Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  “It never is.”

  Seamus walked around the car and climbed in beside Johnny. I watched him, wondering how many years ago it had been when he came with the same automobile to take me to the Ferriter. Four years? Three? I kept my hand on Gottfried’s soft fur. He was the best company of all.

  “How is Gran?” I asked as the car finally began to move.

  Seamus watched everything Johnny did. It couldn’t have failed to make Johnny nervous.

  “She’s taken things as well as she can, I suppose,” he said, talking over his shoulder. “It’s a hard turn of events, that’s certain. It still doesn’t feel quite real to any of us.”

  “Where was the Ferriter lost?”

  “Off the coast of Italy. I’m not sure of the name of the village.”

  I sat forward. I had assumed the Ferriter had sunk somewhere off Ireland.

  “In Italy?”

  “Off the coast.”

  Then he spoke to Johnny, pointing out something to help him navigate a roundabout. Johnny nodded.

  “I didn’t know. I simply assumed it was here. What was he doing off the coast of Italy?”

  “Rescue work.”

  “You mean, like coast guard work?”

  I was confused.

  “No, the refugees. He took his ship down to help in the Mediterranean. You know, the crossings. The Syrians and the West Africans. They’re all trying to make it to Europe to escape whatever hell they’re living in, and of course their boats are terrible. Ozzie was involved, but I don’t know much else about it.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “Why would you? You haven’t been in touch, have you?”

  “Not for a long time. Not since we separated.”

  “Well, it’s not the kind of thing you post in a letter or email. Careful there, Johnny. Not so fast. Easy as you go. It’s not as if he took a new job or moved to New Zealand. You can’t drop it casually into correspondence.”

  “He died off the coast of Italy?” I asked again, hardly comprehending.

  “Yes, by all accounts. It’s still an unsettled death, but witnesses have confirmed the boat’s sinking.”

  “Did they recover the Ferriter?”

  “No, gone and lost. The only mercy is that he was alone when she went down. Large seas took him.”

  “I am sorry, Seamus. This is another shock.”

  “Aren’t we all? Sorry, I mean. Life takes some queer turns, that’s certain.”

  “No one loved him more than you.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. He looked ahead, the light from the road sometimes illuminating his profile. I put my face into Gottfried’s fur and breathed his scent until I could go on with the world.

  * * *

  I slept later than I dreamed of sleeping. When I woke, I had a moment of trying to remember where I was. Gran’s house, I realized slowly. It was a lovely old place, out of date by decades, but still wonderfully warm and calm. Gran favored wallpaper. Every room, just about, had a different design, and it was the image of a lady in a full skirt, being handed out of a carriage by gentleman in a top hat, that finally placed me in Gran’s guest room.

  I showered quickly to get the airport feeling off me, then tiptoed downstairs in the fluffy robe Gran always made available to me. I found Gran at work in her greenhouse that extended off the south side of her mansion. The greenhouse was fitted with a railing that she could cling to, and a deftly designed sliding chair that she could move as she liked along the rail. She could prune and sit, sit and prune, and when she needed to stand, she had the handrail to assist her. She did not stand often any longer and rarely alone.

  The air felt warm and thick when I entered. Plants grew everywhere. Gran saw me and smiled. I crossed to where she was and hugged her. She kissed my cheek. Her lips and skin were as soft as milkweed thistle.

  “Did you sleep well?” she asked. “Those flights can be horribly fatiguing.”

  “I slept well, thank you, Gran.”

  “Ring that bell over there on the table. Gloria will bring you coffee and something to eat. She makes wonderful muffins. She won’t tell me if she makes them from scratch or uses a commercial product, but they’re good just the same. You’ll like her.”

  “I’m not very hungry.”

  “Coffee, then. Just ring the bell.”

  I rang it. In a few minutes, Gloria came into the greenhouse. She was a tall, stout woman, with brown hair cut short. She wore a colorful smock over a pair of jeans. She carried a bouquet of silverware she had been polishing, apparently. She wore bright yellow rubber gloves. She looked to be in her late forties, square-jawed, her feet in brown moccasins.

  “Gloria, this is Kate. Kate, Gloria.”

  “Nice to meet you, Kate. I won’t try to shake your hand with all this mess going on,” she said, and held up the silverware. “Trying to get ahead of the game.”

  “Gloria, please bring Kate one of your excellent muffins when you have a moment. Blueberry, is that all right, Kate?”

  “That would be wonderful,” I said, giving in to Gran over the muffin. It was easier that way.

  “And black coffee. You still drink it black, don’t you, Kate?”

  “I do. Thank you.”

  Gloria nodded and turned to go. Gran pointed with her shears at a small tree she had been pruning as Gloria left.

  “This tree is called a Metasequoia. Do you know anything about them?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “I just learned about them myself. Their common name is Dawn Redwood. They’re cousins to our west coast sequoias and redwoods. Botanists thought they were extinct until a Chinese biologist found one survivor in the Szechuan Province. They can live in water or on land, and they shed their needles like a tamarack. Their discovery was as unexpected as it would be for someone to find a living dinosaur. Now they have spread round the world again. I love plants with stories, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know them as well as you do, Gran. But I like hearing them.”

  “Well, if you’ll assist me, let’s sit at the table where we can have a proper talk. Seamus told you some of the details, I’m sure. It’s been a painful few days. I’ve dreamed of him every night since we got the news. Vivid dreams. It’s almost as if he were in the room with me.”

  I held her arm as we edged slowly to the wicker table at the center of the greenhouse. She walked less steadily than she had before, and I noticed age had advanced on her in subtle ways. Her hair was pure white and her earrings, brass and diamond, looked too large on her delicate face. Moving beside her, I tried to calculate her age, but I could not get my mind to still. I had to brace her so she could sit. She plopped down the last few inches. Someone had placed a large cushion on her chair to help her.

  “There we are. I don’t like people to eat off their laps unless it’s a picnic and can’t be avoided. I never have. I’m probably getting too fussy in my dotage. Now let me look at you. You look beautiful, Kate. You’ve matured. You’re no longer a girl, are you? But you are still fresh and lovely. Lovelier, really. You’ve grown into your beauty. Not all women do, you know? Some resist it.”

  “Thank you, Gran. You look well, too.”

  “Oh, I look like an old sea turtle. A tortoise. I have a new hairdresser and she has tried to pep me up with this highlight business that is supposed to make the gray more attractive, but I don’t think it’s working. She tells the most scandalous stories, though, so I go to her whenever I can. She knows more about divorce than anyone I’ve met.”

  “Tell me about Ozzie, Gran.”

  She looked at me. Her eyes filled. Before she could start, Gloria returned with coffee and a muffin. Both things smelled delicious. She set them on the table before me and tucked a bright white napkin beneath a heavy fork. She had also brought me orange juice.

  “Thank you, Gloria. This looks wonderful.”

  “Hope you enjoy it,” Gloria said, then she whisked out of the room.

  “She’s a little shy with
new people,” Gran said, putting the shears down in front of her. “I’ll tell you what I know, Kate. It isn’t a great deal.”

  “Seamus said the Ferriter went down off the coast of Italy?”

  She nodded.

  “Near Sicily. I don’t know the details. I’m not sure anyone does. Apparently refugees land in Sicily all summer long. It’s called the boating season. They’re taken into custody and permitted to stay, from what I understand. A storm came up and the boat went under. He was known to Italian officials as someone who helped refugees land on Italian soil. I’m not certain they were happy with him. Politically, it’s a situation fraught with difficulties on all sides. There is some talk of him having enemies. Ozzie was never the one to keep his opinions to himself when he saw an injustice.”

  “Who reported it? How do they know…?”

  “Those details are hard to gather. The refugees are a drain on the sluggish Italian economy. That’s one spear of the argument. I don’t know, dear. It feels as though it belongs to another world. It’s a complicated political issue. A humanitarian issue, really.”

  “But why was he down there in the first place?”

  She looked a long time at me. I could hardly contain the sad, nervous flutter in my stomach. I reached forward for the coffee Gloria had brought. It was dark and hot and it centered me. I had the sense that I was going to be told a truth that might be difficult to hear. I was certain of it.

  “He was paying for his sin, Kate,” Gran said slowly. “I thought you knew that. That’s always been his cross to bear.”

  “What sin?”

  “The sin of war. The sin of killing. The sin of arms.”

  “He refused to talk about that. He never told me what he did in Afghanistan.”

  “He couldn’t talk about it. It was too much for him. Did you know he watched two boys be killed by an order he gave?”

  “What order?”

  “Oh, it was a commonplace order. Nothing remarkable in the least. Apparently, some boys had gotten in the habit of playing soccer near one of the military compounds. Ozzie told them they had to go somewhere else to play. It was policy not to have children too close to the compound. He loved children, so it was not out of meanness that he told them to go. Some of the soldiers had provided the boys with soccer balls, which was a great treat for the children. The boys had to move away and later that day they were playing and the ball took them into a booby-trapped field. The two boys chasing the ball were blown up, their parts thrown onto buildings and into trees. Ozzie knew the boys. His order brought about their deaths.”

  “Oh, lord,” I whispered. What could be said against such news? Gran let the understanding fall on me slowly.

  “Imagine knowing you had a hand in the death of two boys. How do you resume your life, Kate? That was the sin he carried. We all have a sin. Maybe more. He returned from the war changed. He knew it, too. He knew a light had gone out of him. You brought it back.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “He swore me to silence about it. He told me the story on the condition that I never tell anyone else, but I suppose that promise is finished now. He carried a great weight, Kate. A weight he could not support. He took medicine. I don’t know what all it was, but he worried it deadened him. And, of course, he had other stories inside him, I’m sure. How does a man so full of life reconcile himself to bringing about death in the world?”

  “And that’s why he went to help in the Mediterranean?”

  “Yes. I suppose. The sin of killing can only be countered by the promise of life. I suspect that was the calculation in his mind. It’s always risky to say a person did this or that because of A or B or C. Ozzie lived with pain, and that order in the war about the boys added to it. How could it not? That was only one thing, though, Kate. He was a soldier. A ruthless one, I’ve been told. What do they say? There is a victim on either side of a bullet. He was good at what he did. He endured a family history, as we all do, and he had his own turn of mind. It’s always hopelessly complicated to imagine another person’s life. What is acute pain for one person may not be as painful to another. One can’t predict these things. One can only live with sympathy for us all. For every human we encounter.”

  I put my face in my hands. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or scream. I felt shallow and hollow, emptied of everything essential in my blood. During our brief marriage, I had been so intent on my own needs, my own petty academic career, my need for tidiness, that I had never seen what he needed from me. I had never understood his pain. Not really. Not fully. I had clung to a vision of what a marriage should be, what it had to be, and I had lost the reality of what it had been in everyday life. I loved him, yes, I knew that. I knew that absolutely. But I had not given love, had not seen him all the way around, and that was my sin, I realized. I would live with that forever.

  “I feel so foolish,” I said when I could speak again. “I feel as if I didn’t know him at all. Not really. Not the way I should have known him.”

  “He loved you, Kate. That’s all you need to remember.”

  “I need to remember more than that, Gran. That was my mistake the first time. I was a trivial, foolish girl who thought another human being had to match me somehow. Some ridiculous way. I hate that version of myself. I hate it.”

  “We all learn as we go. I carry sins, too, Kate. More than I can name. The trick is to forgive ourselves. Ozzie wasn’t able to do that. Perhaps his sins were too great. What one person can support proves too much for another. We are all of us doing our best.”

  “I didn’t see him, Gran. I didn’t see him clearly. That’s what pains me. I was shallow and vacuous.”

  “You saw him. You saw a portion of him as he saw a portion of you. A side or facet. We mustn’t paint him as a saint, either. He would be the first to tell you his faults. He never blamed you for returning to America, Kate. He understood. It hurt him, certainly, but he understood your reasons.”

  “I don’t know if I had any reasons. Any reasons at all. I think he let me end it so I wouldn’t be troubled by him. I don’t know if any of my reasons…”

  “You had your own life to pilot. Don’t blame yourself over it. My husband used to say we all have our own sails and sometimes our boats cross and one sail steals the wind from the other. Ozzie had a large sail and perhaps you worried he would take all the wind you needed for your own course. Now have a bite to eat and drink some coffee. Life goes on. The lawyers are going to want to see you at some point during your stay. Except for a few personal things he left to Seamus, you have whatever it is he acquired in this world. He never stopped thinking of you as his wife.”

  The steam from the coffee wound up into the beams of sunlight slashing into the greenhouse.

  “It’s too much,” I whispered.

  “It is that. East of the sun, west of the moon.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “Oh, it comes from a story I used to read to Ozzie when he was a little boy. About a polar bear and a fisherman. Nordic, I suppose. That’s where the story took place. East of the sun, west of the moon. It was a saying Ozzie and I shared and loved.”

  Her eyes moistened at the memory. I took a deep breath and sipped my coffee. It was good coffee, deep and rich and hot.

  * * *

  “His estate, when all is settled, should come in at 1.7 or 1.6 million euros. We’re still going through his holdings. Nora Crean suggested we look to see what it would entail to declare death in absentia. It’s a legal tactic to have him declared dead before the mandatory seven years. We’re still discussing that, but it’s common enough. He was a modestly wealthy man, Ms. Moreton. I’m told he didn’t live like a wealthy man, but he was well heeled despite all of that. He kept his assets fairly liquid. No massive stock positions. He had the land on Dingle, but you know about that. He also acquired some land in Ontario, Canada. A stretch of lakefront property. It’s thirty acres of forest. I think that’s all the real estate in his portfolio.”

  I
sat in the law offices of Peal, Simmons, Hassleton. It was an office filled with leather upholstery and a massive grandfather clock that ticked heavily to remind us all of our mortality. An historically significant firm, Gran had assured me. Robert Smith, a conventional man with a conventional name, sat across from me at a wide oak table. He was tall and thin and reminded me of a bird leaning forward to seize a worm. The center of his scalp was empty of hair; two patches above his ears, like parentheses, grew in compensation for the missing center. He wore a solid gray suit with a blue tie pulled tightly against his throat. Mid-forties. His hands on the paperwork moved like accomplished pets obeying any instructions he gave them.

  “I understand this is a great deal to hear in one meeting, Ms. Moreton. You have a lot to take in. Do you have any questions about what we have gone over so far?”

  “Please call me Kate.”

  He nodded. I had already asked him three times to call me Kate. Informality went against his grain. I supposed that was an admirable trait in an attorney. A person stuffy over social niceties would be careful with paperwork.

  He smiled and tapped his fingers on the paperwork in front of him.

  “Very good. You can read the documents in your own time. I’m only trying to give you a sense of where you are positioned.”

  “I’m shocked, honestly.”

  He pursed his lips. He nodded.

  “His parents left him a good sum of money upon their deaths. It was held in trust by his grandmother. The money grew. He was not someone who tended his money carefully. He let others do it for him, and that worked out splendidly in this case. Of course, his grandmother is well known and is an important personage in her own right. She had good people managing the money.”

  “I am stunned. That wasn’t my perception of Ozzie.”

  “If you’ll permit me to wax philosophical for a moment,” he said, leaning still farther forward, “money is a fascinating thing. I don’t mean the paper and coins, but the resource itself. I’ve spent my working life watching people’s approaches to money. Some people are like the dragons of our mythical past. They sit on their pile of gold and know the weight of every doubloon. They threaten anyone who comes near their hoard. Others—and I would say Mr. Ferriter falls into this category—see it as a larder. A few cans of food on the shelf that they can go to if life makes them hungry. He did well for himself, but not in a way that signified anything to him. Cans on a shelf, that’s how I think of it.”