The Stories of John Cheever (1979 Pulitzer Prize)

by John Cheever

  "But I can see you again?"

  "Of course, but not tonight." She crossed the room and laid her hand against his cheek. "Now, you go," she said, "and I'll call you. You're very nice, but now you go."

  He stumbled out of the door, stunned but feeling wonderfully important. He had been in the room three minutes, four at the most, and what had there been between them, this instantaneous recognition of their fitness as lovers? He had been excited when he first saw her—had been excited by her strong, gay voice. Why had they been able to move so effortlessly, so directly toward one another? And where was his sense of good and evil, his passionate desire to be worthy, manly, and, within his vows, chaste? He was a member of the Church of Christ, he was a member of the vestry, a devout and habitual communicant, sincerely sworn to defend the articles of faith. He had already committed a mortal sin. But driving under the maples and through the summer night, he could not, under the most intense examination, find anything in his instincts but goodness and magnanimity and a much enlarged sense of the world. He struggled with some scrambled eggs, practiced the variations, and tried to sleep. "O, marito in Città!"

  It was the memory of Mrs. Zagreb's front that tormented him. Its softness and fragrance seemed to hang in the air while he waited for sleep, it followed into his dreams, and when he woke his face seemed buried in Mrs. Zagreb's front, glistening like marble and tasting to his thirsty lips as various and soft as the airs of a summer night.

  In the morning, he took a cold shower, but Mrs. Zagreb's front seemed merely to wait outside the shower curtain. It rested against his cheek as he drove to the train, read over his shoulder as he rode the eight-thirty-three, jiggled along with him through the shuttle and the downtown train, and haunted him through the business day. He thought he was going mad. As soon as he got home, he looked up her number in the Social Register that his wife kept by the telephone. This was a mistake, of course, but he found her number in a local directory and called her. "Your trousers are ready," she said. "You can come and get them whenever you want. Now, if you'd like."

  She called for him to come in. He found her in the living room, and she handed him his trousers. Then he was shy and wondered if he hadn't invented the night before. Here, with his shyness, was the truth, and all the rest had been imagining. Here was a widowed seamstress handing some trousers to a lonely man, no longer young, in a frame house that needed paint on Maple Avenue. The world was ruled by common sense, legitimate passions, and articles of faith. She shook her head. This then was a mannerism and had nothing to do with washing her hair. She pushed it off her forehead; ran her fingers through the dark curls. "If you have time for a drink," she said, "there's everything in the kitchen."

  "I'd love a drink," he said. "Will you have one with me?"

  "I'll have a whiskey and soda," she said.

  Feeling sad, heavy-hearted, important, caught up on those streams of feeling that never surface, he went into the kitchen and made their drinks. When he came back into the room, she was sitting on a sofa, and he joined her there; seemed immersed in her mouth, as if it was a maelstrom; spun around thrice and sped down the length of some stupendous timelessness. The dialogue of sudden love doesn't seem to change much from country to country. We say across the pillow, in any language, "Hullo, hullo, hullo, hullo, hullo," as if we were involved in some interminable and tender transoceanic telephone conversation, and the adulteress, taking the adulterer into her arms, will cry, "Oh, my love, why are you so bitter?" She praised his hair, his neck, the declivity in his back. She smelled faintly of soap—no perfume—and when he said so she said softly, "But I never wear perfume when I'm going to make love." They went side by side up the narrow stairs to her room—the largest room in a small house, but small at that, and sparsely furnished, like a room in a summer cottage, with old furniture that had been painted white and with a worn white rug. Her suppleness, her wiles, seemed to him like a staggering source of purity. He thought he had never known so pure, gallant, courageous, and easy a spirit. So they kept saying "Hullo, hullo, hullo, hullo" until three, when she made him leave.

  He walked in his garden at half past three or four. There was a quarter moon, the air was soft and the light vaporous, the clouds formed like a beach and the stars were strewn among them like shells and moraine. Some flower that blooms in July—phlox or nicotiana—had scented the air, and the meaning of the vaporous light had not much changed since he was an adolescent; it now, as it had then, seemed to hold out the opportunities of romantic love. But what about the strictures of his faith? He had broken a sacred commandment, broken it repeatedly, joyously, and would break it at every opportunity he was given; therefore, he had committed a mortal sin, and must be denied the sacraments of his church. But he could not alter the feeling that Mrs. Zagreb, in her knowledgeableness, represented uncommon purity and virtue. But if these were his genuine feelings, then he must resign from the vestry, the church, improvise his own schemes of good and evil, and look for a life beyond the articles of faith. Had he known other adulterers to take Communion? He had. Was his church a social convenience, a sign of deliquescence and hypocrisy, a means of getting ahead? Were the stirring words said at weddings and funerals no more than customs and no more religious than the custom of taking off one's hat in the elevator at Brooks Brothers when a woman enters the car? Christened, reared, and drilled in church dogma, the thought of giving up his faith was unimaginable. It was his best sense of the miraculousness of life, the receipt of a vigorous and omniscient love, widespread and incandescent as the light of day. Should he ask the suifragan bishop to reassess the Ten Commandments, to include in their prayers some special reference to the feelings of magnanimity and love that follow sexual engorgements?

  He walked in the garden, conscious of the fact that she had at least given him the illusion of playing an important romantic role, a lead, a thrilling improvement over the sundry messengers, porters, and clowns of monogamy, and there was no doubt about the fact that her praise had turned his head. Was her excitement over the declivity in his back cunning, sly, a pitiless exploitation of the enormous and deep-buried vanity in men? The sky had begun to lighten, and undressing for bed he looked at himself in the mirror. Yes, her praise had all been lies. His abdomen had a dismal sag. Or had it? He held it in, distended it, examined it full face and profile, and went to bed.

  The next day was Saturday, and he made a schedule for himself. Cut the lawns, clip the hedges, split some firewood, and paint the storm windows. He worked contentedly until five, when he took a shower and made a drink. His plan was to scramble some eggs and, since the sky was clear, set up his telescope, but when he had finished his drink he went humbly to the telephone and called Mrs. Zagreb. He called her at intervals of fifteen minutes until after dark, and then he got into his car and drove over to Maple Avenue. A light was burning in her bedroom. The rest of the house was dark. A large car with a state seal beside the license plate was parked under the maples, and a chauffeur was asleep in the front seat.

  He had been asked to take the collection at Holy Communion, and so he did, but, when he got to his knees to make his general confession, he could not admit that what he had done was an offense to divine majesty; the burden of his sins was not intolerable; the memory of them was anything but grievous. He improvised a heretical thanksgiving for the constancy and intelligence of his wife, the clear eyes of his children, and the suppleness of his mistress. He did not take Communion, and when the priest fired a questioning look in his direction, he was tempted to say clearly, "I am unashamedly involved in an adultery." He read the papers until eleven, when he called Mrs. Zagreb and she said he could come whenever he wanted. He was there in ten minutes, and made her bones crack as soon as he entered the house. "I came by last night," he said. "I thought you might," she said. "I know a lot of men. Do you mind?"

  "Not at all," he said.

  "Someday," she said, "I'm going to take a piece of paper and write on it everything that I know about men. And then I'll put it in
to the fireplace and burn it."

  "You don't have a fireplace," he said.

  "That's so," she said, but they said nothing much else for the rest of the afternoon and half the night but "Hullo, hullo, hullo, hullo."

  When he came home the next evening, there was a letter from his wife on the hall table. He seemed to see directly through the envelope into its contents. In it she would explain intelligently and dispassionately that her old lover, Olney Pratt, had returned from Saudi Arabia and asked her to marry him. She wanted her freedom, and she hoped he would understand. She and Olney had never ceased loving one another, and they would be dishonest to their innermost selves if they denied this love another day. She was sure they could reach an agreement on the custody of the children. He had been a good provider and a patient man, but she did not wish ever to see him again.

  He held the letter in his hand thinking that his wife's handwriting expressed her femininity, her intelligence, her depth; it was the hand of a woman asking for freedom. He tore the letter open, fully prepared to read about Olney Pratt, but he read instead: "Dear Lover-bear, the nights are terribly cold, and I miss..." On and on it went for two pages. He was still reading when the doorbell rang. It was Doris Hamilton, a neighbor. "I know you don't answer the telephone, and I know you don't like to dine out," she said, "but I'm determined that you should have at least one good dinner this month, and I've come to shanghai you."

  "Well," he said.

  "Now you march upstairs and take a shower, and I'll make myself a drink," she said. "We're going to have hot boiled lobster. Aunt Molly sent down a bushel this morning, and you'll have to help us eat them. Eddie has to go to the doctor after dinner, and you can go home whenever you like."

  He went upstairs and did as he was told. When he had changed and come down, she was in the living room with a drink, and they drove over to her house in separate cars. They dined by candlelight off a table in the garden, and, washed and in a clean duck suit, he found himself contented with the role he had so recently and so passionately abdicated. It was not a romantic lead, but it had some subtle prominence. After dinner, Eddie excused himself and went off to see his psychiatrist, as he did three nights each week. "I don't suppose you've seen anyone," Doris said. "I don't suppose you know the gossip."

  "I really haven't seen anyone."

  "I know. I've heard you practicing the piano. Well, Lois Spinner is suing Frank, and suing the buttons off him."

  "Why?"

  "Well, he's been carrying on with this disgusting slut, a perfectly disgusting woman. His older son, Ralph—he's a marvelous boy—saw them together in a restaurant. They were feeding each other. None of his children want to see him again."

  "Men have had mistresses before," he said tentatively.

  "Adultery is a mortal sin," she said gaily, "and was punished in many societies with death."

  "Do you feel this strongly about divorce?"

  "Oh, he had no intention of marrying the pig. He simply thought he could play his dirty games, humiliate, disgrace, and wound his family and return to their affections when he got bored. The divorce was not his idea. He's begged Lois not to divorce him. I believe he's threatened to kill himself."

  "I've known men," he said, "to divide their attentions between a mistress and a wife."

  "I daresay you've never known it to be done successfully," she said.

  The fell truth in this had never quite appeared to him. "Adultery is a commonplace," he said. "It is the subject of most of our literature, most of our plays, our movies. Popular songs are written about it."

  "You wouldn't want to confuse your life with a French farce, would you?"

  The authority with which she spoke astonished him. Here was the irresistibility of the lawful world, the varsity team, the best club. Suddenly, the image of Mrs. Zagreb's bedroom, whose bleakness had seemed to him so poignant, returned to him in an unsavory light. He remembered that the window curtains were torn and that those hands that had so praised him were coarse and stubby. The promiscuity that he had thought to be the well-spring of her pureness now seemed to be an incurable illness. The kindnesses she had showed him seemed perverse and disgusting. She had groveled before his nakedness. Sitting in the summer night, in his clean clothes, he thought of Mrs. Estabrook, serene and refreshed, leading her four intelligent and handsome children across some gallery in his head. Adultery was the raw material of farce, popular music, madness, and self-destruction.

  "It was terribly nice of you to have had me," he said. "And now I think I'll run along. I'll practice the piano before I go to bed."

  "I'll listen," said Doris. "I can hear it quite clearly across the garden."

  The telephone was ringing when he came in. "I'm alone," said Mrs. Zagreb, "and I thought you might like a drink." He was there in a few minutes, went once more to the bottom of the sea, into that stupendous timelessness, secured against the pain of living. But, when it was time to go, he said that he could not see her again. "That's perfectly all right," she said. And then, "Did anyone ever fall in love with you?"

  "Yes," he said, "once. It was a couple of years ago. I had to go out to Indianapolis to set up a training schedule, and I had to stay with these people—it was part of the job—and there was this terribly nice woman, and every time she saw me she'd start crying. She cried at breakfast. She cried all through cocktails and dinner. It was awful. I had to move to a hotel, and naturally, I couldn't ever tell anyone."

  "Good night," she said, "good night and goodbye."

  "Good night, my love," he said, "good night and goodbye."

  His wife called the next night while he was setting up the telescope. Oh, what excitement! They were driving down the next day. His daughter was going to announce her engagement to Frank Emmet. They wanted to be married before Christmas. Photographs had to be taken, announcements sent to the papers, a tent must be rented, wine ordered, et cetera. And his son had won the sailboat races on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. "Good night, my darling," his wife said, and he fell into a chair, profoundly gratified at this requital of so many of his aspirations. He loved his daughter, he liked Frank Emmet, he even liked Frank Emmet's parents, who were rich, and the thought of his beloved son at the tiller, bringing his boat down the last tack toward the committee launch, filled him with great cheer. And Mrs. Zagreb? She wouldn't know how to sail. She would get tangled up in the mainsheet, vomit to windward, and pass out in the cabin once they were past the point. She wouldn't know how to play tennis. Why, she wouldn't even know how to ski! Then, watched by Scamper, he dismantled the living room. In the hallway, he put a wastebasket on the love seat. In the dining room, he upended the chairs on the table and turned out the lights. Walking through the dismantled house, he felt again the chill and bewilderment of someone who has come back to see time's ruin. Then he went up to bed, singing, "Marito in città, la moglie ce ne Va, o povero niarito!"

  THE GEOMETRY OF LOVE

  It was one of those rainy late afternoons when the toy department of Woolworth's on Fifth Avenue is full of women who appear to have been taken in adultery and who are now shopping for a present to carry home to their youngest child. On this particular afternoon there were eight or ten of them—comely, fragrant, and well dressed—but with the pained air of women who have recently been undone by some cad in a midtown hotel room and who are now on their way home to the embraces of a tender child. It was Charlie Mallory, walking away from the hardware department, where he had bought a screwdriver, who reached this conclusion. There was no morality involved. He hit on this generalization mostly to give the lassitude of a rainy afternoon some intentness and color. Things were slow at his office. He had spent the time since lunch repairing a filing cabinet. Thus the screwdriver. Having settled on this conjecture, he looked more closely into the faces of the women and seemed to find there some affirmation of his fantasy. What but the engorgements and chagrins of adultery could have left them all looking so spiritual, so tearful? Why should they sigh so deeply as they fingered t
he playthings of innocence? One of the women wore a fur coat that looked like a coat he had bought his wife, Mathilda, for Christmas. Looking more closely, he saw that it was not only Mathilda's coat, it was Mathilda. "Why, Mathilda," he cried, "what in the world are you doing here?"

  She raised her head from the wooden duck she had been studying. Slowly, slowly, the look of chagrin on her face shaded into anger and scorn. "I detest being spied upon," she said. Her voice was strong, and the other women shoppers looked up, ready for anything.

  Mallory was at a loss. "But I'm not spying on you, darling," he said. "I only—"

  "I can't think of anything more despicable," she said, "than following people through the streets." Her mien and her voice were operatic, and her audience was attentive and rapidly being enlarged by shoppers from the hardware and garden-furniture sections. "To hound an innocent woman through the streets is the lowest, sickest, and most vile of occupations."

  "But, darling, I just happened to be here."

  Her laughter was pitiless. "You just happened to be hanging around the toy department at Woolworth's? Do you expect me to believe that?"

  "I was in the hardware department," he said, "but it doesn't really matter. Why don't we have a drink together and take an early train?"

  "I wouldn't drink or travel with a spy," she said. "I am going to leave this store now, and if you follow or harass me in any way, I shall have you arrested by the police and thrown into jail." She picked up and paid for the wooden duck and regally ascended the stairs. Mallory waited a few minutes and then walked back to his office.

  Mallory was a free-lance engineer, and his office was empty that afternoon—his secretary had gone to Capri. The telephone-answering service had no messages for him. There was no mail. He was alone. He seemed not so much unhappy as stunned. It was not that he had lost his sense of reality but that the reality he observed had lost its fitness and symmetry. How could he apply reason to the slapstick encounter in Woolworth's, and yet how could he settle for unreason? Forgetfulness was a course of action he had tried before, but he could not forget Mathilda's ringing voice and the bizarre scenery of the toy department. Dramatic misunderstandings with Mathilda were common, and he usually tackled them willingly, trying to decipher the chain of contingencies that had detonated the scene. This afternoon he was discouraged. The encounter seemed to resist diagnosis. What could he do? Should he consult a psychiatrist, a marriage counselor, a minister? Should he jump out of the window? He went to the window with this in mind.