28
PARTISAN REVIEW
that
is
not the reason why we "broke up." There are only two possi–
bilities, one very flattering to me, the other, degrading.
To take the base one first, I observed, when I entered your house
and when I was eating lunch, that you avoided all reference to WP
A.
Your presented me to your father, and later to your brother, as an
old friend from school whom you bumped into downtown while
looking for a job. You would not admit that you had applied for
WPA, and you would not have them know that I, too, had done so.
What a false and wicked pride, and- since you evidently know some–
thing about such matters- what utter disloyalty to your class! Your
father, a carpenter as I recall, was obviously unemployed. He had
that look about him. And your brother, who was building a model
airplane in the middle of the day, evidently had nothing better to do.
So what was there to be ashamed of? And what
if
your mother, as
I gather from her absence, was the only one working in the family?
What of it? Must you be ashamed? But perhaps you were even more
ashamed of me than of yourself. Perhaps the very fact that you met
me in a relief station was enough to queer me. Then why flirt with
me and bring me to your home?
But apart from all that, what a fool you were not to go through
with your WPA application. I scoured all the rolls, inquired at all
the projects where you might conceivably have been taken on, but
no one had heard of you. Ah, what you missed! Myself, I went on
to the Writers' Project and compiled a 100,000 word report on pigeon
racing in Chicago, including a life-size biography of Josiah Breen,
the pigeon fancier. And what did you do? Pickle works, belt-buckle
factory, typist, stenographer, secretary? You are a traitor to your
class, Ellen, to your better instincts and your better capacities, and
you allowed what we call "the most crucial experience of our genera–
tion" to slip by you. But this is a digression. ·
As
I say, you may have been ashamed to know me, or to con–
tinue seeing me because I was going on WPA. Or perhaps, even
because I had caught you in the act, applying for the national dispen–
sation. This, of course, is only a possibility; and I may be wrong.
Assuming that I am, and that you had your own and better reasons,
there
r~mains
another possibility, which I am very eager to entertain.
It does me good.
This is mystery. It involves a whole world, of which you are the
hub. At the center, beside you, let me place a young man, of respect-
