The Stories of John Cheever

Renée put on a black dress the next day and took a cab to the funeral parlor. As soon as she opened the door, she was in the hands of a gloved and obsequious usher, ready to sympathize with a grief more profound and sedate than any grief of hers would ever be. An elevator took her up to the chapel. When she heard the electric organ playing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning!” she thought she would have to sit down before she had the strength to see Mrs. Walton, and then she saw Mrs. Walton standing by the open door of the chapel. The two women embraced, and Renée was introduced to Mrs. Walton’s sister, a Mrs. Henlein. They were the only people there. At the far end of the room, under a meager show of gladioli, lay her dead lover. “He was so alone, Renée dear,” Mrs. Walton said. “He was so terribly alone. He died alone, you know, in that furnished room.” Mrs. Walton began to cry. Mrs. Henlein cried. A minister came in and the service began. Renée knelt and tried to remember the Lord’s Prayer, but she got no further than “… on earth as it is in Heaven.” She began to cry, but not because she remembered the man tenderly; she had not remembered him for years and it was only by forcing her memory that she could recall that he sometimes brought her breakfast in bed, and that he sewed the buttons on his own shirts. She cried for herself, she cried because she was afraid that she herself might die in the night, because she was alone in the world, because her desperate and empty life was not an overture but an ending, and through it all she could see the rough, brutal shape of a coffin.

The three women left the chapel, helped by the obsequious usher, and rode down in the elevator. Renée said she couldn’t go to the cemetery, that she had an appointment. Her hands were shaking with fright. She kissed Mrs. Walton goodbye and took a taxi to Sutton Place. She walked down to the little park where Deborah and Mrs. Harley would be.

Deborah saw Renée first. She called Renée’s name and ran toward her, struggling up the steps one at a time. Renée picked her up. “Pretty Renée,” the little girl said. “Pretty, pretty Renée.” Renée and the child sat down beside Mrs. Harley. “If you want to go shopping,” she said, “I’ll take Deborah for a few hours.”

“Now, I don’t know whether I ought to or not,” Mrs. Harley said.

“She’ll be perfectly safe with me,” Renée said. “I’ll take her up to my apartment and you can call for her there at five. Mr. and Mrs. Tennyson needn’t know.”