The Letter

by Marie Tillman

  “Hey, Marie, I know I’m only here for the afternoon, but why don’t I come back and help you go through some of this stuff?” Jim said after looking around, then added tactfully, “It looks like a lot of work.”

  “Oh, thanks,” I said, “but that’s okay—it shouldn’t be too bad.” The truth was the comment made me feel physically assaulted. I wanted to do it alone. At that time, I felt like everything about Pat’s life had become public, and I didn’t want anyone—no matter how good a friend or how pure his intentions—touching the objects of our lives together. It would have felt like he was trespassing.

  Kevin moved out before I did. I blocked out the weekend before I moved to New York, and got boxes, tape, and packing material, and tried to prepare myself emotionally for what I had to do. I approached it gently, telling myself that I only had to go through the top drawer in the dresser. I opened it slowly and peeked in at the rows of socks and undershirts. Brown military-issued versions were shoved next to his civilian wear. His military gear had never seemed like him, and stood out in contrast to his often colorful wardrobe choices. Still, I carefully pulled out each pair of brown cotton socks, folded them together, and placed them in a box for safekeeping. I worked slowly for several hours, emptying drawers into boxes, sealing them up, and labeling their contents. Then I went out onto the porch, sat in the sun, and watched the boats float over the water, wondering about the people on board and the lives they lived. For three days, I sorted, folded, and packed away, never throwing out a thing. Each night I watched the sunset over the narrows. On the fourth day, a moving truck came, taking most of our belongings to storage.

  I moved to New York with a couple of suitcases only. I wasn’t sure how long I would be in Manhattan, and I told myself it was less expensive to buy a few things to furnish my tiny apartment than to move everything across the country. I became very good at playing tricks with myself so that I could pretend that things were not as they were. In reality, I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing the things we’d shared—the things we’d had for years in our homes in Phoenix and then in Washington—crammed into a tiny apartment in the city. So other than my clothes, everything sat in storage. I’d thought of it as locking this life up, tucking it away to be pulled out at another time.

  Now, two years later, I collected my rental car and drove out to the nondescript storage facility. The 9 x 10–foot room was just as I’d left it—crammed floor to ceiling with boxes, chairs, and tables. The furniture was all piled at the back of the unit, so I examined the boxes in front first. While I habitually throw everything away and am not very sentimental, Pat was. He kept every nice note he’d received from a coach or fan, every report card, every jersey and game ball, every trinket his mom had given him over the years. If they’d been mine, I would have tossed them long ago. I wasn’t going to display all this stuff at the new house, but I didn’t have the heart to throw them away when they’d meant so much to Pat. I put those boxes aside to mail to California, no doubt to sit in my garage for a while. I figured one day I’d be ready to let them go.

  Framed photographs came next. I’d taken a lot to New York, but dozens more sat in boxes. Photos of our high school crowd, of celebrating after ASU beat Cal to go to the Rose Bowl, of Thanksgiving in Arizona, of holidays in Tahoe, of our snow-covered yard in University Place after a storm that left us housebound, of Pat in a child-sized Halloween costume he’d bought at a grocery store on the way to a party. As with my wedding ring, there was no rule book for what to do with these snapshots.

  When I’d lived in New York, I’d become friends with a 9/11 widower. He’d remarried, and I was hanging out at his house one day and noticed he had pictures of his late wife up everywhere. I can’t say exactly why, but it felt strange to me. The photos seemed dated, as I knew photos of Pat soon would. Pat would forever be twenty-seven, frozen in time, while I was growing older every day. But if I didn’t have photos up, wouldn’t people who came to my house think that was strange? If I had too many photos up, would people think that was strange? So much significance was attached to these small prints, and in the end, as I sat in the concrete storage facility, contemplating the problem, I was just tired of it all. Pat was much more than these photos. Pat was part of my daily thoughts and decisions, whether I had his image up on the wall or not. He was a part of me, like my arm. I didn’t need to look down at it to know it was there; it just was. I’d ship those boxes to California, I decided, but I wouldn’t put all the pictures up at my new house.

  Pat’s clothes were easier to deal with, as I no longer expected him to come home looking to put them back on. The boxes were neatly labeled, and I knew once I got them home to L.A., I could search through them and make sure there wasn’t a favorite sweatshirt or hat I’d want to hold on to. Finally I came to the furniture—the Pottery Barn couch, the cottagey throw pillows and comforters. Before coming up here, I’d thought maybe some of the furniture could be used in my new house, but as I examined the dark brown chairs, beige couch, and rust-colored throw pillows, I realized I was looking at an old life. My style had changed; the house was different; the scenery was different. I was different.

  * * *

  Back in Los Angeles, I went to the bookstore and bought every home magazine available. I pored over the pages, trying to figure out what I wanted my new house to look like. In the end I kept things pretty simple: dark wood floors, white walls, white marble countertops with subtle gray veins running through them. This house was like many things in my life now, gutted to the essence. My external space became a reflection of my internal space. Only the essentials were left.

  Once the construction was done and I was finally able to sleep in the house, I started getting excited about making it a home. Now that I had 1,600 square feet to do whatever I wanted with, it was kind of exhilarating. I wanted it to be calm and comfortable, and even a bit girly. I didn’t have to take anyone else’s taste into consideration when picking paint colors or bedding, and I found some joy in knowing I could do whatever I wanted. I became a little obsessed with wallpaper and found a beautiful print with large flowers that wound up the walls of my bedroom. It was certainly more feminine than I would have picked in the past, but I loved it. I ended up with a mostly neutral palette of soft grays, beige, and white, but little splashes of color appeared in turquoise vases, lilac pillows, and pink throws.

  The exterior received a face-lift, too, with a fresh coat of light gray paint and white trim, keeping with the simple neutral palette. For the front door, I wanted a little color and settled on a sunny shade of yellow that made me smile every time I came home. I planted a small cutting garden of hydrangeas and roses in the front courtyard so I could always have fresh flowers in the house, and nurtured the avocado tree that was already there. As I slowly brought the house back to life, I felt life coming back to me as well.

  While I was trying to be a bit more social in Los Angeles, I still relished time alone, and the little house felt like the perfect place to regroup after too much time traveling for work or being around people. As soon as I started the climb up the hills and turned onto my little street, I felt better. Up here it was quiet; I could hear birds in the middle of the day and coyotes at night. I could find the solitude I still craved when I felt like I needed to think.

  Shortly after moving in, I had a long day at work, dealing with a variety of mundane problems—another appearance cancellation, another agent fretting about the perception of his client appearing on an ESPN show. I wound my way up the canyon to my new little house, feeling the stress dissipate as my car climbed up the hill. I pulled into the drive and noticed a bottle of wine and a note. I looked around, wondering who had left the gift, and ripped open the note.

  Welcome to the neighborhood, it read. You’ve chosen a truly magical place. It was signed by the neighbors to my left.

  I hope so. I smiled to myself. I could use a little magic.

  * * *

  One of the biggest selling points of moving to Southern Californ
ia was the proximity of some of my dearest friends from high school: Ben, Jamie, and Brandon. Ben and Pat had known each other since kindergarten, and Ben and I had become fast friends when we’d met at Leland High. Jamie—now Ben’s wife—was a year younger than us. She and I had been cheerleaders together in high school, and I’d always appreciated her carefree spirit. Brandon was Ben’s younger brother. He was Kevin’s age, and the two of them were close friends, so the whole group just meshed together.

  Jamie had gone to ASU with Pat, and whenever she’d see him on campus, she’d run up and jump on him. She was the only person who could get away with that, as she was like a little sister to him. Ben and Jamie bought a place in Lake Tahoe, and Pat and I would spend vacations there along with other close friends, skiing in the winter and hanging out on the lake in the summer. We’d drink beer and have dance parties in the kitchen in the evenings, and felt completely at ease with one another. A lot of times with couple friends, the men might be friends or the women might be friends, but it’s harder to find a fit where all are equally friends. That’s what we had with Ben and Jamie and, extending it, with Brandon and Kevin.

  While we had been close for a long time, the past couple of years since Pat had died had brought us even closer. It was still amazing to me how things shook out after Pat’s death. Some of the friends I thought would be of comfort weren’t, and those relationships slowly faded away. Meanwhile, other relationships strengthened amid the turmoil, and Ben, Jamie, and Brandon quickly became like family. Pat had a lot of friends who I wasn’t as close with, who reached out to me after he died. I loved them for the gesture, but I also knew they were doing it for him and didn’t really know me. And then I had friends reach out to me who had been in my life since childhood, but who hadn’t known Pat. But Ben, Jamie, and Brandon knew and loved us both. When Ben and Jamie had a baby less than a year after Pat died, Ben felt a deep ache of missing Pat and not being able to share the joy of having his first child with his friend. He could relate to what I was going through like no other friend could.

  When I moved to Los Angeles, we often got together for dinner on Sundays. I loved having a place to go where I could feel at home, loved being with people who knew and understood me and were able to accept the bad with the good. There were no pretenses; I could be angry or sad. I could sit on Ben and Jamie’s couch and eat pizza and watch television all day without feeling like I was putting them out. But mostly, time with them calmed me down, helped me feel centered and loved. When the whirlwind of life seemed too much, they helped bring everything into perspective and helped me realize how important relationships were in my life. It was important to me to feel connected to other people and know that I wasn’t alone in the world.

  One Sunday I picked up some wine and drove out to Ben and Jamie’s. I’d been looking forward to dinner all week. After a long slog at work, I just wanted to relax with old friends and enjoy the warm summer night. ESPN had put on an event in Los Angeles that week, and as I had been setting things up and fielding questions left and right, an irate sports agent had come over to me and started yelling about the size of his client’s hotel room. Though I knew better than to take it personally, the encounter was still with me.

  “Rough week?” Jamie asked when I walked in.

  “How can you tell?”

  “Two bottles of wine,” she said.

  “Just a crazy month at work,” I said. But as I settled in, and as we all sat down for dinner by the pool, we started talking more about my job. “I don’t think this is what I want to do anymore,” I said, surprising myself. I told them about the experience of getting yelled at by the agent. Not that it was a new occurrence, exactly, but I was sick of it. “You wouldn’t believe these expos set up for the athletes.” I described the scene before the show: We’d had a hotel suite chock-full of expensive watches, jackets, hats, and bags for the celebrities to pick from. The manufacturers reasoned that if so-and-so was photographed for People magazine wearing their brand of jacket or purse, well, then, the rest of the world would want it, too. Part of my job was to make sure the celebrities were exposed to all the merchandise. “See how I contribute to society?” I laughed. “I help make kids everywhere want a Rolex.”

  “That’s crazy,” Ben said, stuck on the image of hotel rooms packed with swag. “Who lives like that?”

  “And how can I?” asked Brandon. “Seriously, Marie—can you hook me up?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” I smiled. “I don’t know…it’s not all bad. Sometimes we do cool, meaningful stuff, and Maura’s great. And I don’t have any idea what I’d do next. It’s all well and good to want what you do to matter, but it’s not like you just snap your fingers and it happens.”

  “Of course it doesn’t,” said Jamie, “because you’re working all the time. You need to take some time off, get away, think about some of this stuff.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, and tried to turn the conversation away from me. But I kept thinking about what Jamie had said. Of course, she also thought I should get married eight or nine more times, because falling in love is fun, she reasoned, and weddings are fun. Though I took her free-spirited advice with a grain of salt, it had been a long time since I’d traveled for anything other than work. I hadn’t left the country since Pat had died. Maybe I should. It would be great to get away, see something new, and just break away from my routine for a while. The uncertainty of exploring a new city had always excited me, and I realized I missed the adventure of it all.

  I’m both a planner and impulsive. After the evening’s dinner, I went with my latter tendencies. I told Maura I was leaving ESPN, but didn’t have a plan for what I would do next. Another media job materialized, but I wasn’t sure I wanted it. While I closed things out at ESPN, I surveyed my friends as traveling companions. Most of them were married or had kids or jobs that were hard to leave, so I decided I’d just go alone. I refused to let the “single” part stop me.

  I had a few cities on my short list of places I wanted to visit, and told my childhood friend Erin that Buenos Aires was one of the top three contenders. “Marie!” Erin practically shouted. “You know Juan still lives there, right?” Juan had been an exchange student at our high school. He’d become friends with both me and Pat and had gone to prom with our group of friends. After the year ended and Juan went back to Argentina, Erin kept in touch with him. I sent him an email, not really expecting a response, but a few short days later I heard back from him. He wrote that he was excited to show me around his city, and when could I come? It was just the push I needed, and I booked my flight.

  On the night of my thirty-first birthday, I boarded a plane to Buenos Aires, looking for a little adventure, some introspection, and perspective on what I should do with my life. I landed at night, tired from the travel and the time change. I collected my luggage and clambered into a taxi, and as we drove through the lights of the unfamiliar city, I had a moment of fear. Some concerned people in my life had been uncertain about the Argentina trip, had told me they weren’t sure it was a good idea for a woman to be traveling alone in a South American country. Though I had brushed the comments off, they came back to me. The fact was that I was in a big city, in a big country, in a big world, and I was by myself. No one knows where I am, I thought. I’d planned the trip so quickly that I hadn’t told anyone what my itinerary was or where I was staying. Something could happen to me, and no one would know where to look. Through my mind ran countless movie trailers of the woman who disappears while traveling, and the brave sister who takes off to find her. When I got to my hotel, I sent Christine an email and told her the basics of where I was and planned to be. Then I thought about Pat, and how ridiculous he would think my train of thought. He loved nothing more than an adventure and would never have let fear stand in his way. Neither would I. There was so much to be afraid of in life, and I was tired of it.

  That was the last time I felt fear or doubt in Argentina.

  After sleeping my first morning away, I got d
ressed and wandered around the streets near my hotel, taking it all in. Buenos Aires is a city full of juxtapositions, a mix of old world and modern, with as many high-end, slick neighborhoods as downtrodden areas. Its rocky economic past was still evident around the city, but the lively spirit of its people emanated from even the most dilapidated streets.

  My hotel was situated in Recoleta, a short walk to a famous cemetery full of elaborate marble mausoleums. Past the cemetery was an open-air flea market with stalls stretching for miles. There were thousands of leather goods for sale, endless jewelry, and more food to sample than you could try in a year. It was a feast for the senses. I walked aimlessly, still a little jet-lagged from the long flight. I walked over to one vendor selling leather bags and belts, and my eye caught a pair of funny leather sandals that reminded me of a pair Pat used to own. They weren’t full-on gladiator sandals, with leather straps going up the leg, but they were pretty close. While everyone around him had worn Tevas and Birkenstocks, there was Pat with his handmade leather shoes from some little shop in Arizona. He’d worn them proudly until they broke. The memory didn’t make me sad, which surprised me.

  “You like them?” asked the vendor.

  “Yes, very much,” I said, and smiled at him. I ran my fingers over the sandals for sale, feeling the cool leather and intricate braiding. Pat would love it here, I thought.

  Pat had been so much fun to travel with. While I had the travel bug before he did, and had been the instigator and planner of our first long trip to Europe when we lived in Arizona, Pat quickly caught the bug, too. People go one of two ways when traveling: They either are afraid of a new situation, or they’re curious. And he was always curious. In fact, Pat was the most curious person I’d ever known, and going out of the country with a curious person is like going to Disneyland with a five-year-old. It was a delicious display of sheer energy and enthusiasm. “What do you suppose that’s all about?” he’d ask when we’d come across a random statue in France, or a half-crumbled wall in Rome. He’d ask this dozens of times a day as we meandered our way through big cities and tiny villages. And he wanted to taste everything; he was on a quest to find the best beer in Germany, the most delicious croissants in France, the thickest Guinness in Ireland.