The Stories of John Cheever (1979 Pulitzer Prize)

by John Cheever

  The remark was crushing. It seemed to the girl emotionally and intellectually incomprehensible. She wanted to cry. She could not imagine her mother giving herself, as she put it, to a string of lonely soldiers. Her mother's manner firmly and authoritatively declared her indifference to this side of things. There seemed to be no way of getting around what had been said. It stuck up in the girl's consciousness like a fallen meteor. Perhaps it was all a lie, but her mother had never lied. Then, for once, she faced up to the limitations of her only parent. Her mother was not a liar, but she was a fraud. Her accent was a fraud, her tastes were fraudulent, and the seraphic look she assumed when she listened to music was the look of someone trying to recall an old telephone number. With her indomitable good cheer, her continual aches and pains, her implacable snobbism, her cultural squatter's rights, her lofty friends, and her forceful and meaningless utterances, she seemed, for a moment, to illustrate a supreme lack of discernment in nature. But was Jill meant to fabricate, single-handed, some cord of love and wisdom between this stranger who had given her life and life itself as she could see it, spread out in terms of fields and woods, wondrous and fair, beyond the windows? Could she not instead—But she felt too young, too thin, too undefended to make a life without a parent, and so she decided that her mother had not said what she said, and sealed the denial with a light kiss.

  Jill went away to boarding school when she was twelve, and took all the prizes. Her scholastic, social, and athletic record was unprecedented. During her second year in college, she visited her relatives in San Francisco, and met and fell in love with Georgie Madison. He was not, considering her intelligence, the sort of man she would have been expected to choose, but it may have been sensible of her to pick a man whose interests were so different. He was a quiet, large-boned man with black hair and those gentle looks that break the hearts of the fatherless of all ages; and she was, after all, fatherless. He worked as a junior executive in a San Francisco shipyard. He had graduated from Yale, but when Melee once asked him if he liked Thackeray he said sincerely and politely that he had never tasted any. This simmered down to a family joke. They got engaged in her junior year, and were married a week after she graduated from college, where she again took all the prizes. He was transferred to a Brooklyn shipyard, and they moved to New York, where she got a public-relations job in a department store.

  In the second or third year of their marriage, she had a son, whom they called Bibber. The birth was difficult, and she would not be able to have more children. When the boy was still young, they moved to Gordenville. She was happier in the country than she had been in town, since the country seemed to present more opportunities for her talents. The presidencies of the civic organizations followed one after the other, and when the widow who ran the local travel agency got sick, Jill took over and ran this successfully. Their only problem in the country was to find someone to stay with Bibber. A stream of unsatisfactory old women drifted through the house, augmented by high-school girls and cleaning women. Georgie loved his son intemperately. The boy was bright enough, but his father found this brightness blinding. He walked with the boy, played with him, gave him his bath at bedtime, and told him his story. Georgie did everything for his son when he was at home, and this was just as well, since Jill often came in later than he.

  When Jill put down the reins of the travel agency, she decided to organize a European tour. She had not been abroad since their marriage, and if she wrote her own ticket she could make the trip at a profit. This, at least, was what she claimed. Georgie's shipyard was doing well, and there was no real reason for her to angle for a free trip, but he could see that the idea of conducting a tour stimulated and challenged her, and in the end he gave her his approval and his encouragement. Twenty-eight customers signed up, and early in July Georgie saw Jill and her lambs, as she called them, take off in a jet for Copenhagen. Their itinerary was to take them as far south as Naples, where Jill would put her dependents aboard a home-bound plane. Then Georgie would meet her in Venice, where they would spend a week. Jill sent her husband postcards each day, and several of her customers were so enthusiastic about her leadership that they wrote Georgie themselves to tell him what a charming, competent, and knowledgeable wife he possessed. His neighbors were friendly, and he mostly dined with them. Bibber, who was not quite four, had been put into a summer camp.

  Before Georgie left for Europe, he drove to New Hampshire to check on Bibber. He had missed the little boy painfully and had seen him much oftener in his reveries than he had seen his wife's vivacious face. To put himself to sleep, he imagined some implausible climbing tour through the Dolomites with Bibber when the boy was older. Night after night, he helped his son up from ledge to ledge. Overhead, the thin snow on the peaks sparkled in the summer sunlight. Carrying packs and ropes, they came down into Cortina a little after dark. The bare facts of his trip north contrasted sharply with this Alpine reverie.

  The drive took him most of a day. He spent a restless night in a motel and scouted out the camp in the morning. The weather was mixed, and he was in the mountains. There were showers and then pale clearings—an atmosphere not so much of gloom as of bleakness. Most of the farms that he passed were abandoned. As he approached the camp, he felt that it and the surrounding countryside had the authority of a remote creation; or perhaps this was a reprise of his own experience of summers and camps as interludes unconnected with the rest of time. Then, from a rise of ground, he saw the place below him. There was a small lake—a pond, really: one of those round ponds whose tea-colored waters and pine groves leave with you an impression of geological fatigue. His own recollections of camp were sunny and brilliant, and this rueful water hole, with its huddle of rotting matchboard shanties, collided violently with his robust memories. He guessed—he insisted to himself—that things would look very different when the sun shone. Arrows pointed the way to the administration building, where the directress was waiting for him. She was a blue-eyed young woman whose efficiency had not quite eclipsed her good looks. "We've had a bit of trouble with your son," she said. "He's not gotten along terribly well. It's quite unusual. We seldom if ever have cases of homesickness. The exception is when we take children from divided families, and we try never to do this. We can cope with normal problems, but we cannot cope with a child who brings more than his share of misery with him. As a rule, we turn down applications from children of divorce."

  "But Mrs. Madison and I are not divorced," Georgie said.

  "Oh, I didn't know. You are separated?"

  "No," Georgie said, "we are not. Mrs. Madison is traveling in Europe, but I am going to join her tomorrow."

  "Oh, I see. Well, in that case, I don't understand why Bibber has been so slow to adjust. But here is Bibber to tell us all about it himself!"

  The boy threw off the hand of the woman with him and ran to his father. He was crying.

  "There, there," said the directress. "Daddy hasn't come all this way to see a weeper, has he, Bibber?"

  Georgie felt his heart heave in love and confusion. He kissed the tears from the boy's face and held him against his chest.

  "Perhaps you'd like to take a little walk with Bibber," the directress suggested. "Perhaps Bibber would like to show you the sights."

  Georgie, with the boy clinging to his hand, had to face certain responsibilities that transcended the love he felt for his son. His instinct was to take the boy away. His responsibility was to hearten and encourage him to shoulder the burdens of life. "What is your favorite place, Bibber?" he asked enthusiastically, keenly aware of the fatuity in his tone, and convinced of the necessity for it. "I want you to show me your favorite place in the whole camp."

  "I don't have any favorite place," Bibber said. He was trying successfully to keep from crying. "That's the mess hall," he said, pointing to a long, ugly shed. Fresh pieces of yellow lumber had replaced those that had rotted.

  "Is that where you have your plays?" Georgie asked.

  "We don't have any plays,"
Bibber said. "The lady in charge of plays got sick and she had to go home."

  "Is that where you sing?"

  "Please take me home, Daddy," Bibber said.

  "But I can't, Bibber. Mummy's in Europe, and I'm flying over tomorrow afternoon to join her."

  "When can I go home?"

  "Not until camp closes." Georgie felt some of the weight of this sentence himself. He heard the boy's breathing quicken with pain. Somewhere a bugle sounded. Georgie, struggling to mix his responsibilities with his instincts, knelt and took the boy in his arms. "You see, I can't very well cable Mummy and tell her I'm not coming. She's expecting me there. And anyhow, we don't really have a home when Mummy isn't with us. I have my dinners out, and I'm away all day. There won't be anyone there to take care of you."

  "I've participated in everything," the boy said hopefully. It was his last appeal for clemency, and when he saw it fail he said, "I have to go now. It's my third period." He went up a worn path under the pines.

  Georgie returned to the administration building reflecting on the fact that he had loved camp, that he had been one of the most popular boys in camp, and that he had never wanted to go home.

  "I think things are bound to improve," the directress said. "As soon as he gets over the hump, he'll enjoy himself much more than the others. I would suggest, however, that you don't stay too long. He has a riding period now. Why don't you watch him ride, and leave before the period's ended? He takes pride in his riding, and in that way you'll avoid a painful farewell. This evening we're going to have a big campfire and a good long sing. I'm sure that he's suffering from nothing that won't be cured by a good sing with his mates around a roaring fire."

  It all sounded plausible to Georgie, who liked a good campfire sing himself. Were there any sorrows of early life that couldn't be cured by a rousing performance of "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"? He walked over to the riding ring singing, "They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps..." It had begun to rain again, and Georgie couldn't tell whether the boy's face was wet with tears or drops of rain. He was on horseback and being led around the ring by a groom. Bibber waved once to his father and nearly lost his seat, and when the boy's back was turned Georgie went away.

  He flew to Treviso and took a train into Venice, where Jill waited for him in a Swiss hotel on one of the back canals. Their reunion was ardent, and he loved her no less for noticing that she was tired and thin. Getting her lambs across Europe had been a rigorous and exhausting task. What he wanted to do then was to move from their third-rate hotel to Cipriani's, get a cabana at the Lido, and spend a week on the beach. Jill refused to move to Cipriani's—it would be full of tourists—and on their second day in Venice she got up at seven, made instant coffee in a toothbrush glass, and rushed him off to eight-o'clock Mass at St. Mark's. Georgie knew Venice, and Jill knew—or should have known—that he was not interested in painting or mosaics, but she led him by the nose, so to speak, from monument to monument. He guessed that she had got into the habit of tireless sightseeing, and that the tactful thing to do would be to wait until the habit spent itself. He suggested that they go to Harry's for lunch, and she said, "What in the world are you thinking of, Georgie?" They had lunch in a trattoria, and toured churches and museums until closing time. In the morning, he suggested that they go to the Lido, but she had already made arrangements to go to Maser and see the villas.

  Jill brought all her competence as a tour director to their days in Venice, although Georgie didn't see why. Most of us enjoy displaying our familiarity with the world, but he could not detect a trace of enjoyment in her assault. Some people love painting and architecture, but there was nothing loving in her approach to the treasures of Venice. The worship of beauty was mysterious to Georgie, but was beauty meant to crush one's sense of humor? She stood, one hot afternoon, before the facade of a church, lecturing him from her guidebook. She recited dates, naval engagements, and so on, and sketched the history of the Republic as if she were preparing him for an examination. The light in which she stood was bright and unflattering, and the generally festive air of Venice made her erudition, the sternness of her enthusiasm, seem ungainly. She was trying to impress him with the fact that Venice was to be taken seriously. And was this, he wondered, the meaning, the sum, of these brilliant marbles, this labyrinthine and dilapidated place, suffused with the rank and ancient smell of bilge? He put an arm around her and said, "Come off it, darling." She put him away from her and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

  Had she lost an address, a child, a pocketbook, a string of beads, or any other valuable, her canvass of Venice couldn't have been more grueling and exhaustive. He spent the rest of their time in Venice accompanying her on this mysterious search. Now and then he thought of Bibber and his camp. They flew home from Treviso, and in the gentler and more familiar light of Gordenville she seemed herself again. They took up their happiness, and welcomed Bibber when he was released from camp.

  "Isn't it divine, isn't it the most divine period in domestic American architecture?" Jill always asked, showing guests through their large frame house. The house had been built in the 1870s, and had long windows, an oval dining room, and a stable with a cupola. It must have been difficult to maintain, but these difficulties—at parties, anyhow—were never felt. The high-ceilinged rooms were filled with light and had a special grace—austere, gloomy, and finely balanced. The obvious social responsibilities were all hers; his conversation was confined to the shipbuilding industry, but he mixed the drinks, carved the roast, and poured the wine. There was a fire in the fireplace, there were flowers, the furniture and the silver shone, and no one knew and no one would have guessed that it was he who polished the furniture and forks.

  "Housework simply isn't my style," she had said, and he was intelligent enough to see the truth in her remark; intelligent enough not to expect her to recast this image of herself as an educated woman. It was the source of much of her vitality and joy.

  One stormy winter, they weren't able to get any servants at all. A fly-by-night cook came in when they had guests, but the rest of the work fell to Georgie. That was the year Jill was studying French literature at Columbia and trying to finish her book on Flaubert. On a typical domestic evening, Jill would be sitting at her desk in their bedroom, working on her book. Bibber would be asleep. Georgie might be in the kitchen, polishing the brass and silver. He wore an apron. He drank whiskey. He was surrounded by cigarette boxes, andirons, bowls, ewers, and a large chest of table silver. He did not like to polish silver, but if he did not do this the silver would turn black. As she had said, it was not her style. It was not his style, either, nor was it any part of his education, but if he was, as she said, unintellectual, he was not so unintellectual as to accept any of the vulgarities and commonplaces associated with the struggle for sexual equality. The struggle was recent, he knew; it was real; it was inexorable; and while she side-stepped her domestic tasks, he could sense that she might do this unwillingly. She had been raised as an intellectual, her emancipation was still challenged in many quarters, and since he seemed to possess more latitude, to hold a stronger traditional position, it was his place to yield on matters like housework. It was not her choice, he knew, that she was raised as an intellectual, but the choice, having been made by others, seemed irrevocable. His restless sexual nature attributed to her softness, warmth, and the utter darkness of love; but why, he wondered as he polished the forks, did there seem to be some contradiction between these attributes and the possession of a clear mind? Intellect, he knew, was not a masculine attribute, although the bulk of tradition had put decisive powers into the hands of men for so many centuries that their ancient supremacy would take some unlearning. But why should his instincts lead him to expect that the woman in whose arms he lay each night would at least conceal her literacy? Why should there seem to be some rub between the enormous love he felt for her and her ability to understand the quantum theory?

  She wandered downstairs and
stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him at his work. Her feeling was tender. What a kind, gentle, purposeful, and handsome man she had married. What pride he took in their house. But then, as she went on watching him, she suffered a spiritual chill, a paroxysm of doubt. Was he, bent over the kitchen table at a woman's work, really a man? Had she married some half male, some aberration? Did he like to wear an apron? Was he a transvestite? And was she aberrant herself? But this was inadmissible, and equally inadmissible was the reasoning that would bring her to see that he polished silver because he was forced to. Suddenly some vague, brutish stray appeared in the corner of her imagination, some hairy and drunken sailor who would beat her on Saturday nights, debauch her with his gross appetites, and make her scrub the floor on her hands and knees. That was the kind of man she should have married. That had been her destiny. He looked up, smiled gently, and asked her how her work was coming. "Ça marche, ça marche," she said wearily, and went back upstairs to her desk. "Little Gustave didn't get along at all well with his school chums," she wrote. "He was frightfully unpopular."