The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [58]
“Would you say that your parents were happy together?”
“Well, I really never thought of it that way,” Coverly said. “They’re married and they’re my parents and I guess they take the lean with the fat like everybody else but there’s one thing she used to tell me that left an impression on me.”
“What was that?”
“Well, whenever I had a good time with Father—whenever he took me out on the boat or something—she always seemed to be waiting for me when we got home with this story. Well, it was about, it was about how I came to be, I suppose you’d say. My father was working for the table-silver company at the time and they went into the city for some kind of banquet. Well, my mother had some cocktails and it was snowing and they had to spend the night in a hotel and one thing led to another but it seems that after this my father didn’t want me to be born.”
“Did your mother tell you this?”
“Oh, yes. She told me lots of times. She told me I shouldn’t trust him because he wanted to kill me. She said he had this abortionist come out to the house and that if it hadn’t been for her courage I’d be dead. She told me that story lots of times.”
“Do you think this had any effect on your fundamental attitude toward your father?”
“Well, sir, I never thought about it but I guess maybe it did. I sometimes had a feeling that he might hurt me. I never used to like to wake up and hear him walking around the house late at night. But this was foolish because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He never punished me.”
“Did she punish you?”
“Well, not very often, but once she just laid my back open. I guess perhaps it was my fault. We went down to Travertine swimming—I was with Pete Meacham—and I decided to climb up on the roof of the bathhouse where we could see the women getting undressed. It was a dirty thing to do but we hadn’t even hardly got started when the caretaker caught us. Well my mother took me home and she told me to get undressed and she took my great-grandfather’s buggy whip—that was Benjamin—and she just laid my back open. There was blood all over the wall. My back was such a mess she got scared, but of course she didn’t dare call a doctor because it would be embarrassing, but the worst thing was I couldn’t go swimming for the rest of that summer. If I went swimming people would see these big sores on my back. I wasn’t able to go swimming all that summer.”
“Do you think this had any effect on your fundamental attitude toward women?”
“Well, sir, where I come from, I think it’s hard to take much pride in being a man. I mean the women are very powerful. They are kind and they mean very well, but sometimes they get very oppressive. Sometimes you feel as if it wasn’t right to be a man. Now there’s this story they tell about Howie Pritchard. On his wedding night he’s supposed to have put his foot into the chamber pot and pissed down his leg so his wife wouldn’t hear the noise. I don’t think he should have done that. If you’re a man I think you ought to be proud and happy about it.”
“Have you ever had any sexual experiences?”
‘Twice,” Coverly said. “The first time was with Mrs. Maddern. I don’t suppose I should name her but everybody in the village knew about her and she was a widow.”
“Your other experience?”
“That was with Mrs. Maddern too.”
“Have you ever had any homosexual experiences?”
“Well, I guess I know what you mean,” Coverly said. “I did plenty of that when I was young but I swore off it