or at all; same thing. Emities nurtured bear no life; impotent regrets bring death
of the host—these thoughts are hardly fresh.
I just made a web search; re-found a portrait of 1994
on the net for nine years. I was forty.
Bernice, in her ninety-fourth year:
Here to hold forth, for her.
Born Bernice Browning, great-great relation of Robert, there was no poet within Bernice. Just a gal
with boldness and charm, with class acquired onward from barefoot beginnings at a dusty Missouri farm.
Skip to marriage with a mustached broker, the birth of one child. These did not leave her feeling fulfilled.
Bernice determined to resume premarital work as a registered nurse. Another nurse would nurse Frank Jr.
She positioned in 1928 in the office of a prominent Kansas City physician.
One day while sorting file folders she came across a manila bomb: her husband's medical history.
She did not know until then that he had been treated there once—at the time of her pregnancy.
Diagnosis: primary syphilis. Treatment: mercury cure. Case: resolved.
"What did you do? Did you explode into Frank?"
"Goose, what good would it have done to get mad? I didn't get mad, I got even."
She pursued and conducted an affair of her own in 1930.
I learned of the reparation around '79, at her home at 1254 Coral Way,
her coral house in Coral Gables.
I knew Bernice from my infancy because she was my grandmother's closest friend.
Fern died at my age ten; then Bernice became something of my grandmother, a buddy.
See cobalt blue roofed 1254 featured in the opening scenes of the 1995 Banderas/Griffith romantic comedy, Two Much.
See Antonio trip on the driveway's edge, where this stumbler often tripped himself, for his not looking down.
I collected sheet music when younger; had obtained a red covered copy of "Little White Lies".
I liked the cover, I like the tune.
"That's my theme song."
"What do you mean?"
"When Gilley and I had our affair we danced to Little White Lies."
Gilley, dashing, a pioneering aviator. I forget his last name.
"Didn't you love him?"
"Oh, of course not, not in that way."
As time and chance would have it, or perhaps because of a spur, not long after, she told me
"Expect to meet Gilley. He's dying of prostate cancer gone to the bones; he's on estrogen
in California. He wants to see me. He'll be here next month."
I met Gilley, is all. I could not tell that he had ever been young or dashing.
He looked a turkey plucked in advance of the lop.
I met Gilley, is all. I observed the autographed copy of his flight history memoir.
I bowed away. Gilley remained, a few days, went home, died.
The moon was all aglow and heaven was in your eyes those nights when I told you those little white lies.
I try but there's no forgetting in spite of my tears. I try but there's no forgetting despite all the years.
The moon was all aglow and heaven was in your eyes those nights when I told you those little white lies.
Bernice's once-roving Frank, the problem: beside that one philandering, and perhaps because of it
Frank Sr. always felt medically doomed, hypochondriac; a case of incurable introspection.
Frank waited for a Sunday morning when Bernice and fourteen year old Frank Jr. left the house for something
other than to go to church. Frank, to his basement, blew his brains with the usual pistol. It was for Bernice
to find the body on Dec. 7th, 1941; Frank's timing a fluke of chance or chancre.
The boy was affected. I knew Frank Norman. He was kind, always wan. He was half of his father
with all of the melancholia. Why, if a man has raised successful children, has done well in business, has
a good marriage, why does a man go sad and blow out? Bernice was eighty-nine when history
repeated. Frank Jr., while Myra was away, went to the garage and shot his head. This time was for Myra
replacing her car, to find the body.
The funeral of Frank Norman Jr. was matter of fact on one level; everyone seemed to know
Frank was doomed despite all cares. Of acceptance, what to say? Bernice never invoked,
lived well and laughed along under her moon she made aglow. So I thought to offer her portrait
and show poorly via this imperfect fragment, something about how one woman held forth.
