by John Cheever
I have dreams of a density I would like to bring to fiction. We are summering in Nantucket, and I write a letter to some friends in Texa who are planning to visit us. I give them detailed instructions on how to reach the island, using both an atlas and a road map. A woman reminds me that she wore my old clothes during the bombing of Britain. At daybreak, I feel unloving and make no passes and invent a fantasy in which Mary says, “I think I had better tell you that B. and I are in love. I think you ought to know. X has refused to give him a divorce.” I am bathed in self-pity, limpid as gin. But how can I gentle a woman who treats me with scorn? Remain hopeful and keep your pecker up.
•
All Hallows’ Eve. Some set piece about the community giving a primordial shudder, scattering the mercies of piety, charity, and mental health and exposing, briefly, the realities of evil and the hosts of the vengeful and unquiet dead. I see how frail the pumpkin lanterns are that we light on our doorsteps to protect our houses from the powers of darkness. I see the little boy, dressed as a devil, rattling a can and asking pennies for UNICEF. HOW thin the voice of reason sounds tonight! Does my mother fly through the air? My father, my fishing companions? Have mercy upon us; grant us thy peace! Although there seemed to be no connection, it was always at this season that, in the less well-heeled neighborhoods of the village, “For Sale” signs would appear, as abundant as chrysanthemums. Most of them seemed to have been printed by children, and they were stuck into car windshields, nailed to trees, and attached to the bows of cabin cruisers and other boats, resting on trailers in the side yard. Everything seemed to be for sale—pianos, vacant lots, Rototillers, and chain saws, as if the coming of winter provoked some psychic upheaval involving the fear of loss. But as the last of the leaves fell, glittering like money, the “For Sale” signs vanished with them. Had everyone got a raise, a mortgage, a loan, or an infusion of hopefulness? It happened every year.
•
I belt down a great deal of bourbon before lunch, futz around. Buy flowers for Mary. The simple pleasure I seemed to take in flowers is vanished. Oh, well. We go—a little rain is falling—to see Pasolini’s “St. Matthew.” I have been told that Pasolini is homosexual, but he photographs the faces of his people lovingly and beautifully, and his sexual life is no affair of mine. As we leave the theatre, it is rainin heavily, and I throw my jacket over Mary’s shoulders and feel myself to be seventeen, eighteen, no more. At home I drink some whiskey and brood. I am sad; I am weary; I am weary of being a boy of fifty; I am weary of my capricious dick, but it seems unmanly of me to say so. I say so, and Mary most kindly and gently takes me into her arms. I don’t make out, but lie there like a child. Patience, courage, cheerfulness.
So with one word, one word, she mends the wreath of hair. Oh, mend the wreath of hair, make the rain fall, scatter the ghosts. And I seem, most unjustly, to accuse myself.
So I am gentled and gentled and gentled.
•
When D. was a kid he liked to dress up in girls’ clothes, and in his sophomore year at college he had a love affair with his roommate. This was gratifying sexually, but it corresponded in no other way to what he expected from love. His roommate was comely and athletic. D. was puny. His roommate claimed that he did what he did only as a convenience or a favor. D. was the lover, his roommate was the beloved, and he was a demanding, cruel, and callous beloved. After his graduation, D. went on to New York and got a job. His homosexual or narcissistic instincts were estimable, but he was unwilling or unable to enter into another love affair as painful as the affair in college. He went to a psychiatrist named Jacks three times a week for five years, trying to understand or cure or alter the clash between his homosexual instincts and the desire to marry and raise a family. At the end of five years, he met a young woman whom he loved. Jacks was doubtful about D.’s ability to marry, but he went ahead in spite of Jacks and seemed very happy—he seemed ecstatic. He loved his wife, he loved his way of life, he loved his children, and yet all of this had not changed his narcissism. In trains, public places—everywhere—he seemed to seek out men younger than he, whose features and tastes corresponded in some way either to his own features and tastes or, perhaps, to those features and tastes that he lacked when he was young. He went to another psychiatrist—Jacks had died—who encouraged him to sublimate his narcissism in various ways. He fell in love with a young neighbor—a married man with two children. He desired the neighbor ardently, dreamed of him, and tried to sublimate this by helping his friend. He got him a job, got him a raise, and advised him on everything including the purchase o a new oil burner. He did not admire his image in the mirror—he could see clearly how gaunt and lined his face was—but he loved it more than any other face that would appear in his lifetime, and boarding a train he would look around for some young man reading a paperback copy of Dylan Thomas whom he could help. There always seemed to be some young man around the house receiving help. D. never touched them, and if they touched him, as they often did, he would put them away gently, half faint with desire. I only mention this to point out that everyone’s life is not as simple as yours.
•
Wet lunch at the club. Taking a taxi home I ask the driver to leave me off at Hawkes Avenue. He thinks I’m crazy. “Let me take you to where you’ve paid to go,” he says, but I ask him to let me off, and walk home. It is very cold and the cold air seems as stimulating as gin. I pound along the road, dragging the heels of my loafers with pleasure. Why is this? It is the kind of irresolute or sloppy conduct that used to trouble my father. I think I enjoy dragging the heels of my loafers because it was something he asked me not to do, thirty-five years ago.
Mary is resting in bed and, fully dressed, I lie down beside her and take her in my arms. Then I experience a sense—as heady as total drunkenness—of our being fused, of our indivisibility for better or for worser, an exalting sense of our oneness. While I hold her she falls asleep—my child, my goddess, the mother of my children. Her breathing is a little harsh, and I am supremely at peace. When she wakes, she asks, “Did I snore?” “Terribly,” I say. “It was earsplitting. You sounded like a chain saw.” “It was a nice sleep,” she said. “It was very nice to have you asleep in my arms,” I say. “It was very, very nice.”
•
Nailles’ memories of his marriage were unromantic, even crude. He seemed not attracted to the conventional beauties. MaryEllen cutting the autumn roses, MaryEllen in a ball gown, MaryEllen weeping at the news of a friend’s death. Instead of this, he remembered a night when Tessie had got sick and vomited on the floor beneath the grand piano. It was about 3 A.M. when he let the old dog out and got a mop and a pail and started to clean up the mess. The noise woke MaryEllen, and she came downstairs in her nightgown. Looking up from beneath th piano, he was deeply moved by her beauty. She got some paper towels and went on her hands and knees to help him. When she was done she stood, striking her head smartly on the piano lid. The blow hurt. Her eyes filled with tears. He, naked, kissed away her tears and led her over to the sofa. He pulled her nightgown up above her breasts and laid her there. Another night, she had asked him to lay her before she took her bath. Then she drew her tub, and he joined her in the bathroom and sat naked on the old toilet while she shaved her legs. “If I don’t have a hot lunch,” he said, “I get loose bowels. Cheese gives me loose bowels too.” “Cheese constipates me,” she said. She went on shaving her legs. It was lovely, lovely, lovely. It was what he remembered.
•
Fend, fend, fend off the gin with the New York Times Magazine section. My resolve collapses at eleven. I walk the boys to the archery range, set up a target in the orchard. Sneak two bourbons and read some more of the Times. An article in defense of the Asiatic war. The timbre of the man’s intelligence offends me to the point of desperation. The metaphors are vulgar, the syntax is evasive, the analogies are massive and dishonest, but what I experience most is a sense of alienation and despair: the knowledge that in any conversation it would be impossible to
impress—let alone persuade—this stranger with one’s own opinions.
•
I take Mrs. Zagreb out to lunch. Oh, what a rascal! I think she’s a little crazy, but the effect on me is stimulating, and we both chat excitedly about our terribly interesting lives. We could talk all afternoon. She let the cabdriver (very good-looking in an Italian sort of way) buy her a drink and the bartender (he must have been good-looking; he’s very tall but he’s pretty old) drove her into New York. I take a nap, and wake with a stupendous feeling of magnanimity and love. Mary is upstairs, correcting papers in bed, but when I feel in her pants she puts me off. I don’t care. I sail off to the florist’s and buy flowers for Mary and Zagreb, thinking two women are better than one. What a rascal, what a libertine! Z. gives me a French kiss. Swept along on my magnanimity I walk the dog over the hill, noticing how like flowers (pansies) are the dog’s tracks. A leaf, some leaves. I do not much lift my eyes to the clouds from whence cometh this, the light of this winte afternoon. My house is brightly lighted, and Mary is in the kitchen making rolled beef, which I like. We are all happy, it seems, until at dinner Freddy begins to bawl. I finesse this, but something has gone wrong. I ask Mary if she has read Merwin’s poems. “I’ve read several of them twice,” she says, and goes upstairs to correct papers. But now she seems to me stern, unfeminine, more than I can master, and, at the thought of screwing, my cock begs to be excused. What is this? I think with pleasure and without shame of how feminine and sensual X was; of how, having dressed to make a telephone call, X, on returning, stripped and bounded back into bed. I also remember how sappy X was—the sense of having been disinfected, the bitten lower lip. I read until ten, when I find Mary in bed. I am given a sweet kiss, but she is asleep when I return from my bath. She is wakeful during the night, but when I ask if I can do anything she answers impatiently. Keep your pecker up.
•
It seems—or it seems to me—that it is terribly difficult for Mary to thank me for anything. When I gave her an electric typewriter for Christmas, she refused to open it, look at it, or acknowledge it in any way. She not only did not thank me; she did not speak to me. Exactly eleven months later, she came to me in the dining room, gave me a kiss, and said, “Thank you for the lovely, lovely typewriter.”
•
The house was dark, of course. The snow went on falling. The last of the cigarette butts was gone, the gin bottle was empty, even the aspirin supply was exhausted. He went upstairs to the medicine cabinet. The plastic vial that used to contain Miltown still held a few grains, and by wetting his finger he picked these up and ate them. They made no difference. At least we’re alive, he kept saying, at least we’re alive, but without alcohol, heat, aspirin, barbiturates, coffee, and tobacco it seemed to be a living death. At least I can do something, he thought, at least I can distract myself, at least I can take a walk; but when he went to the door he saw wolves on the lawn.
•
The fact of the passage of time seems, to my great surprise, a source of sadness. One can put a sort of varnish on the facts, but one canno change them. In the space of a day you find that the barber, bartender, and waiter who have served you for twenty-five years are all suddenly dead. Waking in high spirits is a matter of stepping out of one’s dreams into an aura of love and friendship, but to take a roster of one’s most vivid friends is crushing. X sits in a wheelchair being read to by a nurse. Y cruises the Mediterranean in his twin-diesel yacht, suffering terribly from boredom. M. is a reformed alcoholic with a damaged brain, trying to sell magazine subscriptions over the telephone. A. is an unregenerate alcoholic, bellicose, absentminded, drunk for three and four months at a time. These were the men and women one rose in the morning to meet, talk, walk, and drink with, and nearly all the brilliant ones are gone. I think of Cummings, who played out his role as a love poet into his late sixties. There was a man.
•
Our conversation goes, by my account, like this. Me: Good morning. She: Good morning (faintly). Me: May I have the egg on the stove? She: You know I never eat eggs. “Goodbye,” I say, after breakfast. (Silence.) “Would you like a drink,” I ask at five. “Yes, please.” “This book is very interesting,” I say. “It must be,” she sighs. I chat during dinner, but she remains silent. These are the words we exchange during a day.
•
Bright stars and intense cold when I go to bed; in the morning the bluish darkness of another snowstorm. The usual Friday festivities. I take Mary to see “Zhivago.” It would be fun to parody the screenplay. The battlefield scene ends with a closeup of a pair of eyeglasses. Not broken. There are many such cues: fur hats, flowers. Cuts from opulence to poverty. A rich and loving young couple ride their sleigh through the snow. Camera up to a lighted candle in a frost-rimmed window. Dissolve frost, and we see a very poor and loving couple. Terrible music, and all the sets are overdressed. Overdecorated. A ballroom frilled with drifting snow. The passengers crowded into a freight train for days have gleaming linen, lustrous hair, brilliant complexions. Watching the hero and his blonde in bed, I think how long it’s been since I’ve been involved in some volcanic, unseemly, irresistible, and carnal affair. Is this age? Will I never be caught up helplessly in the storms of history and love?
•
Palm Sunday. Ten above zero. I get to church before the doors open, and am badly chilled. This, I suppose, because I’ve harmed my circulation. Miss F. has arranged the palm fronds in a fan above the purple cloth of Holy Week. She sits at a distance from her father. There is a blond young woman ahead of me who has a nervous habit of shifting her head that I find charming. Her taffy-colored hair conceals her face. I want to see it, but then I am afraid I will be disappointed. What am I doing here on my knees, shaking with alcohol and the cold? I do not pray, but I hope that my children will know much happiness. I believe that there was a Christ, that he spoke the Beatitudes, cured the sick, and died on the Cross, and it seems marvellous to me that men should, for two thousand years, have repeated this story as a means of expressing their deepest feelings and intuitions about life. My only noticeable experience is a pleasant sense of humility. Kneeling at the chancel, I notice how expertly the wooden lamb holds in the crook of his leg the staff of Christ’s banner. The acolytes have red dresses and muddy loafers. Leaving the chancel, I see the face of the blonde and I am disappointed. I take home a palm frond, not to cleanse my house of its ills but to demonstrate that I want my house to be blessed.
•
And the sad men, the lonely men, those who are unhappily married, drop to their knees in garages, bathrooms, and motels asking God to help them understand the need for love. Unbelievers, every last one of them. Who is this God with whom they plead? He is an old man with a long white beard like a waterfall. Why do they, adult and intelligent men, behave so ridiculously? They seem forced to their knees by a palpable burden of pain.
•
Not drunk, not very drunk in any case, I decide that we should have our quarterly talk. “Things aren’t going well,” I say. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” says she. “Do you think this is the way a man and a woman should live together?” I say. “No,” says she. “Well, let’s talk.” Her face is strained and pale, the eyes not protuberant but brilliant, the brows well up. “You destroy everything you love,” says she. “I love my children,” say I, “and I haven’t destroyed them.” “Let’s leave the children out of this,” says she. “I love my friends,” say I. “You don’t have any friends,” says she. “You simply use people as a convenience.” Then we go into the routine where she says she wishes I could see my face. This is followed by the fact that I deceive myself, that I am a creation of self-deception. She’s said this before, and once offered to tell me some terrible truth about myself and then said it was too terrible. I don’t know what she’s aiming at here. Is this homosexuality? Has she determined that I am a homosexual? I have had my homosexual anxieties and experiences, but I find women much more attractive than men, and think it fitting a
nd proper that I make my life with a woman. She then says that she knows herself absolutely, and that I know nothing of myself. This sort of judgment—which is how I think of it—bewilders me. How can any adult claim to know himself much better than another does? There seems to be some impermeability here. It seems to me unnatural. I don’t understand it at all. I say that I am a loving person, and she asks how can I be a loving person, since I never see anyone? There is a digression here on the loneliness of the novelist, but I do see people and I do go out to them directly and warmly. I ask—it seems to me one of the few aggressive points I make—if she is afraid of being dependent. “I am,” she says, “completely independent of you.” I say that as a provider I’ve given her whatever she wanted. She says I haven’t. She then says that I’m very funny about money with the children. I say that I’ve given the children whatever money they wanted, and that I’ve never reproached them. What does she mean by “funny”? She doesn’t wish to discuss the matter. I say that I’m not much of a banker. She assents, laughing bitterly. There is much more, but I seem unable to recall it this morning. I mention the love I feel for my sons. “That’s the only reason I’m sticking around,” she says, getting to her feet. “Is that what you’re doing?” I ask. “Sticking around?” “You take advantage of everything I say,” she says. “I wouldn’t have said that,” say I, and covering my poor, poor cock with my hands I kiss her good night, take a Nembutal, and check out. Waking in the morning, I summon up my girls, but they do not come. It is she, who has indicted me as venomous, emotionally ignorant, a bad provider, self-deceived, whom I desire. I don’t, I won’t, admit that this is sexual masochism. There is too little evidence for this in the rest of my life. I sincerely doubt that this is a wishful repetition of my mother’s dominance. I think maybe it’s just bad luck.
