The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [103]
The salesman packed his things and went away. Coverly came home at six. “Hello, sugar,” he said. “Why sit in the dark?”
“Well, I think I’m pregnant,” Betsey said. “I guess I’m pregnant. I’m seven days late and this morning I felt sort of funny, dizzy and sick.” She sat on Coverly’s lap and put her head against his. “I think it’s going to be a boy. That’s what it feels like to me. Of course there’s no point in counting your chickens before your eggs are hatched but if we do have a baby one of the things I want to buy is a nice chair because I’m going to breast feed this baby and I’d like to have a nice chair to sit in when I nurse him.”
“You can buy a chair,” Coverly said.
“Well, I saw a nice chair in the furniture center a couple of days ago,” Betsey said, “and after supper why don’t we walk around the corner and look at it? I haven’t been out of the house all day and a little walk would be good for you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be good for you to stretch your legs?”
After supper they took their walk. A fresh wind was blowing out of the north—straight from St. Botolphs—and it made Betsey feel vigorous and gay. She took Coverly’s arm and at the corner, under the fluorescent street lamp, he bent down and gave her a French kiss. Once they got to the shopping center Betsey wasn’t able to concentrate on her chair. Every suit, dress, fur coat and piece of furniture in the store windows had to be judged, its price and way of life guessed at and some judgment passed as to whether or not it should enter Betsey’s vision of happiness. Yes, she said to a plant stand, yes, yes to a grand piano, no to a breakfront, yes to a dining-room table and six chairs, as thoughtfully as St. Peter sifting out the hearts of men. At ten o’clock they walked home. Coverly undressed her tenderly and they took a bath together and went to bed for she was his potchke, his fleutchke, his notchke, his motchke, his everything that the speech of St. Botolphs left unexpressed. She was his little, little squirrel.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
During the three weeks before their marriage, Moses and Melissa deceived Justina so successfully that it pleased the old lady to watch them say good night to one another at the elevator and she spoke several times at dinner of Melissa’s part of the house as that part of the house that Moses had never seen. Moses’s training as a mountain climber kept him from tiring in his nightly trip over the roofs but one evening, when they had wine with dinner and he was hurried, he tripped over the wire once more and sprawled, full-length, on the slates, cutting his chest. Then, with his skin smarting, a deep physical chagrin took hold of him and he discovered in himself a keen dislike of Clear Haven and all its antics and a determination to prove that the country of love was not bizarre; and he consoled himself with thinking that in a few days he would be able to put a ring on Melissa’s finger and enter her room at the door. She had, for some reason, made him promise not to urge her to leave Clear Haven, but he felt that she would change her mind by autumn.
On the eve of his wedding Moses walked up from the station, carrying a rented cutaway in a suitcase. On the drive he met Giacomo, who was putting light bulbs into the fixtures along the drive.