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At any rate I'm not writing to justify myself-my God, I'm forty-two!-but to let you know on the wing as it were that I'm physically well and you're not to worry. There's no other man, not really, not the way you think, but I did feel my entire flight out here the day before yesterday taking place in an upholding atmosphere of love-love streaming against my face and chest like the sunset light in that clipper ship we had framed above the big carved mantel in Dedham. I used to look at the picture as a little girl until I felt myself to be a mermaid in the waves, looking up at this artifact of men from another world-the masts, the riggings, the portholes, the wooden woman on the prow. All the details of that picture-the froth, the clouds, their little dabbed-on crests of sunset red-seemed magical to me, a piece of a Heaven I would some day enter. Think of me as still that little girl. Think of this episode now as my continuing my education. In fact it is like that, back to school, but school where my real i

What I want to say is, Don’t let Charles con you. To him I was another piece of furniture and unless I got coffee spilled on me or squeaked like a rusty door he never gave me a glance. You and he have always tended to gang up on me and as Pearl would say I'm through with guilt trips. Through, Mother.

Next morning. The words were begi

The best of the Price silver along with that serpentine candelabra Granddaddy saved from the Peabody creditors I put for safekeeping in a rented lockbox at the same bank where I opened my own independent account. I'm still angry about the way my trust fund got absorbed into Charles's medical education and I can't tell you the satisfaction it gave me not to check the little box marked Joint. The Price and Peabody silver you still have (and that precious teeny-tiny salt-and-pepper set way back from the Pry