by Lucia Berlin
Trip was too much. Jeff was fine, Mark delighted, especially by Indianapolis. Once we had lunch under an ombú tree across from the copper colored sorghum by a watering hole.
The most magnificent thing I ever saw in my life was the MISSISSIPPI at Alton. I felt PATRIOTIC—imagine the settlers and pioneers.
We were efficient until St. Louis (never got a ruddy road map), where we got mixed up and almost made it to Mattoon—we drove all around up there—then later at about 2 A.M. I missed the Ohio through-way and this is the thing about the East—you can’t change your mind—you can’t screw up, you can’t stop.
NO STOPPING
At least in Missouri there were nice signs on one-way streets on the other side thru the rearview mirror that said
TURN BACK NOW
YOU ARE GOING IN
THE WRONG DIRECTION
Anyway, I missed the through-way so we ended up in Cleveland where I got lost in almost dawn on streets above the FACTORIES—brick and fog and smoke and lights. Watch out. Wow.
And you know after going up there so we could drive by Lake Erie—the road was about 50 miles from the lake. We had a glimpse of it, at dawn, from Euclid Ave. in Cleveland.
We got to Race’s house on Sunday afternoon. This is the thing I would so love to express, my awe, my complete incomprehension of a real house where birches grow that were planted when each child was born with attics and cellars and summerhouses and all the people in the town have known everyone all their lives and all their relatives and they see each other all the time and like it and speak of birth and death with this fantastic War and Peace acceptance. Aunt Fan, showing us her (lovely) house—took us into the study—a real New England paneled study and said “We don’t use it much, except for funerals, to put the coats in.”
How lovely it was that Race brought me home—that “Sandy” came home. We are having a vacation and a rest and a honeymoon. Walk down Main St. and through these crazy flowers and grass all over—look thru boxes in the attic—with books and photos and poems by Race and have dinner in dining room with flowers and candles and butter plates and Mark picked corn from a corn field and washed it and ate it. (He is out of his HEAD!) Went to see cousin Andy and his wife Esther and Dorns, these people are TOO much—they work so hard and so easily and mulch (I love that word) and sow and reap and can and prune and graft and darn and bake and plant all their food and everything is so cyclical and ORDERED and NICE—they are all nice—with this crazy wit and an INTEREST in things, everything, and a joy from the views they see every day. I am meeting everyone. They take me in. I don’t mean they approve or accept or like me, altho they do, I think, but they take me into their War and Peace scene, to their cradles in the attic, and Jeff sleeping in Grandma Proctor’s crib that was Bobby’s crib too and it’s so nice and terrifying. I’ve never known a family.
I keep thinking of the last family reunion my family had, the children of my grandfather in El Paso and of Mamie, his wife, with big tears in her eyes as she held his coffee cup by the sides while he sat down so he could quick grab it by the handle and drink it down boiling.
That reunion was on Christmas and aside from being a house full of about 30 people there were these things happening. Most of all everyone there was wishing for my aunt to die. She and my uncle had been so bloody happy and in love and fine, all their life, but then she got very sick—really in agony—pain all the time. It was like a reverse Dorian Grey how her body began to destroy her with self-pity and fear and how she began to destroy everyone else. That Christmas Dr. Holt was there, who somehow illegally kept my aunt on cocaine and himself in terrible remorse and horror. My uncle who loved her and watched her and cried at night. Her children who hated her for making my uncle’s life so horrible. Her mother, who prayed, was crazy, and who my aunt wouldn’t let out of her room not even to eat, only twice a day to go to the bathroom. I was there and it was 2 weeks before my divorce was final and my parents were leaving in 3 weeks. Rex Kipp was there and he is a rich rancher and he and my uncle are best friends. A few days before, he and my uncle had split in a plane and everybody thought they had just gone to get drunk but I found out later they had been preparing for a Santa Claus thing in Mexico where during the night they went to this poor village and put seed and beans and meal and toys and clothes at all the doors. Which is a pretty repulsive Texan thing to do but not really if you think of two drunk millionaires putting around in a plane trying like hell to think of something nice to do, anything nice to do, with their money on Christmas.
Anyway, on Christmas Eve it was cold and there were several things going on—two factions—the drunk ones giving each other deep freezers and TV sets and telling jokes and the religious ones singing the Lord’s Prayer and some people cooking hams and turkeys. Poker games and people riding up on new Palominos and everybody had some personal scene—awful violent Faulkner scene going—aside from Christmas Eve, but it was Christmas Eve and my aunt said, “You want me to die, OK, I will,” and climbed onto a roof with only a bathrobe on and lay down and it snowed, in El Paso.
There is a crazy thing about my family. If you’re going thru a room and meet anyone going thru or sitting, you stop and you touch them, or you contact them—you affirm something—even if often it’s some bitter angry thing.
So I can’t understand these truly positive people—honest people. Here is the negative portion of my letter and this is what I meant, Edw., when I said I was afraid. I am afraid because I can’t make this scene, this nice, so really GOOD HONEST POSITIVE SCENE—where nobody weeps or screams or curses or hugs or fucks up or despairs or desires or kids themselves or dreams. Like the Newtons, truly so kind and they love Sandy (Race), very much—but when they saw him they said, “Why, hello Sanford!” But no weeping. When cousin Andy came back from the war half-dead, after horrible time, his father shook his hand. “Hello, Andrew.” Nobody is CORNY here.
And so corniness ultimately unimportant and superficial—the dependability and strength of love is here. Ah. But once when I was very little I dug Frost and “Stopping by Woods” and then I read “The Death of the Hired Man” and there is a line there that says (more or less) “Home is where, if you haven’t anywhere else to go, they have to take you in.”
I wish I had my damn typewriter—I want to write—which is crazy. I suddenly have 100s of things to write—but anyway the second day we were in Little Falls, in that lovely place, THE WELL RAN DRY! No water! First time in 60 years.
So we came to Hatch Lake—TO SHADYSIDE where SANDY GREW UP—A CRAZY LAKE and CRAZY (real) CABIN and we are camping, washing selves and clothes in the lake and Mark and Jeff delirious. Crayfish and snails and water snakes and squirrels and chickadees—we lie down in bed and see tons of trees and the sky and if you sit up against the pillow you look down on the lake. Right now we are at the dock and Jeff is throwing rocks and snails in the water. Race is reading (he has 100s of crazy books here), I am in a boat with a cat, and Heinz is tormenting us. Mark’s asleep in Grandma Proctor’s iron bed.
Last nite Aunt Moe, who lives next door, came to dinner with Race’s mother and father and Dana, his brother and Lee, Dana’s wife, and their children, and we had corn (you put the water on—then run and pick corn, quick dump it in, cover it with husks—cook for 3 min. and eat). We ate out on porch over lake on old chairs with oil cloth on table and it was nice and fun. Aunt Moe is as lovely a lady as I had imagined (she’s the box and paper lady). We had a good talk while we boiled water in crazy kettles and washed dishes and cut glass jelly bowls.
I’m getting seasick. Mark and Jeff are FAT and browning. I AM FAT—can’t button that blue dress I had in Santa Fe over me at all, in fact I am suddenly wholesome as hell—fat and no makeup (first time in 10 years) and tired from rowing and reaching across big old beds to make them.
Hey and the main reason I’m writing is that Race’s father, when we ran out of water, called Mr. Jay Murphy, who is a
DOUSER
who came in these crazy grey ov
eralls with his alder stick and started stomping thru the woods and found where 3 veins of water met.
He gave me the stick and had me walk toward where the water was and I did and nothing happened. We did it again and he took one end of the Y and I took another—just barely holding it. He took my hand and as we got closer the end started to pull downwards—to be PULLED by the EARTH.
He said it didn’t matter what kind of a stick he used—that he could do it with wire, even, because it was the GIFT, his gift that mattered. “I don’t know why. I just know.”
Dr. Newton tested him by asking him to try it in places where he (Dr.) knew exactly where the vein was, and Mr. Murphy got it absolutely right. It was so damned far out, his hands so EASTERN and SO OLD.
Ee-ah, they say, instead of yeah or OK.
Aunt Moe has the gift of dousing too and I can see it—she has will. Didn’t we speak of this, Edw.? WILL, that is what people have here—somewhere it should relate to faith, like Melville’s, or to passion, somewhere it could, could be power—like Melville—because it is strength—but there is the order, the order of Melville’s “I and My Chimney.”
Now we are on the porch. I’m on a silly old chair by a pillow, with faded brown needlepoint that says:
LOOK UP AND NOT DOWN
LOOK FORWARD AND NOT BACK
LOOK OUT AND NOT IN
I keep beginning to end this illegible letter—but to end I always want to say something about leaving you and knowing you—we miss you. This is what’s left, like my uncle said, how we are friends.
Love, Lucia
P.S. Mark got in a rowboat all by himself—lugged the oars up and into the slot deal and rowed perfectly, except that boat was moored or anchored or whatever. He is radiant, beautiful.
My story came back from Kerouac. Said it was the wrong address—is it Rhode Island or Long Island?
1959 [September]
Little Falls, New York
Dorns
501 Camino Sin Nombre
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Ee-ah, but I try to reread my letter and there it is—but just barely because ultimately I’m so confident and happy—but it’s there—the shrill positivism. So let me say two things in my new campaign for it. One is that when I sit on top of the hill by the summer house where it is so quiet—thick and cushioned with grass and flowers, and it’s still. Where everything is green and beautiful and you can’t see the sky except when the wind blows—well this is it, there is no sound and there is no light.
I feel awkward not being sure of the sky and to be facetious, but not really—you can’t see the river for the trees.
Remembered the day we moved into Alameda and we were washing dishes by the pump in the sun. Hell, I miss sitting on the steps when it is going down, with Buddy.
Buddy called on Monday—a typically horrid thing to do—he knew Aunt Fan and Aunt Moe and Aunt Reba and Cousin Betsy would be in the parlor by the phone, that Race would be there and that it would upset me and that it would make me happy to hear him—and this is the thing—it is so EASY for us to know how to touch each other or to hurt each other. I hurt him over the phone, he was crying—but the thing is that I did it not because I want him to simply go away—but because I was angry because he called, and angry, hurt, about the “broad is a broad” thing, which he said, even tho he said he didn’t. He said it because he was angry, knew it would hurt me. Isn’t this horrid—but it is so easy, the tenderness, and this is it.
Oh hell—this is complicated and I don’t know how to say it.
It’s like the difference between being drunk and being doped that we talked about.
The ultimate value of a drunken self—like me and Race—so awkward and clumsy but with it, trying to make a life—like trying to pick up a petal when you are drunk. This is worthwhile and positive.
I believe in this—it is so unnatural to me—it is hard.
Love, Lucia
1959 [Fall]
106 West 13th Street,
New York, New York
Dorns
501 Camino Sin Nombre
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Dear Dorns,
Hey, 1st of all, since letters are so groovy because only one person can talk at a time, it’s really crazy to have left and heard from you, Helene, such a nice long letter and crazy to have got it the day we moved into our new house on
106 W. 13th, NY, NY
Wow—we were worried too and for a while it was all very discouraging—car broke down several times ($$$$) and what with things like $100 deposit to get a phone, $300 deposit to move into a $100 a month apt. half as big and twice as beat as our house in Alameda, plus having no $ at all—it was pretty frightening. Every place we looked at was depressing, horrid, and expensive. There was one that was possible—$300 to move in, then only $65 a month. One big room, a hot plate, one window at one end and bath in the kitchen or vice versa—but it had a fireplace and was sort of jazzy—on Cornelia St., but couldn’t make the naturalism and poetic suffering of it even tho it was in throbbing heart of Village etc. So, anyway, we have a pretty crazy pad—I mean it is nice, up 4 flights of stairs and it is in back and is quiet with big windows in every room and a real kitchen (more or less) but it is LIGHT and sunny and there is a bay type window in one room that looks down and out on trees and everybody’s gardens in backyard. The street is nice, too, very Henry Jamesish with trees and window boxes and no delinquents, just old gentlemen and very old ladies. Anyway, it is nice and right now I’m on our bed and I see all these crazy minaret and parapet chimneys, and absolutely all I can hear since it’s Sunday are birds and buses and bells and I’m not trying to be alliterate but that’s all I hear, except Mark and Jeff, who are in their room and it’s sort of nice because they have their own sunny room, and are in it (barricaded) but can see us etc.
Race is in Little Falls picking up the piano—next thing is to get piano fixed up. The next thing is for me to get a job for 3 months, which shouldn’t be hard, I don’t think. I might get something with Grace Lines, since I speak Spanish and half of its passengers don’t speak English, and I know all the presidents and vice presidents. Then the next thing is for Race to get job which seems hard, seems harder to him, but I am very confident and it may take time, but in the job and music aspect, wow, I think this was the best move to have made, ultimately. Race plays better than 90% of piano players here—and the other 10%—how crazy (good and bad) that they are here working and playing at all—except that Bill Evans and Red Garland and Jaki Byard are all playing RIGHT NOW in N.Y. and we are too broke to go—or to Miles Davis, also here—very frustrating! But they are RIGHT HERE.
Yes, Edw., it was the best move—it really was. I didn’t know this, know it and believe it, when we left Albuquerque, or even when we got to Little Falls—because we hadn’t yet moved, ourselves, closer or higher or further—toward anything or each other.
And actually it was even worse for a while—it was as awful as it could be because we had done it, moved and agreed, and things were not better. I did not understand—I still was not trying to understand—why we were in Little Falls and felt as if I was not a part of Race’s life or what everyone there believed in—but it was because I’m still having trouble thinking of anything but myself. It wasn’t until I started to see Race coming from that life and from his family and from the trees and the lake that I began to understand him.
I was still pretty sick—I mean sick, like an illness, my masochism, which is like dope, the extreme of masochism-suicide, a denial—and I didn’t know then (honestly) that that was what Buddy was—everything that I hate—suicide like the snakes that devour each other. I don’t know what I wanted more, to destroy or to be swallowed—but I didn’t know this, I didn’t see how horrible I was—then I did, in myself. I’m trying not to say anything anymore that I am not sure is the truth.
Anyway, I feel like I have been very ill, and now I’m well and I’m tired and glad I’m well. Happy like you are when you are tired a
nd glad. I don’t think I am capable anymore of my false exhaltance, false positivism, I’m too tired and glad—and yes, again, this was the correct move.
We are walking and talking and laughing and fighting and worrying and getting mad and depressed and excited. It’s very crazy and good. And no matter what finally happens, we will have done this together, and worked at this—N.Y., at something.
And it is TOO much, N.Y. Everything. We have been all the hell over it. It is VAST. I mean vast. All these people LIVE in it, in every block and they are all going upstairs or downstairs or in or out and they are all a part of a block, a whole endless block with delicatessens and shoe stores and people going upstairs and downstairs.
Subways are crazy because you come up into a new world and it is as if the place you have been isn’t there anymore at all—which is crazy but I don’t like it, it’s just like airplanes—you don’t go from one place to another, you simply eliminate the first place.
But the buses are too much—how many hundreds of worlds and districts and parks and S. Klein’s and people you have to go thru to get to our house. And you could keep going thru millions of different others if you wanted to.
Hey Helene—that crazy black sweater you gave to Jeff—Maggie1 and I have capitalized on it. We’re starting a Home Industry—children’s sweaters and ponchos—borrowing $50 to put an ad in Westchester papers—people send $10, we buy $2 of wool and make it and send it and our business will begin to mushroom. I love that expression, since I saw mushrooms mushrooming in Little Falls.
