Frances and Bernard by Carlene Bauer

education, but he never meant for the education to mean anything; for him, Harvard was a convention to be observed the way church was a convention for my mother. But he enjoys feeling me out for poverty to see if he can’t compromise me with an offer of his money. I’ve caught him inspecting the bottoms of my shoes for holes. Back to dinner. If my grandmother were still alive she would say that it’s a good thing my mother didn’t have a girl because any girl my mother had would have had to spend her whole life in exile from the dessert table. And then she’d cut me an extra-large slice of pie. My uncle George will ask me why I’m not wearing a collar if I’m a priest, and I will have to remind him again that I didn’t end up going to seminary. And he will say, like he always says, that I’m much better off that way because I know the Catholic Church is filled with greasy, immigrant blood-drinking pagans, don’t I, and it would be like serving a mission in Africa if I had to pastor that herd. This is my father’s brother. His daughter, my cousin Caroline, however, will ask me about my teaching and tell me that she will try to read my book, and I will ask her about her teaching and then try to remember if I have met any young men who are tender enough for her. Caroline teaches kindergarten at a progressive school in Boston—she’s an Alcott daughter brought up by bankers. She has Walden Pond in her eyes but some schoolmarm in her heart, so she won’t stray too far from the Eliot ethos, which is mulish pursuit of respectability and material comfort. She and Ted once had an abortive, though charming, interlude that ended because Ted needs a little less Walden Pond and a little more Mediterranean tempest, and she needs a little less crank and a little more complacency.
    Are you going home for Thanksgiving?
    As you might say: Who is this Peter?!
    Yours,
    Bernard
     
    December 5, 1958
    Bernard—
    Who is this Peter?! Bernard, I sigh. And then laugh at you and your persistence in imposing romance where there is none. Peter is a young man with whom I work. He likes whiskey and Edmund Burke. That is all I can tell you. When I find out that I really am in love with him, the bastard, in spite of myself, I will let you know. Dear God.
    In return: How sharp and fetching was the Barnard grad?
    Thanksgiving was pleasant. I went home on the train and helped my aunts make dinner, as I have always done. There are so many of us there need to be Sterno cans on the dining room table. This year I was in charge of the pies. All seven of them. I made a mincemeat pie for my father, which he ruined by eating a slice before it came out from behind the wings. Mincemeat is a pie for old people. My cousins and their children vastly preferred the whipped chocolate cream cheese pie, the recipe for which I got off the back of the Ann Page cream cheese package. This is slumming for me, the supermarket directive, but I do sometimes—sometimes—want to please a crowd. So as to better camouflage my dissent. My father raised a glass to my book being turned in, and everyone loudly cheered. I wanted to hide. There’s an aunt and an uncle who show up in the book as a battle-ax and the stone that ax loves to grind itself on, but I doubt they’ll read it. Or if they do, I bet they won’t be able to recognize themselves as two old nuns. A cousin said she was glad to see that I hadn’t gotten uppity since I moved to New York. I said I was glad I hadn’t gotten sold into white slavery. But it was a fine time in general.
    Thank you for sending my work on to those people. Never expect more than a handful of people to understand what you are about when you are writing about God. Or care.
    Your immigrant blood-drinking pagan friend,
    Frances
     
    December 8, 1958
    Bernard—
    So I have had a talk with my agent about my editor. I can’t take it anymore. This woman is dead set against mystery. She is asking me to articulate why things are happening when