by Sally Koslow
“Who’s the letter for? Dr. Barry? A secret boyfriend?”
Did everyone think I had a boyfriend?
“No, Annabel.”
“But that little child, she can’t even read. You’d need to read it to her.” Ella reads not just letters but whole books, as Narcissa never fails to mention. “So technically—”
Like most West Indian housekeepers in our neighborhood, thanks to her powers of persuasion, Narcissa is paid better than not only every editorial assistant in Manhattan but also 20 percent of the attorneys who’ve recently been sworn into the New York Bar. But Delfina is unconvinced. “I don’t think it’s my place to open this letter,” she says. God will punish me, I hear her think.
“Then what are you going to do about it?”
Delfina peers again at the clock—it’s almost eleven—as she moves to plan B. “I’ll let you know,” she says, and hangs up. She places the envelope next to the Bible she keeps next to her bed. With Baby Moses now safely in the bulrushes, she returns to sort through the rest of the stuff in the desk very carefully. Who knows what else she might find? A winning lottery ticket, perhaps? She checks the Bible every few minutes.
I stare at the envelope and remember everything.
I’m proud to say there were times in my life when I had a sense of occasion. This was one of them. First, I visited a stationery store, since I didn’t want to write this letter on my MacBook and simply hit print. As soon as the saleswoman told me a particular shade of paper was called Cosmic Lavender, I decided it was my destiny and ordered a hundred sheets with a swirling white monogram. I sat at this very desk, opened the lid of the navy blue box, lifted a sheet, and slowly copied the text I’d rewritten endlessly over the course of a week. I only earned B’s in English, but I felt I made my point.
Darling Annabel, I’d begun. When you read this letter, there are things I want to make sure you understand….
Delfina tries to drift through the day as if it were ordinary. She and Annabel visit the butterflies at the Museum of Natural History and cook colorful wagon-wheel pasta for dinner. During Annabel’s bath, she reads her Madeline and tucks her into bed. At eight-fifteen, Delfina retreats to her bedroom next to the kitchen, where she moved in after my work with Luke started taking me across the globe. We painted it together in a shade Delfina chose after considerable deliberation, a smoky plum called—inexplicably—Lazy Afternoon. Perhaps Delfina picked it because her life has offered so few of those.
“Did the painter fall into grape jelly?” Kitty asked when she saw the walls. But I always admired Delfina’s conviction on the matter of this paint and much more. When Annabel pokes her head into this hidden domain with its white organdy curtains, floaty as bridesmaids’ dresses, she thinks she’s entered an enchanted kingdom.
A few hours later, Barry walks through the door with her. Delfina is still up, watching Lifetime, although usually she’s asleep by now. She hears Barry leave Stephanie to hang up her own coat while he heads straight to Annabel’s room, where he brushes away her blond hair for a soundless kiss on a plump, damp cheek.
“Good night, angel,” he whispers. Annabel opens one eyelid, says, “Your whiskers scratch, Daddy,” turns over, and tries to reboot her dream.
In the kitchen, Stephanie pulls a bottle of water out of the refrigerator. Another woman is at home in my home. She knows where to find the coffee beans and my favorite café au lait bowls, as well as my thickest, newest bath towels and the Dr. Hauschka lemon body oil I hoarded because it cost thirty dollars for only 3.4 fluid ounces. I want to pour the bottle of water on Stephanie’s fluffy, salon-blow-dried head. Let her dehydrate, with lips so scaly Barry will refuse to kiss them. See if I care.
Barry and Stephanie walk, arms wound around each other’s waist, toward the bedroom. As she sits on my side of the bed and unzips her tall, spiky boots, Stephanie sees the letter. “Hey, Bear,” she shouts to him in the bathroom. “There’s an envelope here for Annabel.”
Stephanie pulls open the drawer on my bedside table, finds an emery board, and begins to file a ragged edge on one of her long nails. The casual intimacy of the gesture makes me as enraged as the fact that Barry shouts back, “Be there in a minute, baby.” I despise that he calls her that as much as I loathe the way she carelessly pushes back my ivory matelassé coverlet. My ritual was to carefully fold it in thirds and lay it on the mohair chaise in the corner. I suddenly feel as attached to this bedcover as if it were from my grandmother’s trousseau, not casually ordered on sale from a website I can’t remember.
Barry walks into the room as Stephanie lights a candle. It gives off a musky scent. My husband is only two steps from the bed when his eyes fall on the envelope. He freezes. “Where’d that come from?” His tone is accusing, as if Stephanie is playing a practical joke. He scowls, which makes her scowl back.
“What’s wrong? You look like it’s going to explode.” She hands him the letter. “Here.”
He doesn’t want to touch it. “It’s for Annabel,” he says.
“Okay,” Stephanie says. She stretches out the word and gets up to take her turn in the bathroom. What’s gotten into him? she wonders. Why’s he gone all serious on me? When Stephanie emerges, doing justice to an abbreviated black camisole, the letter is out of sight, although Barry has read it. He slumps against the pillows, his muscular legs stretched in front of him. Stephanie walks to his side and waits for him to move over. When he fails to budge, she begins to knead his shoulders.
“Not now,” he says, and removes her hands.
“Want to go to sleep?” I admire her seductive tone.
“Actually, I’m wide awake,” he says, although in the taxi riding home from the theater, he’d dozed.
“Well, that’s good,” she says, “very good,” and waits for his embrace. It doesn’t happen, not even when she circles her tongue in his ear. “What’s going on?”
In the same situation I might have cried, but Stephaniewoman, made of razor blades and gumption, feels anger, which is exactly what I myself am feeling now. My wrath is a bottomless well, an echo of a larger, unnameable emotion. When Barry fails to answer Stephanie, she quickly dresses. This guy is heavy weather, she thinks. Or maybe he just needs more time. I can wait, she thinks. The good body, the medical practice, the money I can learn to be patient. Before my husband’s lover leaves the bedroom, she kisses Barry lightly, hoping her touch will be the rabbit’s foot that reverses the evening’s direction.
He pulls away. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“Want me to stay?” Say yes, she hopes. I’m your answer. When he stares ahead, Stephanie says, “I’ll speak to you tomorrow.” She walks out of the room as confidently as she entered it. As soon as Barry hears the front door shut, he snuffs the candle and takes the letter from the nightstand drawer to reread its three pages. By the end of the first page, he dabs his eyes with the hem of the sheet, deeply exhales, and reaches for the phone.
“What time is it?” Kitty mumbles after the fourth ring.
“Just past eleven.”
When my mother-in-law’s sleeping pill begins to wear off enough for her to register that her only child is on the phone, her panic registers. “What now? Is something wrong with Annabel?”
“Kitty, we’re fine,” he says, although he doesn’t believe it. “But I’ve found a letter. From Molly.”
“So?” Kitty says. Why is this an occasion for waking me? she wonders. Has Barry gotten weepy over some old love note? Maybe he drank too much tonight, or isn’t coping nearly as well as he appears to be. He’s working and he’s dating, for God’s sake, and Stephanie’s the kind of woman men like. He’s moving on with his life, as he should.
“So? Do you want to hear this letter or not?”
“Okay, read the thing,” Kitty says as firmly as she can through a pharmaceutical haze, but all she hears is a low snuffle that sounds as if Barry might be crying. She repeats the words, this time with the kindness of a mother. “Read
it, darling.”
“‘To my darling Annabel,’” he begins as I lip-synch “‘When a mother loves a child for eternity, every time that daughter breathes the mother is breathing along with her, hoping that every one of her child’s dreams come true. My love for you never stops and never will. It goes around and around like a carousel, a hula hoop of hugs.’”
Barry stops. He squeezes shut his eyes, hoping to stem his tears.
“Is there more?” Kitty whispers hoarsely over the white-noise machine tuned to “country eve.” Falling asleep to crickets wouldn’t do it for me, but it works for her.
“Yes, a lot. Molly even gets around to me.”
“And me?” Kitty is now awake.
“You, Mother, didn’t make the cut.”
“Just as well.” No love lost there, she thinks. “Who else knows about this?”
“No one,” Barry says, having decided that Stephanie doesn’t count. “Absolutely no one.” I’m glad Delfina can’t hear this. Who does Barry think found the letter?
“First thing in the morning, you’ve got to call that detective and show this to him,” Kitty says as the wires connect. The letter is the ticket for the Marx family to get its life back. No more sideways stares from the manicurist or the bitch at the dry cleaner who pretends she can’t speak English. No more sudden hushes when I walk into the locker room at my club. Of course, everyone will dish the dirt about Molly’s having taken her own life, and maybe I’ll have to remind them, with Jackie Kennedy dignity, that my daughter-in-law was a bit—how shall I put it?—on the high-strung side.
People will shake their heads, feel sad for Barry, and sadly debate the best way to explain the tragedy to poor little Annabel. People will be full of advice on what Barry should say.
“I’m not going to Hicks before I call Molly’s parents.”
Right. The Divines, she thinks. “Darling,” Kitty says, “that won’t be easy. I’m so sorry for you.” My son shouldn’t have to be going through this. But this is the end of the road that has taken me on the worst ride of my life, she thinks, worse than when Stan—that would be Barry’s father—gambled away his business and my brother had to bail him out. “At least we’ll have closure.”
“‘Closure’? What are you talking about, Mother?” Barry’s voice rises despite his fatigue. “I don’t see how this letter proves a thing. Molly could have written it anytime after Annabel was born.”
“Come on. Sweetie, you don’t want to connect the dots. You’re too upset. Totally understandable.”
“Suicide? Really, I doubt it,” he says, but maybe his mother is right. He needs to sleep on the possibility. He repeats this sour-milk word-suicide—several times to himself. “Good night, Kitty. And don’t tell anyone about the letter, promise?”
“Would I lie?” she says.
Aren’t you the mother who promised my life would always be happy? he remembers as he hangs up the phone.
In two minutes Barry is as dead asleep as he always was as a resident. He wakes at his normal hour, doesn’t remember a dream about a vacation when we went to Prague and I got lost, and goes for his run as the sun rises over the park. With every tread, his brain considers what to say to my parents. I am warmed by the thought that he wants to cushion the blow. When he returns home, Annabel is eating breakfast.
“Don’t forget to leave those muddy shoes in the hall, Daddy,” she says, in little-wife mode.
“Don’t forget to give your father a big hug,” he calls back as he brings in the Times and the Wall Street Journal. Barry has cancelled the Post, since I’m the only one who read it except Delfina, who misses it. I was never able to start my day without Page Six and a glance at my horoscope. He swoops down to snuggle Annabel, who wiggles in her seat as she kisses her father’s cheek.
“Ick, you’re sweaty,” she says.
“Coffee, Doctor?” Delfina asks.
“Good morning, Delfina,” Barry says.
If he would actually look at Delfina, standing at the counter, he’d see her biting her lip and twisting her ring. She can’t bring herself to ask about the envelope.
“No coffee just yet, but thanks,” he adds, depositing the news papers on the kitchen table and padding to the bedroom in his stocking feet. He rushes through a scalding shower and dresses in a shirt and trousers before he picks up the phone. I am glad it is my father who answers.
“Dan,” Barry says, his hearty effort falling short.
My father reads voices like Gypsies do palms. “Everything okay in New York?”
“Annabel’s great,” he says, but struggles to support this thesis. “Growing like a weed, starting to recognize letters.”
“Well, that’s good.” In Chicago it’s not even seven. “What’s up that you’re calling so early?”
Barry drums his fingers on the nightstand. “Dan, I came across a letter,” he says. “From Molly.”
Since I died, my father’s gained twelve pounds, mostly in his face. He strokes his brand-new jowls. “That so?”
“I’d like you to hear it,” he says.
Do I want to endure this alone? my father thinks. Last night my mother, who’s developed insomnia, read a mystery from two until four in the morning, and she’s still sleeping. The woman is practically a saint, but when he wakes her she nips like a Jack Russell terrier and doesn’t mellow until after she’s anesthetized by her second jolt of java.
“Dan, are you there?” Barry says.
“I’ll call you back in ten minutes, Barry. Claire should be on the line.”
Ten minutes, ten hours. It feels the same to Barry. After thirty-five minutes, the phone rings. “Barry dear,” my mother says, “good morning. Read us this letter you’ve found.”
She doesn’t disintegrate until he gets to the part about her.
No one teaches you how to be a mother, Annabel. I was lucky, because I had Grammy Claire, the best mother in the whole world, who didn’t realize that every day she was showing me how to be a parent someday myself. She has special powers. When I was little, she could just look at me and know if I had a temperature or wanted a graham cracker or had fibbed to Lucy.
My parents, who are sitting side by side, each with a phone to an ear, grab each other’s hand as the letter continues to extol my father’s fourteen-carat-gold virtues and moves on to what to me passed for wisdom.
Don’t marry a man who thinks you talk too much, doesn’t make you laugh at least twice a day, or farts in front of you and isn’t embarrassed. (Feel free to disregard the last part after six months of dating.)
Never wear ankle strap shoes, unless your legs turn out to be a lot longer than mine.
Learn to roast a chicken.
Even though Mandarin Chinese would be more practical, make French your second language. You’ll be at home in Paris, where I hope you will take a junior year abroad. When you do, order the hot chocolate at Angelina’s.
Print out your pictures and put them in an album. Label! Date!
Don’t waste time balancing your checkbook.
When you’re crabby, fake a good mood.
Never ask a two-year-old a question to which she can answer, “No!”
Make at least one new friend every year.
Don’t judge people by where they went to college.
When in doubt, paint your walls the color of vanilla ice cream.
Remember that Big Macs have 24 fat grams.
Keep your perfume in the refrigerator.
And so on. The list covers every area of banal daily life—hair, friendship, diet, skin care, and, of course, home decoration—until it finally ends.
50. Most important, Annie-belle: toughen up. God gives everyone her own special bag of breaks, but what makes the difference between happy and sad is whether you waste time being jealous and small. Don’t. Learn to recognize good luck when it’s waving at you, hoping to get your attention. Sometimes the universe tries very hard to send you a message. No matter what life hands you, angel-girl, bounce back. Be resilient.
Self-pity is a waste, and life is short enough without it. Do not feel sorry for yourself and don’t expect everything to be perfect. Work on getting a sense of proportion—you’ll know what that means when you’re older—so you can handle the disappointments that march along every day like ants. When nothing good happens, stand up straight and think of all the better things ahead….
But there is no ahead for Molly Divine Marx, and my parents are shutting down. “Stop, Barry,” my father says. “We’ve heard enough.”
“The thing is,” Barry asks impatiently, “this is what’s spooking me. Do you think Molly … knew she was going to die?”
“Like when you’re thinking about someone and then the phone rings,” my mother says, “that funny feeling in your bones?”
“Not exactly. I’m looking at this letter, which Molly clearly put a lot of thought into, and wondering about … something else.”
The silence between Highland Park and Manhattan drops like a shroud. “Do you honestly think our daughter might have taken her own life?” my father says, barely choking out the words, as outraged as if Barry has accused me of molesting a child. I love how my parents rise to my defense. They have never made me prouder.
“That’s preposterous,” my mother says, trying not to bellow at her son-in-law, who she knows is upset. She can’t even think suicide. “You lived with our daughter and she was sunshine, pure gold. Is there something you want to tell us?”
There isn’t.
Did you make our daughter miserable? they are both thinking, and Barry gets that as the message oozes through the phone lines.
“Have you called Lucy yet?” my mother asks.
“Maybe you want to tell her yourself?” Barry asks, hoping they’ll bite.
