My dearest Henry,
I must say you made quite an impression on everyone here during your visit! I can't tell you how many times a day your name is on someone's lips. Either mother is praising the peonies you brought her, or the twins are in raptures over the dear little pin cushions you were so kind as to give them. Every day they ask me, do you think Henry will come back soon for another stay? I say that I do not know, of course, but I hope that you will! Even father has talking about you. The other day he walked through the breakfast room as we were eating and very sternly said that he wished that all young men had heads as solid as "that young man Henry." He is very parismonious with his praise, especially of the young, so you should feel very honored indeed.
Even Opal has taken up the theme of your wonderfulness. She says she never knew a guest to leave their room as neat and clean as you did. She claims that you never slept in your bed, it was made up so neatly, without so much as a crease in the sheets, but I told her of course you did. For one thing, I passed by your room last night and heard you snoring. It was just a soft little gentle snore, nothing like father's awful rumblings, so you need not be ashamed. It seems your snoring is as exemplary as everything else you do!
I will tell you a little secret that I hope will not distress you too much: after you left, I was possessed by such a fit of weeping that I thought I never would be able to stop. Finally Mother brought me a cup of chamomile tea and told me that I positively must get control of myself, for the twins were beginning to weep as well, and she said if there is anything my father cannot stand it is a houseful of weeping women. So I promised to stop and so far have kept my word! But the only thing that keeps the tears from falling is the hope that you will come back to us soon.
Last Sunday we all went up to the creek for a swim. It was a bit early for such an outing, for the waters were still icy, but I got in up to my chest and did not feel the worse for it. Mother was the only one of us that did not wear a bathing suit. She says her legs have got so many veins that she is ashamed for anyone to see them, but in the end we persuaded her to take off her shoes and wade a little. The twins behaved so poorly, screaming and splashing about, that Mother had to scold them. She said what would Henry think if he saw how you all were carrying on, more like two Gypsies than ladies!
While we were eating the lunch Opal made for us a group of young men got in the creek a little distance away to swim. I had taken off my glasses because the tea causes them to fog, and do you know for an instant I thought one of them was you? He was your height, or almost, and had the same wavy brown hair with a cowlick. But when I put on my glasses to look more closely I knew he was not you. I said to Mother, Henry would never have such a red neck and shoulders as that young man does, his would be white and smooth. That young man must work in the sun all day. Very likely a farmer or laborer. They called out something ugly to the twins when Mother and I were packing up our things to leave. Mother didn't hear but I did, and I didn't tell her, knowing how it would upset her.
I think my story only goes to show you how much I think about you every day! Write to me soon, a good long letter telling me everything you are doing and thinking. Everything you do is of interest to me, so do not spare me any of the details, just as I have spared you nothing in this letter. I am afraid I cannot hold anything back--least of all how very very much I do love you, my dear, dear Henry.
With deep affection,
Caroline
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Thursday, March 22, 2007
November 7, 1999
Moss--
I know I should have called before I left. At the very least I should have written a note. Both, actually--neither would have taken more than ten minutes. I can't say why I didn't, except that something came over me on Thursday, a terrible feeling of panic and dread and the desire to simply drop everything and get away, as fast as I could. This strange compulsion to flee grips me every now and then; it's another reason you should probably think twice about being with me, staying with me. More on that later.
I'm here at Aunt Vinnie's until Monday or Tuesday, I'm not sure which. I'm calling in sick at work; maybe they'll fire me, maybe that's what I want, I don't know. At any rate Aunt Vinnie seems glad to see me--she's the only person in the world I would simply drop in on this way. She took care of me and my brother for a while when my mother died, did you know that? It was summertime, I was ten; my mother had died in May, just before we got out of school, and my brother and I were spending the summer playing this stupid Bermuda Triangle board game over and over, sitting at a card table we had set up in the living room. Over and over, not saying a word. You moved this sort of Ouija board like device with a magnet on it over these ships and sucked the unlucky ones up. We'd stop for "The Gong Show" and then go right back to the game. It was mesmerizing--and weirdly consoling. But it drove my father crazy; he said we were losing our minds. So he called up Aunt Vinnie (she was my mother's favorite aunt) and asked if we could go there for a few weeks. Both my brother and I resisted furiously, but in the end we caved in. And it was the best thing we could have done. Because she was wonderful to us, though not in the way you'd expect an old lady to be--no sweet-talk, no nonsense about angels and heaven and Jesus. We didn't talk about Mom much, actually. Aunt Vinnie was painting a mural with a sea theme on the walls of the front hall, and we worked with her on that. We memorized a poem every day. We made egg cremes--odd unexpected things. Right before we left she gave us some photographs of my mother when she was a young woman--henna-haired, spry, laughing, sitting on the sofa of the old Dobson house downtown next to a bunch of old ladies in black--the bridge club, Aunt Vinnie said. When we went back home we didn't touch that Bermuda Triangle game again, ever.
Now she's old--85 this past October. Have I told you how odd it is to have an old person in our family? We don't live long--not many of us. My great-grandmother committed suicide at 45 or so; my grandmother died in her 30's; my mother died at 38. And my grandfathers didn't last much longer than that. My father's 60 this year, but he's already had two bypasses. Very likely he wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for Margot. I don't have much use for her, never have since he married her when I was 14, but I have to give her that: she keeps him going. My mother became ill at 35; I'm only five years away from that now, did you realize that? When you've had a parent die young, you always measure your lifespan by that of your parent who died. I'm 30, that means I've got eight more years tops, and so on. Morbid but I can't help it. They say there's a test to see if you're predisposed to get the kind of cancer my mother had. I can't decide whether I want to have it done or not.
Anyhow, Aunt Vinnie. She's awfully frail, doesn't eat enough--just picked at the supper I threw together for us last night, spaghetti with black olives I found in the cupboard. Enough canned food to last for a whole summer, but the refrigerator's full of half-rotten vegetables and fruit. Drink on the other hand is a different story; happy hour starts at 4:00 here (Jim Beam), and then she has elevenses before noon--a shot of cheap brandy. I can hardly keep up with her. She doesn't guzzle--her drinking's very ladylike--but she's got one going from dusk till bedtime.
We don't talk about the past. We don't talk about her children, Dorothea and Maury, who live in New York. I get the sense that they hardly ever visit or call. I recall meeting Dorothea once long ago once when we came to visit--a tall gaunt woman, upright as a Cherokee, with iron-gray hair in a pigtail. She played the piano, a Chopin mazurka, dressed in a strange flowing poncho-like thing. As soon as she was done she excused herself and spent the rest of the time of our visit in the garden, planting bulbs. Maury's a super in operas or something. By day he has an office job. Probably gay. It's odd that they're not around more. Maybe she wasn't a good mother--too flighty, too preoccupied, maybe? She was always going on trips whenever she got the chance: Tibet, Egypt, Rome. I don't know what happened.
Actually what we talk about is death. She's reading "Final Exit," that book about how to do yourself in by taking drugs and putting a bag over your head. She laughed at my reaction when she told me. "Don't worry, darling, I'm not ready to pack it all in yet." But she thinks about it. The other morning over breakfast she said to me, "you know, I think mother was right to do what she did. Just to go on and get it over with when you realize no more good is going to come your way." And then she looked at me--she has very clear blue eyes in a face with big knobby cheekbones and an oddly small heart-shaped mouth that always has a little smile on it--and said, "Because it's all death, in the end. It's all death."
We've been out riding today--I took her to Food Lion and then to the pharmacy and the post office. We passed the old family place near downtown, a Queen Anne with shingled second story, and a wide veranda around the front, and a sort of turret up top. It's been turned into law offices now. Somebody is writing legal briefs and filing papers in the room where my great-grandmother took poison. It's a beautiful day--the poplars are all flaming, and the hills in the distance--you can see them from the post office--are a red gold. Aunt Vinnie's napping now--she fell asleep in the easy chair reading a book about the Masai. She's been talking it about it all day.
I don't think I can come back to you. No. I can't. Can't come back. It's better this way. I'm messy and half-crazy and thinking horrors half the time and it's not fair to you. You've already put up with enough from me, I can't ask more of that from you. One can't in good conscience. You need someone like that blond girl we saw sketching in the cemetery that day, do you remember? She showed us all her sketches of this big oak tree with a group of graves beside it. None of them were any good but she was so, I don't know, open and guileless about it. "I think I'm getting closer," she said, "but I haven't gotten there yet." When we were going out the gate I imagined you making love to her there in the grass, so sweetly and tenderly. And you know, it didn't bother me in the least, that image--it seemed right, it seemed good. It filled me with a strange happiness. I shouldn't be telling you this but I've never held much back before--why should I now now?
Don't call me. Don't write. Not now anyway. Not for a week at least--please. After that, I don't know. Perhaps. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything right now. I don't even know where I'll be staying when I get back. If I get back.
Aunt Vinnie's waking up--I hear her clinking around in the kitchen. So I should go. She doesn't have email, thank goodness, otherwise I'd be madly checking it all day.
Love (can't help myself),
Mary Renfroe
P.S. Please water that African violet on the windowsill above the stove--it's very dry. I meant to before I left but I forgot. I can't remember anything these days, as you know.
I know I should have called before I left. At the very least I should have written a note. Both, actually--neither would have taken more than ten minutes. I can't say why I didn't, except that something came over me on Thursday, a terrible feeling of panic and dread and the desire to simply drop everything and get away, as fast as I could. This strange compulsion to flee grips me every now and then; it's another reason you should probably think twice about being with me, staying with me. More on that later.
I'm here at Aunt Vinnie's until Monday or Tuesday, I'm not sure which. I'm calling in sick at work; maybe they'll fire me, maybe that's what I want, I don't know. At any rate Aunt Vinnie seems glad to see me--she's the only person in the world I would simply drop in on this way. She took care of me and my brother for a while when my mother died, did you know that? It was summertime, I was ten; my mother had died in May, just before we got out of school, and my brother and I were spending the summer playing this stupid Bermuda Triangle board game over and over, sitting at a card table we had set up in the living room. Over and over, not saying a word. You moved this sort of Ouija board like device with a magnet on it over these ships and sucked the unlucky ones up. We'd stop for "The Gong Show" and then go right back to the game. It was mesmerizing--and weirdly consoling. But it drove my father crazy; he said we were losing our minds. So he called up Aunt Vinnie (she was my mother's favorite aunt) and asked if we could go there for a few weeks. Both my brother and I resisted furiously, but in the end we caved in. And it was the best thing we could have done. Because she was wonderful to us, though not in the way you'd expect an old lady to be--no sweet-talk, no nonsense about angels and heaven and Jesus. We didn't talk about Mom much, actually. Aunt Vinnie was painting a mural with a sea theme on the walls of the front hall, and we worked with her on that. We memorized a poem every day. We made egg cremes--odd unexpected things. Right before we left she gave us some photographs of my mother when she was a young woman--henna-haired, spry, laughing, sitting on the sofa of the old Dobson house downtown next to a bunch of old ladies in black--the bridge club, Aunt Vinnie said. When we went back home we didn't touch that Bermuda Triangle game again, ever.
Now she's old--85 this past October. Have I told you how odd it is to have an old person in our family? We don't live long--not many of us. My great-grandmother committed suicide at 45 or so; my grandmother died in her 30's; my mother died at 38. And my grandfathers didn't last much longer than that. My father's 60 this year, but he's already had two bypasses. Very likely he wouldn't be alive today if it weren't for Margot. I don't have much use for her, never have since he married her when I was 14, but I have to give her that: she keeps him going. My mother became ill at 35; I'm only five years away from that now, did you realize that? When you've had a parent die young, you always measure your lifespan by that of your parent who died. I'm 30, that means I've got eight more years tops, and so on. Morbid but I can't help it. They say there's a test to see if you're predisposed to get the kind of cancer my mother had. I can't decide whether I want to have it done or not.
Anyhow, Aunt Vinnie. She's awfully frail, doesn't eat enough--just picked at the supper I threw together for us last night, spaghetti with black olives I found in the cupboard. Enough canned food to last for a whole summer, but the refrigerator's full of half-rotten vegetables and fruit. Drink on the other hand is a different story; happy hour starts at 4:00 here (Jim Beam), and then she has elevenses before noon--a shot of cheap brandy. I can hardly keep up with her. She doesn't guzzle--her drinking's very ladylike--but she's got one going from dusk till bedtime.
We don't talk about the past. We don't talk about her children, Dorothea and Maury, who live in New York. I get the sense that they hardly ever visit or call. I recall meeting Dorothea once long ago once when we came to visit--a tall gaunt woman, upright as a Cherokee, with iron-gray hair in a pigtail. She played the piano, a Chopin mazurka, dressed in a strange flowing poncho-like thing. As soon as she was done she excused herself and spent the rest of the time of our visit in the garden, planting bulbs. Maury's a super in operas or something. By day he has an office job. Probably gay. It's odd that they're not around more. Maybe she wasn't a good mother--too flighty, too preoccupied, maybe? She was always going on trips whenever she got the chance: Tibet, Egypt, Rome. I don't know what happened.
Actually what we talk about is death. She's reading "Final Exit," that book about how to do yourself in by taking drugs and putting a bag over your head. She laughed at my reaction when she told me. "Don't worry, darling, I'm not ready to pack it all in yet." But she thinks about it. The other morning over breakfast she said to me, "you know, I think mother was right to do what she did. Just to go on and get it over with when you realize no more good is going to come your way." And then she looked at me--she has very clear blue eyes in a face with big knobby cheekbones and an oddly small heart-shaped mouth that always has a little smile on it--and said, "Because it's all death, in the end. It's all death."
We've been out riding today--I took her to Food Lion and then to the pharmacy and the post office. We passed the old family place near downtown, a Queen Anne with shingled second story, and a wide veranda around the front, and a sort of turret up top. It's been turned into law offices now. Somebody is writing legal briefs and filing papers in the room where my great-grandmother took poison. It's a beautiful day--the poplars are all flaming, and the hills in the distance--you can see them from the post office--are a red gold. Aunt Vinnie's napping now--she fell asleep in the easy chair reading a book about the Masai. She's been talking it about it all day.
I don't think I can come back to you. No. I can't. Can't come back. It's better this way. I'm messy and half-crazy and thinking horrors half the time and it's not fair to you. You've already put up with enough from me, I can't ask more of that from you. One can't in good conscience. You need someone like that blond girl we saw sketching in the cemetery that day, do you remember? She showed us all her sketches of this big oak tree with a group of graves beside it. None of them were any good but she was so, I don't know, open and guileless about it. "I think I'm getting closer," she said, "but I haven't gotten there yet." When we were going out the gate I imagined you making love to her there in the grass, so sweetly and tenderly. And you know, it didn't bother me in the least, that image--it seemed right, it seemed good. It filled me with a strange happiness. I shouldn't be telling you this but I've never held much back before--why should I now now?
Don't call me. Don't write. Not now anyway. Not for a week at least--please. After that, I don't know. Perhaps. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know anything right now. I don't even know where I'll be staying when I get back. If I get back.
Aunt Vinnie's waking up--I hear her clinking around in the kitchen. So I should go. She doesn't have email, thank goodness, otherwise I'd be madly checking it all day.
Love (can't help myself),
Mary Renfroe
P.S. Please water that African violet on the windowsill above the stove--it's very dry. I meant to before I left but I forgot. I can't remember anything these days, as you know.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
February 3, 1933
Dear Claudine
No I aint staying with Miss Tolbert no more. She dead. She fell ill before last Christmas and never did get better, tho her husband kep saying she was. Doctor say she have a lump. I know she dint have no lump cause I was the one had to dress and feed her. Feel like I know her body better than she did and I would have knowed it if she had one where he said she did. I know why she died but I keep quiet for now. You better not say nothing either.
Now I with the Charles over on Mosley St., over by the cimitery. I have my own room over the garage. Cold but its big with great big windowlights, so I can look out and see if anybody up yet in the mornings, and if they staying up late at night. Mrs. Charles, she often up late. She go out a lot too. Sometime she dont come in till near about 3. But I dont say nothing about that either. She treat me pretty nice, always smiling. She gave me a china plate with a peach pained on it after I help her carry out the things in Miss Lavinia's room. She going to make that into her sewing place, she say. I say where Miss Lavinia going to sleep when she come home. Mrs. Charles say she spect Miss Lavinia wont be coming back much, if she do she sleep in the guess bedroom down the hall. Miss Lavinia gone to the normal school, she gon be a teacher. Nobody never could teach her nothing so I say how she gon teach somebody elses chilren. I say it to mysef, not to nobody else. She smart but cant nobody tell her nothing cept she gon come right back and say something sassy. She already snap at me several time. I try to stay out of her way. I'm glad she gone.
If your baby aint got nothing wrong with her besides fever then take a big red onion and put it up there in her nite gown when she sleep. She going to fret and fuss but leave it up there. That onion take the fever right out of her. Just take it right on out. When its all shrivel up you know the fever gone. If that dont work take her to the doctor. I in close 5 dollar in case you need to. If you dont use it to by the baby some shoes, she going to need some before long.
Love,
Essie
No I aint staying with Miss Tolbert no more. She dead. She fell ill before last Christmas and never did get better, tho her husband kep saying she was. Doctor say she have a lump. I know she dint have no lump cause I was the one had to dress and feed her. Feel like I know her body better than she did and I would have knowed it if she had one where he said she did. I know why she died but I keep quiet for now. You better not say nothing either.
Now I with the Charles over on Mosley St., over by the cimitery. I have my own room over the garage. Cold but its big with great big windowlights, so I can look out and see if anybody up yet in the mornings, and if they staying up late at night. Mrs. Charles, she often up late. She go out a lot too. Sometime she dont come in till near about 3. But I dont say nothing about that either. She treat me pretty nice, always smiling. She gave me a china plate with a peach pained on it after I help her carry out the things in Miss Lavinia's room. She going to make that into her sewing place, she say. I say where Miss Lavinia going to sleep when she come home. Mrs. Charles say she spect Miss Lavinia wont be coming back much, if she do she sleep in the guess bedroom down the hall. Miss Lavinia gone to the normal school, she gon be a teacher. Nobody never could teach her nothing so I say how she gon teach somebody elses chilren. I say it to mysef, not to nobody else. She smart but cant nobody tell her nothing cept she gon come right back and say something sassy. She already snap at me several time. I try to stay out of her way. I'm glad she gone.
If your baby aint got nothing wrong with her besides fever then take a big red onion and put it up there in her nite gown when she sleep. She going to fret and fuss but leave it up there. That onion take the fever right out of her. Just take it right on out. When its all shrivel up you know the fever gone. If that dont work take her to the doctor. I in close 5 dollar in case you need to. If you dont use it to by the baby some shoes, she going to need some before long.
Love,
Essie
Monday, March 12, 2007
June 22, 1977
Dear Aunt Vinnie,
I'm sitting with Dan at a little table at a caffe in the Piazza della Rotonda in Rome, trying to write you a quick aerogram with a pen that a nice German woman at the next table has lent me. She saw me fumbling in my purse for one and kindly stepped over to give me one of hers. At any rate I think I'm supposed to give it back by the time she leaves (she keeps looking over to see how much I've written!), so this letter may have a certain slapdash quality. My apologies for that. Once we get to Siena I will have recovered more fully from jet lag and have more time for a longer letter. But I did want to let know you we'd arrived safe and sound--more or less!
The trip over was really an ordeal. Delay at JFK; then a truly horrifying bit of turbulence somewhere over the Mediterranean--one of the captains said something about air pockets. And then at Fiumicino there were armed soldiers lining the corridor has we were walking towards customs! An Italian woman who was sitting close to me on the plane said it had to do with the Red Brigades, a terrorist group who has been active here lately--kidnappings and the occasional bombing and such. Rather scary, I have to say! Since I've been ill I don't really care a great deal about what happens to me, but I'd hate to think that my children might be deprived of their mother and father this early in the game! By the way, I know that as an intrepid, fearless traveler yourself, you're the one person I can tell this to in the family without worrying you too much.
Anyway now that we're here in Rome and have seen how wondrous and beautiful it is, none of the unpleasantness we experienced getting here matters. I was so jet-lagged and achey after we got to our hotel that I was not sure I should have made the trip, but after I'd had a good rest--on a too-narrow bed that has a big valley in the middle!--I woke up to the sound of bells ringing, looked up and saw a couple of pigeons flutter across the evening sky in our window, and I was so glad I had come. Since then it's been nothing but enchantment. That night we went down and ate at a little trattoria near the Piazza Barberini, which is close to our hotel, and walked through Piazza Navona, which was all lit up with lights. There were people out walking; children were swinging these odd tubes that street vendors here sell--they make the most haunting, lovely sound. There was a breeze from the direction of the Tiber. And I just felt--well, freer than at any time since I've been sick. Today we've seen a little of the foro Romano--just the part near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (I was too tired to go much further)--the Piazza del Campidoglio, and just a little while ago the Pantheon: truly the most soft dusky magical light inside imaginable! Tomorrow we tackle the Vatican, if I feel up to it: can't wait.
I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us--keeping the children while we're gone. It's beyond generous of you--truly saint-like! But I know that you're the one person who understands why I felt the need to take a trip like this now, while I still can. I hope this little period of wellness lasts a good long time--maybe it will even be permanent--but as you know the doctors aren't very optimistic about my long-term prospects. (Party-poopers!) So I have to live as well as I can while I can. One part of me thinks I'm a monster of selfishness for spending some of this precious time away from my children rather than with them, but now that I'm here I know I was right to come. Please give them my love and tell them that Mommy is thinking about them every hour, every minute. I'll be writing them a group of postcards once I get finished with this letter--and judging from the amount of room I have left, I guess I am finally done (and not a minute too soon--the German woman is making as if to get up and looking very meaningfully over here!). Damn--some of what I've written may end up under the folded flaps of this aerogram. Most of my meaning, I think, will be clear, however. Dan sends you his love (he has truly been an angel to me during this trip). And of course you know you have mine.
Con tenerezza (to use an Italian expression!)
Patricia
I'm sitting with Dan at a little table at a caffe in the Piazza della Rotonda in Rome, trying to write you a quick aerogram with a pen that a nice German woman at the next table has lent me. She saw me fumbling in my purse for one and kindly stepped over to give me one of hers. At any rate I think I'm supposed to give it back by the time she leaves (she keeps looking over to see how much I've written!), so this letter may have a certain slapdash quality. My apologies for that. Once we get to Siena I will have recovered more fully from jet lag and have more time for a longer letter. But I did want to let know you we'd arrived safe and sound--more or less!
The trip over was really an ordeal. Delay at JFK; then a truly horrifying bit of turbulence somewhere over the Mediterranean--one of the captains said something about air pockets. And then at Fiumicino there were armed soldiers lining the corridor has we were walking towards customs! An Italian woman who was sitting close to me on the plane said it had to do with the Red Brigades, a terrorist group who has been active here lately--kidnappings and the occasional bombing and such. Rather scary, I have to say! Since I've been ill I don't really care a great deal about what happens to me, but I'd hate to think that my children might be deprived of their mother and father this early in the game! By the way, I know that as an intrepid, fearless traveler yourself, you're the one person I can tell this to in the family without worrying you too much.
Anyway now that we're here in Rome and have seen how wondrous and beautiful it is, none of the unpleasantness we experienced getting here matters. I was so jet-lagged and achey after we got to our hotel that I was not sure I should have made the trip, but after I'd had a good rest--on a too-narrow bed that has a big valley in the middle!--I woke up to the sound of bells ringing, looked up and saw a couple of pigeons flutter across the evening sky in our window, and I was so glad I had come. Since then it's been nothing but enchantment. That night we went down and ate at a little trattoria near the Piazza Barberini, which is close to our hotel, and walked through Piazza Navona, which was all lit up with lights. There were people out walking; children were swinging these odd tubes that street vendors here sell--they make the most haunting, lovely sound. There was a breeze from the direction of the Tiber. And I just felt--well, freer than at any time since I've been sick. Today we've seen a little of the foro Romano--just the part near the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (I was too tired to go much further)--the Piazza del Campidoglio, and just a little while ago the Pantheon: truly the most soft dusky magical light inside imaginable! Tomorrow we tackle the Vatican, if I feel up to it: can't wait.
I can't thank you enough for all you've done for us--keeping the children while we're gone. It's beyond generous of you--truly saint-like! But I know that you're the one person who understands why I felt the need to take a trip like this now, while I still can. I hope this little period of wellness lasts a good long time--maybe it will even be permanent--but as you know the doctors aren't very optimistic about my long-term prospects. (Party-poopers!) So I have to live as well as I can while I can. One part of me thinks I'm a monster of selfishness for spending some of this precious time away from my children rather than with them, but now that I'm here I know I was right to come. Please give them my love and tell them that Mommy is thinking about them every hour, every minute. I'll be writing them a group of postcards once I get finished with this letter--and judging from the amount of room I have left, I guess I am finally done (and not a minute too soon--the German woman is making as if to get up and looking very meaningfully over here!). Damn--some of what I've written may end up under the folded flaps of this aerogram. Most of my meaning, I think, will be clear, however. Dan sends you his love (he has truly been an angel to me during this trip). And of course you know you have mine.
Con tenerezza (to use an Italian expression!)
Patricia
Friday, March 9, 2007
April 12, 1935
Dear Evelyn,
As you know by now, Mother died last Thursday by her own hand. She drank horse lineament she had found in Dr. Wilfong's shed. None of us knew anything was the matter until she woke us up in the night moaning in the upstairs bathroom--she had crawled there on her hands and knees, vomiting. Aunt Harriet got to her first, she said it was a terrible sight. They managed to help her back to bed but by then it was too late. The doctor said if we had managed to get to her right after she had drunk it, he might have been able to save her. But how were we to get to her when she had her room bolted shut, and a chair propped against the door handle, as she has done for the last six months? And who knew she would go and do such a thing? Just that morning I had seen her kneeling on her garden stoop by the front hedge, cutting the first azalea blossoms to put in a bowl on the dining room table. She didn't look at me or speak or smile. But I have long been used to that, it was nothing unusual.
Father is in a state--does nothing but sit in the front parlor with the radio off, staring at the portrait of Mother on the bureau, the one taken not long after their wedding. He has not slept I do not think since it happened. Aunt Corey has come down from the hotel downtown to stay with us for a while. She has always been able to talk sense into him but I doubt whether she can do any good this time. She has brought her knitting, but I don't think she has knit a single stitch, there is so much to do. I heard her weeping in the back bathroom this morning when I was going out for more wood--father said he was cold. She came out as I passed but she avoided looking at me, though I wanted to comfort her. She loved Mother more than her own sisters, who were so cruel to her after her own husband's death.
This morning while I was passing through the kitchen I heard Essie the cook say that Mother was right to do it, anyone would have done the same in her situation. The Lord will forgive her, she said, she wasn't in her right mind when she did it. I told her if I heard another word from her mouth on the subject she would have to find another position. I doubt I will fire her, however, help is so hard to find around here.
I wish I were back living with you and the other girls at the Teacherage, which I imagine is looking so pretty at this time of year, with Miss Octavia's daffodils blooming in front. Tell her I may want my old room back soon, if I can ever get out of here. I believe I left one of my brooches in the dresser drawer--like as not another girl has taken it, but if she finds it I would appreciate it if she would mail it to me. It is one of the last things Mother gave to me before the troubles between us started.
Pray for us in our time of trial. I open my eyes every morning thinking it has all been a bad dream, but then I realize it is all true, too true. If only someone had got to Mother in time, if only someone could have reasoned with her. But I know she was beyond the reach all reason, all pity, all love when she did it.
I cannot forgive her for what she has done, that is the worst part. Pray that I might someday be able to, Evelyn.
With great sorrow,
Lavinia
As you know by now, Mother died last Thursday by her own hand. She drank horse lineament she had found in Dr. Wilfong's shed. None of us knew anything was the matter until she woke us up in the night moaning in the upstairs bathroom--she had crawled there on her hands and knees, vomiting. Aunt Harriet got to her first, she said it was a terrible sight. They managed to help her back to bed but by then it was too late. The doctor said if we had managed to get to her right after she had drunk it, he might have been able to save her. But how were we to get to her when she had her room bolted shut, and a chair propped against the door handle, as she has done for the last six months? And who knew she would go and do such a thing? Just that morning I had seen her kneeling on her garden stoop by the front hedge, cutting the first azalea blossoms to put in a bowl on the dining room table. She didn't look at me or speak or smile. But I have long been used to that, it was nothing unusual.
Father is in a state--does nothing but sit in the front parlor with the radio off, staring at the portrait of Mother on the bureau, the one taken not long after their wedding. He has not slept I do not think since it happened. Aunt Corey has come down from the hotel downtown to stay with us for a while. She has always been able to talk sense into him but I doubt whether she can do any good this time. She has brought her knitting, but I don't think she has knit a single stitch, there is so much to do. I heard her weeping in the back bathroom this morning when I was going out for more wood--father said he was cold. She came out as I passed but she avoided looking at me, though I wanted to comfort her. She loved Mother more than her own sisters, who were so cruel to her after her own husband's death.
This morning while I was passing through the kitchen I heard Essie the cook say that Mother was right to do it, anyone would have done the same in her situation. The Lord will forgive her, she said, she wasn't in her right mind when she did it. I told her if I heard another word from her mouth on the subject she would have to find another position. I doubt I will fire her, however, help is so hard to find around here.
I wish I were back living with you and the other girls at the Teacherage, which I imagine is looking so pretty at this time of year, with Miss Octavia's daffodils blooming in front. Tell her I may want my old room back soon, if I can ever get out of here. I believe I left one of my brooches in the dresser drawer--like as not another girl has taken it, but if she finds it I would appreciate it if she would mail it to me. It is one of the last things Mother gave to me before the troubles between us started.
Pray for us in our time of trial. I open my eyes every morning thinking it has all been a bad dream, but then I realize it is all true, too true. If only someone had got to Mother in time, if only someone could have reasoned with her. But I know she was beyond the reach all reason, all pity, all love when she did it.
I cannot forgive her for what she has done, that is the worst part. Pray that I might someday be able to, Evelyn.
With great sorrow,
Lavinia
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