Hello, It's Me

by Wendy Markham

  Sitting up, she leans over to see that the weekend’s deluge has given way to a glistening September morning. Not only that, but as she opens the window and shivers in the cooling breeze, she realizes that summer has given way to a hint of autumn in the air.

  She quickly pulls on her clothes and goes downstairs, where she finds Milo and Trixie already dressed and eating dry cereal.

  “The TV still doesn’t work,” Milo informs her gloomily, looking up from a comic book he’s read a hundred times.

  “And the milk tastes funny so we poured it out.”

  Annie sighs, knowing she’ll need to go through a refrigerator’s worth of spoiled food later.

  But for now, she wants to go outside to assess the damage.

  “Come on,” she tells the children, “get your shoes. Let’s go for a walk and see what happened in the storm.”

  Back in the city, Thom decides to visit Susan before he heads over to the office to address the piles of paperwork and e-mail that has accumulated after a weekend spent on Long Island without power.

  He heads for the hospital on foot, trying to enjoy the refreshing breeze and the dappled sunlight on his shoulders.

  But it’s difficult to find pleasure in anything when all you can think about is the fact that you ruined your last chance for happiness.

  Why didn’t he stick with his original plan?

  Why did he have to go barreling out to Long Island last week before he was ready?

  At least he steered clear of her on Saturday night, after going through hell and, quite literally, high water, to ensure her safety.

  At least he had the sense by then to leave well enough alone.

  What’s done is done.

  Now the only thing you can do is move on and forget her, he tells himself, strolling through his familiar neighborhood toward the hospital.

  Focus on your work, and the renovation.

  And Susan and the baby.

  Maybe he’ll stop and pick up the morning papers and some magazines to bring his sister, he thinks, passing a news kiosk. Yes, and perhaps some flowers.

  His step quickens as he turns the corner, knowing just where he’ll buy them.

  “Mommy! The beach!” Milo calls in dismay, skidding to a halt on the branch-strewn path in front of her. “It’s almost gone.”

  “And the trees! Look, Mommy!” Trixie shrieks, pointing at the copper beeches that lie in a tangle of broken boughs.

  Annie’s stomach turns over.

  The trees.

  The tree.

  Their tree, hers and Andre’s, the one where he carved their initials on the day he proposed, toppled over in the storm.

  She makes her way slowly toward it, feeling almost as though she’s staring at the wreckage of a ship washed up on the shore. Splintered wood is everywhere, and rain-trampled, sodden boughs, and the roots that lie in a vertical wall of dirt before a gaping hole.

  “No,” Annie whispers, kneeling beside the trunk, running her hand along the bark in a fruitless search for the initials.

  Over by the base of the fallen tree, Milo lets out a sudden whoop.

  “Mom! Come quick! Look!”

  Annie glances up, her tear-clouded gaze settling on her son, who is crouched over the hole left where the tree was uprooted.

  “Just a second, Milo,” she says, needing a moment to regain her composure.

  First the cell phone, and now this.

  She’s lost everything. Every tangible link to her husband. Everything but the children . . .

  “But Mom!” Milo calls. “You’ve got to see this!”

  And one day, she’ll lose the children, too. They’ll grow up and move away and she’ll be left here alone.

  “What is it?” Trixie comes up beside Milo, and peers over his shoulder into the hole.

  “Mommy!” she screams, as only Trixie can. “It’s the treasure!”

  Annie sighs, stands, picks her way among the fallen limbs to where her children are. She wonders what it will be this time. Another old tire rim? A rusted bike frame? A rock?

  Coming to a stop between Milo and Trixie, Annie leans forward, toward the earthen crater . . .

  And finds herself gazing at the top of an ancient wooden sea chest.

  Stunned, Thom checks the street sign once again, just to make sure he’s on the right corner.

  This is it, all right.

  But there’s no florist shop here.

  There’s nothing but a towering office high-rise and a local bank branch with a lobby ATM he’s used countless times in the past.

  Frowning, he looks around and spots a familiar street vendor standing nearby, behind a pushcart from which Thom has bought many cups of coffee and morning bagels.

  “Excuse me,” he says, striding toward the cart.

  “Yes? You like coffee today, sir?” the vendor asks, smiling in polite recognition.

  “No coffee,” Thom says briskly. “I’m just looking for a florist shop. I thought there was one over on that corner?”

  “Florist shop? No, no florist shop. Just the bank.”

  “Are you positive?”

  The man nods. “You like coffee?”

  “No thanks,” Thom says slowly, walking away. “Not today.”

  He reminds himself that the man could be mistaken. That this is Manhattan. Businesses come and go overnight.

  Still . . .

  There’s not a hint that a florist shop ever existed on this corner.

  Yet . . .

  Inhaling deeply, Thom is positive that the breeze that stirs the morning air smells faintly of honeysuckle.

  With a groan, Annie hauls the sea chest out of the wheelbarrow and plunks it onto the grass in the shade of the honeysuckle hedge at the back of the property.

  “Aren’t we going to bring it into the house to open it, Mom?” Milo asks, hovering anxiously over their find.

  “I don’t think I can move it another inch, sweetie,” Annie says, collapsing on the ground, panting, mindless of the mud.

  “What do you think is in there?” Milo asks, as Trixie does an excited little dance around the chest.

  “Treasure!” his sister exclaims. “What else would be in a treasure chest?”

  Milo rolls his eyes with the air of a big brother who has little patience for kindergarten logic. “Can we open it, Mom?”

  “As soon as I get Daddy’s tools from the basement.” Annie hoists her weary self to her feet once again and heads for the house.

  “Hurry, Mom!” Milo shouts after her.

  “I will,” she promises, wondering why she isn’t as eager as her children are to see what lies inside the chest Andre sought for a lifetime.

  Then it hits her.

  No matter what it is . . .

  Gold doubloons, or a fortune in jewels, or valuable stock worth millions . . .

  It won’t bring Andre back to her.

  All the money in the world can’t buy the kind of happiness they shared, once upon a time.

  Happiness.

  Life is too short not to grab every opportunity you get, Thom told her a few months ago, back in his bland apartment in the city.

  Every opportunity . . .

  For happiness.

  For love.

  Annie sighs, reaching for the basement door, remembering how zealously she descended the stairs on Saturday, certain that the telephone Andre saved all those years would allow her to make one last connection.

  It wasn’t meant to be . . .

  But she found the treasure anyway.

  Was that the message he was trying to tell her? That it was buried beneath the copper beech tree?

  Searching among her dead husband’s tools for a crowbar and a hammer, Annie can’t help feeling as though there might have been something more.

  Something . . .

  About Thom?

  Annie shakes her head.

  She wants to believe that . . .

  She really does . . .

  As much as she wants to believe t
hat Thom loves her.

  “I did a stupid thing.”

  “You told Mother that we were the ones who dug that hole in her rose garden trying to get to China?”

  Thom blinks at his sister. “Huh? Are you feeling all right? That was twenty years ago!”

  Susan shrugs. “I have a lot of time to lie here and think. I keep remembering things, okay?”

  Well, it’s about time. He wonders if she remembered that she used to like sailing and snowball fights.

  “So you better not ever tell her about the rose garden, got it? She still thinks Maimie Wilshire’s poodle snuck onto our property to bury a bone.”

  “Hey, I’ll never tell. We made a pact, remember?” Thom says with a grin.

  “Sealed with spit and blood. You don’t get much more official than that. So what’s the stupid thing that you did?”

  “Do you remember that woman I was seeing after I broke up with Joyce? Her name was Annie?”

  “Divorced, three kids?”

  “Widowed, two kids.”

  “Waitress/artist?”

  “That’s her.”

  “I remember.”

  He wonders if Susan’s lack of a disapproving expression is due to her lack of mobile facial muscles or the fact that she’s come to terms with the fact that her brother is a nonconformist.

  “I fell in love with her, Susan.”

  She nods solemnly. “You’re right. That is stupid.”

  With a wry smile, he says, “That’s not the stupid part.”

  “That depends on how you look at it.” Susan shakes her head. “What’s the stupid part, according to how you look at it?”

  He wonders where to begin. “Got an hour?”

  She gestures at the row of monitors keeping their short-leashed vigil at her bedside. “Trust me. I’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Okay, the thing is, I know you and Mother both think that I fell for her because she’s so wrong and I knew everyone would disapprove, and the truth is, maybe I did do that, a little, in the beginning . . . but I’m in love with her, Susan. Really.”

  “Love and infatuation can feel like the same thing, Tommy.”

  “This isn’t infatuation. And please don’t interrupt, okay? Just listen.”

  She throws up an apologetic hand, the one that isn’t attached to the IV tube. “Sorry. I promise, I’m all ears.”

  “Is that all there is?” Milo asks in dismay, staring at the musty contents of the old trunk, spread carefully on the grass in the sunshine. “Just stupid old clothes?”

  Old clothes is right, Annie thinks, setting aside the last pair of woolen breeches, the fragile fabric rotting wherever she touches it.

  Yes, just old clothes that belonged to some hapless sailor, and not much of a wardrobe, at that.

  Breeches, socks, undergarments . . .

  Talk about anticlimactic.

  “Yes,” Annie tells a scowling Milo, “it looks like that’s all there is.”

  “Are you sure?” Trixie asks, leaning into the chest. “Just check it one more time.”

  Annie obliges, peering into the mildew-scented depths. “I’m positive, there’s nothing else in—”

  Oh, yes there is.

  Reaching into the trunk, she pulls it out.

  “What is it? Doubloons?” Milo asks excitedly.

  “Papers,” Annie tells him, carefully removing the fragile, ribbon-tied sheaf.

  “Maybe it’s a map!” he exclaims, reaching.

  “Careful, don’t touch. The edges are crumbling.” Annie skims the spidery handwriting. “It looks like letters.”

  “ABCs?” asks Trixie, the imminent kindergartner.

  “No, love letters,” Annie murmurs, reading the first few lines. “I think they’re from the sailor to his wife back in England.”

  “Love letters!” Milo wrinkles his nose.

  “That is the stinkiest treasure anybody ever found,” Trixie grumbles, trudging off toward the house in disgust, her brother at her heels.

  “So now I can’t live without her,” Thom tells Susan, staring desolately out the window at the uninspiring view of the hospital air shaft. “And even if I move, like I planned, and step down from the board, and start traveling around the world climbing mountains and doing all the things I always said I was going to do . . . None of it will be worthwhile.”

  Susan remains silent, all ears, just as she promised.

  “I want her back,” he says desperately. “Hell, I never even had her. I just want her, period. But how am I supposed to compete with a ghost? The only way I stand a chance with her is if her dead husband floats back down to earth and tells her that it’s okay to fall in love again. And that’s about as likely to happen as Mother is to . . . to marry some Academy-Award-winning actor.”

  Susan doesn’t reply.

  Thom winces. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that as a dig, I swear. Susan? Sue?”

  The room is no longer silent.

  He turns around . . . and sees his big sister sound asleep, hands clasped on her rounded belly, mouth wide open, snoring like a trucker.

  Annie watches the children disappear into the house, then turns back to the brittle stack of letters in her hand. The first is dated “Twenty-first of April, 1822.”

  My dearest bride,

  Another day has come and gone on the storm-tossed sea that carries me farther still from my beloved Annabelle . . .

  Annabelle.

  Annie smiles. The name is so charming and old-fashioned, far more appealing than plain old Annie.

  She reads on, carefully turning the painstakingly penned pages, caught up in the sailor’s vivid account of shipboard rigors, the promise of making his fortune in America. He frequently mentions returning home to start the family they’d always dreamed of.

  Lying in my bunk last night, I could scarcely sleep for the violent swaying and the overwhelming fear that I might die before e’er I see the winsome face of my beloved Annie.

  Annie?

  With a startled frown, she goes back to the letter.

  If the good Lord should will it that way, please know that I shall always be with you, watching over you from above. And though it breaks my heart to say it, I should be nothing but pleased should you find your way into the arms of another, that you may spend the rest of your earthly days fulfilling your dreams of home and family.

  Thom steps out into the bright September sunshine, taking a deep breath, and then another, gulping the fresh air like a drowning man who’s just been pulled to shore.

  Poor Susan, chained to the hospital bed up there for four long months, he thinks, heading down the sidewalk toward home.

  Lucky Susan, who in four short months might just have everything she ever wanted . . .

  All because she’s accepted the risk of a lifetime.

  And what are you doing? Thom asks himself with a sudden flicker of anger.

  You’ve never turned away from a challenge, Brannock.

  You’ve accepted every challenge that ever came along . . . until now.

  Until Annie.

  Why?

  Because the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been. Because he has so much more to lose . . .

  But so much more to gain . . .

  If he’s willing to take the risk.

  With a sob, Annie casts aside the letter.

  “That’s it, isn’t it?” Her voice a ragged whisper, she tilts her face into the sun, closing her moist eyes briefly against the blinding rays. “That’s what you were trying to tell me, isn’t it?”

  Now, believing anything is possible, she listens for an answer from above, or beyond, or wherever it is that her husband’s soul has come to rest.

  She hears no sound but the crashing surf in the distance, washing over what’s left of Copper Beach.

  No, the beach won’t be there forever.

  Nothing lasts forever.

  You can stand in the sand in a glorious sunset and wish the waves to stop stealing precious grains with every sweep a
cross the shore, but you can’t keep it from happening.

  All you can do is feel the warm sand beneath your bare toes while it’s still there, and watch the brilliant orange orb sink slowly into the western sky, and know that sooner or later, the darkness will give way to the promise of another brilliant dawn.

  Annie opens her eyes and wipes her tears.

  “I shall always be with you, watching over you from above.”

  “Thank you,” she says softly.

  Then, still clutching the precious letters, she walks toward the house, and the old green telephone that still has a dial tone.

  As a child, Thom always dreaded Labor Day, knowing that it heralded an end to carefree days in the sun. The first Monday in September meant it was time to trade sleeping in and sailing for a school dormitory and schedules and homework; Popsicles and flashlight tag for wind chills and early nightfall.

  Yes, Labor Day used to mean all the good stuff was over.

  But maybe now, he thinks, filling his lungs with the crisp morning air, it can mean that the good stuff is just beginning.

  Does he dare take another chance?

  Does he dare not take it?

  Abruptly making his decision, Thom reaches into his pocket for the cell phone he turned off back at the hospital.

  He flips it open.

  Turns it back on.

  He’s about to dial the number that he has no business knowing by heart . . .

  The number, perhaps, that he has no business ever dialing again . . .

  When the phone in his hand rings shrilly.

  Startled, Thom glances down at the caller ID box, certain it’s somebody from the office.

  No.

  Wonder of wonders . . .

  The number on the digital display is precisely the one he was about to dial.

  Trembling with anticipation, he presses TALK . . .

  LIFTS THE RECEIVER TO HIS EAR . . .

  SOMEHOW MANAGES TO SAY, “HELLO?”

  THERE’S A PAUSE, SO EXCRUCIATING THAT HE ALMOST BELIEVES HE IMAGINED THE RINGING, THE NUMBER . . .

  EVERYTHING.

  THEN, A VOICE SO REAL IT TAKES HIS BREATH AWAY SAYS SOFTLY IN HIS EAR, “HELLO . . . IT’S ME.”

  Epilogue

  Did you ever see anything so precious in all your life?” Thom asks Annie, tilting the blue-blanketed bundle in his arms so that she can get a closer look.

  “Only twice before,” she tells him with a smile, reaching out to stroke his newborn nephew’s red cheek. “It’s hard for me to believe Milo and Trixie were ever this small.”