The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen

by Constance C. Greene

  “Whadya mean, practically irreplaceable? Either it’s irreplaceable or it’s not,” he said.

  “Tim, I have absolutely no time to argue with you now. I told Kev I’d have the stuff unpacked when he got here, to give him a chance to look it over. And he’ll be here in half an hour. Or an hour. Whichever’s soonest.” His mother sometimes delivered lines in a way that, if you didn’t know her, might make you think she was an airhead, too. Far from the case. She was some smart cookie.

  Kev was his mother’s partner in the antique shop. He was thirty-seven and gorgeous. Or so Tim’s mother thought.

  “Isn’t he gorgeous?” was the first thing she’d said after Kev had left that first night he showed up at the house. “Isn’t he the most gorgeous thing you ever saw?”

  “You want a straight answer?” was what he’d said to that. But his mother had been occupied with other things and hadn’t answered.

  “Look at this!” she cried now. “Will you just look at this!”

  He went over to see what all the excitement was about.

  “It looks like an old trunk to me,” he said.

  “It is an old trunk. See what’s inside. Why, they must’ve been here for ages. More than a hundred years, I’ll bet. Maybe more than that.”

  His mother’s eyes shone. Nothing turned her on like the mention of age, as long as it wasn’t her own. She got all hot and bothered when she talked about the age of a piece of furniture, or a picture, or anything she collected. “It has some age to it,” she always said when trying to justify what seemed to him an outrageously high price for some piece of old junk.

  Now, carefully, tenderly, she lifted from the trunk’s bottom a pile of tattered paper tied with a pale ribbon. “They’re old letters,” she said softly. “Just look, Tim. They’re tied with this beautiful ribbon. I’ll bet they’re love letters. What do you want to bet? Otherwise, why would they have been saved?” She began to untie the ribbon and it fell apart in her hand, sending the letters drifting to the ground like the last leaves of autumn.

  “I told you!” his mother crowed. “Why, the ribbon was so old it just disintegrated. Isn’t that marvelous?”

  “Maybe they’re letters from George Washington to old Martha from Valley Forge,” he suggested. “Or from Abe Lincoln to John Wilkes Booth telling him he was a bad actor.” He liked that one.

  “I think I hear Kev. Back in a minute.” His mother flew off in the new, girlish way she’d had since the advent of Kev into her life.

  He stayed where he was, his imagination fired by finding the old letters. Even if they weren’t love letters, they were still interesting simply because they were old. And if they turned out to speak words of love, it would be all right to read them, because all the lovers concerned must be long gone.

  On his hands and knees, he crawled around, gathering up the letters. He glanced at one now and then. There were no envelopes, simply musty-smelling pieces of paper covered, for the most part, in spidery, slanted handwriting. The same person must have written them all, he thought.

  “My dearest darling,” one began, and he hastily looked away, as if he’d intruded on something very personal. My dearest darling. Nobody talked like that. Not anymore they didn’t. But what did you say after openers like that?

  “I carry with me your dear face,” the letter went on, and, entranced, he settled down to read it all. “I have no need of perfumed remembrances. I smell your scent, it is with me all the day and night, sweeter than any flower.” Then the guy had to blow it all by telling a long, boring story about how the locks on the Erie Canal had gotten stuck and had made him late in his arrival in Buffalo. What a turkey. The letter was signed “Thine, until Death doth part us.” The letter writer’s name was Willie.

  “Kev’s here, Tim.” His mother stood there, beaming, presenting Kev to him like a present wrapped in shiny paper and tied with a big bow. “Hi, fella,” Kev said, as if he were a dog. Kev always called him “fella.” He personally had known three dogs called Fella. Was Kev trying to tell him something?

  He got up off the floor, lifted a hand in greeting, and put the letters back into the trunk.

  Thine, until Death doth part us. Heavy, really heavy. But eye-catching. Capital D for Death. He’d have to remember that. Maybe he could use it sometime. The last letter he’d written had been a thank-you note to his grandparents after Christmas for a ten-dollar check they’d sent. They still thought ten bucks was a fortune. They’d told him not to spend it all in one place. Probably they thought he would use the money to take a trip to Vegas, play the slots, buy the show girls champagne, and play chemin de fer until the sun came up.

  “I think you’ll like this china, Kev,” his mother said. She was always trying to please this bozo, trying to make him say that something she’d bought was a real find. It made him sick, the way she tried to please Kev. And Kev was very picky. Compared to Kev, Tim’s father was a piece of cake.

  “Umm.” Kev inspected the china. “Chip here.” With his thumb Kev traced the chip on a cup. That was the way Kev operated, point out the bad things straight off, ignore the good. The china looked OK to Tim, although, perhaps, not museum quality. They were always talking about stuff being “museum quality.” If it was museum quality, why wasn’t it in a museum?

  Kev came over to where he was kneeling by the trunk.

  “What’s that?” Kev looked inside the trunk.

  “Letters.”

  “We found a pile of old letters in the trunk,” his mother said. “Tim’s intrigued.”

  “Maybe they’re worth something,” Kev said, hunkering down, picking up the pile, thumbing through it. “You never know.”

  He wanted to say, “Hands off. They’re mine!” and was wise enough to keep quiet.

  “They’re only valuable if they’re written by famous people,” he said quickly. He didn’t want Kev kibitzing. Those letters were his, his and his mother’s. He didn’t want Kev sticking his nose in where he wasn’t wanted. Besides, Kev would only make fun of them. “I have to split,” he said, getting up. “Got a science project to finish.”

  “Oh, it’s Pasteur at work, is it?” Kev flashed one of his famous grins, trying to be friends. No such luck, Kev. You have no idea of what a jerk you are. Why don’t you take your tent and silently steal away, like the poet said? Kev had a bright-orange tent he lugged around with him in an effort to establish himself as a lover of the great outdoors. Tim was willing to bet Kev never pitched that tent very far away from hot running water and a diner whose parking lot was loaded with trucks, their drivers inside shoveling down excellent chow. Kev had suggested they go camping together, just the two of them. His mother thought that a wonderful idea. He told Kev, truthfully, about his fear of snakes and porcupines. Kev laughed until he choked and had to be pounded on the back. The orange tent was stowed in their garage for safekeeping, waiting for the call of the wild to beckon once again.

  He pocketed the letters surreptitiously as his mother showed Kev a box of old books she’d picked up at a tag sale.

  “I don’t suppose there are any first editions?” Kev asked, already bored. He had the attention span of a two-year-old, Kev did. He’d invested some money in the antique shop, which was housed in a run-down building at the end of an alley off the main street in town. The landlord spent his winters in the Bahamas and gave them a special price if they signed a year’s lease.

  “A special high price,” his father had said when told of the arrangement. But it wasn’t any of his father’s business what his mother chose to do. Not anymore it wasn’t.

  “I hope you didn’t pay more than a couple of bucks for these.” Kev inspected the books with a small sneer on his face. “They’re a mess. You have to be more selective, Maddy, when you buy. The condition of these is deplorable.” Kev fingered a book with a broken spine, its pages stained and torn. “You might as well get rid of this one. Along with all the others. They smell, too.”

  “Old books always smell,” Tim’s mother sai
d. “It’s part of their charm.” He knew that, sooner or later, she’d dump this guy. The only thing he couldn’t figure was why she put up with him in the first place.

  “Maybe it is for you,” Kev said, winking elaborately at him, “but count me out.”

  “Fine with me,” Tim said. They both looked at him. “What’s fine with you?” his mother asked.

  “Kev said ‘count me out,’ and I was just saying that was fine with me,” he answered lamely. Talk about putting the quietus on a conversation. He was an ace.

  “Will you come out to the garage for a minute, Kev?” his mother said hastily. “I’ve got a ladder-back chair I think might, just might, be original Shaker.”

  They left him. He was ashamed of what he’d said to Kev. Not because he didn’t mean it, but because he knew it had hurt his mother. She wanted them to be buddies, him and Kev.

  The books, he noticed, were covered with a thick layer of dust. He couldn’t read any of the titles. He blew vigorously, and the dust rose to clog his nose and throat. Serves me right, he thought, wheezing, patting the books, feeling sorry for them. Poor things. They were unwanted, neglected, and devastated by age and lack of care. Now that the dust had settled, he could see there were some old medical books, a set of Britannica volumes from 1911, as well as novels and books of poetry. Most of the books looked so frail he was afraid they’d fall apart if he picked them up.

  One Hundred of the World’s Best Love Letters. That’s what the title of the book was. Amazed at the coincidence, he put one finger gently on the book, as if to separate it from the others. Who decided which letters were the best? He picked it up gingerly and weighed it in his hand. It was slender, almost weightless. Probably there weren’t that many great love letters around. He opened it to the table of contents. Beau Brummell, Edgar Allan Poe, Lord Byron, and to his astonishment, Benjamin Franklin. He’d seen plenty of pictures of old Ben Franklin, and he sure didn’t look like the kind of guy who’d write any love letters. Or the kind of guy anybody would be in love with.

  He took the book of love letters up to his room and tossed it on his bed. Then he took the packet of letters from his pocket and stuck it under his pillow. Sometimes he memorized poetry or committed passages or phrases that caught his fancy to memory, thinking he might have use for them in some future, more exotic existence. He was a collector, too, though not of Americana. Of words, words that brought him to the brink of some nameless, tearing emotion, words that moved or touched him, or made him laugh. Words it never would have occurred to him to put together. Or phrases that struck such a chord in him as to render him speechless, breathless, dazzled by the author’s prescience and sensitivity. A “voice like jewels dropped into a satin bag.” A line from a poem. Did such a voice exist? He certainly hoped so. Words that said what he’d been thinking and feeling but that he hadn’t had the power to articulate.

  “You stinketh in God’s nostrils,” he’d read somewhere recently. Worth remembering.

  The telephone rang. When he picked it up, a voice said, “Hello, fool.”

  It was Patrick. Try and call him Pat and see where that got you. “Hello, Pat,” he said back. Patrick’s heavy breathing flooded the line.

  “I was only teasing,” he said. “You want to hear a love letter written by Benjamin Franklin?”

  Patrick said, “Who’s she?”

  “My mother bought a bunch of old books and there’s this one called One Hundred of the World’s Best Love Letters,” he told Patrick. “I’m really getting into it. Getting ideas.”

  “Who would you write a love letter to?” said Patrick, scoring a point.

  “Shirley Temple? I’m thinking along those lines.”

  Patrick snorted. “She’s old enough to be your grandmother.”

  “Hey, I saw her last week in Little Miss Marker and she was looking good,” he said. “A little young, maybe, six or seven, along there, but still hanging in there.”

  “Yeah, they probably made that movie about fifty-five years ago,” Patrick said.

  “Whoa! Hold it. You just shot me down in flames. But don’t worry, I’ll come up with somebody.”

  “How about Lauren Bacall?” Patrick said. “She’s hot stuff.”

  “I think she’s dead. Yeah, I’m almost positive she’s dead.”

  “You’re crazy. She’s as alive as you or me.”

  “You know a girl named Sophie?” he let slip, not having planned to mention her name.

  “Sophie? You mean Giraffe? That’s what they call her, ‘Giraffe,’ on account of her legs. That the Sophie you mean?”

  “I don’t know about that,” he said, offended by Patrick’s description. “I didn’t notice her legs,” he lied.

  “Oh, well, if you didn’t notice her legs, you and me are talking about two different Sophies. The one I’m talking about has legs so long they call her Giraffe, like I said.”

  “I have to split,” he said, sorry he’d brought up her name at all.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll run a dossier on Lauren Bacall. If she’s not dead, she might be your man. To write a love letter to, I mean. Except there’s one thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Humphrey Bogart. He might not like it. Ciao.” And Patrick hung up on him, just in time.

  Chapter 4

  “I’m funny that way.” Joy wrinkled her nose at the company at large. They had polished off the salad and were waiting for dessert. “I like all new. Give me new stuff any day.”

  “Surely you jest, madam.” Kev had drunk a lot of wine and, as usual, when tiddly, he took on airs.

  “Dear Madam,” Kev pontificated, winding up for one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, perhaps. Fortunately, the timer on the stove went off, and his mother dashed to snatch the soufflé from the oven before it fell. His father, slightly hard of hearing, smiled and drummed his fingers on the table, the scent of chocolate making him happy.

  “Old is in, new is out,” Kev proclaimed, taking another slug of the best burgundy Gallo had to offer.

  “If I ever have a house,” Joy continued, as if Kev hadn’t spoken, thereby winning points with Tim, if no one else, “I want all white. Rugs, couches, chairs, drapes, the works. All white.”

  His mother’s hearing, however, was acute. She came from the kitchen bearing the soufflé before her and set it down gently and said, “Drape is a verb, Joy, not a noun. You shouldn’t say ‘drape’ when you mean curtains or draperies.” His mother had been a teacher of sixth-grade English, when fresh from college, and had often said there were some things one never gets over. Being an English teacher was high on the list.

  “Joy?” His mother dipped her spoon into the soufflé. The spoon sank without whisper, and she passed the first portion to Joy, who sat, rigid and red-faced, no doubt justly irritated at being treated like a sixth grader.

  “Oh, I couldn’t!” Joy cried. “I have to watch my figure.”

  They were all too busy watching the soufflé serving to comment on this obvious ploy. When everyone had been served, they dug in. Joy scanned the diners, and, when she saw that no one was giving her the time of day, she dug in, too.

  “This is good, Maddy,” his father said. “I always did like your chocolate the best.”

  His father’s hair had gone quite gray, and he’d grown sideburns since his last visit.

  “I like your burns, Dad,” he said.

  His father gave him a look. “I feel as if someone’s following me,” his father said, “and all I know is, he must be a very hairy gent because all I can see of him is his hair.” One thing about his father, he knew how to laugh at himself, a very endearing characteristic.

  “I think he looks wonderful,” Joy said. “They make him look so much younger. Don’t you think?”

  His father flushed and, to change the subject, Tim said, “You playing any tennis lately, Dad?” They often played tennis together on weekends, he and his father. Sometimes his mother joined them with a friend, and they played doubles. None of them was terribly good
but they had fun together.

  “Didn’t I tell you? I’ve taken up golf.” His father smiled. “Joy’s idea. She has a ten handicap.” Tim didn’t know much about golf but he knew a ten handicap was good.

  “Oh, and he’s pretty good at it, too!” Joy exclaimed. He wondered if she ever spoke in a quiet voice. He found her vivacity somewhat daunting.

  “For a beginner,” Joy went on, turning from one to the other of them, making sure they were all in on it, “he’s really quite good.”

  “If you want to play a couple of sets, Dad, I’m available,” he said.

  “Thanks, Tim, I’d like that.”

  Kev scraped his spoon against his empty dessert plate and said, “Speaking of tennis, seconds anyone?”

  Kev was such an ass. There was no excuse for anyone being such a super ass.

  “Tim.” Joy laid a hand on his arm. “If you’d like to join us for golf, we’d love to have you. Wouldn’t we?” She turned to his father, who happened to be talking to his mother, giving her his full attention. This was a strange group, he thought. His parents, his mother’s business partner and sometime boyfriend, his father’s next-door neighbor and sometime girlfriend, and himself, sixteen years old with nothing to show for it.

  He looked down at Joy’s hand, which still rested on his arm, for lack of anything better to do. Kev was involved in getting up all traces of chocolate soufflé without actually picking up his plate and licking it.

  Joy’s fingers, he noticed, were laden with diamond rings, at least three of them. Seeing him looking at her rings, Joy said, “My mother once told me, ‘Joy, you have diamond hands. Don’t settle for rhinestones.’”