The Stories of John Cheever

“Hello, brother.” It was Paul’s sister Ellen calling to him from one of the open windows. His business suit bound at the shoulders when he left the car, as if he had taken on height, for the place told him that he was ten years younger; the maples, the house, the simple mountains all told him this. His two small children stormed around the edge of the barn and collided against his legs. Taller, browner, healthier, more handsome, more intelligent—they seemed to him to be all these things each weekend when he was reunited with them. A sere branch on a maple caught his eye. That would have to be cut. He stooped down to pick up his little boy and girl in a scalding rush of love, for which he was unarmed and, it seemed, unprepared.

The duck house, where they put the rabbits that morning, had been empty for years, but there was a cage and a shelter, and it would do. “Now, these are your pets, these are your rabbits,” Paul told the children. His sternness transfixed them, and the little boy began to suck his thumb. “These are your responsibility, and if you take good care of them, perhaps you can have a dog when we get back to New York. You’ll have to feed them and clean their house.” His love for the children and his desire to draw for them, even faintly, the mysterious shapes of responsibility reduced him to a fatuity that he was conscious of himself. “I don’t want you to expect someone else to help you,” he said. “You’ll have to give them water twice a day. They’re supposed to like lettuce and carrots. Now you can put them in the house yourself. Daddy has to get to work.”