Bullet Park by John Cheever Page A

embraced her, saying: “Darling, darling, darling, darling.” She went upstairs and when Tony returned Nailles said that his mother was resting. “For God’s sake,” said Nailles, “please don’t ever do anything like that again.”
    “I won’t, Daddy,” said Tony.

VIII
    O n the night but one before Tony was stricken with what Nailles insisted was mononucleosis, Nailles and Nellie had gone to a dinner party at the Ridleys’.
    The Ridleys were a couple who brought to the hallowed institution of holy matrimony a definitely commercial quality as if to marry and conceive, rear and educate children was like the manufacture and merchandising of some useful product produced in competition with other manufacturers. They were not George and Helen Ridley. They were “the Ridleys.” One felt that they might have incorporated and sold shares in their destiny over the counter. “The Ridleys” was painted on the door of their station wagon. There was a sign saying “The Ridleys” at the foot of their driveway. In their house, matchbooks, coasters and napkins were all marked with their name. They presented their handsome children to their guests with the air of salesmen pointing outthe merits of a new car in a showroom. The lusts, griefs, exaltations and shabby worries of a marriage never seemed to have marred the efficiency of their organization. One felt that they probably had branch offices and a staff of salesmen on the road. They were very stingy with their liquor and when they got home Nailles made a nightcap for Nellie and himself.
    Nailles put on eyeglasses to measure the whiskey. Now and then his glasses flashed a double beam of light. He seemed, to Nellie, fussy that night as he measured out the ice and soda and she noticed a large lipstick stain along the side of his mouth. He would have exchanged an innocent kiss behind a pantry door and this did not worry her but the streak of crimson made him look ridiculous. His procreative usefulness was over—she thought—but his venereal itch was unabated—he scratched himself while she watched—and she wondered if there wasn’t some massive obsolescence to the overly sensual man in his forties; some miscalculation in nature that left him able to populate a small city with his unwanted pro-generative energies. Later, when Nailles lurched over to Nellie’s side of the bed she didn’t actually kick him but she made it clear that he was unwelcome.
    Now Nailles had no use for men who were afraid of women. He had grown up with a man who suffered from this terrible infirmity. His name was Harry Pile and Pile had been afraid of women all his life. This had begun quite naturally with his mother—a large, big-breasted, impetuous woman who fired out contradictory commands,broke her husband’s spirit and thrashed her only son with a thorny walking stick. When Pile was eight or nine years old he fell in love with a girl named Janet Forbes. She was intelligent and responsive and yet in some way formidable. Her shoulders were broad, her voice was a little gruff for a girl and her uncle, Wilbert Forbes, had discovered a mountain in Alaska that bore his name. That Harry’s beloved shared her name with a mountain seemed to hint at some snowcapped massiveness, some inaccessibility that both pleased and frightened him. In school and college he invariably fell in love with women distinguished by their independence and intractability. He first married a high-spirited and beautiful young woman who gave him three daughters and then ran off with an Italian waiter. This deepened his fears. For his second wife he chose a woman so preternaturally demure, wistful and shy that it seemed he had outmaneuvered his fears but she turned out to be a heavy drinker and another source of anxiety. In the meantime the three daughters of his first marriage had grown up into argumentative, robust and determined young women and when he once tried to correct the eldest she picked up a china lamp and