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By Root 3900 0

(and colorful) businessman, he was practically treated as a pariah. Thus he was less inclined to be gracious in praising his brother's different kind of success, and never mind that Fred fancied himself a writer, too. “We seem unable to grant one another excellence without losing ground,” John wrote, though in fact Fred was delighted as ever by his brother's talent, always exhorting his children to read Uncle John's stories and later his books. And sometimes, when drunk, he'd drop his guard and let his old extravagant affection (and desperation) show: “Don't go, Joey, don't go,” he pleaded one night as John was leaving along the bordered flowerbeds that traversed Fred's lawn. John thought his brother seemed almost frightened and wondered “what there was to frighten a man, surrounded by his family.”

In time John would know the loneliness of being a bad drunk, estranged from friends and family alike; for now (given Iris's tendency to “complain passionately” about her husband) he might have surmised that what Fred wanted was a drinking companion, a little commiseration, since clearly his own family didn't fill the bill. For the past five years or so, his older children had been watering his gin, hoping to forestall the moment when Fred's joviality turned into something else—something ghastly that Fred himself was less and less apt to remember, such that he seemed almost puzzled when his children tried to remonstrate with him. As his daughter Jane recalled, “His attitude was ‘Well, I don't think there's anything wrong. I'm providing for all of you.’ “ While in Briarcliff, she and her brother, David, finally went to a dry-out facility and spoke with a doctor, who assured them that little could be done until their father wanted to help himself. Fred gave no indication, however, of being anywhere near that point, and meanwhile his obnoxious behavior got worse. According to his brother's journal, he called Mrs. Vanderlip an “old bag” and almost made it a point, at parties, to “single out some woman of a conservative appearance” and ask her if she wanted to fuck him. “You're a lovely old bitch,” he remarked to his daughter's future mother-in-law (to whom it was explained that there was nothing necessarily pejorative about the word “bitch” when spoken by Fred; it was interchangeable with “woman”). Sober, Fred was a kind, lovable, funny man (if a bit prickly and arrogant when put on the defensive), and the sober Fred decided that things weren't working out in Westchester. He was not sober, however, when he visited his brother to announce that he and his family were moving to Connecticut after less than two years in Briarcliff. “Going out F[red] gooses M[ary],” John recorded. “ ‘I hope we'll see more of you,’ I whimper, ‘now that you're going away.’ “ Though he felt nothing but relief as he watched Fred shamble off, he couldn't help feeling sorry for the man, and wistful too, as if he'd encountered a former lover “grown old and shabby”: “But the fact is that we were once like lovers, that this has left an opening, a weakness in my mind, a lack, a longing, the chagrin of unrequition, a sexual tristesse.”

* This after the place had been hastily vacated by the novelist Richard Yates (age thirteen) and family, since Yates's impecunious sculptor-mother, Dookie, had neglected to pay rent for several months. The Beechwood estate is located near a street named Revolutionary Road—also the title of Yates's first and most famous novel.

* Spear attended services at the Presbyterian church across the street from Beechtwig, though he played organ for the Episcopal church (All Saints) attended by Cheever and Mrs. Spear. And Spear was, in fact, a decided political conservative. While in Moscow in 1964, Cheever took the trouble to send his friend a postcard—“Please don't vote for Goldwater”—to no avail.

† In the fullness of time, Cheever would become very bored with Spear's incessant talk about his Yankee progenitors, but at first he was delighted and even used the journals of Spear's grandfather Hezekiah Prince to flesh out bits of maritime