The Letter

by Marie Tillman

  I should have known right then, but for some reason, I convinced myself that I didn’t need anything from him. I could go back to being content with just a fun weekend here and there.

  “I’m just not sure about this guy,” Christine finally said after listening to me relay our flow of communication over the past several days. In our last couple of conversations, I had started to get the feeling that she was suspicious of J.P.’s intentions. She didn’t care who he was; she didn’t like how he was treating me or the way it was affecting me.

  “But it’s casual, he doesn’t owe me anything, he hasn’t done anything wrong, really,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

  “That doesn’t matter,” Christine said. “All that matters is whether or not this is good for you. Is it?”

  There was no denying that it wasn’t good for me, but I wasn’t ready to let it go. As my work trip to California neared, I still hadn’t heard from J.P. about a definitive plan for meeting up. I felt crazy trying to figure out the point in the relationship when he started pulling away. I kept replaying our last weekend in New York, wondering where it had gone wrong or what I had said that had started to make him distant. I had been moody and a little quiet, tired of spending time with him and then feeling confused when I barely heard from him between visits. I thought that introducing me to his kids and letting me into his life meant that he was interested in more than just casual dating.

  The night before I left for California, I called him. To my surprise, he picked up right away.

  “So what’s up?” I asked, and both he and I knew what I meant.

  “Oh, you know,” he said. “Marie, you know my track record—I’m just not sure I’m capable of a relationship.”

  “Right,” I said. It’s not you; it’s me. Message received. “Okay, have a good time in California. I’ll see you around.”

  And that was it. A minute-long conversation, and it was done. Then again, maybe that was appropriate for the end of a casual relationship—I wouldn’t know. The next couple of weeks I was devastated, but too embarrassed to talk to my sister or any of the few friends who knew we were dating. I had maintained a cool front with all of them except Christine, saying J.P. and I were just hanging out—no big deal, and certainly nothing serious. They assumed I was just having fun, and I didn’t think they would understand my devastation. I admonished myself for mourning the loss of this man I barely knew, but soon realized I was mourning something more important than the unraveling of this short-lived relationship.

  I had gotten lost in the notion of what J.P. represented, lost in the realization that all these feelings I thought were dead inside me were very much alive. I still wanted to share my life with someone. I wanted the kids running around on the lawn; I wanted the future that Pat and I had talked about, and that I’d glimpsed again that weekend on the beach with J.P. I wanted to journey through life as part of a pair and create a world around us that was deep and meaningful.

  Pat’s unwavering presence in my life for eleven years had grounded me through all life’s ups and downs. Since he’d been killed, I had become caught up in the waves of life and been tossed and turned with nothing to tie me down. I realized that I wanted a connection to another person to anchor my existence, and the realization of this, more than the loss of J.P., caused me to mourn all over again. This notion scared me, because I felt that I had no control. I might meet someone; I might not. All I could do was open the door. As painful as it was to feel so exposed, I promised myself I would keep my heart open to the possibility of love.

  In the end, I understood that of course my brief encounter with J.P. had meant more to me than it had to him. There were things he could have handled better. But I felt grateful for him, because he allowed me to see how much I still valued love.

  * * *

  One fall evening not long after J.P. had left my life, I was working late, waiting to meet a colleague in the lobby of the Hudson Hotel in Midtown. The lobby was overgrown, roofed with vine-covered glass, and walking in felt a bit like walking into your entangled, erotic subconscious. In the rosy-paneled library bar by the elevators, a young, dark-haired man sat reading in a large chair below the two stories of bookshelves. Something about him caught my eye: the shaved head, the way he held himself. I had come to recognize the look of a soldier. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw the memorial bracelet around his wrist. I looked down, seeing the gleam of silver around my own wrist. I had been given this bracelet, inscribed with Pat’s name, his unit, and the date he’d been killed, after he’d died. It was a constant reminder that I never took off.

  As I leaned against the wall, waiting to meet my coworker, I watched the man read for a minute. I was strangely drawn to him. For some reason, surrounded by the fantasy world of the Hudson, I wanted him to know that I was not blind to the realities of the world beyond these wood-paneled walls. I could relate just a little to what he had been through. All that I had been trying to escape by moving to New York was sitting right in front of me, and I wanted to connect, if only for an instant, to the past.

  I walked over and the man looked up. I smiled and asked him if he had lost someone in Iraq or Afghanistan. It may seem like an odd way to start a conversation, but when you have been through extreme circumstances, which I assumed he had, niceties like small talk lose their place.

  “Yes. A few,” he replied. His eyes were intense. He had served in Iraq as a member of the Florida Guard, he said.

  He looked at me for a moment.

  “And you?” he asked.

  “My husband.”

  There wasn’t the look of pity or horror this statement typically provoked. Just two people understanding the reality of each other.

  “Wait here,” he said. He bolted up and disappeared into an elevator. He returned with a book.

  “I wrote this. I want you to have it, in case it might do you any good somehow.”

  The book was The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, and the young author was John Crawford. I thanked him, tucked the book into my purse, and turned around to find my coworker. Later I read the book, which was an excellent, honest portrayal of life in a war zone. But that wasn’t the most significant piece of the encounter. Rather, I saw that the barrier had fallen down. As I’d stood in the Hudson, in my new city, waiting to meet my colleague, who knew nothing of my former life, it had felt oddly comfortable to let my old story wash over me. It was a part of me. Too many times over the past year I had felt like a fraud, shedding my past in search of a future. I couldn’t outrun my memories; they weren’t going to let me go. I had tucked them away so as not to live in the past, but I now realized I needed to find a way to live comfortably with them in the present.

  I’d been lying. Lying to J.P. by pretending I was some carefree fun girl, lying to Pat’s family about the light that was starting to shine in my life, and lying to myself, thinking I could keep all these parts of my life separate. The new city, the new job, and even the attempt at dating, all outward signs of progress and forward movement, were a lie. I wanted to take only the good things, the things I thought people could handle, the things I could handle, and carry those into my future, but it doesn’t work that way. It wouldn’t work that way for me. How could I ever have a relationship or a future without being honest about my past? Before I could be in a relationship, I needed to work through some of the things that I had carefully packed away.

  The next morning, I went jogging in Central Park and stopped to look at the autumn leaves swirling around me. This season in New York was over. The city, I felt, had done what I had asked it to do. I was a California girl. My family was there. Pat’s foundation was near there. I felt a pull homeward, but in a healthy, new way. Tears filled my eyes as I jogged, because I felt love for this park and this city and what it, and its people, had given me. But it was time to go. When I got home, I called my sister.

  “The autumn leaves this morning are unbelievable,” I told her.

  “What’s up?” she yawned. It
was too early for her; I had forgotten the time difference again. But she forced herself awake as I talked.

  We talked for an hour. She had the best idea: I could move to California without getting caught up in the old shadows, and also be closer to the foundation in Arizona, if I settled in L.A. instead of the Bay Area. It seemed brilliant. I was excited. I am a gypsy and like to move, but this time I was moving not in emotional desperation but in happy anticipation. I didn’t know what was out there for me, but I knew what was inside me now, and it was a heart beating toward the future.

  One of my favorite underlined passages in Pat’s copy of Self-Reliance read “Insist on yourself. Never imitate.”

  Simple, strong, and clear advice. It was time for me to live as Emerson suggested, to be true to who I was. All of me.

  Part 3: 2007–2010

  Tip the world over on its side and everything loose will land in Los Angeles.

  —Frank Lloyd Wright

  Chapter Eight

  My Realtor, Josh, pulled up outside the condo I’d rented in Santa Monica, and I climbed into his black BMW. I’d met Josh through my good friend Matt, and as we chatted in the car, I thought they sort of looked alike, with their short, dark hair and lean, athletic builds. Josh was young and smart, and having spent a number of years in Los Angeles, he had a good grasp of the real estate market and the neighborhoods I would like.

  “Ready for round four?” he asked.

  “I’m ready,” I said, and meant it. I’d really enjoyed the past few weekends of winding around the streets of West Hollywood. At first I had considered staying near the beach, in Venice or Santa Monica. Since I’d returned to California, I’d made a frequent practice of running on the beach, relishing the fact that if I were still in New York, I’d be ducking my chin into my thick wool coat to avoid the harsh, windy winter bite. Romantic beach runs gave way to practicality, however, and I decided to narrow my search to Hollywood so I’d be closer to work and avoid the notorious Los Angeles traffic. After I’d spent many years moving around the country, there was a part of me that wanted to settle in and find a place to call home. So far I’d lived in Los Angeles only three months, and still felt like a visitor instead of a resident. But there was another part of me that felt incredibly anxious at the thought of anything permanent. What if I didn’t like it there? What if the arid climate, Santa Ana winds, and absence of seasons made me want to move to another city? I negotiated these conflicting voices and reasoned that, nomadic tendencies aside, a small place that needed some work might be a good investment opportunity. Worst-case scenario, if I decided I wanted to leave Los Angeles, I could always rent the house out once I’d remodeled it. My parents had built a few homes while I was growing up, and I’d been an interested observer when Christine undertook a huge remodel. A little fixer-upper didn’t seem that overwhelming, and might tap into some of my creative side, which had lain pretty dormant.

  As Josh and I made our way through West Hollywood and up Laurel Canyon, the landscape shifted a bit. There was more space, fewer people. Houses were still clustered together, but not as packed in as in the flat part of Hollywood. We drove up to the top of a large hill, wound around a bit through hairpin turns, and ended up on a small street with pink bougainvillea dotting nearly every home. We weren’t too far away from the city, but it felt like a world away. It was quiet up here, with an eclectic mix of houses that seemed as though they’d been haphazardly thrown up onto the hillside. Many of them looked like they’d been renovated, but a few were still in desperate need of a makeover.

  The house for sale was situated just off the street and had an ivy-covered wall and a small gate leading to a courtyard. The garden was terribly overgrown, with the ivy strangling everything. We walked in through the front door to get a look at the interior. A plush rug was thrown into the entryway, and a simple table with fresh flowers drew my eye to the far window. The owner had clearly tried to make the place presentable to get the most out of potential buyers, but it was still pretty run down. Faux brick lined the kitchen walls, giving it a shabby cottage feel, and the low ceiling made the space seem closed in and dark. Despite the dated interior, I saw possibility. If you stripped everything away and opened up the ceiling, a simple floor plan was revealed. I knew I would need a contractor to take a look before I finalized an offer, but something about this little house told me it held great potential. I loved the location, tucked up into the hills. I loved how quiet it seemed. I made my way around the house, mentally taking inventory of all the work that needed to be done.

  “I think I like this one,” I said to Josh.

  “Really?” he questioned, surprised.

  “Yeah,” I said, “if you bust out the ceiling and open it up a bit, it could be really nice.”

  He looked around, still unsure but trying to see what I saw.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Think about it a little tonight, and then if you still like it, let’s talk tomorrow about putting in an offer.”

  That night I called Christine and described the little broken-down house. She loved the idea and thought it would be an ideal project for me. I called a contractor to take a look the next day and got the all clear. I put in an offer, and after a few negotiations, the house up in the hills was mine.

  When I’d moved from New York, I had kept my old job for ESPN, working out of a small production office. The day the deal closed, Josh came by my office to drop off the keys to my new house. I took the short trip up the twisty canyon after work and stood hesitantly outside the front door before finally opening it and walking inside. It was starting to get dark, and as I walked around, my footsteps echoed off the hardwood floors. Suddenly I wasn’t sure about this. I wanted to be excited about my new life, or the one I was working toward. But all I felt standing in the entry of my new house was alone.

  It was interesting to me how, three years after Pat had died, the happy things in life made me the saddest. The moments when something really good or exciting happened, like when I got the job for ESPN or learned that old friends were getting married, or even when mundane stuff happened, like when I found a great new restaurant, I still turned to share it with Pat and felt the loss of him quickly and severely. In an instant, my emotions would switch from cheerful to devastated as I realized the one person I wanted to share any happy moment with was gone.

  Also, I knew I had a tedious and probably painful task ahead of me. When I’d left our little cottage in Washington, I’d put everything Pat and I owned in storage. Now that I was staying put for a while, the time had come to go through it all, so I booked a flight to Seattle and a hotel room for one night. I didn’t tell anyone from my old job that I’d be in town, and didn’t tell anyone other than Christine that I’d even be gone from Los Angeles.

  Flying in, watching the many waterways, islands, peninsulas, and archipelagos that fit together like a three-dimensional puzzle, felt strange. Though I’d loved the scenery in the Northwest, loved many of the people I’d met there, what I wanted was to get to the storage unit, get my stuff done, and get out. This was a trip of necessity, not pleasure. I landed at Sea-Tac Airport and made my way to the rental cars, remembering how I’d gotten a flat tire in the Sea-Tac garage late one night, when Pat had been deployed to Iraq. I’d sat in my car for a minute, recognizing that my life as a military wife meant taking care of this sort of thing by myself. And in the end, it felt empowering not to have to call anyone besides AAA to come save me.

  * * *

  When Pat and I lived in Arizona together, we went about decorating our home in a collaborative way. Pat was opinionated about everything in life, and décor was no different. Rule one was that it shouldn’t be too feminine. Rule two was that it couldn’t be showy. I’ve always liked things to be a certain style; I feel it’s an expression of who you are. But when I was in my early twenties, I was more self-conscious about my spending, because of Pat’s aversion to it. Though Pat’s childhood had an abundance of love and laughter, money was often tight, and ther
e wasn’t much room for material objects. This made him one of the most thoughtful and creative gift givers I’ve ever met, and gave him an appreciation for the little things. We bought very simple furniture for our house in Phoenix and kept the whole place understated.

  Overall, when we talked about house stuff—“What do you think of this couch?” “Don’t you think a wine rack would look nice in that corner?”—in a lot of ways, it felt like playing house. We were twenty-two, and the whole idea of picking out furniture and paint colors and vacuuming on weekends and mowing the lawn was novel; trips to the hardware store were exciting.

  When I’d moved us to Washington while Pat was in basic training, I knew his taste well enough that I made the house reflect both of our likes and dislikes. I like clean, uncluttered spaces, so I tried to be minimalist about what went on the walls and bookshelves. But since Pat liked knickknacks, I reserved some shelf space and grouped his favorite belongings together. A game ball from when Pat was in Little League got pole position on a bookshelf near his books of philosophy, history, and poetry. Other decorations included a framed picture of Tiger, the gigantic tabby cat he’d had as a kid; and a framed picture of Winston Churchill.

  During the time I’d lived in the cottage with just Kevin after Pat was gone, we had made no changes to our environment. We were trying to live in some weird alternative world where Pat was still alive. I moved among Pat’s things but never touched them, and the house looked just as he’d left it. Just in case he came back, I’d reasoned at the time. He would need his things. He would need his socks and the frayed T-shirts worn in just the right places. I couldn’t get rid of them or even stomach putting them away. When an old friend of ours, Jim, came to visit soon before I left for New York, I could tell he was taken aback when he entered the house. Pictures of Pat and signs of his presence were everywhere, from his shoes still casually thrown in the corner of the room, to his coats in the closet, to his books and decorative hiking boot on the shelves. The only sign of his death was a huge picture that hung over the fireplace, of him sitting in a tree, gun in hand, taken a few days before he had been killed.