by Mary Adkins
re: Hello
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I prefer to go through it in my own home rather than at your office with you standing over me. Please mail them, thanks.
JM
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 11:41 AM
subject:
re: Hello
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Tone can be difficult to decipher over email, but I am pretty sure I detect hostility in yours. I apologize if I offended you in some way by asking you to come by. I am trying to be helpful. I’ll get the boxes in the mail to you as soon as I can.
I don’t know if you were aware, but your sister was writing a blog at the time of her death. In boxing up her things, my intern came across a copy she left for me. Iris asked me to try to publish it. I figured you’d want to know about it if you didn’t already. I’ll put a copy in the mail along with the boxes.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 11:48 AM
subject:
re: Hello
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So she wants you to publish her “secret blog.”
Not to stomp on your publishing dreams, but thirtysomething with cancer writes about her life as a secretary being cut short by the same thing everyone else dies of, too? That is not going to sell. And if it does, it will be to sentimental barbarians who want to read about someone else’s illness so they can feel better about their own pathetic lives. She died so young! Before she ever even made anything of herself! Before she even got married! Thank my lucky stars I’m not her! I’M SO #BLESSED!
It’s cancer porn.
Here, I’ll give you the back cover: “She reminds us to act on our dreams before it’s too late.” Or how about “#YOLO.”
You leave her funeral early like you have somewhere better to be, and now you want to make her blog into a book you can sell? Big celebrity-brand guy, or whatever it is you do? Show a little decency.
JM
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 11:49 AM
subject:
re: Hello
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So there’s your beef with me.
I left the funeral early because I got a call from my mother’s retirement home. My “something better to do” was seeing the area code 608 flashing on my cell, which tells me the call is from Homily Pines in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, an institution with 24/7 medical professional care of the kind my mother requires. She is disabled over ten years now, and her prognosis was six. That week she’d had an adverse reaction to her medication and spent a couple of days in the hospital. I was afraid she had died, which is my fear every time I see that damn area code. But I am glad you feel like you know me well enough to assume I’m an asshole.
I haven’t yet read beyond the first several pages of her blog, so I can’t counter your assertion of what it contains. Still, despite apparent appearances to the contrary, I respected your sister. If she wanted to share what she wrote with a wider audience than only those who followed her blog back in the spring, my default response is going to be to honor that. Call me crazy.
And lest you think I am one of those people who treats the dead as if they stick around as ghosts or spirits, dwelling just over our heads, surveying our actions, let me assure you that I’m not attempting to please some phantasmal version of her corpse. I don’t believe Iris is watching, or that she is going to be angry at me if I don’t publish it. Whatever energy moved in her has dispersed into a universe that is blind to our concocted narratives of “purpose.” We are not special. We do not survive death. We only think we are, and do.
If I am wrong and she is assuming gold-tipped wings from a cherub as we speak, no matter. The nature of my interest is principle. She requested it. I’d like to honor that.
Smith
PS—The copy about the dreams isn’t too bad (if clichéd), but “YOLO” is just tasteless. And she wasn’t my secretary. She was my assistant, and would have been my associate if she’d ever been willing to accept the title.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 1:19 PM
subject:
re: Hello
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Let me try again: my sister was very ill. As the person present in the weeks leading up to her death, I will assure you that cancer does indeed affect the mind as well as the body. So does chemo.
You may know that I took a leave of absence at Barn so I could stay with her for those last couple of months. I observed that as she was proceeding through the stages of grief, she took to writing to process. Apart from that fling she had with the heavyset man from Queens whom I believe was a friend of yours, her days were spent baking sweets and then throwing them away—muffins, cupcakes, peanut brittle toppling out of the trash can. She said she was making things for people, but she never seemed to give any of it away. It all ended up in the garbage. Do you see what I am saying?
I am not insulting Iris. If she’d written something while she was healthy and alive that you happened upon—perhaps a novel?—that’d be different. This is not that. Lord knows if I was in her position, I’d likely deal with the situation in unhealthier ways than oversharing with strangers on the Internet and obsessive cookie baking. But I think you will find there is little in her blog by way of literary merit or commercial appeal. It was a diary, for fuck’s sake. Of a sick woman on the decline.
Speaking of God, if your unsolicited atheistic diatribe was to goad me after my sister has just died, well done. It must feel good to be so much smarter than everyone else because you don’t believe in an afterlife. Want to lecture me about evolution, too? Go ahead and start quoting Darwin to me like I don’t know who he is. Give me a lecture on religion and be sure to use the words “opiate” and “Richard Dawkins.”
You have made your views loud and clear. Here are mine: I’m not okay with you publishing, or seeking to publish, my sister’s cancer blog. So no need to send it—I don’t have to read it to feel entirely, unflinchingly certain of this.
I’m sorry about your mother.
JM
What the fuck is your problem? Were you raised to
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 1:22 PM
subject:
re: Hello
* * *
I apologize for the text I inadvertently forgot to delete at the bottom of my email. Please disregard that part only.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 1:25 PM
subject:
Fwd: Hello
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Carl,
See below. On Monday, please ship the boxes to her. Use the cheapest means—USPS ground or whatever.
And do include a copy of the manuscript, please. I’ll leave one on your desk.
Thx,
SS
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 2:04 PM
subject:
re: Fwd: Hello
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Dear Boss,
In regard to your email just now, I am trying not to work weekends. It is important for boundary-setting for both my immediate and distant future, as studies show that if you start drawing boundaries early, you retain the ski
ll throughout life—and if you don’t, well. I’m not sure I’m to that chapter yet.
However, since we are now effectively in communication on a Saturday and the boundary has been crossed, I would like to use this opportunity to express my concern over the conversation in the email chain below. You might want to be a little nicer to her, because while I am not formally a lawyer, last spring I did audit an IP class at Stanford Law (ranked no. 1 in US News, tied with unnamed school that rhymes with “tail”). If you indeed decide to pursue publication of the book, I imagine you are going to need the sister, or at least the next of kin, on board as heir of the copyright. Should I email my professor to confirm? I don’t mind. I have to keep in touch with him anyway so he will write me a LOR—that is, if I succumb to my parents’ pressure and decide to go to law school after all. Lulz.
Now get off the computer and enjoy your weekend!
Carl
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 2:05 PM
subject:
re: Fwd: Hello
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Even if she left it for me, asking me to publish it?
What is an LOR?
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 2:06 PM
subject:
re: Fwd: Hello
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Letter of Recommendation.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 2:07 PM
subject:
re: Fwd: Hello
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I don’t know what that thing means either.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 2:09 PM
subject:
re: Fwd: Hello
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It’s a shrugging guy!!!!!
Also remember that the words on the Post-it are smudged due to the Arnold Palmer, so that particular document probably wouldn’t hold up in court. Sorry/not sorry. In the pursuit of justice spills will occur.
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 6:17 PM
subject:
no subject
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It’s funny, you’re gone, but reading your manuscript makes it seem like you’re not.
You know, I think you’re selling yourself short in this thing.
My dad, as you know, was not the greatest guy, especially toward my mom. If there is a person who died full of regrets, and probably hating himself, it was my father.
Whenever he pulled up to the house after being on the road for a while, and my mom came outside to greet him, he couldn’t move fast enough. Not a small man, he would more or less fall out of the cab and jog over to her with so much effort that it was awkward to watch. He was like a giant kid, the clasps of his overalls jangling until they embraced. In those moments, they always looked in love. There were times when she actually squealed. It was a scene I came to associate with returns. Of course, returns require departures.
The year I turned nine was the first time she kicked him out that I remember, and the next few months were the most peaceful of my childhood. She started cleaning houses, and I’d occasionally go along to sit on other people’s sofas and watch The Price Is Right. She’d flip the mops upside-down to transform them into mop creatures, and we’d crack up. I stopped being afraid to come home from school. We ordered a lot of pizza. But there was also something missing—him. She wasn’t getting a boot thrown in her face or yelling so loudly I’d crawl in the shower and turn on the water, but she also didn’t smile as much. She definitely didn’t squeal.
When they eventually got back together, the happiness didn’t last, of course. The next eight years went about the way I’ve described to you before. And I didn’t understand that we were a stereotype. It felt like we were the first people to suffer, in secret, the confounding cycles of a rageful alcoholic who gets clean once in a while.
The spring I turned seventeen, she left a handful of times, disappearing with both her summer and winter clothes, leaving a big open space in the hall closet to make a point. But every time, she would return, and there was a moment when they looked in love again. For just a day, or even only a few hours, this fleeting euphoria would exist between them. Eventually I realized they were probably both trying to get that feeling back all the time. It was why she had to keep going, and why he had to keep giving her a reason to go: so that she could come back.
Even for him, a miserable asshole, there were still these kind of . . . redemptive, I guess, flashes that squeaked through the expanse of shit. There was joy in the crevices. I witnessed it.
I find myself hoping as I turn the pages that you came to this understanding about your own life, that for any regrets you may have had, you recognized there were joyous parts. You certainly created them for others.
I don’t care what your sister wants. You wanted this manuscript published, so that’s what I’m going to do.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 6:49 PM
subject:
Congratulations! And a question
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Hi Sheryl,
What a delight to receive your wedding announcement! I had no idea that you and Steve were even a couple!
I have a half-baked idea for Berringer to throw your way. I know you’ll be frank with me because you always are, in that college-roommate’s-college-girlfriend way. It concerns my former colleague, who tragically passed in May at the age of thirty-three. During the last six months of her life, she authored a blog that received considerable attention online. My office is currently working to determine the copyright situation with this “manuscript,” so to speak, but as a preliminary matter, I’m just curious—what do you think of it? In terms of its publishability, assuming the copyright is a nonissue? As you may recall, she and I were close, and I find myself wanting it to be more widely available, but I don’t know what that would look like.
Linking to it below.
Congrats again,
Smith
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 7:02 PM
subject:
Aug + Sept Rent
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Dear Smith,
We still have not received payment from you for either August or September. Please remit payment at your earliest convenience.
Jillian
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from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 7:14 PM
subject:
re: Loan
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Hey Richie,
You around? Thanks again for helping me out. Want to get a beer?
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from:
UWinNao
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 8:19 PM
subject:
YOU WON!
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* * *
from:
&nbs
p; Bro-vado
to:
[email protected]
date:
Sat, Aug 29 at 9:21 PM
subject:
Your account has been deactivated
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