I FOUND a letter in our box from the book club who warned that if I did not send a blocking card I would receive a novel written by a policeman. It occurred to me that if policemen patrolled more and wrote less, the cities would be safer. You can no longer walk across Boston Common except with apprehension; only when you have passed on into the Public Gardens can you walk without glancing behind you.
Here was a letter from my elder son; my sons like so many other men's sons have not in the last few years had an easy time of it. My sons like so many other men's sons are gentle, talented liberal arts majors and the business world is alien to them; I'm afraid I taught them a scorn of the business world, of business people as money-grubbers, and of politicians as parasites, like those who inherit wealth. However, these grubbers and parasites are in the majority and scratch each other's backs, and must be manipulated. I did not teach my sons to manipulate because I myself do not know how to manipulate.
My sons sometimes need help and I am happy to help them, since I didn't teach them to be aggressive. I have sometimes needed help.
My neighbor the portrait painter has suggested that I haven't handled things correctly and that he, who regards himself as shrewd and sensible, has handled things better and that it would be good for my sons if from time to time I refused them, and I would refuse them if I were not afraid that if I did they would be going without something they needed. In my view, fathers are supposed to help. I believe that is what fathers are for.
“Very well,” my neighbor said.
Then quite by accident I found he had but recently purchased a farm for his daughter and son-in-law because only with a farm could they live as they liked. They wanted to kill their own chickens and make their own bread. Without their own farm it was impossible to be as real as they wished to be.
So, a letter from a son.
And I wasn't surprised to find a letter from the eldest of my aunts, Roberta, for it was she who most often wrote me after my mother's death — took me over.
Dear Tom:
Polly wrote me about the woman this morning and I never heard of anything so crazy in my whole life! I mean I got the letter this morning after I had my coffee. I'm not much good until I've had it. They bring it in at Holiday Inns. In Phoenix, anyway.
Whoever this Nofzinger woman is or whatever she calls herself you can bet your boots it's got something to do with money. That's what they do, these people!
I'll tell you one thing, she's not Beth's daughter! You know perfectly well your mother would never do a thing like that, be with a man before she married him because none of us would and Beth especially because of how she was. I was always closer to her than anybody else because of our age. Anyway Mama would have told me if anything like that had happened and she never did. You can imagine Mama!
I don't think Polly was taken in but if she was it's because she's liable to think the best of people like when the cooks used to steal Papa's field glasses off the gunrack. I think maybe the woman got wind that Mama was Sheep Queen and thought she'd cash in on it. But a good lawyer would fix her! Ours in Salmon is a good one. They're old people — he was in the Legislature and a lot of fun. Beth liked him.
If the woman is anybody, she's Ben's. You're old enough now to know I think the reason Beth divorced your father is that she knew there was another woman and went down and found some of his clothes hanging in the woman's closet.
I've always been happy that we're such a close family.
Oh, by the way. Mary Hester Collins had a nice little party for me right after I got here, you remember Mary Hester — don't you, Tom? She played the piano so well but not like Beth. They have a lovely home here, on two levels, just outside Phoenix, with a pool. She says the filter is the worst part. We sat around it for drinks and then went on inside. They had an animal floating on it for a grandchild.
Then her husband Gene came in with some men and they sat around and joked and talked. They'd been out in the desert doing something for several days in a jeep because they'll go anywhere. He's a good shot, I guess. Your mother liked him but I never much cared how he played jokes on people.
Well, Mary Hester has an aqua-suede couch from Altman's where your mother got her chaise longue with the roses on it, and wall-to-wall lemon shag carpeting. I asked her what she did and she said you can get a little rake thing for the end of the vacuum cleaner and it does it. Yellow's so impractical and the men with their shoes. She has a pretty little Mexican girl and it's a good thing because the room's about the size of our old horse-pasture. Old Billy died more than aged thirty-six and they finally had to file his teeth but Mama loved him.
Mary Hester was tickled because Gene gave her a Cadillac for her birthday but she says the hood is so long she can't see much of the road. You remember how tiny she is and her father was always so tall. I wish I thought I could afford a new one. I hated to see them leave Salmon but he got that lung condition.
Want to do a little shopping tomorrow, but it's so blamed hot. Of course, Mexicans just everywhere and even colored people. They don't mind the heat so much, they say. Guess that's why they're down there. When I go shopping I think of your mother because of her taste. I want a raspberry linen suit to wear with my grandfather's gold chain he made when he was discovering gold during the winter when he couldn't. This is my year for it. Next is Maude's.
Poor dear Beth — gone now from us ten years the 4th. Funny it's now the woman wrote. Sometimes I could just cry. Remember when we left the church and we heard the wild geese fly over with that lonesome sound of theirs, and then in the cemetery how surprised the bees were at all those flowers so early? I love you, Tom. Roberta.
“Your aunts are happy in their little arrangements,” my wife said. “It's funny the woman would make up such a story out of whole cloth, and hire an attorney. They don't come cheap these days.”
“Maybe the woman borrowed the money because she thought the end would be worth it,” I said. “Or maybe the lawyer does. Maybe he's in on it, too.”