The Letters (5 page)

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.

Chlorophyll 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.

You started to undress me. It surprised us both, and we were smiling. Grinning. It was almost funny, because we hadn’t made love outside in so long, and I think we were both wondering why not. It was broad daylight, anyone could have come along, Jenny and Nat or any of the other neighbors, but we didn’t care. You unbuttoned my shirt, and I undid your belt, and we pulled off our jeans. Your legs, I’ve always loved your legs, and then they were wrapped around me.

You know how dreams are sometimes so real, they happen in slow motion, as if to tell you it’s important to pay attention, you don’t want to miss anything? That’s how this was. I looked into your eyes, and they were full of joy. I could tell you were seeing how much I loved you. That broke my heart, but it was a dream, so I could just rewind and feel fine again. You were caressing me, and your lips brushed mine, and I arched my back into you and I heard you whisper something.

I couldn’t make out what you were saying, but you had me going, I was lost in you, completely lost. And then you said it again. The words were a little louder; I thought you said “This is how it began.”

“What began?” I asked.

“You know,” you said.

And I did…I knew. I pushed it away, because I wanted to hold on to the dream, the feeling of you making love to me. I was desperate for that. I thought, If I can just get through this, if the dream ends right, then we can still be happy. We can all be together, nothing bad will have happened.

“Make it not happen,” I said to you.

“What?” you asked. “Make what not happen?”

And then I woke up.

I had to stop for a while, but I’m back. I’m sitting here in the kitchen, rereading your letter, wondering if you’re on the way, how far you’ve gotten. If you’re already there.

When I think about that dream, me saying “Make it not happen,” there are a few things I might have meant. Isn’t it strange, how the world of dreams and the world of awakening can be so different? Awake, I think I meant make Paul not to have crashed. But in the dream, I think I was talking about myself—about what I did. The two things seem to go together.