The Letters Read online

  I like the group here. It’s small and vigorous. One old lobsterman’s been sober for thirty-nine years. And he said he was still drinking at his fortieth birthday…I do the math and feel daunted. I try to stick with “one day at a time.”

  The slogans are so hokey; it embarrasses me to repeat them. Again, back to me the sentimentalist. You must think it’s ridiculous, that I can buy into a group that would measure out wisdom—not with Eliot’s coffee spoons—but in pithy sayings tacked up to church basement walls. I can just feel you cringing…

  But it seems to be working for me. They tell you to remember the day you hit bottom. I don’t have to think very far. The accident, of course. But so many other things. The way I started to disappear. The way you’d turn to me—I’d see those piercing eyes I used to long to draw—and just want to close mine, so I couldn’t see you. My own version of the hole in the sweater, the stitches starting to pull. You remind me so of Paul…He had his own intensity, not for the written word, but for teaching/helping/saving…in those ways he was his father’s son.

  Hitting bottom…

  I remember, Sam. Sometimes I think I haven’t quite hit it yet—the true bottom might come along with the divorce papers. Do you ever think that? What it will be like to pick up a pen and end our life together? Oh, that might just be me being sentimental again—I guess I ended it the day of the accident. Or maybe you did, the day you moved out. I’ve lost track.

  In any case, I have something to tell you. I’m buying the cottage. The price is crazy-low. I can paint here. I want you to have the house—or maybe you can’t bear to keep it either. Maybe we were too happy there for either of us to stay.

  The island is beautiful. Back in October, when I first got here, the sun was out almost continuously. I spent the first two weeks painting en plein air. I’d set up my easel in the meadow, a field of flowers right in the center of town. Later I went to White Head, one of the high cliffs across the island. The other painters would gather, and it was quite a scene.

  As I told you, most everyone leaves for the winter, but a few have stayed. One artist, John Morgan, I remember from RISD. We bump into each other at the grocery store, but he keeps to himself. People who stay the winter here aren’t looking for company.

  The island is even more amazing now. It’s lonely and windswept and haunting. It’s inspiring. Even the names of the places—Cathedral Woods, Swim Beach, the Ice Pond, the Tercentenary Tablet. There are seals, which means you-know-what. There’s a lighthouse and a shipwreck. It’s a brutal, rocky coast: gray boulders, white foam, the endless sea, and whatever is swimming beneath…

  Oh—and there’s a cat. A hungry, stray cat that sits on the stone wall behind my cottage. She stares as if she wants something from me. But when I approach, she runs away. What should I do? You were always magic when it came to animals…She’s a little gray tiger.

  Be safe, Sam. When you get to the place, will you tell him I love him?

  Watch out for icefalls and Martha Rich.

  Hadley

  November 18

  Hadley—

  Your letters arrived today in one big bundle. I admit I am annoyed and more than a little hurt, but glad to receive them nonetheless. I am feeling a dozen other emotions I can’t begin to sort out. Confused, mostly. How can you still cause this turmoil in me?

  I need to think about what I want to say. And I’ll confess right now that I wasn’t entirely honest before. I am not sorry if this trip upsets you; or at least I can’t entertain that thought right now. I need to be here. I need to visit Paul. Call it his spirit, his ghost, whatever it might be. If he somehow exists in heaven or Valhalla or wherever he is, I want him to know that I came looking for him. That I stood next to his last earthly place and greeted his spirit. That his father came to find him.

  Stopping now…

  Deep breath.

  I’ve decided not to edit this, or to rethink it, or to delete things if they make me uncomfortable. We’re past the need for editing, thank goodness. Say what you like. I’ll say my piece. If I step over a line, or say something hurtful, I’m sorry. No pulled punches.

  And while I’m thinking of it, and because you mentioned it, no, I don’t think you are an alcoholic. What I think is, you are a lousy drunk when you get drunk. How’s that? I hated to see your second drink go down, because the Hadley I loved, the wonderful woman I married, faded backward through your skin and ended up caged in your ribs. Nasty image. But that’s what I felt. And then this other woman emerged, one I didn’t like nearly as much, and she took over. I remember that time we went to Tankers, that restaurant on the old tanker ship outside of Portland. You had two martinis and the bartender looked at me when you ordered a third, and you snapped at him not to consult your husband, damn it, and then you held forth on tax codes, of all things, and by the end of it the couple we were with—the Babcocks, I think, the lovely, dashing Babcocks, what a pair—had grown glassy-eyed and uncomfortable and you didn’t even see it. So that’s my opinion on your drinking once and for all. It turned you into a bore. Not a drunk, just a bore.

  I was tempted to cut that last part about your drinking, but then I said, no. Let it stand. I’m sure you have things to say to me. Fair enough. But I also need to be clear: I hated the drinking because it erased the woman I loved. The martini-you would never care about stopping on the road and cutting wildflowers, or putting a bouquet of black-eyed Susans on a picnic table when we camped—you did that in Idaho, remember, near the Henry’s Fork. Do you know, if I could freeze one day, just one, from all our time together (not counting days with Paul), I would freeze the day beside the Henry’s Fork. You spent the day in jeans and a red flannel shirt, with some sort of bandana in your hair, and you didn’t care much about fishing, I know, but you loved the countryside, and you sketched an exquisite landscape all focused on a fence post and mountain perspective, and your cheeks were red and glowing, and that night we cooked rice and beans. And I had gone down to the river to fish and when I came back you were there at the campsite, and the sun was behind you, and you didn’t see me for a second and I watched how beautifully you moved, how you had such purpose and calm, and you had cut an enormous bouquet of black-eyed Susans and arranged them in an old coffee tin sitting on the table. You had collected the flowers for no other reason except that you appreciated beauty, just beauty, and returning to you that way, coming toward the camp, I felt out of breath at the sight of you. If you remember, I kissed you and then I pushed you down on the table and I kissed you some more, and we stayed like that a long time, the mountains around us, and the first chill of evening coming on, and you didn’t ask why, or what we were doing, and it didn’t push on to sex. We just kissed, and I thought, still think, that you knew we were happy, and I did, and that we had the real thing, that we could arrange days just as you had arranged those flowers.

  So, there. That’s the other side. That’s the you I lost when you had too much to drink.

  Okay, turn the page. Next subject.

  Are you still reading? Maybe I don’t have the right to say such things to you. Tell me if I don’t. Maybe I have surrendered that right.

  Anyway, some news. I haven’t left yet because the weather turned dirty and Martha—no worries there, I promise—came over to say we should postpone. She said we could slog it out, but we needed to wait until it “crisped up.” By that, I suspect, she meant it had to freeze hard everywhere. The big danger in dogsledding, especially if you are bushwhacking, is unfrozen water. If you go through the ice, you’re toast.

  She came over and had dinner with me and Gus. A fun evening. Gus is an old crank, but he has a soft spot for Martha and he likes dogs. She brought over two house dogs—George and Sneak. Sneak is a sweet little female who, Martha claims, is the smartest dog she ever owned. And George is Sneak’s boyfriend, I guess, and is a magnificent animal with a thick coat and eyes that you can hardly bear to look into.

  The dogs walked all over the lodge, checking things, and you could tell
they were dying to raise a leg and mark their territory, but they were just polite enough not to do it. Gus gave them each a bowl of moose meat and they ate it in greedy gulps. We took them out afterward, and we stood for a while watching the northern lights. Spectacular, really. Green slices of curtains. When we retreated back inside, the dogs went to sleep under the table like regular suburban dogs.

  Martha gave us a little lecture on Global Positioning Systems, and we punched in the coordinates of Paul’s accident. We have it fixed so I will know, as much as a person can know, when I am standing on the scene of his death. You can call me crazy, but it was important to me that I not pretend or guess about knowing the location. Now with a glance at Martha’s GPS, we’ll know for certain.

  She also made a couple phone calls to people she trusted and got a long-range forecast, and she said we will likely get started soon. A fresh front is moving in and she liked the looks of it. It will be cold, she said, but dry and clear. All good.

  So there. That’s my news, such as it is.

  I’m going to bed shortly. I’m writing this on an old typewriter. It’s been years since I used a typewriter, but Gus had one around and he offered it to me. A manual Smith and Corona. I’d forgotten how much I love that clickety-clack of typewriters. I feel a little like Jack Torrance in The Shining, typing away in a large, haunted lodge. If a little kid passes by on a Big Wheel, I’m out of here.

  Sam

  November 19

  Hadley—

  I want to say this: I could not be more pleased to hear you are painting again. I mean that. I have always loved your work, as you know, and to hear that you are painting again is like hearing an old friend has returned from being lost. Maybe that’s a clumsy metaphor, but you know what I mean. You are a painter; painting is part of you. Even when you didn’t paint, I knew you were storing it up, watching, taking mental notes. So I am not surprised, only delighted. One of the great pleasures in my life has been to sit near you, reading or writing, and to smell your paints and to look over and see you entirely absorbed. And then to look at the canvas—how astonishing it always was to see what you had created out of nothing, or from a suggestion of light and angles. I was always proud of your talent. I hope you know that. I hope I said it enough.

  And now I have a wonderful image of you trekking out to the bluffs and plunking your easel down among the other painters, and maybe they aren’t sure who this chick is, but she’s good-looking, and then, little by little, they realize you are a master, and they start looking at their punky canvases and realize they should give it up…

  That’s my fantasy. But no matter what, the action of painting, the discipline of it, will be a joy to you. I know what you are like when you are painting. You begin to see everything with a greater clarity, and your movements become smooth and calm, and you are absolutely beautiful when you step back.

  It might surprise you to know I am glad you are done with our house, and I am jealous of your new house on the island. I had a moment’s sorrow when you talked about abandoning the house to me, because it was our house, Paul’s house, but after a night’s sleep I see the wisdom of it. It’s time to move on. I am going to sell it and we can split the profits and go from there. It should bring a good price and it’s never bad to have a pocketful of money. To my amazement, I don’t feel much emotional attachment to the house. Isn’t that odd? If anything, I feel attached to the trees we planted. Strange, I know. But I planted some of those trees with Paul, when he was little, and I will miss watching them go through the seasons. I suppose I can always visit and peek around like some sort of nosy neighbor. But you are right—as you are about many things—that we need to move forward.

  I said that I am jealous of your house on Monhegan Island and I meant it. You belong next to the sea, and I can picture you with your ghost and your cat and the drafty parlor. I haven’t even seen it, but I bet I can picture the light. One of the most endearing things about you—and you may not even be conscious of this—is that you are attracted to light the way plants follow sunlight. You are. I always thought part of your DNA was chlorophyll.

  Have to stop here for a second. Gus came out to call me in to lunch.

  It’s set, I guess. I will leave Thursday with Martha Rich. Gus told me she radioed this morning. He is going to ride me over at sunrise that day. Then we leave right from her house. It’s a bit unnerving to consider stepping out her back door and taking off, but there it is. I will be driving the second sled, following her lead. She assures me it is not as difficult to do as you might think, but the terrain we will eventually cross would clog and wreck a snowmobile. Dogsleds are more flexible if we need to bushwhack over some portions of the trail—and of course, it’s a dream of mine to ride a dogsled in the North. I get the sense she doesn’t anticipate any large delays. It’s a workout for her dogs and not much more.

  It’s more complicated for me, but you know that.

  Okay, I read your letters again and I think I am jealous of this John Morgan, your old friend from RISD. Actually, I’ve decided I have to punch him in the nose the minute I spot him. I’m joking, but I am jealous. Should I be? I have no right to ask that question—and you have no right to tell me to be wary of Martha Rich—but I can’t seem to shake my green-eyed monster.

  Enough of that.

  I want you to know that I brought a photo of us—our family—with me. I will leave it there. You know the one: you, me, Paul, our cat, Boing, sitting on the tailgate of our old Ford pickup. Paul is holding Boing and he looks incredibly handsome—just the faint outline of the man he will become. And you have your arm around him, and I am back behind you both, reaching for something out of the camera range. I know you remember it. It was a great day.

  I will leave the photo there, where Paul died. I hope you don’t think that is morbid, or worse, too patently sentimental, but I need to carry something there, something to leave, even if it is a futile gesture. So now you know everything. That’s my great plan. I wish I could explain it all better. I wish it had a more logical basis. It’s just my heart. I can’t help it.

  Okay, I need a good night’s sleep. I miss you and love you. I don’t know where we’re heading—you and me—but I am grateful for these letters. Say hello to Annabelle. Picture me in a red Mountie uniform, heading off into the brush!

  Mush.

  Sam

  P.S. Nearly forgot. Tell me about the seals and the sharks—any sightings? Any stories? You know we have to talk about sharks.

  Dear Sam,

  Boing. Of all our cats, he was always, only, Paul’s. The way they adopted each other on sight—Paul going out into the field the day after that fox had attacked the barn kittens’ mother, the whole litter running as fast as they could away from him, turning feral already, but that one little tiger just breaking from the pack and leaping straight into his arms—boing. Tiny springs on his back paws…

  And the way Paul would feed him with that little bottle you got from the vet. Doc McIntosh told you the kitten was too young, hadn’t gotten enough antibodies from his mother’s milk, was infested with fleas, had everything going against him, would need round-the-clock feeding and care that would be too much for a teenage boy…but you said he didn’t know Paul. And you were right.

  The alarm clock going off all through the night, every three hours. And the sound of Paul’s bare feet on the hall floor, and then the ring of the microwave as he heated up the formula…and then sometimes I’d go downstairs to check, and he would have fallen asleep with the kitten in his arms—the two of them, our two young ones.

  You picked the right picture to leave up there. You ask if I remember the day; of course I do. We’d just come home from that fishing trip to the Wind River, and Paul was getting ready to go back to Amherst, and we were all having one last picnic before summer ended. That light, and the way the ground was still warm from the summer sun. It was September, and we went to the orchard, and Boing chased bees, and we knew, we knew, what we had.

  Chlorop
hyll in my DNA…if it’s there, it’s a mutation that occurred after I married you. Remember the year you fell in love with fruit trees? It was right after I got pregnant. I looked out the window one Saturday morning, and you were pulling in with twenty saplings tilting all over the truck bed. You spread the plaid blanket on the hillside so I could watch you planting them. I still have the sketchbook filled with all the drawings I did of you.

  We never talked about why you did that—or if we did, I don’t remember. Drawing your body, the strain in your shoulders as you worked, and the exultation in your whole being as you plunked the root balls down there in those deep holes you’d just broken your back to dig—I just, well, I just couldn’t help feeling that it was all one and the same. I had Paul growing in me, and you needed something to nurture, too.

  So the picture you brought to Alaska, that’s the right one. Our picnic in the orchard, twenty years after you planted it…those first trees were all grown by then, and so was our boy. Almost grown, anyway.

  The night after I read your most recent letter, I dreamed about our orchard. It was fall, always our favorite time. The smell of apples was sweet, almost intoxicating. We were lying on the old blanket, and the grass felt dry and spiky coming through the wool. We weren’t young…I mean, it wasn’t a dream of our early days. We had Paul, although he wasn’t there. He was still alive, though. I know, because I felt so happy, in a way I’ve never felt since he died.

  We held each other. Your arms were around me, in the easiest way. Holding me so our chests were pressed close, but kind of loose, as if there was nothing to worry about. No one was going anywhere. You weren’t afraid of losing me, and I wasn’t wanting to be anywhere else. We were so free with each other.