Free Oh What a Paradise It Seems by John Cheever Page B

way, that’s the way, that’s the way to do it!” He seemed very happy and excited. A little way down the beach was a group of very old people. They were so old that if they went swimming they would sink. They sat on the sand wearing all their clothes, including vests and hats, and one of the women kept saying, “Ohwhat have we done to deserve such a beautiful day!” Betsy didn’t know what she was talking about.
    Then Randy came running up and said that he had learned to swim and so she went down to the edge of the water and watched him demonstrate his stroke. She was very happy to see how pleased both he and his father were and she did not mention the fact that the buoyancy of salt water made it easier to swim in the ocean than to swim in the pools where she had done most of her swimming. Then they ate their sandwiches and Henry drank his beer and kissed Betsy and felt very amorous, but there wasn’t any place and they knew that when they made love or even thought about it it made little Randy feel lonely and left out and they didn’t want to spoil his day at the beach and she understood when Henry stopped kissing her. She had thought to pack a softball and Randy and Henry were happy to throw this back and forth, and she was happy to lie on the beach and hear the waves and smell the salt water.
    Her people were not fishermen or sailors and she had nothing at all to do with the sea so far as she knew, but the brine and the blue sky and the sand all seemed most natural to her as if this were her home, although she could not imagine what it must be like to live near the sea with its winter storms and tempests. She had never in her life seen the ocean but on a summer’s day. She went swimming again and again. Then the old people left and the shadows began to fall toward the sea. They packed up their own things. They were the last people on the beach and Baby Binxie was sleeping. While she gathered up the towels and the sandwich papers and Binxie’s diapers she rememberedwatching on TV when an astronaut went into space. After the countdown the camera had shown all the people along the beach packing up their sandwich baskets and their towels and their folding furniture and going back to the parking lot, and she remembered that this had moved her more deeply than the thought of a man walking around on the moon. Almost everybody else on the beach had gone home early, and it seemed to her that they had gone because they had received some urgent message to leave and that the beach was their home and that on leaving the beach they would be like the evacuees of war or much more recently like those people who lived near toxic dumps and who have to travel for years, perhaps for a lifetime, seeking a new home.
    “That was a nice day at the beach, darling,” she said to Henry when they got to the parking lot and she kissed him. “I’ve always liked to spend a day at the beach and that was a very nice one.” He kissed her and said, “I thought it was a very nice day too, but I’m going to ask you to drive until we get to route 224 if you don’t mind. I’m sunburned and my eyes are strained and I’d like to rest before I hit the heavy traffic on route 224.” “I know what you mean,” she said, “but I’d love to drive.” And so he got in the back seat with Randy and they put Binxie’s carrier in the front seat and off they went.
    “That sun made me feel poleaxed,” Henry said and that was the last she heard from him. Then little Randy fell asleep and Binxie was already gone and she found herself alone in the car like the captain of a ship but a pleasant feeling of aloneness. She knew what Henry meant feelingpoleaxed, but she had the strength to drive to 224 in a car with three sleeping and beloved men. Two twenty-four was a convergence of six- and eight-lane highways that made her think with longing of the simplicity of their day on the beach, when there was nothing more difficult to comprehend than blue sky and