I have decided to take the children back to Dallas on the train with Arthur and Totsie. Our help with the baby should compensate for the added responsibility of our company. I simply cannot face the thought of traveling alone with the children. Sometimes Arthur must feel he married two women. Since the wedding he has devoted as much time to me and my family as he has to Totsie. Fortunately they both knew me before they knew each other so neither resents my prior claim. Marriage does not begin to prepare us for the complicated relationships that can exist between men and women. Friendship, perhaps because it is less defined, can be a far more demanding responsibility.
My love,
Bess
July 26, 1921
Woodstock
My dear Dwight,
I was very touched by your letter of sympathy, and all it reflected of your feelings toward your own son. Be assured that Totsie has no wish to deprive you of his affection but he is so young he will forget you unless you make it a point to see him whenever you can. I realize this will become difficult once he is living in Texas but I am taking care of him this week while Totsie and Arthur are vacationing at the seashore and I hope you will take advantage of the opportunity to pay him a farewell visit. Having just lost a son, I beg you not to turn your back on the one you still have. Do not let your pride deprive you of more than even death could.
Little Dwight will be here all week. Please feel free to call on us at any time.
With deepest affection,
Bess
July 28, 1921
Woodstock
Dear Sam,
You were so kind to write and send separate letters to both children. Drew plans to hold you to your promise to take him fishing the first weekend we are home. Eleanor would not tell me what you promised her, but it was obviously a source of great satisfaction. After she read the letter, she locked it in her box of pine cones and other treasures.
I am delighted you have become a member of the country club. If I had known you were interested, I would have been happy to write a letter in support of your application. However, you seem to have managed sufficiently without my help. I must confess I had taken pity on you as a stranger in town but it is clear that you are not without influential friends. In our part of the country I can assure you that counts for more than wealth or family background.
New England now seems like a closed chapter of my life and I am anxious to bring the children home to Texas. It is nice to know you will be there waiting for us.
Affectionately,
Bess
July 29, 1921
Woodstock
Dearest Papa and Mavis,
Our pastoral existence was enlivened most pleasantly this week by a visit from my friend Dwight Davis. He drove up from his home in Connecticut, intending to spend only the afternoon at the farm with his son. But as afternoon lengthened into evening, it was clear he had no wish to leave. We invited him to stay for a supper of country ham, corn from the garden roasted in its own husks, and homemade bread and preserves from Mrs. Stone’s larder. His two-year-old son took him by the hand and led him into the garden to help the children gather vegetables for the salad.
He admitted after supper that this was the first time he had ever been alone with his son for longer than a few minutes. Totsie was always standing by, ready to spring to attention at the first show of impatience on the part of either father or son. And, as almost any father will, he took advantage of her constant presence to evade those parental responsibilities that ultimately result in a precious intimacy which can be achieved no other way.
At my suggestion he booked a room in the village inn so that he could have another day at the farm. When he told us good-bye for the night, Little Dwight suddenly clung to him and begged to go with him. No one was more amazed than Dwight, but he quickly agreed. I packed the baby’s nightclothes and favorite soft toy in a satchel and off they went. I fully expected to see them back here by breakfast the next morning. I suppose I am as guilty as the next woman of thinking father and child cannot stay friends for long.
However, it was late afternoon before they returned, bearing gifts for everyone. They had spent all morning shopping in the village and had then gone back to the inn for lunch. That act won Dwight to my heart completely. Any man brave enough to dine in public with a two-year-old has my total admiration.
I have always found Dwight a rather stiff and reserved person, but the children have taken a great liking to him (and the presents he brought from town did nothing to discourage their growing affection). We persuaded him to keep his room at the inn for the rest of the week—till Arthur and Totsie return from the Cape. It is ironic that he did not discover his son until he was on the verge of losing him but that may well prove soon enough.
I am reminded every day that there are greater tragedies than my own—the greatest being not knowing what you have until you lose it. How much of what passes for grief in the world is really nothing more than regret? Of course there are moments of unbearable sadness every day when I think of Robin and long for his loving presence, but some mornings I awaken astonished at the elation which fills my soul in gratitude for the years he gave us.
All my love,
Bess
August 5, 1921
St. Louis
Dear Lydia and Manning,
We are between trains here and the memory of my last stop at this station is so overwhelming I am taking refuge in a letter to you, hoping the lively events of the last few days will displace the dark thoughts that fill my mind.
Arthur and Totsie are still talking about the scene which greeted them on their return to the farm a day ahead of schedule. I am not sure who was the more shocked: Dwight to see Totsie with her new husband or Totsie to see Dwight so happy in the company of their son.
It was nice of Dwight to drive us to the train, though Totsie was quite undone at having to tell him good-bye face to face. And the baby cried loudly at having to leave behind someone he had just learned to love. When they married, Arthur told Totsie he would like to replace Dwight as the baby’s adopted father and give him his name. Neither expected Dwight to offer any objection since he had been vehemently opposed to the idea of adoption in the first place and only consented to please Totsie. But when Arthur broached the subject to him on the day of our departure, Dwight was adamant in his refusal to discuss the matter. Totsie, however, has discussed little else this entire trip. She is distraught that the child will have one father in name and another in fact.
Arthur assures her that he is equally upset, but I have observed signs of barely concealed relief at the thought that another man is willing to share the responsibilities of fatherhood. Why do women make the mistake of exacting such total commitment from the men they marry? I have a feeling fatherhood is only one of many responsibilities most men would be glad to share. Marriage places such an unfair burden on the husband and I am only one of many young widows paying the price.
Thank you again for all you have done to make the pain of the last few weeks easier to bear. The children are still safe in the cocoon of fantasy you spun for them each night out of fables and fairy tales and I pray they will not break through the sheltering walls of their imaginary world until their wings are strong enough to hold them aloft. Would that we all could soar forever out of reach of the earth—beyond dangers waiting to destroy us the moment we alight.
Even though this trip revives unhappy memories, the train is a form of escape for me. I dread our arrival and the relentless ritual of daily life that awaits me.
Much love,
Bess
August 20, 1921
Dallas
Dear Papa and Mavis,
I know you must be glad to be home again, cultivating your own garden, so to speak. It was generous of you to spend so much of the summer here, first with me and then again with the children when we returned from Vermont. Your cheerful presence sustained us in a way words cannot describe.
Ever since our return my friend Sa
m Garner has devoted himself to the children and their welfare. I chide him about spending so much time with us when I am in no position to make promises concerning my future, but he merely smiles and says he always does business by extending credit freely. The more I ponder this remark, the more unsettling it becomes.
However, Drew and Eleanor openly adore him. From the day we returned home he set about to win their friendship and within the week his efforts were completely successful. Children give their hearts so easily. Little more than a smile and they are yours forever—or at least until your attention lags. But as long as they have your total attention, you have their total devotion.
Sam has just bought a new rowboat and every Sunday we drive to a different lake, with the rowboat bouncing along behind us on a trailer. While Sam takes the children out on the lake, I read under a shady tree. I pay with endless teasing for my preference for shade and solitude, and I am beginning to feel more alone in their combined company than I do at home in my room. I know it is stupid of me but there are times when I feel the three of them are the family and I am the stranger in town.
Forgive me for letting my feelings show so shamelessly, but though I am seldom alone, there is no one in my life now with whom I can share my deepest thoughts. My friend Arthur Fineman and I used to prolong the dinners we shared for hours, discussing each new face and idea we had encountered since the last time we met. Now that he and Totsie are married, we still see each other frequently but the conversation seems to center on furnishing a house and hiring a staff, topics which none of us considered of even passing interest when we each had a separate and special friendship. And the intimacy which Totsie and I have shared since college suddenly seems nothing more than an ordinary friendship between two middle-class matrons now that we are neighbors.
I do not know what is causing this storm of unrest within my soul, but it is much worse than the sorrow that consumed me when Robin died. With death comes an awareness of life so intense that for a brief moment the world is radiant and beautiful to behold. But how quickly we slip back into our old ways and allow it to become drab and ordinary again. I grieve for my lost child now in a way that would have been abhorrent to me in the days immediately following his death when the world spoke to me in a thousand tongues and everywhere I turned I saw evidence that life had meaning. I grieve for Robin, but even more I grieve for the vision I could not keep.
I do not mean to hurt either of you by saying this, but how I wish my mother were alive.
Bess
November 1, 1921
Dallas
Dear Lydia and Manning,
It is All Soul’s Day and I feel closer to the dead than I do to the living. I am amazed, though of course grateful, at the unquestioning way the children have accepted the death of their brother. The only time Eleanor has cried since she came home was the night before she was to go back to school. I took her in my arms to comfort her and she confessed, “Everybody’s going to ask about Robin and I’m going to be so embarrassed.”
They have survived the loss of their father and now their brother with an equanimity that finally challenges my own existence. Until now my purpose in life has been provided by the needs of other people but I am beginning to realize none of us is really necessary to anyone else. There is always someone to replace us. In a sense I rejoice at the new freedom afforded by this discovery. But I also grow more detached each day from everything and everyone around me.
However, the more alone and apart I feel, the more objectively I witness the curious interdependence that seems to connect everyone else. For instance, my friend Sam Garner. It was his sympathy for my loss that involved him so deeply in my life this summer, but it is his own loneliness that keeps him there. He is as devoted to the children as if they were his own, and they have taken the place in his life of the children his own wife refused to give him, choosing instead the rewards of a career. The topic of professional women is one of the few that threatens his usually cheerful disposition, in spite of the fact that we were introduced by Grace Townsend, who is a respected orthopedic surgeon.
Sam stops by the house nearly every afternoon on his way home from work. The children are always delighted to see him and beg him to stay for dinner and when I add my insistence, he usually does. Last weekend, Drew was staying overnight with a friend and I had retired to my room with a headache when Sam arrived. Eleanor was about to sit down alone to a light supper of soup and sandwiches when to her delight he invited her to dine with him at a restaurant. She quickly put on her best dress and off the two of them went. She had cherries jubilee for the first time in her life and pronounced the whole experience unforgettable.
Sam is an expert photographer and the first person I know to buy a motion picture camera for home use. He follows the children around trying for candid footage, and now they begin clowning whenever they see him, while I sit watching their antics with an eye as cold as the camera.
Sam is going to Philadelphia for Christmas to sign the papers that will make his divorce final. I suspect he will ask me to marry him when he returns, and I am afraid the children will not allow me to refuse. When does a woman cease to be the hostage of her family?
Love,
Bess
December 17, 1921
Honey Grove, Texas
Dear Sam,
My father has been in ill health so we are spending Christmas here with him and his wife. We put a huge Christmas tree up in the hallway yesterday and your lovely packages were the first to go under it. It was kind of you to remember us. I thought you might forget your new friends in Texas once you rejoined your old ones in Pennsylvania. Returning home can make all the time spent in another place seem like a dream. I have been sleeping in the bedroom where I spent my childhood, and this morning I awoke thinking I still had my whole life ahead of me. What a shock to confront my two children at breakfast and realize how much of my future had already been committed.
I am glad you have no regrets about ending your marriage and hope you will enjoy all the freedom your new status affords. You are in a position now to restructure your whole life according to your own desires, with no obligation to accommodate your decisions to anyone else’s needs. You must make the most of this opportunity and not assume any unnecessary burdens at this point in your life.
The events of last summer left me more emotionally exhausted than I realized, and I am finding the unhurried tempo of life in a small town very soothing. I play bridge once a week with girlhood friends grown old. It is ironic that the less they have experienced the older they look. And yet I am also amazed to realize that people who have never left Honey Grove can be more content with their lot than I am. My father and his wife belong to a bridge club, many of whose members graduated from high school with me, but they enjoy each other’s company as if they were contemporaries. Perhaps that is why my father had no qualms about marrying a woman younger than his daughter. In a small town there are only children and adults. Once you finish school, you’re as old as everyone else.
I try to spend several hours a day at my father’s bedside. His failing health has made me realize how much of his life is still unknown territory to which he is the only guide. He loves answering my questions, and we sometimes talk for hours before my stepmother tiptoes in to suggest a nap. While he sleeps I rummage through bureau drawers filled with unidentified photographs, and when he wakes, I am armed with new questions.
The children are happier here than they have been anywhere except Vermont. My father rents the property adjoining his house to a farmer, and both the children and I marvel at the many uses to which so few acres can be put. He keeps cows and goats, and Drew and Eleanor provide an admiring audience every day for the afternoon milking. He has a cotton field and a fruit orchard, and has promised them a job as field hands this summer. Neither of them has ever accepted an offer more eagerly.
We envy you the snow in Philadelphia—we all would have enjoyed ice skating on the lake with you. The children were surpris
ed to learn that in some parts of the country people do more than just sing about a “one-horse open sleigh.”
I hope your holiday will be filled with all the peace and joy this season can provide. The children join me in sending you our best wishes.
Happy New Year,
Bess
December 19, 1921
Honey Grove
My dear Dwight,
Your letter was forwarded to me from Dallas. Unfortunately, I will be here for the holidays, so will miss seeing you during your brief stay.
I am delighted by your desire to spend Christmas with your son. And I can assure you of a warm reception from Arthur and Totsie, have no fear. Totsie has told me many times this fall how much it means to Little Dwight when a letter arrives from you. Did you know that ever since last summer he has insisted on being called Dwight? Anyone who forgets and refers to him as “Din-Din” risks the terrible wrath that only a three-year-old can unleash upon the world.
It occurs to me that in my absence you might enjoy the use of my house. I have a full-time housekeeper in residence, and she would be delighted to have you there. Little Dwight is a frequent visitor, always heading straight for the cookie jar, which has won him an enduring place in the heart of my housekeeper. I know he would enjoy being with you there, and a home is certainly preferable to a hotel room when it comes to celebrating Christmas. I will write my housekeeper tonight to get everything in readiness for you. Please do not disappoint us.
How marvelous that you are moving into Manhattan. If I were alone, I would not hesitate to find a small apartment in the heart of the city and pursue every event of interest to me. I never open a New York newspaper without seeing a hundred places I’d like to go. How I envy your independence—physical, emotional, and financial. I hope you are as happy as your situation allows you to be.