My God! My God!
Dear Betty:
Our family recently spent a weekend in our nation’s Capital. While there we visited the moving Vietnam Memorial. Upon our return home I penned the following lines, which I would like to share with you.
You Could Have Been a Son of Ours
You could have been a son of ours
If we had ever had a son,
You could have been our pride and joy
But someone shot you with a gun
And now your work is done.
You perished in a jungle wild
So that our freedoms might be insured.
You risked your life without complaint
You laid it down without a word.
And now upon a long black stone
Are chiseled words that give you fame;
You could have been a son of ours—
We’re proud to say, “We know your name”
Emily
READERS:
Policy change! Policy change! Pay attention, now, because I’m not kidding around. Hereafter this column will continue to run the usual advice letters, recipes, and household hints; but we will no longer publish original verse. There will be no exceptions. Don’t even think about it.
Dear Betty:
I guess you think you’re pretty funny. I guess you think we’re all hicks and idiots out here.
Well, maybe you’re right, but I’ll tell you one thing. That old letter I asked for about “The Other Woman”? It’s not the one you ran before, even though you said it was, or you changed it in some way. I may not be super intelligent but I’ve got a good memory, and what’s more I know when I’m being made fun of.
You know what? You really hurt me. Congratulations.
Sister Sue
Dear Sis:
I am ashamed.
I, too, have an excellent memory, and for this reason my record-keeping has never been systematic. And very occasionally I confuse genuine mail with letters I have concocted for one reason or another. This is what happened in your case. I had you down as a fiction.
I can’t apologize enough.
Dear Betty:
Aren’t you taking a big chance, admitting that you make up some of this stuff? Also, you haven’t dealt with Sister Sue’s real complaint, which is that now, inexplicably, after spending three decades securing the trust and affection of middle American women, you expose yourself as a misanthrope, misogynist, intellectual snob, and cheat. What are you up to, anyway?
F.P.S.
Dear F:
Look, nobody reads this but us gals, so I’m hardly “taking a big chance.” And it should be obvious, especially to you, that I’m “up to” no good.
Dear Betty:
Do you believe in God? I don’t. Also, do you ever sit in front of a mirror and stare at your face? My face is so blobby that I can’t figure out how even my own parents can recognize me. Lastly, do you think we should be selling weapons to Jordan?
Fifteen and Wondering
Dear Wondering:
Take five years off after you graduate from high school. Move away from home, get a menial job, fall for as many unworthy young men as it takes to get all that nonsense out of your system. Don’t even think about college until your mind is parched and you are frantic to learn. Don’t marry in your twenties. Don’t be kind to yourself. Keep in touch.
Dear Betty:
I was not “lying about the sex”; nor do I for a minute imagine that you thought I was. You simply could not resist making a flip wisecrack at my expense.
I was lying about my friends, who have gradually lost their affection for me but continue to socialize with us because they value my husband’s company. He is aging well. I am turning into a fool. I’m one of those handsome old beauties with a gravelly, post-menopausal voice and a terrible laugh. I never had much of a sense of humor, but once I had a smoky, provocative laugh, which has now somehow become the sort of theatrical bray that hushes crowds. Strangers, accosted by me at parties, attacked at lunch counters and in elevators, shift and squirm in alarm: even the most obtuse knows he’s about to be mugged, that he will not be allowed to pass until I have exacted my tribute. I am all affectation, obvious need and naked ego: just that kind of horrible woman who imagines herself an unforgettable character. I tell off-color jokes and hold my breath after the punch line, threatening to asphyxiate if you fail to applaud my remarkably emancipated attitude. During the past forty years I have told countless people about the stillbirth of my son, to show that I Have Known Great Sorrow. I parade my political beliefs, all liberal and unexamined, as evidence of my wisdom. I am a deeply boring, fatuous woman, and strangers pity me, friends lose patience with me, and my family loves me because it never occurs to any of them that I know it. I am the emperor in his new clothes, who knew perfectly well he was naked, who just needed a little attention, that’s all, merely the transfixed attention of the entire populace, not an unreasonable request, just unlimited lifetime use of the cosmic footlights.
Don’t try to tell me I can change. Of course I can’t. And don’t for an instant presume that I’m not all that bad. I am. Believe it.
Niobe
Dear Niobe:
Yes, but on the other hand your astonishing self-awareness makes you a genuinely tragic figure. And, Honey, cling to this: you’re not ordinary. Commonplace sufferers find themselves trapped in homely, deformed, or dying bodies; you’re trapped in an inferior soul. You really are a remarkable woman. Bravo!
How about it, Ladies? Isn’t she something?
Dear Betty:
Just who the hell do you think you are?
Washington Wallop
Dear Wallop:
I am 147 pounds of despair in a fifty-pound mail sack. Though overpaid I groan with ennui beneath the negligible weight of your all too modest expectations, and when I fail to counter one of your clichés with another twice as mindless I apologize, even though the fault, God knows, is yours. I am
Betty
Dear Betty:
Temper, temper.
F.P.S.
Dear F:
I can’t help it. That broad really frosts my butt.
Dear Betty:
Do I have an inner life? I think I read somewhere that women don’t. Also, what does it mean? Do you think we’re capable of original thought?
Fifteen and Still Wondering
Dear Wondering:
I love you, and wish you were my own daughter. I have in fact two daughters, but neither of them has an inner life. I am what they call nowadays a “controlling personality.” (Believe me, dear, that’s not what they used to call it.) I was one of those omniscient mothers—the ones who always claim to know what their children are thinking, what they’ve just done, what they are planning to do. Not for any sinister reasons, mind you, but I got so good at guessing and predicting that, without intending to, I actually convinced them both of their utter transparency. They are each adrift, goalless and pathetic. They are big soft women, big criers, especially when they spend much time with me. I think I should feel worse about this than I actually do. Do you think this is Darwinian of me? (Hint: Go to a good library, and take out some books on Darwin.)
Dear Betty:
It’s me again! Do you have any suggestions as to what I can do with a ten-foot length of old garden hose?
Petunia
Dear Petunia:
Do you ever just sit still? Do you ever just sit in front of a mirror, for instance, and stare at your face? It’s none of my business, but—and I say this with no snide intent; I am trying to be good, so that my teeth are literally clenched as I write this—I seriously think you should calm down. Petunia, even the Athenians threw things away. Let the garden hose be what it is, a piece of garbage. Now sit very very very still and try to think of nothing but the weight of your eyelids. Come to rest. Let your muscles slip and slide. Easy does it, girl. Easy. Shhhhhhhhhhhh.
Dear Betty:
Maybe you should stop “trying t
o be good” if that’s the best you can do. If I were Petunia, I’d rather get a wisecrack than a lot of patronizing advice based upon a snap analysis of my character and the circumstances of my life. You’re a fine one to exhort them to wonder, be surprised, and admit to possibilities. On the basis of little evidence you’ve turned the woman into a cartoon. You don’t see her as a person at all, just a type Early thirties, right? Hyper-thyroid, narrow-shouldered, big-bottomed, frantically cheery, classically obsessive-compulsive; a churchgoing, choir-singing, Brownie troop mothering Total Woman with a soft sweet high voice, darting panic behind her deep-set eyes, an awful cornball sense of humor, and an overbite like a prairie dog Am I right? Boy, how trite can you get! And how presumptuous you’ve become! I’ve tried to see it your way, but it’s no go. I say, bring back the Original Betty.
F.P.S.
Dear F:
Look, we know for a fact she’s a cornball. No one who asks what she should do with a ten-foot length of hose could possibly have a sense of humor. As for the rest, well, I stayed up half the night trying to imagine another psychological context for her question (which, I must object, is hardly “a little evidence”), so that if I have failed it isn’t for lack of trying.
Oh, all right, I admit it. I did see her as a type. But it becomes so difficult to believe that Petunia, or any of them, has any kind of independent existence. Remember, these folks are just words on a page; of course they’re full-fleshed and complex, but I have to take this on faith. Most of them probably think they’re revealing their true selves, whereas really they tell me almost nothing, and with every letter I’m supposed to make up a whole person, out of scraps.
I don’t like to complain, but this doesn’t get any easier with practice, and I’m tiring now, and losing my nerve. I can live with not being nice—nobody nice would do what I do—but what if I’m not any good?
READERS:
Do you think that failure of the imagination can have moral significance? I mean, is it a character flaw or just an insufficiency of skill? Is triteness a sin? Or what?
Dear Betty:
Last night my husband woke me up at 2:00 A.M. with a strange request. Then after awhile this old song started going through my head that I hadn’t thought about for thirty years. I must have gone through the darn thing ten thousand times. It got so I was following the words with a bouncing ball, so that even when I blocked out the sound that old ball was still bobbing away in my head and I never did get to sleep until sunrise. The question is, does anybody out there know the missing words?
Herman the German and Frenchie the Swede
Set out for the Alkali Flats—Oh!
Herman did follow and Frenchie did lead
And they carried something in, or on, their hats—Oh!
Now Herman said, “Frenchie, let’s rest for a while,
“My pony has something the matter with it—Oh!”
Now Frenchie said, “Herman, we’ll rest in a mile,
“On the banks of the River Something—Oh!”*
Now Hattie McGurk was a sorrowful gal,
Something something something.
She had a dirt camp in the high chaparral
And a something as wide as Nebraska.
There’s more, but I never did know the other verses, so they don’t matter so much.
Betty, we sure do love you out here in Elko.
Sleepytime Sal
Dear Betty:
One time I was at this Tupperware party at my girlfriend’s. Actually, it was just like a Tupperware party, only it was marital underwear, but it was run the same way. Anyway, everybody was drinking beer and passing around the items, and cutting up, you know, laughing about the candy pants and whatnot, and having a real good time. Only all of a sudden this feeling came over me. I started feeling real sorry for everybody, even though they were screaming and acting silly. I thought about how much work it was to have fun, and how brave we all were for going to the trouble, since the easiest thing would be to just moan and cry and bite the walls, because we’re all going to die anyway, sooner or later. Isn’t that sad? I saw how every human life is a story, and the story always ends badly. It came to me that there wasn’t any God at all and that we’ve always known this, but most of us are too polite and kind to talk about it. Finally I got so blue that I had to go into the bathroom and bawl. Then I was all right.
Partly Sunny
Dear Betty:
When I was first married you ran a recipe in your column called “How to Preserve Your Mate.” It had all kinds of stuff in it like “fold in a generous dollop of forgiveness” and “add plenty of spice.” I thought it was so cute that I copied it out on a sampler. Time went by, and I got a divorce, and finished high school, and then I got a university scholarship, and eventually a masters degree in business administration. Now I’m married again, to a corporate tax lawyer, and we live in a charming old pre-Revolutionary farmhouse, and all our pillows are made of goose down, and our potholders and coffee mugs and the bedspreads and curtains in the children’s rooms all have Marimekko prints, and every item of clothing I own is made of natural fiber. But I never threw that old sampler away, and every now and then, when I’m all alone, I take it out and look at it and laugh my head off about what an incredible middle-class jerk I used to be.
Save the Whales
Dear Betty:
This is the end of the line for you and the rest of your ilk. We shall no longer seek the counsel of false matriarchs, keepers of the Old Order, quislings whose sole power derives from the continuing bondage of their sisters. Like the dinosaurs, your bodies will fuel the new society, where each woman shall be sovereign, and acknowledge her rage, and validate her neighbor’s rage, and rejoice in everybody’s rage, and caper and dance widdershins beneath the gibbous moon.
Turning and Turning in the Widening Gyre
Dear Betty:
I did what you said and sat real quiet and let myself go. Then you know what happened? I got real nutty and started wondering if I was just an idea in the mind of God. Is this an original thought? ’Cause if it is, you can keep it.
Hey, are you all right?
Petunia
Dear Petunia:
No, since you ask. My mother is dying. My husband’s mistress has myesthenia gravis. My younger daughter just gave all of her trust money to the Church of the Famous Maker. And I, like Niobe, am not aging well. My ulcer is bleeding, I can’t sleep, and I’m not so much depressed as humiliated, both by slapstick catastrophe and by the minute tragedy of my wasted talents. To tell you the truth, I feel like hell.
Dear Betty:
I can see you have problems, dear, but whining doesn’t advance the ball. Why not make a list of all your blessings and tape it to your medicine chest? Or send an anonymous houseplant to your oldest enemy? Why not expose yourself to the clergyman of your choice? Or, you could surprise hubby with a yummy devil’s food layer cake, made from scratch in the nude.
Or, if nothing seems to work, you can put your head down and suffer like any other dumb animal. This always does the trick for me.
Ha ha ha. How do you like it, Sister? Ha ha ha ha ha.
Bitterly Laughing in the Heartland
Dear Betty:
See? They’re closing in. You had to try it, didn’t you, you got them going, and now all hell’s breaking loose. You took a sweet racket and ruined it, and for what? Honor? Integrity? Aesthetic principle? Well, go ahead and martyr yourself, but leave me out of it.
F.P.S.
READERS.
For what it’s worth,
Betty Really Believes
That God is criminally irresponsible.
That nobility is possible.
That hope is necessary.
That courage is commonplace.
That sentimentality is wicked.
That cynicism is worse.
That most people are surprisingly good sports.
That some people are irredeemable idiots.
That everybody on the Bo
ard of Directors of GM, Ford, Chrysler, and U.S. Steel, and every third member of Congress and the Cabinet ought to be taken out, lined up against a wall and shot.
That whining, though ugly, sometimes advances the ball.
How about it, Readers? What do you believe?
Dear Betty:
Does anybody have the recipe for Kooky Cake?
Kooky in Dubuque
Dear Kooky:
Forget the cake. The cake is terrible. What we’re trying for here is a community of souls, a free exchange of original thoughts, an unrehearsed, raucous, a cappella chorus of Middle American women.
A Symphony of Gals!
Kooky, for God’s sake, tell me your fears, your dreams, your aw-fullest secrets, and I’ll tell you mine. Tell me, for instance, why you use that degrading nickname. I’m sending you my private phone number. Use it. Call me, Kooky. Call me anytime. Call collect. Call soon.
That goes for everybody else. All my dear readers, the loyal and the hateful, the genuine and the fictional, the rich and the strange. Call me anytime. Or, I’ll send you my home address. Drop in. I’m serious. Let’s talk.
Serious? You’re critical. These people are going to kill you.
These people are my dearest friends. I love them all.
You do not! You don’t even know them!
What’s the question?
But…sentimentality is wicked.
But cynicism is worse.
Under the Bed
On November 6 of last year, at around 8:15 P.M., I was beaten and raped by a man named Raymond C. Moreau, Jr., who had entered our first-floor apartment through a living room window while I was taking a shower. This is neither the most significant event in my life nor the most interesting; nevertheless it is a fact, around which cluster many other facts, and the truth is always worth telling. As I approach forty I am learning to value the truth for its own sake; I discover that most people have little use for it, beyond its practical applications, except as the glue that holds together rickety constructs of theory and opinion. As a rule the brighter and better educated select their facts with great care.
Jenny and the Jaws of Life Page 12
