Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [135]
† Getting beaten out of the Prix de Rome—by John Ciardi—would rankle forever. In 1979, Cheever was head of the jury awarding the prize, and thus phoned that year's winner, Joseph Caldwell, with the good news. “You yourself won, didn't you?” said Caldwell, filling an awkward pause. Cheever allowed that he hadn't. “Well,” said Caldwell, “keep plugging!” Cheever didn't laugh.
* In fact, Cheever spent at least part of the money on an old friend. If he'd been awarded the Prix de Rome as expected, then Josie Herbst—now virtually destitute—would have gotten one of the thousand-dollar grants, since she'd been chosen as an alternate. Whether Cheever knew as much is unknown, but once he received the Hollywood money he promptly sent her a check “which should be spent on gin, shoes, and rose-bushes or anything else.” Herbst would have to wait ten more bitter years before she finally got a grant from the Institute (largely at Cheever's behest).
* Mary Cheever confirmed that this encounter at Clark's party was indeed the first time the two met.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
{1956-1957}
AFTER HE FINISHED a light revision of The Wapshot Chronicle, Cheever wasn't able to get any work done for a long time. He was tired of writing about (and living in) Shady Hill. For years now he'd been casting ahead to Rome—listening to La Traviata and Tosca again and again, as well as the odd conversational-Italian record—and now at last he was ready to sail. Such was his excitement that he'd hardly considered some obvious difficulties: none of them spoke Italian (records withal); they hadn't arranged a permanent place to stay or schools for the children; Mary was pregnant, and didn't see the point of having a baby in Rome, to put it mildly. Also, Cheever had elected to receive his M-G-M money in three annual installments for tax reasons, and now discovered he had surprisingly little in the bank once he'd paid for boat passage (first-class), trunks, clothing, and the like. And finally there was a more esoteric concern: “So [I am] afraid that I may fall in love in with a dirty duchess or a lonely grocery boy,” he wrote a few days before sailing, “but this is after all not so remarkable; and with a gentle heart and a capricious cod what can you do but trust in the Lord and take your chances.”
They departed on October 17, 1956, aboard the Conte Biancamano (“a cross between the Fall River Line and the old Ritz”). Cheever rose early and had a last drink with Angelo Palumbo, then a few more with the Boyers, who eventually drove them into New York. After a bon voyage party in their cabin, the ship pulled out of the harbor amid a shower of confetti and circus music. The gaiety lingered perhaps an hour or two: “Then fog, a heavy roll and everyone sick but me.” The wind would blow for six long days. Cheever awoke “to the noise of smashing flower vases and medicine bottles,” and when he emerged in the morning, most of the passengers were absent. Dressed in black-tie, he passed the time in an elegant bar or playing musical chairs with a few stragglers in the ballroom, all the while worrying whether the boat would sink. Finally the weather cleared somewhere around the northern Azores (Cheever went for a swim), and after stops in Lisbon, Casablanca, Gibraltar, Barcelona, Cannes, Palermo, and Genoa, they disembarked at Naples and boarded a train for Rome. “I am tired of the ship,” Cheever wrote in his journal, noting a “peculiarly bad smell” that had pervaded the crossing: “The essence of it seems to have been one rough mid-afternoon when I was hanging onto an ornate piece of furniture with one hand and a glass of whisky with the other, the orchestra playing concert music to a room-full of empty chairs … and the unfresh smell.”
Tired and disoriented, they hired a carriage in Rome and spent the first day sightseeing. At the Tomb of Augustus, Cheever thought