Dear Edward

by Ann Napolitano

  On the first Monday back to school—even though he’s relieved that life has returned to normal and he and Shay can visit the garage that night—he’s half-asleep through every class. He trudges to Principal Arundhi’s office when the final bell rings, to see how the ferns fared over the break. He picks up his watering can from its usual spot inside the door.

  “Happy New Year, Edward,” the principal says.

  “Happy New Year.” The words are hard to get out of Edward’s mouth; they jumble like marbles for a moment in his throat. He realizes how little he’s spoken that day.

  While studying the stem of a spider fern, the principal says, “I’ve been meaning to ask you, what would you think about joining the math club?”

  Edward blinks. “Me? Uh, I guess I’ve never thought about math club.”

  “You’re a fine natural mathematician. Perhaps you should consider it.”

  “No, thank you.”

  “How about debate, then, or is there a sport you like? I fancied fencing when I was young, but I’ve never been able to muster enough interest for a fencing club here.” The principal’s mustache droops for a moment, as if in memory of that failure.

  Edward focuses on watering in a slow, steady circle around the periphery of the fern, and then a smaller circle at the base of the stem.

  “I just think, Edward, that it might be good for you to join a group of some kind. To broaden your circle. Humans need community, for our emotional health. We need connection, a sense of belonging. We are not built to thrive in isolation.”

  “I’m not isolated,” Edward says. “I have my aunt and uncle. And Shay.”

  “I myself belong to a botanical club that meets twice a month. We help each other with our research, share information, and eat very fine cookies.”

  Edward says, “Shay thinks I can get into any college I want, as long as I write about the crash in my essay. Do you think that’s true?”

  The principal turns to face him. “She said that, did she?”

  He nods.

  Principal Arundhi smooths his mustache. “And you object to that idea?”

  “Of course. It’s not fair. It would mean that I got into college, regardless of my grades or how hard I worked, just because something bad happened to me.”

  “Some might call that affirmative action.” The man smiles. “If it offends you, Edward, then I suggest that you study harder and improve your marks—I’ve heard about the erratic nature of your homework.”

  “I don’t want to join a team.”

  The older man regards him. “Then you should not do so. Please don’t think I care about your résumé, or the depth of your college application, when I speak of things like this. I am thinking, more or less, of my ferns.”

  Edward wonders if his lack of sleep has now landed him in a spot where he’s not processing information correctly. “Your ferns?”

  “Well, any living thing. A fern either grows or it dies. I would like”—he stops for a moment, considering—“I would like to do anything I can to ensure that you keep growing.”

  Edward feels the kindness of the man across the room and at the same time thinks that his team, his community, is in the folder in the garage. It is the 191 people who died on the flight. It’s the men and women whose faces stare from the photographs, who ask questions of him that he can’t answer. Why did you survive, and not me?

  “Sir, can I be done for the day?”

  The principal continues to study him, his face sad. It is a kind of deep sadness that Edward recognizes, and he feels a shard of his own sadness rise to the surface.

  “When in doubt, read books,” Principal Arundhi says. He speaks quickly, as if worried this might be his last opportunity to share his thoughts. “Educate yourself. Education has always saved me, Edward. Learn about the mysteries.”

  The boy looks at him, and believes him. Believes that education saved him, believes that he had once been a person who needed to be saved. “Thank you, sir,” he says, and turns to leave.

  * * *

  —

  On the way home, Edward can identify different blades of grass within the clumps. Stratus clouds blanket the sky, and he can identify where one cloud ends and another begins. In his fatigue, he’s seeing the boundaries that separate one thing from another. The gnarled tree on their corner is made of so many pieces: roots, branches, micro-branches, the distinct wrinkles on the bark. Edward thinks of the outer façade—the bark—of his school, with so many internal parts making up the organism. Chairs, lockers, children young enough to cry when someone insults them. Teachers, janitors, all the noise, the moving herd of growing humans. The students who hate Edward, who feel worse off than him, even though his whole life fell out of the sky. Edward finds that he’s not mad at their hatred. Maybe it is worse to have a father in jail, to live in a town that’s mostly white when your skin is brown, to find homework difficult even when you try your best. How would he know?

  There are no cars in the driveway. Lacey is at the hospital, John at work. Shay will be in her bedroom, reading or doing her homework. Edward decides to go to the garage now, even though it’s daytime. He’ll ignore the duffel bags; those are a mystery to be solved with Shay. I can lie on the floor, he thinks. No one will see me. He has a desire to be near the photographs. But he’s hungry, so he goes inside to get a snack first. He and Lacey both gasp when he thunders into the kitchen.

  “Goodness!” she says.

  “Your car’s not here.” Edward says this in a tone of accusation, while taking in the picture of his aunt sitting at the table in her work clothes—nice slacks and one of his mother’s cardigans—and holding one of John’s beers. Lacey never drinks beer.

  “I got dropped off by a colleague. There was a retirement party for someone at work, and I drank a few glasses of champagne.”

  “Oh.” Edward stands still, not sure what to do.

  “Join me,” Lacey says.

  He gets an apple from the fruit bowl on the counter and then takes his normal seat across from her. He bites the apple and chews, more for the activity than the taste. They sit in silence for a moment, and it occurs to Edward that this is the time of day when he used to come home and find his aunt waiting for him on the couch, with their soap opera cued to play. Neither of them has watched General Hospital for a long time. It had felt like a mutual hibernation, those hours spent side by side watching the most predictable of dramas. Edward wonders if his aunt ever misses that hour in the day; he sometimes does.

  “Did you sleep better last night?”

  “Yes,” he lies.

  “Good, good.” Lacey’s voice is slower than usual, and her posture less straight. She says, “Did I ever tell you that when I hold babies in the nursery, I sometimes think about you as a baby? You were a memorable baby, because you cried so much. Did your parents tell you about your colicky phase?”

  Edward presses the apple to his mouth and nods.

  “One day, I remember, your mom left Jordan with your dad and came out here. She hoped that the car ride, or the change of scenery, would soothe you. It didn’t, though.” Lacey gives a half smile. “Jane lay on the couch and slept, while I walked you in laps around the house. You screamed the whole time. I didn’t mind, though. You seemed okay, even though you were crying. Like you’d been set on some kind of anger mode and you needed to yell yourself out of it. It was your mom who needed help, and I hardly ever got a chance to help her. She was always trying to help me.”

  Edward attempts to picture this. A younger, exhausted version of his mom sleeping on the couch where he’d logged so many miserable hours. Lacey holding him to her shoulder, lap after lap. His mom had told him about his colicky phase, many times, but never mentioned a field trip to New Jersey. She’d always seemed to bring up his crying jag in order to retell the happy ending, about how she had woken up one morning to find Ed
ward dive-bombing her cheek with kisses.

  “I didn’t know she brought me here.”

  “It’s funny now,” Lacey says, as if to herself, “to think that Jane and I ended up sharing that baby.”

  Sharing. The word has a bitter taste in Edward’s mouth.

  Lacey rubs at her eyes, in the manner of a sleepy toddler. “The lady who retired had been working at the hospital for thirty years, in an administrative job. She and her husband are going on a trip around the world. Isn’t that something?”

  Edward nods, because a response seems required.

  “I was thinking that retirement is kind of like having someone you love die. It makes you focus on how you want to live your life. It makes you start over. Or feel like you should.” She looks at Edward, appears to really notice him. “Your mother always wanted to write a movie. That’s what she would talk about when she was tipsy. Did you know that?”

  “She was writing a movie on the plane.”

  “No, not that. That was a dumb rewrite job, which she hated. She had an idea that she loved, that she took notes on for years. I was jealous of how much she cared about that idea. Sometimes I feel like I should write Jane’s movie for her, but then I remember that I’m not a writer.”

  Edward tries to look sympathetic. He doesn’t know what to say. He both hates having this conversation with his aunt and experiences her words as a cold glass of water sating a thirst he didn’t know he had. Say more about my mother, he thinks. He knows that if he says that aloud, the moment will end, and no more truths will be revealed.

  Lacey picks at the label on the beer bottle. “If you saw the lady who just retired, you never would suspect that she was going to travel the world. She looks like she would never leave this town.” She yawns. “Do you know where your uncle is?”

  “At work?”

  Lacey shrugs, and pushes the bottle away from her. “I never know with him these days. I’m going to take a nap. Will you wake me up for dinner?”

  Edward nods and is surprised that as she leaves the kitchen, she bends down and kisses his cheek. It’s a gentle kiss, and she ruffles his hair on the way up. He’s surprised partly because Lacey rarely kisses him but also because the moment separates, the way the individual clouds did in the sky and the threads of grass did on the ground. He sees—and feels—two separate realities.

  Lacey kisses his cheek the exact same way his mother had kissed Edward’s cheek when she was alive. The kiss feels deliberate and intentional; Lacey can’t write her sister’s movie, but this is something she can do. But she also kisses his cheek the way Lacey would have kissed the cheek of the baby she had so badly wanted. Edward knows this, even though he can’t explain how. The word cherish enters his brain as if on a foreign breeze, and then departs. His aunt is gone too, and Edward is left alone at the kitchen table, holding an apple core.

  * * *

  —

  At midnight, he and Shay are seated on the cold floor of the garage, in front of the duffel bags. They’re wearing their winter coats and hats, because this room isn’t much warmer than the outdoors, but when Edward shivers, it’s with anticipation. He and Shay exchange a look that says, We’re finally here.

  Shay has researched the combination locks on the bags, because the Internet is her domain. Edward has a laptop now, for schoolwork, and a phone. He hardly uses the phone, but sometimes Mrs. Cox texts him, since one of her sons taught her how. In the middle of math class his phone buzzes with the sentence: You will need to visit Europe before you turn twenty, while your mind is still impressionable. On a Saturday evening: I recommend keeping a list of the books you read, as well as notes on them. I forget everything I don’t write down, so notes are important. Mrs. Cox had also texted him on his birthday to say that she was gifting him several Series I savings bonds.

  Edward uses Google for academic information when necessary, but he has never searched for the flight, or himself, or his family. Shay teases him that he uses technology like an old man, but of course she understands. When there’s any information to be gathered, like now, she gathers it. And according to the Internet, the lock is both old and cheap, which means that if you no longer remember the code, the best thing to do is cut it off.

  “We can’t cut the lock off without John noticing,” Shay says. “I remembered this morning that I actually have a lock-picking book. I found it in the back of my dresser.” She pulls her bag toward her. “I don’t think it will help with this kind of lock, though. Why did John have to use such cheap ones?”

  “Why do you have a book about lock-picking?”

  “Oh, well, when I was planning to run away from home, I was going to break into houses and sleep in people’s closets while I made my way across the country. That way, I’d have shelter when I needed rest.”

  Edward likes the image of a small, determined Shay with a lock-picking book under her arm. “Across the country to where?”

  She shrugs. “Who knows? I told you, I knew I’d never actually do it.”

  He reads the truth in her shrug. That younger version of Shay was planning to find her father. Out West. He wonders whether it would be for a reconciliation or to tell him off. He guesses a little of both.

  He points the flashlight at the bag closest to them. The lock is a horizontal row of four dials with numbers. The correct four-number combination will open it.

  Shay flips through the book in her lap. “I think we have to just try every possible combination.”

  Edward looks at her. “There are ten thousand.”

  “You should do it, then. I’ll get frustrated.”

  Edward leans forward and spins one of the dials. It takes a few rotations for him to get a feel for the traction between the numbers and the wheel beneath them. He’s looking for the telltale stickiness that signals the correct digit.

  “I wish John had put in carpeting,” Shay says. “This could take forever, and my butt is cold.”

  Something occurs to Edward. “Wait a minute,” he says. He stares down at the lock. These four digits were programmed by his uncle, which means they’re not random. “I have an idea.” He spins each of the four dials until the lock reads 2977.

  There’s a loud click, and the lock mechanism opens quietly and falls into Edward’s waiting palm.

  “You did it,” Shay whispers. She leans forward and unzips the length of the duffel bag. This seems to take a long time, and Edward watches. He’s aware that part of him had not wanted the bags to open. He’d wanted them to remain in the corner, a mystery that enticed Shay but a mystery unanswered. I wonder, instead of I know.

  “It is full of paper,” Shay says.

  The bag is stuffed with envelopes. Shay picks one up, and Edward reads the handwritten name above the address.

  Edward Adler

  The letter is unopened. The address is unfamiliar: It’s a P.O. box in town. Edward’s heartbeat notches faster. Who would have written to him? Shay pulls another letter from the bag. It’s also addressed to him, at the same address.

  Edward reaches past Shay and pushes his arm into the bag, creating space so he can read several addresses at once. The handwriting is different. The color of the envelopes, the color of the ink, all varied. He picks one out at random and sees that the postmark is for a date two years earlier.

  “They’re all addressed to you,” Shay says, in a quiet voice.

  Same name, every envelope. So many envelopes.

  Adrenaline ignites Edward’s brain and he feels his thoughts shoot forward, beyond his control. He figures something out and says it at the same time. “They don’t get mail here at the house. I’ve never seen any lying around. I guess I figured Lacey got it while I was at school? But all the mail must go to that P.O. box.”

  Why? he sees Shay think.

  “Because of how upset they got about the binder—they had a big fight—and because o
f whatever this is,” he says, and waves his hand at the paper rectangles, the stamps, the printed dates. “I guess the other bag must be full of letters too?”

  “Do you want me to open one?”

  “Wait.”

  She studies his face in the dim light.

  He thinks, I know the impossible is possible. I’ve seen it, been inside it.

  “What?” she whispers.

  When he speaks, his voice is small too, as if they’re trying to communicate below a larger, louder conversation, as if to speak now they need a new register. “What if the letters are from my parents and brother and everyone who died on the plane?”

  She looks startled. “You mean from their ghosts?”

  “Things don’t always have to make sense. Do they? Maybe if you’re open to things not making sense, you get to see more?”

  He can read Shay. He always can. Now she looks sad, worried. She knows he wants these letters to be from his parents and brother. She wants the letters to be from them too. But she hasn’t seen the impossible herself. She wasn’t inside the plane when it fell out of the sky. She only saw the aftermath on television, watching beside her mother on a couch.

  “I don’t think things always make sense,” she says, her voice so soft the words join the dust atop the shelves around them.

  He nods. “Open one.”

  1:40 P.M.

  There is no true silence on an airplane. The engines drone; air swooshes from vents overhead. There are occasional coughs, stifled conversations, the hiccup of the beverage cart’s one bad wheel, the clipping shut of the bathroom door, small children and babies putting up an intermittent, righteous wail of protest. The seatbelt and cramped quarters say, Be still. The air says, Listen. More passengers are asleep now than at any other point during the flight. Some cover themselves with a jacket or blanket; like turtles, they withdraw into their shells. Another camp seems to flaunt their vulnerability. They sleep with their faces tilted back, mouths slightly agape. An arm might dangle into the aisle, as if hoping a stranger will reach out and clasp his or her hand.