It was one of those midsummer Sundays when everyone sits
around saying, “I drank too much last night.” You might
have heard it whispered by the parishioners leaving church,
heard it from the lips of the priest himself, struggling with his
cassock in the vestiarium, heard it from the golf links and the
tennis courts, heard it from the wildlife preserve where the
leader of the Audubon group was suffering from a terrible
hangover. “I drank too much,” said Donald Westerhazy. “We
all drank too much,” said Lucinda Merrill. “It must have been
the wine,” said Helen Westerhazy. “I drank too much of that
claret.”
This was at the edge of the Westerhazys’ pool. The pool, fed
by an artesian well with a high iron content, was a pale shade
of green. It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand
of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance— from the
bow of an approaching ship— that it might have had a name.
Lisbon. Hackensack. The sun was hot. Neddy Merrill sat by
the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin. He
was a slender man— he seemed to have the especial slenderness
of youth— and while he was far from young he had slid down
his banister that morning and given the bronze backside of
Aphrodite on the hall table a smack, as he jogged toward the
smell of coffee in his dining room. He might have been compared
to a summer’s day, particularly the last hours of one, and
while he lacked a tennis racket or a sail bag the impression was
definitely one of youth, sport, and clement weather. He had
been swimming and now he was breathing deeply, stertorously
as if he could gulp into his lungs the components of that moment,
the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his plea sure. It all
seemed to flow into his chest. His own house stood in Bullet
Park, eight miles to the south, where his four beautiful daughters
would have had their lunch and might be playing tennis.
Then it occurred to him that by taking a dogleg to the southwest
he could reach his home by water.
His life was not confining and the delight he took in this observation
could not be explained by its suggestion of escape.
He seemed to see, with a cartographer’s eye, that string of
swimming pools, that quasi-subterranean stream that curved
across the county. He had made a discovery, a contribution to
modern geography; he would name the stream Lucinda after
his wife. He was not a practical joker nor was he a fool but he
was determinedly original and had a vague and modest idea of
himself as a legendary figure. The day was beautiful and it
seemed to him that a long swim might enlarge and celebrate
its beauty.
He took off a sweater that was hung over his shoulders and
dove in. He had an inexplicable contempt for men who did
not hurl themselves into pools. He swam a choppy crawl,
breathing either with every stroke or every fourth stroke and
counting somewhere well in the back of his mind the one-two
one-two of a flutter kick. It was not a serviceable stroke for
long distances but the domestication of swimming had saddled
the sport with some customs and in his part of the world a
crawl was customary. To be embraced and sustained by the
light green water was less a plea sure, it seemed, than the resumption
of a natural condition, and he would have liked to
swim without trunks, but this was not possible, considering his
project. He hoisted himself up on the far curb— he never used
the ladder— and started across the lawn. When Lucinda asked
where he was going he said he was going to swim home.
The only maps and charts he had to go by were remembered
or imaginary but these were clear enough. First there
were theGrahams, theHammers, the Lears, theHowlands, and
the Crosscups. He would cross Ditmar Street to the Bunkers
and come, after a short portage, to the Levys, the Welchers,
and the public pool in Lancaster. Then there were the Hallorans,
the Sachses, the Biswangers, Shirley Adams, the Gil -
martins, and the Clydes. The day was lovely, and that he lived
in a world so generously supplied with water seemed like a
clemency, a beneficence. His heart was high and he ran across
the grass. Making his way home by an uncommon route gave
him the feeling that he was a pilgrim, an explorer, a man with
a destiny, and he knew that he would find friends all along the
way; friends would line the banks of the Lucinda River.
He went through a hedge that separated the Westerhazys’
land from the Grahams’, walked under some flowering apple
the swimmer 727
trees, passed the shed that housed their pump and filter, and
came out at the Grahams’ pool. “Why, Neddy,” Mrs. Graham
said, “what a marvelous surprise. I’ve been trying to get you
on the phone all morning. Here, let me get you a drink.” He
saw then, like any explorer, that the hospitable customs and
traditions of the natives would have to be handled with diplomacy
if he was ever going to reach his destination. He did not
want to mystify or seem rude to the Grahams nor did he have
the time to linger there. He swam the length of their pool and
joined them in the sun and was rescued, a few minutes later, by
the arrival of two carloads of friends from Connecticut. During
the uproarious reunions he was able to slip away. He went
down by the front of the Grahams’ house, stepped over a
thorny hedge, and crossed a vacant lot to the Hammers’. Mrs.
Hammer, looking up from her roses, saw him swim by
although she wasn’t quite sure who it was. The Lears heard
him splashing past the open windows of their living room. The
Howlands and theCrosscupswere away. After leaving theHow -
lands’ he crossed Ditmar Street and started for the Bunkers’,
where he could hear, even at that distance, the noise of a party.
The water refracted the sound of voices and laughter and
seemed to suspend it in midair. The Bunkers’ pool was on a
rise and he climbed some stairs to a terrace where twenty-five
or thirty men and women were drinking. The only person in
the water was Rusty Towers, who floated there on a rubber
raft. Oh, how bonny and lush were the banks of the Lucinda
River! Prosperous men and women gathered by the sapphirecolored
waters while caterer’s men in white coats passed them
cold gin. Overhead a red de Haviland trainer was circling
around and around and around in the sky with something like
the glee of a child in a swing. Ned felt a passing affection for
the scene, a tenderness for the gathering, as if it was something
he might touch. In the distance he heard th under. As soon as
Enid Bunker saw him she began to scream: “Oh, look who’s
here! What a marvelous surprise! When Lucinda said that you
couldn’t come I thought I’d die.” She made her way to him
through the crowd, and when they had finished kissing she led
him to the bar, a prog ress that was slowed by the fact that he
stopped to kiss eight or ten other women and shake the hands
of as many men. A smiling bartender he had seen at a hundred
728 the stories of john cheever
parties gave him a gin and tonic and he stood by the bar for a
moment, anxious not to get stuck in any conversation that
would delay his voyage. When he seemed about to be surrounded
he dove in and swam close to the side to avoid col -
liding with Rusty’s raft. At the far end of the pool he bypassed
the Tomlinsons with a broad smile and jogged up the garden
path. The gravel cut his feet but this was the only unpleasantness.
The party was confined to the pool, and as he went
toward the house he heard the brilliant, watery sound of voices
fade, heard the noise of a radio from the Bunkers’ kitchen,
where someone was listening to a ball game. Sunday after -
noon. He made his way through the parked cars and down the
grassy b order of their driveway to Alewives Lane. He did not
want to be seen on the road in his bathing trunks but there
was no traffic and he made the short distance to the Levys’
driveway, marked with a private property sign and a green
tube for The New York Times. All the doors and windows of
the big house were open but there were no signs of life; not
even a dog barked. He went around the side of the house to
the pool and saw that the Levys had only recently left. Glasses
and bottles and dishes of nuts were on a table at the deep end,
where there was a bathhouse or gazebo, hung with Japanese
lanterns. After swimming the pool he got himself a glass and
poured a drink. It was his fourth or fifth drink and he had
swum nearly half the length of the Lucinda River. He felt tired,
clean, and pleased at that moment to be alone; pleased with
everything.
It would storm. The stand of cumulus cloud— that city—
had risen and darkened, and while he sat there he heard the
percussiveness of th under again. The de Haviland trainer was
still circling overhead and it seemed to Ned that he could
almost hear the pilot laugh with plea sure in the afternoon; but
when there was an other peal of th under he took off for home.
A train whistle blew and he wondered what time it had gotten
to be. Four? Five? He thought of the provincial station at that
hour, where a waiter, his tuxedo concealed by a raincoat, a
dwarf with some flowers wrapped in news paper, and a woman
who had been crying would be waiting for the local. It was
suddenly growing dark; it was that moment when the pinheaded
birds seem to organize their song into some acute and
the swimmer 729
knowl edgeable recognition of the storm’s approach. Then
there was a fine noise of rushing water from the crown of an
oak at his back, as if a spigot there had been turned. Then the
noise of fountains came from the crowns of all the tall trees.
Why did he love storms, what was the meaning of his excitement
when the door sprang open and the rain wind fled rudely
up the stairs, why had the simple task of shutting the windows
of an old house seemed fitting and urgent, why did the first
watery notes of a storm wind have for him the unmistakable
sound of good news, cheer, glad tidings? Then there was an
explosion, a smell of cordite, and rai
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