Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,37

I do not want to risk your censure. How beautiful, and yet you suffer this Polyphemus groping for you from his dark cave.

Love,

Bernard

May 21, 1959

Dear Bernard—

I will see you in a few days, but I wanted you to have something to read in the meantime that wasn’t a mimeographed sheet telling you what not to take with your orange juice. I want to get this in the last mail, so it will be short.

Please keep reading. I think that is a good idea. I wanted to tell you that I have been reading Cymbeline too—I’ve never read it, which I’m sure you can believe—and in fact I just finished it, so when I see you we will talk about it some. They say it’s a clunker, but I do like this line, from the end: “Pardon’s the word to all.”

I think you look as kind as you have always looked.

Yours,

Frances

PS. Although I think you should let the nurses at your sagebrush.

If only for your mother’s sake. And maybe mine?

June 1, 1959

Dear John—

I hope this letter finds you still enjoying England. If you have found any books over there that merit looking into, would you let me know?

I told you I would write you again about visiting Bernard, so here I am. They’re letting him out on the fifteenth, and it seems like he’s going to stay with his parents for the rest of the summer before moving to New York to take a teaching job at Hunter College. I think this may be one of those times where even ineffectual parents are better than no parents at all. Bernard is just humbled enough now to accept their care, and they seem humbled enough to swallow their objection to his being Bernard instead of an obedient son.

He seems better. Although I have no idea what better means, in this context. I think what I mean is that he seems eager to leave the hospital and resume his life, and that the people who run the hospital are going to let him. I worry about him a little because I sense that he is afraid of himself—that he thinks of himself now as a loaded gun likely to go off at anytime without warning. All I can do is pray for him and try to make him laugh when I see him—and not mind how feeble those two gestures are.

I know Bernard would love to see you when you get back. Your letters have been cheering. If you want to make plans to visit him, let me know and Ted McCoy will drive us out.

Yours,

Frances

July 12, 1959

Dear Claire—

Do you know what heaven must be like? I mean, a child’s conception of heaven—a place you dread being caught dead in because it must be everlastingly quiet and mirthless? It must be like Proper Boston. Which is where Bernard’s parents reside. Every time I took a step in their house I swear I heard the china and silverware rattle—no doubt an alarm to let the ancient Proper Bostonians know that some Irish servant girl’s descendant was trespassing on their grounds, possibly with the intent to burgle—and in the deep silence a grandfather clock ticked off every eternal second. The house looked like the Colonial-era period rooms I remember staring into at the art museum: mahogany chests sitting like thrones in every room, discreet whispers of pewter and white lace. Bernard’s parents were perfectly civil, but they seemed to have no actual life in them. His mother asked questions but didn’t seem to care how you answered, and his father fell asleep at the table just before coffee was brought out. Bernard then woke his father up by whistling through his fingers, which is how he said his father used to wake him up when he was a teenager. “Do you want to give your father a heart attack right now, Bernard?” his mother said, floating toward the table with the coffee tray in a haze of matriarchal serenity. I just let Ted and John make the small talk.

We spent much of the visit in their small backyard, which featured many handsome rosebushes. (I couldn’t help but notice they did not look as bug-eaten as the ones my father always tries to get going in milk cans outside our front door.) I could not say for sure but I thought Bernard seemed rested and close to something like well. He said he was writing, and had written seventy pages of something that didn’t seem a