Raymond Carver--Cathedral

Raymond Carver's short story, "Cathedral," is, like so many of this author's stories, a peculiar piece of work. Populated by mostly unsympathetic characters living drab lives, Carver's work stands a long distance from the classic narrative structures of O. Henry and Guy Du Maupassant.
In this story, an unnamed husband and wife play host to the blind former employer of the wife. The husband and narrator of the story does not want the blind man, Robert to come over. In fact, he doesn't seem to want anybody to come over. This character leads a hopelessly detached life. When he protests that he doesn't have any blind friends, his wife replies by noting "You don't have any friends. Period."
Although married, he and his wife sleep in separate rooms. They rarely go to bed at the same time. Instead, he sits up watching meaningless TV late into the night. Clearly the couple don't have much meaningful communication of any sort. The husband dislikes his job. He's just an alienated being bobbing along through life, moving toward death because there's nothing else to do.
Robert, we're told, has just lost his wife, Beulah. What an intriguing name that is, Beulah. It derives from a Hebrew word meaning married. Is that significant? I think so. In fact, I think the entire existence of Beulah is important. Carver could have easily portrayed Robert simply as the wife's former employer without the baggage of a recently deceased wife, but he compounds the significance by describing Beulah as the reader who came to work for Robert after the wife gave up the job. It doesn't take too much imagination to wonder if the wife didn't see herself in Beulah's shoes. She could have married Robert, but instead she married this guy who, although sighted, is as blind as can be.
Why is it, do you suppose, that Robert and Beulah have names while the husband and wife, clearly the closer characters to the narrator, do not have names? I would suggest that these names indicate the greater reality of these characters. Although blind and dead, respectively, Robert and Beulah have experienced what the husband and wife have never experienced, connecting in a way they have never connected.
The name "Beulah" also evokes images of the Promised Land or the land of peace in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. This suggests to me that there's more to this idea of connection than just friendship. Raymond Carver is not known as a religious writer, but here he seems to be describing a character with a God-shaped hole, a hole that he cannot fill with the alcohol he continues to drink throughout the story, the marijuana that he persuades Robert to share, his pointless job, his marriage-in-name-only, or his late-night television marathons.
What does eventually fill the husband's void or at least suggest the potential of filling is a moment of communion when he and Robert together hold a pen and draw an image of a cathedral. One can imagine this bit of collaborative art as an act of worship, or at least an act of potential worship. Is that what Carver intended? I don't think so, but often artists say more than they ever intend to say when they put pen to paper.
"Cathedral" is the title story in a fine collection of Carver's work.