Welcome Home by Lucia Berlin

Author:Lucia Berlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

and they say “Perfect! Hold it,” for half an hour.

Wish you, both, all, would write.

Love, Lucia

P.S. Did you ever read A High Wind in Jamaica (The Innocent Voyage). It’s crazy. He writes about tons of things happening at once or in a sequence like nobody ever could. It is too much, if one is a parent, to read it.

1959 [November]

106 West 13th Street,

New York, New York

Dorns

501 Camino Sin Nombre

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Hi Dorns— Today we went for a walk—Race is gone and we are aimless. Nothing for us to do but hang around. I MISS him so we walk in spite of the rain and today we went to Lower East Side and with the rain and being aimless it was very sad and depressing. Soggy pushcarts.

We came back tired, so tired we stopped to rest, in a restaurant.

Sat down at a table and waited politely. An elderly man in black with silver hair and foreign accent came up and said,

“What is it you wish?”

“Coffee with cream. Two milks, no, one milk and two glasses, and some kind of donuts.”

“Blueberry muffins?”

“Yes, fine, thank you,” I said.

He came back with a tray and poured the milks, undid the paper from around the muffins, lit my cigarette, and said, “That will be forty cents.” All I had was 50 so I gave it to him murmuring, “Keep the change.”

“Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said, and he went over to another table, picked up his umbrella and put on a bowler hat and left, bowing to us. We were in a cafeteria!

Flower stores are pushing wheat, orange berries, yellow and brown mums, and deep rust asters and in the back are these gentle violet spring flowers. They are heather. Have you ever seen HEATHER?

Race wrote, such a crazy letter, and it sounds good, his gig, if only because it is such a GAS. They broadcast every night from the Persian Terrace of the Syracuse Hotel with 4 trombones playing “Shine on Harvest Moon” and those revolving domes of broken mirrors in the middle of the ballroom. Ferns.

A customer dug one of the capes in our major retail outlet so much she ordered 2 more—which was crazy—altho last 2 checks from major retail outlet bounced, leaving us hung for $90. He’s going bankrupt. He paid for last order by trading for a suit with a fur collar—just like Proust’s.

What about Nebraska and the long-named lady? What’s happening? Hey H., it would be groovy to get another long letter.

Mark calls you all the time, you five and Mary Lou and Lourdes and LeRoy and Pete. They are the people I miss too.

I can’t think of anything else to say!

Love, Lucia

February 5, 1960

106 West 13th Street,

New York, New York

Dorns

501 Camino Sin Nombre

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Dear Helene,

Keep waiting for spirits enough to write you a letter, don’t come so I will just tell you how fine it was to get your good letter, to hear about your happy birthday and the birds, and (damn!) New Mexico, that sounds pretty good nonetheless.

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