The Wapshot Chronicle - John Cheever [54]
Coverly was not familiar with a correct dinner service, but by watching Cousin Mildred he saw how to serve himself from the dishes that the waitress passed and he only got into trouble when he was about to drop his dessert into his finger bowl, but the waitress, by smiling and signaling, got him to move his finger bowl and everything went off all right. When dinner was finished they went down on the elevator and were driven through the rain to the opera.
It is perhaps in the size of things that we are most often disappointed and it may be because the mind itself is such a huge and labyrinthine chamber that the Pantheon and the Acropolis turn out to be smaller than we had expected. At any rate, Coverly, who expected to be overwhelmed by the opera house, found it splendid but cozy. Their seats were in the orchestra, well forward. Coverly had no libretto and he could not understand what was going on. Now and then the plot would seem to be revealed to him but he was always mistaken and in the end more confused than ever. He fell asleep twice. When the opera ended he said good night and thank you to Cousin Mildred and her husband in the lobby, feeling that it would be to his disadvantage to have them drive him back to the slum where he lived.
Early the next morning Coverly reported to Grafley and Harmer, where he was given a common intelligence-quotient test. There were simple arithmetical problems, blocks to count and vocabulary tests, and he completed this without any difficulty although it took him the better part of the morning. He was told to come back at two. He ate a sandwich and wandered around the streets. The window of a shoe-repair place on the East Side was filled with plants and reminded him of Mrs. Pluzinski’s kitchen window. When he returned to Grafley and Harmer he was shown a dozen or so cards with drawings or blots on them—a few of them colored—and asked by a stranger what the pictures reminded him of. This seemed easy, for since he had lived all his life between the river and the sea the drawings reminded him of fish bones, kelp, conch shells and other simples of the flood. The doctor’s face was inexpressive and he couldn’t tell if he had been successful. The doctor’s reserve seemed so impenetrable that it irritated Coverly that two strangers should be closeted in an office to cultivate such an atmosphere of inhumanity. When he left he was told to report in the morning for two more examinations and an interview.
In the morning he found himself in stranger waters. Another gentleman—Coverly guessed they were all doctors—showed him a series of pictures or drawings. If they were like anything they were like the illustrations in a magazine although they were drawn crudely and with no verve or imagination. They presented a problem to Coverly, for when he glanced at the first few they seemed to remind him only of very morbid and unsavory things. He wondered at first if this was a furtive strain of morbidity in himself and if he would damage his chances at a job in the carpet works by speaking frankly. He wondered for only a second. Honesty was the best policy. All the pictures dealt with noisome frustrations and when he was finished he felt irritable and unhappy. In the afternoon he was asked to complete a series of sentences. They all presented a problem or sought an attitude and since Coverly was worried about money—he had nearly run through his twenty-five dollars—he completed most of the sentences with references to money. He would be interviewed by a psychologist on the next afternoon.
The thought of this interview made him a little nervous. A psychologist seemed as strange and formidable to him as a witch doctor. He felt that some baneful secret in his life might be exposed, but the worst he had ever done was masturbate and looking back over his life and knowing no one of his age who had not joined in on the sport he decided that this did not have the status of a secret. He decided to be as honest with the psychologist as possible. This decision comforted him a little and seemed to abate his nervousness. His appointment was for three o