Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [302]
When Fred failed to reach John on the telephone (unaware of its sudden removal), he became concerned and rushed to Bay State Road, where he found his brother naked and incoherent. He got him dressed and drove him back to Ossining. The next day, Fred wrote his son a circumspect account of the episode, noting that he was “in deep concern” about John: “He is such an extraordinary person, not only very knowledgable and bright, but kind and loving, [and] it would hurt many, many people if anything were to happen to him.” Such was Fred's haste in rescuing his brother that he didn't bother to retrieve any manuscripts, or, for that matter, John's false teeth and Academy badge, which were eventually found in the bedroom dresser.
“I MUST HAVE BEEN QUITE DRUNK and mad,” Cheever wrote a few weeks later, realizing that he remembered nothing of the drive back to Ossining (during which he'd drunk a bottle of Scotch and then urinated into the empty bottle), or even his subsequent hospitalization at Phelps, where he was found to be suffering from a degree of brain damage in addition to a failing heart. Given one more chance to choose between life and death, Cheever seemed on the whole to prefer living—defiant of the expectation that he should go on fulfilling the “Orphic myth.” Where he differed with his wife and doctors was in how, exactly, to proceed with his recovery. Jewett, the psychiatrist, had arranged for him to be admitted to the Smithers Alcoholism Treatment and Training Center on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, which involved an “intensive” twenty-eight-day inpatient treatment program. Balking at the prospect of incarceration, Cheever phoned his daughter and insisted she find out whether the program was affiliated with Alcoholics Anonymous, because he refused to get mixed up with a “bunch of Christers.” Susan did so, and someone at Smithers denied the connection—falsely, but in accord with AA's principle of anonymity. Cheever would later concede that the lie had saved his life, but at the time he was decidedly ambivalent, and even tried to jump out of the car when Mary drove him to Smithers on April 9.
All things considered, he was in remarkably good fettle on arrival: he seemed fairly lucid, and his vital signs were normal. After his typewriter was turned upside down to check for contraband, he was given the abbreviated Shipley IQ test (scoring, as ever, in the high-average range) and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. It was the screening interview that gave counselors pause: Cheever's memory was “apparently poor,” they noted, since he denied ever having blackouts, DTs, or any psychiatric treatment (aside from “some marriage counseling” five years before), though his medical records plainly contradicted him on all these points, and never mind the patient's claim that “all his trouble began [my italics] with the suicide of a close friend [Sexton!] last year.” Despite such “minimization,” he seemed otherwise cooperative, relating well (if reservedly) with staff and patients alike. “A bummer; not really bad, but not good,” he wrote in his journal that second day. “At breakfast I am asked not to sit at a particular table. We do not play musical chairs around here, says an authoritative woman of perhaps forty, a little heavy.” But he hadn't much time to dwell on his social progress. Between meals (“meat