The Letters of Shirley Jackson Read online

  i haven’t heard from you in so long…darling i’m a sick woman write me at once. we leave on thursday so better not mail any letters later than tuesday morning. we leave, that is, if i am able. they’re taking furniture out of this apartment on the first, so we leave here anyway…i love you…much.

  cat.

  • • •

  [To Stanley Edgar Hyman]

  tuesday [August 29, 1939]

  dearest,

  i am recovering. thank god. for a while i didn’t give a good goddam whether or not i ever saw the light of day again. i got your letter yesterday at just about the lowest point i had reached so far. i was in the hospital and it didn’t look like they were going to let me out and no one knew what was wrong and mother came down to see me and brought your letter. at the beginning i didn’t write to you because i felt bad and then i didn’t write to you because they wouldn’t send the letter from the hospital without fumigating it first and after i was home i didn’t write you because i thought i was dying and so today i am recovering and the sun came out (rose clear!) and so i am writing to you a letter. i think i wrote you that mother thought i had mumps…she called the doctor and he said make her eat a pickle and i did and nothing happened except my temperature went up a few degrees so the doctor came and looked at my throat and said hm. and he went away after telling mother to give me a good laxative (so she gave me an enema which is a different story altogether or could i say thereby hangs a tale) and about twenty minutes after the doctor left he called us and said bring shirley to the hospital right away she has diphtheria. mother said my god no she hasn’t we’re leaving town on thursday and the doctor laughed nastily and hung up so there was i at the hospital and my god i hated it they all wore masks and everyone was scared of me and i was so contagious and i breathed in all their faces. i went to the hospital sunday morning and it was monday afternoon that i left. and by that time they had decided it wasn’t diphtheria so they decided to call it a throat infection and they let me go home. and when i got home i had to perform something called throat irrigation only mother didn’t help right the way the nurse told her to and i swallowed about a quart of something called hydrogen peroxide and then I knew I was going to die because it is a very unpleasant drink indeed. so then i couldn’t eat. i hadn’t been able to eat in the hospital because i couldn’t swallow but this was different. so mother gave me something she thought would settle my stomach and then hell broke loose because it seems mother made another mistake and gave me something the doctor didn’t think i should have and anyway i haven’t had anything to eat since…i think i have lost a great many pounds.

  incidentally the doctor who took all the cultures of my throat in the hospital was a chinese woman, dr li, and she was the only bright spot in the whole time i spent in the hospital. she didn’t speak english very well but she stayed around anyway and talked to me all the first afternoon. she has only been in america for six weeks and left china only because the japanese took over her hospital there and she wasn’t going to work for the japanese and she won’t go back until they’re out of there…she’s coming back east next year to spend a year at cornell and then she thinks the war will be over and she can go back to china. she says she can’t be homesick because she keeps remembering china the way she saw it last and no one could be homesick for that.

  all of which makes the fact that i miss you seem delirium. only it isn’t and the funny thing was that in that damned hospital i was lying there half asleep and the door opened and i looked up and it was you and then i knew i was sick and i got more scared only seeing you like that cheered me up at the same time only you wouldn’t stay…just closed the door and went away and i could hear your footsteps going down the hall. and i never knew i loved you so much.

  there is a slight possibility that i may come home alone on the train, but it is very slight. anyway we are coming home just as fast as we can and so i’ll be back in rochester in about two weeks. thank god thank god thank god.

  i’ll see you soon and i love you more than i can say.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Stanley Edgar Hyman]

  saturday [September 2, 1939]

  dearest auntie,

  i am at last strong enough to write you a few lines; my fingers do not work too well, however, so forgive.

  we are still in california; and i am afraid we will be here for at least another week. i have put on a fine show and driven everyone nearly insane, but at last i am on the road to recovery (meaning they let me have a cigarette yesterday). i now have three doctors working on me…someone finally called in a throat specialist who said the treatment they had been giving me was all wrong all wrong and so now everything starts anew except that i still take injections which of course do me much more harm than good because they knock me absolutely cold for a day and a half and i have to take one every other day. and the only thing the doctors agree on is that i positively MUST NOT DRIVE BACK TO THE EAST. they say if i want to drive back i must wait until i am completely cured which would mean two weeks more.

  which makes for a very pretty combination of circumstances. every few hours i tell mother and barry with a catch in my voice that they must go on back without me and my doctors will see me off on the train when i am well (“go on, pal; i’m done for…save yourself and never mind about me…”) but mother and barry say no. we were supposed to start home two days ago and my father in rochester knows nothing of all this except that mother sent him a telegram saying we were not leaving right away and now comes frantic telegrams from pop to the office saying what is wrong what is wrong. so finally the office took over and still without telling pop the head of the sf branch found us and brought us books and custard and a bottle of scotch which mother drank and this guy says well we will sell the car and you will all take the train back and we all said why that is a very good idea and then they went to see what they could sell the car for and it seems that they couldn’t sell the car for very much so we will either take the terrific loss on the car and take the train home or mother and barry will drive and i will take the plane home alone. mother, who would worry herself into a stroke if she thought of me alone for five days on the train, can hardly worry over me alone for two days on the plane with a stop off in chicago where her friends will take care of me. that seems to be the most sensible solution and of course i am for it. things look pretty bleak. it will take at least four or five days for the infection to go away and then i must get back all the strength i have lost by not eating, and not sleeping, and being generally miserable. so it looks like a long hard winter.

  the nicest part of now is that we left the apartment. we could have stayed a couple more days but the damned place was so dreary and the sun never shone and the curtains and the bedclothes and the furniture and the rugs all seemed damp and mouldy and it was so gloomy…so we left and came down to burlingame to a motor court, where it is lovely. it is run by such a nice lady who puts a chair out in the sun for me every morning and makes me sit there for an hour and she has two big black cats named tommy and jake and they sit on my bed and purr. and we are way out in the country and when i sit out in the sun in back there are cows walking around.

  so i am tremendously comfortable and as soon as i can eat and talk and sleep i think i will be completely happy. i won’t be really happy till i get home. please god!

  oh, auntie, i miss you so! all i can do is write you long miserable letters about how bad i feel and i can’t ever seem to make you realize how i need you and love you.

  s.

  • • •

  [To Stanley Edgar Hyman, handwritten]

  thursday [September 7, 1939]

  darling—

  just wanted to tell you that we’re on our way again—they decided i could drive and we’re coming the shortest way home—skipping The Grand Canyon.

  it’s
difficult to write because there is a cat playing with my pen—he is a nice grey cat and purrs when i rub his head. i don’t know his name because he is a sort of transient—we’re in a motor court and he came in and went to sleep on my face. i am put back to bed as soon as we stop anywhere, of course.

  i haven’t heard from you for so long that i haven’t the faintest idea where you are or what you are doing. we stayed in Burlingame so much longer than we expected but we will be home only a couple of days later than we planned to be—approximately the 16th or so. we seem to be missing half the trip by coming home so fast, but we’re all homesick and mother seems to feel that she must get me home as soon as possible.

  i can eat now, and do, like a horse. instead of seeing me thin and wan and pale (as i am now, god help me!) you will see me sleek and fat.

  we get very little news—the war, of course, which still seems unreal to me. nothing is quite real now, anyway, except getting home. thank god for the radio in the car—we get some news that way, enough to know what’s going on.

  i’ll be with you soon. i think of you constantly. i love you, and o christ i want to see you—

  cat

  • • •

  [To Stanley Edgar Hyman]

  [Christmas vacation, 1939]

  darling, i’ve been amusing myself (the long winter mornings) by writing down my dream which has been following me. it followed me right the hell out of a small nap yesterday afternoon into a prodigious nightmare last night. it would be such a perfect horror story…i’ll send it to you, to make a nice fat letter, and you will write me back and say i am secretly in love with a crocodile, because that’s what i think the animal was. funniest thing about it is a very vivid sense (still) that i’ve done something wrong, and am being punished. that’s why it’s so strange that i should be so convinced that it’s imaginary; when i woke up i was reassuring myself that the whole thing was in my mind; i hadn’t done anything. (whee.) the injury, imaginary, was to you; don’t tell me i’ve a subconscious wish to kick you in the eye; that’s not subconscious. no, there was a guy and he was so goddam nice and i was so happy and then you in the form of a rather greyish crocodile came up and started to eat off my hand only i guess i drove you away when i insulted you and said i was sorry you were only a mirage. wish to hell you’d been in bed when i woke up; i would have gotten even for scaring me so. you goddam crocodile.

  and i was having such a nice time too before you came.

  hey. i’ll be able to come on wednesday i think. well? you don’t seem to be writing to me, how the hell am i supposed to know? and where would i stay? well, find out. i gotta get a letter from you before i leave, though, because otherwise i won’t know whether you’re expecting me and whether to come. WILL YOU WRITE?

  it’s terrible here. i don’t want to come home any more. i like shopping with my mother because she buys me things and i like sleeping and i like reading and i like going places where they let me have lots to drink but i don’t like being home. there’s my guilty feeling, damn it. they’re so nice to me too. but you’re nicer and i love you just simply lots. only my mother writes to me. go thou and do likewise.

  s. edgar

  p.s. well?

  * * *

  —

  Shirley’s dream

  was i afraid, was this it, was it fear? was this what it was like, fear coming to a deep garden of moss, coming into a garden and following me as i walked in the darkness and the quiet places of the garden? his hands on my head were the hands of fear, and when he smiled at me i was afraid.

  could it have been, where was the need? could it not better have been regret, and longing to free myself from the garden where i walked and his hands on my head? when he smiled at me i wished myself away, and yet away with him, no longer in the garden.

  the garden was dark, and the heavy moss hung from the trees and touched my head as i walked between the trees. there was a black pool in the garden and when i walked near the pool the water stirred and looked at me. trees had fallen into the pool and lay there, grey and rotting, and the moss from the trees moved with the pool, and stirred as i walked by the pool.

  was it fear that came from the pool into me, so that i ran back to the comfort of the steps leading down into the garden? was it fear that drove me to the steps waiting there with no house beyond, and nothing but the steps and a low wall behind which to hide?

  i cried and called to him and he came, touching me with his hands, and standing with me. and when the trees moved from the pool he was watching me and i pointed and he laughed. for the trees were moving and stirring and rising from the pool and rolling and stirring and creeping.

  then it was fear and i watched, afraid. for he had seen and he was gone and i stood on the steps with no house beyond, watching the trees move from the pool to me.

  and when the trees had crawled from the pool to the steps they waited and raised their heads to me and they watched me and i screamed, not calling to him, but to the trees which lay before me, watching me. “you are not real,” i screamed. “you are not real. i have only thought of you. leave me alone; you are not real; you are from my mind; you are not real. oh, go back. it is only me, so go back; you are not real!”

  * * *

  • • •

  Shirley is spending spring vacation at home in Rochester.

  monday [March 25, 1940]

  darling,

  my family is really beating hell out of me on the california business. they have taken the attitude that of course it was to be your graduation present and we were planning so many nice things for you but of course if you’re so anxious to leave home it’s all right with us we thought we had treated you pretty well but isn’t it just a little ungrateful of you? and then they tell me how they can’t see why i can’t take three weeks off to go with them and anyway i’d meet all the guys my father wants me to get a job with—they’ll all be at the convention. and i’m going crazy. i just walk out when they start. it’s a little difficult except they have promised themselves that nobody’s going to get mad every one keep his temper now and so they’re very nice and very hurt and i’m practically out of my head. i just keep saying i’m not going i’m not going i’m not going and then i shut my eyes and hang on with both hands. so they figure they’ll buy me lots of clothes, and mother picks out nice quiet patterns and says of course if you’ll be working you will want something like this. and i suspect that i haven’t convinced anyone, that in june they’ll show up with a plane ticket for me expecting that I’ll go with them.

  it would be nice if vacation were all over with now and i could go home. i would even welcome getting to work on the fourth issue.*49 y’s boss is reading thecosmologicaleye*50 and he says i should read it. y is going to give me tropicofcancer for a wedding present. could we use it? i told her she might better give me a bed. speaking of beds, i miss you rather. why don’t we call this vacation business off and get back together? it’s all awfully silly. and i love you lots. why don’t you write me a small letter.

  so, with love,

  s. edgar h.

  • • •

  [To Stanley Edgar Hyman]

  tuesday [March 26, 1940]

  o darling,

  i have come to the conclusion that my family is not so dumb. last night they dressed me all up with a red skirt like carmen and my hair done high and red red nails and expensive perfume and red carnations in my hair and silver sandals and a couple of drinks, and they took me to the opera. charles*51 drove us and called for us and my mother wore white satin and silver fox and diamonds, and we sat in the mezzanine among a lot of other women all looking perfectly beautiful, and we went out during intermission and met everyone my family knows and they all said to me shirley how wonderful that you’re back for a while you’re looking lovely will we see you in june? and then mother wou
ld say oh we’re thinking of taking shirley to california with us in june she loves the coast so you know. and then of course the friends would say how perfectly wonderful shirley how lucky you are dear don’t i wish i could go in your place. and then we would meet girls i used to go to high school with and they would all look so silly and i felt so tall and graceful with my high heeled shoes and two drinks in me.

  see what i mean? i suspect that it’s their next to last attempt, the last being a tearful plea on june 2nd. this attempt was unfortunately negated by the fact that my new shoes hurt like hell and my hair wouldn’t stay up and anyway most of the people we met are people i hate the guts of. i kept giggling and mother kept saying be more sociable and kicking me and then turning around to smile at people. and i went to sleep in the second act and so did pop and mother was so mad at us both. the only nice thing was that i looked in the mirror before i went out and i was scared because i looked so nice and i just stood there looking, but that is not peculiar to rochester but peculiar to the dress and i shall bring it to syracuse and try it on for you to show you.

  and of course the opera was terrible. i think that in order to enjoy wagner you must be either a native-born german or a native-born rochesterian. and the germans like him because they’re patriotic and the rochesterians like him because good heavens! there’s mrs. lee in the third row i didn’t know she was still being seen with her husband! my girl brunnhilde was somewhat shrill and i was playing fourteen ways of looking at a valkyrie and kept myself amused. i mean, thinking i was wagner and my goodness i did leave the horn motif out of this scene didn’t i or thinking i was the director who lost his place. i love the old norse legends better than almost anything else, and i was the only one there who knew how wotan lost his eye.