Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,17

this is, I suppose. There is something in my bones that senses eventual divorce, however.

All right, all right, enough, enough. I will keep in mind what Frances the Spiritual Director has suggested.

Love to you—

Bernard

June 26, 1958

Bernard—

I got a job in New York. Did you know I can type like a demon? Well, I can, and this talent has led me to be hired as Alfred Sullivan’s secretary at Sullivan and Shields. Jeanette, a friend of mine from Iowa who lives in New York mingling among the literary, has been keeping her ear to the ground for me and when she heard of this she thought I would be perfect for it. Alfred Sullivan, as you know, is seventy-nine and almost senile but still vain about his father’s name, and thus he needs to be placated so he’ll keep paying everyone. Alfred Sullivan needs a secretary. Or the illusion of a secretary, and here’s where I come in. The old one died. She was sixty-seven. She’d been with him for thirty years. She might even have been his mistress, but no one’s saying. And if he dies after a year, at least I will have gotten to New York. Her name was Frances too. I believe Mr. Sullivan is a superstitious, sentimental old Irish fool.

Which I am very grateful for, because his patronage is making it possible for me to stay at the Barbizon. Do you know this place? Actresses, writers, models, secretaries, convented away from menfolk so they can play at being career girls without being molested before they get married—when they’ll be molested legally. Another nunnery. But I get my own room, and meals are provided, and it’s clean and cheap. Mr. Sullivan wrote me a letter of reference, and he got another big shot at the house to write one for me too. I think, after nearly a year of waitressing and keeping house for my father and Ann, I will allow myself to enjoy a certain amount of paternalism.

This job has come at the right time. When I begin to be short with my father at the dinner table, I know things have gone sour.

I thought you might like to know this news. I hope you’re feeling better.

Yours,

Frances

July 2, 1958

Dear Frances—

I laughed out loud at your letter. I congratulate you. If a writer has to have a job, serving as handmaiden to the obsolete is the best kind to have. This nunnery, however, sounds ridiculous. Make me proud and get kicked out of there, won’t you?

And I’ve read your chapter. It’s fantastic. I have one thought: the ending is too abrupt. I think the problem is that you, the author, know what’s coming next in the book and can rest easy in that knowledge, but maybe there’s a way that you can adjust for those who don’t have that privilege. No, I have a second thought: I am hungry for Sister to say one thing that gives evidence of her theology—that she has a theology.

I really do think it’s wonderful. You make me ashamed of all my words.

Yours,

Bernard

July 9, 1958

Dear Bernard—

I can’t tell you how glad I am that you liked what I sent you. But I don’t want to change a thing. If there is lingering discomfort at the end, all the better.

I write you from my shoebox in the Barbizon. I have a tiny window. It looks out onto Sixty-Third Street, and since I am up high, the sunsets have been lovely evening companions. This place is very clean, which I require. But why are women so awful? Everyone’s perfectly nice—which is the problem. At dinner, the only thing they can think to ask me about, after my job, is whether I’m going with anyone. When I answer no, cheerfully, and keep eating, you can feel the pity and suspicion tiptoeing around in their silence. Since they can’t make their pity or suspicion public, they have to be encouraging: “Oh, you’ll find someone, I’m sure. It’s a big city!” It’s like eating dinner with my sister, only multiplied by eight to ten. Though my sister knows how to make a joke. These girls have some money—they’re daughters of doctors and lawyers and bankers—and I think money eliminates the need for the catharsis of humor. Kierkegaard says that comedy transpires in the gap between the eternal and the temporal, and I think that these girls, because they have not known the disappointment of being caught between what one hopes for and what one actually receives, can’t