whose looks I’ve liked and who I told how pretty they were, but no girl till you has ever said to me that she liked my looks or expressed admiration for anything else about me. That isn’t the way it worked with any girl I’ve known before or that I’ve ever heard of—which is something that I’ve realized about my life only since you spoke your mind in the bookstore. You are different from anyone I’ve known, and the last thing you could ever be called is a slut. I think you’re a wonder. You’re beautiful. You’re mature. You are, I admit, vastly more experienced than I am. That’s what threw me. I was thrown. Forgive me. Say hello to me in class.
Marc
But she didn’t say anything; she wouldn’t even look my way. She wanted nothing further to do with me. I’d lost her, and not, I realized, because her parents were divorced but because mine were not.
No matter how often I told myself I was better off without her and that she drank for the same reason she’d given me the blowjob, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I was afraid of her. I was as bad as my father. I was my father. I hadn’t left him back in New Jersey, hemmed in by his apprehension and unhinged by fearful premonitions; I had become him in Ohio.
When I phoned the dormitory, she wouldn’t take my calls. When I tried to get her to talk with me after class, she walked away. I wrote again:
Dear Olivia,
Speak to me. See me. Forgive me. I’m ten years older than when we met. I’m a man.
Marc
Because of something puerile in those last three words—puerile and pleading and false—I carried the letter in my pocket for close to a week before I dropped it into the slotted box for campus mail in the dormitory basement.
I got this in return:
Dear Marcus,
I can’t see you. You’ll only run away from me again, this time when you see the scar across the width of my wrist. Had you seen it the night of our date I would have honestly explained it to you. I was prepared to do that. I didn’t try to cover it up, but as it happened you failed to notice it. It’s a scar from a razor. I tried to kill myself at Mount Holyoke. That’s why I went for three months to the clinic. It was the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Sanitarium and Psychopathic Hospital. There’s the full name for you. My father is a doctor and he knows people there and that’s where the family hospitalized me. I used the razor when I was drunk but I had been thinking about doing it for a long time, all that while I wasn’t living but went from class to class acting as though I were living. Had I been sober I would have succeeded. So three cheers for ten rye and gingers—they’re why I’m alive today. That, and myincapacity to carry anything out. Even suicide is beyond me. I cannot justify my existence even that way. Self-accusation is my middle name.
I don’t regret doing what we did, but we mustn’t do anything more. Forget about me and go on your way. There’s no one around here like you, Marcus. You didn’t just become a man—you’ve more than likely been one all your life. I can’t ever imagine you as a “kid” even when you were one. And certainly never a kid like the kids around here. You are not a simple soul and have no business being here. If you survive the squareness of this hateful place, you’re going to have a sterling future. Why did you come to Winesburg to begin with? I’m here because it’s so square—that’s supposed to make me a normal girl. But you? You should be studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and living in a garret in Montparnasse. We both should. Farewell, beauticious man!
Olivia
I read the letter twice over, then, for all the good it did me, shouted, “There’s no one around here like you! You’re no simple soul either!” I had seen her using her Parker 51 fountain pen to take notes in class—a brown-and-red tortoiseshell pen—but I had never before seen her handwriting or how shesigned her name with the
Marc
But she didn’t say anything; she wouldn’t even look my way. She wanted nothing further to do with me. I’d lost her, and not, I realized, because her parents were divorced but because mine were not.
No matter how often I told myself I was better off without her and that she drank for the same reason she’d given me the blowjob, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I was afraid of her. I was as bad as my father. I was my father. I hadn’t left him back in New Jersey, hemmed in by his apprehension and unhinged by fearful premonitions; I had become him in Ohio.
When I phoned the dormitory, she wouldn’t take my calls. When I tried to get her to talk with me after class, she walked away. I wrote again:
Dear Olivia,
Speak to me. See me. Forgive me. I’m ten years older than when we met. I’m a man.
Marc
Because of something puerile in those last three words—puerile and pleading and false—I carried the letter in my pocket for close to a week before I dropped it into the slotted box for campus mail in the dormitory basement.
I got this in return:
Dear Marcus,
I can’t see you. You’ll only run away from me again, this time when you see the scar across the width of my wrist. Had you seen it the night of our date I would have honestly explained it to you. I was prepared to do that. I didn’t try to cover it up, but as it happened you failed to notice it. It’s a scar from a razor. I tried to kill myself at Mount Holyoke. That’s why I went for three months to the clinic. It was the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The Menninger Sanitarium and Psychopathic Hospital. There’s the full name for you. My father is a doctor and he knows people there and that’s where the family hospitalized me. I used the razor when I was drunk but I had been thinking about doing it for a long time, all that while I wasn’t living but went from class to class acting as though I were living. Had I been sober I would have succeeded. So three cheers for ten rye and gingers—they’re why I’m alive today. That, and myincapacity to carry anything out. Even suicide is beyond me. I cannot justify my existence even that way. Self-accusation is my middle name.
I don’t regret doing what we did, but we mustn’t do anything more. Forget about me and go on your way. There’s no one around here like you, Marcus. You didn’t just become a man—you’ve more than likely been one all your life. I can’t ever imagine you as a “kid” even when you were one. And certainly never a kid like the kids around here. You are not a simple soul and have no business being here. If you survive the squareness of this hateful place, you’re going to have a sterling future. Why did you come to Winesburg to begin with? I’m here because it’s so square—that’s supposed to make me a normal girl. But you? You should be studying philosophy at the Sorbonne and living in a garret in Montparnasse. We both should. Farewell, beauticious man!
Olivia
I read the letter twice over, then, for all the good it did me, shouted, “There’s no one around here like you! You’re no simple soul either!” I had seen her using her Parker 51 fountain pen to take notes in class—a brown-and-red tortoiseshell pen—but I had never before seen her handwriting or how shesigned her name with the
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