Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [279]
One problem was rust; another was that he'd begun drinking again. Doing so, he'd followed to the letter the classic pattern of the alcoholic who gets sober in response to some crisis, then thinks he's capable of drinking moderately and almost immediately reverts to his previous condition or worse. In Cheever's case it would get much, much worse, though it began with a trifle: “I drink perhaps a tablespoon of whisky,” he noted in mid-July “The effects are splendid, beyond anxiety, but I suppose I should confess this.” A page later, he wrote: “Alone, I drink a whisky after dinner. It tastes very good. It seems to do me no harm but I must be very careful about this.” Cheever would have found a reason to drink in any case, but since it was summer the most satisfying reason was readily at hand: his wife was going away to Treetops, and if that weren't callous enough, she was taking the whole family with her—all but Cheever, who felt very sorry for himself even though the decision to stay behind was, as ever, his. “I might state the facts,” he wrote, explaining to himself why he wanted to drink again, “that I am a very lonely man of sixty-one, malnourished, living alone with a cat, suffering from a heart condition and trying to write off a debt of one hundred thousand dollars before I die.” Still, he made a miniature stand of sorts. Home alone that first day, he poured his gin down the sink and tried to get some work done; then he lunched with friends and went for a swim at Mrs. Zagreb's. A drab day. His work went badly or not at all, and he found himself “less spontaneous” with friends. That same night, then, he consoled himself with two whiskeys (“I revel in these, wallow, smear, engorge myself”), and the next day he drove to the liquor store and replenished his gin.
Federico returned from Treetops after a week or two, and soon discovered that his father was drinking again. Caught in the act, Cheever said that Mutter had allowed him to have two drinks a day*; Federico didn't buy it and demanded he stop. For a while Cheever drank furtively and somewhat moderately, and from time to time would even ask his son's permission; this being denied—emphatically—he'd sneak a drink anyway. Meanwhile he worked on the only real writing he accomplished that summer: a brief testimonial on the savory elegance of Suntory whisky, in return for which a Japanese PR man arrived one day with a case of the stuff. “I was nervous about it,” Federico recalled, “and I think in one of his moments of pique he told me he'd drunk some of it to hurt me.” Federico promptly poured the rest of it into the sink, then phoned his mother in a panic and begged her to come home right away. But of course it was too late—had always been too late, though Cheever promised once again to abstain. “The gin bottle, the gin bottle,” he wrote.
This is painful to record. I go to the post office and stay away from the gin shop. “If you drink you'll kill yourself,” says my son. His eyes are filled with tears. “Listen,” say I. “If I thought it would benefit you I'd jump off a ten-story building.” He doesn't want that, and there isn't a ten-story building in the village. I drive up the hill to get the mail and make a detour to the gin store. I hide the bottle under the car seat. We swim, and I wonder how I will get the bottle from the car to the house. I read while brooding on this problem. When I think that my beloved son has gone upstairs, I hide the bottle by the side of the house and lace my iced tea.
By the end of August, Federico and Mary had exhausted their arguments and Cheever was drinking openly again. They avoided him in disgust, while he in turn felt sorry for himself and affected