Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,58

family. I do not often covet what other people have, but I did find myself wishing that I had known something like it.

I saw also that Frances is perfectly suited to family life, that she swims about her people like a fish in their waters, that she is happy when she bathes in their love and their noise, and I think she knows this about herself, that she could quite easily spend her days cooking, cleaning, and corralling children, that she could quite easily be charmed into a life in which she gave order to other lives, not words, and I think this is why she is so strict with herself on the point of marriage. She does not know anyone who has written and mothered, so she thinks it impossible. (I actually don’t either—all the women writers I know are libertines.) But she needs to be in control, and she has chosen to be in control of the people in her stories.

We stood on the platform. “Thank you very, very much,” she said. I got another caressing look. No sign of intractable Frances. Was it the exhaustion of having successfully fought her way through one of the most difficult maneuvers on the battlefield of romance—the visit home? It’s one thing to be able to undo Frances in bed—and I have compromised her there, in telling you that, that’s what kind of hold she has on me, that I give a damn about discretion—but it’s wholly another for her to, fully clothed and upright, make her preference for me known. Then another caressing look. I am sure she was trying to tell me that she loved me. I didn’t know what to say, which alarmed me. I was exhilarated, but could not speak.

She said hardly anything on the train. But she took my hand, and then fell asleep, her head resting on my shoulder. I wanted to propose to her.

I love her. But no sign from her that she’s as in love with me. If she were another sort of woman I might suspect her of having someone else in the wings. And I’m not even competing with God for her hand! That I might find acceptable.

Apologies for the length. But that’s what you get for not living near me at this crucial juncture. And I had to keep writing because there’s a girl from Texas here who’s been giving me the eye over the past hour as I sit in the dining hall, and as long as I’m writing she won’t come and talk to me. I’m trying to be worthy of my impossible love.

Love,

Bernard

August 15, 1960

Dear Claire—

This will be a very short letter because I have to polish a story before Monday. But I wanted to tell you that Bernard paid a visit to Philadelphia last week, and he was a very big hit. The rotter.

My father, after dinner, took me out back to tell me that if he died, he would not mind leaving me in Bernard’s hands. It was a little unnerving. I wanted to ask him if perhaps this was an excess of feeling due to the fact that I’d never brought anyone home before, but I think he really meant it. My aunts exclaimed over him as if he were Errol Flynn. “Jeez, Frances,” said Ann. “You sure do know how to make up for lost time.” (I have to admit some glee in making Ann a little jealous.) A small cousin of mine demanded to run her toddler hands through his hair, and he let her, grinning like an idiot all the while. That girl was delighted to be in his arms, and she made a big, unselfconscious fuss of showing it.

I was a little chastised. No man should give of himself the way he does to me and receive mere acquiescence in return. It was a lesson, seeing him bear up so good-naturedly under all that noise and fuss and behave as a perfect gentleman in the middle of the circus I come from. What kind of Christian am I if I can’t make my appreciation known? What kind of woman?

I find I do miss him now that he’s away. I’m a little bored with all the little things I do to plump my nest—do the laundry, clean the kitchen, organize my drafts, flip through cookbooks, draw up a budget, go for walks. It’s all starting to seem like an old maid’s cross-stitching.

My love to Bill as he girds up for another