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Letters 1984-1988When employed at Simon and Schuster, CS had signed up what she believed to be a first novel by a new Chicano writer, Danny Santiago. The title was FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN. Danny was reclusive and only communicated via letter. Shortly after she left S&S, it was reported in The New York Times and elsewhere that Danny Santiago was actually Dan James, a former screenwriter and an elderly WASP.
In January of 1984, CS entered what would be a short course of therapy with a Doctor K, whose insights and support helped her bring the treatment with Dr. B to closure. February 13, 1984 Dear Jack, . . . . You’ve been filling my mailbox with generous notes and scintillas. If I’ve been silent, it’s only because I’m busy editing—editing like a fiend!—for the first time in a long time, and taking breaks for sleep and food and Hill Street Blues (and an occasional blue funk, too, I fear). Then there’s aerobics and sessions with my new shrink (may she be an extender) . . . . I like her but am afraid to get too attached to her, for obvious reasons. Anyway, . . . . don’t feel slighted if I fail to take up the pen or plug in the Selectric—which is currently shoved off the desk so I can pencil-edit.) Right now I’m working on a book called THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE, interspersing it with an early consultation on a book called HOW TO FIND ANOTHER HUSBAND (which I will edit next month, I think) and an ongoing sex book project (the less said about it, the better; descriptions of the Big O are beginning to make me yawn, a heinous occupational hazard). I hope the business keeps flowing! I’m thinking of calling my freelance business “C/S Enterprises—Creative Services by Catherine Shaw.” (It seems that every time I see or write you, I have a new scheme.) . . . . Well, I’m writing and writing on this pale green sheet but what I’m thinking is how can I possibly communicate the texture of my days or the wild ups and downs of my psyche. I want to kill that Dr. B, I do, and I know the fury is a combination of old “transferential” horrors and justifiable outrage over her ignorance and self-importance. But the murderousness is beginning to lessen—and it’s taught me a lesson. Every now and then I fall apart. Every now and then I say a prayer. I was on such a high, haughty horse last year and thought I knew everything. . . . And it was really something to get thrown off that high horse, and feel bruised and swollen and ugly and muddy, and still have a husband who loved me, a family that loved me, a friend like you who still loves me . . . . and that’s what’s it’s all about, isn’t it, accepting others and yourself no matter what. And if I can work through the remaining unforgiving rage against Dr. B, I just might have it made. All you need is the pail—I wrote that to you in a previous letter and now it’s my motto. I’ve got it up on my wall, above my desk, along with a sonnet by John Donne ending “Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his art/And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart.” (“His art = Satan’s crafty temptations and “Adamant” is a magnet; “thou,” of course, is God.) If this is being born again, it sure is a treacherous event, with no end in sight. It’s like that Beatles song, The Long Winding Road. I had better draw this thing to a close and finish some work or get dressed up like a human or something. (I am wearing John’s pajama bottoms and a blue men’s undershirt. This is the flip side of my “together” persona.) Cheers . . . . and remember, I’m not going to forget you whether I answer your letters promptly or not, or whether you send them or not. No chance. February 26, 1984 Dear Jack,
Y’know, you’re pretty unfathomable sometimes. You implore me to write but when I do you toss my letters in the garbage! I think letters are precious to you—including the ones you write—but for some reason you don’t want to dwell on that. In your novel, you say you are envisioning the shrink as a Christ figure. Do you realize how that very attitude contaminated my analysis????? I had Dr. B completely idealized; she was my goddess. Do you think I would have gotten enslaved to any old person? No, only to, and by, the Almighty and Beautiful Dr. B . . . . giving her my dreams, my “brilliant” interpretations—and it was all lies, a false self, and the tragedy is she believed the false self. Whenever I did or said anything that mirrored her own values she took it as evidence of my health, when all it was, was evidence of my continuing enslavement. This new doctor of mine saw what had happened within two visits—that’s how obvious it was, only it was completely hidden from me, and, apparently, from Dr. B. I’ve read about this sort of thing, it’s in the books in black and white. A patient like me has radar; she knows just what it takes to “please” her doctor (and Dr. B made it all the easier by being so damned opinionated). And a doctor like her needs patients to satisfy her own narcissistic needs. It’s a deadly combination. I haven’t told you something yet. Once, early in the analysis, I was talking about the church, my early experience as a Catholic, and so forth. Suddenly (it seemed out of the blue), Dr. B announced that “Jesus was a masochist.” She was referring to the passion and crucifixion. Despite a professed lack of religiosity, I was dumbfounded. I said, “Well, it’s true that some people in the church use those images masochistically, but Jesus himself certainly wasn’t a masochist.” She interrupted me: “Oh, but Jesus was such a masochist.” I was quiet. Then I said, very softy (picture me lying on the couch, outwardly calm but inwardly squirming), “Well, I think that’s something of a trivialization. Jesus was . . .” “Jesus was a masochist,” she said. I shut up. And I stayed. I don’t know what it means, Jack, but these days I feel as if my own an analyst asked me deny the divinity of Christ three times. Did I? I also think that if there is a Prince of Darkness, his favorite lie for our time would be “Jesus was a masochist.” So this is an important question. Is it smart to write a novel with a shrink as a Christ figure? I don’t think so. That is having false gods before you. I never knew what that meant before, but now I have first-hand knowledge. I had a long talk with MLB the other day. Give her a call. She’s given up smoking and is going bananas. She says it’s a “zoo parade”—by which she means every crazy emotion in the book has gotten dredged up during this period of withdrawal. She was a 2+-pack-a-day smoker so it must be ghastly for her. Thank heaven I’ve been spared the major addictions—though I’ve been addicted to a person or two. Bye for now. March 4, 1984
Dear Mother, I’ve been working like the dickens on that book, THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE, which means that a typical day consists of spilling out of the dream world every A.M. and pouring myself into the microworld. It’s all about atoms and subatomic particles and sub-subatomic particles, and how the universe, one day, is likely to end in a Big Crunch. First there was the Big Bang, which set the stuff of the universe inflating outward like some kind of tremendous balloon, and when it gets blown out to its maximum girth, it will slowly start to “deflate”—until it gets so small, and so concentrated, it will simply implode. At least, that’s one theory. Think of it the next time you gaze upward into the twinkling Maine night sky. So things have been pretty exciting intellectually around here but otherwise fairly ordinary. February was the mildest in recorded N.Y. history; that little chubby sweater jacket I wore to Maine last October has come in mighty handy. It’s all I’ve needed, most days. John and I have had some harrowing episodes with las cucharachas. Let me just say that as I was moving the bulletin board out of the kitchen and into the bedroom, we discovered a colony of the things residing under an old lapel button of mine that said “Free the Secretary.” Those roaches make their beds anywhere. Now don’t go feeling smug on me. We both know that Maine and bugs are synonymous; in N.Y. we’re spared everything but our little brown friends. Mayor Koch says he wants his fair city to have a mascot. I think it should be the cockroach. As winter moves toward spring, I find I am feeling better and better about things. I’m also more spiritual than I ever supposed I’d be, and am actually getting interested in the church again. Don’t worry; I’m not turning into some kind of born-again bore. I’m just opening myself up to the possibility of a grownup, sincere faith. I haven’t made any decisions yet—am still hemming and hawing—but will probably make tentative steps in the direction of the nearby parish now that Lent is upon us. I used to hate the church for its human frailties; certainly I experienced the church of my childhood as horribly repressive and child-hating. But that was yesterday. The winds of change have blown through that church and through me too. Anyway, there’s got to be some force or other blowing up the universe, then letting out the air, then blowing it up again. Well, that’s it for now. I have to run into the living room to watch Ann-Margret in A Streetcar Named Desire. Remember how I used to idolize her when I was a kid? It’s been wonderful to watch her grow as an actress over the years. She never stops taking chances. March 5, 1984
Dear Jack, . . . . No, you never have said much about Wooster. I must say, though, that I fail to see how your college experience qualifies as a “delayed” adolescence. At 16, you were awfully young to be in college! As you know, I myself was quite retarded and didn’t graduate until I was 24 and more. At sixteen, I was barely ready for the junior mixers in high school; college would have undone me. Did I ever tell you that my freshman year at college was spent not at City College but at Bronx Community College, the very last school on my list? This was before open admissions and my high school grades were too low for any but a junior college. I’ve always found this part of my history mortifying—and yet, in fact, my year at BCC was crucial. I was so smart in comparison to everyone else, I practically beamed. My writing was so good that my Freshman Composition professor took one look at my first paper and said I didn’t have to write anything else for the course because I clearly had nothing else to learn! What he didn’t know was that I had spent about 20 hours writing the 3-page paper that shone so brightly! Those were probably the best-spent hours of my life. That’s when I literally taught myself to how write like a pro. I would not have been satisfied with anything less. . . . . As for the analysis, you are right to point out that, for all my rage and outrage, the process did work. It’s a powerful process—that Freud was no dummy—and, in the end, it opened doors for me. As in the tale of the Grinch, Christmas happened anyway. Even La B has to get some credit for that. When I’m feeling steady, I’m actually grateful that she made some of the mistakes she did. After all, I never would have gotten to where I am if I had continued to think of her as infallible. Her careless remarks about Jesus’s so-called “masochism” have led me to ponder religious mysteries I might not otherwise have done. Even her kicking me out was a blessing in disguise. I mean, finally, she did something so awful I had to get mad at her—and getting mad at her was essential to my quest. It also put me in a different place—one where I could no longer avoid the truth about myself. I am quite sure I would not have come this far if I had stayed in analysis with her; she may have saved me years on the couch. There’s a big BUT to all this, though. The banishment was truly terrible, and another patient might hot have survived it. That’s what worries me. You do hear about people who have been in treatment for a long time and who go off and kill themselves. I think it’s because the truth rushes in on them and it feels like doom. There are few things more horrible than recognizing how unfree you are, how programmed, how petty, how not-nice, and few things more tragic than seeing that your whole life has been lived by someone else’s rules. This is what it comes down to, after all. There is this great book, PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE IMPOSSIBLE PROFESSION, in which an analyst is quoted as follows: “To say ‘man is not an animal’ is to say nothing that banal people haven’t always said. To say that our essential humanity resides in precisely that part of our nature which is most instinctual, primitive and infantile—animal—is to say something radical.” I believe that too. And you believe (or so I assume) that God Himself “became” one of us for a time. That too is radical. Put those two things together and it’ll shake you to the roots. You’ll shake in your boots. April 10, 1984 Dear Jack, When you called me last week I was chin-deep in mire again. I am trying very hard to fight my way out of it—IT being that same old obsessional fury at you-know-who—and I know it must be boring to keep hearing this from me and I agree wholeheartedly with you and with John and with everyone who cares about me that I simply must try to put the analysis behind me. Once in a while I seem to be succeeding, and then I sink into the bog again. Let me switch metaphors. It’s like a broken record. My life is like a broken record, -ken record, -ken record, -ken record, -ken record, -ken record, -ken record, -ken reco. . . . . . AAAAARRRRRGGGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Did I tell you I screamed into B’s answering machine a few months ago? This was after she hung up on me, refusing to answer my questions about the analysis, boomeranging everything I said back on me like the ogre she is. So I called back, got only the machine, and left a “message” of primal screams she’s not likely to forget soon. The screams were hot and unstoppable and erupted form a deep, deep stratum of pain—my own Mauna Loa. Oh, there’s just so much going on in my mind these days that sometimes it just plain ups and short-circuits, that’s all. I’m sure you understand that I have been through something very, very peculiar—something akin to brainwashing, actually. That I played such a big part in letting my mind be taken over is the most painful part of it all, I think. A fragile thing, the mind. Anyway, the mental short-circuits have me feeling beside myself. The French have a phrase for it: to walk next to one’s shoes. I’m walking next to my shoes these days. So you’ve got a brand new clerical collar! God, I love a man in a clerical collar!!! I can understand, though, how wearing one could be problematic to an inquiring soul like yourself. Am I being prideful, or Pharisaic, am I hiding behind it, am I parading around in it, what’s so holy about me anyway, etc., etc. How I used to hate anything suggesting piety myself, how I used to make fun of all you Presbyterian types saying prayers before every meeting, for instance, and how the sight of the ecclesiastical glad rags worn by the hierarchy of my “medieval” church made me sneer. You’d be amazed at me these days. Every Sunday I get dressed up in my own glad rags and go to Mass. I still doubt if God, whoever/whatever/he/she/it is, requires all that prayer and praise but I’m certain of one thing: we humans do. I’ve discovered/rediscovered some marvelous prayers. One freely acknowledges the difficulty of achieving the “integrity” for which we humans “ardently yearn,” another asks God to “fix deep in my heart . . . a firm purpose of amendment.” And then, of course, there are the famous Acts of Faith, Hope and Contrition. They meant zilch to me as a child. I’m grown now, and they mean quite a lot to a careworn adult who has lost all faith, abandoned hope and has lots to be sorry for. Don’t worry. I’m not wallowing in sin or anything, I don’t think, but I would like to recharge, revamp and renew. You know, the funny thing is that all through my many years of tired agnosticism (“The tired agnostic yearns for prayer more than the blessed can ever do . . .”—Edna St. Vincent Millay), I never stopped praying really. You know that. I had the poetry, and not just poetry in general but the reverent Christian sonnets of John Donne and Gerard Manley Hopkins. And at three different times in my life I willingly went back to your church organization to work. For years, I hated myself for going back, attributing it to something stubborn in me that was enslaved by religion, or liked playing the profane outsider. Maybe those things did count for something, but they’re not the whole story. Maybe something spiritually healthy in me was at work too, “calling” me, as it were. Do you think that’s possibly true? Do you think I have anything good and spiritually lively in me? I feel foolish and teary asking the question. That’s because all my life I really have “lived in my heart with taint,” as I wrote in that clumsy old poem. I really have. Underneath it all, I have always thought that underneath it all, there was an underneath place that was, underneath it all, awfully nasty. You sound brutalized by your book project at the moment—but, . . . . will you be effective in getting your message across if the work of writing your book becomes a chore? Wish I could pass along some wisdom of my own, but I have a long, long way to go before I can write happily and be satisfied with my own less-than-perfect products. I know one thing. That desire for perfection is a killer. It strangles the joy out of work. It strikes me dumb! Remember Flora Y., that wild child? She was the first to tell me that Persian rugs are woven with one intentional error—because to do otherwise would offend God who alone is perfect. And do you know what the physicists have discovered? That the “perfection” of the universe is an illusion, that at bottom matter is crazy and chaotic and formless and, you might say, gives every appearance of being in bad need of editing! And do you know that if the DNA molecule didn’t regularly make “mistakes,” evolution never would have happened? And do you know what Woody Allen says—that if you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything new? It is to such things I turn for consolation. I’m skipping around from topic to topic, tripping along, for I am skittery and bongedybonkers, walking next to my shoes. Last night, John and I went to an Oscar-watching party. Everyone put five bucks into the kitty and the person who guessed the most winners went home with $100. We went home with $100—by taxi, of course! April 25, 1984 Dear Jack, Well, Easter did happen, alleluia. I have learned, however, to avoid any and all Roman Catholic services on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. They last forever and feature endless processions. On Good Friday, I left when something called the “Veneration of Crosses” began. Weird, idolatrous stuff and not to my taste. Still, I really am back in the church. Only next year, during Holy Week, I shall go listen to music somewhere instead! Haven’t much time for letter writin’ this week, but let me say that I just finished Russell Baker’s GROWING UP, which I loved. Nearly got up and cheered when he described the success of his school essay on the art of spaghetti eating, didn’t you? I’ll return the book, but first John would like to read it. May 12, 1984 Dear MLB, It’s Saturday evening, I’ve just gotten soaked in a sudden downpour, and I’m drinking a glass of red wine to warm my chilly innards. Monday morning John and I are flying to Florida for 6 days, where the chilly innards will certainly thaw out. Right now he’s in the kitchen cooking his specialty, skillet lasagna. I thought this would be the perfect time to drop you a note; I’ve been intending to call you for lunch for a long time and somehow just never did. I’ve been mercifully busy though, editing a book . . . . and also working on a few other jobs that have been trickling in. My peak working time tends to coincide with the lunch hours of “normal” people. I usually get a burst of energy around eleven and just keep on truckin’ for three or four hours. I’m sorry I missed your play. (I was in a blue funk that week.) Hope it turned out to be more rewarding than you thought it was going to be. I promise to go to your next play; in fact, I can’t wait, so I hope you have a gig on the horizon. ML, my life has done a complete about-face over the last eight months or so. There’s this man in my building, a mellow fellow, who keeps gazing at me in amazement whenever we meet in the elevator. He tells me I’ve emerged from the cocoon. Even when I’m feeling like an alien in the world he tells me that. And then I go and look in the mirror and I realize he’s right. I’m different and it shows. It’s not that I’m glowing, heaven knows, but a strange new peace is overtaking me, cell by cell, gene by gene. One interesting tidbit is that I’ve liberated myself from the shrinks forever. I saw a new doctor for a while, and she helped me clarify some things that happened in my previous ill-fated analysis. For that I’m grateful. Otherwise—when I found myself going over things from my past I had already resolved, say—that’s when I began to wonder if more therapy was advisable. Anyway, she couldn’t help me with my primary crisis because essentially it is a spiritual crisis. I feel weird telling you this—I’m afraid you’ll think me rash or silly—but I have reconciled with the Catholic Church. Two weeks ago I signed up with Blessed Sacrament parish (W. 71st Street), after a long Lent of thinking it over. And do you know what? Even though there have been changes in the liturgy over the years (I left the church when I was 17), I feel, in a way, that I have never left. Don’t worry, I’m not turning into some kind of fanatic! As you can imagine, Jack has been very important to me over these last few months. As for John, here he is watching me get “into” something else. First it was analysis, now it’s God. On more worldly issues, this trip to Florida is intended to be a luxurious gas! We’ve scheduled two nights at the Fontainebleau, and then a couple of days in Key West. Finally, eh? Wasn’t I talking about going there about five years ago? We intend to walk, drive, eat, drink, eat, swim, browse, lounge, eat, pet Ernest Hemingway’s cats, eat, read, and eat. We’ll be back Saturday night—unless we decide to chuck it all for the good life. Let’s get together for brunch when I get back? May 29, 1984 Dear Mother, I hope you and Janice got the postcard I sent from Miami! I think it featured a picture of that glorious, hedonistic lagoon pool at the Fontainebleau Hotel. Miami Beach is all pink and white and aqua and the water is iridescent turquoise. John’s a pool aficionado so we spent the greater part of our two days in Miami swimming around in chlorine, but I wedged in some private time in the real water too. It’s only in the last few years, since we’ve been going to Sea Girt every summer, that I’ve come to adore swimming in the sweet salt sea. I feel so buoyant in the water, I just recline on it like Odalisque—or take off and swim, swim, swim. Afterward, I feel so renewed and lush, I swear it’s like I’ve regained my virginity. I’m thinking about retiring to Florida or Hawaii or something. Do you think 33 is too young?
The vegetation in Key West is out of this world—coconut palms, Poinciana trees (all were in full red bloom), tall reaching cacti, even those bizarre Banyan trees that put out shoots and roots so prodigiously that one must cut them back regularly or they’d take over the island. Hemingway (whose house in Key West is now a museum) had one beauty of a Banyan in his back yard. I loved the Hemingway house, which is furnished with the Spanish antiques he admired. The grounds are prowled by 60-odd descendants of his pet cats, a bunch of lolling, squawking six-toed creatures of various hues. I photographed a black beauty curled up in the Banyan tree. Lots of pix of Hemingway line the rooms and hallways—and every single one reminded me of Daddy. Ed really did resemble Ernest, even as a young man; of course, Ernest took Ed’s interest in fishing and hunting to extraordinary lengths. Ernest with giant marlin, Ernest with slain lion, Ernest posing with shotgun—such pictures are all over the place. I don’t know when the man found the time to write—but write he did, and most of his great works were written right there in Key West. I swear I could spend my life on vacation. There is nothing quite like coming back to your hotel room and finding that in your absence the beds have been made, the bathroom polished, the towels changed, the floors vacuumed, all by efficient invisible hands. One evening someone came to our room to ask us if we wanted “turndown” service. You don’t even have to turn down your own bed if the idea sounds too exhausting! The weirdest thing to happen was the now infamous “glass bottom boat ride.” John and I had once taken a glide on a glass bottom boat at Silver Springs—a very genteel experience. This was a real boat, and there was a great wind that day that made the water very rough. Well, Ed would have been ashamed to know me, for there I was, turning as green as the slurping water as the boat pitched and yawed its way seven miles out to the reef and seven miles back. I was grateful that I had breakfasted on a soothing orange yogurt and fruit dish, for if it had been bacon and eggs I surely would have lost them. Now I know why hostages kiss the earth when they return to the terra firma of their homeland; I nearly embraced the briny pier! Well, mother, I’m so sorry to hear that you fell down and went boom. Is it possible that you need a new prescription for eyeglasses—or that your cataract has gotten worse? You must promise me to be very careful, for a fall can be dangerous at your age. If your ankle continues to hurt, make sure you get an X-ray taken too. I know how you hate to think about matters medical, but after all, your health is your own responsibility. I mean, if you have a cataract, say, and you refuse to have it treated, then you’re acting somewhat like Helen who drove you crazy by refusing to do what was best for her (and making you clean up the mess!) And you don’t want to fall into that trap, do you? O.K. End of lecture. And hope you’re feeling much, much better! June 12, 1984 Dear Jack, Your article on adult education was incisive. Persuasive. Anyone responsible for such programs in the church is bound to read it and honor bound to use it, I’d say. Know something? I have nothing to do this week. I have nothing to do next week. In fact, the whole summer yawns ahead of me, a vast gaping unknown. The only thing I do know is that it’s up to me to fill it. Until one leaves the structured worlds of school and jobs, one can’t know the burden. I find it a burden. All the world’s shrinks and all the world’s priests could not convince me on this hot, unremitting Tuesday noon that what I face is an opportunity and not a burden. This is one of the colorations of my personal original sin. Underneath the patina, I’m a grudge and a strike artist. I started to write a poem once called “On Strike.” Nothing came of it—and yet when I look at the blank white page entitled “On Strike,” I wonder if I haven’t said it all. . . . . MLB and I have had brunch for two Sundays running. She came over on June 3rd at 1 PM and we feasted at Dobson’s. After that, we strolled around the local outdoor flea market, then up Columbus Avenue to Gelato Modo for some of that amazing Italian ice cream I’ve been raving about. Then more bopping around till about 4:30 when we stopped at Tap-A-Keg East, my watering hole. John happened to show up with his friend and co-worker, Steve, and we all stayed together, laughing and drinking and munching on pretzels till it got so late we decided we’d just have to have pizza somewhere. Then, at Al Buon Gusto, the busboy spilled a whole pitcher of red wine on our table. He graped us! What a scene. Then, of course, the owner treated us each to an extra glass of the stuff. Merriment prevailed until we walked MLB to the subway station, seeing her off with such great pomp she felt as if she were departing on the Queen Mary. “Gosh,” said Steve, a droll soul, as she disappeared down the grimy steps, “Maybe someday we can take one of those.” It was such a gas, MLB and I tried to repeat the experience again last Sunday. It was quite pleasant, brunching at Ruelles, a trendy place around here decorated in what I call “latter day bordello” (winding stairs, opulent bar, plummy walls, ceiling fans, roaches). Later we saw Ghostbusters, a scream, and shopped at Bolton’s, a clothing discounter, where ML bought a black straw hat and a pullover and I bought the pinkest, chicest shirt dress you ever saw and a long, luscious tunic made of pale aqua linen. Just putting it on makes me feel ready for Bermuda. The things I’d miss if it weren’t for Mastercard! I gave MLB your best, as instructed, and she sends her love too. Well, I’ve been tending to this letter for four hours, on and off, and it’s becoming a grand excuse for not doing anything else. My natural work schedule is somewhat like Fran Lebowtiz’s, I think. Make coffee. Drink it. Trim toenails. Sharpen pencils. Watch the morning news. Do last night’s dinner dishes. Move typewriter into air-conditioned living room. Apply Band-Aid to injury sustained while toting typewriter. Get the mail. Read it. Make more coffee. Drink it. Begin letter to friend. Go out for lunch. Make phone call. Go back to letter. Retype it. Search for stamp. You get the picture.
July 23, 1984 Dear Folks, . . . . What hits the front page of The New York Times on Sunday but a story about Danny Santiago, the Chicano author whose marvelous autobiographical novel I personally signed up and edited at Simon and Schuster. Only Danny Santiago turns out not to be a Chicano at all. He’s an old white man named Dan James from Kansas City, Missouri (at least originally; now he’s Californian). He claims he adopted the Mexican name after being blacklisted in the 1950’s during the McCarthy witch hunts. He also worked among the Mexican-American people in L.A. for 20 years and knows them inside out. Still and all, it was quite a deception. He and I corresponded for years—he would not allow phone calls and I had to write to him at a box number—but I never once suspected that he wasn’t Latino. The incident raises a lot of questions. You see, even his letters were peppered with Chicano lingo; I feel as if I have been sucked into a fiction. No one really knows how much that book meant to me and how it contributed, in the end, to my disenchantment with publishing and my loss of faith in myself. Now at least I know what was the matter. Lies. Mother, sister, there are times when I just don’t know what’s real anymore. You get into a sort of fictional relationship in analysis too, and last year the depths of that fiction were revealed to me and it tied my mind into knots. Now this. I suppose, though, that these strange occurrences have opened my eyes to certain dimensions of the human condition I wouldn’t be aware of otherwise. It exhausts me sometimes but I’m basically grateful.
July 23, 1984 Dear “Danny,” Well, the news is out and I am neither amused nor diverted as you had hoped. Dumbfounded would be more like it. It’s awfully strange to think back on our correspondence and realize that I was living in a fiction. There is some poignancy in your needing to conceal your identity the way you did. I don’t consider it a major hoax or anything—in fact, I am more interested in the personal repercussions the disguise had on us all than on the philosophical issues. You made a Faustian bargain when you adopted that mask. With all my heart and soul I welcome you back to the “daylight” of truth. Feliz Navidad, Dan James. My masks are off too. I am no literary midwife, no supergirl, no Virgin de la Candelaria (as you once called me!). Back in the days when your book was the light of my professional life, I was just an earnest young editor with visions of Max Perkins dancing in her head. (M.P. syndrome is virulent among young editors, though we outgrow it soon enough.) I’ll always consider the acquisition and editing (such as it was) of your book a professional milestone. But my association with it was also something of a private nemesis. Maybe I’ll share some of that with you when we meet. There was always something “wrong” with our alliance and now I know what it was. Mendacity. Still and all, isn’t it a wonder to find out how much we have in common after all? Both of us fay white but both deeply identified with the minority vision. And to think that all along I worried that Danny Santiago would always hate me, deep down, just for being “other”! My address is above, my apartment is 54, and my phone number is (212) 877-XXXX. I’m in the book. CS finally met Dan James in person when he came to New York in the fall. They had a few drinks at a restaurant called Rupperts on the upper east side of Manhattan. He was intense, flirtatious, brilliant, and as tall as Abe Lincoln. CS was enchanted by him, but failed to understand his dogged determination to continue to use “Danny Santiago” as his pen name and alter ego. Dan had big plans for his next “Danny” novel. Gazing at his handsome, aged face, CS suspected he would not have a chance to complete it. Dan James died a few years later. FAMOUS ALL OVER TOWN remains his only published novel. August 20, 1984 Dear Mother, I just went down for the mail, then fixed myself a cup of tea. Your nice note is here—and your most unexpected enclosure! I’m so glad to hear that the “flare up of nerves” has died down. Mother, let’s face it, you ran away from home. I keep imagining you standing on the highway in Searsport not with a little packed bag but with a stuffed scarf on a stick, like some sort of over-age Huck Finn. But I don’t think it’s at all comical. I wonder, in fact, if your running off wasn’t designed to have an effect on me as well as on Janice. Perhaps, underneath it all, you are worried that I have “forgotten” you—and so you did something to draw attention to yourself. And it worked. By mid-afternoon I was wailing on the telephone, upset and distraught, as of course I would be. Now that it’s over I can only say this: I miss you and I love you. I know I am pretty far away geographically and that must seem to you as if I am also far away emotionally, but really I am not. So please, whenever you have the slightest feeling that I might be neglecting you, just tell me. Call me collect or write me a letter. But try not to throw the whole family into a tizzy. It isn’t necessary and the price is too high. Lest you think I am jesting about my feelings for you, let me report that about three weeks ago I was sitting on the floor in the living room, watching television, when suddenly I began to cry. “What’s wrong?” says John. “You’ll laugh,” says me. “No, I won’t,” says he. “I miss my Mommy,” says me. And I should have called you, but for some reason I did not. Take care, and write me again soon. CS’s apartment building was converting to a co-op and she and her husband decided to buy into it. Monthly mortgage and maintenance payments would be significantly more than their rent. CS realized she would have to earn money more consistently. It was time to come out of “writhing solitude.” In October, she signed up with a temporary agency as a typist. Her temp fee would be $7 per hour, and she intended to keep freelance editing as well.
December 3, 1984 Dear Jack, Here’s a missive from a fairly glamorous place, publishers of ITEMS FROM OUR CATALOG, THE PETER PAN SYNDROME, and lotsa bodice rippers. I’ve been dutifully temping since last we spoke, but this is my first publisher. I swore to myself that I wouldn’t show my face or my typing fingers at the publishers for fear of mortification, but this was the only job that came through for this week and I figured what the heck, it’s only a paperback publisher. I’m working for a young editor whose first day at Avon this is, and also for Roger Straus III, who also just came aboard as Executive Editor. He is of the Strauses, as in Farrar-Straus-Giroux, and he seems like a honey. I was at the Junior League for only one day, then I spent three weeks at a place called Qual Fab, a cloth manufacturer. I sat at the front desk in a showroom with track lighting and a display of beds covered with Qual Fab comforters. Very odd and delightfully non-verbal. Mostly I office-managed and manned the busy phones, and the small staff, artists mostly, came to rely on me in a way I found touching. Over the course of the three weeks, the walls came crashing down for the small company. The newly hired president had a heart attack, the V.P., a classy young woman with two fur coats, tearfully resigned, and the artists began quarreling bitterly. I still find myself wondering about that beleaguered bunch. Next I went to a place called the Practising Law Institute for two weeks of heavy labor in the form of Dictaphone typing. Now here I be at Avon. My main observation after a month in these various offices is melancholy: most people are disenchanted with what they do. They fret, they complain, they hate their bosses. Mostly, I think, they just don’t believe that what they do has any inherent value. I myself am in a strange spot, a betweentimes groove, having renounced publishing but with no clear idea of what to do next. I feel like Hamlet’s sister or something—the pursuits of this world seem weary, stale, etc. And I’d say more, only to do so would sound flat, unprofitable, etc. Y’know something? I need to renounce things. I need to shuck things off. I need to kick things out. I’ve noticed this about myself. No wonder temping suits me. Every week or every other week I get to shrug off a job like an old shawl. I feel pretty numb about all this. I wonder if this tendency of mine could be of use at all? Is there a job that requires casting things off? Perhaps I should go into demolition or start a resignation service for disgruntled employees called Exeunt, Inc.? . . . . Well, I’m not that much of a malcontent, quite. I just wanted to write and say hello, even though my hello’s come without frills these days. My life is very early-to-rise now, I get work done, whatever it may be, and at night I watch TV or go to my aerobic dance class or play Trivial Pursuit with John. Is Trivial Pursuit so successful because emblematic of life in the 80’s? Perhaps I should take the fact that I have not won T.P. once as a good omen . . .
Dear Mother, Thanks for your nice note and the sundae money. The best sundaes around these parts can be had at a place called Diane’s, and John and my favorite is called the Metropolitan Mint—mint chocolate chip ice cream, whipped cream, a burgundy cherry and real creme de menthe liqueur sloshed over everything. Today I’m working at an impressive accounting firm called Touche Ross—very high finance and very slick. My little wheeled typing chair rolls me around on parquet floors. So far, it hasn’t been very busy here, though, and that’s nice ‘cause it gives me a chance to write this letter. While I’m at it, I’m penning some letters to try to drum up some freelance editing. Sometimes I can hardly believe the variety of what I’ve been doing lately. Since October I have: Sat at the front desk in a fabric company showroom Typed my fingers off at a law institute Waded through the slush pile at a paperback book publisher Typed a thousand blue press cards in one day at the Museum of Modern Art Sat around reading and doing crosswords at CBS Records during Christmas week when almost everyone there wasn’t there Did secretarial work at The Ford Foundation (where coffee in silver urns is delivered to your desk each morning!) Wrote copy and typed sales reports at Drug Store News, a trade publication Dispatched repairmen at ITEK (maker of photo offset equipment) I’m probably leaving something out . . . all this crazy switching of gears suits me now, for some reason. . . . . Oh, Mama, I am so sorry I haven’t written you for a while and will try to write more from now on. I’d rather talk to you on the phone, I guess. The last time I did speak to you, you were going to the eye doctor the next day, and then, a few days alter, I got a cryptic note from you telling me not to worry, you’re fine, but saying nothing about the eye doctor. This leaves me with the impression that you decided not to go, but of course I may have misinterpreted that. I’m sure that the prospect of an eye operation is not pleasant for you, but you know what? When you do decide to go ahead and have that cataract fixed, I’m sure you’ll come through it unscathed—and with better vision too. You’ll know when the time is right. Me, I seem to be physically tip-top. No aches, no pains, no colds since I don’t know when. Had a sore back last November—I blame Jane Fonda and her dominatrix-inspired exercises for that!—but now it’s cured and I’m still dancing and be-bopping at my aerobics classes, the only thing that gets me through the winter with a smile. April 2, 1985 Dear Mother, And when do I not typewrite my letters? I lost the ability to use a mere pen a long time ago! Seriously, I’m sorry your eyes are still giving you a hard time. Sunshine is so restorative and comforting—it must be a terrible loss to have to block it out with curtains. Then again, even with my good eyes I find that bright sun is excruciating and wouldn’t be caught dead outside in summer without sunglasses. John and I were quickly approved for our mortgage (technically, it’s a “co-op loan”) and will soon be in debt. I understand that the closing may not be until August, though, so in the meantime we are trying to pay off all our outstanding bills so we’ll be ready for the high monthly payments when they come. I’m looking around for a high-level administrative assistant job—it’s time to get serious—and I’m working the temps full-time and freelancing on the side. Am editing a book for Simon and Schuster called PROFESSIONALLY SPEAKING and I just finished writing a magazine article called “Eating Management: A Body-Conscious Guide to Restaurant Dining.” The article is for a new fitness magazine, Bruce Jenner’s Better Health and Living, which will make its debut this summer. Bruce Jenner is known for winning the decathlon at the Olympics some years ago. By day, I’m still at that big accounting firm, Touche Ross, and it is likely I will be there for another few months. I recently got some hands-on experience there on a word processor. Mother, you would be amazed at what a word processor can do. The words you type come up in green on a TV screen, and you can change or delete anything with the touch of a key. You don’t have to use a “return” key either, it goes to the next line automatically. This means you never have to even look at the screen as you’re typing, you just type, type, type without stopping. I think I must go 110 words a minute on the thing, I’m not kidding. It even knows how to indent automatically when you’re doing list-type jobs. And when you’re through with a document, it will check the spelling for you! I know machine love. Are you planning anything for this weekend, Easter weekend? I’ll be attending services and John and I will have an Easter brunch, but otherwise I’ll probably spend the weekend hunched over my editing project, which is due the following Tuesday. My renewed Catholicism is still with me and feels as natural as bread. Well, I’m typing this at work so I had better turn my attention to what I’m getting paid for. Hope all is well and that you’ll write again soon. November 13, 1985 Dear Mother, Not too much news at this end but I do know how much you like to receive letters, so here is one—at last! Recently I spent about two weeks at home editing a book called FEARFUL SYMMETRY by Fred Alan Wolf, another one of my science specials. It’s all about the strange quantum world of particles leaping and vibrating in unseen rhapsodies. What I like best is the idea that at the most fundamental levels, things are not perfect but rather the symmetry is “broken.” A snowflake possesses perfect symmetry, this author writes, but it is essentially a cold and lifeless thing. The galaxies, the planets, and life itself would not exist in a completely symmetrical “perfect” universe. After I finished the manuscript, I went back to my word processing “career.” I am with a new temporary agency now, which is paying me a little more than the other place did. Recently, I spent a couple of days at a public relations firm specializing in the medical area, and then I went to KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines), which I liked very much. Today, however, I am back at the Chase Manhattan Bank, all the way downtown. Mercifully, the work load is light here, and I am at this moment writing to you on a wonderful, high-tech Wang word processor. In my spare moments, I am editing another science manuscript, THE BODY QUANTUM. John and I have “pre-closed” on our apartment, which means we have signed all the documents and paid all the fees and are now waiting for the official closing when the building management lawyers and our lawyers have their final pow-wow, speak the incantations, and thus sanctify everything. (Obviously, I find the whole process ineffable!) Do you know that less-than-brilliant saying of Shakespeare’s?—”Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” Well, I feel as if I have had real estate thrust upon me! But it’s a happy circumstance—especially since the apartment is beginning to come together, thanks to the new paint job, the scraped floors, and the new couch. . . . . I know I told you about Frances Shaw’s wedding to Bill Sherman, how beautiful the ceremony was, how she had all the married couples renewing their vows, and how, at the reception hall, we toasted the happy couple with a song. And I know I told you what Richie Shaw told me—that he always remembers you fondly and never forgets how kind you were to him when he was young. But I thought I’d repeat all that anyway, for it is worth setting down in print. Did I also mention how many long-lost relatives approached me with a marveling look and said, “I knew it was you, Catherine, for you look just like Kitty did thirty years ago.” Now how about that!
In March of 1986, CS was sent to a major financial institution on a temp assignment. In June, she accepted a permanent position as an administrative assistant in the credit card marketing division. CS liked the people at what, on these screens, will be called “QBank,” and found it liberating to work in an atmosphere that was the polar opposite of book publishing. She resumed writing poetry, and indeed was “aglow” with it. She felt prosperous, mature and emotionally stable. For the first five years at QBank (which she smilingly referred to as “Mondo Mammon”), CS thought she had found the ideal solution, the “T. S. Eliot solution” of pursuing her poetry while working at a bank for financial peace of mind. Approaching middle-age, she wanted enough money not only to pay her bills but also to save for the future and do some traveling. In the fall of 1987, CS and her husband went to Maine to visit her family. As they were driving on Route 3 from Augusta to Belfast, John lost control of the car during a passing maneuver and they tumbled off the road. The car, a rental, was totaled but they were not seriously injured. In 1988 Janice put their mother in the Bay View Boarding Home in Searsport, Maine. She’d been drinking heavily and had torn up her arm in a fall. CS was herself feeling run down, due to serious oral surgery in January and a painful bout with shingles in the summer. She took the month of November off, intending to spend it in Maine, visiting her mother at the Home and renewing her relationship with her sister’s family.
November 1, 1988 Hi, Babe. I spent four hours at the Bay View Manor yesterday, where they were holding a Halloween party for the “inmates.” It’s a fine place, clean and warm, with a large, bright common room where everyone eats and smokes (boy, was it smoky!) and plays games. Still, it was depressing seeing Mother there. Many of the folks are much worse off than she is—she is the resident genius! Most unsettling to watch was a demented-seeming deaf woman who roams around grunting like something out of Dickens. Twice she approached me to gargle incoherently and shake hands and show me the ice skating bears on her sweater. Evidently, in the Maine of 70 years ago, they didn’t bother educating deaf people. She seems like a genuine naïf. Mother, however, is much improved—still a little forgetful, maybe, but much more “with it.” She participated in all the party games and won the spelling bee. The funniest game was the ritual battering of a makeshift piñata. These old folks whacked the heck out of it—Mother took the first two jabs—and the woman who finally punctured it laughed hysterically when all the candies and pencils and little gifties came thundering out. The activities director—one of those big-boned, chatty, take-charge type of people—told me they truly “love having Catherine with us. She is delightful.” And she is, really. She keeps cracking jokes, even. But she still refuses to go on outings. . . . . My little bedroom in Janice’s house is snug, thanks to an electric heater—the kind that resembles a radiator. I’m in here now and it’s almost too hot! I must surrender it on weekends when JaneA is here, though; her bedroom is in an uninsulated part of the house. So last night was Halloween! I wore my black-and-orange number and Janice made me bat-shaped earrings and a bat necklace out of black cardboard. We had dinner at The Weathervane—the waiters and waitresses were dressed up as lions, convicts, Elviras—and then we walked over to watch the annual bonfire and “enactment.” This was 15 or so people, in masks and robes, dancing around and whooping while recorded music bellowed in the background. Michael was part of it: he rowed a little “ghost boat.” Then the players filed out and some fireworks went off. Very droll. Probably only 25 people were watching (publicity problems, I guess); Janice seemed to know all of them. We stayed by the incredibly hot bonfire for a while, but when our feet began freezing due to the cold damp grass, Janice and I and a pal of hers named Ricky went back to the Weathervane for Irish coffee and pumpkin pie, and then to his place for an hour to watch a TV show about hauntings he had recorded. Ricky is the local florist and UFO buff. So that was Halloween. It was pretty placid—but I noticed that the hangouts were packed with costumed revelers. If you were he-ah, we would’ve been they-ah. . . . . Where are you? You’re so far away. What do you look like? Is there still traffic in the world, and panhandlers, and Haagen-Dazs? I feel as if I have been lost in the Maine dimension forever. What if I don’t find my way out? I couldn’t even tell you what my plans are. I may stick it out for the month or be back Sunday. I just don’t know.
CS did not even stick it out till Sunday for reasons that shall remain private. ——Back to Contents—— |
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