John Cheever: Falconer

"That's true."

"I haven't been here sooner because I've been in Jamaica with Gussie."

"That sounds great. How's Gussie?"

"Fat. She's gotten terribly fat."

"Are you getting a divorce?"

"Not now. I don't feel like talking with any more lawyers at this point."

"Divorce is your prerogative."

"I know." She looked at the Chicano couple. The man had stroked his way up to the hair in the girl's armpits. Both their eyes were shut "What," she asked, "do you find to talk about with these people?"

"I don't see much of them," he said, "excepting at chow and we can't talk then. You see, I'm in cellblock F. It's sort of a forgotten place. Like Piranesi. Last Tuesday they forgot to spring us for supper."

"What is your cell like?"

"Twelve by seven," he said. "The only thing that belongs to me is the Mint print, the Descartes and a color photograph of you and Peter. It's an old one. I took it when we had a house on the Vineyard. How is Peter?"

"Fine."

"Will he ever come to see me?"

"I don't know, I really don't know. He doesn't ask for you. The social worker thinks that, for the general welfare, it's best at the moment that he not see his father in jail for murder."

"Could you bring me a photograph?"

"I could if I had one."

"Couldn't you take one?"

"You know I'm no good with a camera."

"Anyway, thank you for sending me the new watch, dear."

"You're welcome."

Someone on cellblock B struck a five-string banjo and began to sing: "I got those cellblock blues/I'm feeling blue all the time/I got those cellblock blues/Fenced in by walls I can't climb…" He was good. The voice and the banjo were loud, clear and true, and brought into that border country the fact that it was a late summer afternoon all over that part of the world. Out the window he could see some underwear and fatigues hung out to dry. They moved in the breeze as if this movement-like the movements of ants, bees and geese-had some polar ordination. For a moment he felt himself to be a man of the world, a world to which his responsiveness was marvelous and absurd. She opened her bag and looked for something. "The army must have been a good preparation for this experience," she said.

"Sort of," he said.

"I never understood why you so liked the army."

He heard, from the open space in front of the main entrance, a guard shouting: "You're going to be good boys, aren't you? You're going to be good boys. You're going to be good, good, good boys." He heard the dragging ring of metal and guessed they'd come from Auburn.

"Oh, dammit," she said. Peevishness darkened her face. "Oh, God dammit," she said with pure indignation.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I can't find my Kleenex," she said. She was foraging in the bag.

"I'm sorry, he said.

"Everything seems to fight me today," she said, "absolutely everything." She dumped the contents of her bag onto the counter.

"Lady, lady," said the turnkey, who sat above them on an elevated chair like a lifeguard. "Lady, you ain't allowed to have nothing on the counter but soft drinks and butt cans."

"I," she said, "am a taxpayer. I help to support this place. It costs me more to keep my husband in here than it costs me to send my son to a good school."

"Lady, lady, please," he said. "Get that stuff off the counter or I'll have to kick you out."

She found the small box of paper and pushed the contents of her handbag back to where they belonged. Then he covered her hand with his, deeply thrilled at this recollection of his past. She pulled her hand away, but why? Had she let him touch her for a minute, the warmth, the respite, would have lasted for weeks. "Well," she said, regaining her composure, her beauty, he thought.

The light in the room was unkind, but she was equal to its harshness. She had been an authenticated beauty. Several photographers had asked her to model, although her breasts, marvelous for nursing and love, were a little too big for that line of work. "I'm much too shy, much too lazy," she had said. She had accepted the compliment; her beauty had been documented. "You know," his son had said, "I can't talk to Mummy when there's a mirror in the room. She's really balmy about her looks." Narcissus was a man and he couldn't make the switch, but she had, maybe twelve or fourteen times, stood in front of the lull-length mirror in their bedroom and asked him, "Is there another woman of my age in this county who is as beautiful as I?" She had been naked, overwhelmingly so, and he had thought this an invitation, but when he touched her she said, "Stop fussing with my breasts. I'm beautiful." She was, too. He knew that alter she'd left, whoever had seen her-the turnkey, for instance-would say, "If that was your wife you're lucky. Outside the movies I never seen anyone so beautiful."

If she was Narcissa, did the rest of the Freudian doctrine follow? He had never, within his limited judgment, taken this very seriously. She had spent three weeks in Rome with her old roommate Maria Lippincott Hastings Guglielmi. Three marriages, a fat settlement for each, and a very unsavory sexual reputation. They then had no maid and he and Peter had cleaned the house, laid and lighted fires, and bought flowers to celebrate her return from Italy. He met her at Kennedy. The plane was late. It was after midnight. When he bent to kiss her she averted her face and pulled down the floppy brim of her new Roman hat.! It got her bags, got the car and they started home. "You seem to have had a marvelous time," he said. “I have never," she said, "been so happy in my life." He jumped to no conclusions. The fires would be burning, the flowers gleaming. In that part of the world the ground was covered with dirty snow. "Was there any snow in Rome?" he asked. "Not in the city," she said. "There was a little snow on the Via Cassia. I didn't see it. I read about it in the paper. Nothing so revolting as this."

He carried the bags into the living room. Peter was there in his pajamas. She embraced him and cried a little. The fires and the flowers missed her by a mile. He could try to kiss her again, but he knew that he might get a right to the jaw. "Can I get you a drink?" he asked, making the offer in a voice that rose. "I guess so," she said, dropping an octave. "Campari," she said. "Limone?” he asked. "Si, si," she said, "un spritz." He got the ice, the lemon peel, and handed her the drink. "Put it on the table," she said. "Campari will remind me of my lost happiness." She went into the kitchen, wet a sponge and began to wash the door of the refrigerator. "We cleaned the place," he said with genuine sadness. "Peter and I cleaned the place. Peter mopped the kitchen floor." "Well, you seem to have forgotten the refrigerator door," she said. "If there are angels in heaven," he said, "and if they are women, I expect they must put down their harps quite frequently to mop drainboards, refrigerator doors, any enameled surface. It seems to be a secondary female characteristic." "Are you crazy?" she asked. “I don't know what you're talking about." His cock, so recently ready for fun, retreated from Waterloo to Paris and from Paris to Elba. "Almost everyone I love has called me crazy," he said. "What I'd like to talk about is love." "Oh, is that it," she said. "Well, here you go." She put her thumbs into her ears, wagged her fingers, crossed her eyes and made a loud farting sound with her tongue. “I wish you wouldn't make faces," he said. “I wish you wouldn't look like that," she said. "Thank God you can't see the way you look." He said nothing more since he knew that Peter was listening.

It took her that time about ten days to come around. It was after a cocktail party and before a dinner. They took a nap, she in his arms. They were one, he thought. The fragrant skein of her hair lay across his face. Her breathing was heavy. When she woke she touched his face and asked: "Did I snore?" "Terribly," he said, "you sounded like a chain saw." "Ii was a lovely sleep," she said, "I love to sleep in your arms." Then they made love. His imagery for a big orgasm was winning the sailboat race, the Renaissance, high mountains. "Christ, that felt good," she said. "What time is it?" "Seven," he said. "When are we due?" "Eight." "You've had your bath, I'll take mine." He dried her with a Kleenex and passed her a lighted cigarette. He followed her into the bathroom and sat on the shut toilet seat while she washed her back with a brush. "I forgot to tell you," he said. "Liza sent us a wheel of Brie." "That's nice," she said, "but you know what? Brie gives me terribly loose bowels." He hitched up his genitals and crossed his legs. "That's funny," he said. "It constipates me." That was their marriage then not the highest paving or the stair, the clatter o: Italian fountains, the wind in the alien olive trees, but this: a jay-naked male and female discussing their bowels.