"The Wrysons" (The Stories of John Cheever)

You Walk into this Kitchen at Your Own Risk

If you want to understand the Cold War, watch The Twilight Zone. Every episode oozes with post-nuclear dread. Even the twist endings reflect the time. On the surface everything is fine, but the façade falls away to reveal a stark reality. In the 1950s and 1960s, America was a powerful force in the world, the world's police officer, the country that not only won WWII but came away with a revived economy and people eager to pay for social programs because they were making more money than they ever imagined. Yet, the Rosenbergs were selling nuclear secrets. Nuclear bombs that could each kill thousands of people instantly. The world was threatening to go Communist in the same way that it went Fascist in the 1930s.

If you want to mourn Rod Serling's career, watch Night Gallery. Made in the 1970s, Night Gallery was for an audience engaged in the old gender norm anxieties. Many episodes were just outright sexist. Funny stories about men killing their wives. Larry Hagman using magic to replace his wife with his housekeeper. A man marries a gold digger and seeks revenge. Not every story can be titled “My Wife is an Evil Whore” but Night Gallery had enough sexism to leave a bad taste in your mouth.

“The Wrysons” is a story about mid-century fears (nuclear war and actual emotions). The Wrysons are an unpopular couple in Shady Hills. The introductory paragraph treats them with contempt. Donald Wryson has “the cheerful air of a bully” but he's only a bully to keep out the bad elements. Irene Wryson was “not unattractive” but shy and contentious, especially contentious on the subject of upzoning. They have no books. They send out Xmas cards and expect cards back. Their taste in art runs to dentist office paintings. They are definitely opposed to a library. They fear a stranger at the gate - “a man with a beard, a garlic breath and a book”. They can't even approve of an “elderly rest home” (nursing home) without asking what kind of old people are going to be in that home.

John Cheever presents their behavior as odd, except it seems rather stereotypical. They don't want “those people” invading their neighborhood. They drink. They hold parties. Their civic engagement begins and ends with maintaining the stability. Changes are coming, but not to Shady Hills, not if the Wrysons can help it.

Dispensing with their behavior, Cheever turns to their internal lives. Irene is haunted by visions of the hydrogen bomb exploding nearby. Nuclear war was an obsession. Two bombs ended WWII but what about WWIII? Faulkner's Nobel Prize acceptance speech referenced nuclear war as inevitable. Social critics openly wondered about culture in the age of the nuclear weapon. Would children still listen to Mahler and Chopin when growing up with visions of mushroom clouds?

Irene spends her days fighting for the character of her neighborhood, but spends her nights dreaming about a mass exodus as bombs go off and everything is on fire. In her dreams men fought to get on escape yachts. Her dreams end with her trying to kill herself and her daughter just before the house blows up. She can't very discuss these dreams over breakfast.

Donald's secret is even more shameful for 1950s men. He bakes. He bakes cookies, banana bread, and muffins. He even bakes Lady Baltimore cake, which is a complicated cake with layers, frosting and filling full of fruit and nuts. This is not the cake for amateur bakers. This is also not the kind of thing that men do.

Donald is a man in the 1950s and he's committed to that image. He grew up without a father and a mother who taught him how to bake. Boys who grow up without immediate father figures tend to rely on pop culture for their masculine identity. Donald's male role models were Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. These men only cried when they drank. They did not talk about their emotions. They did not play bongos or eat garlic. They certainly did not bake. Traditionally, men can be chefs or even cooks and still be men. Women bake.

Donald's mother taught him how to bake. She also depended on him. In a few sentences, Cheever describes a needy doomed woman who leaves an impression long after she's dead. Whenever Donald feels lonely or anxious, he bakes. He doesn't just bake. He bakes complicated cakes and then throws them away. He treats baking as an addiction. Certainly, it's a better addiction than most, but he's still ashamed of himself. He's so ashamed that he doesn't even enjoy his cakes. He even fights against the urge.

This is a short short story, so once Cheever establishes his characters, he dangles a tragic melodramatic ending in front of the readers. It's the kind of ending that he liked to pull in his early writing, particularly “The Hartleys”. He even mocks the trope by saying ”we can dispatch them brightly enough.” Donald dies in a car accident. His poor widow falls and breaks her hip, lays in bed, contracts pneumonia and dies. Their daughter continues to receive Xmas cards from everyone.

Only that's a stupid ending. Cheever can do better than that. So Donald gets up in the middle of the night to bake a cake. Only since he's doing this in the dark hours of the morning, he falls asleep and burns the cake. Irene smells the smoke and thinks that the bombs are falling. In a panic she runs to the kitchen. She sees the burning. Donald is exposed as a baker. Only Irene has no clue what is going on. Irene opens the windows and lets in the smells of nicotiana and other night flowers. Nicotiana is an ingredient in cigarettes. So out with the baking. In with the smoking.

And as they sit in the kitchen in their night clothes, they imagine a stranger at the gates looking at them and finding them odd. They go to bed “more interested than ever in good appearances.” The twist ending has happened. The couple is revealed to be weirder than anyone assumed. Enter Rod Serling with a cigarette.

Here is Martha Stewart’s recipe for a Lady Baltimore cake.

You can read the story here.

I published Michael Hemmingson’s This Other Eden which is also about men trying to live up to their masculine ideals.