The Stories of John Cheever

Minnie must have been beautiful many years ago. It was from Minnie that Cora got her large eyes and her fine nose. Minnie comes to visit us two or three times a year. There is no question about the fact that if she announced her arrivals we would lock up the house and go away. Her ability to make her daughter miserable is consummate and voracious, and so, with some cunning, she makes her arrivals at our house a surprise. I spent the next afternoon trying to read Henry James in the garden. At about five I heard a car stop in front of the house. A little while later it began to rain, and I stepped into the living room and saw Minnie standing by a window. It was quite dark, but no one had bothered to turn on a light. “Why, Minnie,” I exclaimed, “how nice to see you, what a pleasant surprise. Let me get you a drink..

I turned on a lamp and saw that it was Cora.

She turned on me slowly a level and eloquent look of utter misgiving. It might have been a smile had I not known that I had wounded her painfully; had I not felt from her a flow of emotion like the flow of blood from a wound. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, darling,” I said. “I’m terribly sorry. I couldn’t see.” She went out of the room, “It was the dark,” I said. “It got so dark all of a sudden, when it began to rain. I’m terribly sorry, but it was just the dark and the rain.” I heard her climb the dark stairs and close the door to our room.