“She’s one of those John Cheever women,” someone said tomeofa friend’s wife not long ago; I knew exactly what he meant, precisely what to expect of her. She would be a gentle woman, long on neither imagination nor wit, faithful unless pressed by sudden pity beyond some point of no return; she would have come from a place like Morristown, New Jersey, from a family that had once—a generation prior to that of anyone now living—had money. She would be a warrior about schools, be given to tears in the middle of the night, be loved by habit; she would have vague but urgent longings for some daffodils planted by a neighbor, for a house barely glimpsed, some ten years ago (before either of the children was born), on a back road near Marblehead.
Some People, Places, and Things That Will Not Appear in My Next Novel, by John Cheever. Harper, $3.50
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