The story under discussion vividly represents Cheever's typical features as a sharp observer of life, a subtle psychologist with a great gift of penetrating into the minds of his characters at crucial moments of their lives, a skilful writer. It represents the narrator's recollection of an episode of his teenage life which reflects the complexity of `fathers-sons' relations.
Cheever writes in his own brief seemingly casual manner, but the verbal plane is only the top of the iceberg. The story of a trivial episode of a boy's meeting with his father turns into an indictment of the whole class with its hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness.
The story describes a crucial moment in the main character's life, though on the surface nothing extraordinary happens. The moment is crucial because the character is a teenager who is passing this serious period of his life which, to a great extent, determines everybody's adult life. The event described is very important for the boy. He meets his father whom he hasn't seen for 3 years and he looks forward to this meeting as a beginning of his wonderful reunion with his father. The meeting however turns out to be a complete disappointment. So the title `Reunion' acquires an ironic implication because in fact it is not a story of reunion but a story of separation. The irony is enhanced by framing - the story opens and ends with the same words `the last time I saw my father'.
Thus the author introduces the theme of the story - a teenager's frustration and crash of his hopes. But it is not only the psychological conflict of the boy's cheated expectations that is in the focus of the writer's attention but also the external conflict between material wealth and spiritual degradation.
The story is the first person narration. It is obvious that the narrator recollects the event when he is already a mature man. At first it may seem that the man is not inclined to tell the reader much about his life and feeling, but a skilful reader will always discern deeper implications behind words. The boy is a neglected child whose parents are divorced and it seems he does not even have a permanent place of living (home); he is constantly travelling from his mother to his grandmother and back. The boy hasn't seen his father for 3 years which implies that his father neglects him and his mother doesn't encourage their meetings.
It was apparently the boy's personal decision to write to his father and appoint the meeting. However the answer came not directly from his father but from his secretary who wrote that he would come at noon. The father was punctual (as a reliable businessman) and came at 12 o'clock sharp. When Charlie saw him he experienced contradictory feelings - the father was a stranger to him but at the same time `his flesh and blood, his future and his doom'. This periphrasis backed by parallelism reveals the boy's psychological state at the moment - he was excited, elated, full of hope and expectation. The hackneyed oxymoron `terribly happy' adds to the description.
The reader sees the man through the son's perception and he cannot but see that the boy is proud of his father (`a big good-looking man'), he longs to have a father, a real man by his side. This idea is emphasized by parallelism in the last three sentences of the first paragraph (I hoped, I wished, I wanted). His father `smelled' of what the son lacked in his teenager life with two females, mother and grandmother.
The central part of the story describes the father and the son's visiting four restaurants. Instead of taking the son to his club and having a quiet talk with him the father brought him to a restaurant in a side street, very small and common (there was only one old waiter, the bartender was quarrelling with a delivery boy). But they did not stay there long as the father was rude and boisterous which is contrasted to the waiter's polite and quiet manner. The father's aggressive behaviour made the waiter ask the man to leave the place. So father and son went from restaurant to restaurant and wherever they came the man was rude. He was getting drunk which increased his aggressiveness. He did not seem to notice his son. The author doesn't describe Charlie's feeling and his reaction to the father's intoxicated behaviour but it is evident that the boy couldn't have liked it.
He started to feel ashamed and disappointed. The father did not seem to be interested in the son's life and studies. Only once he cross-questioned Charlie about the baseball season, while the boy longed to be asked about his ambitions and aspirations. The reader feels that the boy gradually realizes what his father is like and in frustration he says he has to go and get his train. This makes the father stop and think how he could please his son before the departure. He was obviously a rich man but to had come to the meeting without a present and now he wanted to compensate for it but could think of nothing better than buying a newspaper for the son. The scene at the news stand was the last straw - the father was humiliating the news stand clerk speaking in his usual manner mixing formal and rude vocabulary. The boy couldn't stand it any longer, he was utterly disappointed and he knew that he `would have to plan his future without his father'. He lifted abruptly without waiting for his father to say a proper goodbye to him.
The fact that Charlie did not try to contact his father later speaks for itself. He went through a traumatic experience but he got over it. Thus the conflict lies not only on the psychological plane but on the social plane either. The author reveals the realities of the disintegration of the manners and morals of society, where bright surfaces conceal tensions, disorders, anxieties and frustrations of life.