NORMAN ENDED UP WRITING a lovely article about the Rabbits, four pages long.
It began, As I start to write, I know my greatest difficulty will be to convince people that what is told here is not a glimpse into the bowels of an imaginary hell but part of our world, and only got better from there, explaining in careful detail the plight of the girls and their grim situation.
After the Saturday Review went to print, a few letters trickled in, one asking if the Rabbits needed a theatrical agent, another inquiring whether the ladies could perform at a 4-H club meeting. I faced the reality that America might indeed have charity fatigue.
The following week, on a glorious, warm fall morning so hazy it was like looking at the world through cheesecloth, I finished feeding the horses in the barn and walked to our Bethlehem Post Office to pick up the mail. Our sow, whom Mother had named Lady Chatterley, followed close behind, apparently unable to let me out of her sight.
I passed Mother’s Litchfield Garden Club friends assembled in the garden, washing down Serge’s coconut washboard cookies with whirligig punch, their crystal cups flashing rainbows as they sipped. Sally Bloss, Mother’s lieutenant, still in garden clogs, her bandana tied like a baby’s bib, stood at the front of the group lecturing on their topic of the day: wasps, the garden’s friend. Slight, dark-haired Nellie Bird Wilson stood adjacent, skinny as a wasp herself, holding a presumably vacant papery nest aloft. Mother’s social calendar was much fuller than mine, filled with garden club, charity fetes at her Nutmeg Square and Round Dance Club, and coaching her baseball team.
Once I made it to the post office, just a few steps across the street from The Hay, the American flag above the door waved me in, and I left Lady Chatterley with nose to the screen door. Our little Bethlehem Post Office was a warren of small rooms tucked under the wing of Johnson Brothers Grocery. Johnson Brothers was a town meeting place with our only gas pump and ice cream counter.
I found Earl Johnson in his mailroom, a tight space no bigger than a closet. He sat atop his high stool, a white wall of mail cubbies peppered with envelopes behind him. For his clothes, Earl favored the neutral part of the color wheel, giving the impression that if he stood still long enough he would become indistinguishable from his mail. Beads of perspiration shone on his forehead, no doubt due to that morning’s ten minutes of rigorous mail sorting.
Earl leaned toward me through the window and slid a flyer for the upcoming Bethlehem Fair my way.
“Been hot,” Earl said, unable to look me in the eye.
Was I that ferocious?
“It has indeed, Earl.”
“Hope you’re not here to see the barber downstairs. He’s not workin’ today.”
I took the flyer. “Is this the only mail for me?”
Earl stood and sidled out of his mail closet. “Can you help me with something, Miss Ferriday?”
Country life has its charms, but I had a sudden yearning and appreciation for the Manhattan post office at Thirty-fourth Street, that massive, columned complex of efficiency.
“Must we, Earl?”
Earl waved me down the back hallway, and I followed. He lingered next to a closed door.
“Well?” I said. “Open it.”
“Can’t,” he said with a shrug.
I fanned myself with the flyer. “Well, get the key, for heaven’s sake.”
“It’s not locked.”
I took the knob in hand and turned it, then pushed the door with one hip, but it only opened a crack into the darkened room.
“Something’s blocking the door, Earl. What do you do here all day? It can’t take much to keep things tidy.”
“Clyde!” Earl called at the top of his voice. Mr. Gardener’s nephew came running.
“Yes, Earl?” said dear Clyde, who was no thicker than two sheets of paper.
“Get in there for Miss Ferriday,” Earl said.
“Yes, sir,” said Clyde, happy to have a mission that celebrated his size. Clyde slid through the door opening like a stinkbug slipping under a window sash.
I put my lips to the door crack. “Open the door, Clyde.”
“Can’t, Miss Ferriday. There’s stuff in front of it.”
“Stuff?” Where was Clyde getting his slang? “You really need to clean this place up, Earl.”
Earl toed a knot of wood in the floor.
“Just clear the door, Clyde,” I said. “Open the window shades. Then we can help.”
I heard shuffling, a groan from Clyde, and the snap of an ascendant window shade.
“Almost there, Miss Ferriday,” Clyde said.
Clyde opened the door, and a lovely Steinway smile seized his face, his teeth white and straight as keys.
The room was heaped with canvas bags, each big enough to fit Clyde himself, U.S. MAIL stamped in blue letters on all of them. The bags covered the floor and the counter that ran around the room. Some had burst at their rope handles, belching out piles of letters and packages.
I waded in through an avalanche of envelopes.
“It’s all addressed to some rabbits, Miss Ferriday,” Clyde said. “Look, one from Hawaii.”
“My God, Earl,” I said, a bit dizzy. “All for us?”
“Got ten more in the truck. Been dumpin’ them in here through the windows.”
“Whatever happened to ‘Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,’ Earl?”
“Beg pardon, Miss?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I scooped up a handful of letters with return addresses from Boston, Las Vegas—Mexico?
“At Christmas I have fifteen extra employees,” Earl said. “It’s just me here summers. There’s more in the basement. So much the barber can’t get in there.”
Mr. Gardener led Mother’s garden club over with a convoy of wheelbarrows, and we ferried the mail back to The Hay, with Clyde astride one bag, riding it like a pony, Lady Chatterley struggling to keep up. We opened every letter, separated them into piles on the dining room table, and called out their contents.
“Seventeen magazine is designing a clothing line for the girls!” Sally Bloss said. “Dr. Jacob Fine at Beth Israel Hospital donating medical care—”
Nellie Bird Wilson waved a piece of Roy Rogers stationery. “Kevin Clausen from Baton Rouge sent his allowance.”
“How lovely,” I said, scribbling it all down.
Mother couldn’t rip open envelopes fast enough. “National Jewish Hospital in Denver, Caroline.”
“Wayne State University,” Mr. Gardener said. “Dr. Jerome Krause, dentist.”
Sally held up a letter on blue-castled letterhead. “Disneyland in Anaheim is donating passes…The girls are to be Mr. Disney’s honored guests.”
“The Danforth Foundation is forwarding a check, Caroline,” Mother said. “A whopper.”
Nellie fanned herself with an envelope as she read. “The Converse Rubber Company wants to design a collection of footwear for the ladies.”
“Clothes and handbags from Lane Bryant,” Serge said.
We made a pile for the radiologists and osteopaths donating medical care and one for the dentists offering free cleanings. A pile for hospitals offering beds. Families from Bar Harbor to San Diego opening their homes to the girls. By nightfall we added up money and checks totaling over six thousand dollars, more than enough money to support a trip for the girls.
In the next Saturday Review, Norman called America “electrifying in its generosity,” and I was numb with happiness.
Our Rabbits were coming to America.
1958