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| Frank Wheeler, the author of this piece |
(editor's note: Scholars of the work of Richard Yates recently found the following tucked into the back of a drink recipe book in the archives of a bar in midtown Manhattan. It appears to be a section Yates edited out of the final draft of his classic mid-twentieth-century novel Revolutionary Road. In this section, main character Frank Wheeler fills out a Facebook Valentine's Day survey about his relationship with his wife April Wheeler. It is the great privilege of the EG Revue to publish such an important literary artifact.)
How’d you guys meet? At a party in Morningside Heights. I was four whiskeys deep, which helped. I’d never really been with a “first-rate” girl before. I’d dated a couple girls in New York, but one had “unpardonably thick ankles” and the other had a “tendency to mother me.” Anyway, April’s “shining hair and splendid legs had drawn me halfway across a roomful of strangers.” I thought she was a girl named Pamela, but she wasn’t. She was April, she was a first-rate girl, and she laughed at my jokes.
First date? About a week later we went out, and somehow by daybreak there she was, “lying miraculously nude beside me in the first blue light of day on Bethune Street.”
How long have you been married? Well, Niffer is about to turn seven. So seven years.
Who was interested first? On the aforementioned night on Bethune Street, she told me that I was the most interesting man she’d ever met. Inasmuch as I am interesting, it would follow that she was interested.
Who said I love you first? Not sure. April was definitely the first one to say “I love you when you’re nice.”
Most impatient? I’d say April. She’s always been impatient to get to Europe. That was our plan before she got pregnant, and even then, she was impatient to, um, deal with the situation before I convinced her to keep the thing. That was when I got the job at Knox Business Machines, which, trust me, is not a thing I take seriously. Anyway, now April has this plan to work as a secretary in Paris so I can have time to find myself because--and this is her talking--”it’s unrealistic for a man with a fine mind to go on working like a dog year after year at a job he can’t stand, coming home to a house he can’t stand in a place he can’t stand either, to a wife who’s equally unable to stand the same things.” So I’d say she’s more impatient.
Most sensitive? Definitely April--she was training to be an actress before we met. That’s how she got mixed up with the community theater performance of The Petrified Forest that turned out to be such a shambles. I should have known better than to let her get mixed up with that damned thing.
Most stubborn? April. I keep telling her she needs to go into analysis. She’s too stubborn to really love someone, it seems to me. It’s hardly her fault, with that absent mess of a father on top of all the usual penis envy that all the medical journals apparently say that all the women have. But it’s a hell of a time getting her to go.
Falls asleep first? It depends. How much have I had to drink?
Cooks better? I definitely opened some cans of beans and so forth in my Village bachelor pad days. But it’s 1955. Who the hell do you think cooks better?
Better morning person? Probably her. I don’t really perk up until I’ve had my second martini.
Better driver? Me. April never wants to do anything in a car.
Best Sense of Humor? That’s a tough one. I have insights, I think, into some of the degrading nonsense out here in the suburbs, but I feel it’s important not to make absolutely everything a joke. On the other hand, April doesn’t smile very often, except for when she gets on one of her hysterical laughing jags.
Where do you eat out the most as a couple? If by eat you mean drink, then it’s definitely Vito's Log Cabin, where we sometimes go dancing with the Campbells. There’s a little jazz combo, and they get a good mix of people from Revolutionary Estates. It’s awful.
Who is more social? For Chrissake, who even wants to be social out here? How many conversations can you have about schools and picture windows and sedum (whatever the hell that is)? That said, it’s probably me. Back in college everyone said that Wheeler’s really got it going on upstairs.
Who wears the pants in the relationship? April put on some pants one morning not too long ago--the Saturday after her performance in The Petrified Forest, actually--and went out to mow the lawn. I’d been meaning to do it, but then we got into it after the play was such a disaster, and so I’d had a few and I didn’t exactly spring out of bed if you know what I mean. But there she was, out there on the damn lawn with her slacks and the mower, practically begging for Mrs. Givings to drive by and start snooping around with her questions about whether I was sick. I know what she’s really thinking, not that I give a good Goddamn.
Who hogs the remote? What the hell is a remote? Oh, it’s for the TV? That’s definitely one of the ways you know the world is going to hell; the kids with their cartoons and no one anywhere even cares to so much as think about what it might mean to get some actual culture in this country for once.
Post a picture of you and your valentine:
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19427697
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