Tom and Kurt Brown (my late husband) had been friends since the late 70s. So even before I actually met Tom in the early 90s, I already knew many stories about him. But this one particularly touched me.
Because Tom so absolutely loved his daughter Claudia, who lived in Boston with her mother, Tom wanted to be part of her life as much and as often as he could. So although he taught poetry at Sarah Lawrence College (200 miles away from Boston), Tom commuted back and forth to Bronxville every week. And this for 14 years! Fourteen years! So, each week he would have to drive through Hartford, CT, the city where Wallace Stevens lived and wrote until his passing in 1955. And each time, at a specific place on a bridge, he would "beep three long and loud beeps to say hello to Wallace Stevens." Tom told us this story one evening around our kitchen table in Cambridge, where Kurt and I lived at the time. A few months later, Kurt and I were on our way to a reading in New York when he suddenly turned to me and asked: "Ready?!" And before I could ask for what, Kurt slammed his hand on the steering wheel's center and beeped three long and loud beeps.
So you—who read this—if and when you drive through Hartford, CT, keep that tradition going. In memory of Tom.
And this, briefly: Tom and I were sharing a reading one evening. We were sitting together on the first row, when he leaned over to me and whispered: "Can you believe those knuckleheads are actually going to pay us for this?" And during our 27-year-long friendship, he would say that again, from time to time—and seriously swearing, å la Thomas Lux of course. As in: "Cupcake, can you fucking believe that those knuckleheads pay us to do what we love best? We should pay them!"
