Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,40

won’t again, if I can help it.

Neither one of us really wants to speak of what happened now that we are in the light, I can tell, and I think that’s best. Here is one case, Frances dear, in which I am glad of your reticence. I’ve spent enough time lately trying to figure out how my parents, and their parents, and their parents, etc., created the conditions that led me to the hospital. In the beginning I was glad of the chance to blame. When it comes to blaming one’s parents, everyone loves the feel of a lighted torch in the hand, especially when it appears that torch is being handed to you by a Harvard-laureled practitioner of one of the West’s great interpretive frameworks. But that flame died quickly and I felt crushed by the weight of my parents’ blindness. I now feel sorry, somewhat, for my mother and father. I’m trying to feel sorry for them so that I don’t feel sorry for myself.

Don’t feel sorry for me, or afraid of me. Please remain my friend.

Love,

Bernard

July 20, 1959

Dear Bernard—

I was very much moved by your letter.

I will of course remain your friend.

What did I think of the Eliot manse? Well, it was impressive in the way it came off as both austere and lavish. Should there ever be a Marxist revolution on American soil, your parents will be safe, as their people taught them how to hide in plain sight. But really and truly, I was most jealous of your mother’s splendiferous roses. If I one day happen to have a yard all my own, splendiferous rosebushes will be the first order of business. The yellow ones were my favorites—pale and frothy, as if they would smell of eggnog and not roses.

Let’s just say that your mother and I seem to have decided that we will not have a mutual admiration society.

You’re right—I do feel hesitant to talk about what happened. My people, for better and for worse, taught me how to hide what was too difficult to bear. I feel shy as I write to you. I don’t want to say anything that’s beside the point. One of the things I want to say I know is childish, but I mean it with my whole heart: I hope you never have to take Thorazine again.

I want you to feel hope more than you feel despair. That is what I have been praying for.

Yours,

Frances

July 30, 1959

Frances, my dearest dear. My mind might be a little potholed right now, but I think my heart is as sturdy as ever. Don’t handle me lightly. Tell me what you’re thinking.

I have a feeling that after you read this you’re going to take me at my word, and with a vengeance.

When I read your letter and thought about you praying for me, I felt that I needed to confess some thoughts to you. I have been thinking—it is all I can do here—and you are the only person to whom I can write these thoughts. You won’t like them, but I have to confess them to you.

Do you remember what you wrote about Simone Weil? How she wrote that it’s sort of humorous, the line “Our father, who art in heaven”? I am beginning to see that it is indeed humorous. That it is ludicrous. That I was deluded in my imagining that I could communicate with him. I think you, rightly, keep this in mind as a way of remaining humble, of purging your faith of craven obedience—if he can’t answer you, he can’t hold anything over you. I wanted to have this sort of humility and patience myself. Now I think I never did, and so perhaps I really never did receive him.

I have been thinking about the letter you wrote to me after the book came out. You did not say that I was poetizing my love for God, but I see now that’s what I was doing. I wonder how deeply his word had a place in my life. I wonder how deeply he had worked his way in. I wonder what I was doing when I was praying. When the abbot saw me—now I see what he saw.

Who was I praying to? Was I straining, and did the straining lead to silence? Did my straining serve only myself? I wanted to feel something. So I trumpeted loudly, waiting for the selfishness in me to fall. Another Old Testament metaphor: I built myself a god who was