The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [92]
It was a gray afternoon along the coast, but not an unexciting one—there might be a storm, and the prospect seemed to please her, as if she held on her tongue, like a peppercorn, the flavor of the old port and the stormy dusk. The air was salty and she could hear the sea breaking at Travertine. The Topaze was dark, of course, dark and she seemed unsalvageable in that light—one of those hulks that we see moored by coal yards in city rivers, kept afloat through some misguided tenderness or hope, wearing sometimes a For Sale sign and sometimes the last habitation of some crazy old hermit whose lair is pasted up with pearly-skinned and spread-legged beauties and whose teeth are pulled. The first thing that crossed her mind when she saw the dark and empty ship was that she would not sail again. She would not cross the bay again. Then Mrs. Wapshot had her vision. She saw the ship berthed at the garden wharf, her hull shining with fresh paint and her cabin full of light. She saw, by turning her head, a dozen or more cars parked in the cornfield. She even saw that some of them had out-of-state license plates. She saw a sign nailed to the elm by the path: VISIT THE S.S. TOPAZE, THE ONLY FLOATING GIFT SHOPPE IN NEW ENGLAND. In her mind she took the path down the garden and crossed the wharf to board the ship. Her cabin was all new paint (the life preservers were gone), and lamps burned on many small tables, illuminating a cargo of ash trays, cigarette lighters, playing-card cases, wire arrangements for holding flowers, vases, embroidery, hand-painted drinking glasses and cigarette boxes that played “Tales from Vienna Woods” when you opened them. Her vision was in detail and splendidly lighted and warm as well, for she saw a Franklin stove at one end of the cabin with a fire in the grate and the perfume of wood smoke mingled with the smell of sachets, Japanese linen and here and there the smell of tallow from a lighted candle. The S.S. Topaze, she thought again, The Only Floating Gift Shoppe in New England, and then she let the stormy dusk reclaim the dark ship and went very happily into the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Leander did not understand why Theophilus Gates would not lend him enough money to have the bow of the Topaze repaired while he would loan Sarah all the money she wanted to turn the old launch into a floating gift shop. That is what happened. The day after her vision Sarah went to the bank and the day after that the carpenters came and began to repair the wharf. The salesmen began to arrive—three and four a day—and Sarah began to stock the Topaze, spending money, as she said herself, like an inebriated sailor. Her happiness or rapture was genuine although it was hard to see why she should find such joy in a gross of china dogs with flowers painted on their backs, their paws shaped in such a way that they could hold cigarettes. There may have been some vengefulness in her enthusiasm—some deep means of expressing her feelings about the independence and the sainthood of her sex. She had never been so happy. She had signs painted: VISIT THE S.S. TOPAZE, THE ONLY FLOATING GIFT SHOPPE IN NEW ENGLAND, and posted at all the roads leading into the village. She planned to open the Topaze with a gala tea and a sale of Italian pottery. Hundreds of invitations were printed and mailed.
Leander made a nuisance of himself. He broke wind in the parlor and urinated against an apple tree in full view of the boats on the river and the salesmen of Italian pottery. He claimed to be aging swiftly and pointed out how loudly his bones creaked when he stooped to pick a thread off a carpet. Tears streamed capriciously from his eyes whenever he heard a horse race on the radio. He still shaved and bathed each morning,