Falconer+-+John+Cheever

Falconer 157
there’s your piano and your grandfather’s crappy library and that
five-hundred-pound bust of Homer….”
“I’m leaving,” she sobbed, “I’m leaving.”
“Oh, stop saying that,” Eben shouted. “How can I be expected to
take seriously, even in a quarrelsome way, a woman who relishes
lying to herself?”
He closed the kitchen door and passed the drinks.
“Why are you so cruel?” Farragut asked.
“I’m not always cruel,” he said.
“I think you are,” said Marcia.
“I’ve gone to extraordinary lengths to build up some
understanding,” said Eben. “For example. Carrie wanted a
television set for the kitchen and so I bought her an excellent set.
The first thing in the morning she would go downstairs and start
talking to the television. When she sleeps she wears a kind of hat
like a shower cap and she puts a lot of rejuvenating oils on her
face. So there she sits in the morning with this hat on, talking a
mile a minute to the television set. She contradicts news reports,
laughs at the jokes and keeps up a general conversation. When I go
to work she doesn’t say goodbye; she’s too busy talking to the
television. When I come home in the evening she sometimes says
hello, but very seldom. She’s usually too busy chatting with the
newsmen to pay any attention to me. Then at half-past six she
says, ‘I’m putting your dinner on the table.’ That’s sometimes the
only sentence I get out of her during a full day, sometimes a week,
sometimes longer. Then she serves the food and takes her plate
back to the kitchen and eats her dinner there, talking and laughing
at a show called Trial and Error. When I go to bed she’s talking to
an old movie.
“So let me tell you what I did. I have a friend named Potter. He’s a
TV man. We ride into town on the train together sometimes. So I