The Last Little Blue Envelope

by Maureen Johnson

  “Oh, bless you,” Ellis said, accepting her coffee.

  Along with a coffee, Ginny gave Keith the driving directions she had gotten from Richard the night before.

  “It doesn’t look far at all,” Keith said. “If we hurry, we can get the piece, have something to eat, and get back up to Dublin for midnight. But we’ve said that before, haven’t we? I suppose you know but you aren’t going to tell us, because it’s much more fun to drive around Ireland without a clue of what’s going on.”

  This was to Oliver, who had emerged from whatever hidey hole he’d secreted himself in and joined them.

  “I don’t know how long it will take,” he said. “I don’t even know where it is. Ginny got the directions.”

  “This is somewhere near Richard’s grandmother’s house,” Ginny explained. “The letter just said this place she and Richard visited together. He didn’t say what it was either.”

  “All a bit mysterious, isn’t it?” Keith asked. “Still. Looks like we can get it done and get our party hats on. Shall we?”

  Ginny immediately saw what Aunt Peg would have liked about Ireland—the colors. There were long stretches of almost nothing but fields, but the fields were a dozen different shades of green. Then suddenly a tiny stone church, a few boring box stores, then a small town with four pubs painted in yellow and red and blue . . . a row of houses in every pastel color of the rainbow. So many colors in defiance of the steel gray of the sky.

  The sun had just gone down when they reached the spot Richard had marked on the map. The car coughed to a stop. They got out.

  “This is a field,” Keith said. “Are you sure that’s right?”

  “It says stop at the end of the road and look for the white gate, go up the steps.” Ginny lowered the paper and looked around. It was too dark to see clearly. Keith produced a flashlight from his car and shone it around, until he landed on a little stone wall, which lead to a chipped white gate, partially covered by shrubs.

  “There we are,” he said.

  They started trudging through the mucky grass. The ground was like a sponge, and every step produced a sucking noise. Only certain patches were actually muddy, but there was nothing solid about this field at all. The chipped white iron gate was unlocked, and it lead to a series of stone steps that had been stuck into the side of a small hill, cutting a path up through the trees.

  “I think—” Oliver said.

  “Don’t care,” Keith cut in.

  “Shut it for once and listen,” Oliver said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out some white photocopied pages.

  “Copies?” she asked.

  “I didn’t want the letter to get damaged,” he explained. “And I think you might want to do this part yourself. It’s more . . . personal.”

  Ginny looked at the path ahead. She could only see the first few steps; then it was completely obscured by darkness and trees. It wasn’t the biggest hill ever, but it was still a good climb.

  “Really,” Oliver said. “I think we should wait here.”

  Keith tentatively held the flashlight out to her.

  “Whatever you want to do,” he said.

  “I guess I’ll go,” she said, accepting it. “It’s just up there.”

  She stuck the phone into her coat pocket and pushed the gate open and started up the steps. The stones were coated in slippery green moss. Getting up them was a challenge, as there was nothing to hold on to but the occasional tree branch or the step above. She lost her footing several times, sending the beam of light dancing all over the place.

  “You all right?” Keith called. She couldn’t even see him anymore. The view down was just darkness.

  “Fine . . . ,” she said, scrabbling to the top.

  She was standing in a graveyard.

  It wasn’t like any graveyard she had ever seen in her life. It was more like a strange stone garden. Some markers were plain, rough stones. Other monuments were ornate Celtic crosses. Some had been here so long that the ground had come up to meet them, coming up halfway, sometimes more. Some were just little rounded tips sticking out of the ground. Many were crooked, tilting as the earth had changed around them. The inscriptions were covered in white lichen and black creeping mosses and molds obscuring the words—when the words were still there. Some inscriptions had been worn away by years of rain and wind. Interspersed throughout were new headstones, cut from some gleaming, silvery rock. At some of these were gifts and tokens. Along with the usual flowers and candles, small stuffed animals perched on the branches of the crosses, half-full bottles of whiskey remained from some recent, drunken communion with the dead. It was an amazingly not-creepy place. It was peaceful.

  The moon was low and bright enough that she could see pretty well, but she needed the flashlight to read the pages she’d been given. Even though they were just copies, it made a huge difference to have them physically in her hand, to read them herself in the place where she was supposed to read them. She was grateful that Oliver had realized that this was one step she had to take by herself.

  I learned my most important art lesson when I was ten years old. We had to do a project in which we set our heads down on a piece of paper, sideways, in profile, and then someone traced them. Then this was copied, and the two halves were put together. When you put the two sides together, we learned the lesson: The result looks nothing like you. Surprise!

  Why? Because we’re not symmetrical. What’s happening on the one side isn’t happening on the other. There’s this scientific theory that humans think symmetry is beautiful—equal, even things, all in the correct measure. But we are asymmetrical, Gin. Our faces, our bodies—they’re not the same on both sides. Your eyes are not identical. Your nose is not exactly straight. And trust me, your boobs are almost definitely different sizes.

  What’s art, Gin? What’s beauty? What makes my strange drawings or pile of stuff a work and not just junk?

  This discussion has been going on for the ages, and there is no definite answer. So I’m as entitled as anyone to throw my hat in the ring and make up some definitions. I think something is art when it is created with intention—serious intention. Even crazy intention. And I think something is beautiful if it reveals something important about what it means to be alive.

  This place is beautiful. They are strange things of beauty, monuments of death, lopsided, weathered . . . many generations gathered together in one place. They aren’t pristine and ordered in rows. They are carefully maintained, while they are also allowed to change and decay as nature commands. And so, they are living places. Look around, Gin. From here, you can see everything.

  I came here with Richard soon after I realized I was sick and was tested. His grandmother lives near here, and we came to visit. I actually got the call with my diagnosis when I was here. (Richard is half Irish. You should know this, since you are related to him. That makes you just a little bit Irish yourself, at least by marriage. But I think our family is a little Irish anyway.)

  Dammit. Keith was right about that Irish thing.

  We had been planning on walking up here—it’s a famous spot locally. Richard didn’t want me to come after I got the news, because going to a graveyard when you just found out that you’re going to die is kind of morbid. I don’t think I accepted it, really. He was more devastated than I was. I left him with his gran for an hour and walked up by myself, because I just had to see this place.

  I was immediately drawn to one monument. I won’t even have to tell you which one. If you look around, you will know.

  Ginny looked around. There were so many monuments, in so many conditions. But she remembered to look softly, to just let her eyes drift. “Paint with your eyes,” Aunt Peg used to say. “Sweeping gestures, just like a brush.” Side to side. Gentle.

  There it was, perfectly obvious. It was one of the few monuments that wasn’t a cross or a standard headstone, but an obelisk. She walked over to it gently, stepping around the plots, both the open ones and the ones marked off by littl
e metal bars, low to the ground, and the large slabs. When she got close to it, she saw a carving of a woman, dancing, with a book in her hand. What she read next confirmed her guess.

  The woman buried there was a poet. She lived with her sister, who was a sculptor. When her sister died of a “fever” (or so said the parish register, which he showed me—it’s a huge book, each birth and death handwritten in ink—the same book is still in use), the sculptor spent the next two years working on that monument to her.

  Sculpting used to be considered a very manly art, Gin. Rock, chisel, breaking marble with your bare hands . . . A female sculptor working in 1887 would have been a pretty rare thing. Her hands would have been rough; her arms would have been well-muscled. She would have spent a lot of time alone in hard labor, putting her tools against the rock. That was not the Victorian ideal. It took a lot of women like that, a lot of women who said, “I’m not going to do what you expect me to do, because you have no idea what I’m capable of. I’m going to get dirty and use tools and live the way I want” to move the world forward. And this woman? She made her sister into a goddess and gave her a seat on the hilltop where she could dance in the wind.

  When I saw that, I knew I wanted to dance in the wind here too. I wanted to join her. This is why I asked Richard to scatter my ashes here. By the time you read this, I am sure this will have been done. I am here. Now, let’s do this together. The container you got in London, you have it, right? Get it. Open it.

  Ginny’s hand started to shake. She knelt down, her knees sinking into the ground, then set her bag down and retrieved the box. She cracked open the sticker seal and slid out the contents. She put these carefully on her bag and continued reading, not caring that her knees were soaking and probably filthy.

  You are going to make the final part of this. This is a joint work. You need to let your fears go here. Don’t worry that it won’t be good enough. Don’t worry that you aren’t going to do it right. Take the paper and tape it to the monument. Then get out the pastels. Just rip the paper covers off, because you’ll need to turn them sideways. Do a rubbing of the image, using whatever colors you like. Just one. All of them. Whatever you want to do.

  The picture is now complete. I leave it to you to assemble it.

  The paper fought against the wind, but Ginny held it firm and taped it down. She opened the bag with the pastels. She reached first for the green, because that was the color around her. She started very lightly. Then she grabbed the gray. She rubbed harder, alternating the colors diagonally, even doing a few strips in white, leaving only ghostly traces.

  This was really and truly the end. Aunt Peg could never know that she would show up here on New Year’s Eve, with the moon hanging low and spreading a bright white glow over the hilltop . . . but she would have approved. The ashes had been put here months ago, been blown around and soaked in the rain and pressed into the earth. They were a part of the landscape now, part of the dirt on her clothes, part of everything. It really was like Aunt Peg would forever dance on the top of this hill, a place she only ever visited once in life.

  She rolled up the paper and put it back in its box. She took her phone out of her pocket and was happy to find that she had at least a partial signal.

  “I’m here,” she said, when Richard answered. “On the hill.”

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I think so,” she said, looking around. “Yeah. I am.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment.

  “It’s a good place,” he said. “She said she liked it because she could be between England and America, keep an eye on everyone.”

  Ginny laughed, and wiped a tear from her eye. She hadn’t realized she was crying a little. Richard laughed as well.

  “Are you up there by yourself?” he asked. “It must be dark.”

  “They’re waiting for me at the bottom. We’re driving back to Dublin now. We’ll get the early ferry back in the morning.”

  “Well, be careful. And I’m here . . . if you want to call. I think I’m having a quiet night in. Maybe go round to the pub later, so . . .”

  “Thanks.”

  “Happy New Year, Ginny.”

  “Happy New Year,” she said.

  Ginny took one last look around, to say good-bye to this place, good-bye to the year. She felt like she was leaving something behind here—she wasn’t sure what, she just had the sensation that something she no longer needed had come loose and fallen away. Down below, she could hear Keith heckling Oliver. Their voices carried on the wind. She checked one last time to make sure the paper was secure in her bag, then climbed back down the hill in the dark. Keith was bouncing around Oliver, doing some kind of strange step dance. Oliver stood patiently, smoking and ignoring him.

  “What was it?” Keith asked, as Ginny appeared.

  “Just some stones,” she said quickly. “I had to do a rubbing.”

  She wasn’t quite sure why she lied—maybe it was just too much to drop on people on New Year’s Eve. Keith continued his strange kick dancing, and Ellis chided him. Oliver, however, knew exactly what was up there, and he was looking right at her.

  “Come on,” she said, brushing past him. “We have to get to Dublin.”

  A Death in Ireland

  They had dinner at a small, empty café—the lone business on a street of rainbow-colored houses. The café was white and starkly lit by fluorescent bulbs. There were three metal tables with green Formica tops. The menu was painted on a large green board and stuck to the wall. The main choices were “butties.” Bacon butties. Chip butties. Batter burgers. Curry chips. Drink choices were tea or Coke.

  “I have no idea what any of these things are,” Ginny said quietly. “Except for the tea and the Coke.”

  “They are all very healthy,” Keith said. “I suggest the chip butty. I feel it’s something you need to experience.”

  A few minutes later, Ginny was facing down a french fry sandwich on white bread, the insides covered in ketchup. Considering where she had just been, she was feeling surprisingly upbeat. She wanted to eat. She wanted to drive fast across Ireland. She wanted to get to Dublin. She wanted to do everything, right now.

  “Right,” Keith said, working his way through a plate of fries and curry sauce. “If we drive like hell to Dublin, we can celebrate New Year’s Eve in proper style.”

  “What’s proper style?” Ginny asked.

  “Well, we can find a pub and do things the classic way—drinking ourselves into a stupor, vomiting in the street, and passing out behind some rubbish bins in an alley—an approach I have advocated many times in the past.”

  “What’s the other option?” Ellis asked.

  “Option two: We just sort of walk around until we find somewhere good, and then we stand there and see what happens to us. We have the mad one here. Strange things seem to find her. She’s like a party in your pocket.”

  “That’s me,” Ginny said. She took a timid bite of her sandwich. The fries were thick and crisp and hot with fat, which soaked through the white bread, making it go limp and squishy. It was both horrifying and delicious.

  “I think,” Keith said, “that we should go for the second one, while keeping our hearts and minds open to the first. I, of course, don’t drink and can’t drink, as I am driving the car. But you are welcome to do as you like.”

  “I have to make a call,” Oliver said, picking up his bacon sandwich and going outside.

  “You know,” Keith said, “since we have everything now, we could just leave him and go to Dublin. Nothing’s stopping us.”

  “Are you goin’ to Dublin?” the owner asked.

  “We are, yeah,” Keith said. “What’s good to do on New Year’s?”

  “You’ll want to go to Christchurch. That’s where people go.”

  Ginny was chomping away as they talked and soon polished off the French fry sandwich. She instantly felt ill.

  “Do you have any ginger ale?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t, but th
e shop across the road does.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Ginny said.

  She noticed, as she stepped out, that Oliver wasn’t in front of the café. There weren’t too many options for places he could be, though. It was a small road, with just a handful of two-story houses. There were some cars, and a milk van, and two boys wandering down the street with a soccer ball. All else was quiet.

  The store across the street was locked, though the lights were on. There was a sign in the window that said BACK IN 15 MINUTES. Ginny got the feeling it had been up a lot longer than that. There was a little walkway at the side of the shop, and Ginny heard Oliver talking in a low voice. She peered around the corner. He was leaning against the wall and speaking intently into his phone.

  “It’s fine, Mum,” he said. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I promise. I’ll sort it then.”

  A pause. Oliver kicked at the ground as he listened.

  “No, they can’t do that. I’ll fix it. Just leave it for now. . . . No, don’t call the counsel. There’s no one there anyway. Just leave it.”

  Keith and Ellis emerged from the café, Keith chomping away on an ice cream bar. Ginny quickly snapped her head back.

  “Mad One!” he called. “Into the sexmobile! Where’s Sneaky Beaky? I’m telling you, we should leave. . . .”

  “Right here.” Oliver came down the alley, shoving his phone in his pocket. He gave Ginny a quick nod as he walked past, but she had no idea why.

  The rain came down harder, pounding down on the roof with such force that it sounded like nails were being dumped on the top of the car. Keith took the swervy roads at a good speed, slowing down when one of the Gardaí (as it seemed the police were called here) cars or motorcycles was nearby. Signs in English and italicized Irish pointed the way back to the M7 into Dublin.