Where or When (5 page)

“They're our best,” she says.

“This will do,” he says, “and I need a good pen, if you sell them. A fountain pen.”

This last request has occurred to Charles only as he has uttered it. He will have to write the note in the car. He cannot write it at home.

They walk together to the register. Charles hands the woman a credit card, wonders fleetingly if he's already over the limit—a staggering amount of money in itself. “Wait a minute,” he says. “I have a book on order here. And I need another book too, although I don't know if you have it.”

He tells the saleswoman the names of the books. He adds that the second is a book of poetry. She checks in the computer, says that his order came in and that they have five of the volumes of poetry—the shipment arrived last week.

“I'll get it for you,” she says.

When she hands the small book to him, Charles studies the jacket, turns the book over. The photograph he saw in the advertisement is on the back. He reads the short biography that accompanies the picture: “This is Siân Richards' third collection of poetry. She lives in eastern Pennsylvania with her husband and daughter.”

This last sentence seems impossible to him—as if he had been told that the earth had four moons. Or that the tides had stopped.

 

The bridge is desolate, empty at five-twenty on a Sunday. He parks on the blacktop at its end. The cloud cover is thick now, a grayish-brown batting, darker behind him in the west. Soon there will be splashes on the windshield. The temperature has changed too; it's dropped ten, fifteen degrees since noon, he thinks. Beside him is the book of poems, the box of stationery, the pen. He picks up the book, rests it against the steering wheel, turns each page slowly. He reaches down in front of the passenger seat, fumbles for a beer in the cooler. Still cold; the label is wet.

He reads each of the poems, then closes the book. He makes a desk with it on his lap, resting one edge on the steering wheel. He unscrews the pen, slips in a cartridge, makes a few practice scrawls on the paper bag from the bookstore. The rain begins, tentatively at first, a slow, uneven rain of fat drops. He likes the sound of the rain on the roof of his car, the isolation of the beach. He takes a card from the box, lays it on the book. He puts the pen to the card.

He cannot think how to begin. He takes a long swallow of beer, then hears a phrase, a single phrase of a song. Jesus Christ. He turns the book over to look again at the picture. The phrase comes to him again, blown off across the sand. He plays it in his mind, and then again, even as he played the 45 over and over as a boy.

Fragments rush in upon him now. A young girl's face. A high white forehead. A blue dress just below the knees. A stone courtyard.

Images and ideas scud along the crust of sand in front of him, pockmarked now with the beginning of the rain.

The song may be on a jukebox somewhere, he thinks. He cannot remember all the words, just the tune, bits of phrases. He looks down at the thick white card on the book.

He thinks: I cannot do this. I have a wife and three children, and I may lose the house soon.

Then he thinks: How can I not do this?

“Dear Siân,” he writes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

September 15

 

Dear Siân,

When I saw your picture in this morning's newspaper I had the same feeling as I had the first time I saw you, in the courtyard of The Ridge thirty-one years ago. I bought your new book of poetry today. I have read all the poems once, and will need to spend more time with them, but I was struck initially by the way the bleak emotional and physical landscape you describe takes on a unique beauty. Beauty out of deprivation. And how this theme holds true as well in the several poems about the migrant workers. I hope you have not had to experience what you write about.

Congratulations.

 

Charles

 

September 23

 

Dear Charles,

I was delighted to get your note. Can it really have been thirty-one years ago? I have an image of the boy you were then—and somewhere I have photographs of you, even one, I think, of the two of us. Weren't you called Cal, or did I dream that?

I live on a farm with my husband and my daughter, Lily, who is three. Two days a week, I teach poetry at Stryker University, not far from my home. Thank you for your comments about the poems. The landscape I write about is familiar to me. As are the migrant workers.

You know what I do and what I look like. I am more than a little curious about what you do and what you look like.

 

Siân

 

 

September 26

 

Dear Siân,

Somewhere my children still have a gold identity card hanging from a chain, with “Cal” written on the front and “Siân” written by you on the back.

I am married, with three beautiful children—fourteen, twelve, and five.

I am surprised your daughter is so young. I suppose I just assumed you had married earlier and that your child would be nearly grown.

I plotted the bike ride between my house and yours several times, but a 200-mile bike ride across three states is pretty difficult for a fourteen-year-old boy. Did your father ever tell you that I called about a year after we had each graduated from college?

Concerning what I do, I sell both insurance and real estate. I'm doing brilliantly at neither at the moment.

To know what I look like, you'll have to meet me for a drink.

Thank you for not making me write to you through your publisher. That would be tiresome.

 

Charles

 

October 15

 

Dear Siân,

I am just a little concerned that you have not responded to my last letter. I hope this correspondence has not put you off in some way.

I remember I saw you as soon as I arrived at The Ridge. I can picture this vividly. You were standing in the courtyard, in a cotton dress with short sleeves, and it came down below your knees. It must have been just after we had arrived. I remember, too, the first time we spoke to each other.

We were painfully shy with one another. I do remember that. I remember walking down to the lake in an agony as to whether or not I would have the courage to hold your hand. I believe I also gave you a gold bracelet that said “The Ridge” on it. I remember the badminton game. And, of course, I have never forgotten the bonfire. Do you remember that?

I find it extraordinary that I should have the same feeling looking at your picture in the advertisement that I had thirty-one years ago looking at a beautiful young girl in a courtyard.

 

Charles

 

October 20

 

Dear Charles,

No, I have not been put off by this correspondence, though I am unclear as to just where it is going. But perhaps I am being too linear. It doesn't have to go anywhere, I suppose; it might just circle and loop around in our memories.

I am fascinated by your memories. I would love sometime to compare them—yours and mine. Did you perceive that week as I did, I wonder? I do see myself with you. I am wearing a white sleeveless blouse and plaid pedal pushers, and my hair is pulled back in a ponytail. You are beside me, quite a bit taller, and you have a crew cut. I must have this image from a photograph. I
will
go through my trunk and find all of the photographs one day soon.

I do remember the bracelet and the badminton game and the night of the bonfire. I also remember having an epiphany of sorts, down by the outdoor chapel at the water's edge, that the essence of religion was love, pure and simple. I am not religious now, by the way. I haven't been inside a church, except for a wedding or a funeral, in twenty years.

I would, of course, meet you for a drink, but I think you will be disappointed. I am not quite as interesting or as mysterious as my photograph makes me out to be.

 

Siân

 

October 23

 

Dear Siân,

I received your letter yesterday. I saw the review of your new book in last Sunday's literary supplement. I was thrilled when I saw it, and I thought it was quite good, all in all. I know it must be hard to have your work hanging out there for anyone to take aim at. I confess I seldom read poetry—at least contemporary poetry: I am more likely to read philosophy or history—so I was a little lost and befuddled in the paragraph of comparisons to other poets, but I felt the reviewer was absolutely right when he referred to you as a transcendentalist.

I can remember being with you at the outdoor chapel by the water. If the essence of religion is love, and you love someone as I'm sure you do, then I guess you're religious. Those are words from a former seminarian. After college I entered the seminary and was there for two years. Mostly I wanted to avoid the draft, but I probably received my best education there. I haven't been to church in twenty years either.

There is a line in a book I read recently about the curiosity of lives unfolding. I guess that is what we are doing. I know you are interesting. The part of you that I believe is mysterious we could hold on to by not meeting, but I wouldn't be satisfied with just holding on to a mystery.

Just tell me where and when. Whatever is easiest for you. I'm looking forward to meeting you. Again.

 

Charles

 

October 28

 

Dear Charles,

I would like to meet with you sometime, although I confess I am a bit uneasy. My larger difficulty, however, is that I feel uncomfortable in the position of having to arrange a meeting. I don't know quite what else to say at this point, except that I will think about it. I don't mean to put you off, but I am a little daunted by the hows and wheres.

I'm sorry you had to see the review in the literary supplement. It is probably a classic example of a “mixed” review, but it stung nevertheless.

I smiled at the image of your plotting the bike ride from your house to mine. My father still lives in the same house in which I grew up in Springfield, but I really left western Massachusetts when I went to college. I attended a Catholic college for women in New Hampshire and barely escaped entering religious orders myself by joining the Peace Corps. My mother died while I was in college. In the Peace Corps, I taught elementary school in Senegal. When I returned to this country, I went to graduate school for a time, and I met my husband there. Then we settled on his farm.

What is it like where you live, and what are the names of your children?

I am sorry my handwriting is so poor. I could type these letters if you'd rather—your handwriting is remarkably beautiful.

I am intrigued by how you happen to have a postbox.

 

Siân

 

November 1

 

Dear Siân,

I had already ordered from my local bookstore your two previous books, and several days ago your first book of poetry, about Africa, arrived. I think the poems are beautiful—that goes without saying. There are threads and currents that run through your poetry, but each poem is somehow a surprise. I'd also like to say, and I hope this is not disturbing to you, that I think there is a kind of sadness associated with your poetry. This is easier to see in the later poems—a kind of awful loneliness, I think. Or do I only imagine that?

I'd like to see you smile. You seem fairly serious, and I'm sorry about the “sting” of the review.