Bullet Park

by John Cheever

  Nailles had a second drink and went back to the road. The conversation at the bar had disconcerted more than it had amused him. What about the man on the bowling team? Did he know or care how his wife spent her Thursday nights? Nailles was monogamous—incurably so—and the existence of promiscuity bewildered him. He had fallen in love with Nellie the first time he met her and the success of his marriage was not an affair of the heart—it was a matter of life and death. He remembered a recent Saturday afternoon when she had fallen asleep in his arms. Holding her he had experienced a sense of being fused as heady as total drunkenness—a sense of their indivisibility for better or for worse, an exalting sense of their oneness. Her breathing was a little harsh and he was supremely at peace. She was his child, his goddess, the mother of his only son. When she woke she asked: “Did I snore?” “Oh, terribly,” he said, “you sounded like a chain saw.” “It was a nice sleep,” she said. “It was nice to have you in my arms,” he said, “that was very nice … When he got home that afternoon he mixed them both a drink and going upstairs to wash his face he opened the medicine cabinet for the same obscene and detestable purpose as had the stranger in the bar. Then he went downstairs and asked Nellie what sort of a day she’d had. “I went shopping,” she said. “I didn’t buy anything. I just looked at dresses. Everything was the wrong size or the wrong color.”

  “Would you come into the living room for a minute. There’s something I want to ask you.” She followed him into the living room and he shut the double doors into the hall so their voices wouldn’t be heard by Tony.

  In the natural course of events and in a society whose sexual morals were empirical, Nellie, as an attractive woman, had been approached by a number of men. The following things had happened. One Saturday night at the club the Fallows had introduced her to a young house guest named Ballard. He asked her to dance and when he took her in his arms she felt a galvanic flash of sexuality, much stronger than anything she had ever felt for Nailles. She could tell that he was equally disturbed. They moved absentmindedly over the floor. If he asked her to go out with him to his car she could not have refused and why should she? She was in the throes of the most profound sexual attraction of her life. He didn’t ask her to go out. He didn’t have to. They were both pale. He simply gave her his arm and they walked off the floor but as they passed the bar someone shouted: “Fire, fire, fire!” The bar began to fill up with smoke and the drinkers poured out into the corridor, jostling the lovers. Then down the hall came Nailles, carrying a brass fire extinguisher, and plunged into the smoke-filled room. The band went on playing but all of the dancers left the floor and crowded in the doorways. The fire department was there in a few minutes and the bartenders, coughing and weeping, began to carry the bottles out into the hallway, two by two. A white canvas firehose was dragged along the crimson carpet but they got the fire under control without having to inundate the place. When Nailles finally came out of the gutted room, smeared with soot, Nellie ran to his side and said: “Oh, my darling. I was worried about you.” Then they went home and she never saw or thought of Ballard again.

  Among the village libertines was a man named Peter Spratt although he was naturally known as Jack. His wife was a heavy drinker and there was endless speculation about whether his philandering had begun with her drinking or vice versa. At parties he often took Nellie aside and spoke about what he would do if they were ever left alone. She was not offended and was sometimes provoked. He borrowed Nailles’s hedge clipper on Saturday. At Monday noon he rang the bell. Nellie answered the door. He stepped into the hall, put the hedge clipper onto a chair and giving Nellie an amorous and penetrating look that made her head swim said: “Now I’ve got you alone.” Whether or not Nellie could have resisted him will never be known because Nailles was upstairs in bed with a bad cold. “Who’s there, dear,” he asked, “who’s there, sweetheart.” He appeared at the head of the stairs in his bathrobe and pajamas. “Why Jack,” he said, “why aren’t you working.”

  “I thought I’d take a day off,” Jack said.

  “Well have a drink, come in and have a drink.” Nellie got the ice and the two men had a drink. Spratt never tried again.

  Another philanderer in the neighborhood—Bob Harmon—had several times asked Nellie to lunch with him and at a time when she was bored with Nailles and his worries about mouthwash, she accepted. She was thirty-eight years old and what harm could there be in flirting over a restaurant table with a good-looking man? They met in a midtown bar and instead of taking her to a restaurant he took her to an apartment. Here was all the paraphernalia for a seduction, including champagne and caviar. She ate a caviar sandwich and drank a glass of wine while he began to tell her how barren his life had been until he met her. He had still not moved towards her when either the caviar sandwich or something she had eaten for breakfast started a volcanic disturbance in her insides. She asked the way to the bathroom, where she remained for the next fifteen minutes, racked with cramps. When she reappeared she was quite pale and shaken and said that she would have to go home. He seemed, if anything, glad to see her go. So her chasteness, preserved by a fire, a runny nose and some spoiled sturgeon eggs was still intact, although she carried herself as if her virtue was a jewel—an emblem—of character, discipline and intelligence.

  When the extremely shabby scene in the living room ended, Nellie went upstairs and washed away her tears. Then she served dinner so that Tony would not suspect there was anything wrong. At the end of dinner Nailles asked: “Have you done your homework?”

  “It’s all done,” Tony said. “I had two study halls.”

  “Shall we play some golf?”

  “Sure.”

  Nailles got some putters and balls out of the hall closet and they drove to a miniature golf links off Route 64. The links, Nailles guessed, had been built in the thirties. There were deep water traps, bridges and a windmill. The place had long ago gone to seed and had then been abandoned. The water traps were dry, the windmill had lost its sails and the greens were bare concrete but most of the obstacles were intact and on summer nights men and boys still played the course although there were no-trespassing signs all over the place. There were no lights, of course, but that was a summer night and there was light in the sky. A little wind was blowing from the west and there was thunder across the river. When Nailles described the scene to himself, as he would a hundred times or more, his description followed these lines.

  “I was ashamed of having quarreled with Nellie and I kept blaming the whole thing on psychological motives and mouthwash. If I hadn’t gone to Westfield none of this would have happened. Tony led off and I remember feeling very happy to be with him. I taught him how to putt and he has a nice stance. I gave up golf four years ago but I thought I might take it up again. We would play together. I know he isn’t handsome—his nose is too big and he has a bad color—but he’s my son and I love him. Well, it was windy and there was some thunder on the other side of the river. I remember the thunder because I remember thinking how much I liked the noise of thunder. It seems to me a very human sound, much more human than the sound of jet planes, and thunder always reminds me of what it felt like to be young. We used to belong to the country club when I was a kid and I went to all the dances—assemblies—and when I hear the music we used to dance to—‘Rain’ and ‘The Red, Red Robin’—and so forth I remember what it felt like going to dances when you’re seventeen and eighteen, but thunder refreshes my memory much better. It isn’t that I feel young when I hear thunder, it’s just that I can remember what it felt like to be young. We shot the second hole at par and on the third hole you’re supposed to make your ball loop the loop through an old automobile tire. I had some trouble with this. Tony made it in par but I was two over and still trying when Tony said: ‘You know what, Dad?’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he said ‘I’m going to leave school.’

  “Well this got me off-guard. It really spilled me. The idea had never crossed my mind. The first thing I figured out was that
I mustn’t lose my temper. I must be reasonable and patient and so forth. He was only seventeen. I worked out a reasonable and a patient character like a character in a play. Then I tried to act the part. What it really felt like was that patience was this big woolly blanket and I was wrapping myself up in it but it kept slipping. So I said very patiently, ‘Why, Tony?’ and he said because he wasn’t learning anything. He said that French was all grief and English was even worse because he read more than the teacher. Then he said that astronomy was just a gut course and that his teacher was senile. He said that whenever the teacher turned off the lights for a film strip everybody took naps and threw spitballs and that once the teacher cried when they piled out of the class in the middle of a sentence. He said that when he got to the door he looked back and saw the teacher crying. So he went up to him and explained that they didn’t mean to be rude, they just didn’t want to be late for the next class, and then he said that the teacher said that nobody understood him, that he loved his students, he loved them all. Then Tony said he didn’t think too much of a teacher who cried. Well, then we played the fifth hole where you have to get your ball through a gate. I did this in par but he was three over and we went on talking. I said that he had to get his diploma. I asked him what he was planning to do without a diploma and he said he thought he might do some social work in the slums. He said there was this place for children with disturbed parents and he thought he might work there. Well, I was having trouble with my patience, my woolly blanket. It kept slipping. I said that if he wanted to do social work that was all right with me and I felt sure it would be all right with his mother but first he had to get his diploma. I said I guessed that social work like everything else needed training and preparation and that after he got his diploma I and his mother would be happy to send him on to some college where he could get training as a social worker. So then he said he couldn’t see what was the good of a diploma if he wasn’t learning anything. He said it was just a phony, just a phony scrap of paper like a phony treaty. Then I said that phony or not you had to observe some of the rules of the game. I said that trousers, for instance, weren’t perhaps the most comfortable form of clothing but it was one of the rules of the game that you wear trousers. I asked him what would happen if I went to the train bare-ass and he said he didn’t care if I went to the train bare-ass. He said I could go to the train bare-ass as far as he was concerned. By this time we’d stopped playing and that was when these other men, men or boys, asked if they could play through and we said yes and stood aside.

  “It was windy, as I say, and there was more thunder and it looked like rain and the light on the course was failing so you really couldn’t see the faces of the men who played through. They were high school kids, I guess, slum kids, hoods, whatever, wearing tight pants and trick shirts and hair grease. They had spooky voices, they seemed to pitch them in a way that made them sound spooky, and when one of them was addressing the ball another gave him a big goose and he backed right into it, making groaning noises. It isn’t that I dislike boys like that really, it’s just that they mystify me, they frighten me because I don’t know where they come from and I don’t know where they’re going and if you don’t know anything about people it’s like a terrible kind of darkness. I’m not afraid of the dark but there are some kinds of human ignorance that frighten me. When I feel this I’ve noticed that if I can look into the face of the stranger and get some clue to the kind of person he is I feel better but, as I say, it was getting dark and you couldn’t see the faces of any of these strangers as they played through. So they played through and we went on talking about his diploma and the rules of the game. I said that whatever he wanted to do he had to train himself for it, he had to prepare himself. I said that even if he wanted to be a poet he had to prepare himself to be a poet. So then I said to him what I’ve never said before. I said: ‘I love you, Tony.’

  “So then he said, ‘The only reason you love me, the only reason you think you love me is because you can give me things.’ Then I said this wasn’t true, that the only reason I was a generous father was because my own father hadn’t given me very much. I said that because my own father had been so tight was why I wanted to be generous. So then he said: ‘Generous, generous, generous, generous.’ He said he knew I was very generous. He said that he heard about how generous I was practically every day in the year. So then he said, ‘Maybe I don’t want to get married. I wouldn’t be the first man in the world who didn’t want to get married, would I? Maybe I’m queer. Maybe I want to live with some nice, clean faggot. Maybe I want to be promiscuous and screw hundreds and hundreds of women. There are other ways of doing it besides being joined in holy matrimony and filling up the cradle. If having babies is so great why did you only have one? Why just one?’ I told him then that his mother had nearly died when he was born. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know that.’ So then he said that I had got to understand that he might not want to come home at dusk to a pretty woman and play softball with a bunch of straight-limbed sons. He said he might want to be a thief or a saint or a drunkard or a garbage man or a gas pumper or a traffic cop or a hermit. Then I lost my patience, my woolly blanket, and said that he had to get off his ass and do something useful and he said: ‘What? Like pushing mouthwash.’ Then I lifted up my putter and I would have split his skull in two but he ducked and threw down his club and ran off the links into the dark.

  “So there I was on this ruined miniature golf course having practically murdered my son but what I wanted to do then was to chase after him and take another crack at him with the putter. I was very angry. I couldn’t understand how my only son, whom I love more than anything in the world, could make me want to kill him. So then I picked up his putter and walked back to the car. When I got home I told Nellie that I’d had a fight with Tony but she sympathized with him, of course, because I’d already had a fight with her. Then I had a drink and looked at television—there wasn’t anything else to do. I sat there in front of the set until about midnight when he came in. He didn’t speak to me and I didn’t speak to him. He went upstairs to bed and I went up a little later.

  “He’s been in bed ever since.”

  IX

  When Tony had been in bed twenty-two days Nellie received a letter from a cleaning woman named Mary Ashton who had once worked for her. Mary had been intelligent and industrious but she had been a thief. She had first stolen two small diamond rings that had belonged to Nellie’s mother. Nellie never wore the rings and she did not accuse the maid of the theft. Good cleaning women were hard to find, Mary was poor and deserving, and Nellie thought of the diamonds as a bonus. A month or so later a pair of gold cufflinks vanished and Nellie fired the maid. She did not mention the cufflinks. The letter she received was neatly typed (had she stolen the typewriter?) on good stationery (stolen?). The letter read: “Dear Mrs. Nailles: I know that your son is sick and I am very sorry to hear this. He is one of the nicest boys I have ever known. In the village there is a guru or faith-healer who calls himself Swami Rutuola. He cured my sister of arthritis last year. He works part time for Percham, the carpenter, but he’s usually at home in the afternoons. He doesn’t have any telephone but he lives upstairs over Peyton’s funeral parlor on Hill Street.”

  This combination of theft and magic disturbed Nellie. She and Nailles gave a cocktail party that afternoon and she didn’t have a chance to show him the letter. The party was excellent. It is difficult to praise a cocktail party but as a hostess Nellie deserved praise. There was no fatuity in the pride she took in her house. The pleasant rooms seemed to be partly illuminated by her graces. The sixteen or seventeen guests were people whose company she unreservedly enjoyed. The food and liquor were splendid and nothing banal, boring or asinine was said. Charlie Wentworth, sitting close to Martha Tuckerman on the sofa, shared with Martha a flash of immortal longing. Looking into one another’s eyes it suddenly seemed to them both that a life together would be paradise. They would laugh at one another’s jokes, warm on
e another’s bones, travel to Japan. Martha left the sofa then and joined her husband at the bar. This was the closest anyone came to adulterous passion. The only difficulty was that Nailles had a circular driveway and without Tony—who was, of course, in bed—to direct traffic, the parking was haphazard. Nailles spent the last half hour of the party either moving cars or asking people to move them. Everyone had gone by eight. They had some scrambled eggs and sausage in the kitchen and Nellie showed Nailles the letter.