Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [299]
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THE OTHER FAMOUS PERSON in the BU writing program was the poet Anne Sexton, whom Cheever found “aggressive” and mostly avoided. The two had met at a faculty dinner hosted by the dean, where both engaged in a kind of caustic banter meant to shock their less illustrious colleagues and perhaps each other. Ivan Gold remembered sensing a “visceral distaste” between the two; Brinnin and Star-buck tried to distract the dean and his wife at the other end of the table: “Did they overhear that?” the two men worried with each new explosion of naughtiness from Cheever and Sexton. Whatever their incompatibility otherwise, both were alcoholics who'd distanced themselves from family in order to drink in peace, and Sexton somewhat endeared herself to Cheever by spiking his coffee with vodka at tedious faculty meetings.
Sexton killed herself on October 4, 1974, and Cheever “never quite got over this.” Even though Sexton had been suicidal for most of her adult life, nobody really expected it: her friend Brinnin was under the impression that she'd “never been so happy,” whereas Ivan Gold had found her “sardonic, nervous, full of a crazed energy.” For his part, Cheever seemed to regard the tragedy as emblematic of the whole ghastly situation—aspects of which included the apathetic, feckless administration of a “fourth rate” university near an embalming school in an utterly, utterly dismal part of Boston. Cheever boycotted the memorial service, threatening to resign on the spot and go home.
But home to what? Over Thanksgiving his family tried to rouse him out of his funk with the usual “shark tank” persiflage, an occasion to which Cheever was decidedly unable to rise. “Susie said that I put on a rather bad show,” he wrote Coates afterward, “and I shall try to do better at Christmas.” This was not to be. Returning to Cedar Lane a month later, Cheever appeared to be on the verge of death—an impression he soon confirmed by coughing uncontrollably and turning blue. This, of course, was the same old heart trouble, and once again he went to the hospital and stayed a few days to dry out. Perhaps to underline the gravity of his predicament, a young priest visited his “extraordinarily bleak” room at Phelps. Cheever, wearing pajamas, bemusedly knelt on the linoleum floor and received Holy Communion, then said “Thank you, Father,” and watched the man depart.
Back home he demanded a drink, and when his family protested, he asked if he might take a Valium instead; given the go-ahead, he swallowed three and poured himself a drink. During the Christmas feast, a hush fell over the table as he tried to eat peas: time after time, suspensefully, the trembling fork ascended, only to spill its savory burden at the crucial moment. At last a spoon was suggested. “I regret to tell you,” said Cheever (putting the fork aside), “that you have a father who is dying.” A look went around the table, and Federico said, “We have a father with a taste for melodrama.” This eased the tension somewhat, though it was precisely the sort of thing Cheever was apt to find “unfeeling.” On New Year's Day, he became enraged when his family advised him to eat lentils “in order to ensure an income”: after crashing upstairs to his room, Cheever yanked the cover off his bed and fell over backward, unconscious.
“So I am heartily sorry,” he noted exactly one year later. “We have all survived.”
* His great-uncle