Her Last Letter

by Nancy C. Johnson

  “You’ll sell. Maybe I’ll buy the whole bunch.”

  I smiled. “I don’t think you have to do that. Maybe just do a lot of gushing about my work in front of the customers, pretend to be an art critic or something.”

  “I certainly will, but actually I can’t guarantee to make it. I have a few things to take care of on Sunday, so don’t count on me.”

  “If you’re there great, if not, some other time.”

  “Yeah.”

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and felt as if we might drift into dangerous territory if the conversation continued. “Well, it was nice talking to you, Josh. I probably should call the mall and do some last minute-”

  “Gwyn?”

  “What?”

  He was silent, then cleared his throat. “Have a good time tomorrow. Enjoy yourself. You’ll do fine.”

  After we hung up, I made a list of questions to ask the mall people, just to reaffirm what they’d told me before. I’d get over there by eight tonight, before the mall closed at nine, look at the layout, plan how to set everything up, then get started.

  Unfortunately, by the time I drove over, the sleet, still heavy-and now made worse by the addition of wind-had glazed the roads and made them icy. The van didn’t handle as well as the Jeep, a stick shift, enabling me to downshift quickly when needed, and I had my reservations about the quality of tread on the tires. The van slid at every corner even though I was barely moving.

  To make matters worse, a line of traffic grew steadily longer behind me. A truck, its headlights flooding the interior of the van, loomed inches from my bumper.

  I could see the mall lights up ahead on my right as I began to ascend a small hill. The rear end of the van swished right, then left. I clutched the steering wheel, willing my foot off the brake. The truck faded back.

  I pulled into a well-lit area of the immense parking lot and stopped to take a breather. According to my instructions, I was to go to a loading dock marked B-7, where I could back the van inside, shielded from the weather. I’d impressed upon the mall people that I couldn’t unload my paintings and panels unless they were well protected. They’d assured me everything would be fine.

  But, of course, I couldn’t find B-7. The way they’d spoken, I’d assumed it would be easy to locate. But there weren’t any markings of any kind outside, or else the dark night and inclement weather had erased them. I parked the van as close to an entrance as possible and ran inside.

  Despite the weather, the mall was busy. It was quite nice, better than anything near Glenwood, and new. It gleamed like a shiny new coin. I hurried past walls adorned with striated marble tile and under vaulted ceilings with antique gold accents. Lush greenery and brilliant flowers of red, yellow, and purple sprouted from giant pots around every turn. Store windows spewed forth their offerings, glittering jewels, Rolex watches, full-length sable coats. I spotted Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, smaller stores, Liz Claiborne, Gerard Heath, and Le’ Spa.

  My instincts told me to head to the center of the mall. Maybe I’d find some kind of information desk.

  I did find a circular booth, and calmly explained my dilemma to a kind-faced, smartly dressed woman in a rose colored suit. She quickly spoke to someone on the phone, pulled out a folded map, marked off B-7 in red ink, along with the area I described as the location for my art show. I thanked her profusely and headed off.

  By the time I crept back to my hotel that night, I was exhausted. I’d found B-7, but again had to get out of my van and get drenched because a huge delivery truck was blocking the entire entrance. I found the driver and convinced him to move his empty truck-he had stopped to have a coffee and donut and was reluctant to leave the donut box-but the delay cost me another half-hour of setup time.

  Fortunately, it was all done now. It took me countless trips to carry it all inside and a lot of thinking and planning to put it all together, but it looked great. They’d given me a good location, a carpeted island surrounded by aisles going in several directions, central to foot traffic. I had potted plants for background, pots of flowers I could use or remove. And they’d remembered to provide a decent looking desk for me to sit behind when I wasn’t on my feet roaming or talking to potential customers.

  Though it was almost eleven p.m. and Trevor might already be asleep, I decided to call. The phone rang four times and then the answering machine clicked on. But as I began to speak, the machine beeped once, and I knew Trevor had picked up the receiver. His sleepy voice mumbled something resembling hello.

  “Hi, honey,” I said, “sorry I woke you.”

  “So’kay.”

  “I’ll call again in the morning. You go back to sleep.” He grunted something unintelligible and I couldn’t be sure if he was agreeing with me or not. “Trevor?”

  The phone disconnected.

  I sighed and hung up, then pulled back the blankets on the tightly made bed. Without another thought, I crawled between the cold sheets and turned off the light.

  The mall opened at nine and I arrived by eight-thirty. I wore a charcoal gray skirt and low shoes, a lighter gray jacket and mauve blouse that matched my name tag, along with a pair of pearl earrings. Not too dressy, but not too casual.

  I inspected my small domain. Desk with Visa machine-a must-and several small stacks of my brochures, a business card tucked into each. I also had a large floor bin of prints I’d made of my original paintings, three copies of each one. I could, of course, take orders for more. The prints were priced to sell for much less than the original artwork and would likely be the smaller percentage of my profits.

  I walked between my panels, painstakingly put together last night and hung lovingly with the canvases I had labored over the past few months. They were some of my best work. My painting of climbers ascending an icefall looked almost real. You could almost feel them sweat as they swung their axes in the warm sunshine. And my painting of a mammoth bear balancing on the rocks, extending its neck into a cold mountain stream for a drink, was breathtaking. I’d also recently completed one of hikers on the trail up to Hanging Lake, stopping to wait for their young son, and to take in the beauty surrounding them.

  I had arranged and rearranged it all in as attractive a fashion as I could imagine, allowing for traffic flow and room to stand back and admire. It looked spectacular.

  There was a deli close by, and before the mall became too busy I planned to buy my lunch and put it in the small cooler below my desk. That was the only problem. I couldn’t leave for any length of time. It would be a long, long day.

  A little past nine a.m., a stray pedestrian, a twenty-or-so male dressed nicely in slacks and a golf shirt, sidled into my area. I tried not to pounce on him, instead stood near my desk ready to answer his questions should he ask any. He walked through it all, then gave me a quick smile and rummaged through the bin.

  “Nice,” he said when he was done. “I might be back later.”

  I nodded and watched him walk on.

  I experienced a few more of those, then at ten o’clock things got busier. I casually walked among the panels. Potential customers strolled in and out, wives with husbands, wives without husbands, single women, single men and, of course, children.

  An older gentleman, his face deeply lined, but his gait rapid and sure, came up to me and signaled me to follow him to one of the paintings. “I love this,” he said. He was referring to my painting of a lone young man in a kayak moving through a turbulent river, the youth’s paddle dipping forcefully into the churning water. “My grandson would love this. Can I buy it?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “What river is that?”

  “The Colorado.”

  The gentleman smiled. “Really? He kayaks there. It almost looks like him. Did you paint this?”

  I nodded, remembering taking the shot last summer, but painting it within the last month.

  He turned to gaze at it again. “Oh, he will absolutely love this. It’s his birthday tomorrow and I didn’t have
any idea what to get him, but this is perfect. Do you take Visa?”

  He didn’t question the price, which I’d displayed on a small card beside the painting, though it was one of my most expensive. I wrapped the painting in brown paper for him and he strolled off, an apparently happy man.

  I sold two prints and one smaller original before lunch, and was feeling very good about it all. I sneaked a few bites of my turkey sandwich when I had a chance, and sipped iced tea through a straw in a paper cup.

  My mouth did drop open when I overheard a young woman wearing stilts for shoes bray to her boyfriend. “Well, yeah, but it’s not worth that!“

  I backed off immediately, not hurt exactly, just surprised by the girl’s loud mouth rudeness.

  I rearranged my paintings to cover the empty holes made by the morning’s sales, then sat for a while. I’d tried to call Trevor an hour ago, but got his voicemail, so left another message. Suddenly, I missed him, and wondered why he didn’t answer his phone, though he was probably working hard too. Realtors, at least the successful ones, couldn’t work strictly from nine to five. He hadn’t mentioned his condo venture in a while, though he had talked nonstop about it at first. Had something gone wrong with that?

  By nine o’clock Saturday night, my feet were sore and my temperament dark. The show had gone well, but I couldn’t enjoy my success. I just wanted to be home. I had a bad feeling I couldn’t shake. I didn’t believe Linda’s story about the fall down the stairs. She was lying. But it was more than that. Something was telling me I was missing something important. And I hadn’t talked to Trevor at all. Why didn’t he call?

  It was past eleven before I returned to the hotel. I debated calling Trevor again, though I knew he’d be asleep. I dialed the house anyway. No answer. Then his cell phone-the recording again. Calmly, I left another message, then climbed into bed, tossing and turning until I finally fell asleep.

  Sunday was more of the same, decent sales, nice conversations with some very nice people, and it improved my mood. I started to attribute some of the bad feelings on the previous night to exhaustion, both physical and mental.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon I decided that Josh wasn’t coming. He hadn’t said what time he might come by, and now I wished I’d asked, because I was torn between hoping he’d show at one moment and hoping he wouldn’t the next. But I wasn’t worried about my motives anymore. We were old close friends, and to my great relief, I didn’t want us to be anything more.

  I finally connected with Trevor late that afternoon.

  “God, it’s good to hear your voice, Gwyn. I’ve really missed you. I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to call until now. You forgive me?”

  “No, but I guess you had your reasons,” I answered cautiously.

  “Gwyn, now don’t be mad. I honestly couldn’t help it. Every time I stopped to pick up the phone I got interrupted. And I figured you were busy anyway. You were, weren’t you?”

  “Yes. I made quite a few sales. But I stayed up late, and I didn’t see any messages on my phone. Not one.”

  “You were up late? I swear I would have called you if I thought you were up. I’ve had some incredibly late nights. Sales are popping all over the place with the condo project. There might be a Whispering Pines two if sales are any indication. In fact, I might be making a trip to Denver myself in the near future to train new associates. But I know. You’re not interested in that. I should have called.”

  “Yes.”

  “I love you. You still love me … right? Just a little?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Gwyn?”

  “Okay … a little.”

  “That’s better. We’ll work at improving on that when you get home.”

  I had to cut Trevor off at that point because a teenaged boy was standing in front of me anxious to purchase a print. I gave a smile to my new customer, apologized to Trevor, then hung up.

  When I arrived home late Sunday night, the lights were still burning, but Trevor didn’t rush out to greet me as I’d hoped he would. I quietly shut the side door entrance and glanced up the stairs, then toward the kitchen, but Trevor definitely wasn’t around. Home though. His car was in the garage. I walked upstairs and heard his muffled snores as I stepped into the bedroom. I thought about waking him, but instead listened to him breathe for a while, then walked back downstairs.

  As I entered the kitchen, I caught the unmistakably sweet scent of roses. Two dozen or more red ones, my favorite, swelled out of an antique-style vase on the table. A note poked out from between the petals.

  I’m sorry if I’m not awake to greet you. If you walk in and I don’t run out and carry you to bed in my arms it will only be that the spirit was willing, but my body was shot… I love you with all my heat, (heart). Trevor

  I laughed softly and leaned down and breathed in the rich perfume of the roses. He hadn’t given me roses in a long time, not two dozen anyway. Maybe I was being too hard on him. All of the questions, all of the worry, had created so many doubts.

  I undressed in the upstairs hall bathroom so as not to disturb him, then tiptoed into the bedroom once more. I laid my clothes neatly beside the bed, then eased in beside him. I laid my head back on the pillow, then blinked, turning my nose into the soft folds to again test what I’d sensed when I put my head down. It was perfume-not a leftover impression made by the roses-but the undeniable scent of another woman there on my pillow. My heart picked up speed, thudding wildly as my mind searched for an explanation to replace the unthinkable one that was rapidly filling my head.

  I turned to look at him, wanting to take my foot and shove his body right out of the bed. So, he was too busy to call me all weekend. Too tired to talk when I called. Then as a cheesy afterthought, he’d bought flowers to assuage his guilt. How very predictable and ordinary of him.

  I slowly climbed out of bed and crept back down to the kitchen. I cried for a while, then sat staring at the flowers, wondering what would be my next move.

  Chapter 6

  I pretended to be asleep when Trevor tried to wake me and make love the next morning. Not surprisingly, he didn’t try all that hard. He patted me patronizingly on the shoulder, then headed to the master bath and turned on the shower. I watched him through the slits of my eyes. It had been all I could do not to reach up and slap him.

  He picked his keys off the dresser, then leaned over the bed and kissed me on the cheek. “I’ll call,” he whispered, “you get some rest.”

  When I heard the side door slam downstairs I leapt from the bed and ran down to the foyer. I stood there, cold and naked, my arms clasped tightly to my chest as he backed out of the garage. Last night, after I’d gone back upstairs, I’d been tempted to find my flannel nightgown and put it on, but Trevor would have noticed, and I didn’t want him to notice a thing.

  Padding across the foyer tile to the kitchen, I spotted a note he’d left behind on the table.

  You must have been a tired puppy too. I missed you this morning. I might be late again tonight. Sorry, honey. Please forgive me. Don’t save me dinner, and call “immediately” when you get up. Love you, Trevor

  I crumpled the note into a tiny ball and pitched it into the garbage. Shaking, but not so much from the cold, I stomped back up to the bedroom and threw on some clothes. I spent two hours brooding into my coffee cup, then dialed Linda.

  She answered on the second ring.

  “Well, hi, Gwyn. I was just making some blueberry muffins and thinking of calling you too. Want to come over and have some with me?”

  “Sure.”

  “I think I’ll be able to play tennis sooner than the doctor said. I’ve been slowly moving my arm and it’s starting to feel almost normal.”

  “I think the doctor was talking about your head, not your arm, when he said that.”

  “Why? I don’t play tennis with my head.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Hey, what’s with you? I’m trying to be funny. You could at least try to laugh.
”

  “Sorry, rough weekend.”

  “Oh. That’s right. The art show. I didn’t even think to ask. How was it?”

  “Okay.”

  “Just okay? You did sell some of your paintings, right?”

  “Yes. Actually I made more sales than I expected.”

  “Well, that’s great. So what’s the problem?”

  “Nothing. I’m just exhausted. It was a lot of work.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t go with you-to help you out.”

  “That’s not why I invited you. I could have hired someone to help me. I didn’t want to.”

  “So tell me about it. You were so excited.”

  I didn’t feel like talking about it, but Linda would think it odd if I didn’t. I had been excited about it … before.

  “Well, all right. It turned out to be a nice mall, a lot of foot traffic. I did have some trouble setting up. It started to rain, then sleet. I couldn’t find my area, but when I did, saw that I’d gotten a good one-sort of an island with shoppers passing on both sides. By the end, I’d sold at least half of what I brought and took several orders for prints and maybe an original. But the woman needs to give me a deposit for materials, and I’m not sure she won’t back out. She was kind of flighty.”

  “Well, that doesn’t sound bad.”

  “I guess.”

  “Come on over. I’ll cheer you up. We’ll have a nice visit.”

  “Actually, there is something I need to talk to you about.”

  “What?”

  “Not over the phone. And, please, promise me you won’t come unglued. I just couldn’t handle it today.”

  “Well, what is it for pity sakes? You can’t drop something like that on me and expect me not to react.”

  “Just promise me you’ll stay calm.”

  “Why, what is it? Are you and Trevor getting a divorce?”

  “No,” I said, wondering if this would eventually prove true.

  “I think you should tell me something, so I can at least prepare myself.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you this much and no more. It’s about Kelly. Something I found.”