S.

by John Updike

  But I mustn't mention the Arhat, as that offends you. You write rather wistfully of your father's visit this summer. You say he spoke fondly of me—as if that amazed you. You say he seemed in a forgiving mood—as if there was much to forgive. You write that he keeps our old home up, mostly by not living in most of the rooms, and has no conspicuous girlfriend—as if that will gladden my heart or shame me or do something to me. It does nothing. Nothing but make me feel a quite unnecessary estrangement between you and me. You write of him as of a lumbering fuzzy old bafflingly wounded teddy bear at the same time that he and this shyster Gilman he's hired are bombarding me with the most preposterous legal documents, all meant simply to terrify a defenseless woman, who has for a lawyer that wimpy if formerly superficially attractive Ducky Bradford; be is so preoccupied with coming out of the closet as a middle-aged gay and humiliating poor Gloria and then discovering that life out of the closet is no picnic either that he can hardly lift a legal finger. (None of this came directly from him but from Midge, who on her last tape painted a pathetic picture 'of Ducky slowly realizing that the only market for an aging American man is with American women and that he should have announced himself when he was young and slender or kept quiet forever—he's Grecian formula-ing his hair and wearing closer-cut suits, but it's not nearly enough.)

  You write of what a tender and attentive father yours was when the sad truth is he hardly bothered to kiss you good-night most nights let alone read a bedtime story as you and he both seem to be fantasizing. Worse yet, even when you had a cold or mumps that time your face looked like a gourd, or that very odd fever up to 104.5" that had me so worried about possible permanent brain damage, your father the big Boston.doctor couldn't be bothered to doctor his own daughter but had me drag you over to the Beverly Hospital and sit there in the waiting room with the television turned up so loud and the air so thick with germs you refused to breathe and turned bright blue. Precious Pearl, make no mistake: / nursed you, / changed your diapers. I dried your tears. I sang you songs when you were nervous at night, on and on until my own eyes could hardly stay open. You sucked milk out of my breasts, took hold of life in my belly, not your father's. All he did was clumsily contribute his sperm (I had no climax when you were conceived; I rarely did in those virtually virginal days) and show up at your graduations (and in fact, having written that, I just remember that he missed the one from Miss Grandison's in the sixth grade—said he had a MSPCC board meeting—likely story!) and condescend to keep your picture on his desk (along with his boyish self in his Boston Latin baseball uniform and that one of me I always hated, in that foolish garden hat standing there tipsy and tense at one of the Hibbenses gauche lawn parties worrying that your father was going to lose the lens cap). Now of course that you're a stunning woman and he's a well-dressed man in his forties who hasn't let himself go entirely to pot it's all very cute for the two of you to trot out to the Queen's Arms or the King's Joint or whatever the most expensive restaurant in Oxford is and split a carafe of an amusing dry Beaujo-lais and discuss in tiddly cozy fashion how far poor old Mother has wandered off the deep end: but raising you was not an equal partnership, and I am hurt, dearest Pearl, by what seems to me not so much your divided loyalty—that perhaps is to be expected and is healthy—but what can only strike me as disloyalty. Be true to yourself, and you will be true to me. I did not raise my flaxen-haired darling to be her father's cat's-paw or for that matter some minor princess of malt.

  On top of all this paternal interference, you say my mother has written lachrymosely to you. Of course you can see that what meager sense senility has left in Grandma's brain the sun and saltwater have quite vaporized. I do believe she has goaded your Uncle Jeremy into writing me a somewhat harassing letter as well. What do you all object to? I know the answer: my attempting to become anything other than your (plural) obedient servant and flattering social extension. Perish the thought that I and my shoeless friends" would for a moment cause a frown to cross the stately brow of the beer count where he sits enthroned amid his mighty vats of boiling mash! Not to mention his fat Katrinka of a countess and their wispy dilettantish son, who led you to waste a whole glorious English summer, the kind that Browning wrote about, on dreary flat soggy Holland—forgive me, I just get frantic fearing that Jan won't let you grow—that you'll allow him to put a permanent cramp in the ongoing splendid adventure of your womanhood just as your father with the connivance of my parents did to me twenty-two years ago.

  Do forgive me. How your mother does go on with her "wiggles"! Think of these letters as what I do now instead of embroidery. But isn't it better not to pretend I wasn't hurt by the really very delicately but unmistakably challenging tone of your letter? I've been under some stress here, too, aside from worrying about my priceless elf-child. Pressures from the outside are producing shifting allegiances within. It turns out that Ma Prapti, a rather stern sad mustachioed soul whom I formerly admired, as a kind of Albert Schweitzer or Mother Teresa, has really been rather indiscriminate in her distribution of prescription drugs. Vikshipta left, it turns out, because he was convinced he was being poisoned, I was recently told (by Yajna, the boy about your age I playfully offered you but who for the moment seems to be involved with Satya and Nagga and their crowd of PR glamour girls, who really could be professional football cheerleaders from the uniform glossy look of them). There are days, especially after the cafeteria has served one of those cruelly hot curries that disguise every other taste, when people complain of wooziness and cramps and we all go about in something of a date—I've been blaming it on the heat, which even though we're almost into September has not let up. There is so much suspicion around in fact that I don't like to mail personal letters with the Uma Room mail but I must get this on the way and do hope it will still reach you at the Iffley Road address. If not, they can forward it back to Yale, which begins in less than three weeks! I will ignore your passing mention of Jan's wanting you to take the fall term off so you and he can go to Crete and the Greek islands in the familial yacht. I know taking time off from college isn't the end of the world like it used to be but skipping out of your senior fall term for a Mediterranean jaunt with a Dutch playboy would be—how can I say this without giving offense?—unspeakable.

  Still love me? Here's some kisses:

  XXX

  Mummy

  September 2, 1986

  Gentlemen:

  Enclosed find endorsed checks totalling $66,403.27 for deposit to my account, #0002743-911.

  Thank you sincerely,

  Sarah P. Worth

  September 2, 1986

  Gentlemen:

  I am very interested in opening a credit-deferrable charge account with the Arhat Book and Gift Shop of Samana Cay. My understanding is that a balance in excess of charges will accumulate 6% interest compounded monthly, while a debit of more than thirty days' standing will be penalized at the rate of 12%, also compounded monthly. Though I am temporarily an executive assistant at Ashram Arhat here in Arizona, my account, I wish to emphasize, would be a personal one, for my use only. I look forward to receiving whatever information you can send, mailed to me in care of this motel, along with relevant currency and investment regulations in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.

  With sincere thanks,

  Sarah P. Worth

  le deux septembre 1986

  Monsieur,

  Je voudrais ouvrir, peut-être, avec Crédit Suisse un compte identifié seulement par son numéro, un numéro qui soit secret. Envoyez-moi, s'il vous plait, à l’adresse cidessous, les formules necessaires et les règles qu'il faut qu'on observe concernant un tel compte.

  Agréez, je vous prie,

  l'expression de mes sentiments distingues,

  Sarah P. Worth (Madame)

  Sep. 2

  Dear Dr. Podhoretz—

  I'm afraid an October appointment won't do either. Tell your secretary to put me in the inactive file. I'm still flossing, though. Do you think an occasional twinge in the left eyetooth mean
s anything, or is it just the enamel wearing thin with old age? I notice it most with iced tea, though very hot curries set it off too.

  Warm regards,

  Sarah Worth

  September 2

  Dear Martin—

  Well, I'm enchanted that my little postcard meant so much to you. Your generous response—longer, I fear, than I can answer in detail—was waiting for me here at the motel. I don't live here, I live forty miles away with a lot of other people seeking the inner peace that comes with the good life. When I wrote you that all the material world is a jail I did not mean to make light of your predicament or the terrible conditions of incarceration in Massachusetts but to offer a consoling general premise—that for any of us to be alive is to suffer pain and limitation. We are born into a certain body, with a certain sex and color of skin, etc., at a specific time and place, of parents who shelter us and damage us according to their capacities, and as we grow we attain a certain height and degree of intelligence we can't do" much about, and fall into some job or r6le—in your case, into drugs and burglary—and from a certain angle one could become intensely claustrophobic about all these circumstances, which are more constricting and harder to escape from than any cell. And then the body and with it the brain begin to age and malfunction and eventually to die and the constriction is very tight indeed. But there is a way out, the way of the spirit, of accepting that little unchanging viewpoint or "I" inside you as part of a larger spiritual reality, which we call purusba, in relation to which material reality with all its confining specifics is mere illusion, called maya, which also means deception. And there are exercises and disciplines which enable men called masters (gurus) to attain release (moksba) from the material world and the bliss of pure spiritual being, nirvana, which doesn't literally mean nothingness but "no wind"—we will get out of the wind, Martin, and exist in a place where everything is still and shining and eternal. The orthodox path to nirvana is long and tedious (you begin by thinking of a point just behind your forehead, at the bridge of your nose) but it is not the only way, there are shortcuts that suddenly open to people—even and perhaps especially to foolish and miserable people—and there is no reason why at least the beginning of enlightenment—a little fascinating pinprick—won't come to you in jail just as one came to me in my nice suburban home (which in moments of weakness I still miss). But you must look within for what is real. You tried to look within with drugs but what they gave you was not real, they just suppressed part of maya. There is a better way out, which does not lead to jail and early death. This Way embraces everything: it is the Way of striving and surrender, of action and inaction, of good and bad, of the senses and their absence. Whatever name you give this Way, whatever images you use to help you visualize the Path, it is the Way that we all seek and that makes all our seeking one.

  My fond regards to little Eldridge and your mother. Tell Shirlee my hair is stiff and brittle as burnt toast here in this climate and that I have given up Clairol so the gray strands are poking through, and I cut it short in a kind of scruffy mid-neck flip just to get it out of my mind and concentrate on higher things, but for all that there are still some here who find me an attractive brunette.

  Your friend,

  Sarah Worth

  Sep. 6

  Dear Mother—

  Just the briefest note, to check in. They've given me more responsibilities here, and I'm up to my ears in legal and financial details. Of course I'm horrified to hear that you have cashed in all your CDs, even paying the fines to do so, and have sold those blocks of Daddy's lovely old IBM and AT&T, and put everything into the stock of this cosmetic company your admiral friend has heard is going to be taken over by Revlon. His grandson's being an investment banker doesn't mean a thing; or, rather, it does mean, if this is real insider information, that you and the boy and old Granddaddy will all go to jail. I recently received a letter from a man in jail and he says it's no fun—the toilet is in the middle of the cell and the white guards let the black prisoners rule by survival of the fittest and there's a two-yean wait for the course in computer science. If on the other hand it's not real insider information, then you're holding a big chunk of some stagnant company (Visage, Inc.—what kind of name is that, and who put on that absurd incorrect accent?) from Arkansas (Arkansas, Mother!) that will pay peanuts—not even that, peanut shells—for dividends and slowly sink into the swamp of what's left of Reaganomics. The CDs were safe, sure, and smart, as I told you before. You've obviously written me off as an adviser and probably even heir, but think of your own grandchild, pretty Pearl who adores you and who has let herself fall into the clutches of some loathsome Dutch pseudo-plutocrats because, no doubt, of financial insecurity. If she didn't have a grandmother who was squandering her eventual inheritance she might have the self-respect and self-confidence to stick with her education and independent development. She's even threatening not to return to Yale this fall! Isn't that incredibly self-destructive? Do phone her and tell her so, instead of commiserating with her over what a rotter I am and what a saint Charles is—she didn't exactly quote you to that effect but I can read between the lines. Your involvement with this alleged admiral I find, of course, alarming. He sounds like a typical male exploiter, hunting for a cook and a nurse to see him into the grave. Don't be conned, I beg you, and don't fell me how dashing he looks in a double-breasted blazer and old-fashioned cream linen pants with broad cuffs—I can't imagine what's come over you. After Daddy, this clown in a sailor suit? I don't think you realize how humorous and pathetic your description of his rapping night after night on your hurricane shutters is. I guess it's not in the nature of women to learn. Seduced and ruined by an octogenarian swindler—is that what you want your epitaph to be? I know you have been teasing me about this romance, egging me on to overreact, so I have tried to be circumspect. It is your life—just don't ever dare say a word of criticism to me again about anything. And don't get Jerry to write me any more platitudinous chummy letters. It was embarrassing for both of us—he didn't know what to say and I didn't either. My brother is part of me but I have no more to say to him now than to my own left foot.

  But do sell that preposterous Visage and put everything into a 6% savings account. Even under your mattress would be better. Don't discuss money with this ancient mariner. Or if you do, ask about his money—find out if he has enough of his own so that he isn't after yours. Do take your vitamins, especially A to combat aging and brain-cell loss. Niacin can be very effective in reversing delusional thinking. A lot of Alzheimer's, they think now, is caused by aluminum salts in the blood. Aluminum turns out to be in everything—toothpaste, aspirin, water. And of course you cook with pots of it. I forgot—you don't cook any more, you and the Admiral eat out, champagne and oysters and chocolate cake every night. I told the Arhat what you were up to, and he laughed and laughed and said, "Women are the gods!" He joins me in sending you strivyatireka (love).

  Sare

  Sep. 28

  Dearest Alinga—

  Tena tyaktena bhunjithah. I fear, my darling, we have reached our quota. These months living with you have been the happiest of my life, as far as cohabitation goes—the most harmonious, as if we were two upright notes, one blond and one dark, forming a single chord. No pulling and hauling, no serving and being served—or, rather, both, so carelessly and lightly blended that there was no knowing where the serving left off and the being served began. Our time together has in my mind a precious fine fragility, a crackled gold-rimmed right-ness, that makes me hold my breath as I try to set it down.

  This break with you is, as I conceive it, a delicate one, scarcely perceptible but to us. We will still share the ashram, and our love of the Arhat, and our work in the Uma Room, and why not then some hours of private talk and even rasa as before? Do please keep thinking of me as your lover—your dark and stormy prince,—you once called me.

  But I must feel free, to continue what let's call my ascent toward the unconditioned. I do not want to make you my prison w
arder as I did Charles—the guardian of habit, of limits, the enforcer, albeit for my good and out of affection—he was affectionate, I can admit that now—of a system in which my function is simply to bold still, to be the'same day after day. Durga's madness and the siege from outside have thinned the population of the ashram so that there are plenty of empty beds. Vik-shipta's old A-frame is vacant, though my moving in there risks stirring up ugly memories, like some dust rich in allergens. He wonderfully managed to make heterosexuality ugly and yet for me this hard, silent other (shunya = void = diamond = vajra = thunderbolt = linga) with whom we must share our species still retains the fascination of a challenge, the task set for us, the basic duty. In this sense perhaps I was always a bit unfaithful to you, harbored a bit of reservation, so that all we enacted together, gracious and blissful as it was, had a certain quality of foreplay, of something less than full seriousness, the seriousness that leads, biologically, to that tremendous bloody ego-splitting death-defying bearing of a child.