The Wapshot Scandal by John Cheever Read Free Book Online Page A

Mrs. Armstrong working in her flower garden and she interpreted this interest in flowers as the sign of a kindly nature. One day, when Binxey was taking his nap, Betsey went next door and rang the bell. Mrs. Armstrong answered the door. “I’m Betsey Wapshot,” Betsey said, “and I’m your next-door neighbor. My husband Coverly was trained as a subprogrammer but they’ve got him on public relations right now. I’ve seen you in your garden and I thought I’d pay you a call.” The woman kindly invited her in. She seemed not inhospitable but subdued. “What I wanted to ask you about,” Betsey said, “was my neighbors. We’ve been here two months now but we just seem to have been too busy to make friends. We don’t know anybody and so I thought I’d like to give a little cocktail party and see who’s who. I want to know who to ask.”
    “Well, my dear, I’d wait a little while, if I were you,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “For some reason this seems to be quite a conservative community. I think you’d better meet your neighbors before you invite them.”
    “Well, I come from a small town,” Betsey said, “where everybody’s neighbors, and I often say to myself that if I can’t trust in the friendliness of strangers, well, then what in the world is there that I can trust in?”
    “I see what you mean,” said Mrs. Armstrong.
    “I’ve lived in all kinds of places,” Betsey said. “High society. Low society. My husband’s family came over on the Arbella . That’s the ship that came after the Mayflower but it had a higher class of people. It seems to me that people are all the same, under their skins. What I want you to do is to give me a list of twenty-five or thirty of the most interesting people in the neighborhood.”
    “But, my dear, I’m afraid I couldn’t do that.”
    “Why not?”
    “There isn’t time.”
    “Well, it wouldn’t take very long, would it?” Betsey asked. “I’ve got a pencil and paper right here. Now just tell me who lives in the house on the corner.”
    “The Seldons.”
    “Are they interesting?”
    “Yes, they’re quite interesting but they’re not terribly friendly.”
    “What’s his first name?”
    “Herbert.”
    “Who lives in the house next to them?”
    “The Trampsons.”
    “Are they interesting?”
    “Yes, they’re terribly interesting. He and Reginald Tappan discovered the Tappan Constant. He’s been nominated for a Nobel Prize but he’s not terribly friendly.”
    “And then on the other side of them?” Betsey asked.
    “The Harnecks,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “But I must warn you, my dear, that you’ll be making a mistake if you ask them before you’ve been introduced.”
    “And that’s where I think you’re wrong,” Betsey said. “You just wait and see. Who lives on the other side of them?”
    In the end she went away with a list of twenty-five names. Mrs. Armstrong explained that she would be unable to come to the party herself because she was going to Denver. With the thought of a party to occupy her Betsey was happy and at peace with the world. She explained her plans to the proprietor of a liquor store in the shopping center. He told her what she would need and gave her the telephone number of a couple—a maid and barman—who would mix the drinks and prepare the food. At the stationery store she bought a box of invitations and happily spent an afternoon and an evening addressing these. On the day of the party the couple arrived at three. Betsey dressed herself and her little son, Coverly came home at five, when the first guests were expected, and the scene was set.
    When no one had come by half-past five Coverly opened a beer and the barman made a whisky and ginger ale for Betsey. Cars went to and fro on the street but none of them stopped at the Wapshots’. She could hear the sounds of a tennis game from a court in the next block; laughter and talk. The bartender said kindly that the neighborhood was a strange one. He had worked in