The Stories of John Cheever

I work in an apartment house called the Prestwick. It is seven stories high and dates, I guess, from the late twenties. It is of a Tudor persuasion. The bricks are irregular, there is a parapet on the roof, and the sign advertising vacancies is literally a shingle that hangs from iron chains and creaks romantically in the wind. On the right of the door there is a list of perhaps twenty-five doctors’ names, but these are not gentle healers with stethoscopes and rubber hammers, these are psychiatrists, and this is the country of the plastic chair and the full ashtray. I don’t know why they should have chosen this place, but they outnumber the other tenants. Now and then you see, waiting for the elevator, a woman with a grocery wagon and a child, but you mostly see the sometimes harried faces of men and women with trouble. They sometimes smile; they sometimes talk to themselves. Business seems slow these days, and the doctor whose office is next to mine often stands in the hallway, staring out of the window. What does a psychiatrist think? Does he wonder what has become of those patients who gave up, who refused Group Therapy, who disregarded his warnings and admonitions? He will know their secrets. I tried to murder my husband. I tried to murder my wife. Three years ago I took an overdose of sleeping pills. The year before that I cut my wrists. My mother wanted me to be a girl. My mother wanted me to be a boy. My mother wanted me to be a homosexual. Where had they gone, what were they doing? Were they still married, quarreling at the dinner table, decorating the Christmas tree? Had they divorced, remarried, jumped off bridges, taken Seconal, struck some kind of truce, turned homosexual, or moved to a farm in Vermont where they planned to raise strawberries and lead a simple life? The doctor sometimes stands by the window for an hour.

My real work these days is to write an edition of The New York Times that will bring gladness to the hearts of men. How better could I occupy myself? The Times is a critical if rusty link in my ties to reality, but in these last years its tidings have been monotonous. The prophets of doom are out of work. All one can do is to pick up the pieces. The lead story is this: PRESIDENT’S HEART TRANSPLANT DEEMED SUCCESSFUL. There is this box on the lower left: COST OF J. EDGAR HOOVER MEMORIAL CHALLENGED. “The subcommittee on memorials threatened to halve the seven million dollars appropriated to commemorate the late J. Edgar Hoover with a Temple of Justice…” Column three: CONTROVERSIAL LEGISLATION REPEALED BY SENATE. “The recently enacted bill, making it a felony to have wicked thoughts about the administration, was repealed this afternoon by a standup vote of forty-three to seven.” On and on it goes. There are robust and heartening editorials, thrilling sports news, and the weather of course is always sunny and warm unless we need rain. Then we have rain. The air-pollutant gradient is zero, and even in Tokyo fewer and fewer people are wearing surgical masks. All highways, throughways, and expressways will be closed for the holiday weekend. Joy to the World!

But to get back to the Cabots. The scene that I would like to overlook or forget took place the night after Geneva had stolen the diamonds. It involves plumbing. Most of the houses in the village had relatively little plumbing. There was usually a water closet in the basement for the cook and the ash man and a single bathroom on the second floor for the rest of the household. Some of these rooms were quite large, and the Endicotts had a fireplace in their bathroom. Somewhere along the line Mrs. Cabot decided that the bathroom was her demesne. She had a locksmith come and secure the door. Mr. Cabot was allowed to take his sponge bath every morning, but after this the bathroom door was locked and Mrs. Cabot kept the key in her pocket. Mr. Cabot was obliged to use a chamber pot, but since he came from the South Shore I don’t suppose this was much of a hardship. It may even have been nostalgic. He was using the chamber pot late that night when Mrs. Cabot came to the door of his room. (They slept in separate rooms.) “Will you close the door?” she screamed. “Will you close the door? Do I have to listen to that horrible noise for the rest of my life?” They would both be in nightgowns, her snow-white hair in braids. She picked up the chamber pot and threw its contents at him. He kicked down the door of the locked bathroom, washed, dressed, packed a bag, and walked over the bridge to Mrs. Wallace’s place on the East Bank.