The Truth According to Us Read Free Page B

the cloth will shred to rags. Their children are sick because they don’t get enough to eat, and they’re dirty becausethere’s no place to wash. These are people who never thought they’d have to beg, and yet here they are, begging me for a job that won’t pay them enough to keep food in their stomachs.
    There’s an opening on the West Virginia Writers’ Project. I have, against my better judgment, given you that position. Be grateful or be damned.
    Ben

May 30, 1938
    Miss Layla Beck
    c/o Mr. Lance Beck
    Department of Chemistry
    Princeton University
    Princeton, New Jersey
    Dearest Layla,
    I must say, it’s very inconsiderate of you to run off to cry on Lance’s shoulder and leave me here to cope with Papa in the state he’s in, and I certainly hope you’re not having a rendezvous with that awful Charles Antonin, because Papa will find out, and he’ll be even more furious than he is right now. Nothing I say moves him even the tiniest bit, and I can’t help it but you simply have to take Ben’s tatty old job. I know what you think—and imagine
my
feelings at the thought of you among grubby coal miners—but I’m afraid Papa won’t budge, darling. He says if you won’t marry Nelson—I’m not lecturing, I’m only repeating what Papa says—then you have to face stark reality. I wept and said I was sure you’d get ringworm, but that just made Papa fuss the more. He said it was time you understood what you were throwing away and if it took worms to make you understand it, that was fine by him (I didn’t tell Papa, but I don’t believe there are real worms in ringworm).
    I never thought my own daughter would be on relief. I could just
strangle
Ben.
    Your loving,
    Mother
    P.S. Lucille saw Nelson at Bick’s Saturday. She says he looks
terrible
, absolutely heartbroken and thin as a rail. You can’t call a man insincere when he’s lost weight like that. You just think about that, young lady.

June 6, 1938
    Miss Rose Bremen
    “The Waves”
    Gurney Street
    Cape May, New Jersey
    Dearest Rose,
    Your letter came like the King’s Pardon, just after the severed head thumped into the straw. Thanks for the kind offer, but the die is cast, and I’m to arrive in Macedonia, West Virginia, next Tuesday to begin work for the Federal Writers’ Project. I took the Pauper’s Oath yesterday, and I am officially on relief.
    I can’t tell you how it happened because I don’t understand it myself, really I don’t. I’ve been a frivolous person for years now, and Father’s never been bothered by it in the least. If anything, he seemed pleased by my success: Once, I overheard him bragging that I had been invited to every house party from the Adirondacks to the Appalachians. Everything was
fine
until Nelson appeared on the scene, and then the worm turned with a vengeance. They wanted me to marry him in the worst way, both Mother and Father did. I thought they were joking. He was so obviously, completelyawful—and they knew it. They knew it and they didn’t care. Nelson! He’s the Citronella Scion and hugely rich, but he’s also vain and tedious and shallow as a dewdrop. That whinny laugh, that tiny mustache—I’d rather kiss an eel. His most cherished ambition is to be mistaken for Errol Flynn. Within ten minutes of meeting Nelson, I despised him, and if Nelson ever had a thought about anyone but himself, the feeling would have been mutual. I thought Mother and Father knew what a disaster he was, and when he proposed, I thought we’d all laugh about it. How wrong I was. They wanted me to be a good girl and say yes. Father was blinded by the glint of Citronella (he’s running again next year), and Mother was blinded by Father, and Lance refused to concern himself with such trivialities. I didn’t know what to do, and when Father demanded an explanation, I panicked and made a fatal error: I said I could never respect a man who didn’t work. The moment I said it I wished I could take it back. Father’s face turned