(2 of 4)
The best Cheever stories act like fulcrums: they translate considerable social weight into emotional power. The art is one of indirection, of inescapable conclusions drawn from shadowy evidence. Describing people watching in The Summer Farmer, Cheever captures his own method: "It is true of even the best of us that if an observer can catch us boarding a train at a way station; if he will mark our faces, stripped by anxiety of their self-possession; if he will appraise our luggage, our clothing, and look out of the window to see who has driven us to the station; if he will listen to the harsh or tender things we say if we are with our families, or notice the way we put our suitcase onto the rack, check the position of our wallet, our key ring, and wipe the sweat off the back of our necks; if he can judge sensibly the selfimportance, diffidence, or sadness with which we settle ourselves, he will be given a broader view of our lives than most of us would intend."
The railroad imagery is appropriate, not only because so many of Cheever's characters are commuters. A good many others are suddenly discomfited by journeys of the body or spirit that they had not meant to take. In The Seaside Houses, a husband takes his family to the beach for the summer and begins sensing sour emanations from his rented house; before he realizes why, his marriage of twelve years is over. In The Housebreaker of Shady Hill, a man with money troubles is appalled to find himself burgling his wealthy neighbors and friends.
No Cheever character endures more shocks than the hero of The Country Husband, perhaps the best story he has ever written. Things begin going wrong for Francis Weed when he survives a plane crash and goes home to find that neither his wife nor his children seem interested. In short order, Francis recognizes the maid at a neighbor's party as the same woman he had seen, years before, being shaved and stripped at a Normandy crossroads for collaborating with the Nazis. Rattled, Francis falls in love with the teen-age babysitter. Seeking psychiatric help, he is detained by police who think he is the one who has been making threatening phone calls to the doctor. Francis eventually winds up in the cellar of his house doing woodwork as therapy. Cheever paints a scene of dusk falling over the suburb of Shady Hill and concludes: "Then it is dark; it is a night where kings in golden suits ride elephants over the mountains."
This stroke is audacious and illuminating. What is a fairy-tale line doing in a story filled with accidents and misfortunes? It is alerting everyone to the presence of magic that was there all along, dogging the hero but also yanking him out of the rut of predictability. Cheever does not often introduce direct trappings of the supernatural; The Enormous Radio and The Swimmer violate physical laws, and a woman in The Music Teacher acts suspiciously like a real witch. But an aura of wonder bathes even those stories most absorbed in everyday details.