Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [76]
In the early hours of July 31, 1943, Mary gave birth to an eight-pound daughter, Susan Liley Cheever. One of the father's “most intense” memories was holding Mary in his arms during the long labor, all the more grateful for being there when he learned that another woman, sharing the room, had to suffer the ordeal alone because her husband was in Africa. Mostly the couple were thrilled to be parents. A few days after returning to Chelsea, they were visited by Dodie Merwin—now married and living on Cape Cod—who was struck by how radiant with fatherhood Cheever seemed; though warm and gracious, he firmly prevented Merwin from entering the room where his wife was nursing.
Each morning Cheever took the Eighth Avenue subway to the old Paramount Studio in Astoria, Queens, where he wrote scripts for Army-Navy Screen Magazine in keeping with the Signal Corps motto: “Make it clear, make it logical, make it human, and drive home the necessity of learning now, not when you get into battle.” The subjects ranged from crucial aspects of combat to something as mundane as brushing one's teeth or using a hammer correctly (one of Cheever's colleagues remembered a seven-reel disquisition on How to Carve a Side of Beef). Intrigued by the difference between written and spoken language, Cheever would fret for hours, at first, over the crucial mot juste—almost always a verb, divested at length of the various modifiers he'd weighed. Soon he was one of the fastest and most effective writers, known for the “lean purity” of his language. “There wasn't enough work for him,” Major Spigelgass recalled. “He was a writing machine.”
Perhaps the best part of Signal Corps life was the company of illustrious peers such as Irwin Shaw, William Saroyan, cartoonist Charles Addams, and others—a fraternity of talent where rank hardly mattered. To underline the egalitarian ethos, writers and artists addressed one another by surname only, and when some B-movie-producer officer would insist they “flatten their backs against the wall when [he] pass[ed], goddammit,” Privates Shaw and Cheever would ignore the man and blithely retire to their offices. Finally, in an effort to impose some modicum of military discipline, drills were ordered in the streets of Astoria at the crack of dawn. Saroyan was said to have alighted on the parade ground, hungover, from a chauffeur-driven Rolls.
Cheever nursed his own hangovers at Borden's ice-cream parlor, where he'd have coffee and bagels with his friends John Weaver, Don Ettlinger, and Leonard Field. The kindly Weaver was known as “Good John” to Cheever's “Bad John”—a distinction earned by the latter's drinking and malicious wit. Ettlinger was a handsome, buoyant man who'd been signed as a screenwriter by Twentieth Century-Fox while still in college; in 1943 he was twenty-nine and well established in a career that would span the next four decades, as would his friendship with Cheever. Leonard Field shared adjoining kneehole desks with Cheever, and would also remain in touch for many years, picking up tabs for their semiannual lunches at Sardi's and reciting his woes as a not-very-successful theater producer.
By noon the headaches had dissipated somewhat and it was time to start drinking again. If the writers were flush, they'd race into Manhattan for an elegant lunch at “21” or another midtown restaurant, Au Canari d'Or, calling ahead to order martinis and pots de crème, so they could (in theory)