Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [144]
Cheever's long ordeal in writing The Wapshot Chronicle would be amply rewarded. The book sold more than twenty thousand in hardcover, and a subsequent Bantam paperback sold almost 170,000 in the United States alone.* That spring in Italy, meanwhile, Cheever continued to woolgather over his imminent good fortune, dreaming one night of the Eisenhowers alone in their White House bedroom: “Mamie is reading the Washington Star. Ike is reading The Wapshot Chronicle.”
ZINNY SCHOALES CAME OVER in April, joining the Cheevers on a trip to Venice for the St. Mark's Festival. Arriving in the rain at the Hotel Europa, the group was refused rooms because of Federico's squalling (Iole allegedly punched the desk clerk) and proceeded to the Londra. The rest of the trip was “wonderful.” They were woken the next morning by all the bells of Venice pealing in honor of the festival, and spent the day riding gondolas and attending concerts and watching the various religious processions. The drinks were nastier than ever, though, and Cheever allowed himself the luxury of a celebrated tourist trap, Harry's Bar, “just to see how disgusting it was”: “The second day I went in to make sure. … I took Mary back the next day to show her how disgusting it was and we stayed until closing.”
A decent martini reminded Cheever that he was more homesick than ever. Federico was colicky and crying all the time, which left Mary exhausted and inclined to cry, too. As for Cheever, he was tired of playing host to a lot of dull Americans in his vast salon, and longed to get back into a proper working routine. The combination of idleness and drink tended to make him mean. One day Ben came home from an outing with friends—a warm, jolly (if a trifle déclassé) family whom Cheever described to his guests “with much unkind detail” while the boy stood there holding a pail of tadpoles. “Then the guests go,” Cheever wrote in his journal,
and when we come to the [dinner] table Ben is sobbing as if his heart would break for, having left people who I think of as needing my condescension he has come home to find his own house, as is so often the case, full of men and women drinking whisky and jawing. I speak to him, stupidly perhaps—I was too drunk to remember what I said—and this morning when I wake him he takes one look at me and buries his face in the pillows. He does not want to see me, touch me, he does not like my house or my friends. And standing in the Piazza Venezia beside a dirty beggar I get a crushing visitation of the shabbiness of my life.
Things improved somewhat with the arrival of Jean Douglass—Salinger's mother-in-law—a charming woman who enjoyed the company of children and soon began babysitting for the Cheevers, whose parenting style bemused her. “She likes to take care of [Federico],” Cheever wrote, “and like all baby-lovers she feels that his parents are giddy and unworthy and whispers things to him like: ‘Did Mummy have a little too much wine at Tre Scalini, Federico?’ “ That sort of thing was benign enough, but one night the woman witnessed an episode that shocked and enraged her. Cheever had promised to take the thirteen-year-old Susan to see Renata Tebaldi sing the role of Desdemona in Otello; with Douglass's help, the girl had picked out her only suitable outfit, a pink dress she'd worn to dancing school. When