THENEWYORKER, APRIL 18, 2022 47ger speak. “So I reminisced about early
days in Buffalo,” Day wrote, “weekends
in the country together with Cal Low-
ell; meals or drinks with Auden, Berry-
man, Stephen Spender.” I’d have loved
to hear more about these encounters, but
it was the only time he mentioned them.
Maybe because I hadn’t responded.
In 1991, he wrote from what was then
Czechoslovakia, “This is my tenth day
of travel. I am a bit weary, a bit lonely. I
feel more companionable with myself by
writing you, and trying to imagine your
reactions to some of the things I’ve seen
and done.” He always craved more let-
ters: “It is as much fun for me to receive
as to send.”
After I wrote a piece for Spy maga-
zine under the name Celeste de Brun-
hoff, he sent a fan letter to Celeste at
the magazine, signed “Sue D’Eaux-
Nimbe.” I remembered my astonish-
ment at the pun: such a Mom move. In
2017, he wrote that a piece I’d done about
the scienti5c quest for immortality was
“the best article of yours that I’ve ever
read.” His handwriting was trembly, the
lines not quite plumb. “But I know I
may have missed the point. If you feel
I have gone askew, just tell me so.”
The last letter I read was from 2014.
Day had written me in mauve ink, not-
ing that it was “not the ideal tint for
male correspondence,” but that his other
pens had run dry. He’d come across a
wounding letter Mom sent him in 1985,
“5ve pages detailing my shortcomings,
that had struck me as coherent, yes, but
incongruous and non-harmonious.” He
added, “Trying to remember E. more
fully, and not through the limited lens
of that one letter, I turned to your book,
which I found wholly absorbing.” He
went on to praise “Cheerful Money,”
his past criticisms forgotten or laid aside.
This letter had startled me at the time.
Now I could see that his appreciation,
and his implicit apology, shouldn’t have
been so surprising. Like a detective re-
turning to a cold case, I was amazed by
how much I’d missed.N
ot long before Day died, I went to
see him, on my way home from
reporting in Washington, D.C.—a long,
muggy day made sultrier by lobbyists
hosing me with hot air. As usual, he was
in the bathroom: banging-around sounds
and “Fuck!”s issued from the baby mon-itor in the kitchen. I ate a banana while
a caregiver, a self-assured woman named
Tamika, got Day into his p.j.’s.
He sat on the edge of his bed, swal-
lowing his seven pills one by one. “Do
you want me to help you lay down?” Ta-
mika said. Even as she spoke, Day said,
“It’s ‘lie,’ not ‘lay’!” She grinned at me,
having heard this distinction before. He
amused strong women, which vexed him.
To forestall that dynamic, I brought
up his brother: “Do you remember how,
when Charles was in the hospital near
the end, a nurse told him to just lay
there quietly, and he corrected her the
same way? And then said, ‘I’m still the
house grammatician’? And how, to make
her feel better, you told her, ‘That’s
O.K.—the word is grammarian’?”
“I said that?” he asked. I nodded, and
he laughed. At the time, he’d told me
that he’d hoped to talk with Charles
about their childhood, but that it had
seemed too late: “Charlie and I never
talked about our parents. It was dis-
turbed ground—too much wounding
and bleeding.”
Beginning to frown, he said, “I hope
Charles didn’t hear me.”
“He didn’t,” I said. I had no idea—I
wasn’t there—but he seemed so concerned.
“That’s good,” he said. “Grammarian.”
Once Tamika had gone to the kitchen,
I said that I was writing another book.“Good!” he said. His eyes popped
open. “I think you have three memoirs
in you, and you’ve only done one.”
“What do you think this one should
be about?”
“The alleged future,” he said quietly.
I knew he was thinking that he prob-
ably wouldn’t live to read it.
“And what should the last one be
about?”
“Reflections and suppositions.”
“So this one should look ahead and
the last one should look back?”
“That’s how it works.” He shifted,
settling. “Will this one be about squash?”
“There will be squash in it,” I said.
“But it can’t all be about squash.”
“Why the hell not?”
“That would reduce the readership
even further.”
“You’re not trying to write a best-
seller, are you?”
“I’m not trying to write a worst-seller,
either.”
He laughed, rumblingly, and winced.
Then he sighed, a long, weary sigh, and
pulled at his pillow, already forgetting.
“I should let you get some sleep,” I
said. “Do you need anything?”
“Only your company,” he said. He
reached out his hand. “Don’t go just yet.”
The ripples are reaching, have reached,
their full amplitude. But the lake is glassy,
and you are still hugging the shore. “Well, one person’s mess is another person’s immersive experience.”••