The Pot Of Gold

John Cheever is blowing my mind.

Call me a pretentious fool, but every time I come back to "literature", supremely talented, sensitive and expressive writers, I am thrilled.

The day began innocently enough. I just worked seven days in a row. Got today off. Slept until 8:15, which is uncharacteristically late for me. Felt good. Rolled out of bed, tended to the toiletry needs that mark me as human and make me feel somewhat awake, and strolled leisurely downstairs without a care in the world on a beautiful but too damn cold June SUMMER morning.

Brewed up a cup of coffee and settled in to the recliner with Cheever in hand.

As I have said endlessly in here, give me a cup of coffee, a book and a quiet house and I am in the most peaceful place I can get to.

And yet I drink whiskey. Who can understand these things.

Maybe my shrink? I'm hoping tomorrow marks the beginnings of insight.

But I digress.

Within half an hour of reading, Cheever had me on the floor.

Again.

I have read 11 of his short stories so far, and every one of them has grabbed my emotion and ripped it up and through defensive bullshit straight to the truth.

Many of them deal with small lives and endless hope and broken dreams and hurting people.

You know, reality.

"The Pot Of Gold" is the one that floored me today. It concerns a couple who is endlessly plotting, planning and dreaming, always on the verge, seemingly, of lifting themselves out of survival mode into an easy life. Their dreams are continuously crushed by broken promises, unlucky circumstances, and unrealistic expectations.

Finally, though, a solid chance presents itself. The husband is offered a spectacular job by the rich friend of an uncle. An uncle who saved the life of the rich friend and to whom the rich dude feels indebted.

The husband is told he will be called in a week to hammer out the details and arrange for transportation from New York to California for him and his wife.

The call never comes, so the husband calls his prospective employer only to be told by the secretary that the man suffered a stroke and the deal is off the table.

Absolutely crushing. As a reader you have followed this couple through hope and disappointment over and over again, and when the real deal comes along, it too evaporates.

Awful.

The writing, the insights and the reality are powerful.

"There had hardly been a day when he had not been made to feel the power of money, but he found that the force of money was most irresistible when it took the guise of a promise, and that years of resolute self-denial, instead of rewarding him with reserves of fortitude, had left him more than ordinarily susceptible to temptation."

Before the couple gets the bad news, a struggling friend is jealously talking to the wife as the friend realizes she will get left behind.

"Do you know what that feels like? To live for fifteen years on promises and expectations and loans and credits in hotels that aren't fit to live in, never for a single day to be out of debt, and yet to pretend, to feel that every year, every winter, every job, every meeting is going to be the one. To live like this for fifteen years and then to realize that it's never going to end. Do you know what that feels like? I'm never going to get to Bermuda. I'm never even going to get to Florida. I'm never going to get out of hock, ever, ever, ever. I know that I'm never going to have a decent home and that everything that I own that is worn and torn and no good is going to stay that way."

She goes on but there is no sense in my copying it all down. By now these words should have broken your heart in familiarity.

AND YET

After the couple has absorbed the awful news, realizing their last chance at comfort has passed them by, the story ends like this:

"She turned on the stool and held her thin arms toward him, as she had done more than a thousand times. She was no longer young, and more wan, thinner than she might have been if he had found the doubloons to save her anxiety and unremitting work. Her smile, her naked shoulders had begun to trouble the indecipherable shapes and symbols that are the touchstones of desire, and the light from the lamp seemed to brighten and give off heat and shed that unaccountable complacency, that benevolence that the spring sunlight brings to all kinds of fatigue and despair. Desire for her delighted and confused him. Here it was, here it all was, and the shine of the gold seemed to him then to be all around her arms."

Where do we find our happiness?