November 1,1985

Dearest Johnny,

Will you ever accept this apology? I was clearly wrong to linger so exclusively on myself, and of course you had every right to be so upset by my indifference towards your difficulties.

To think I was so convinced the staff was hoarding your letters. (But why not? You write gorgeous letters. Who wouldn't hoard them?)

How dare your teachers misread your beautiful words. They are blind to their colors, deaf to their melodies. You must be brave and disregard them. Fortes fortuna juvat. Keep true to the rare music in your heart, to the marvelous and unique form that is and shall always be nothing else but you. Keep to that and you can do no wrong, which I realize is easier said than done.

This world, inside and out, is full of New Directors. We must watch for them and avoid them. They are here only to keep us from telling everything we know, revealing our little truths.

I think I've found a new attendant, one I can trust to mail you an unexamined letter. Be on the look out.

Wrapping you in my arms, Shielding you from all harm,

I remain your loving, Mom April 5,1986

Dear, dear Johnny, center and whole of my world,

I cannot understand how you have not received any of my letters. For every agonized one of

yours—so full of misadventure and cruelty—I have responded with not one, not two, not even three but five, five endless letters, so surfeit with love, tenderness and confusion they would have with one reading bound your heart and healed it in full. I promise.

Unfortunately in every one, I described—at least in part—the reasons why I was put here and why the New Director means to keep me here until I die or at the very least my mind goes up like Mrs. Havisham's wedding dress. They will stop short of nothing to forbid my revelations. What I know will untie the world. No wonder the doors here are all locked. No wonder they seal all the windows too.

This is such an awful place, continuously blushed with rot, threatening (promising?) but always failing to fall from the vine. I too am suspended in this ever way of foulness, in a sanity so cloying you sometimes need to retch in order just to breathe.

Here your mother sleeps, waits and when she can't help it cowers in the deep corners of her room. Every day the attendants spy on me, follow me, even tease and taunt me for their own pleasures. Still their worst hardly measures up against the impact of even one whiff of The Whalestoe itself.

Every night when I must sleep they scheme. They sense as does the New Director—or dare I say he knows?—that I have made congeal the artifacts of this world and so behold now its mutations in simple entirety. A fact that binds and at the same time reads it all. And nullifies it all too.

The attendants, of course, are just worker bees. The New Director is not. Why do you think they got rid of the Old Director? Why do you think they installed this new one? To keep me, perhaps others here, detained so they can unlock us and then empty us. Which explains why The New Director destroyed all the letters I wrote you. At least that much is obvious.

I have determined one crucial thing. Their control depends on what they pejoratively call medicine. It's Hippocratic blasphemy. How carefully they mete out such debilitating flakes of color. Madder, azure, celadon, gamboge—behold the flag of tyranny, robbing your mother of her memory, her ability to function, her chance to flee or feel—the "1" no matter where it stands still stands for the same thing: loss of self.

So sad really. So many years destroyed. Endless arrangements—re. zealous accommodations, medical prescriptions, fe? needless other wonders, however obvious—debilitating in deed; you ought understand—letting occur such evil? hardships, creating a monstrous mess really, a travesty for the ages, my ages.

Your mother will not tolerate this. She most definitely will not. So now, each morning, lunch and night, I pretend to eat their mechanisms, then when the worker bees are not looking retrieve the pills from my mouth and carefully crush them into a dust I can unnoticed toss beneath a table or conceal within the creases of a couch.

(This letter goes out by private route)

Returning steadily to my former self,

Practicing my smile in a mirror the way I did when I was a child,

I lovingly remain your,

Mother

May 31,1986

Dear dear flesh of mine, spirit of mine, My Johnny,

Alaska again!

Two words and an exclamation point. Is that all you can spare your mother?

I need, need, need you.

Need.

There I've failed. My resolve to independ from you has collapsed.

I need.

You spend two words, a punctuation point and not even a visit?

La grima!

Don't you miss her? This huddled puddle of mother? The shape that gave you shape? Fed you, warmed you, waned over you?

Good God, I've never been afraid like this.

An even more frightening exclamation when the exclaimant is an atheist.

love, hopelessly Mom

July 6,1986

Dear only son, only mine, my Johnny,

Your mothers mind's a mess. They have gotten away with more than I will ever fathom. Somehow they have even placed their "medicines" within my food and water. There is no other possibility. It is here. It is within me.

What do you mean you visited me at the end of

April? Your letter responded to our day, our walk, our lengthy talk about the New Director and my persecution, and yet for the life of me I have no recollection of those hours or whispers. All those details and yet not one could resuscitate an image in the hollows of my brain.

Either some marauding rabbit devoured the leaves of my memory, and thus deprived me of the sweet sight of you, or the woman you lingered with was not me.

I'm afraid it's the latter that makes the most sense. The New Director must really fear all I know. He must have hired a professional, trained her,—a professional actress!—surgically altered her and then after many months of rehearsal introduced her to you as the very same soul of your breath, source of your being.

Dear Johnny, you must disregard all you assumed you gleaned in that encounter. Toss everything and don't worry: I forgive you for failing to recognize this woman as a fraud. I am surrounded by fiendish adversaries. If she fooled you, she would have fooled your beautiful father too.

Still, I must confess, I had no idea they were so thorough. I must rise to their level.

Realizing now the need for a complete disclosure of the entire entirety I am in secret preparing for your eyes only the complete.

Love's word,

Mother September 18,1986 Dear, dear Johnny, my sun in winter, my reason in fog,