The Stories of John Cheever

I fell back into my chair and poured myself some more whiskey. There was a sharp pain in my heart, as if that lumpy organ had weathered every abuse, only to be crippled by misery. The pain was piercing, and I thought I would die—not at that moment, in the canvas chair, but a few days later, perhaps in Bullet Park, or in some comfortable hospital bed. The idea did not alarm me; it was a consolation. I would die, and with those areas of tension that I represented finally removed, my only, only daughter would at last take up her life. My sudden disappearance from the scene would sober her with sorrow and misgiving. My death would mature her. She would go back to Smith, join the glee club, edit the newspaper, befriend girls of her own class, and marry some intelligent and visionary young man, who seemed, at the moment, to be wearing spectacles, and raise three or four sturdy children. She would be sorry. That was it, and overnight sorrow would show her the inutility of living in a slum with a stray.

“Go home, Daddy,” she said. She was crying. “Go home, Daddy, and leave us alone! Please go home, Daddy!”

“I’ve always tried to understand you,” I said. “You used to put four or five records on the player at Bullet Park, and as soon as the music began you’d walk out of the house. I never understood why you did this, but one night I went out of the house to see if I could find you, and, walking down the lawn, with the music coming from all the open windows, I thought I did understand. I mean, I thought you put the records on and left the house because you liked to hear the music pouring out of the windows. I mean, I thought you liked at the end of your walk to come back to a house where music was playing. I was right, wasn’t I? I understand that much?”

“Go home, Daddy,” she said. “Please go home.”

“And it isn’t only you, Flora,” I said. “I need you. I need you terribly.”

“Go home, Daddy,” she said, and so I did.