The Letters

by Luanne Rice

  You started to undress me. It surprised us both, and we were smiling. Grinning. It was almost funny, because we hadn’t made love outside in so long, and I think we were both wondering why not. It was broad daylight, anyone could have come along, Jenny and Nat or any of the other neighbors, but we didn’t care. You unbuttoned my shirt, and I undid your belt, and we pulled off our jeans. Your legs, I’ve always loved your legs, and then they were wrapped around me.

  You know how dreams are sometimes so real, they happen in slow motion, as if to tell you it’s important to pay attention, you don’t want to miss anything? That’s how this was. I looked into your eyes, and they were full of joy. I could tell you were seeing how much I loved you. That broke my heart, but it was a dream, so I could just rewind and feel fine again. You were caressing me, and your lips brushed mine, and I arched my back into you and I heard you whisper something.

  I couldn’t make out what you were saying, but you had me going, I was lost in you, completely lost. And then you said it again. The words were a little louder; I thought you said “This is how it began.”

  “What began?” I asked.

  “You know,” you said.

  And I did…I knew. I pushed it away, because I wanted to hold on to the dream, the feeling of you making love to me. I was desperate for that. I thought, If I can just get through this, if the dream ends right, then we can still be happy. We can all be together, nothing bad will have happened.

  “Make it not happen,” I said to you.

  “What?” you asked. “Make what not happen?”

  And then I woke up.

  I had to stop for a while, but I’m back. I’m sitting here in the kitchen, rereading your letter, wondering if you’re on the way, how far you’ve gotten. If you’re already there.

  When I think about that dream, me saying “Make it not happen,” there are a few things I might have meant. Isn’t it strange, how the world of dreams and the world of awakening can be so different? Awake, I think I meant make Paul not to have crashed. But in the dream, I think I was talking about myself—about what I did. The two things seem to go together.

  If Paul hadn’t died, if I hadn’t started drinking more, I wouldn’t have hurt you. I know I’ve told you this a hundred times, nothing really happened. Nothing physical anyway. I’ve never been sure whether you believed me or not. I guess it’s beside the point now. That snag in the sweater started long before Daniel. Just a small hole that grew between us because we didn’t pay enough attention. Once the divorce is final, what will it matter? But I do find myself thinking about it.

  It seems a little crazy, dwelling on it so much right now, when you’re in Alaska, on your way to see where Paul died. Why am I suddenly so focused on wanting you to understand? Maybe I just think it will give us both peace at last.

  What went wrong between us really had nothing to do with Daniel. He was just there. You were taking more assignments, and they all seemed to be halfway around the world, and I was lonely and crazy. I missed Paul so much, every inch of me hurt. I felt as if someone had started peeling my skin off, strips of skin down to the muscle, just turning me inside out. My nerves and blood were on the outside, and there was nothing holding me together.

  You used to do that. The first days after we heard about the crash, I don’t think you let go of me for one minute. You came to lie beside me after you got the call, and you put your arms around me, and I looked at your face, at your eyelashes on your cheek—that’s the freeze-frame where my heart stopped. I saw the way tears were leaking out, and you didn’t even have to tell me. I knew. All of it—it was as if I left my body, and you left yours, and we went flying over the whole country, into Alaska, into the bush, to see the wrecked plane, his broken body. You’ll say it was just my worst fear coming true—my last words to Paul before he left about being safe, not flying in bad weather—and maybe it was.

  But you held me, and I made you tell me, and that was that. I don’t think we moved for hours. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even open my eyes. I just wanted him there. I knew that if I moved even an inch, I’d have to do things. Make calls, or walk past his room, or see the postcard he’d sent us from Denali on the refrigerator. If we moved, that would make it real. So we just held each other, and that kept me together. I think it kept you together, too.

  The cat finally got us up—he was hungry, and he meowed so loudly, but I barely even heard. It wasn’t until he finally gave up, curled into a ball against my back, that we realized we had to feed him. Boing had been Paul’s cat, after all. Poor kitty. Poor, poor little kitty. Losing Paul was hard on him, too. Do you think that’s why he ran away? Because he knew Paul would never be back? Or were we as unbearable to him as we were to each other?

  Sitting here in the kitchen, I can hear a very strong wind picking up outside. Cat is curled up on the top bookshelf, where the heat is rising. A storm’s blowing in tonight. Storms come from the west, don’t they? Did this one start in Alaska? How many days did it take to get here? Did you hear this wind, feel it buffeting your sled? If something happened to you, how would I find out? Even as I write this letter to you, I don’t know where you are, what you’ve gone through since you last wrote me.

  Anyway. I don’t want to get to the rest, but I will. My dream. Daniel. What that all did to us. You, and I really don’t say this to blame you, but you went away, Sam. You did that trip to Mont Blanc for Outside, and one to Tierra del Fuego for whomever, and then the America’s Cup trials in Barcelona, and then you started talking about going surfing at Mavericks and Half Moon Bay, and that was it. It was right after that boy on his surfboard had been attacked by the white shark, and you were out to get the story. You know what I thought you were after? Suicide by shark.

  You didn’t know it, and I didn’t know it, but I snapped. I’m tired of blaming. I felt as if I’d fallen into the Land of the Unhappy Middle-Aged Woman, spouting the catchphrases about our disappointing husbands: withdrawn, distant, emotionally unavailable. I was so sick of myself. I decided I wasn’t going to tumble any further into the chasm of the pathetic.

  So when the new gallery opened in town, I went down to check out the Cape Ann exhibit. I was looking for beauty, inspiration, a way to connect with everything I used to find luminous. I wanted to gaze at paintings and find truth. I’d read that there were paintings by Ruth Anderson, a woman who’d worked in Gloucester around the turn of the last century. She was an American Impressionist who’d gotten lost in the shuffle of men’s reputations. I wanted to see her paintings and see if they would tell me what to do next.

  I swear I wasn’t looking for anything other than the chance to see another artist’s work. I do remember, though, I felt like crawling out of my body. Everything hurt, the air stung my skin. You were so far away. I was hurting. I wasn’t sure you loved me anymore, I didn’t believe we made sense without Paul. In fact, and you must remember my screaming this at you, had we stopped loving each other even before he died? We had stopped being a couple—we were just Paul’s parents, and we no longer even had him to hold us together. So what were we? There was just a huge hole where our love used to be.

  So, the exhibit. I fell a little in love with Ruth. Found out most of her work was destroyed in a fire at her Boston studio. I felt that so strongly—a woman artist who’d lost so much that mattered to her. Daniel saw me standing in front of a study she’d done of dunes. Sand dunes sculpted by the wind, tufted with beach grass. Such a lonely scene. I was weeping silently. Could it be more poignant? He walked over and just stood beside me. I felt him wanting to ask me if I was okay. I was very…distressed.

  And he finally did ask me. It was awkward. Maybe he was afraid I’d completely melt down and ruin his gallery opening. I pulled myself together and we talked about Ruth Anderson and her studio fire. At first he thought that’s all it was—that I was just a supersensitive soul who cared that deeply about another artist’s loss. I signed the guest book, put my email address down to receive notice of upcoming shows. />
  He wrote to thank me for coming to the opening, I wrote back to say I’d loved the show, and that’s how it started. His marriage was old and dead, our marriage was…well, it was in trouble. On shaky ground already and grieving so badly for our son…Those emails made me feel alive again. You were traveling, and Daniel lived just five miles away; I’d drive by his house and see the light in his study, and know he was sitting there waiting for an email from me. That felt good.

  And I’d settle down with a glass of scotch, there by the computer. I couldn’t paint or draw anymore, but I could wait—that was my art in those days. The way I could sit so still, drinking single-malt scotch, vigilant for the appearance of an email. Kind of like sitting across the table from you in the old days, when I’d be drawing and you’d be writing, and the silence could stretch forever without feeling wrong. And one of us would laugh, or say something, and then the silence would come back, and it was beautiful.

  So there I was, waiting. And, again not to blame you, but I wasn’t hearing from you. The little “you’ve got mail” message was never from you. It was always from Daniel. His wife would be in the other room, watching TV or talking on the phone to one of her friends or their kids, and he’d be at the desk mooning over me. It felt good to be mooned over.

  I began to get into the habit of looking forward to something. I started washing my face again. That might sound crazy to you, but it felt good to care again. Instead of just rinsing off in the shower, tilting my face up just because I had to, I’d use pretty soap. It smelled of lemons. Not that I ever thought he, Daniel, would get close enough to appreciate it—but I just felt like doing it anyway. I began caring about what I wore. I got back on my bike, and started exercising.

  You’d come home between assignments, and I swear you never noticed. You’d always liked that soap, so I thought you might say something. But you didn’t. We never slept close anymore. In fact, I think it was after the Half Moon Bay trip, you seemed to fall asleep on the couch more often. I began wondering if you’d started seeing someone.

  Or maybe that was just my guilt. Because I was thinking about Daniel. He…liked me. I knew he was there for me. That sounds so dumb and tacky, but he was. He’d let me talk about Paul. You must hate that, to think of me talking about our son to someone else—but I couldn’t talk about him to you. It was the one subject that was forbidden between us. The crazy thing is, I couldn’t let you talk about him either. But with a stranger—it was different.

  Talking to Daniel made me feel our son’s presence. But then I’d wonder what he’d think about his mother getting so close to a man who wasn’t his father, and I knew he’d be upset. He’d always loved the way we were together—he’d have found it impossible to believe this was happening.

  When people talk about affairs, they always mean sex. Wet, sweaty, passionate, sneaking around, hard and physical. But sex isn’t the most powerful part of an affair, not in the truest sense. Any two people can go to bed together. But it’s the emotional attachment that counts. It’s when you start preferring email with a man five miles away to talking to your husband that you know you have a problem.

  Sorry for the disruption—the storm hit hard and knocked down a big tree. It fell on the wires outside, and I completely lost power. I tried writing you by candlelight, but it just started seeming too melodramatic, especially considering what I was saying. Besides, I couldn’t find Cat for a few hours and I had to look for her. She was hiding in the yard, under the woodpile. She’s so feral. My wild cat.

  To skip ahead, that night when you found me and Daniel together—we were just talking. It was one of your rare periods home, and I’d found myself just feeling so frustrated. Out of my mind with it. You were there—but not really. You were absorbed with the article, writing about Mavericks, finishing up interviews with surfers and marine biologists, still trying to convince that kid who’d gotten attacked to talk to you. You were obsessed with him, with getting the story. I always thought it was because he survived. He could have died, but he didn’t. Why him and not Paul? That’s what I thought you were after, but you refused to talk to me about it.

  I got drunk. I didn’t set out to, but I never did. As you said in your last letter, it was just a little at a time. Sometimes I felt that I wasn’t so much drinking the scotch as that it was drinking me. I missed Daniel—that seductive longing. It was heightened, of course, when you were home. I knew he was at the gallery—getting ready for a new show, he’d be working late. So I sent him an email, and told him I was coming over. I left the screen open. I’ve always figured it was just because I’d been drinking, but now I’m not sure. Maybe I wanted you to see. To know.

  I walked out the door, and somehow made it into town. You noticed I was gone, and went to my computer, and you came after me. I can picture it: the gallery in that beautiful yellow Greek Revival house on Elm Street, the big windows glowing like a jewel box, lamplight silhouetting us. Our first and only real physical contact, and you were there to see us. I’m thinking of that right now, listening to the wind howl—the storm is over, but that’s how the wind is out here right now. It shrieks when it’s not howling.

  Sometimes I get a glimpse of myself begging you to believe me, forgive me, and I don’t even know why. I think it was already over between us then, so the exercise was pointless. Daniel is still with his wife—I wouldn’t be with him even if he wanted that. You can trust me on that or not, and after all this time, I guess I know how you feel.

  But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. The longer I’m here, the sorrier I am. I hurt you, hurt us. If nothing else, our past together deserved better. And if there was ever any chance of fixing what was wrong between us, I gave us both a great excuse not to try.

  Now, the only person I can imagine talking with about Paul is you. You’re the only one who knows. That picture you brought…you say you were reaching for something out of the frame. I know what it was—Paul’s Red Sox cap. You’d set the camera’s self-timer, and we’d all been laughing, getting into place and trying to fit into the shot, and you’d accidentally knocked it off his head.

  Paul hardly ever took it off that year—he wanted to bring luck to the team, and that was his way of doing his part. Remember how he was about the things he loved? And did he ever love anything more than the Red Sox? You and he going to those playoff games; I’m not sure he was ever happier.

  Do you talk to Martha about him? Tell her about Paul? Or about us? Not you and me…or at least I think that’s not what I mean. I mean about us as a family—we three. Then again, do you tell her about you and me? How could you help getting close to someone on a trip like that? Don’t tell me, though. I don’t want to know…

  Okay, neutral territory. Something else to write about. I went to a meeting last night. I told you about the ancient sober lobsterman—Turner. He’s really wonderful. Born and raised here on Monhegan, quit drinking after he realized he was starting to love the bottle more than “his Rosie”—his wife of, as he says, a hundred years. He’s full of stories and wisdom. Some of the younger guys really look up to him—for his example and discipline here, and also for everything he knows about the sea, for the life he’s lived.

  The season is brutal here. It’s the only place in Maine—maybe in the world—where they lobster only during the harshest months, from January to June, letting the lobsters fatten up all summer. Right now, with Thanksgiving coming on, everyone is getting eager to get back to work. They talk a lot about ice and weather. It’s strangely comforting to me, being among people whose daily lives incorporate the elements that killed Paul. It’s as if they’re fighting them for him. Or something like that…

  I found out that the man Annabelle loved was an artist by summer, lobsterman by winter. He died in a blizzard, when his boat got caught out beyond the entrance to the harbor. Annabelle was standing on the dock, calling for him—she thought he could follow the sound of her voice back to shore. It’s such a touching image, and helps me understand her so much. I’ve be
en doing sketches for a painting of that storm—her on the wharf, him out at sea.

  John Morgan told me the story. It turns out the reason he’s here on Monhegan is that he grew up spending summers on the island and he’s going through a big change in his career. He’d worked out in Seattle for a long time, doing large-scale sculptures—they’d remind you of Calder, bright works of iron, the kind you see in city parks or company courtyards. The kind you don’t like. He and his wife broke up—I have no idea why, we haven’t spoken about anything personal. But anyway, when he found out I was staying in this house, he told me about Annabelle.

  I’ve asked Turner about her, too. This is the amazing thing: Annabelle’s lover was Turner’s brother Ralph. He was in the boat with him when he died—he said the snow was so thick and white, heavier than the fog we get here. They’d grown up sailing these waters, and their instincts were so strong they could find their way home through any storm—until that one. He said they heard Annabelle calling over the wind, her voice guiding them in. But then they shipped a big wave, and it washed Ralph overboard. Turner tried to grab him—their hands clasped, and Turner pulled as hard as he could, but his brother just slipped away. They never found his body.

  I keep seeing it all—Turner watching his brother drown, Annabelle waiting, calling, them being so close to home, almost within sight. But Ralph died. She saved Turner, but not her love. Is that the way life is, Sam?

  I think of Paul saving Boing—of that entire litter, he was the only one who survived. He jumped into Paul’s arms, and never really jumped out. And then, when Boing was old, Paul went to Alaska. The cat lived, but our boy died.

  And I ruined everything. That’s how I feel…I’m sorry, Sam. Those words sound so dry and old. But I mean them. I’m sorry. I talk to Annabelle and Cat about it. Cat, my little feral island stray. When you have a son who comes up with names like Boing, you just don’t even try. Simple is best for me. Me and Holly Golightly. But, oh. Everything is making my heart ache. I look at Cat and think of Boing running away. So much unhappiness in our house…