with rhetoric until the foggy old creature burst into
weeping and had to take refuge in the ladies’ room. For Ernest this was the last straw, and not only because from that day
on Jim Dalrymple—chivalrous to the last—stopped speaking to him; also because the episode confirmed that Nancy was no longer
in any way under his control. “Let her send Mark money,” he told me later. “Let her write letters to congressmen, letters
to senators. But for God’ sake, let her shut up.”
In retrospect, I often wonder what it must have been like for Ben, those months after his brother’ departure, watching his
parents’ marriage degenerate into a rancorous silence. At least Daphne had her burgeoning love affair with Glenn to retreat
into; Ernest had me; Nancy had her various subcommittees and commissions and meetings. But Ben, in a way that at the time,
I think, none of us understood or acknowledged, was alone. He had no friends to speak of, most of his coevals on Florizona
Avenue having long since dismissed him as a loser or freak. I myself avoided, as much as possible, meeting his eye. That testy
encounter at the hairdresser’ had set the tone for our acquaintanceship, which would for years after be marked by unease on
my part and on his by a remoteness bordering on hostility. Perhaps he never forgot the clinch in which he had caught his father
and me that first Thanksgiving. Perhaps he simply didn’t like me. Nor can I pretend, at this stage, that I much liked him.
As I saw it, Ben at fifteen had only one salient characteristic, and that was brattiness. It never occurred to me to wonder
what might lie behind his more bizarre behavior (for example, his food phobias), for I was young myself then, and heedless
of any suffering I could not exploit. Instead I wrote him off as simply a source of interruption. It seemed that he lived
to pester, to complain to his mother about her cooking, or interrupt our four-hand to demand that she listen to one of his
poems. He was always writing poems. He never did his homework, and his grades suffered accordingly. And Nancy, I am sorry
to say, rather than informing him in crisp tones that there was a moment to read poetry and that this was not it, usually
buckled under to his insistence, stopping whatever she was doing to listen to him and then responding to his recitations with
that brand of offhand, reckless praise that in most cases speaks more to a parent’ desire to get a kid off her back than to
any genuine enthusiasm or belief in his talent. She had learned the hard way that offering criticism was a mistake, since
with Ben even the mildest complaint invariably provoked a wail of frustration, an enraged “You just don’t understand!” after
which he would run off to his room, slamming the door behind him. Much easier to provide the balm of immoderate laudation.
Still, I sometimes wondered if she went too far. For instance: “Mark my words,” she told him once, “you’ll be the youngest
person to win the Nobel prize for poetry.” A fateful exhortation, as it turned out, for he did mark her words—he forgot nothing—and
later, when the youthful success she had forecast failed to materialize, he blamed her.
As a poet, Ben was both ambitious and lazy. He never revised, appeared oblivious to basic principles of spelling and grammar,
took little care to type up clean copies or to follow the rules of poetic form. Thus his sonnets never scanned, while his
villanelles were approximate at best. Generally speaking I thought his poems tendentious and humorless, though I never told
Nancy this. Even so, starting when he was about twelve (and with her blessing) he began sending them out by the dozen, and
not only to contests and publications specifically aimed at teenagers; also to such august publications as Poetry and The New Yorker, which invariably returned them with form rejection slips paper-clipped to each bundle. Then Nancy
weeping and had to take refuge in the ladies’ room. For Ernest this was the last straw, and not only because from that day
on Jim Dalrymple—chivalrous to the last—stopped speaking to him; also because the episode confirmed that Nancy was no longer
in any way under his control. “Let her send Mark money,” he told me later. “Let her write letters to congressmen, letters
to senators. But for God’ sake, let her shut up.”
In retrospect, I often wonder what it must have been like for Ben, those months after his brother’ departure, watching his
parents’ marriage degenerate into a rancorous silence. At least Daphne had her burgeoning love affair with Glenn to retreat
into; Ernest had me; Nancy had her various subcommittees and commissions and meetings. But Ben, in a way that at the time,
I think, none of us understood or acknowledged, was alone. He had no friends to speak of, most of his coevals on Florizona
Avenue having long since dismissed him as a loser or freak. I myself avoided, as much as possible, meeting his eye. That testy
encounter at the hairdresser’ had set the tone for our acquaintanceship, which would for years after be marked by unease on
my part and on his by a remoteness bordering on hostility. Perhaps he never forgot the clinch in which he had caught his father
and me that first Thanksgiving. Perhaps he simply didn’t like me. Nor can I pretend, at this stage, that I much liked him.
As I saw it, Ben at fifteen had only one salient characteristic, and that was brattiness. It never occurred to me to wonder
what might lie behind his more bizarre behavior (for example, his food phobias), for I was young myself then, and heedless
of any suffering I could not exploit. Instead I wrote him off as simply a source of interruption. It seemed that he lived
to pester, to complain to his mother about her cooking, or interrupt our four-hand to demand that she listen to one of his
poems. He was always writing poems. He never did his homework, and his grades suffered accordingly. And Nancy, I am sorry
to say, rather than informing him in crisp tones that there was a moment to read poetry and that this was not it, usually
buckled under to his insistence, stopping whatever she was doing to listen to him and then responding to his recitations with
that brand of offhand, reckless praise that in most cases speaks more to a parent’ desire to get a kid off her back than to
any genuine enthusiasm or belief in his talent. She had learned the hard way that offering criticism was a mistake, since
with Ben even the mildest complaint invariably provoked a wail of frustration, an enraged “You just don’t understand!” after
which he would run off to his room, slamming the door behind him. Much easier to provide the balm of immoderate laudation.
Still, I sometimes wondered if she went too far. For instance: “Mark my words,” she told him once, “you’ll be the youngest
person to win the Nobel prize for poetry.” A fateful exhortation, as it turned out, for he did mark her words—he forgot nothing—and
later, when the youthful success she had forecast failed to materialize, he blamed her.
As a poet, Ben was both ambitious and lazy. He never revised, appeared oblivious to basic principles of spelling and grammar,
took little care to type up clean copies or to follow the rules of poetic form. Thus his sonnets never scanned, while his
villanelles were approximate at best. Generally speaking I thought his poems tendentious and humorless, though I never told
Nancy this. Even so, starting when he was about twelve (and with her blessing) he began sending them out by the dozen, and
not only to contests and publications specifically aimed at teenagers; also to such august publications as Poetry and The New Yorker, which invariably returned them with form rejection slips paper-clipped to each bundle. Then Nancy
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