Dear Dorothea,
I forgot to tell you in the letter I just mailed that I have met the sweetest boy! Well, I'm not sure others would use that term to describe him, but to me he is quite adorable, though he carps and complains all the time and says something unsettling to me every time we see each other. The other day he told me I was looking "blowsy," all because I wore a handkerchief to chorus practice due to having just washed my hair. Then this afternoon he told me that I could stop the fluttery Nicole Diver act, for this was a benighted college in the provincial South, not the French Riviera. And I haven't even read that book or scarcely any Fitzgerald at all! At any rate I told him he was a typical embittered, disillusioned _scion_ of the fallen southern gentry--a Quentin Compson type, if you like (I wasn't going to let him get away with making literary references without coming back with one myself)--and thank God I didn't have to carry around any aristocratic baggage of that kind, since my family were all humdrum shopkeepers and clerks. (Of course that isn't strictly true: your mother can't be classed in that phylum!) He got red in the face and couldn't come back with anything smart! Of course that made me like him more.
Oh, I haven't even told you how he looks. Well, he's no Tab Hunter! Very thin and tall, and already going bald at the crown of his head, wears glasses (dark and horn-rimmed). But he has the sweetest long-fingered hands (today I could hardly keep myself from grasping one of them when I was sitting next to him in the caf) covered with soft brown hair and he has green eyes! I'm not lying--they really are green. Today we were walking by the chapel in full sun and I looked carefully and made sure. Earlier I had thought they might be merely hazel, a much more prosaic shade. But they really are green. And he has a full mouth that turns up at the edges a little. Very aristocratic looking--a cleft chin too! I would really hate him if I didn't like him so much!
We're singing Elijah, and none too well. The sopranos are very off. The alto, some lady from town, is wobbly. She ruined Jezebel's solo. Dan says--did I mention his name is Daniel?--he says the part where Elijah contends with the priests of Baal is so poignant; it makes him sympathize with the Baal worshippers, who are the losers, he says, in the "God sweepstakes." Dr. Whaley was red-faced with annoyance at that remark. Dan says Elijah is like a big juicy rich Victorian fruit cake: dense but without any real substance, and no nutritional value. I love it though. I cried at the end during our last run-through, and lost my place. Did I tell you that Dan has the sweetest baritone voice? I told him that he ought to be singing Elijah himself but he says he doesn't have the heft, with his "feeble Pelleas voice."
Must go now--I have a trig exam to study for, and I need to get in the shower before all the hot water is gone. (Some of these girls, these damned horse-riding debutantes-to-be-girls, take forever to bathe.) I'm not going to appear at practice with my hair wet again! Tell me more about life in New York, and about _Johann_--I'm dying to hear what comes of that! I don't think I would lend him any more money, and as for him sleeping on your daybed--well, my dear girl, take care!
Love,
Pat
Saturday, May 26, 2007
May 12, 1953
My dear little Patricia,
Thank you for your sweet note. I am glad you are settling in at Aunt Evie's and getting on so well at school there. Evie is a dear woman, a little flighty at times, but with a core of steel. Did I ever tell you about how she killed a copperhead that had gotten into our room one night when I was a child? I woke up and heard a pounding and saw her crouched on the floor in her little flannel robe, hammering that snake to death with one of Mama's old heavy irons. There is no telling what might have happened if she had not spotted it, for our baby sister Marcia was sleeping in her crib in the same room. Poor Marcia, the diphtheria took her when she was only two. She was a dear baby who laughed all the time. But I know she is in a better place now, in Jesus's loving arms. Anyway I have every faith that Evie will take good care of you until we can be together again.
They have just fed us lunch and now we are allowed to sit on the porch a spell. The food is fair, not good but nothing to make you sick. The other day they served us some custard that was like my mother used to fix. But the potatoes were lumpy. From the porch I can see live oaks in the distance, near the river bank. In the haze they look sort of like weeping angels, all hunched over in their robes, stretching out their arms in consternation and remonstrance. One of the groundkeepers ran over a yellow jacket hive near one of the trees the other day and was stung badly. But today he is out in the grass again, mowing what he did not finish. He has a poultice on his arms one of the kitchen women made him. They say it will be a hot dry summer and it is already miserable here. The ceiling fans do little to ease the sweltering heat.
There is not much company to speak of here. Some of the patients are so sick they cannot speak or so much as look at you, and when they do their eyes are vacant and cold. Others mumble and cry out in the night. Sometimes when I gaze upon them it is difficult for me to believe we are members of the same species, God forgive me.
There is one nice man here, a real scholarly type with a great shiny domed bald head and wire-rimmed glasses. He can discourse on Fichte and Hegel and Kant for hours. Surprisingly he has a sweet tenor voice. The other night he sang "Ah, may the red rose live alway'" to the accompaniment of the piano playing of one of the nurses. It was delightful. Some of the other patients wept. But then he forgot the last sad verse about the departed flowers and became so upset he rushed from the room. The only trouble with him is that he counts things--the tiles on the floor, the windowpanes, his own heartbeat. You will be having a nice conversation with him and suddenly he will start mumbling numbers under his breath. And once he starts that it is as if you are no longer there. I don't know that he will ever get well. One of the nurses told me he was here last winter and had to come back again. And he was doing so well at his post at the university.
I know I am improving every day and that I will soon be strong enough to take you home with me again, and we will live together once more like a father and daughter should. I am taking daily exercise and eating well. There are times when I think of your dear mother and her loss is as fresh as it was the days just after she left us. In some ways the pain is far more keen than it was then. There are moments when it is as if a shadow descends upon me and I cannot catch my breath from the suffocating misery of not having her near, and the knowledge that she is gone forever. But then thirty minutes later I am smiling again. I am smiling because I know that of course she has not left us. In fact she is very close by us at all times.
Do you want to know how close? There is a framed picture in my room of a fishing boat with its nets and tackles drooping over the side. Behind it there is a small hole in the wall, just big enough for somebody to look through, though there is nothing inside it but the dark inside of the wall. One day I pressed my ear to the hole--I do not know why--and suddenly I heard your mother's voice, calling my name. It was so shocking that I cried out and the nurses had to come and put me to bed. All that I night I wept and moaned into my pillow, for it seemed a very frightening thing to hear your mother's voice, without warning, out of the blue. I thought that maybe I was getting worse, that perhaps there was something truly wrong with me, which I had never thought before.
But the other day when they were not watching I put my ear to the hole again, just to make sure my mind was not playing tricks on me. And I heard her voice again. This time she said much more, in a normal speaking voice, clear and distinct. She spoke to me so matter-of-factly and plainly, just as she used to from her place on the other side of the breakfast room table in the morning. She told me we need not worry about her, for she is in a place filled with love and shining light. She said she is watching us every hour, every day, weeping with us as we weep, laughing as we laugh, giving us strength to carry the heavy burden of grief we must bear. It is her burning wish that we live together as a family once more. And she is certain we will, once I am well again. And I know that I soon will be; hearing her voice has done more than any of the treatments I have received here to set me on the path back to health.
This morning when I put my ear to the hole I was distressed not to hear her voice, though I waited for some time. But I know that it will not be long before she speaks to me again. Now that the silence that death had placed temporarily between us has been broken, I am confident that we will be in everlasting contact, and that the love we shared during this lifetime will continue on and on, growing stronger and stronger, binding us together in a bond that death can never break.
Keep the faith, my dear Patricia, and be strong, supported by the knowledge that we will soon be together again--maybe sooner than you think!
Give my love to Evie.
I am,
as always,
your loving Father.
P.S. Let us keep what I have told you about your mother a secret between you and me. I know what people would think if they knew. Let it be our happy little secret to be joyfully silent about. We will cherish it together, trusting in what your mother has promised us. I believe what she has told me, and I know that you, my loving daughter, will too!
Thank you for your sweet note. I am glad you are settling in at Aunt Evie's and getting on so well at school there. Evie is a dear woman, a little flighty at times, but with a core of steel. Did I ever tell you about how she killed a copperhead that had gotten into our room one night when I was a child? I woke up and heard a pounding and saw her crouched on the floor in her little flannel robe, hammering that snake to death with one of Mama's old heavy irons. There is no telling what might have happened if she had not spotted it, for our baby sister Marcia was sleeping in her crib in the same room. Poor Marcia, the diphtheria took her when she was only two. She was a dear baby who laughed all the time. But I know she is in a better place now, in Jesus's loving arms. Anyway I have every faith that Evie will take good care of you until we can be together again.
They have just fed us lunch and now we are allowed to sit on the porch a spell. The food is fair, not good but nothing to make you sick. The other day they served us some custard that was like my mother used to fix. But the potatoes were lumpy. From the porch I can see live oaks in the distance, near the river bank. In the haze they look sort of like weeping angels, all hunched over in their robes, stretching out their arms in consternation and remonstrance. One of the groundkeepers ran over a yellow jacket hive near one of the trees the other day and was stung badly. But today he is out in the grass again, mowing what he did not finish. He has a poultice on his arms one of the kitchen women made him. They say it will be a hot dry summer and it is already miserable here. The ceiling fans do little to ease the sweltering heat.
There is not much company to speak of here. Some of the patients are so sick they cannot speak or so much as look at you, and when they do their eyes are vacant and cold. Others mumble and cry out in the night. Sometimes when I gaze upon them it is difficult for me to believe we are members of the same species, God forgive me.
There is one nice man here, a real scholarly type with a great shiny domed bald head and wire-rimmed glasses. He can discourse on Fichte and Hegel and Kant for hours. Surprisingly he has a sweet tenor voice. The other night he sang "Ah, may the red rose live alway'" to the accompaniment of the piano playing of one of the nurses. It was delightful. Some of the other patients wept. But then he forgot the last sad verse about the departed flowers and became so upset he rushed from the room. The only trouble with him is that he counts things--the tiles on the floor, the windowpanes, his own heartbeat. You will be having a nice conversation with him and suddenly he will start mumbling numbers under his breath. And once he starts that it is as if you are no longer there. I don't know that he will ever get well. One of the nurses told me he was here last winter and had to come back again. And he was doing so well at his post at the university.
I know I am improving every day and that I will soon be strong enough to take you home with me again, and we will live together once more like a father and daughter should. I am taking daily exercise and eating well. There are times when I think of your dear mother and her loss is as fresh as it was the days just after she left us. In some ways the pain is far more keen than it was then. There are moments when it is as if a shadow descends upon me and I cannot catch my breath from the suffocating misery of not having her near, and the knowledge that she is gone forever. But then thirty minutes later I am smiling again. I am smiling because I know that of course she has not left us. In fact she is very close by us at all times.
Do you want to know how close? There is a framed picture in my room of a fishing boat with its nets and tackles drooping over the side. Behind it there is a small hole in the wall, just big enough for somebody to look through, though there is nothing inside it but the dark inside of the wall. One day I pressed my ear to the hole--I do not know why--and suddenly I heard your mother's voice, calling my name. It was so shocking that I cried out and the nurses had to come and put me to bed. All that I night I wept and moaned into my pillow, for it seemed a very frightening thing to hear your mother's voice, without warning, out of the blue. I thought that maybe I was getting worse, that perhaps there was something truly wrong with me, which I had never thought before.
But the other day when they were not watching I put my ear to the hole again, just to make sure my mind was not playing tricks on me. And I heard her voice again. This time she said much more, in a normal speaking voice, clear and distinct. She spoke to me so matter-of-factly and plainly, just as she used to from her place on the other side of the breakfast room table in the morning. She told me we need not worry about her, for she is in a place filled with love and shining light. She said she is watching us every hour, every day, weeping with us as we weep, laughing as we laugh, giving us strength to carry the heavy burden of grief we must bear. It is her burning wish that we live together as a family once more. And she is certain we will, once I am well again. And I know that I soon will be; hearing her voice has done more than any of the treatments I have received here to set me on the path back to health.
This morning when I put my ear to the hole I was distressed not to hear her voice, though I waited for some time. But I know that it will not be long before she speaks to me again. Now that the silence that death had placed temporarily between us has been broken, I am confident that we will be in everlasting contact, and that the love we shared during this lifetime will continue on and on, growing stronger and stronger, binding us together in a bond that death can never break.
Keep the faith, my dear Patricia, and be strong, supported by the knowledge that we will soon be together again--maybe sooner than you think!
Give my love to Evie.
I am,
as always,
your loving Father.
P.S. Let us keep what I have told you about your mother a secret between you and me. I know what people would think if they knew. Let it be our happy little secret to be joyfully silent about. We will cherish it together, trusting in what your mother has promised us. I believe what she has told me, and I know that you, my loving daughter, will too!
Saturday, May 19, 2007
January 16, 1953
Dear Claudine
Yes I still here at the Poker house. Everybody come and gone for Miss Louisa's funeral and now I here alone with Miss Patricia and Mr. Poker. I can't stay here much longer with them, this a crazy house. Mr. Poker, he ain't been right since she died. All night I hear him walking in the bedroom up above mine at night, the room where Miss Louisa breathe her last. He go back and forth, back and forth, talking. Crying too. Going through her clothes and spreading them all on the bed and pressing his face down in them, smelling for her. I know cause I saw him, when the door was crack open. One time he got the child up out of her bed to pray with him way pass midnight in the bitter freezing cold. Had her down on the floor with him on her knees and she ain't got nothing on but her little cotton nightdress. I march up there and raise the child up and say Mr. Poker, this child stay in my room with me tonight, she need her rest and I do too. Miss Patricia she follow me like nothing wrong. She climb up in the bed next to me like it was hers, lean her head back on the pillow next to mine. She don't sleep though. Don't cry neither. She lie there so still and straight. I say go on and sleep now, go on and sleep, but she don't. About three I ask her why she ain't slep and she say she thinking about how cold her mama must be in that ground. I say don't you know your mama in heaven with Jesus? She don't say nothing. She turn on her side and face the wall.
Miss Louisa she fade so quick, I never seen nobody go so fast. It was like she wanted to hurry on through her sickness and get the dying over with as quick as she could. Wouldn't take no food cep an egg I would fix for her with a little milk whip up in it. She said I believe I take a little egg like you fix me, but no bread, no butter, no meat. She sit up in bed and write out her funeral service, letters. She got her jewelry box out and portion it out. She leave this to her sister, this to somebody else. She tell me get down this box and she write somebody name on it, wrap this up in newspaper and put it over here. She terrify me, the way she sat up so high in bed, her head prop up against the bolster, all gaunt and drawn, and her eyes burning, telling me do this, do that. I say Miss Louisa please let me ease you back in bed so you can rest, but she refuse. She say she got too much to do and too little time to do it.
Only when the end came near did her pride slip. Then she cry out for Jesus, for mercy, then she moan from the pain. She say what Jesus suffered on the cross was nothing compare to what she living through, with something eating her alive inside. She say let it be soon, let it be soon, it hurt too much to take one more breath, like teeth cutting into her flesh. And then late one night she tell me something, clutching my hand so hard I thought she'd crack my bones. She said Mrs. Charles left me some money in her will when she died but that her and her father fix it so I wouldn't get it. She cry out and ask me to forgive her. She wail so loud that Mr. Poker came in to see what was the matter. And by the time he was gone she was asleep, her breathing rough, catching every time she breathe out like she might not draw in another.
Next morning I came in and she was sitting up in bed like she feeling better. She had put her lipstick on and comb her hair herself. And I ask her what she meant last night about a will and she act like she don't know what I mean. She say bring her robe, she think she get up a spell. But she never rose from that bed again. Because near about 11:00 she start breathing real ragged again and she lay there a long time with her eyes open with her head turn toward the window, but she don't see nothing, just breathe slower and slower, rougher and rougher. Mr. Poker went to get the doctor but by the time he get back she was gone. Her breath catch a final time, she breathe in once more, a long strained breath, then she still. She so still, lying there with her eyes open that don't see nothing no more. I had to close them myself.
I habent told nobody about the will. I don't know who to tell or what to say. Ain't nothing to say, like as not. The will is made and the money gone and Mrs. Charles and Miss Louisa is dead and I'm here in this crazy house with a man who ain't right in his head and a child who ought not be here. I say to Mr. Charles this child don't blong in this house, she need to be where somebody can look after her. And if she go I go. My hip bother me too much to be running around this cold house. Yesterday it pop as I was carrying a tray up the stairs and I nearly dropped it. I put some salve on my side Brother Webb prepare for me but it ain't help none.
Give my love to Drucie. I in close five dollars for her books. Tell her to study hard and get her lessons every night cause she smart enough to do something sides carry trays and run around for white folks.
Love,
Essie
Yes I still here at the Poker house. Everybody come and gone for Miss Louisa's funeral and now I here alone with Miss Patricia and Mr. Poker. I can't stay here much longer with them, this a crazy house. Mr. Poker, he ain't been right since she died. All night I hear him walking in the bedroom up above mine at night, the room where Miss Louisa breathe her last. He go back and forth, back and forth, talking. Crying too. Going through her clothes and spreading them all on the bed and pressing his face down in them, smelling for her. I know cause I saw him, when the door was crack open. One time he got the child up out of her bed to pray with him way pass midnight in the bitter freezing cold. Had her down on the floor with him on her knees and she ain't got nothing on but her little cotton nightdress. I march up there and raise the child up and say Mr. Poker, this child stay in my room with me tonight, she need her rest and I do too. Miss Patricia she follow me like nothing wrong. She climb up in the bed next to me like it was hers, lean her head back on the pillow next to mine. She don't sleep though. Don't cry neither. She lie there so still and straight. I say go on and sleep now, go on and sleep, but she don't. About three I ask her why she ain't slep and she say she thinking about how cold her mama must be in that ground. I say don't you know your mama in heaven with Jesus? She don't say nothing. She turn on her side and face the wall.
Miss Louisa she fade so quick, I never seen nobody go so fast. It was like she wanted to hurry on through her sickness and get the dying over with as quick as she could. Wouldn't take no food cep an egg I would fix for her with a little milk whip up in it. She said I believe I take a little egg like you fix me, but no bread, no butter, no meat. She sit up in bed and write out her funeral service, letters. She got her jewelry box out and portion it out. She leave this to her sister, this to somebody else. She tell me get down this box and she write somebody name on it, wrap this up in newspaper and put it over here. She terrify me, the way she sat up so high in bed, her head prop up against the bolster, all gaunt and drawn, and her eyes burning, telling me do this, do that. I say Miss Louisa please let me ease you back in bed so you can rest, but she refuse. She say she got too much to do and too little time to do it.
Only when the end came near did her pride slip. Then she cry out for Jesus, for mercy, then she moan from the pain. She say what Jesus suffered on the cross was nothing compare to what she living through, with something eating her alive inside. She say let it be soon, let it be soon, it hurt too much to take one more breath, like teeth cutting into her flesh. And then late one night she tell me something, clutching my hand so hard I thought she'd crack my bones. She said Mrs. Charles left me some money in her will when she died but that her and her father fix it so I wouldn't get it. She cry out and ask me to forgive her. She wail so loud that Mr. Poker came in to see what was the matter. And by the time he was gone she was asleep, her breathing rough, catching every time she breathe out like she might not draw in another.
Next morning I came in and she was sitting up in bed like she feeling better. She had put her lipstick on and comb her hair herself. And I ask her what she meant last night about a will and she act like she don't know what I mean. She say bring her robe, she think she get up a spell. But she never rose from that bed again. Because near about 11:00 she start breathing real ragged again and she lay there a long time with her eyes open with her head turn toward the window, but she don't see nothing, just breathe slower and slower, rougher and rougher. Mr. Poker went to get the doctor but by the time he get back she was gone. Her breath catch a final time, she breathe in once more, a long strained breath, then she still. She so still, lying there with her eyes open that don't see nothing no more. I had to close them myself.
I habent told nobody about the will. I don't know who to tell or what to say. Ain't nothing to say, like as not. The will is made and the money gone and Mrs. Charles and Miss Louisa is dead and I'm here in this crazy house with a man who ain't right in his head and a child who ought not be here. I say to Mr. Charles this child don't blong in this house, she need to be where somebody can look after her. And if she go I go. My hip bother me too much to be running around this cold house. Yesterday it pop as I was carrying a tray up the stairs and I nearly dropped it. I put some salve on my side Brother Webb prepare for me but it ain't help none.
Give my love to Drucie. I in close five dollars for her books. Tell her to study hard and get her lessons every night cause she smart enough to do something sides carry trays and run around for white folks.
Love,
Essie
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Sunday afternoon, February 25, 1979
My children--my dear children. My dear Sid, my dear Mary Renfroe--
I'm lying here in bed, listening to you all running in and out the front door, checking to see if the snow the weather man has forecast is falling yet. The door slams, opens, slams again; I can feel an icy chill creeping under the coverlet from the winter air you've let in the house. Now I can hear one of you yelling from outside. Have you spotted the first snowflake, perhaps? So much excitement, so much commotion over what I am afraid will be not much. No, not much in the way of winter weather. I don't think there will snow; I think all of this blustery dampness will end in nothing but chill rain, at most maybe some sleet and freezing drizzle. A glassy coating on the trees--that will be something to see, at least. Nevertheless you two are convinced that snow is on the way. I'm sorry, I truly am. I know how much you all had been looking forward to it, and perhaps staying home from school tomorrow. But there will be, for you, other ice storms, other snows.
It's funny, just this moment I'm remembering the ice storms of my childhood, how we'd go outside and carefully peel away the icy molds the frozen rain had made on the leaves of the camellia in front of our house. How delicate they were, and how faithful to the leaves' shape--every vein and ripple was duplicated in the ice's surface. You could see every detail if you held the ice-leaves up to the light. We'd admire them a while, then pop them in our mouths, a leaf meal. Why I'm remembering this I don't know; it may be the stuff I'm taking, these godawful drugs. A thousand memories, a thousand trembling fallen leaves of memory I thought I'd lost forever, have come back to me these past few months from wherever they'd been blown to. Some of them I don't want to come back, some I do. It seems I don't have any choice about what I get to remember, so I just let them come. I just let them come.
It's not an approach to dealing with things that I find easy. I'd much rather marshall them into orderly piles--color-coded piles, perhaps! This pile I'll sort through on Tuesday, this one on Wednesday at 10:00 p.m., after you two have gone to bed. It would be quieter then. But I've discovered these past few years that there are a lot of things that are beyond my power to shape or organize. I just have to take them, however they come, and when, and no matter what they are. Lately I've just been sort of welcoming them. Oh, you want me to accept that too, on top of everything else? Well hand it over, I say, hand it over; I'll find somewhere to put it. That top shelf, maybe? But there are some things that are so much harder than others to take that I can hardly begin to think how I'll accept them. But I'm learning. I'm learning. And by the time I have to hold out my hands for them I hope I will have learned to take them gracefully.
Which brings me to why I'm writing. I think we all know by now that I may not be able to be here with you much longer. None of us really knows, of course; I've had so many setbacks and rallies these past few years that I've given up making any guesses about what may or what may not happen in the near future! But I think that it's safe to say that I've reached a place where the treatments that were working aren't really working anymore, and there isn't much else to try. And I'm sicker and weaker, as I'm sure you've noticed. I think we all sense and know that. I've tried to be honest with you about it, your father has too. At times we've let hope get the best of us, and perhaps allowed ourselves to be a little more optimistic than we really should have been. But of course there was reason for hope! We had a miracle, after all. I've had these last few years with you that I really wasn't supposed to have; I stole time that wasn't rightfully mine, and got away with it! That was a true miracle, and I can't be angry or bitter about it now that it seems that I'm on the other side of it, that I've had it and now it's over. It was a miracle, and I'm deeply grateful; I can't ask for more.
Because you see I'll be with you now, much more than I could have been if I'd had to go when the doctors were thinking I might originally. You've seen more of me (maybe more than you would have liked to at times!), you know me better (maybe things you didn't want to know!) now than you did then; you have more memories or me--the memories of near-adults, not the hazy, murky memories of children. And so I'm confident that I'm going to be with you, I'm going to stick. I'm going to go on being with you in a way I never could have if I hadn't had these years. That's the real miracle.
I'm going to be with you. When I say that I don't mean like some spirit or fairy-godmother or angel or anything silly like that. I had a foolish old aunt who told me when my own mother died that she would always be "watching over me" from above, an idea I came to find rather macabre and upsetting, to tell you the truth. The notion that one is being "watched over" by some angel, however benign, isn't very pleasant, let me tell you. No, I mean I'm going to be with you in the way that someone who has loved you, who has known you well, is always with you, worked into your muscles and sinews and skin, embedded so deeply in your memory that you can't say goodbye to them even if you wanted to.
And you will want to--that is something I know. You'll think about me and dream about me (oh the dreams!) till you wish you didn't. There will come a time when you'll be very angry with me, full of resentment and bitterness. You'll say, why did she say this, do this, why didn't she do that, why did she leave us? Why was she such so stupid, so thoughtless, so impossible? It is perfectly all right and natural for you to be angry with me: that is what I want to tell you. It is all right. I don't mind. It is all right to be sad for me, to pity me, to laugh at me, to ridicule me, and to love, to hate me, even, in succession, or all at once, as you grow older. It is good. Because it means that I will be growing and changing along with you as you go through life and think and feel differently about me, instead of staying the same, like a photograph on a wall that never moves, that never changes its expression.
I'm going to be with you--I'm not going far. It's just an instant away, it's just a moment. It's just a few molecules of air away. It's nothing. I'll be there, whatever happens, whatever you decide to do or be, whatever mistakes you make, whatever unpleasant things come your way. And you will make them, they will come your way. But I know that you're good and talented and smart and brave enough to not be ground down by them, not be diminished by them, not be deceived into living a less full or courageous life than you deserve because of them.
Once I can recover a little energy and feel a little less queasy I am going to come downstairs and see what you all are up to. You've been so good most of the afternoon, letting Mommy rest, but now that's over. You're bickering, I call tell that--you just threw something, Mary Renfroe, I think, a big sofa pillow or book. I'll put a stop to all that. The next thing I'll do is tell you to put that awful handheld football game your father let you buy away, Sid. I can hear its beeping all the way up here. Then I'll clean up the newspaper funnies you've strewn all over the floor and see what sort of mess you've made in the kitchen: I'm sure it's a wreck. If I'm not mistaken somebody was running the blender. Then maybe I'll see what can be done in the way of supper before your father comes home from his office; I think it would cheer him so much if he could see me put a meal together. I'm going to do all these things when I come down. But right now I need to rest a little longer. I need to rest. And do you know it's rather pleasant to lie here and simply listen to you all carp at each other and misbehave and stomp around like elephants? It's lovely, it's heaven, in fact--I could go on listening to you forever, if I could.
I think it really is snowing now! I just saw some flakes out the window, falling by the streetlight down by the corner, which has just come on. You two were right; I ought to have believed you. And now you've opened the front door again to see the falling snow--I can feel the chill draft against my face up here in bed.
I love you both so very much. Never forget that. Never forget it.
Mom
P.S. I don't know when you'll get this. Maybe much later, maybe not for a long time--when you're ready. Maybe never; I simply don't know.
And now I'm going to put down this notebook and pen and turn out the light for a while.
I'm lying here in bed, listening to you all running in and out the front door, checking to see if the snow the weather man has forecast is falling yet. The door slams, opens, slams again; I can feel an icy chill creeping under the coverlet from the winter air you've let in the house. Now I can hear one of you yelling from outside. Have you spotted the first snowflake, perhaps? So much excitement, so much commotion over what I am afraid will be not much. No, not much in the way of winter weather. I don't think there will snow; I think all of this blustery dampness will end in nothing but chill rain, at most maybe some sleet and freezing drizzle. A glassy coating on the trees--that will be something to see, at least. Nevertheless you two are convinced that snow is on the way. I'm sorry, I truly am. I know how much you all had been looking forward to it, and perhaps staying home from school tomorrow. But there will be, for you, other ice storms, other snows.
It's funny, just this moment I'm remembering the ice storms of my childhood, how we'd go outside and carefully peel away the icy molds the frozen rain had made on the leaves of the camellia in front of our house. How delicate they were, and how faithful to the leaves' shape--every vein and ripple was duplicated in the ice's surface. You could see every detail if you held the ice-leaves up to the light. We'd admire them a while, then pop them in our mouths, a leaf meal. Why I'm remembering this I don't know; it may be the stuff I'm taking, these godawful drugs. A thousand memories, a thousand trembling fallen leaves of memory I thought I'd lost forever, have come back to me these past few months from wherever they'd been blown to. Some of them I don't want to come back, some I do. It seems I don't have any choice about what I get to remember, so I just let them come. I just let them come.
It's not an approach to dealing with things that I find easy. I'd much rather marshall them into orderly piles--color-coded piles, perhaps! This pile I'll sort through on Tuesday, this one on Wednesday at 10:00 p.m., after you two have gone to bed. It would be quieter then. But I've discovered these past few years that there are a lot of things that are beyond my power to shape or organize. I just have to take them, however they come, and when, and no matter what they are. Lately I've just been sort of welcoming them. Oh, you want me to accept that too, on top of everything else? Well hand it over, I say, hand it over; I'll find somewhere to put it. That top shelf, maybe? But there are some things that are so much harder than others to take that I can hardly begin to think how I'll accept them. But I'm learning. I'm learning. And by the time I have to hold out my hands for them I hope I will have learned to take them gracefully.
Which brings me to why I'm writing. I think we all know by now that I may not be able to be here with you much longer. None of us really knows, of course; I've had so many setbacks and rallies these past few years that I've given up making any guesses about what may or what may not happen in the near future! But I think that it's safe to say that I've reached a place where the treatments that were working aren't really working anymore, and there isn't much else to try. And I'm sicker and weaker, as I'm sure you've noticed. I think we all sense and know that. I've tried to be honest with you about it, your father has too. At times we've let hope get the best of us, and perhaps allowed ourselves to be a little more optimistic than we really should have been. But of course there was reason for hope! We had a miracle, after all. I've had these last few years with you that I really wasn't supposed to have; I stole time that wasn't rightfully mine, and got away with it! That was a true miracle, and I can't be angry or bitter about it now that it seems that I'm on the other side of it, that I've had it and now it's over. It was a miracle, and I'm deeply grateful; I can't ask for more.
Because you see I'll be with you now, much more than I could have been if I'd had to go when the doctors were thinking I might originally. You've seen more of me (maybe more than you would have liked to at times!), you know me better (maybe things you didn't want to know!) now than you did then; you have more memories or me--the memories of near-adults, not the hazy, murky memories of children. And so I'm confident that I'm going to be with you, I'm going to stick. I'm going to go on being with you in a way I never could have if I hadn't had these years. That's the real miracle.
I'm going to be with you. When I say that I don't mean like some spirit or fairy-godmother or angel or anything silly like that. I had a foolish old aunt who told me when my own mother died that she would always be "watching over me" from above, an idea I came to find rather macabre and upsetting, to tell you the truth. The notion that one is being "watched over" by some angel, however benign, isn't very pleasant, let me tell you. No, I mean I'm going to be with you in the way that someone who has loved you, who has known you well, is always with you, worked into your muscles and sinews and skin, embedded so deeply in your memory that you can't say goodbye to them even if you wanted to.
And you will want to--that is something I know. You'll think about me and dream about me (oh the dreams!) till you wish you didn't. There will come a time when you'll be very angry with me, full of resentment and bitterness. You'll say, why did she say this, do this, why didn't she do that, why did she leave us? Why was she such so stupid, so thoughtless, so impossible? It is perfectly all right and natural for you to be angry with me: that is what I want to tell you. It is all right. I don't mind. It is all right to be sad for me, to pity me, to laugh at me, to ridicule me, and to love, to hate me, even, in succession, or all at once, as you grow older. It is good. Because it means that I will be growing and changing along with you as you go through life and think and feel differently about me, instead of staying the same, like a photograph on a wall that never moves, that never changes its expression.
I'm going to be with you--I'm not going far. It's just an instant away, it's just a moment. It's just a few molecules of air away. It's nothing. I'll be there, whatever happens, whatever you decide to do or be, whatever mistakes you make, whatever unpleasant things come your way. And you will make them, they will come your way. But I know that you're good and talented and smart and brave enough to not be ground down by them, not be diminished by them, not be deceived into living a less full or courageous life than you deserve because of them.
Once I can recover a little energy and feel a little less queasy I am going to come downstairs and see what you all are up to. You've been so good most of the afternoon, letting Mommy rest, but now that's over. You're bickering, I call tell that--you just threw something, Mary Renfroe, I think, a big sofa pillow or book. I'll put a stop to all that. The next thing I'll do is tell you to put that awful handheld football game your father let you buy away, Sid. I can hear its beeping all the way up here. Then I'll clean up the newspaper funnies you've strewn all over the floor and see what sort of mess you've made in the kitchen: I'm sure it's a wreck. If I'm not mistaken somebody was running the blender. Then maybe I'll see what can be done in the way of supper before your father comes home from his office; I think it would cheer him so much if he could see me put a meal together. I'm going to do all these things when I come down. But right now I need to rest a little longer. I need to rest. And do you know it's rather pleasant to lie here and simply listen to you all carp at each other and misbehave and stomp around like elephants? It's lovely, it's heaven, in fact--I could go on listening to you forever, if I could.
I think it really is snowing now! I just saw some flakes out the window, falling by the streetlight down by the corner, which has just come on. You two were right; I ought to have believed you. And now you've opened the front door again to see the falling snow--I can feel the chill draft against my face up here in bed.
I love you both so very much. Never forget that. Never forget it.
Mom
P.S. I don't know when you'll get this. Maybe much later, maybe not for a long time--when you're ready. Maybe never; I simply don't know.
And now I'm going to put down this notebook and pen and turn out the light for a while.
Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Saturday, March 31, 1956
Dear Mama,
Thank you for the chocolates. I shared them with some of the other girls on my wing. Nobody wanted to eat the kind with pink jelly stuff inside them, but there is a fat girl named Elspeth who will eat anything and I gave them to her. She has asthma and is excused from P.E. class--lucky. Is asthma something you can catch? If you send chocolates again please send Whitman's. Theirs are better than Schrafft's.
Last Saturday Hermione's mother came for the day and invited me to have lunch with them in town. She brought her man friend along. His name is Nicola and he is very good-looking, with black curly hair and very white teeth. Also he is very much younger than Hermione's mother. I asked Hermione if they would get married and she said no, he is just one of her mother's amours--that is the term she used. We went to the restaurant in the hotel in town, the Lockley. You should have seen the waitresses in there when he walked in, they nearly fell all over themselves trying to be the one to take his order. Usually they look so sulky and mean. There is one there with a big bottom and and a tower of frosted hair who is especially nasty. One time she said that Hermione had bedroom eyes already at thirteen and that if she didn't stop looking at the busboys the way she did she was going to end up in trouble, and it was lucky it was her mother was so rich, because she could probably pay to fix it if she did. Even she tried to act nice, and smiled at us. When she did that I could see why she never does smile--she has a big gap between her teeth, which are big like a rabbit's.
Nicola kissed me on both cheeks when he left, like they do in France. He is trying to be a painter. Do you think he knows Alfred? Probably not. I don't think Alfred knows anybody that young. Hermione says she is going to invite me home one weekend to her mother's weekend place on Long Island. There is an old lady who lives there, a sculptor, who gives garden parties on the weekends and Hermione says that her mother will take us. She says that she will lend me one of her dresses if we go--nothing I have is nice enough.
I am clearing the tables in the dining hall in the evening as part of my work scholarship. I do not mind. I have a way of stacking the plates up on the trays so quickly that everyone wonders how I do it. They think I am going to break them, the way I fling them into piles, but I never do. Some girls stay late after they've finished eating to watch me do it. It is fun. The women in the kitchen call me Rita on account of my red hair.
Alfred wrote me a short letter back in the fall but I have not heard from him since. It was written on a piece of old cardboard with some kind of Chinese characters on one side, I could hardly read it. He said he had sold a painting, is that true? It probably didn't help much if he did. I am sorry that he is no longer living at home but you always said it would come to this in the end.
I don't know if I can come home during the holidays. Hermione said something about me spending spring break with her but I don't know if it will come to anything. If I do come home you must have the piano tuned. Last time I was there the lower octaves so out of tune I could barely stand to play it. I am working on some Schubert impromptus for my piano lesson. Miss Plotz says I have talent but have no discipline, and no real technique. She says it may be too late to change my bad habits at my age, even though I am only 14. But she often says mean things like that to get me to practice more.
Tell Maury he owes me a letter. He has only written me two since I've been here and I've written him I don't know how many. Hug Katschen for me--I miss her. I hope her arthritis is better.
Love,
Dorothea
Thank you for the chocolates. I shared them with some of the other girls on my wing. Nobody wanted to eat the kind with pink jelly stuff inside them, but there is a fat girl named Elspeth who will eat anything and I gave them to her. She has asthma and is excused from P.E. class--lucky. Is asthma something you can catch? If you send chocolates again please send Whitman's. Theirs are better than Schrafft's.
Last Saturday Hermione's mother came for the day and invited me to have lunch with them in town. She brought her man friend along. His name is Nicola and he is very good-looking, with black curly hair and very white teeth. Also he is very much younger than Hermione's mother. I asked Hermione if they would get married and she said no, he is just one of her mother's amours--that is the term she used. We went to the restaurant in the hotel in town, the Lockley. You should have seen the waitresses in there when he walked in, they nearly fell all over themselves trying to be the one to take his order. Usually they look so sulky and mean. There is one there with a big bottom and and a tower of frosted hair who is especially nasty. One time she said that Hermione had bedroom eyes already at thirteen and that if she didn't stop looking at the busboys the way she did she was going to end up in trouble, and it was lucky it was her mother was so rich, because she could probably pay to fix it if she did. Even she tried to act nice, and smiled at us. When she did that I could see why she never does smile--she has a big gap between her teeth, which are big like a rabbit's.
Nicola kissed me on both cheeks when he left, like they do in France. He is trying to be a painter. Do you think he knows Alfred? Probably not. I don't think Alfred knows anybody that young. Hermione says she is going to invite me home one weekend to her mother's weekend place on Long Island. There is an old lady who lives there, a sculptor, who gives garden parties on the weekends and Hermione says that her mother will take us. She says that she will lend me one of her dresses if we go--nothing I have is nice enough.
I am clearing the tables in the dining hall in the evening as part of my work scholarship. I do not mind. I have a way of stacking the plates up on the trays so quickly that everyone wonders how I do it. They think I am going to break them, the way I fling them into piles, but I never do. Some girls stay late after they've finished eating to watch me do it. It is fun. The women in the kitchen call me Rita on account of my red hair.
Alfred wrote me a short letter back in the fall but I have not heard from him since. It was written on a piece of old cardboard with some kind of Chinese characters on one side, I could hardly read it. He said he had sold a painting, is that true? It probably didn't help much if he did. I am sorry that he is no longer living at home but you always said it would come to this in the end.
I don't know if I can come home during the holidays. Hermione said something about me spending spring break with her but I don't know if it will come to anything. If I do come home you must have the piano tuned. Last time I was there the lower octaves so out of tune I could barely stand to play it. I am working on some Schubert impromptus for my piano lesson. Miss Plotz says I have talent but have no discipline, and no real technique. She says it may be too late to change my bad habits at my age, even though I am only 14. But she often says mean things like that to get me to practice more.
Tell Maury he owes me a letter. He has only written me two since I've been here and I've written him I don't know how many. Hug Katschen for me--I miss her. I hope her arthritis is better.
Love,
Dorothea
Friday, May 4, 2007
14 Sept. 1951
Livvie, So you have found some letter in my pocket, have you, my snoopy girl, some scrap of paper with a name, and just like that you make up your mind that I am some tom cat prawling around, with kitties in heat miauing for me wherever I go. Let me tell you something my darling I am in New York to sell a _painting_ so we maybe can have something to eat besides spaghetti and pay the landlord man, not to hunt for ladies. Mein Gott I have enough ladies as it is with you and Doro I do not need one more. Maybe it amuses you to think I have other woman, or perhaps you find it a little kitzelnd, my dirty girl? Very naughty of you, we will have to see what we can think of in the way of a punishment. Does my dirty girl need a spanking maybe?
So if I can meet this man who says he will buy the stillife I will come home tomorrow if not I will stay to Monday, for this other man in East Village says he might take something of mine, maybe, maybe not, that is the way it is in this business, so ist nun mal des Leben. If I am lucky I bring a bottle of Chianti home, how would my dirty girl like that? I ran into Lise in Soho this morning, no yesterday morning, she ask how you are. The goiter on her neck looks worse, so you know I am safe with her, at least! We will have to make sure every woman I meet has a big mole or goiter or Lippenspalte so my darling can rest easy at night!
Wish me luck, my Livviechen. I kiss you everywhere.
Alf
So if I can meet this man who says he will buy the stillife I will come home tomorrow if not I will stay to Monday, for this other man in East Village says he might take something of mine, maybe, maybe not, that is the way it is in this business, so ist nun mal des Leben. If I am lucky I bring a bottle of Chianti home, how would my dirty girl like that? I ran into Lise in Soho this morning, no yesterday morning, she ask how you are. The goiter on her neck looks worse, so you know I am safe with her, at least! We will have to make sure every woman I meet has a big mole or goiter or Lippenspalte so my darling can rest easy at night!
Wish me luck, my Livviechen. I kiss you everywhere.
Alf
Tuesday, May 1, 2007
August 11, 1979
Dan,
I'm writing this after you hung up on me a few minutes ago. Honestly I was only calling to see how you were getting on--I wasn't going to do anything so crass as to suggest that we meet, but I understand now that it comes to the same thing. You don't want to hear from me, don't want anything to do with me, who knows for how long. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe permanently. Fine: I can live with the uncertainty. After all what in God's name have I been living with for the past few years? It's been one long question mark, one endless pregnant pause, one long waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think you'll forgive me if I say I coped with the endless anticlimax admirably. To hell with the false modesty: I was superb at it, dammit. What I don't seem to be coping so well with, what I don't seem to be good at, is dealing with the denouement, the final dropping of the other shoe, which this may well be.
But if it's the end, it's the end; I'll figure out how to deal with it somehow. After all I deserve nothing less. It would be pure poetic justice if it turns out that the event that seemed most likely to bring us together at last would be the thing that drives us apart for good. It would be fitting. It would be just. And if I had a shred of honor in me I wouldn't be second guessing the fittingness of it by rambling on self-indulgently to you the way I am now. I'd close my mouth, withdraw into the shadows, and wait like some patient disembodied spirit, some Eurydice, for you to make a motion to me and say: come. Or else for you to turn away and say: go. I wouldn't call--ever again. I'd disappear for good.
But here's the thing. (I know you've probably torn this up by now, so it's probably useless to say it. But my hand is continuing to guide the pen across the paper despite myself, so I'll say it anyway.) I love you. It's true. I do. And never has what I feel for you been as strong as during this last month, when you've been suffering so much, suffering for her. I ache for you, I truly do; I would do anything to make things a little less bleak for you, to lighten the darkness hanging over you just a little. At the same time I wouldn't dare to come between you and your grief just now. I wouldn't dare open the door on this dark place where you've shut yourself away from me. I want you to mourn for her, I want you to grieve. And if it turns out that this mourning ends up taking away all the savour of what we had, if it makes it seem a foolish, indecent but not wholly discrediting episode in what was actually a long happy marriage--something to wince over from time to time, something that causes you an occasional but not a lasting pain--then I accept that. I accept it. I want it, in fact, if that is what helps you get through this.
But if not: I'm here. That's all I'm really writing to say. I'm here. And if you don't want me then I won't be here. That's all. So you see I am a little like some patient, ghostly Eurydice after all, now that I've had my say, of course. You wouldn't expect me to withdraw into the shades without delivering some final harangue, would you? But now that I have, I'm through. You'll hear nothing from me from now on but silence.
Unless you call me, of course.
Margot
I'm writing this after you hung up on me a few minutes ago. Honestly I was only calling to see how you were getting on--I wasn't going to do anything so crass as to suggest that we meet, but I understand now that it comes to the same thing. You don't want to hear from me, don't want anything to do with me, who knows for how long. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe permanently. Fine: I can live with the uncertainty. After all what in God's name have I been living with for the past few years? It's been one long question mark, one endless pregnant pause, one long waiting for the other shoe to drop. I think you'll forgive me if I say I coped with the endless anticlimax admirably. To hell with the false modesty: I was superb at it, dammit. What I don't seem to be coping so well with, what I don't seem to be good at, is dealing with the denouement, the final dropping of the other shoe, which this may well be.
But if it's the end, it's the end; I'll figure out how to deal with it somehow. After all I deserve nothing less. It would be pure poetic justice if it turns out that the event that seemed most likely to bring us together at last would be the thing that drives us apart for good. It would be fitting. It would be just. And if I had a shred of honor in me I wouldn't be second guessing the fittingness of it by rambling on self-indulgently to you the way I am now. I'd close my mouth, withdraw into the shadows, and wait like some patient disembodied spirit, some Eurydice, for you to make a motion to me and say: come. Or else for you to turn away and say: go. I wouldn't call--ever again. I'd disappear for good.
But here's the thing. (I know you've probably torn this up by now, so it's probably useless to say it. But my hand is continuing to guide the pen across the paper despite myself, so I'll say it anyway.) I love you. It's true. I do. And never has what I feel for you been as strong as during this last month, when you've been suffering so much, suffering for her. I ache for you, I truly do; I would do anything to make things a little less bleak for you, to lighten the darkness hanging over you just a little. At the same time I wouldn't dare to come between you and your grief just now. I wouldn't dare open the door on this dark place where you've shut yourself away from me. I want you to mourn for her, I want you to grieve. And if it turns out that this mourning ends up taking away all the savour of what we had, if it makes it seem a foolish, indecent but not wholly discrediting episode in what was actually a long happy marriage--something to wince over from time to time, something that causes you an occasional but not a lasting pain--then I accept that. I accept it. I want it, in fact, if that is what helps you get through this.
But if not: I'm here. That's all I'm really writing to say. I'm here. And if you don't want me then I won't be here. That's all. So you see I am a little like some patient, ghostly Eurydice after all, now that I've had my say, of course. You wouldn't expect me to withdraw into the shades without delivering some final harangue, would you? But now that I have, I'm through. You'll hear nothing from me from now on but silence.
Unless you call me, of course.
Margot
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