The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [109]
Coverly kept telling her that it didn’t matter and gave her a glass of sherry and then she decided to call the Frascatis. “All I want now is to have a little party,” she said, “and I have all this food and maybe the Frascatis would like to come. They haven’t been very neighborly but maybe that’s because they’re foreigners. I’m going to ask the Frascatis.”
“Why don’t we forget the whole thing?” Coverly said. “We can eat our supper or take in a movie or something. We can have a good time together.”
“I’m going to ask the Frascatis,” Betsey said, and she went to the telephone. “This is Betsey Wapshot,” she said cheerfully, “and I’ve meant to call you again and again but I’ve been a bad neighbor, I’m afraid. We’ve been so busy since we’ve moved in that I haven’t had the time and I’m ashamed of myself for having been such a bad neighbor but I just wondered if you and your husband wouldn’t like to come over tonight and have supper with us.”
“Thank you but we already had supper,” Mrs. Frascatti said. She hung up.
Then Coverly heard Betsey calling the Galens. “This is Betsey Wapshot,” she said, “and I’m sorry I haven’t called you sooner because I’ve wanted to know you better but I wondered if you and your husband would like to come over tonight for supper.”
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Mrs. Galen said, “but the Tellermans—I think they’re friends of yours—Max Tellerman’s young brother has just come home from college and they’re bringing him over to see us.”
Betsey hung up. “Hypocrite,” she sobbed. “Hypocrite. Oh she’d break her back, wouldn’t she to get in good with the Galens and she just wouldn’t tell me, her best friend, she just wouldn’t have the nerve to tell me the truth.”
“There, there, sugar,” Coverly said. “It isn’t that important. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” Betsey cried. “It’s a matter of life and death to me, that’s what it is. I’m going over there and see, I’m just going over there and see if that Mrs. Galen’s telling me the truth. I’m just going over there and see if that Max Tellerman’s sick in bed or if he isn’t. I’m just going over there and see.”
“Don’t, Betsey,” Coverly said. “Don’t, honey.”
“I’m just going over there and see, that’s what I’m going to do. Oh I’ve heard enough about this brother of his but when it comes time to introduce him around their old friends aren’t good enough. I’m going over and see.” She stood—Coverly tried to stop her, but she went out the door. In her bathrobe and slippers she marched, bellicosely, up the street to the next circle. The Tellermans’ windows were lighted, but when she rang the bell no one answered and there was no sound. She went around to the back of the house where the curtains on the picture window hadn’t been drawn and looked into their living room. It was empty but there were some cocktail glasses on the table and by the door was a yellow leather suitcase with a Cornell sticker on it. And as she stood there in the dark it seemed that the furies attacked Betsey; that through every incident—every moment of her life—ran the cutting thread, the wire of loneliness, and that when she thought she had been happy she had only deceived herself for under all her happiness lay the pain of loneliness and all her travels and friends were nothing and everything was nothing.
She walked home and later that night she had a miscarriage.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Betsey was in the hospital for two days and then she came home but she didn’t seem to get better. She was unhappy as well as sick and Coverly felt that she was pushing some kind of stone that had nothing to do with their immediate life—or even with her miscarriage—but with some time in her past. He cooked her supper each night when he came home from the laboratory and talked or tried to talk with her. When she had been in bed for two weeks or longer he asked her if he could call the doctor.