by John Cheever
I found the mower and gasoline and cut the grass. It was a big lawn and this took me until noon or later. She was sitting on the terrace reading and drinking something—icewater or gin. I joined her, wondering how I could build my usefulness into indispensability. I could have made a pass at her but if we became lovers this would have meant sharing the yellow room and that was not what I wanted. “If you want a sandwich before you go there’s some ham and cheese in the refrigerator,” she said. “A friend of mine is coming out on the four-o’clock but I suppose you’ll want to go back before then.”
I was frightened. Go back, go back, go back to the greasy green waters of the Lethe, back to my contemptible cowardice, back to the sanctuary of my bed where I cowered before thin air, back to anesthetizing myself with gin in order to eat a plate of scrambled eggs. I wondered about the sex of her visitor. If it was a woman mightn’t I stay on as a sort of handyman, eating my supper in the kitchen and sleeping in the yellow room? “If there’s anything else you’d like me to do,” I said. “Firewood?”
“I buy my firewood in Blenville.”
“Would you like me to split some kindling?”
“Not really,” she said.
“The screen door in the kitchen is loose,” I said. “I could repair that.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. She went into the house and returned a little later with two sandwiches. “Would you like mustard?” she asked.
“No thank you,” I said.
I took the sandwich as a kind of sacrament since it would be the last thing I could approach with any appetite until I returned to the yellow room and when would that be? I was desperate. “Is your visitor a man or a woman,” I asked.
“I really don’t think that concerns you,” she said.
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for cutting the grass,” she said. “That needed to be done but you must understand that I can’t have a strange man sleeping on my sofa without a certain amount of damage to my reputation and my reputation isn’t absolutely invincible.”
“I’ll go,” I said.
I drove back to New York then, condemned to exile and genuinely afraid of my inclination to self-destruction. As soon as I closed the door of my apartment I fell into the old routine of gin, Kilimanjaro, scrambled eggs, Orvieto and the Elysian Fields. I stayed in bed until late the next morning. I drank some gin while I shaved and went out onto the street to get some coffee. In front of my apartment house I ran into Dora Emmison. She wore black—I never saw her in anything else—and said that she had come in town for a few days to do some shopping and go to the theater. I asked if she’d have lunch with me but she said she was busy. As soon as we parted I got my car and drove back to Blenville.
The house was locked but I broke a pane of glass in the kitchen window and let myself in. To be alone in the yellow room was everything I had expected. I felt happy, peaceful and strong. I had brought the Montale with me and I spent the afternoon reading and making notes. The time passed lightly and the sense that the hands of my watch were procrustean had vanished. At six o’clock I went for a swim, had a drink and made some supper. She had a large store of provisions and I made a note of what I was stealing so that I would replace it before I left. After dinner I went on reading, taking a chance that the lighted windows would not arouse anyone’s curiosity. At nine o’clock I undressed, wrapped myself in a blanket and lay down on the sofa to sleep. A few minutes later I saw the lights of a car come up the drive.
I got up and went into the kitchen and shut the door. I was, of course, undressed. If it was she I supposed I could escape out the back door. If it was not she, if it was some friend or neighbor, they would likely go away. Whoever it was began to knock on the door, which I had left unlocked. Then a man opened the door and asked softly, “Doree, Doree, you sleeping? Wake up baby, wake up, it’s Tony, the old loverboy.” Climbing the stairs he kept asking “Doree, Doree, Doree,” and when he went into her bedroom and found the bed empty he said, “Aw shit.” He then came down the stairs and left the house and I stayed, shivering in the kitchen, until I heard his car go down the road.
I got back onto the sofa and had been there for perhaps a half hour when another car came up the drive. I retired again to the kitchen and a man named Mitch went through more or less the same performance. He climbed the stairs, calling her name, made some exclamation of disappointment and went away. All of this left me uneasy and in the morning I cleaned up the place, emptied the ashtrays and drove back to New York.
Dora had said that she would be in the city for a few days. Four is what is usually meant by a few and two of these had already passed. On the day that I thought she would return to the country I bought a case of the most expensive bourbon and started back to Blenville, late in the afternoon. It was after dark when I turned up the red dirt road. Her lights were on. I first looked in at the window and saw that she was alone and reading as she had been when I first found the place. I knocked on the door and when she opened it and saw me she seemed puzzled and irritated. “Yes?” she asked. “Yes? What in the world do you want now?”
“I have a present for you,” I said. “I wanted to give you a present to thank you for your kindness in letting me spend the night in your house.”
“That hardly calls for a present,” she said, “but I do happen to have a weakness for good bourbon. Won’t you come in?”
I brought the case into the hall, tore it open and took out a bottle. “Shouldn’t we taste it,” I asked.
“Well, I’m going out,” she said, “but I guess there’s time for a drink. You’re very generous. Come in, come in and I’ll get some ice.”
She was, I saw, one of those serious drinkers who prepare their utensils as a dentist prepares his utensils for an extraction. She arranged neatly on the table near her chair the glasses, ice bucket and water pitcher as well as a box of cigarettes, an ashtray and a lighter. With all of this within her reach she settled down and I poured the drinks.
“Chin, chin,” she said.
“Cheers,” I said.
“Did you just drive out from New York,” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“How is the driving,” she asked.
“It’s foggy on the turnpike,” I said. “It’s quite foggy.”
“Damn,” she said. “I have to drive up to a party in Havenswood and I hate the turnpike when it’s foggy. I do wish I didn’t have to go out but the Helmsleys are giving a party for a girl I knew in school and I’ve promised to show up.”
“Where did you go to school?”
“Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well I went to Brearley for two years. Then I went to Finch for a year. Then I went to a country day school called Fountain Valley for two years. Then I went to a public school in Cleveland for a year. Then I went to the International School in Geneva for two years, the Parioli School in Rome for a year, and when we came back to the United States I went to Putney for a year and then to Masters for three years. I graduated from Masters.”
“Your parents traveled a lot?”
“Yes. Dad was in the State Department. What do you do?”
“I’m translating Montale.”
“Are you a professional translator?”
“No.”
“You just do it to amuse yourself?”
“To occupy myself.”
“You must have some money,” she said.
“I do.”
“So do I, thank God,” she said. “I’d hate to be without it.”
“Tell me about your marriage,” I said. This might have seemed importunate but I have never known a divorced man or woman unwilling to discuss their marriage.
“Well it was a mess,” she said, “an eight-year mess. He drank and accused me of having affairs with other men and wrote anonymous letters to most of my friends, claiming that I had the principles of a whore. I bought him off, I had to, I paid him a shirtful and went out to Reno. I came back last mont
h. I think I’ll have another little drink,” she said, “but first I’m going to the john.”
I filled her glass again. We were nearly through the first bottle. When she returned from the toilet she was not staggering, not at all, but she was walking much more lithely, with a much more self-confident grace. I got up and took her in my arms but she pushed me away—not angrily—and said: “Please don’t, please don’t. I don’t feel like that tonight. I’ve been feeling terribly all day and the bourbon has picked me up but I still don’t feel like that. Tell me all about yourself.”
“I’m a bastard,” I said.
“Oh, really. I’ve never known any bastards. What does it feel like?”
“Mostly lousy, I guess. I mean I would have enjoyed a set of parents.”
“Well parents can be dreadful, of course, but I suppose dreadful parents are better than none at all. Mine were dreadful.” She dropped a lighted cigarette into her lap but retrieved it before it burned the cloth of her skirt.
“Are your parents still living?”
“Yes, they’re in Washington, they’re very old.” She sighed and stood. “Well if I’m going to Havenswood,” she said, “I guess I’d better go.” Now she was unsteady. She splashed a little whiskey into her glass and drank it without ice or water.
“Why do you go to Havenswood,” I asked. “Why don’t you telephone and say there’s a fog on the turnpike or that you’ve got a cold or something.”
“You don’t understand,” she said hoarsely. “It’s one of those parties you have to go to like birthdays and weddings.”
“I think it would be better if you didn’t go.”
“Why?” Now she was bellicose.
“I just think it would be, that’s all.”
“You think I’m drunk,” she asked.
“No.”
“You do, don’t you. You think I’m drunk, you nosy sonofabitch. What are you doing here anyhow? I don’t know you. I never asked you to come here and you don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me excepting where I went to school. You don’t even know my maiden name, do you?”
“No.”
“You don’t know anything about me, you don’t even know my maiden name and yet you have the cheek to sit there and tell me I’m drunk. I’ve been drinking, that’s true, and I’ll tell you why. I can’t drive safely on the goddam Jersey Turnpike sober. That road and all the rest of the freeways and thruways were engineered for clowns and drunks. If you’re not a nerveless clown then you have to get drunk. No sensitive or intelligent man or woman can drive on those roads. Why I have a friend in California who smokes pot before he goes on the freeway. He’s a great driver, a marvelous driver, and if the traffic’s bad he uses heroin. They ought to sell pot and bourbon at the gas stations. Then there wouldn’t be so many accidents.”
“Well let’s have another drink then,” I said.
“Get out,” she said.
“All right.”
I went out of the yellow room onto the terrace. I watched her from the window. She was reeling. She stuffed some things into a bag, tied a scarf around her hair, turned out the lights and locked the door. I followed her at a safe distance. When she got to her car she dropped the keys in the grass. She turned on the lights and I watched her grope in the grass until she recovered the keys. Then she slammed the car down the driveway and clipped the mailbox post with her right headlight. I heard her swear and a moment later I heard the noise of falling glass, and why is this sound so portentous, so like a doomcrack bell? I was happy to think that she would not continue up to Havenswood but I was mistaken. She backed the car away from the mailbox post and off she went. I spent the night at a motel in Blenville and telephoned the turnpike police in the morning. She had lasted about fifteen minutes.
XV
My lawyer arranged for the purchase of the house. I was able to get the place and eight acres of land for thirty-five thousand dollars. Her mother came down from Washington and removed her personal effects and I moved into the house three weeks later, and began my orderly life. I woke early, swam in the pool, ate a large breakfast and settled down to work at a table in the yellow room. I worked happily until one or sometimes later and then ate a bowl of soup. I bought some tools and spent the afternoons clearing the woods around the house and cutting and stacking wood for the fireplace. At five I took another swim and drank the first of three daily whiskeys. After supper I studied German until half past ten when I went to bed feeling limber, clean and weary. If I dreamed at all my dreams were of an exceptional innocence and purity. I had no longer any need for the mountain, the valley and the fortified city.
I kept a cat named Schwartz, not because I like cats but to keep the mice and shrews from overrunning the old house. The man in the drug store in Blenville gave me Schwartz and I knew nothing about his past. I guessed he was a middle-aged cat and he seemed to have a cranky disposition if such a thing is possible in an animal. I fed him canned cat food twice a day. There was a brand of cat food he disliked and if I forgot and gave him this he would go into the yellow room and shit in the middle of the floor. He made his point and so long as I fed him what he liked he behaved himself. We worked out a practical and unaffectionate relationship. I don’t like having cats in my lap but now and then I would dutifully pick him up and pat him to prove that I was a good scout. With the early frosts the field mice began to besiege the place and Schwartz bagged a victim nearly every night. I was proud of Schwartz. At the height of his efficiency as a mouser Schwartz vanished. I let him out one night and in the morning he failed to return. I don’t know much about cats but I guessed they were loyal to their homes and I supposed that a dog or a fox had killed my friend. One morning a week later (a light snow had fallen) Schwartz returned. I fed him a can of his favorite brand and gave him a few dutiful caresses. He smelled powerfully of French perfume. He had either been sitting in the lap of someone who used perfume or had been sprayed with it. It was an astringent and musky scent. The nearest house to mine was owned by some Polish farmers and the woman, I happened to know, smelled powerfully of the barnyard and nothing else. The next nearest house was shut for the winter and I couldn’t think of anyone in Blenville who would use French perfume. Schwartz stayed with me that time for a week or ten days and then vanished again for a week. When he returned he smelled like the street floor of Bergdorf Goodman during the Christmas rush. I buried my nose in his coat and felt a moment’s nostalgia for the city and its women. That afternoon I got into my car and drove over the back roads between my place and Blenville, looking for someplace that might house a bewitching woman. I felt that she must be bewitching and that she was deliberately tempting me by dousing my cat with perfume. All the houses I saw were either farms or places owned by acquaintances and I stopped at the drug store and told my story. “Schwartz,” I said, “that cat, that mouser you gave me, he goes off every other week and comes home smelling like a whorehouse on Sunday morning.”
“No whorehouses around here,” said the druggist.
“I know,” I said, “but where do you suppose he gets the perfume?”
“Cats roam,” said the druggist.
“I suppose so,” I said, “but do you sell French perfume? I mean if I can find who buys the stuff …”
“I don’t remember selling a bottle since last Christmas,” the druggist said. “The Avery boy bought a bottle for his girl friend.”
“Thank you,” I said.
That night after dinner Schwartz went to the door and signaled to be let out. I put on a coat and went out with him. He went directly through the garden and into the woods at the right of the house with me following. I was as excited as any lover on his way. The smell of the woods, heightened by the dampness of the brook, the stars overhead, especially Venus, seemed to be extensions of my love affair. I thought she would be raven-haired with a marbly pallor and a single blue vein at the side of her brow. I thought she would be about thirty. (I was twenty-three.) Now and then Schwartz let out a meow so that it w
asn’t too difficult to follow him. I went happily through the woods, across Marshman’s pasture and into Marshman’s woods. These had not been cleared for some years and the saplings lashed at my trousers and my face. Then I lost Schwartz. I called and called. Schwartz, Schwartz, here Schwartz. Would anyone, hearing my voice in the dark woods, recognize it as the voice of a lover? I wandered through the woods calling my cat until a tall sapling dealt me a blinding blow across the eyes and I gave up. I made my way home feeling frustrated and lonely.
Schwartz returned at the end of the week and I seized him and smelled his coat to make sure that she was still setting out her lures. She was. He stayed with me that time ten days. A snow had fallen on the night he vanished and in the morning I saw that his tracks were clear enough to follow. I got through Marshman’s woods and came, at the edge of them, on a small frame house, painted gray. It was utilitarian and graceless and might have been built by some hard-working amateur carpenter on Saturdays and Sundays and those summer nights when the dark comes late. I had seriously begun to doubt that it was the lair of a raven-haired beauty. The cat’s tracks went around the house to a back door. When I knocked an old man opened the door.
He was small, smaller than I, anyhow, with thin gray hair, pomaded and combed. There was a white button in his right ear, connected to a cord. From the lines and the colorlessness of his face I would guess that he was close to seventy. Some clash between the immutable facts of vanity and time seemed to animate him. He was old but he wore a flashy diamond ring, his shoes were polished and there was all that pomade. He looked a little like one of those dapper men who manage movie theaters in the badlands.