Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [220]
In those days he mostly kept his malice in camera, or limited to the odd elliptical mumble, largely in deference to his old friend Spear: Cheever would have liked to emulate the man's decency, his enviable solidity, or in any case to be somewhat worthy of it. After lunch the two would take their dogs for a walk to the dam, then pass the afternoon playing backgammon, while Spear canvassed his friend's opinion about whatever old family document he was studying at the moment. Cheever always obliged in whatever way he could: “John called early this AM to say come over at 11 and talk about the 19th century letters which I had asked him to look at,” Spear wrote Litvinov. “He, as you would know he would, read through the whole dull manuscript and indicated one third to discard.” (“Art talks about editing his greatgrandfather's journal; has talked about this for ten years. I say yes and no, concealing my impatience with politeness and wondering does he do the same for me.”) Anyway it was something to talk about, other than dogs and neighbors and church. And certainly Cheever appreciated such a “fine friendship … without a trace of jeopardy,” though it would never occur to him to mention anything truly personal, much less tormenting, which at best would have only puzzled the wholesome Spear. “[John] is in good shape,” the man cheerfully reported as late as 1974, when Cheever was entering the last stages of suicidal alcoholism.
No matter what his condition, though, Cheever generally managed the drive to Yaddo every September for the board meeting, and during his visit in 1962 he'd met a twenty-nine-year-old poet named Raphael Rudnik to whom he took a shine (“I think that he will introduce me to a younger generation”). Rudnik, for his part, never forgot his first encounter with Cheever: “I was dozing in a chair by the pool, and saw this little man walk up. I heard him reading a book—an extraordinary book. But when I opened my eyes there was no book, he was just talking!” That night or the next, Rudnik gave a reading of his poetry and received a cherished compliment from Cheever, who said he felt that “everything was all right with the language” after hearing Rudnik's work—and what's more, he meant it. Cheever was then having a bad time with The Wapshot Scandal, and wrote in his journal that Rudnik's poetry had reminded him of “how [he] would like to write.” The friendship was sealed when Cheever discovered the young man had a “good wing” to boot, and so invited him to Cedar Lane for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner that year—and almost every year thereafter. “That house was the great good place for me,” said Rudnik. “John was a delightful person. I would see darker things, but [they] didn't denigrate the fact that this was a joyous occasion for everyone.”
The next year at Yaddo, Cheever met another young poet, Natalie Robins. “I don't know why he liked me,” said Robins, who was a little startled when Cheever got in touch after Yaddo, inviting her to come for Thanksgiving and bring her boyfriend, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt. Along with Rudnik, the couple became a fixture at holiday meals for many years—though the tradition got off to a shaky start, since that inaugural Thanksgiving was less than a week after JFK's assassination. Cheever, rather gloomy at first, said he'd been “glued to the television,” but his mood lightened as he watched the young people play touch football in the post-prandial twilight (“it was something he liked people to do,” said Lehmann-Haupt, “a memory of what people ought to do on an occasion like that”). “I have an anxious seizure on Thanksgiving morning,” Cheever wrote afterward, “and during the next twelve hours I drink nearly a fifth of whiskey. This is dangerous, odious and obscene. I barely see Raphael who leaves empty beer cans all over the place. Natalie wears a purple dress and her boyfriend is an attractive young man with a vaguely familiar look, that sense of