Cheever_ A Life - Blake Bailey [83]
When he wasn't scything with the resident man of the soil, Cheever was discreetly commiserating with the Whitneys in their war against the misfit Winternitz clan. Like Polly, he made (qualified) exceptions where his wife and her brother Bill were concerned, but the other three siblings were fair game. “There are a lot of Mary's family here now and a good deal of venom is generated at the dinner table,” he wrote John Weaver. “When I left the table last night Polly pulled me under a syringia and hissed: ‘They say he used to eat flies at Hamden Hall and now I believe it.’ “ Still in a category of her own was Mary's maid of honor, Buff, whom the Whitney children mercilessly abused because of her dumpy figure and odd behavior. Cheever, too, invariably described her as “Mary's unstable sister” and made amusing references to her overeating. That first summer after the war, it got so bad that Buff went berserk and threatened to kill the cook (“Mary's sister is as crazy as a bed-bug,” Cheever reported), whereupon she was driven away to a mental hospital in Rhode Island. At one such place Buff would meet her future husband, Walter, a chemist with a Ph.D. and social manner that made his wife seem glib by comparison. Once, the man misinterpreted (or understood all too well) one of Cheever's witticisms and challenged him to step outside and fight, but Cheever only laughed and resumed his conversation. There were times, though, when the whole internecine comedy became a bore, and then Cheever would escape to New York, alone, so he could work in peace and see a few friends. While Buff was still regaining her composure at Butler Hospital, Cheever was celebrating Ettlinger's marriage to Katrina Wallingford, heiress of a grain-elevator fortune: “[They] came into town on their way to Berne (Suisse) where they are going to live,” he wrote Herbst. “It was hot and we drank gin and champagne at the Plaza.”
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THE ETTLINGERS SOON RETURNED to the city and took an apartment on Sutton Place. “I used to put a gin bottle in the window and an Edith Piaf record on the phonograph”—Cheever later remarked to the couple, only half in jest—”and hope that the Ettlingers might just possibly drop in to keep me company but you almost never did.” Cheever's working day usually ended at lunch, and the long afternoons made him restless. The fact was, he did see a fair amount of his friends Don and Katrina—the families often spent Christmas Day or New Year's together—but Ettlinger had resumed his busy career writing for Kraft Television Theater, and would soon find a permanent niche as head writer for the soap opera Love of Life. Cheever, a loyal friend, would sometimes watch the show in various bars, and when Ettlinger sued CBS for ripping off his idea for a series titled Our Miss Booth (which CBS had rejected before making Our Miss Brooks with Eve Arden), Cheever would walk to Foley Square on fine afternoons and listen to his friend testify (“Now and then he flashes the jury a youthful smile with just a hint of modesty in it and you ought to see them lay back in their swivel chairs,” he wrote Weaver). On the surface, the two could hardly have been less alike: Ettlinger was tall and princely, Cheever short and rather plain; Ettlinger was wealthy, and