Lion House,The (23 page)

If you're interested, fork up your own twenty-five-an-hour and see for yourself! I'm proselytizing, of course. Like all converts, I feel that nothing else exists, or ever will. It becomes your religion, and you believe that your couch is an Ark.
Get on,
you shout to everyone in sight,
or you’ll be drowned!
(And I'm not completely kidding. I wish you would, Jo. I hope terribly much that someday you will. I would guess, though I have no right to, that you too are one of the Oedipus Wrecks!)

As for Paige
—what can I tell you? Aside from her actual brilliance as an analyst, she strikes a thousand inner chords of response. I hate her till it kills me; and I love her till it kills me. But this time, I suspect, I am facing the kind of killing which turns back on itself and leads, ultimately, to life.

At the moment, I'm dying over something as
seemingly
unimportant as her clothes. Yours were bad enough, Jo
—but hers are absolutely incredible! There are days when, I swear, she looks whorier than my own damned sex-box of a mother! I tell myself, however, that such deliberate unattractiveness can't possibly be blamed on poor taste alone; that in reality she suffers from some deep and unresolved neurosis...

Another problem is her deplorable lack of appreciation of wit. I told her my gag about Fee and Sympathy
—
and you could have heard a pin drop. I'm quite sure she couldn't respond because of some long-buried guilt about all the money I'm paying her; probably
her
mother didn't love
her
enough and
she
doesn't feel
she
deserves anything!

Last week I referred to her as my
Psychoannihilist,
and you could have heard
half
a pin drop...

But I didn't really worry about her until two days ago. It was lovely out, and I went up to her office feeling, for the first time, as if I owned the world. "I like this business," I told her, lying happily on my back. "And when I get all through I'm going to write a book about it. The story of my analysis. And you want to hear the title?
—

I DISMEMBER MAMA!

Well, I waited. (After all, I was Ko-Ko in
The Mikado
at camp when I was thirteen, and I know; you have to
pause
for laughs...) But this one never came. Finally I turned around and looked at her to see if maybe she had died or something. And you know what she was doing? She had put her knitting down (Oh, I forgot to tell you: she knits. Who she gives all those scarves and socks and sweaters to, God only knows!) and she was staring blankly, but blankly
,
out of the window!

"Don't you think that's
funny?"
I asked.

And you know what she did then? She stopped looking out of the window and, without the merest bat of an eyelash, started knitting again!

Oh, Jo, oh Jo, oh Jo
—I'm plugging for yucks, and I know it! I'm kidding, and covering, and crapping it up; and I'm not telling you at all, at
all
what I wanted to tell you when I began this letter! Why can't I? Why is it so hard to be serious? What is it with the Pagliacci bit? What did we used to say when we were kids
—
Oh me, oh my! It's better to laugh than cry...? Why is it better? I know. Because it’s safer. You may not have to find out so much if you keep yourself rolling in the aisles.

But listen now, and I'll tell you what I wanted you to know: I'm all right. I mean I'm going to be all right. I'm sure of it. And one reason I'm sure of it is that I'm so damned fed up with
not
being all right.

So
—there it is. I'm going to be okay. And that butterfly net I was always so afraid of—well, Paige isn't whamming it down over my head the way I thought she would. I've been living inside of it all my life, and Paige is lifting it off!
And not just the big net; the little ones too. You know how your stocking can run while you're at a party and because of a crazy thing like that you think nobody loves you? Or you meet someone you met a year ago and he doesn't remember your name so you wish you were dead? Or you don't go to bed with the most wonderful guy in the world on the night he asks you because you suddenly realize you forgot to shave under your arms...?

Go get yours lifted, Jo. If you land a good job somewhere, save on dinners and clothes; save on everything, and do it! Don't not do it just because I tell you to. You know the old joke line
—
I may be crazy, but I'm not stupid
.
I've learned a lot in this short time: about me, about others. And what happened to us
—well, you must know: it takes two to tango.
Please go, will you?

Love, Frannie.

P.S. I don't bite my nails anymore.

Well, that's it. All of it. And I had to write it down to get rid of it; to get rid of Frannie. Or maybe I mean
—to put her in her proper place. But I couldn't, at home. For some reason—it had to be here in Bermuda, in just the house where Frannie was.

For eight weeks I've spent every morning typing at this table. My cigarette stubs have left a few scars beside the ones she left when she was here. In the afternoons I've swum in her blue ocean, and climbed her perilous cliffs to get close to her blue sky. At night, before I turn the lamp of I see the top of the bedside cabinet, ringed with the glass marks of her gins and soda. There are more there now that have come from mine.

When the whistle toots on the Hamilton Ferry, I think
she loved the quaint and funny things; she must have found it charming.
When the insects with their flutes inside cut up the night in strips of music, I ask:
did she hear this? Did she keep the tune?
And when the seaplanes pass over the roof top, beating my ears with a roar of lions, I wonder:
was she afraid?

I'm leaving tomorrow. I'm flying back to New York to get my things. And then, I'm going to call Brad. I'm going to tell him he was right:
it doesn't work this way.

What would Frannie say to that? What questions, what delvings into the hidden mind
—to come forth with what irrefutable answers?
Dig up!
cries her credo.
Lift out an analyze! Take apart, spread open, examine! Why is the big thing; Why is all; without the Why there is no chant for being!

It's strange. Having had so much of Frannie, I need her less and less. Her word is no longer law; and I can disagree.

She'll make it with Paige. If I know Frannie, she'll make it always, with anyone, at anything she sets her heart to. And the questioning is part of it, just as the answering is; just as the suffering is, and her own bright brand of laughter. In time, she'll make it with Paige
—and she'll leave that sacred couch with the biggest, most fully answered Why in the world, carrying it out in her hands, above her head, triumphantly, like a child on a beach with a colored ball.

But that's she; not I. I don't ask the meaning of
every blade of grass, every pebble, every insignificant weed…
walk on them as she does, and, as with her, they leave an imprint on my heel. Yet, I'm satisfied to have it there, willing to take it for what it is.
Why
it is, I don't know, don't wish to know, will never know.

Brad was right that day as he stood in front of the Gotham and kissed my wrist before going: until now, I've had only half of it. The rest of it is:
I
need
him.
In the beginning I wanted him, and everything that came with him. I got it. Then I let it go. Tomorrow I'm going back to get it. Whatever it is, it's something to be kept.

Does it add up? Does it make sense? God only knows. Living is a job for anyone; but anyone is free to choose the way to get it done.

Frannie is doing it her way.

Let me do it mine.

THE END