Dorothea,
Would you mind making one teensy weensy concession to modernity? _Get_ a cell phone. Or, failing that, get that ancient rotary wall phone in your house fixed, because this business of leaving messages with that nutty Russian woman who lives up the road has just gotten ridiculous. Today she was telling me about her toenail fungus and the herbal remedies she's been trying, and the success or failure of each. The other day she was asking me for Mother's recipe for scalloped oysters, and advice on what brand of canned cranberry sauce was the best. I was like: sorry, honey, but my mother is in the hospital, or has just gotten out of the hospital, and I really don't have time to exchange Thanksgiving cookery tips on the phone with you or serve as a dial-up herbal apothecary.
Anyway, Dorothea, I don't honestly think that your Swiss Family Robinson lifestyle will be compromised in the least if you have a phone. You're 59, remember, and what with your bum knee and propensity to fall off ladders and chop off pinky fingers while digging up potatoes I don't think having a phone handy is an imprudent idea, now, is it? Think of how pleasant having a phone would be! We could dial each other up for a spur-of-the-moment chat and gossip session (ha!), and I could keep you up to date on Mother's condition without having to deal with addled, irritatingly chatty Russian go-betweens or write _letters_, of all things, which is terrible for my repetitive stress problem. My wrist is already aching, and all of Mother's pens seem to be out of ink. I don't think I even know how to _write_ with a pen anymore. This letter will be brief.
Mother's much better--that's the long and the short of what I wanted to say. She spent the first day home from the hospital in bed with her ratty fox stole draped about her shoulders, like some old dowager Marie Dressler would play in a 1930s film, and all of her horrible cats draped over all the other parts of her. These animals are a real nuisance, I have to say--they climb on everything, including the dining room table and the piano, and run around her feet so much that it's a wonder she hasn't fallen and broken her hip. Then too they have an pathological aversion to me, probably because I keep shooing them out the back sliding door whenever I get the chance! They're supposed to stay indoors at night, but (don't tell Mother) I've been locking that mangy orange one--Hiram--out to keep it from scratching on my door at three a.m. I do have to get a little sleep, and it's hard around here with Mother rattling around in the bathroom three and four times a night, and listening to talk radio at 3:00 a.m. at a crazily loud volume.
Since the day before yesterday, Mother's been creeping around a bit on her cane, eating a little (mainly Ritz crackers and pimento cheese), and--surprise, surprise--appearing punctually at cocktail hour for the first of several bourbon highballs and her nutritious evening meal of canned herring in sour cream. I'm trying to limit her to one (highball) but she's so sneaky that it's difficult; every time I look around the golden liquid has mysteriously crept up another inch in her glass. The doctor doesn't like it at all, but what am I going to do? The woman's eighty six; if she wants to drink, I say let her. (But God how she scares me, teetering around on that cane.) Anyhow it's not her drinking that's her problem, it's her lungs. Wouldn't it have been nice if she had quit smoking when the Surgeon General's report came out instead of waiting until she was 77 or 78 and mildly emphysemic? But you can't tell her anything. Three times a day she has to withdraw into her bedroom for her breathing therapy, which involves hooking an oxygen tube around her head and inhaling this medicine for thirty minutes. She was trying to do it in front of the fire in the living room until I put a stop to that; the last thing we need is some catastrophic explosion on top of anything else!
But oh my God, Dorothea, you can't imagine how truly dismal this town is. Downtown is boarded up except for a few discount furniture places and a dollar store that sells cheap gimcracks; there's nowhere to eat except "Appleby's" and "Hardees" and some godawful buffet place called the "Pinetop Inn" that Mother used to go to with Evie on Sundays. The old Charles House has been sold and will be torn down next spring, Mother tells me, without a trace of melancholy. She's never been one to be sentimental about the past. Aren't we lucky that she didn't follow through on her threat to move us back here after she and Father split? Where would we be today, I wonder, if she had? You'd likely be some doctor's wife, vast and wide-hipped in bright floral prints, active in the church and with Women Aglow or something, and I'd be--what? Maybe some paunchy antiques dealer with some hunky "kept boy" assistant, making monthly trips to Greensboro or someplace to see traveling productions of "Cats" and "Fiddler on the Roof" at the Civic Center. Well, maybe we'd have found a way to escape! Anyway, everyone looks sad and beaten-down and of course terribly _big_ here: fat not in a jocund, laughing, merry-peasant like way, but just miserably, sadly, woefully heavy, as if it were a disease they had caught quite by accident.
Some of the young people, such as these thick-necked, swaggering boys with little feathery moustaches I was looking at when I was in the ABC package store the day before yesterday (replenishing our booze supply for Thanksgiving Day), are rather fetching, I must confess. I was afraid I was a little too obvious in my ogling, but then I remembered that I'm protected from any "bashing" episodes by the invisibility syndrome that afflicts everyone after 45 or so: one simply ceases to have any sort of noticeable physical presence for the young; one becomes one of the gray, anonymous shades shuffling around decrepitly in the background, a ashen frieze of the wrinkled and superannuated. Such a fate wouldn't be quite so painful, I don't think, if one's appetites, shall we say, would fade and shrivel away in the same way, and at the same time, that our faces and bodies do. But these importunate wishes persist, I see now, long after the ability to act on them or inspire them in others dies away--they go on, it seems, to the very grave.
Our Thanksgiving wasn't very festive, but neither of us was in an especially festive mood. With some ham that a neighbor lady kindly brought, and some leftover potato salad from KFC, and some canned yams that I dressed up with chopped pecans and sugar, we had a semblance of a meal, washed down with some cheap Zinfandel Mother had stashed away in her liquor cabinet. Not very appetizing. Afterwards we retired to the sitting room to watch some BBC miniseries thing with bug-eyed, faintly hysterical-looking ladies in nineteenth century dress creeping fearfully around some dark English manor house with candles, pursued by sinister men in frock coats. Can't remember what it was--these BBC/Masterpiece Theater things, of which we've been watching quite a few, begin to run together after a while. Mary Renfroe called while it was on to see how Mother is doing. She can't come visit just now because of her new baby, who has a cold, but promises to pop up for a weekend after the New Year, which will cheer Mother, I think. She has always thought highly of her, as you know.
I'll be back home next week, provided that my plane isn't hijacked by an Islamic terrorist and crashed into the Empire State Building. After being away for a week, I find I'm dying to get back to NYC, though for the past few months I've been absolutely dying to get out. It seems now that there's no place I'd rather be, perversely enough.
When I get back we must sit down and have a talk, Dorothea, about what we're going to do about Mother next. She has that woman Prellie coming in each morning to dust and surreptitiously pocket little packs of sugar and sheets of fabric softener and toilet paper rolls, but my feeling is that she needs much more that now--a permanent home-health-care person, or (God forbid) some nursing home/assisted living type place. Naturally Mother says she'd rather die, and in fact in her more melodramatic moments claims that she'll see to it that she _does_ die if it comes to that. Despite all of these morbid avowals, however, I somehow think that if she were going to voluntarily kick the bucket, as she's been darkly threatening to for ten years or so now, she'd have done it by now. Something keeps her here with us, I'm not sure what. It's not religious belief, because she claims to have none, and it's not friends, because all of hers are either dead or senile, like poor Evie.
Maybe it's us, Dorothea--did you ever think of that? She keeps on living for us. Jesus, what a sad thought. It's enough to make you cry.
Get a phone, Dorothea! Get a phone!
Love,
Maury
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
January 19, 1935
Dear Miss Lavinia Charles,
You don't know me, but I know you, ha ha! You _and_ your family, and your ways. Like everybody else who lives in this town, how could I not? I can't pick up the paper without reading in the society column that "Lavinia Charles is home for the holidays from the State Normal School, visiting her mother and father, Henry and Caroline Charles," as if anybody gave a damn, as if nobody else's child had gone off to school and come home to visit, or "Caroline Charles hosted a tea in honor of Miss Claudia Wallis, who will be departing next week to winter on the French Riviera in the company her mother, Mrs. Preston Beauregard Wallis." I can't walk down Main St. without seeing your family's big Packard sweeping by, carrying you all to church, to the Country Club, or out to the covered bridge for a picnic, and all of you inside dressed up to the nines, with hats and jewels and gloves on, looking out at the rest of us passing by on foot like we were savages in Africa. I can't so much as stop by your front gate to look at your flowers without getting a mean look from one of your servants on the porch, who are as haughty and proud as you all, though they are just common dirty negroes, no better than the rest. And until recently I couldn't go in Aubrey's without having your mother sweep in, veiled and bejewelled and grand as the Queen of Sheba, and break ahead of everyone in line with her little breathless "Excuse me." "Excuse me, I simply must get by." "Excuse me, I have business with Mr. Aubrey." "Excuse me, I have a package waiting for me at the counter." Parting the crowds with a little wave of her black gloved hand, as if the rest of us didn't have any reason to be there. As if the rest of us could just _wait_.
But lately it seems as if the queen has fallen from her throne! Now she scurries around town in ragged dresses and sunhats the likes of which I've never seen before--like something the dog got to--running up and down the streets like a "lady of the evening" who didn't manage to get home before dawn. Now if you so much as meet her eye she jerks her head around like a bee stung her. Now she doesn't so much as dare to set foot in Aubrey's or appear at church, too ashamed to show herself before the eyes of God and her neighbors, I guess. I'd be ashamed too, if I had done what she has!
For you see it seems that she's not so discriminating anymore about the company she keeps! Oh no, she's become very democratic! If you're a strapping young buck with strong shoulders and a sunburned neck, slim waist and sturdy muscled thighs, you're in high cotton with her! Oh yes, you can become great friends with her, the closest, most intimate kind, be ye ever so common, be ye lacking in teeth or sense or the ability to read or write, even! If you're handsome enough, you can even get to know her in the Biblical sense!
I guess the queen didn't think anyone would notice. I guess the queen thought that we were all too stupid to see what was going on right before our eyes. I guess she thought if we did see, we'd keep quiet, because everyone who lives in this town knows that it's a law written in stone that one is never to speak a word against the Charles family, oh no, heaven forbid. Heaven forbid one should say the least little unflattering thing about such august pillars of our community, who have given so much money to the church and to the children's home and for the monument for the Civil War dead and for the new fountain in the park. Oh no, we're supposed to keep quiet, smile at you when you pass by, let you break ahead of us in line and look down on us and walk all over us even while you parade your licentiousness and lust and immorality right before our eyes.
Well guess what? I see. I know. And I'm not the only one, believe me. The difference with me is, I'm telling what I've seen. I'm not keeping quiet--at least not for free! Because I don't think that money and position and a front pew in St. James's and a silver tea service and silk and lace should allow you to get away with what the rest of us would be strung up in front of the courthouse for. Because I don't think the best manners and piano lessons and finishing school at Brenau entitle one to engage in behavior that would make a streetwalker blush!
So if I were you, Miss Lavinia, I'd think very carefully about what I've said, very carefully indeed. I'd do more than think. I'd take whatever steps were necessary to preserve the last shred of honor your family possesses, before it's too late. And it soon will be, believe me, if it isn't already, ha ha!
Sincerely,
A concerned citizen!
You don't know me, but I know you, ha ha! You _and_ your family, and your ways. Like everybody else who lives in this town, how could I not? I can't pick up the paper without reading in the society column that "Lavinia Charles is home for the holidays from the State Normal School, visiting her mother and father, Henry and Caroline Charles," as if anybody gave a damn, as if nobody else's child had gone off to school and come home to visit, or "Caroline Charles hosted a tea in honor of Miss Claudia Wallis, who will be departing next week to winter on the French Riviera in the company her mother, Mrs. Preston Beauregard Wallis." I can't walk down Main St. without seeing your family's big Packard sweeping by, carrying you all to church, to the Country Club, or out to the covered bridge for a picnic, and all of you inside dressed up to the nines, with hats and jewels and gloves on, looking out at the rest of us passing by on foot like we were savages in Africa. I can't so much as stop by your front gate to look at your flowers without getting a mean look from one of your servants on the porch, who are as haughty and proud as you all, though they are just common dirty negroes, no better than the rest. And until recently I couldn't go in Aubrey's without having your mother sweep in, veiled and bejewelled and grand as the Queen of Sheba, and break ahead of everyone in line with her little breathless "Excuse me." "Excuse me, I simply must get by." "Excuse me, I have business with Mr. Aubrey." "Excuse me, I have a package waiting for me at the counter." Parting the crowds with a little wave of her black gloved hand, as if the rest of us didn't have any reason to be there. As if the rest of us could just _wait_.
But lately it seems as if the queen has fallen from her throne! Now she scurries around town in ragged dresses and sunhats the likes of which I've never seen before--like something the dog got to--running up and down the streets like a "lady of the evening" who didn't manage to get home before dawn. Now if you so much as meet her eye she jerks her head around like a bee stung her. Now she doesn't so much as dare to set foot in Aubrey's or appear at church, too ashamed to show herself before the eyes of God and her neighbors, I guess. I'd be ashamed too, if I had done what she has!
For you see it seems that she's not so discriminating anymore about the company she keeps! Oh no, she's become very democratic! If you're a strapping young buck with strong shoulders and a sunburned neck, slim waist and sturdy muscled thighs, you're in high cotton with her! Oh yes, you can become great friends with her, the closest, most intimate kind, be ye ever so common, be ye lacking in teeth or sense or the ability to read or write, even! If you're handsome enough, you can even get to know her in the Biblical sense!
I guess the queen didn't think anyone would notice. I guess the queen thought that we were all too stupid to see what was going on right before our eyes. I guess she thought if we did see, we'd keep quiet, because everyone who lives in this town knows that it's a law written in stone that one is never to speak a word against the Charles family, oh no, heaven forbid. Heaven forbid one should say the least little unflattering thing about such august pillars of our community, who have given so much money to the church and to the children's home and for the monument for the Civil War dead and for the new fountain in the park. Oh no, we're supposed to keep quiet, smile at you when you pass by, let you break ahead of us in line and look down on us and walk all over us even while you parade your licentiousness and lust and immorality right before our eyes.
Well guess what? I see. I know. And I'm not the only one, believe me. The difference with me is, I'm telling what I've seen. I'm not keeping quiet--at least not for free! Because I don't think that money and position and a front pew in St. James's and a silver tea service and silk and lace should allow you to get away with what the rest of us would be strung up in front of the courthouse for. Because I don't think the best manners and piano lessons and finishing school at Brenau entitle one to engage in behavior that would make a streetwalker blush!
So if I were you, Miss Lavinia, I'd think very carefully about what I've said, very carefully indeed. I'd do more than think. I'd take whatever steps were necessary to preserve the last shred of honor your family possesses, before it's too late. And it soon will be, believe me, if it isn't already, ha ha!
Sincerely,
A concerned citizen!
Saturday, July 7, 2007
December 9, 1974
Lavinia, honey,
I hope I did not sound as if I did not approve of your plan to move back here when we spoke on the phone yesterday evening! I think it is a lovely idea! It is just that I was so shocked--and surprised. To think that you, who have traveled the world and lived in New York and goodness knows where else, would want to come back home to settle after all these years. That did surprise me, but you were always one for surprises! But after I thought about it a little last night as I was lying awake--I had gotten cold, and I turned on the electric blanket for the first time this season (Peggy gave it to me, though I told her I didn't want one, but now I can't do without it!)--I decided it wasn't so surprising after all. After all, we are getting on in years, and I suppose it is natural that when we reach our time of life we begin to want to be near to the people and places we knew and loved best as children. We need all the love and closeness we can get at our age, don't you agree? And I can guarantee that you will have that here--love.
I do hope you won't be bored, tho'! Of course, you were always such a great reader, and I know books will keep you company and occupy your mind when you get weary of us. But books can only do so much! Fortunately there is a lot else here to keep you busy. There is church, for one thing--for you that would be St. James. They have a wonderful organ, and a perfectly wonderful director of music to play it! Leonard and I used to go to their Christmas concerts, but since he died I seem to have lost interest. This year, however, Lucybell Cauthon has made me promise to go with her, mainly because she can't drive anymore and needs someone to take her--and to help her get up those big stairs on her walker. She is practically _crippled_ with arthritis, one affliction I am free of, thank the Lord! It would help if she would lose some weight--that must be murder on her knees. But I suppose eating is the only consolation she has in her declining years. Getting fat is one danger of living here, I must warn you! I had to completely swear off bread and sweet things earlier this autumn, for all of my pantsuits had gotten so snug around the middle. I did treat myself to some of Annie Maud's wonderful lemon squares at a little shower we had for her niece Melanie--I figured I deserved a reward for being so good! I helped myself to some potato chips too, though they were also "off limits!" Annie Maud had put out some sour cream dip I couldn't resist, with little chives cut up in it. She always does things up so prettily.
Melanie--the niece--is marrying a widower whose first wife was killed in a car accident here two Christmases ago. She (Ruth Ann was her name, she was the sweetest thing) was coming home after the Christmas Eve festivities in the fellowship hall at First Methodist. She was struck down while crossing Main, right in front of the church--a truck driver, and he was drunk. They couldn't even have an open casket at the funeral, because her head was severed from the rest of her body. And she had two darling little blond children! Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I see His hand at work in this marriage, providing those lovely children with a new mother who I know will love and cherish them as if they were her own. Melanie is a lovely girl too, though she has a protruding front _tooth_ I wish she would see to. I said to Lurlene when we were watching a little fashion show Melanie was in at the Country Club last summer, I said, wouldn't Melanie be a _beauty_ if it weren't for that tooth! She looked so cute in those little tennis dresses she was modeling, so trim and petite. But when she opened her mouth to smile I had to turn my eyes to the pretty flower arrangements. It quite spoiled the effect!
Mercy, I have wandered away from my point again--"digressed," as old Reverend Saxon used to say about his sermons, which ran on and on until old senile Miss Wallis would holler out "What's your point?" from the back pew! Oh: the other thing I was going to tell you about was the literary club I belong to--that might interest you. In fact I talked to Eula, the president, when I called her up this morning to see how she was doing, and I mentioned that she might have a new recruit! She went on a Caribbean cruise and came back with dysentery. She is a little better now, though she still has to run to the bathroom nearly every hour--in fact she had to excuse herself to visit the toilet while I was talking to her. Anyhow we don't read anything "heavy," but we have read some wonderful books, and our discussions at our meetings can be quite stimulating! I hosted the club last meeting, and served my floating island for dessert, and that got raves, much more so than the Fig Newtons that Gladys Aubrey served last time. Somebody should have said something to her about that, but she is sort of "off" lately--repeats herself over and over--and so nobody dared. So we just munched in silence. Anyway she never could cook worth a toot, so perhaps it was for the best. She used to send egg custards over here that were practically _raw._ Anyway we read a biography of Stonewall Jackson. Next time we are reading a novel by Eugenia Price, I forget which right now, but I am enjoying it. It is sort of a mystery story with lighthouses and such--I read a little of it before bedtime every night, but I only manage a few pages before I start nodding off! Age, I guess.
Then there is the bridge club, but I don't know whether you will be interested in that. To be honest I am not sure I would recommend joining just now. We have a new member, Priscilla DeLoach, a Baptist, who refuses to play for money--not even so much as a dime--and so ruins the fun for everybody. She closes her eyes and says a little prayer before each game. Isn't that silly! Fortunately she may not be able to play for a while after she has surgery on her bunions next month, so that will give us a nice break.
As for where you will live, there are some lovely "ranch" homes on that ridge up by the Country Club that might suit you to a tee. You can see for miles and miles up there, all the way to the foothills on clear days. Alva Lee lives up there and is always complaining about the deer eating up her daffodils and such, but don't let that put you off. She is so grumpy, and stingy (she sits by me in church and puts only a quarter in the collection tray each Sunday, even though she's rich as Croesus)--just make sure you don't live by her.
Isn't it sad that you can't move back into the old homestead, which is still vacant ten years after old Mr. Ponsonby died? But I imagine you wouldn't want to fool with a house that big at your age--I don't know how anyone ever managed, they're so hard to keep up and heat, goodness knows. I feel such fondness for that house, though of course I never lived in it and rarely ever set foot in it. One time as a child some little girls dared me to run up on the porch and look in the windows, and I did, and when I got up there and peered in I found myself face to face with your mother, who was arranging some dried flowers on top of the piano. She smiled at me kindly and waved at me to come in, but I ran, why I don't know. I remember that she invited my mother in when she had stopped to admire some of the hollyhocks in the front garden, and she came home laden with all manner of plants and flowers--mother-in-laws tongue and peonies and roses and herbs and whatnot. She said your mother was so nice to her--served her iced tea in gold-rimmed glasses, and gave her a little glass fawn she'd brought back from Venice! She would never hear an ill word spoken of your mother after that, even when people said she had started getting peculiar. Goodness, that was so long ago, wasn't it? But it seems just like yesterday, sometimes!
Oh, one advantage to living here is that you will be much closer to Patricia, of course. I do not like to pass on idle "gossip," but I do not think that that marriage is long for this world, judging from I have heard from a friend who lives down there--and from the little that Patricia will let on. She can be so secretive! It has nothing to do with dear Patricia, of course, but with that Dan. I've always regretted that she married him. He has such airs and acts like he hung the moon. When they visited here last spring he spent the whole time sitting on his neck on my living room love seat (which isn't really for "sitting," though I didn't tell him so) reading while Patricia and the children and I went out visiting. And then went out and got himself a hamburger rather than eat the casserole I had spent all day making! Anyway, I pity poor Patricia and those children, though she will never let on that anything in the least is the matter. But I can tell something is wrong because she has lost weight. And she has cut her hair in the most peculiar, most unflattering way--like a boy's sugar bowl cut. She said one day she just got tired of having all that hair blowing round her face and grabbed a pair of shears and started hacking. I remember combing and braiding her lovely hair when she was a girl. It was so soft, and went on forever, all the way down to her waist. Well, I never could tell that girl a thing, she is so headstrong in some ways--except where that Dan is concerned!
Well, I have run on too long, like always, Lavinia. But let me say again how very excited I am about having you so close by again after all these years! Keep me up to date on what you decide, and know that my little guest room is open to you when you come down to hunt for a new home. I have put an electric blanket on that bed too in addition to the afghan I crocheted, so you need not be afraid about keeping warm.
My two pretty little cardinals have just come to my feeder, so that means it must be almost time for my stories. The little birds visit at nearly the same time every day, it is uncanny! At any rate I must go get a stamp for this letter before the postman comes. I am always running after him waving a letter for him to mail.
Wishing you and your family the merriest of Christmases!
Affectionately,
Evie
P.S. Some little girl at church gave me all these darling little candy cane stickers, and I am spending them all on you!
I hope I did not sound as if I did not approve of your plan to move back here when we spoke on the phone yesterday evening! I think it is a lovely idea! It is just that I was so shocked--and surprised. To think that you, who have traveled the world and lived in New York and goodness knows where else, would want to come back home to settle after all these years. That did surprise me, but you were always one for surprises! But after I thought about it a little last night as I was lying awake--I had gotten cold, and I turned on the electric blanket for the first time this season (Peggy gave it to me, though I told her I didn't want one, but now I can't do without it!)--I decided it wasn't so surprising after all. After all, we are getting on in years, and I suppose it is natural that when we reach our time of life we begin to want to be near to the people and places we knew and loved best as children. We need all the love and closeness we can get at our age, don't you agree? And I can guarantee that you will have that here--love.
I do hope you won't be bored, tho'! Of course, you were always such a great reader, and I know books will keep you company and occupy your mind when you get weary of us. But books can only do so much! Fortunately there is a lot else here to keep you busy. There is church, for one thing--for you that would be St. James. They have a wonderful organ, and a perfectly wonderful director of music to play it! Leonard and I used to go to their Christmas concerts, but since he died I seem to have lost interest. This year, however, Lucybell Cauthon has made me promise to go with her, mainly because she can't drive anymore and needs someone to take her--and to help her get up those big stairs on her walker. She is practically _crippled_ with arthritis, one affliction I am free of, thank the Lord! It would help if she would lose some weight--that must be murder on her knees. But I suppose eating is the only consolation she has in her declining years. Getting fat is one danger of living here, I must warn you! I had to completely swear off bread and sweet things earlier this autumn, for all of my pantsuits had gotten so snug around the middle. I did treat myself to some of Annie Maud's wonderful lemon squares at a little shower we had for her niece Melanie--I figured I deserved a reward for being so good! I helped myself to some potato chips too, though they were also "off limits!" Annie Maud had put out some sour cream dip I couldn't resist, with little chives cut up in it. She always does things up so prettily.
Melanie--the niece--is marrying a widower whose first wife was killed in a car accident here two Christmases ago. She (Ruth Ann was her name, she was the sweetest thing) was coming home after the Christmas Eve festivities in the fellowship hall at First Methodist. She was struck down while crossing Main, right in front of the church--a truck driver, and he was drunk. They couldn't even have an open casket at the funeral, because her head was severed from the rest of her body. And she had two darling little blond children! Well, the Lord works in mysterious ways, and I see His hand at work in this marriage, providing those lovely children with a new mother who I know will love and cherish them as if they were her own. Melanie is a lovely girl too, though she has a protruding front _tooth_ I wish she would see to. I said to Lurlene when we were watching a little fashion show Melanie was in at the Country Club last summer, I said, wouldn't Melanie be a _beauty_ if it weren't for that tooth! She looked so cute in those little tennis dresses she was modeling, so trim and petite. But when she opened her mouth to smile I had to turn my eyes to the pretty flower arrangements. It quite spoiled the effect!
Mercy, I have wandered away from my point again--"digressed," as old Reverend Saxon used to say about his sermons, which ran on and on until old senile Miss Wallis would holler out "What's your point?" from the back pew! Oh: the other thing I was going to tell you about was the literary club I belong to--that might interest you. In fact I talked to Eula, the president, when I called her up this morning to see how she was doing, and I mentioned that she might have a new recruit! She went on a Caribbean cruise and came back with dysentery. She is a little better now, though she still has to run to the bathroom nearly every hour--in fact she had to excuse herself to visit the toilet while I was talking to her. Anyhow we don't read anything "heavy," but we have read some wonderful books, and our discussions at our meetings can be quite stimulating! I hosted the club last meeting, and served my floating island for dessert, and that got raves, much more so than the Fig Newtons that Gladys Aubrey served last time. Somebody should have said something to her about that, but she is sort of "off" lately--repeats herself over and over--and so nobody dared. So we just munched in silence. Anyway she never could cook worth a toot, so perhaps it was for the best. She used to send egg custards over here that were practically _raw._ Anyway we read a biography of Stonewall Jackson. Next time we are reading a novel by Eugenia Price, I forget which right now, but I am enjoying it. It is sort of a mystery story with lighthouses and such--I read a little of it before bedtime every night, but I only manage a few pages before I start nodding off! Age, I guess.
Then there is the bridge club, but I don't know whether you will be interested in that. To be honest I am not sure I would recommend joining just now. We have a new member, Priscilla DeLoach, a Baptist, who refuses to play for money--not even so much as a dime--and so ruins the fun for everybody. She closes her eyes and says a little prayer before each game. Isn't that silly! Fortunately she may not be able to play for a while after she has surgery on her bunions next month, so that will give us a nice break.
As for where you will live, there are some lovely "ranch" homes on that ridge up by the Country Club that might suit you to a tee. You can see for miles and miles up there, all the way to the foothills on clear days. Alva Lee lives up there and is always complaining about the deer eating up her daffodils and such, but don't let that put you off. She is so grumpy, and stingy (she sits by me in church and puts only a quarter in the collection tray each Sunday, even though she's rich as Croesus)--just make sure you don't live by her.
Isn't it sad that you can't move back into the old homestead, which is still vacant ten years after old Mr. Ponsonby died? But I imagine you wouldn't want to fool with a house that big at your age--I don't know how anyone ever managed, they're so hard to keep up and heat, goodness knows. I feel such fondness for that house, though of course I never lived in it and rarely ever set foot in it. One time as a child some little girls dared me to run up on the porch and look in the windows, and I did, and when I got up there and peered in I found myself face to face with your mother, who was arranging some dried flowers on top of the piano. She smiled at me kindly and waved at me to come in, but I ran, why I don't know. I remember that she invited my mother in when she had stopped to admire some of the hollyhocks in the front garden, and she came home laden with all manner of plants and flowers--mother-in-laws tongue and peonies and roses and herbs and whatnot. She said your mother was so nice to her--served her iced tea in gold-rimmed glasses, and gave her a little glass fawn she'd brought back from Venice! She would never hear an ill word spoken of your mother after that, even when people said she had started getting peculiar. Goodness, that was so long ago, wasn't it? But it seems just like yesterday, sometimes!
Oh, one advantage to living here is that you will be much closer to Patricia, of course. I do not like to pass on idle "gossip," but I do not think that that marriage is long for this world, judging from I have heard from a friend who lives down there--and from the little that Patricia will let on. She can be so secretive! It has nothing to do with dear Patricia, of course, but with that Dan. I've always regretted that she married him. He has such airs and acts like he hung the moon. When they visited here last spring he spent the whole time sitting on his neck on my living room love seat (which isn't really for "sitting," though I didn't tell him so) reading while Patricia and the children and I went out visiting. And then went out and got himself a hamburger rather than eat the casserole I had spent all day making! Anyway, I pity poor Patricia and those children, though she will never let on that anything in the least is the matter. But I can tell something is wrong because she has lost weight. And she has cut her hair in the most peculiar, most unflattering way--like a boy's sugar bowl cut. She said one day she just got tired of having all that hair blowing round her face and grabbed a pair of shears and started hacking. I remember combing and braiding her lovely hair when she was a girl. It was so soft, and went on forever, all the way down to her waist. Well, I never could tell that girl a thing, she is so headstrong in some ways--except where that Dan is concerned!
Well, I have run on too long, like always, Lavinia. But let me say again how very excited I am about having you so close by again after all these years! Keep me up to date on what you decide, and know that my little guest room is open to you when you come down to hunt for a new home. I have put an electric blanket on that bed too in addition to the afghan I crocheted, so you need not be afraid about keeping warm.
My two pretty little cardinals have just come to my feeder, so that means it must be almost time for my stories. The little birds visit at nearly the same time every day, it is uncanny! At any rate I must go get a stamp for this letter before the postman comes. I am always running after him waving a letter for him to mail.
Wishing you and your family the merriest of Christmases!
Affectionately,
Evie
P.S. Some little girl at church gave me all these darling little candy cane stickers, and I am spending them all on you!
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