“It’s doing my head in,” Johnny spat at the television. “Bloody Scotland. We never should have let the bastards back of the net.”
Tosh was having none of it. “If you’re going to get all mardy, I’ll leave you to yourself. You don’t give a bleeding shit about football anyway.”
“I do when it’s the sodding Scots. Who the hell do they think they are?”
“Bollocks, Johnny. You’re half Scots yourself.” She regretted it as soon as the words left her mouth. Johnny was spoiling for a fight. She could see this now, the way the corners of his mouth pressed in, the whiteness of his lips.
“You’re one to lecture me, Tosh!” he said, rising from his chair to bang the television off with a balled fist. “The way you carry on against the Americans. Oh, you’re a pissy one, all right.”
“That’s different,” Tosh said, stepping into the kitchen and pretending to be interested in the contents of the fridge. The open door was a protection in case he took a swing at her. The thing to do, she told herself, was to stop arguing. To change the subject before he got really nasty. Nobody at the office would believe she walked into another door.
But she couldn’t for the life of her think of anything to say.
This is a copy of a letter from my great aunt Sarah Herring Sorin to my great grandmother Henrietta Herring Franklin. I love everything about this.
8 West 45th St.
N.Y. City
Oct. 10 – 93
My darling Eat:
I got Nick’s nice letter yesterday morning, and yours at noon. Hers was postmarked the 3rd and yours the 4th, but as they don’t deliver mail on Sunday in a highly moral town like this, that may account for the difference. Your letters seem to travel the fastest–in one instance beating one of Mama’s that started a day earlier.
This is your birthday, and I so hope you are having a happy, sunny day, and that Papa is able to be at home. I shall think of you all at dinner tonight and toast you silently when I drink my beer.
The aunts were up to see me yesterday, and invited me down next Monday night to play cards and meet the Abbots–six of them I believe. They also invited Asenath and a young man, a friend of hers. I believe Mr. Bayard is to be there too. I will wear my new dress if it is cool enough, if not, my black silk. They also invited me to ride with them in the Park some Saturday, which I should like immensely. Aunt Annie brought me some little cakes, home-made, which she thought I might like.
I had a pleasant time at Aunt Clara’s on Sunday. After dinner and a nap, we all took a walk over to Riverside Drive, and a lovely view of the Hudson. I saw some young men riding, and they looked like characatures. I longed to get on Charles, and go sailing up the Avenue and show them how. Am glad to hear you are enjoying nice rides on Button. Riding will do you good. How nice that Montgomery exchanged saddles with you. I am of the opinion that you got the best of it. I enjoyed your account of your ride through Walnut Gulch. Let me suggest, while it occurs to me, that you never get on Button without someone holding the bridle, and that, if you ever dismount, while out riding, you ought to keep the bridle in your hand till you are on the ground. You are much more apt to have an accident with Button in whom you have perfect confidence, than with a nervous horse about whom you are naturally uncertain and always watching. You know how the innocent Toby sent me off on my head.
How aggravating that the washouts occurred just when you most wanted to hear from me and find out where I was at. I like it here so much and have congratulated myself so many times upon my good fortune. Long before this you have all heard from me as to my permanent location with Miss Jermyn.
I have a very good washwoman. She washes things very nicely, and asks 75 cents a dozen, while many of them ask a dollar. She counts hakfs. three as one piece, so my washing will average about 75 cents a week. I wash my stockings myself.
My dress is very stylish and dressy. The effect is Olive or bronze green, and the sort of jabot of very pale crepe-green is very becoming. The first of the year I shall have a plain tailor made dress of some warm mixed wool goods, to wear to law-school.
We are kept so busy at law-school I don’t have time to think of clothes or anything else. We just rush.
How nice that you are having such fine games of tennis, and are so interested in your earning. Give my love to the ladies at Mrs. Cheyneys, and to all my friends.
A young fellow of eighteen who is attending Columbia has come to board here. He is a nice boy. Miss Jermyn says she has worked for his mother for sixteen years. He is studying to fit himself as an electrical engineer. He has the room just over mine.
Do tell me, somebody, how Mama and Papa are, and how are you two girls, and Seng, and Manuel? You must tell me every scrap of news. I am afraid Papa has been too much away from home to discipline you properly, and if he doesn’t look out, Birdie will be the best trained, and Mama will get the prize when I return.
New York is very gay and bright, but I wouldn’t live here permanently for anything. The West has spoiled us. The houses are positively oppressive–not inside, but I mean that when you’re in the street you feel as if there was nowheres to go to.
I must get to work. With bushels of love to you all–and an extra share to my dear girl on her birthday. –by the way, how ridiculous for you to accuse yourself of not doing enough for me when I was there. I blamed myself for leaving so many things for you to do for me, always.
I once found Whitey out in his pop’s garage, just standing there, eyes closed. The garage was kind of a monument to good intentions.
Whitey’s pop was a collector of old cars. More than a collector. An enthusiast. When he’d get to talking about them, his eyes would go funny.
“Found me a ’02 Wheeler Runabout rotting away in a barn outside of Sasabe,” he told me once. “I get her fixed up, we’ll put on driving togs and take her out for a spin.”
It never happened, of course. Gin-fueled dreams aren’t worth the time it takes to hear them.
My great-grandfather James Lewis was a Millerite preacher, as devout a man as ever lived in the village of Dresden. Washington County had more than its share of devout men in those times. Joseph Smith himself was said to have dug up his golden tablets from beneath a tree on my family’s homestead, though Old James said they were only the brass plaques set there by the French surveyors. Still. the local constable swore he had seen the mysterious letters carved in what looked like gleaming gold.
“Never was such a polisher of metal as Joseph Smith,” said James dismissively. “Make brass look like gold. And the words, why they’re just French.”
Yet, soon after, Joseph Smith went west with Brigham Young and a host of followers, many of whom had been in James Lewis’s congregation.
As a Millerite, James Lewis preached of the Second Coming. It would involve a Cleansing of the Sanctuary. What this entailed was never made clear in his writings, save that it would be unpleasant for all but the staunchest faithful.
It was a hard faith, demanding. By the time my grandfather John Lewis was born, the Millerites were down to just six men.
When my father turned his back on the church to go and fight the Kaiser, John Lewis told him that they would never meet again.
“I have no intention on paying visiting calls to hell,” were the last words he spoke to his son.
Dreams never remembered save for impressions of hurry, of movement, a sense of familiar place, all gone in the instant of waking.
Dreaming became waking life.
Beginning in the night as soon as she closed her eyes, seeping like ink spilled on a blotter into the morning, into the day.
Things worth remembering– a wounded bird giving her messages, the bird now changed into an ancient man, her father as he might have been had he lived into old age.
“Don’t break the bloody thing!” He snatched the little helicopter from my hands. “You’ll damage the camera, holding it like that.”
“Da gave it to both of us, Jimmy,” I said, trying not to cry. “It’s as much mine as yours.”
“Alright, alright,” he answered. “Tell you what. You can have the first go. Remember, fly it low over the ship, but not too low.”
Looking back on that conversation now, I only remember what a good brother he was. There’s no way what the papers say is true. We went out there to fly our Christmas present. There wasn’t any purpose to it. Certainly nothing like what they accused him of afterward.
My brother was no spy. They didn’t need to do that do him.
I have no idea how the terrorists got a hold of that video.
He had this bear, Paddington. You know, the kind with the little hat? I think it was a present from my sister.
One day, I came in to Teddy’s room and found him crying. He was inconsolable. I asked him why he was upset and he pointed to his bed. On it lay the bear. Teddy had torn the little guy’s head off and shredded the body, especially between its legs. I asked him why he had done such a thing.
“It was bad, Mommy,” he said.
“But you love it, honey.”
He nodded, crying harder. “I love it and it was bad so I had to make it dead.”
You know how kids are. I didn’t really think anything of it at the time.
I started to notice that certain stuffed animals were missing, usually his favorites. When I asked him about it, he would go quiet and look at me strangely.
A couple years later, the local paper ran a story about how the duck family in Hunter Park had all been killed, the heads cut off and placed neatly beside them in a row, their sexual organs mutilated.
