The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [107]
Coverly ran down the hall. Max was standing by the stove. He had torn Betsey’s dress. Coverly swung at him, got him on the side of the jaw and set him down on the floor. Betsey screamed and ran into the living room. Coverly stood over Max, cracking his knuckles. There were tears in his eyes. “Hit me again if you want to, kick me if you want to,” Max said. “I couldn’t punch a hole in a paper bag. That was a lousy thing for me to do, you know, but I just can’t help myself sometimes and I’m glad it’s over and I swear to God I’ll never do it again, but Jesus Christ Coverly sometimes I get so lonely I don’t know where to turn and if it wasn’t for this kid brother of mine that I’m sending through college I think I’d cut my throat, so help me God, I’ve thought of it often enough. You wouldn’t think, just looking at me, that I was suicidal, would you, but so help me God I am an awful lot of the time.
“Josie’s all right. She’s a darned good sport,” Max said, still speaking from the floor, “and she’ll stay with me through thick and thin and I know that, but she’s very insecure, you know, oh she’s very insecure and I think it’s because she’s lived in so many different places. She gets melancholy, you know, and then she takes it out on me. She says I take advantage of her. She says I don’t bring in the money for the food. I don’t bring in the money for the car. She needs new dresses and she needs new hats and I don’t know what she doesn’t need new and then she gets real sore and goes off on a buying spree and sometimes it’s six months or a year before I can pay the bills. I still owe bills all over the whole United States. Sometimes I don’t think I can stand it any more. Sometimes I think I’m just going to pack my bag and take to the road. That’s what I think, I think I’m entitled to a little fun, a little happiness, you know, and so I take a pass here and a pass there but I’m sorry about Betsey because you and Betsey have been real good friends to us but sometimes I don’t think I can go on unless I have a little fun. I just don’t think I have the strength to go on. I just don’t think I can stand it any more.”
In the living room Josie had taken Betsey into her arms. “There, there, honey,” Josie was saying, “there, there, there. It’s all over. Nothing happened. I’ll fix your dress. I’ll get you a new dress. He just had too much to drink, that’s all. He’s got the wandering hands. He’s got the wandering hands and he just had too much to drink. Those hands of his, he’s always putting them someplace where they don’t belong. Honey, this isn’t the first time. Even when he’s asleep those hands of his are feeling around all the time until they get hold of something. Even when he’s asleep, honey. There, there, don’t you worry about it any more. Think of me, think of what I have to put up with. Thank God you’ve got a nice, clean husband like Coverly. Think of poor me, think of poor Josie trying to be cheerful all the time and going around picking up after him. Oh, I’m so tired of it. I’m so tired of trying to make his mistakes good. And if we get a couple of dollars ahead he sends it to this kid brother in Cornell. He’s in love with this kid brother, he loves him more than he loves me or you or anybody. He spoils him. It makes my blood boil. He’s living up there like a regular prince in a dormitory with his own bathroom and fancy clothes while I’m mending and sewing and scrubbing to save the price of a cleaning woman so that he can send this college boy an allowance or a new sports jacket or a tennis racket or something. Last year he was worried because the kid didn