Free The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever Page A

has been beating Mrs. Osborn.” She wailed, she trembled with grief and checked the stream of tears down her face with the heel of her palm.
    “Well, why do you have to listen?” Jim asked again. “Why do you have to listen to this stuff if it makes you so miserable?”
    “Oh, don’t, don’t, don’t,” she cried. “Life is too terrible, too sordid and awful. But we’ve never been like that, have we, darling? Have we? I mean, we’ve always been good and decent and loving to one another, haven’t we? And we have two children, two beautiful children. Our lives aren’t sordid, are they, darling? Are they?” She flung her arms around his neck and drew his face down to hers. “We’re happy, aren’t we, darling? We are happy, aren’t we?”
    “Of course we’re happy,” he said tiredly. He began to surrender his resentment. “Of course we’re happy. I’ll have that damned radio fixed or taken away tomorrow.” He stroked her soft hair. “My poor girl,” he said.
    “You love me, don’t you?” she asked. “And we’re not hypercritical or worried about money or dishonest, are we?”
    “No, darling,” he said.
    A MAN came in the morning and fixed the radio. Irene turned it on cautiously and was happy to hear a California-wine commercial and a recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, including Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” She kept the radio on all day and nothing untoward came from the speaker.
    A Spanish suite was being played when Jim came home. “Is everything all right?” he asked. His face was pale, she thought. They had some cocktails and went in to dinner to the “Anvil Chorus” from
Il Trovatore
. This was followed by Debussy’s “La Mer.”
    “I paid the bill for the radio today,” Jim said. “It cost four hundred dollars. I hope you’ll get some enjoyment out of it.”
    “Oh, I’m sure I will,” Irene said.
    “Four hundred dollars is a good deal more than I can afford,” he went on. “I wanted to get something that you’d enjoy. It’s the last extravagance we’ll be able to indulge in this year. I see that you haven’t paid your clothing bills yet. I saw them on your dressing table.” He looked directly at her. “Why did you tell me you’d paid them? Why did you lie to me?”
    “I just didn’t want you to worry, Jim,” she said. She drank some water. “I’ll be able to pay my bills out of this month’s allowance. There were the slipcovers last month, and that party.”
    “You’ve got to learn to handle the money I give you a little more intelligently, Irene,” he said. “You’ve got to understand that we won’t have as much money this year as we had last. I had a very sobering talk with Mitchell today. No one is buying anything. We’re spending all our time promoting new issues, and you know how long that takes. I’m not getting any younger, you know. I’m thirty-seven. My hair will be gray next year. I haven’t done as well as I’d hoped to do. And I don’t suppose things will get any better.”
    “Yes, dear,” she said.
    “We’ve got to start cutting down,” Jim said. “We’ve got to think of the children. To be perfectly frank with you, I worry about money a great deal. I’m not at all sure of the future. No one is. If anything should happen to me, there’s the insurance, but that wouldn’t go very far today. I’ve worked awfully hard to give you and the children a comfortable life,” he said bitterly. “I don’t like to see all of my energies, all of my youth, wasted in fur coats and radios and slipcovers and—”
    “Please, Jim,” she said. “Please. They’ll hear us.”
    “Who’ll hear us?
Emma can’t hear us.”
    “The radio.”
    “Oh, I’m sick!” he shouted. “I’m sick to death of your apprehensiveness. The radio can’t hear us. Nobody can hear us. And what if they can hear us? Who cares?”
    Irene got up from the table and went into the living room. Jim went to the door and shouted at her from there. “Why are