The Stories of John Cheever

I ate one of the cutlets at dinner. It had a peculiar taste, but by this time I couldn’t distinguish between my anxieties and the facts involved. I was terribly sick in the night, but this could have been my imagination. I spent an hour in the bathroom with acute indigestion. Cora seemed to be asleep, but when I returned from the bathroom I did notice that her eyes were open. I was worried, and in the morning I made my own breakfast. The maid cooked lunch, and I doubted that she would poison me. I read some more Henry James in the garden, but as the time for dinner approached I found that I was frightened. I went into the pantry to make a drink. Cora had been preparing dinner, and had gone to some other part of the house. There is a broom closet in the kitchen, and I stepped into it and shut the door. Presently I heard Cora’s footsteps as she returned. We keep the pesticides for the roses in a cabinet in the kitchen. I heard her open this cabinet. Then she stepped out into the garden, where I heard her dusting the roses. She then returned to the kitchen, but she did not return the pesticide to the closet. My field of vision through the keyhole was limited. Her back was to me as she spiced the meat, and I couldn’t tell if she was using salt and pepper or nerve poison. She then went back to the garden, and I stepped out of the broom closet. The pesticide was not on the table. I went into the living room, and entered the dining room from there when dinner was ready. “Isn’t it hot,” I asked when I sat down.

“Well,” said Cora, “we can’t expect to be comfortable, can we, if we hide in broom closets?”

I hung on to my chair, picked at my food, made some small talk, and got through the meal. Now and then she gave me a serene and wicked smile. After dinner I went into the garden. I desperately needed help, and thought then of my daughter. I should explain that Flora graduated from the Villa Mimosa in Florence, and left Smith College in the middle of her freshman year to live in a Lower East Side tenement with a sexual freak. I send her an allowance each month and have promised to leave her alone, but, considering the dangerousness of my position, I felt free to break my promise. I felt that if I could see her I could persuade her to come home. I telephoned her then and said that I must see her. She seemed quite friendly and asked me to come to tea.