I hope this letter doesn’t upset you in any way. I don’t see why it should, but a couple of times I felt that you thought $80 a month, even if I had to work 48 hours to get it and you had to sleep alone nights, was the best we could hope for. I think a clean break is necessary. The pills must go, and we must have some surgery (powerful imagery). I will not go into this any further. It is very simple. More than anything, I want your honest and intimate opinion. I don’t want you giving way if you think the idea is all wrong. It would seem to me to be a chance to get a head start on our future, so much of it as entails my writing for our living. And now, turning to the center of things, I love you.
Jim
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
January 26, 1946
Dear Betty,
I looked for a letter very much from you today, but none came. It is three in the afternoon, Saturday. I got up at ten this morning and went to Fr Patrick Kelly’s funeral, solemnized by the archbishop, at the cathedral. He was a wonderful old priest at the hospital, actually loved by everybody. He is a subject of mine, and I have only put off writing about him and Sr Eugene Marie,8 who looked after him until she was transferred to North Dakota, because he was still living. I knew that when she left, he would die. He did five months later. I then stopped off at the parole office to see the man. It is all set: I am a free man whenever I wish to go, only have to let the hospital know and teach someone the job I have. I think it’ll be the 9th, my last night. I had hoped to have your letter today so as to know what you thought of the idea I broached the other night (and also to have your reaction to “Prince of Darkness”). […]
I also bought a ticket for Here Is Ireland this morning and will go all by myself — the only one I know who takes me seriously on the subject of Ireland — tomorrow afternoon. I expect to enjoy myself. I made some coffee two days ago but forgot to drink it. I am drinking it now. It tastes flat. Does coffee get flat? Then, after buying the ticket, I bought a pecan roll. Then I went to see Fr Egan about the good news. To discuss us. He would like an early marriage. The dog (the Pastor’s) tried to bite him while I was there. Very funny. I must write it. […]
Fr Kelly lay in his coffin with his biretta on, dapper to the last. I am quite tired from not sleeping. To bed then. I love you but would like to hear oftener and at more length from you. It is a scheme to make me love you more. You can’t.
Jim
4. It would seem you have the well-known business sense, January 29, 1946–February 14, 1946
Jim, ca. 1928, “a member of the Blackfoot tribe”
Betty, who had the Teuton’s boundless appetite for drawing up schedules, budgets, inventories, instructions, and rules, embarked on a lifelong, utterly hopeless crusade to convert Jim to the joys of time management.
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
January 29, 1946
Dear Betty,
It is Tuesday. I think you ought to know that, and I’ve been waiting since last Friday or Saturday for a letter. This morning two of them arrived. Yesterday, when no letter came, I was thinking of altering my future, or rather that it had been altered for me: you had decided I was too this or that, and you’d heard from Elmo again. Well, getting into your letter, I am sorry it caused you so much grief, my big idea. I know you are as anxious as I am to have me amount to something, as they say. I doubt that I will at this rate. When you split up the day and proved I had plenty of time for writing if I’d only stop fuming … shades of my mother. It would seem, though, when the smoke has cleared away, that I ought to stay here and continue what I’ve been doing. All right, we’ll see.
Fandel’s1 is absolutely out. I won’t go into why. If you knew anything about bookstores or department stores, you’d know why. It would be even worse in a hick town, selling Your Income Tax and Lloyd Douglas. In some ways whoever it was that wanted you to go to Chicago and get a job and see the world was right. I mean, working isn’t what it’s cracked up to be by people who don’t do it and by those who do but haven’t desire or imagination enough to know the difference. As for going to the Humphreys’, you have killed that prospect dead. I had not thought that it would be like that. I would go to Sandstone again before I’d go there. I am glad to know it is that way. I would have perished in the snow getting away if I’d gone there first and then found out.
I ought to write a happy letter, I suppose. I am awfully glad you love me enough to cry over letters for fear you’ll run against my grain. I respect that and love you for it. It is true, though, that you have nothing, just as Sr Mariella has nothing when it comes to a solution. It is always the same. I had thought this the time for me to get a head start. When we are married, the screws will be much tighter; then considering a plan to write would amount to nonsupport and desertion and six or seven other things that the state and church sit on you for. I ought to wind this letter up cheerily. I can’t. (My mother sent a clipping showing me where somebody got $125,000 from Hollywood.) I don’t want to live in your grandmother’s house. We’ll live here. I love you.
Jim
Let me say, Betty, I was sorry I put the issue up to you, especially the housing part. It was my responsibility. I don’t know how to meet it except to say we’ll live here. So we’ll live here.
BETTY WAHL
150 Summit Avenue
January 30, 1946
Dear Betty,
Wednesday. Your letter came, and I have read it. I trust you rec’d my letter of yesterday today. I did not feel like writing Monday, and that is why you didn’t get one yesterday. A card from Sr Mariella in which she tells me it is not necessary to come and see her as you would have told me everything she had in mind, which of course you have, and she concludes, however, with the thought that one must live one’s own life and it is my neck if I wish to risk it. In a little while I’ll be eating with Fr Egan. I called him a while ago and told him I was snowed under again (the last time I saw him, I was young and gay with the good news), and he said he’d pay me $80 to clean his pipes before he’d counsel sticking with the system. I do not plan to keep the hospital job if I can get anything else. If I can’t, I’ll try to get it down to five hours a day, but they won’t like it, and of course I’ll have to take less money, all of which seems like a damned nuisance to me. But, let it be clear so your heart can be at rest, I plan to get something, and I will keep the apartment, I am not going to do anything drastic, etc. Enough of that. I guess we are both tired of it. […]
It is snowing. I am not going on the retreat this weekend. I will need what money I have, I imagine, if my brother comes. Anyway, I am in no mood for it. As a matter of fact, I am not in the mood for anything good. I hope you didn’t dislike what I said in my letter about Fandel’s and so on. You must try to understand, Betty, that I have been through the old bookstore mill and it has left its mark on me. And about continuing work — for twenty-seven months, in jail, out of jail, carrying bedpans, sewing up corpses, sweating a lake of sweat with the sterilizer, and hauling a mountain of ice, all this time I have been looking forward to freedom. Or what I thought was freedom. Anyway, it is not easy, especially when you are as short on virtue as I am and long-suffering, to accept someone’s gentle counsel, even when you love that someone and perhaps recognize some truth in what she says, to continue the same old grind. I am lazy too. I hate regular hours. I like to walk when I want to. Sleep when I want to. Listen to music. I will go pretty far to get in a position to do these things. I love you, you know, and I’ll try to find some way.