The Stories of John Cheever

by John Cheever

  WE BECAME ATTACHED at the Newsomes’ one evening, for reasons that I’ve never understood, to a couple named Dr. and Mrs. Trencher. I think that Mrs. Trencher was the aggressor in this friendship, and after our first meeting she telephoned Ethel three or four times. We went to their house for dinner, and they came to our house, and sometimes in the evening when Dr. Trencher was walking their old dachshund, he would come up for a short visit. He seemed like a pleasant man to have around. I’ve heard other doctors say that he’s a good physician. The Trenchers are about thirty; at least he is. She is older.

  I’d say that Mrs. Trencher is a plain woman, but her plainness is difficult to specify. She is small, she has a good figure and regular features, and I suppose that the impression of plainness arises from some inner modesty, some needlessly narrow view of her chances. Dr. Trencher doesn’t smoke or drink, and I don’t know whether there’s any connection or not, but the coloring in his slender face is fresh—his cheeks are pink, and his blue eyes are clear and strong. He has the singular optimism of a well-adjusted physician—the feeling that death is a chance misfortune and that the physical world is merely a field for conquest. In the same way that his wife seems plain, he seems young.

  The Trenchers live in a comfortable and unpretentious private house in our neighborhood. The house is old-fashioned; its living rooms are large, its halls are gloomy, and the Trenchers don’t seem to generate enough human warmth to animate the place, so that you sometimes take away from them, at the end of an evening, an impression of many empty rooms. Mrs. Trencher is noticeably attached to her possessions—her clothes, her jewels, and the ornaments she’s bought for the house—and to Fräulein, the old dachshund. She feeds Fräulein scraps from the table, furtively, as if she has been forbidden to do this, and after dinner Fräulein lies beside her on the sofa. With the play of green light from a television set on her drawn features and her thin hands stroking Fräulein, Mrs. Trencher looked to me one evening like a good-hearted and miserable soul.

  Mrs. Trencher began to call Ethel in the mornings for a talk or to ask her for lunch or a matinee. Ethel can’t go out in the day and she claims to dislike long telephone conversations. She complained that Mrs. Trencher was a tireless and aggressive gossip. Then late one afternoon Dr. Trencher appeared at the playground where Ethel takes our two children. He was walking by, and he saw her and sat with her until it was time to take the children home. He came again a few days later, and then his visits with Ethel in the playground, she told me, became a regular thing. Ethel thought that perhaps he didn’t have many patients and that with nothing to do he was happy to talk with anyone. Then, when we were washing dishes one night, Ethel said thoughtfully that Trencher’s attitude toward her seemed strange. “He stares at me,” she said. “He sighs and stares at me.” I know what my wife looks like in the playground. She wears an old tweed coat, overshoes, and Army gloves, and a scarf is tied under her chin. The playground is a fenced and paved lot between a slum and the river. The picture of the well-dressed, pink-cheeked doctor losing his heart to Ethel in this environment was hard to take seriously. She didn’t mention him then for several days, and I guessed that he had stopped his visits. Ethel’s birthday came at the end of the month, and I forgot about it, but when I came home that evening, there were a lot of roses in the living room. They were a birthday present from Trencher, she told me. I was cross at myself for having forgotten her birthday, and Trencher’s roses made me angry. I asked her if she’d seen him recently.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “he still comes to the playground nearly every afternoon. I haven’t told you, have I? He’s made his declaration. He loves me. He can’t live without me. He’d walk through fire to hear the notes of my voice.” She laughed. “That’s what he said.”

  “When did he say this?”

  “At the playground. And walking home. Yesterday.”

  “How long has he known?”

  “That’s the funny part about it,” she said. “He knew before he met me at the Newsomes’ that night. He saw me waiting for a cross-town bus about three weeks before that. He just saw me and he said that he knew then, the minute he saw me. Of course, he’s crazy.”

  I was tired that night and worried about taxes and bills, and I could think of Trencher’s declaration only as a comical mistake. I felt that he was a captive of financial and sentimental commitments, like every other man I know, and that he was no more free to fall in love with a strange woman he saw on a street corner than he was to take a walking trip through French Guiana or to recommence his life in Chicago under an assumed name. His declaration, the scene in the playground, seemed to me to be like those chance meetings that are a part of the life of any large city. A blind man asks you to help him across the street, and as you are about to leave him, he seizes your arm and regales you with a passionate account of his cruel and ungrateful children; or the elevator man who is taking you up to a party turns to you suddenly and says that his grandson has infantile paralysis. The city is full of accidental revelation, half-heard cries for help, and strangers who will tell you everything at the first suspicion of sympathy, and Trencher seemed to me like the blind man or the elevator operator. His declaration had no more bearing on the business of our lives than these interruptions.

  MRS. TRENCHER’S telephone conversations had stopped, and we had stopped visiting the Trenchers, but sometimes I would see him in the morning on the cross-town bus when I was late going to work. He seemed understandably embarrassed whenever he saw me, but the bus was always crowded at that time of day, and it was no effort to avoid one another. Also, at about that time I made a mistake in business and lost several thousand dollars for the firm I work for. There was not much chance of my losing my job, but the possibility was always at the back of my mind, and under this and under the continuous urgency of making more money the memory of the eccentric doctor was buried. Three weeks passed without Ethel’s mentioning him, and then one evening, when I was reading, I noticed Ethel standing at the window looking down into the street.

  “He’s really there,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Trencher. Come here and see.”

  I went to the window. There were only three people on the sidewalk across the street. It was dark and it would have been difficult to recognize anyone, but because one of them, walking toward the corner, had a dachshund on a leash, it could have been Trencher.

  “Well, what about it?” I said. “He’s just walking the dog.”

  “But he wasn’t walking the dog when I first looked out of the window. He was just standing there, staring up at this building. That’s what he says he does. He says that he comes over here and stares up at our lighted windows.”

  “When did he say this?”

  “At the playground.”

  “I thought you went to another playground.”

  “Oh, I do, I do, but he followed me. He’s crazy, darling. I know he’s crazy, but I feel so sorry for him. He says that he spends night after night looking up at our windows. He says that he sees me everywhere—the back of my head, my eyebrows—that he hears my voice. He says that he’s never compromised in his life and that he isn’t going to compromise about this. I feel so sorry for him, darling. I can’t help but feel sorry for him.”

  For the first time then, the situation seemed serious to me, for in his helplessness I knew that he might have touched an inestimable and wayward passion that Ethel shares with some other women—an inability to refuse any cry for help, to refuse any voice that sounds pitiable. It is not a reasonable passion, and I would almost rather have had her desire him than pity him. When we were getting ready for bed that night, the telephone rang, and when I picked it up and said hello, no one answered. Fifteen minutes later, the telephone rang again, and when there was no answer this time, I began to shout and swear at Trencher, but he didn’t reply—there wasn’t even the click of a closed circuit and I felt like a fool. Because I felt like a fool, I accused Ethel of having led him on, of having encouraged h
im, but these accusations didn’t affect her, and when I finished them, I felt worse, because I knew that she was innocent, and that she had to go out on the street to buy groceries and air the children, and that there was no force of law that could keep Trencher from waiting for her there, or from staring up at our lights.

  We went to the Newsomes’ one night the next week, and while we were taking off our coats, I heard Trencher’s voice. He left a few minutes after we arrived, but his manner—the sad glance he gave Ethel, the way he sidestepped me, the sorrowful way that he refused the Newsomes when they asked him to stay longer, and the gallant attentions he showed his miserable wife made me angry. Then I happened to notice Ethel and saw that her color was high, that her eyes were bright, and that while she was praising Mrs. Newsome’s new shoes, her mind was not on what she was saying. When we came home that night, the baby-sitter told us crossly that neither of the children had slept. Ethel took their temperatures. Carol was all right, but the boy had a fever of a hundred and four. Neither of us got much sleep that night, and in the morning Ethel called me at the office to say that Carl had bronchitis. Three days later, his sister came down with it.

  For the next two weeks, the sick children took up most of our time. They had to be given medicine at eleven in the evening and again at three in the morning, and we lost a lot of sleep. It was impossible to ventilate or clean the house, and when I came in, after walking through the cold from the bus stop, it stank of cough syrups and tobacco, fruit cores and sickbeds. There were blankets and pillows, ashtrays, and medicine glasses everywhere. We divided the work of sickness reasonably and took turns at getting up in the night, but I often fell asleep at my desk during the day, and after dinner Ethel would fall asleep in a chair in the living room. Fatigue seems to differ for adults and children only in that adults recognize it and so are not overwhelmed by something they can’t name; but even with a name for it they are overwhelmed, and when we were tired, we were unreasonable, cross, and the victims of transcendent depressions. One evening after the worst of the sickness was over, I came home and found some roses in the living room. Ethel said that Trencher had brought them. She hadn’t let him in. She had closed the door in his face. I took the roses and threw them out. We didn’t quarrel. The children went to sleep at nine, and a few minutes after nine I went to bed. Sometime later, something woke me.

  A light was burning in the hall. I got up. The children’s room and the living room were dark. I found Ethel in the kitchen sitting at the table, drinking coffee.

  “I’ve made some fresh coffee,” she said. “Carol felt croupy again, so I steamed her. They’re both asleep now.”

  “How long have you been up?”

  “Since half past twelve,” she said. “What time is it?”

  “Two.”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down. She got up from the table and rinsed her cup and looked at herself in a mirror that hangs over the sink. It was a windy night. A dog was wailing somewhere in an apartment below ours, and a loose radio antenna was brushing against the kitchen window.

  “It sounds like a branch,” she said.

  In the bare kitchen light, meant for peeling potatoes and washing dishes, she looked very tired.

  “Will the children be able to go out tomorrow?”

  “Oh, I hope so,” she said. “Do you realize that I haven’t been out of this apartment in over two weeks?” She spoke bitterly and this startled me.

  “It hasn’t been quite two weeks.”

  “It’s been over two weeks,” she said.

  “Well, let’s figure it out,” I said. “The children were taken sick on a Saturday night. That was the fourth. Today is the—”

  “Stop it, stop it,” she said. “I know how long it’s been. I haven’t had my shoes on in two weeks.”

  “You make it sound pretty bad.”

  “It is. I haven’t had on a decent dress or fixed my hair.”

  “It could be worse.”

  “My mother’s cooks had a better life.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “My mother’s cooks had a better life,” she said loudly.

  “You’ll wake the children.”

  “My mother’s cooks had a better life. They had pleasant rooms. No one could come into the kitchen without their permission.” She knocked the coffee grounds into the garbage and began to wash the pot.

  “How long was Trencher here this afternoon?”

  “A minute. I’ve told you.”

  “I don’t believe it. He was in here.”

  “He was not. I didn’t let him in. I didn’t let him in because I looked so badly. I didn’t want to discourage him.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t know. He may be a fool. He may be insane but the things he’s told me have made me feel marvelously, he’s made me feel marvelously.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Go? Where would I go?” She reached for the purse that is kept in the kitchen to pay for groceries and counted out of it two dollars and thirty-five cents. “Ossining? Montclair?”

  “I mean with Trencher.”

  “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she said, “but who can say that I shouldn’t? What harm would it do? What good would it do? Who knows. I love the children but that isn’t enough, that isn’t nearly enough. I wouldn’t hurt them, but would I hurt them so much if I left you? Is divorce so dreadful and of all the things that hold a marriage together how many of them are good?” She sat down at the table.

  “In Grenoble,” she said, “I wrote a long paper on Charles Stuart in French. A professor at the University of Chicago wrote me a letter. I couldn’t read a French newspaper without a dictionary today, I don’t have the time to follow any newspaper, and I am ashamed of my incompetence, ashamed of the way I look. Oh, I guess I love you, I do love the children, but I love myself, I love my life, it has some value and some promise for me and Trencher’s roses make me feel that I’m losing this, that I’m losing my self-respect. Do you know what I mean, do you understand what I mean?”

  “He’s crazy,” I said.

  “Do you know what I mean? Do you understand what I mean?”

  “No,” I said. “No.”

  Carl woke up then and called for his mother. I told Ethel to go to bed. I turned out the kitchen light and went into the children’s room.

  THE CHILDREN felt better the next day, and since it was Sunday, I took them for a walk. The afternoon sun was clement and pure, and only the colored shadows made me remember that it was midwinter, that the cruise ships were returning, and that in another week jonquils would be twenty-five cents a bunch. Walking down Lexington Avenue, we heard the drone bass of a church organ sound from the sky, and we and the others on the sidewalk looked up in piety and bewilderment, like a devout and stupid congregation, and saw a formation of heavy bombers heading for the sea. As it got late, it got cold and clear and still, and on the stillness the waste from the smokestacks along the East River seemed to articulate, as legibly as the Pepsi-Cola plane, whole words and sentences. Halcyon. Disaster. They were hard to make out. It seemed the ebb of the year—an evil day for gastritis, sinus, and respiratory disease—and remembering other winters, the markings of the light convinced me that it was the season of divorce. It was a long afternoon, and I brought the children in before dark.

  I think that the seriousness of the day affected the children, and when they returned to the house, they were quiet. The seriousness of it kept coming to me with the feeling that this change, like a phenomenon of speed, was affecting our watches as well as our hearts. I tried to remember the willingness with which Ethel had followed my regiment during the war, from West Virginia to the Carolinas and Oklahoma, and the day coaches and rooms she had lived in, and the street in San Francisco where I said goodbye to her before I left the country, but I could not put any of this into words, and neither of us found anything to say. Sometime after dark, the children were bathed and put to bed, and we sat down to our supper. At about
nine o’clock, the doorbell rang, and when I answered it and recognized Trencher’s voice on the speaking tube, I asked him to come up.

  He seemed distraught and exhilarated when he appeared. He stumbled on the edge of the carpet. “I know that I’m not welcome here,” he said in a hard voice, as if I were deaf. “I know that you don’t like me here. I respect your feelings. This is your home. I respect a man’s feelings about his home. I don’t usually go to a man’s home unless he asks me. I respect your home. I respect your marriage. I respect your children. I think everything ought to be aboveboard. I’ve come here to tell you that I love your wife.”

  “Get out,” I said.

  “You’ve got to listen to me,” he said. “I love your wife. I can’t live without her. I’ve tried and I can’t. I’ve even thought of going away—of moving to the West Coast—but I know that it wouldn’t make any difference. I want to marry her. I’m not romantic. I’m matter-of-fact. I’m very matter-of-fact. I know that you have two children and that you don’t have much money. I know that there are problems of custody and property and things like that to be settled. I’m not romantic. I’m hardheaded. I’ve talked this all over with Mrs. Trencher, and she’s agreed to give me a divorce. I’m not underhanded. Your wife can tell you that. I realize all the practical aspects that have to be considered—custody, property, and so forth. I have plenty of money. I can give Ethel everything she needs, but there are the children. You’ll have to decide about them between yourselves. I have a check here. It’s made out to Ethel. I want her to take it and go to Nevada. I’m a practical man and I realize that nothing can be decided until she gets her divorce.”

  “Get out of here!” I said. “Get the hell out of here!”

  He started for the door. There was a potted geranium on the mantelpiece, and I threw this across the room at him. It got him in the small of the back and nearly knocked him down. The pot broke on the floor. Ethel screamed. Trencher was still on his way out. Following him, I picked up a candlestick and aimed it at his head, but it missed and bounced off the wall. “Get the hell out of here!” I yelled, and he slammed the door. I went back into the living room. Ethel was pale but she wasn’t crying. There was a loud rapping on the radiator, a signal from the people upstairs for decorum and silence—urgent and expressive, like the communications that prisoners send to one another through the plumbing in a penitentiary. Then everything was still.