Letters

The which he taped, and I transcribed, on the Monday, 1 September, Labour Day. In and by it Ambrose proposed to marry me on Saturday 13th (the date of this, though we are not there yet); and I accepted despite certain apprehensions therein registered. We did not know, as we played with our sixes and sevens and scheduled climaxes within climaxes, that Joe Morgan up in Fort Erie was shooting himself through the head, and that Marsha Blank Mensch had (reluctantly, I’m sure) relieved Ambrose of further alimony payments by marrying Jacob Horner! And that dear Peter had but four more days to live.

Those days — the first four of our 5th week of Mutuality — are too near and dear and painful to recount. I am not a weak woman. I have myself watched a husband die (and lost a previous lover, and a son). But I do not fathom the strength and serenity, or the capaciousness of heart, of Magda Giulianova. I quite love that woman! We four (five, six) quite loved one another. I can say no more. See etc.

On the 4th, a Thursday, Peter reentered hospital for amputation of both legs, one to the hip, the other to the knee, with every likelihood even so of surviving less than five years. A confusion of schedules kept the orthopedic surgeon, a weekly visitor from Baltimore, up in the city a day longer than expected; the operation was postponed till next afternoon. That Thursday night someone broke into the closed office of Mensch Masonry, rifled the files (sealed by court-appointed receivers), and stole copies of the design specifications and foundation blueprints of the Marshyhope Tower of Truth. No clues yet; suspicion falls heavily and kindlessly upon Ambrose, who was in fact with me and/or Magda uninterruptedly. On the Friday morning, sometime before dawn, Peter took a massive dose of Tylenol and ended his life. Suspicion there, too, falls upon the Menschhaus, more mildly but in this case accurately. Though there will be no investigation beyond the routine enquiry required to clear the hospital of liability, the fact is that Magda and Ambrose supplied Peter with pills, at his request, on the Wednesday or Thursday, precisely in case he should change his mind about seeing things through to the final frame.

Why Tylenol? Because, Ambrose explained, aspirin, barbiturates, Seconal, and the like can be promptly pumped out, especially when their taker is already in hospital, without fatal results. But Tylenol, in large doses, besides being easier to lay hands on than prescription chemicals, quickly does irreversible and lethal liver damage. Peter thus became, along with his sculpting Uncle Wilhelm, the only member of the family known not to have died of cancer. We buried him last Saturday beside that uncle and the others, all his limbs attached.

(Angie has been difficult to manage since. The loss seems to have sickened her physically: she wakes up vomiting.)

That same Saturday came the shocking news of Morgan’s accident or suicide (word reached the local newspaper on the Wednesday, but we in the Lighthouse were too distracted to read the newspapers): specifically, that his gunshot wound had been ruled self-inflicted and Jacob Horner cleared of implication, and that the body had been returned from Fort Erie to our neighbouring town of Wicomico for burial on the same day we buried Peter (Morgan’s late wife is buried over there; we have since learned that Horner and his bride accompanied the casket from Ontario to Maryland, along with Morgan’s sons). The funeral having been a private affair, there was to be a memorial service next day in the chapel of Marshyhope State University. We decided that I should attend, as having been closest of the family to Morgan. Ambrose would stay with Magda and Angie.

It was a fairly nauseating ceremonial, not however without its comic touches. I should pass over it except that so many of “your characters” were there, and that it gives to this narrative of my affair with Ambrose Mensch an almost novelistic symmetry: we “began” with the service for Harrison Mack on Redmans Neck in February, and in effect we “end” (our premarital courtship, not our connexion!) with another such service in the same general geography.