The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [38]
“You can’t sell her.”
“I can too,” Honora said. “The D’Agostino boys want to buy her for a fishing boat.”
“I mean she’s my usefulness, Honora.” There was nothing pleading in his voice. He was still shouting. “You gave her to me. I’m used to her. She’s my boat.”
“I only loaned her to you.”
“Goddamn it, Honora, the members of a family can’t backbite one another like this.”
“I won’t listen to swearing,” Honora said. Up went her hands again.
“What do you want?”
“I want you to stop swearing.”
“Why did you do this? Why did you do this behind my back? Why didn’t you tell me what was on your mind?”
“She belongs to me, I can do anything I want with her.”
“We’ve always shared things, Honora. That rug belongs to me. That rug’s mine.” He meant the long rug in the hall.
“Your dear mother gave that rug to me,” Honora said.
“She loaned it to you.”
“She meant me to have it.”
“That’s my rug.”
“It’s nothing of the kind.”
“Two can play at this game as well as one.” Leander put down the sign and picked up an end of the rug.
“You put down that rug, Leander Wapshot,” Honora shouted.
“It’s my rug.”
“You put down that rug this instant. Do you hear me?”
“It’s mine. It’s my rug.” He pulled the folds of the rug, which was long and so dirty that the dust from its warp made him sneeze, toward the door. Then Honora went to the other end of the rug, seized it and called for Maggie. When Maggie came out of the kitchen she grabbed Honora’s end—they were all sneezing—and they all began to pull. It was a very unpleasant scene, but if we accept the quaintness of St. Botolphs we must also accept the fact that it was the country of spite fences and internecine quarrels and that the Pinchot twins lived until their death in a house divided by a chalk line. Leander lost, of course. How could a man win such a contest? Leaving Honora and Maggie in possession of the rug he stormed out of the house, his feelings in such a turmoil that he did not know where to go, and walking south on Boat Street until he came to a field he sat down in the sweet grass and chewed the succulent ends of a few stalks to take the bitterness out of his mouth.
During his lifetime Leander had seen, in the village, the number of sanctuaries for men reduced to one. The Horse Guards had disbanded; the Atlantic Club was shut; even the boat club had been floated down to Travertine. The only place left was the Niagara Hose Company, and he walked back to the village and climbed the stairs beside the fire engine to the meeting room. The smell of many jolly beefsteak suppers was in the air, but there was no one in the room but old Perley Sturgis and Perley was asleep, On the walls were many photographs of Wapshots: Leander as a young man; Leander and Hamlet; Benjamin, Ebenezer, Lorenzo and Thaddeus. The photographs of himself as a young man made him unhappy and he went and sat in one of the Morris chairs near the window.
His anger at Honora had changed to a pervasive sense of uneasiness. She had something up her sleeve and he wished he knew what it was. He wondered what she could do and then he realized that she could do anything she pleased. The Topaze and the farm were hers. She paid the school bills and the interest on the mortgage. She had even filled the cellar with coal. She had offered to do all this in the kindest imaginable way. I have the wherewithal, Leander, she had said. Why shouldn’t I help my only family? It was his fault—he couldn’t blame her—that he had never expected consequence for this largess. He knew that she was meddlesome but he had overlooked this fact, borne along on his conviction of the abundance of life—carp in the inlet, trout in the streams, grouse in the orchard and money in Honora’s purse—the feeling that the world was contrived to cheer and delight him. A ragged image of his wife and his sons appeared to him then—thinly dressed and standing in a snowstorm—which was, after all, not so outrageous since couldn’t Honora, if she wanted, let them all experience hunger? This image of his family roused in him passionate feelings. He would defend