The Lacuna

Mrs. Brown, dear lady, your discretion is prodigious. You resisted the siren song of tattle. The seams of your character must be sewn with steel thread. If this letter delivers only my everlasting gratitude, that is a greater weight than three cents postage should allow. But it also contains an earnest query. Your conduct in the battle of Mexico Old and New has led me to think you may be just the amanuensis who could put a life to rights, and also help with typing a second book, now underway.

Naturally, you may have a different opinion. Let me sum up a few details and be finished, so you can consider the offer. Weighing in my favor, I hope: I am likely in a position to exceed your present salary. A drawback: my workplace is here where I live. Some ladies might find it awkward to work in the home of an unmarried gentleman. In this letter I have already used the terms cat and canary, not because I could ever think of a secretary in those terms, but because others do, evidently. Mrs. Brown, I have an odd impairment: the world paints its prejudices boldly across banners, and somehow I walk through them without seeing. It’s a particular fault of mine, a blindness. I carry on walking down the street, dazed as a calf, with shreds of paper hanging everywhere. I hope in this case to be less naive.

A third point in my favor: I spent years as a stenographer myself, as I already hinted. In Mexico I worked for two different men, both greater than I will ever be. Oddly, the experience did not prepare me for public attention. But I understand the role of professional helpmeet, perhaps better than most men. I am not disposed to tyranny.

If anything about this request strikes you as unseemly, please ignore it and accept my high regard for our previous acquaintance. But if my suggestion holds interest for you, I would gladly schedule an interview at a date and time you suggest.

Sincerely,

HARRISON W. SHEPHERD

May 4, 1946

Dear Mr. Shepherd,

Your letter was what you said. A bolt from the blue. But not the first. At the Lending Library I saw your name on a book cover in January. My thought was, well sir, it’s a coincidence there be two Harrison Shepherds in this world. Next, an article in the paper discussed the book, its author reputed to be living in Montford. The subject of Mexico I knew to be your familiar. Curiosity killed the cat for Mrs. Bittle, her niece said she’d spied on the fellow, reporting him tall as a tree and thin as a rail. Who else?

Imagine our surprise. For years we sat here like bumps on a log eating the cooking of a man who would shortly come to fame. Now old Mr. Judd says, “I had no idee what that young fellow was cooking!” (You remember his drear jokes.) Miss McKellar notes that “still waters run deep.” Reg Borden still refuses to believe it’s you, but wants to read the book anyway. He’s had a long wait. The library has but one copy. I had to wait weeks myself, and I have an “In” with Mrs. Lutheridge since I joined the Library Committee, mainly to set the card files to rights, which were a disgrace.

Your book is good. This town hasn’t had such a sensation since Tommy Wolfe came out with Look Homeward, Angel. And that sensation was not pleasing to most. Some in Asheville were disgruntled to be left out of the story, and all others dismayed to be left in, thus the scandal was entire. The library refused to carry it. I was already in the Woman’s Club (recording secretary), and our meeting convened the week that book came out. I doubt if so many salts of ammonia have ever been used in our city, before or since. You had only to open the door of the meeting hall to get a mighty dose.

I couldn’t guess how to write a book. But here is my opinion: people love to read of sins and errors, just not their own. You were wise to put your characters far from here, instead of so-called “Altamont” as Mr. Wolfe did. That “Dixieland” is his mother’s boardinghouse on Spruce Street, and all here know it. Few were spared the jabs of Wolfe’s pen, even his own father whom I myself can remember teetering into the S & W Cafeteria reeking of spirits before noon of a Monday. Many feel there was no need to bring that kind of thing to the lime-light, especially by a family member.

This all pertains to the subject of your letter. Thank you for saying I am sewn up with steel thread, but I call it plain sense. Some writers get away with murder, using nice words and a mannerly story to bring misery on real folk. You did the other way, writing of murderous things but behaving as a gentleman in the civic sense. That’s how I came to speak as I did at Book Review Night. Those girls were apoplectic to make your book into another hometown yarn. We’ve had that kind of yarn here, and it got itself wound up in a gorm of knots. Mr. Shepherd, you put your story in Mexico. Why not keep it there? That was my thinking.

I know you as a gentleman. Using your home as a place of employment is not unseemly. A lady in the working world all her life knows that tender manners have their place, sometimes less useful than a good cup of coffee. During the war secretaries sometimes emptied bedpans, and certain men will ask worse, even in peacetime. But knowing you as I do from Mrs. Bittle’s, I’ve seen you show more kindness than most, even toward a hen you’re fixing to put in the oven.

I will warn, I can be particular. I like a typewriter with an automatic margin and the type bar separate from the carriage. Preferably a Royal or L. C. Smith. These were used at the Selective Service office, and I got accustomed. I will come to your house for interviewing at half past six on Thursday. The neighborhood of your address is a short ride on the bus from my present employer. I’ll go directly, after work. Sincerely,

VIOLET BROWN

May 27

Mother’s soul can rest: here is a woman in my life. Mrs. Brown in a pearl-gray snood, age forty-six, sensible as pancake flour. Like characters in a story, our lives were star-crossed but came together. She will rescue the hero, answer his telephone, file the mountains of mail, maybe shake a broom at the laundry thieves. And he can keep his monk’s life, the holes in his underwear. Mrs. Brown doesn’t care.

At the first interview she laid her failings at my feet, or would have except she hasn’t any. Does not smoke cigarettes, take strong drink, go to church or gamble. Has worked for the city, the army, and most daunting of all, the Asheville Woman’s Club. Thirty years a widow. She doubts being married would have been much different.

It was strange to speak forthrightly, after living at Mrs. Bittle’s those years: exiting the bathroom with downcast eyes, sitting at supper while old Mr. Judd piped up with his yellowed news extras. Now it seems we shared a kindred silence, restraining our smiles on hearing that Limburger has flown across the Atlantic. But maybe I contrive this, as lovers reconfigure the days before, with every glance leading ultimately to union.