The Summer of 1977

My father’s 8-page letter of July 26, 1977 needs a short introduction, aside from saying that it’s not the kind of letter a father would normally send to a son. I’ve also included a brief note at the end.

In the spring of 1977, when I was 18, my father and I planned to take trip together to France and Spain. We were to drive down from England, where he was spending the summer, over to France and then to Spain by car, and back again. He promised to cover my airfare from New York to London while I covered the rest of my expenses. After my spring semester at Temple in Philadelphia, I went to visit my mother in Michigan after which I would fly to New York and then on to London.

At the time, my father had three houses, the Wallace Street house in Philadelphia and two in the UK, one in Cambridge on Highworth Avenue and the other, south of the city, in the village of Pampisford. He told me of his intention to leave my stepmother and sisters at the house in Pampisford once they got to England and move into the Highworth Avenue house.

Sometime during the spring semester, my 40-year-old father, had begun an affair with one of his students, an attractive 21-year-old girl by the name of Lucy. I had met her when I attended one of my father’s lectures for the class in which she was a student. I knew of the affair and was even asked to cover for him at times. Without consulting me, my father decided to include her in our summer plans and clearly intended for her to spend the rest of the summer with us at the Highworth Avenue house.

I guess he had expended so much time and effort getting this mistress to England that he had either forgotten about my ticket or had not followed up on it. The day before I was to fly there I called the travel agent in New York where my ticket to London was supposedly waiting for me. They didn’t have anything for me and, in fact, knew nothing about it. I called my father in England and he said he would “straighten it out,” but that I should at least get to New York. I heard nothing back from him before my scheduled flight and, knowing not to trust my father, and having only a one-way ticket to New York, I stayed in Michigan.

No letter I received from my father better sums up by example the mistakes my father made in his life. He sabotaged a marriage to a beautiful woman—for the second time in his life—alienated himself from his two daughters and completely lost what little trust any of us had left in him.

Tuesday, July 26th, 1977

Dear Jeff,

Well, there’s really no short version of the summer of ‘77. Suffice it to say it was a natural disaster – only Jimmy Carter won’t be sending me any federal funds. I’ll give it to you in rough factual outlines, like a historian.

May 8 arrived. We settled into Pampisford and I contacted Spicer to start work immediately on Highworth Avenue genuinely believing a 50-50 chance that Lucy might come as early as the following Thursday, but not likely to be much later than the 28th.

May 10 I realized that Lucy would not be coming at least until the 8th. May 12: work commenced on putting Highworth Ave. right. Bev knows generally that Lucy is coming sometime in the summer and perhaps with someone and possibly as part of a general ‘touring around’. May 23: I have phoned Lucy three times (talked to her), she has yet to write or call, though she has promised to call. My social life is busy but I am constantly thinking of Lucy. May 25: a strange letter from Lucy in which she refers to having met several interesting men, in which she shaves down her sense of commitment to me, talks of not possibly thinking of a liaison that will extend beyond the summer, and that I can cancel ‘our’ plans if I like. I call and write and said I’ll play it like it lies – besides I’ve nothing better cooking, really.

June 2nd: House is ready; Lucy says on the phone that she feels ‘pressured’ by my insistences .. especially to get her here sooner rather than later. June 3rd: Lucy says she’s coming on the ‘6th, 7th, or 8th’ – the 9th being her 22nd birthday and the first day of a new non-youth fare pricing for her trip. I push for the 6th, reminding her I have theatre tix and that the 7th is Jubilee Day here. June 7th: Lucy arrives. Bev has been told the magnitude and details of Lucy’s stay – i.e., to actually move in with me here for the summer – the day before. She is incredulous and says she’ll “never forgive me” but otherwise unteared and unbowed. June l0th: Lucy is enjoying herself but is uneasy about my trips to Pampisford to mow the lawn, see the kids, she has gone on outing with the kids and is really great with them -­ they like her so much that they ask Bev why can’t they have Lucy round to the house. June 12th: We decide to take a week’s vacation to Tangiers, Lucy will pay her own fare, our relationship has become a little strained because clearly Lucy doesn’t feel as deeply as I and I am still emotionally puzzled over how she can feel so firmly about an ending (she must return August 4 to go on an all-family outing and prepare for her job in September) yet claim to love me, etc. June 15-22 in Tangiers. Fantastic time .. sun, swim, eat, and loving 3-4 times a day .. like a honeymoon, but still undertones of emotional limitations on her part. Is it that I’m moving too fast and asking too much too soon over someone who’s only just turned 22? Or is it that she just simply “knows” that, for various and sundry reasons, it just “can never be” with us? I am deeply disturbed and try – somewhat unsuccessfully – not to let it show. We return & try to sort out what has become of you. I am beginning to feel that I cannot have all 3 of us go down to Pamplona together when I have such a feeling of a half-formed relationship with Lucy. Clive and Linda are going, with two others, and have offered to take you, Lucy and I to meet you either in St. Jean or Pamplona .. I figuring that 2-3 more days in semi-isolation travelling should consolidate things so that, abdicating heavy emotional considerations during the Fiesta, we  can all have a good time when we meet down South.

My money situation is a bit tense and Bev, after Morocco, is threatening all sorts of retribution in the law, divorce, etc. Your trip, as it was, would have cost me about $650-$700, there was no way I could remotely consider another $300 or more .. that was the way it had to be .. a loan with you taking over the payments against my credit card, that was marginally acceptable – but I knew you wanted to come so, well. But you weren’t having it and you sounded just like your mother when you went into that sulk, etc. I certainly wouldn’t have left you high and dry in N.Y., you know that. But never mind. I was partly relieved as, by the 27th I was beginning seriously to think of sending Lucy back and forgetting about everything. She was writing too many letters to men, and to ‘Ralph’ the fellow she dated the two evening’s just before she flew to me .. and her heart clearly was not ‘involved’ with me. I could try to accept the ‘now’ of our relationship, but it was fucking difficult. If I could only evince a ‘now’-like sense of commitment, but her commitment to ending it in August infected both (a) her ability to really give of herself emotionally ‘now’ and (b) my ability to simply take each day as it came – if she hadn’t told me, and re-told me, about it ending in August – well, who knows but that I might have gotten tired of her or whatever and ended it myself! But the loving was fantastic – she clearly had a libido to match my own, she was so beautiful and as she tanned she got more so. We drank, we went places, we did things and we loved almightily! So we left on June 29th, in the Jag, for the South. Two and a half lovely days in Paris; one night on the road, 3 days in St. Jean.

On the morning of the last day in St. Jean I went for a postcard from the envelope containing the new unwritten cards (I had been sending one a day to the girls) while she was in the bath and I came upon one she had written the night before, when I was asleep, to Ralph. We’d been walking on the promenade at sunset by the sea; she’d written “Here’s another sunset for you, my darling. I think of you always and wish that you were here with me. I miss you so and I can’t wait until I am with you. Think of me. All my love. Lucy.” What a blow! I went into the bath and told her that she had misplaced this card among the blank ones, I told her I couldn’t help reading it, and walked back into the room to pack my bag. She came out in a few minutes and pleaded with me not to end it. She said she didn’t feel that strongly about him, it was just what she thought he wanted to hear. Besides, she loved me, – she said she was with me, wasn’t she? What more could I want? Besides, he was for the fall, and I was for now. Well, we wound up making mad passionate love and on we went to Pamplona. We arrived, as planned, about noon on the 5th. There’d been a slight fuck-up on the rooms but we did stay in the Bearan, where we planned, but a bad room in that the paper was peeling etc. No roaches, but it looked like a roach pit. Lucy was not charmed by it .. but she loved the atmosphere. Party that night and then off at noon for the Grand Opening of the Fiesta .. many old friends, etc. But Lucy was hardly what I wanted and it was growing worse, or my sensitivity was growing greater. She turned her back on me during our 2:30-4:30 p.m. siesta on the 6th and I packed up our bags and we left Pamplona. We hit St. Jean at 8:30 p.m. and as it was raining I stopped for the night there. No words, no loving, nothing. Up early and on the road. 14 hours of silence, just the tape machine. We reached Dieppe on the English Channel at 10 p.m. We decided on one last great French meal. We talked. Lucy asked what I intended doing with her. I said I’d take her to a London hotel, pay a couple of nights in advance, leave her there, go up to Cambridge, pick up her bag and things and bring them down the following day. I told her I wanted it over. Well, she made mad passionate love to me and I began to think, what the hell, we were in London or rather England now and I could send her back any day I wanted to, here, only hours from Heathrow, I could play it truly day by day .. why cut off my nose to spite my face? Besides, I loved her.

We stopped with Helen Lipton (the woman who had arranged your flight with John, so we thought) and then had dinner in London. We motelled it only 5 miles outside of London .. very nice again. Back in Dieppe she insisted on coming back to Cambridge, at least to pick up her developed films of Morocco and pick up her own luggage. I suspected that she wanted to pick up her mail as well. When we came in the door at 11 a.m. there was mail .. she reached down and quickly took up hers. It was in a way and with a motion that made me very suspicious. And a few minutes later as we stood at the dining room table reading our mail, I reached over and flipped down the upper left corner of the bottom letter and saw Ralph’s name and return address. If was fit to be tied because I thought she’d ended their lover’s exchange when she tore up the postcard in St. Jean. Well, I decided that it was only my love for her and the physical enjoyment of her that kept me hanging on, and that I was a bloody fool. So I went in and hauled out her remaining stuff and told her it was time we parted. She called a cab, I loaned her some money and we sat in silence and packing busy-ness for 30 minutes longer. She offered no protestations, no requests for an explanation, no pleas, nothing. Finally, she asked one thing of me. “What?” I said hoping for an opening to reverse everything. “Can I have those plates you bought at the Antique Fair?” (I was hunting for antique plates and she found a beautiful pair which I bought – for myself “After all,” she said, “I found them.” Wow! What chutzpah! “Sit on it” said I. And that was it.

The cab came, she got in, I tossed the luggage in the boot and it drove off .. no words. The date was July 9th: she had been with me 33 days – constantly. I thought she might call from Heathrow .. she would be unable to actually fly out until 11 a.m. the following day. I stayed by the phone .. nothing. And that was it. I have done veritably nothing since that day.

I finally broke down and wrote her a love letter on Friday the 22nd; allowing the average time for mail she had been home fully a week without writing a word to me.

Actually; I left out a vital – and slightly funny – part. On the Monday following her departure a letter came from Ralph .. the 4th so far! I opened it. What a nerd .. he is exactly the same kind of Jesus freak as Susan Jenden our last mother’s help! Apparently he must be tall dark and handsome and didn’t reveal the magnitude of his weirdness in religious matters (and Lucy is a fairly devout Catholic!) It was pure chemistry on those two dates I suspect. Well, he is a 31-year-old Quaker wood-carver .. a simple kind of man .. in every way. His letter was weird. He burns candles to her memory. She apparently slept with him as he made a reference to “holding you in my arms again all night” .. this must, giving her benefit of the doubt, have been the 2nd of their two dates, or in other words, the day before she flew to me .. no wonder her heart was never in it with me!! Anyway, he asks her to send “another” lock of her hair AS HE CHEWED UP THE FIRST AND TAPED THE REMAINDER TO THE DASHBOARD OF HIS CAR! [Whatever happened to plastic Jesuses?!?] Well, if I wasn’t so torn up over her I would have been rolling in aching sides and tears on the floor. I sent her the letter with a 3 line typed note, no salutation, no signature .. saying how I thought they were made for each other and how I knew she had to have the letter as he had her hair on his dash so might she want to hang the letter as a pendant round her neck. She got it the following Thursday.

On the following Saturday, here in Cambridge, the 23rd, I got a letter from Lucy, mailed the previous Wednesday. This was quite a surprise. She missed me, she realized how much she loved me, she wished she’d said something to prevent me sending her away, she said we both had been silly, etc., etc. It was all ‘on’ again. And so my spirits soared even though the rational part of me knew that she hadn’t really changed. But she probably at least found out what a nerd Religious Ralph was and thus had finally put ‘finis’ to what had been open on the day she left. I was going to tell her .. this was to be at a call made 11:30 a.m. here, 6:30 a.m. there .. that there was a flight she could take (she having paid for her own flight over the first time – and spent and additional $500 while she was here) that would actually get her here 9 p.m. the same evening!

I got through. Her mother answered. Said Lucy couldn’t come to the phone. I thought that was very strange, asked if she’d be calling me back (I sensed hostility in the mother’s tone) .. she said “I doubt it”. So I hung up and sat for an hour and a half thinking. Then I called back; her mother was now really irritated .. tried to be both polite and diplomatic but, after all, I’m sitting holding this avowal of love in my hand and the mother says she doesn’t want to talk to me. Said that I’d like to hear it from her own lips. She said she’d hang up. I said politely, how do I know that it’s not you standing between us .. how will I know?  She hung up.  I called a woman friend in Philly and asked her to call a few hours later for Lucy and see if she would merely inform Lucy that I wanted to hear from her. I also found a return address from a girlfriend of Lucy’s who’d written to her here earlier. I knew that if I got ahold of her that neither parents nor Lucy would know that I knew her.

And that particular ploy worked. 20 minutes after I spoke to the girl (around 1 p.m. on Saturday) Lucy called me. I couldn’t believe my ears .. she was spewing venom. Said she, no matter what she may have written, no matter what she may have ever felt for me, it was all over now, How could I have opened a letter to her??!! What a violation of faith. What total lack of integrity, etc., etc. She would never, never, ever be able to forgive me for doing that, etc., etc. I was in a state of shock. This adolescent clearly hasn’t got the slightest conception of love if she can profess love on the one hand and then turn it off on the other .. at least based on opening a letter from her ‘lover’. It didn’t come into the forefront of my mind while talking to her that 2/3rds of her anger might be because the content of the letter revealed that she had been cruelly deceiving me with regard to her real relationship towards RR .. her protestations that he meant nothing to her, that they had merely two innocuous dates before she left, etc. But I told her that while I knew it had been wrong in one sense, I had also felt emotionally justified .. I had, after all, been literally offering her my life up to that point: I had to know to what extent I was a fool (i.e., to have sent her away, or to have kept her as long as I did and feel the way I did). She sallied back and forth, not quite rationally .. she alternated by asking how I was, by cruelly telling me how slim and brown and beautiful she was and what fun she was having, by saying that if anyone came to anyone now it would be me that would have to come to her .. my analysis is that she still feels something .. certainly not any serious love .. that she is spoiled and selfish but that she knows I have touched her deeply as well as vice-versa ..  she wants to be in control, yet she hasn’t the slightest respect for anyone she can control .. clearly needs a few more years of growing up. And so it is over. Oh sure, I know what will happen in the fall, we discussed it as far back as Morocco when I told her that I certainly wouldn’t bother seeing her or doing anything with her in the fall.

She will pursue me .. not like a teeny-bopper .. but she will leave notes, presents, a little flower, etc. She won’t be able to reach me directly by phone, so I can ignore her there. I’m not holding open public lectures or normal classes (Freshman Interdisciplinary Seminars only); but I do have to keep office hours, and she knows this. So .. she’ll come ‘round to my office. And I’ll fuck her there, for sure .. but that will be it. I will be in control. We did it before, so we can do it again. She knows me so well that she knows that if I don’t make love to her that I’ll be hurting .. so if I can just make love to her and matter-of-factly show her the door and say “That was nice, we must do that again someday”, well, revenge is sweet when you have tasted such doled-out bitterness.

So, there you have it .. a real adolescent tale .. better than Love Story though. Having lived to 40 now I can say that I have learned very little, non-rationally that is, since 18 .. still the same mistakes. I’ll probably make them again, though of course not the same kind .. and certainly not while the present pain lingers on.

Bev has, at this point, invited us both back to Wallace Street for the fall. Clearly, she realizes that if she leaves at mid-December she is unnecessarily inconveniencing us by spinning us off on our own for 3 1/2 months. I shall probably stay in the house only as long as it takes me to move some things into David Dickstein’s .. for I want no symbolic attachment to her in the eyes of any 3rd party – particularly any women in my life.   I might borrow Hal Leventhal’s pad for a while, as he is about 200 yards away directly opposite the 7-11 in the Philadelphian on Fairmount .. or some similar arrangement. Thus, except for overnight I can use the Wallace St. facilities. She was quite warm & quite genuine when she said you were quite welcome to your old room, etc. regardless of whatever I decided to do.  To add bait to your considerations: we have a really first-class mother’s help .. I believe the best we’ve ever had. She is attractive, sincere, great sense of humor, great personality, good body, 18 1/2 yrs., we’ve only had her 3 days but I am very impressed. If you and I had a place of our own – or from mid-December, she would be perfect as a housekeeper, etc. She sews on buttons, mends, cleans, cooks .. great arrangement, eh?

Did you write to Colgan and get your grades? He hasn’t forwarded much .. I haven’t heard from the Law School yet.

We’ve sold both houses here .. but there are some knotty problems yet to come. In England she would only get l/3rd of what I have; all monies and goods in England and not covered by any court judgements in the states .. thus if I held everything .. money and goods .. here in England she would (a) have to get a separate English court judgment governing them here and (b) probably get only l/3rd. I will keep at least the monies here (ca. $30,000) to hold as a negotiating point .. when one subtracts all the debts, mortgages, etc., it won’t amount to much anyway.

So, drop me a line and let me know what you’ve been up to. It will be quite an experience, just the two of us, come December. If Bev doesn’t go to Temple for any reason and the divorce business gets too hot and sticky and her presence is not required in Philadelphia, she might well go sooner.

We won’t be able to go back sooner, I think, than 26 August, and probably around the 29-30th, I guess. Colgan has a contract to Sept. 1, but said he might go out a week early.  We will give over Pampisford sometime between 25-28 August .. hopefully Highworth Ave., only a day or two later. I am now anxious to get back and get busy again. The weather here is lousy; the bird life rather pre-adolescent – and I still hurt a bit. I hope everything has gone well with you over the summer and that you are quite the opposite from my state. The girls are fine and speak with thick English accents, this time, because [Jennie] is in school, Jessie as well.

Let’s hear from you,

What my father doesn’t say in the letter about the au pair girl other than: “attractive, sincere, great sense of humor, great personality, good body, 18 1/2 yrs” is the fact he had had sex with her sometime within the three days prior to writing the letter, a fact and the circumstances of which I wouldn’t know for another three months. At some point within those three days Beverly had sent her over to do some housekeeping at the Highworth Avenue house. When my father walked in on her making his bed, he apparently liked what he saw and said, “Why don’t we unmake that bed?” 

Within three and a half months my stepmother left my father with my two sisters. My sisters were the same age my brother and I were when my own mother left my father.

A PDF of the original letter can be found here: