Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [198]
He was met at the airport by Pakula's wife, the actress Hope Lange—”a pretty young woman whose company I enjoy,” Cheever noted, quietly enough, of the person who would become a lifelong (if sporadic and mostly platonic) mistress, for lack of a better word. Lange had debuted in the movie Bus Stop (1956) and earned an Oscar nomination the following year for her best-known role, in Peyton Place. By 1964 she was thirty and temporarily retired, the better to devote herself to family. Charged with entertaining Cheever that first night, Lange would later remember that “he had his New England mumble and suit on”: for an hour or so, he sat stiffly sipping drinks and glancing uneasily around the Pakulas’ orange basement playroom, until Lange put Guys and Dolls on the phonograph (Cheever loved the sound track even more than Tosca) and a wonderful time was had by all.
After that, Cheever made little attempt to disguise the fact that he was smitten with Pakula's wife. He shined his shoes, shaved twice a day, and gazed at her with dewy fascination, whatever the company. Most of the others found it oddly endearing, and Lange's younger brother, David, even viewed Cheever as an ideal father figure of sorts (“a writer of consequence, witty”)—while Cheever in turn was impressed that David was dating Natalie Wood. One night the young man picked up Cheever at the Beverly Hills Hotel and the two went cruising around the neighborhood; as they passed Glenn Ford's house David mentioned he knew the man, and Cheever (“acting like a naughty boy”) said, “Let's go see him! I've got to have something to tell the kids.” So they went, though the midnight visit was “pretty dull,” according to David, since Cheever was shy and Ford was sleepy.
The one person who seemed to hold out against Cheever's boyish charm was Alan Pakula. While they were dining together one night, Cheever noticed that the man “seem[ed] cross” with him for some reason, and finally Pakula's brother took him aside and explained things. Mortified, Cheever delivered a little speech the next day to the effect that he loved Hope as he loved “the light of day,” which may or may not have done the trick; afterward Cheever cursed himself for indulging in such a “vain and indecent flirtation” (“Improve, my soul, improve”). Nevertheless, he arranged to say goodbye to Mrs. Pakula on his way to the airport, and was alarmed to find she wasn't home. Thinking her husband had “forbidden” her to see him again, Cheever spent much of the transcontinental flight drinking gin in the toilet, and when he got home that night (presumably worse for wear) he lost no time telling his wife and seven-year-old son “about [his] emotional embroilments.” The next week or so passed in an agony of worry: “Why should H[ope] have stood me up, oh why oh why?” he wrote, thinking his “drunken and immature behavior” had ruined the movie deal: “There will be a desperate call from Henry [his agent], a prolonged lawsuit, etc.” But at last he got a call from Hope, who explained that she'd had to run an errand the day of his departure, that she was very sorry, and meanwhile everybody loved and missed him. “I've never wanted anything more from the world,” Cheever sighed to his wife, “than to be rich, famous and loved.”*
“Will success spoil John Cheever?” his family joked, and for a few weeks, at least, it seemed the opposite was true. He gleefully deposited a fat Hollywood check at the local bank (whose employees were gratifyingly incredulous) and began spreading the wealth—lavishing gifts on his wife and children, paying off part of the mortgage, and treating himself to a sporty