The Stories of John Cheever

“Listen!” Boobee said. He used the imperative ascolta. “Listen to me. Grace is insane… Tonight, dinner is late. I was very hungry, and if I do not have my dinner punctually I lose my appetite. Grace knows this well, but when I arrived at the house there is no dinner. There is nothing to eat. She is in the kitchen burning something in a pan. I explain to her with courtesy that I must have a punctual dinner. Then you know what happens?”

I knew, but it seemed tactless to say that I knew. I said, “No.”

“You could not imagine,” he said. He put a hand to his heart. “Listen,” he said. “She cries.”

“Women cry easily, Boobee,” I said.

“Not European women.”

“But you didn’t marry a European.”

“That is not all. The madness now comes. She cries, and when I ask her why she cries, she explains that she is crying because in becoming my wife she has given up a great career as a soprano in opera.”

I don’t suppose there is much difference between the sounds of a summer night—a late-summer night—in my country and Italy, and yet it seemed so then. All the softness had gone out of the night air—fireflies and murmuring winds—and the insects in the grass around me made a sound as harsh and predatory as the sharpening of burglar’s tools. It made the distance he had come from Verona seem immense. “Opera!” he cried, “La Scala! It is because of me that she is not performing tonight in La Scala. She used to take singing lessons, that is so, but she was never invited to perform. Now she is seized with this madness.”

“A great many American women, Boobee, feel that in marriage they have given up a career.”

“Madness,” he said. He wasn’t listening. “Complete madness. But what can one do? Will you speak to her?”

“I don’t know what good it will do, Boobee, but I’ll try.”

“Tomorrow. I’ll be late. Will you speak to her tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

He stood and pulled on his gloves, finger by finger. Then he tossed on his plush hat with its imaginary feathers and asked, “What is the secret of my charm—my incredible ebullience?”

“I don’t know, Boobee,” I said, but a warm feeling of sympathy for Grace spread through my chest.

“It is because my philosophy of life includes a grasp of consequences and limitations. She has no such philosophy.”

He then got into his car and started it up so abruptly that he scattered gravel all over the lawn.

I turned off the lights on the first floor and went up to our bedroom, where my wife was reading. “Boobee was here,” I said. “I didn’t call you.”