The Letters of Shirley Jackson
Page 36
Gosh.
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
monday [February 1957]
dearest mother and pop,
i was so glad to get pop’s letter, and know that he is feeling all right now, even though we are all sorry that you won’t be here for a visit this spring.
i haven’t written sooner, although i’ve been trying to, because of the usual mess of complications that seem to gather around here all the time. first, barry got chicken pox, the day after i talked to mother on the phone. he came down to breakfast and said he had picked up a flea from the cats, who all sleep on his bed, and showed me six little spots on his stomach. by the time he had finished breakfast he was covered with spots; we just sat there and watched him get spottier and spottier. while he was in the thick of it some slick hollywood type called me from new york and said i must come down the following tuesday to meet the mgm people and have lunch and a cocktail party and see the private showing of this infernal movie, now called lizzie. i kept saying i would rather die than go to new york and meet a pack of movie people and he kept saying then we’ll expect you for lunch on tuesday. so i told him all the children had chicken pox and he said he would see me on tuesday. a real hearty type. i finally got off the phone and made myself a stiff drink, and then called my agent and told her she must call this hollywood character and tell him i had discovered it wasn’t chicken pox, but smallpox and of course i wouldn’t come to new york. she called back later to say she had convinced him and she had convinced him so well that they had decided to send the movie to me. everything was now arranged for a private showing of the movie at the general stark theatre in bennington. then the manager of the general stark called me and he was terribly excited and upset because he couldn’t think of any prominent people to invite to the showing, bennington being kind of short on mayors and movie stars and such, so i said invite the local librarians and the manager of the bookstore and i would bring my husband and my children and even though we wouldn’t fill the theatre at least there would be someone there to see it.
the kids loved the movie, and stanley thought it was terrible. i actually don’t remember a thing about it; i saw my name on the screen and then i think i closed my eyes and kept them closed. i think i was in a state of shock; i came home, made lunch, and slept till dinner, got up, made dinner, and went back to bed. about two days later i started remembering small things from the movie, but even now i couldn’t tell you what it was like. i will have to see it again sometime. it is going to be released sometime this month, and the paperback edition of the book—now called lizzie, too—should be out about the same time. the funniest thing is this new book, three faces of eve, which is of course on exactly the same subject, but a much later case than the one i used. eve was bought for the movies a long time ago, but they were slow getting into production, and our movie was rushed through fast, so now it is being released just as eve is and mgm*9 is using very similar publicity, so everyone believes that they are all the same story, and we are not only getting the jump on them but building on their publicity.
anyway i hope you’ll see lizzie. the ads are going to be very embarrassing but at least my name is in very tiny letters. they seem to think it will be successful. they are going to make a fuss about it in bennington; they are trying to arrange to have it open here, and the local paper runs stories about it. practically the only lines of mine they left in are the ones for joan blondell, who is the old aunt; she sits there with a fifth of bourbon and babbles. they must have used up twenty cases of bourbon in the movie; there are shots of people carrying out bushel baskets of empty bottles. stanley says it is because in hollywood they don’t know anything about drinking because they all take dope. they don’t know much about psychology either. i did a good deal of background reading before i wrote the book and one area of hysterical behavior i know backward and forward is the dissociated personality. they have made her into a lunatic, which she can’t be, by definition, and the doctor cures her with a very interesting combination of freudian analysis, pre-freudian hypnosis, jungian word-association, and rorshak inkblots. not one of these systems gets along with any of the others in real life, but i guess it is different in the movies. i should think every analyst in the country would shoot himself, which of course might be a good idea too, except that then all the bennington students who are being analysed would have to find something else to do.
stanley goes to boston tomorrow to give a lecture at brandeis college, and he is nervous. he got a new suit to wear and he has written out a nice lecture and boston is one place you can get to from here, since there is a train which goes there, although none going to new york. he comes back on wednesday and then without doing more than packing another clean shirt he goes off to new york.
i figure that about next fall i will be able to get myself a whole new wardrobe. i am so pleased; i have lost twenty-five pounds and people keep commenting on it. i find i am much more agile, too, running up and down stairs as i couldn’t a few months ago. this diet has affected my capacity for drinking; last night we were playing bridge and i had two drinks and passed out cold. i am feeling very guilty and strange this morning, although of course these days i cannot ever drink enough to make me feel lousy the next morning. blood pressure is fine, by the way.
just got a call from my hollywood character in new york (he calls me darling, he honestly does) to say that the movie opens at loews state in new york on april 29th. he asked very politely about the chicken pox, but he never waits for me to answer anyway. whatever i say he just says “isn’t that darling,” and then “be talking to you again, darling.” i said i thought the movie was wonderful and he said he’d “call the coast right away and let them know.”
jannie and sally spent their school vacation cooking, and barry learned to make jello. jannie gave up her piano lessons because they bored her, and spends all her time reading. she is going to give another small dance in a couple of weeks; she and laurie alternate, and i am getting so i can handle a dozen teen-age dancers with no trouble. with laurie’s parties stanley and i have to hide in the study, but with jannie’s parties i have to hang around, because they get to giggling and get slightly hysterical.
sally has been very odd. sally has read through every child’s book in the house and is now raiding our books. if you can imagine an eight-year-old girl reading adult novels. we try to steer her to the wholesome ones (if there are any) and i don’t know what is going to happen. jannie gets books from the library, nice girl’s books about nurses and boarding schools, but sally disdains them. we heard indirectly that she had made a scene in school, tearing up her language workbook because it was boring. at the same time her grades have gone way down, and she keeps trying to make excuses to stay home from school. i am going to have to go in and see her teacher, but i know it is at least partly the teacher’s fault; laurie and jannie both had the same teacher, and they hated her. she uses incorrect grammar and teaches the children incorrect pronunciations. sally is far and away the brightest kid in the class, and is fairly stubborn about being right.
college starts on monday. poor stanley; he dreads it; he will have to get up at seven every morning. at least it means that the faculty will be coming back after the winter, and there will be a decent poker game, instead of the four lonely souls who sat around all winter.
barry just came home from school, which means that i have to make lunch. lots and lots of love to you both.
s.
• • •
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
March 18 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
A lady wrote me that her writing instructor made her copy out one of my stories word by word in longhand.
These are the writers of tomorrow.
I have really lost twenty-five pounds. Barry is enjoying an asthma-res
piratory virus, and I am able to race up and down stairs carrying thermometers and trays in a fashion I could never have done six months ago. I am unbearably complacent about it, and yet I notice that in Sundial all they do is eat. Writing is therapy.
Anxious to hear the results of your negotiations with Roger. One of my greatest pleasures would be gone if I had to admit that he was a nice guy.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
thursday [early 1957]
dearest mother and pop,
it was so good to get your letter and to hear that pop is better and you are going to have a vacation. it will do you both a world of good to lie in the sun and soak up a lot of vitamins—it would do me good, as a matter of fact, since i seem to be enjoying one of those things they call a virus now (i always thought they were colds) and am running a temperature and feeling generally lousy.
i wanted to tell you about sally; i told you that she was not eating or sleeping, and was generally thin and pale and snapping at everybody. i took her to the doctor and he said there was nothing wrong with her, and i must try to find out if she was worried about something, or having some kind of trouble. so i spent hours talking to her, and trying to reassure her, and all she would say was that she had been having bad dreams, and that she was frightened, but she wouldn’t say why. then i got a call from the mother of one of the kids in sally’s class, asking if sally had ever mentioned the teacher and i said not particularly, and she said well, she had just taken her boy to the doctor because he was generally not well, and he had finally told her that the teacher had been bullying him, and that sally was another of her victims. then it all began to come out; i talked to sally and to other mothers, and i wish you could have heard the things that have been going on, with thirty children so terrified that they didn’t dare tell. sally has been whipped with a yardstick, slapped in the face, had a clothespin fastened onto her ear, called a liar and a thief, and been made to stand up in front of the class to be publicly humiliated; one little boy had his head smashed against the iron radiator, another had red pepper poured inside his clothes, another had her face scrubbed with scouring powder, the class in general has been told they were fools and were all going to be sent back to the first grade to start all over, and any of them who answered back or tried to tell their parents were punished.
i went in to the teacher and told her flatly that if she ever touched sally again i would personally take the yardstick to her, and so for the past week sally has been reasonably safe; we had called an emergency meeting of the school board for last night so about twenty-five parents showed up at the school, and we told the school board all these things, and it got more and more horrible, because we kept hearing more that we did not know—she has been telling the kids nightmare stories (one about a mother murdering three little babies) to frighten them, and she keeps a baseball bat beside her desk to enforce order. for some reason, probably because i was madder than i think i have ever been, i did most of the talking, and said flatly that if the teacher was not removed at once i would withdraw my four children from the school and see that the whole affair got as much publicity as possible. i had a temperature of 102 and was probably a little more excited than usual. anyway this morning the school superintendent called to say that there was a new teacher in the third grade, and that the old sadist had been bounced. now all we have to do is get sally back to normal.
laurie is doing better and better with his trumpet; he and his friend tony, who plays the drums, put on a performance at the high school variety show; they were a sensation, and the result has been that they have been invited to join an adult band here, called the sage city six; their trumpet player left them and they had largely dissolved until they decided to take in laurie, but unfortunately they cannot accept any paying dates because laurie is too young. tony is eighteen, so he represents no problem, but poor laurie cannot even get a union card, so they can only play privately. they can, however, play for school programs and such, and they will play for the lions club minstrel show. as a result laurie is getting a lot of experience in playing in public, and is no longer as nervous as he was. he apparently cannot read music at all but has a fine ear and can pick up anything fast, and his trumpet teacher says his tone is as fine as anyone he has ever heard.
much love,
s.
• • •
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
April 29 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
Here is your second thrilling installment of Sundial. I am so generally despondent over stories, books, money, Sally and almost everything else that almost any kind word on it would be welcome.
Can you think of any way I can use the Sally incident as a story without being libelous? I am still so angry, but so is everyone else; our whole town got into the fight, and it just goes on and on, and the teacher is still teaching.
I can always comfort myself with Laurie, however; he is now playing with a small local band, all college boys, and the other night they played in Arlington and at two-thirty I was still sitting up waiting for Laurie and the door crashed open and he came weaving in; he had decided to be grownup like the college boys, and had been drinking beer all evening. For a minute I was shocked and then it struck me funny, and I sat on the stairs and howled while Laurie just grinned foolishly. I had to put him to bed, poor baby, and the next morning he was horribly sick, so I guess he has learned his lesson.
Partly I am despondent because I cannot use either Sally or Laurie for stories.
Anyway I’ll be waiting anxiously for some word on this our Sundial.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Bernice Baumgarten]
May 1 [1957]
Dear Bernice,
I have been reading an eighteenth-century moral tale about lying, by a lovely lady named Mrs. Amelia Opie.*10 She discusses various forms of “social” lying, like flattery, and instructing your footman to tell unwelcome guests that you are not at home (and so teaching the servant class to lie, you perceive) and pretending to acquaintance with the nobility when you are actually not received at their houses, and such. She illustrates each form of lying with an instructive little tale, showing how inheritances were lost and lovers betrayed by these little social lies.
Now I wonder if such an article is not possible now, either taking off from Mrs. Opie, (finding how her lies apply today, or, contrariwise, how hopelessly out of date they are in this age of professionals) or starting from scratch with two or three modern forms of lying, each illustrated by a little moral tale. In this case it might even be two or three different articles. They would have to be odd kinds of lying—her Lie of Benevolence, for instance, would hold that it is a kind lie to keep the news of impending death from a sufferer; Mrs. Opie points out that this is not justified, particularly if the sufferer has not made a will and you stand to inherit. She is absolutely serious, by the way.
I do not want to get tangled in this unless you think it has possibilities. I have actually found my niche in life, which is fighting with the school board. Because I was unable to think about anything else, I wrote the whole Sally business down, and so have complete notes for a story, someday.
Best,
Shirley
• • •
[To Geraldine and Leslie Jackson]
july 12 [1957]
dearest mother and pop,
i’ve been wanting to write for a long time, but have been wholly tied up with the new book of which, thank heaven, the first draft is now finished, except that i can’t decide on which of four or five endings. also, we’ve been having our usual mid-summer rush of unexpected guests, and yesterday i sat in the study and worked while five different people arrived, spent a whi
le, and left. it is really too much, particularly since one was here for lunch and three for dinner. in the evening after we got rid of everybody stanley read my manuscript and didn’t like the ending i used and we squabbled about it (a very good subject to quarrel about, actually, since we were both sore at all the company and just pretended it was a literary difference) and stanley was so annoyed that he couldn’t sleep which always happens to him, and sat up reading and snarling until about four-thirty and then tried to come to bed quietly and of course woke me and i remembered about the company and the ending of the book and couldn’t get back to sleep, so now it is seven-thirty and stanley is sound asleep and i have been up since four-thirty and i refuse to change the ending of the book because why should he sleep and i can’t?
we took laurie down to lenox, with about four tons of assorted equipment—tape recorders, record players and even a clean shirt. we didn’t hear a word from him for a week, and then he called to say he had the fourth of july off, just one day, and if i could pick him up at nine (there is no bus or train) that morning and get him back by nine the following morning, he could come home. so of course i said i would, and i set the alarm for six, and went to bed at ten o’clock while stanley went out to play poker, and slept through the alarm, and stanley came home from the poker game at six-thirty and shook me and said “wake up and go get laurie; i won eighty-two dollars” so without ever quite waking up i gathered the eighty-two dollars and barry, who was awake because stanley had made considerable noise getting up the stairs, and barry and i headed for lenox, stopping on the way to have a very fine eighty-two dollar breakfast. laurie turned out to be wildly enthusiastic about the inn and excited about all that he was doing; all the rest of the boys are much older, in their twenties, but they have taken him in as an equal, largely i gather because of his trumpet playing. they work hard all day and play all night. laurie has been taking care of the athletic equipment and bell-hopping. he says bop musicians only tip a quarter and every time someone comes in and insists on carrying one small suitcase and letting the bellhop take the others, you can figure the small suitcase has a bottle of whisky in it. he has also been running the lights at the concerts, and has managed to get free access to the potting shed by playing the bass fiddle, which he seems to have learned how to do. yesterday we got a long letter, very cheerful and happy, announcing that ethel waters’*11 manager had borrowed the mike to our tape recorder and wrecked it trying to change the wiring, and laurie had tried to catch a falling coke bottle, had cut the palm of his hand so badly that he had to be rushed into pittsfield where a doctor took three stitches. and he can only carry bags with one hand, which means two trips which means two tips. he doesn’t say how he plays the bass one-handed.