would rail at what she called
the editors’ “lack of vision.” “It’ a matter of who you know,” she’d tell Ben, “an inside job"— evading the tricky question
of why, if it was an inside job, she had encouraged him to send the poems out in the first place.
It was Ernest’ contention (which he shared only with me) that Ben suffered from an underdeveloped sense of reality. In Ernest’
view, Ben’ problem was that he lived half in a world of dreams, the borders of which he could not clearly delineate; much
of his bad temper and frustration, his father felt, owed to the refusal of the “real world” (whatever that was) to conform
to his wishes. A reasonable diagnosis, I thought at the time—and yet today I cannot help but wonder whether in this regard
Ben differed all that much from most other writers. Everything that Ernest said of him, for example, he could just as easily
have said of Jonah Boyd. Also, I think it would be a mistake to understate the degree to which Nancy encouraged Ben in his
delusions, if for no other reason than because they lent ballast to her own: that she had been a perfect mother, and that
her children, thanks to everything she had done for them, would go far. So she abandoned him. This is awful but true. The
only person who might have gotten through to Ben at this time was Mark, and Mark was long gone, though Ben spoke eagerly of
the Easter break when Nancy had promised that he could fly to Vancouver for a visit. (Mark didn’t want his parents to come.)
Ben was proud to have a rebel for a brother, and put Mark’ picture above his bed, and made a FREE MARK WRIGHT button out of
red and blue construction paper that he wore to school every day for a week, until one of his teachers infuriated him by pointing
out the illogic of the message, given that Mark had gone to Canada of his own free will.
It was around this time that the so-called nosebleed incident occurred. One morning Nancy rose later than usual, went into
Ben’ room to make his bed, and found the sheets and walls spattered with blood. In a panic she threw a coat over her nightgown
and rushed over to the high school, where she tracked Ben down in his gym class, one of two dozen boys waiting to throw a
basketball at a hoop. And there she pounced on him, at once relieved that he was alive and furious that he had given her such
a scare. It turned out that during the night he had had a nosebleed (he was prone to them), woken, sneezed blood all over
the wall and bedclothes, and fallen back asleep. Then in the morning he had dressed in the dark and left without even realizing
what had happened. And now here was his mother, a harridan in pink slippers and a raincoat, a scarf tied over her hair, hurling
herself at him in front of a group of boys who would never forget what they had witnessed, or let him forget it.
Years later, when he was famous and people cared about his life, he described the incident. In a memoir titled The Eucalyptus, he wrote: “My mother’ intrusive arrival at the school that morning merely confirmed what I already suspected: that she was
a meddler and an hysteric. At the same time, it opened my eyes to a certain ferocity in her character of which I had so far
only caught glimpses. Later she told me that it was my brother as much as me of whom she was thinking, when she switched on
the light in my bedroom and saw all that blood: Mark, his body bullet-riddled, or dismembered, in some remote theater of war.
And so, as she put on her coat that morning, she made a vow to God that if I were to be spared, she would devote the rest
of her life to the protection of her children. And I was spared. And yet it was a fatal pact, because by making it, she was
effectively telling us that our safety mattered more to her than our loving her, or feeling that she loved us; that she would
rather have us safe at a great remove than at danger near her.
“I now see that
the editors’ “lack of vision.” “It’ a matter of who you know,” she’d tell Ben, “an inside job"— evading the tricky question
of why, if it was an inside job, she had encouraged him to send the poems out in the first place.
It was Ernest’ contention (which he shared only with me) that Ben suffered from an underdeveloped sense of reality. In Ernest’
view, Ben’ problem was that he lived half in a world of dreams, the borders of which he could not clearly delineate; much
of his bad temper and frustration, his father felt, owed to the refusal of the “real world” (whatever that was) to conform
to his wishes. A reasonable diagnosis, I thought at the time—and yet today I cannot help but wonder whether in this regard
Ben differed all that much from most other writers. Everything that Ernest said of him, for example, he could just as easily
have said of Jonah Boyd. Also, I think it would be a mistake to understate the degree to which Nancy encouraged Ben in his
delusions, if for no other reason than because they lent ballast to her own: that she had been a perfect mother, and that
her children, thanks to everything she had done for them, would go far. So she abandoned him. This is awful but true. The
only person who might have gotten through to Ben at this time was Mark, and Mark was long gone, though Ben spoke eagerly of
the Easter break when Nancy had promised that he could fly to Vancouver for a visit. (Mark didn’t want his parents to come.)
Ben was proud to have a rebel for a brother, and put Mark’ picture above his bed, and made a FREE MARK WRIGHT button out of
red and blue construction paper that he wore to school every day for a week, until one of his teachers infuriated him by pointing
out the illogic of the message, given that Mark had gone to Canada of his own free will.
It was around this time that the so-called nosebleed incident occurred. One morning Nancy rose later than usual, went into
Ben’ room to make his bed, and found the sheets and walls spattered with blood. In a panic she threw a coat over her nightgown
and rushed over to the high school, where she tracked Ben down in his gym class, one of two dozen boys waiting to throw a
basketball at a hoop. And there she pounced on him, at once relieved that he was alive and furious that he had given her such
a scare. It turned out that during the night he had had a nosebleed (he was prone to them), woken, sneezed blood all over
the wall and bedclothes, and fallen back asleep. Then in the morning he had dressed in the dark and left without even realizing
what had happened. And now here was his mother, a harridan in pink slippers and a raincoat, a scarf tied over her hair, hurling
herself at him in front of a group of boys who would never forget what they had witnessed, or let him forget it.
Years later, when he was famous and people cared about his life, he described the incident. In a memoir titled The Eucalyptus, he wrote: “My mother’ intrusive arrival at the school that morning merely confirmed what I already suspected: that she was
a meddler and an hysteric. At the same time, it opened my eyes to a certain ferocity in her character of which I had so far
only caught glimpses. Later she told me that it was my brother as much as me of whom she was thinking, when she switched on
the light in my bedroom and saw all that blood: Mark, his body bullet-riddled, or dismembered, in some remote theater of war.
And so, as she put on her coat that morning, she made a vow to God that if I were to be spared, she would devote the rest
of her life to the protection of her children. And I was spared. And yet it was a fatal pact, because by making it, she was
effectively telling us that our safety mattered more to her than our loving her, or feeling that she loved us; that she would
rather have us safe at a great remove than at danger near her.
“I now see that
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