The Love Letters of J. Timothy Owen

by Constance C. Greene

  There wasn’t a whole lot to be said to that. His father cleared his throat noisily. Tim said, “Thanks, Joy, I wouldn’t mind taking up golf someday. I watch a lot of the tournaments on TV, and it looks like fun. Well, of course, those guys are pros. They can make anything look like fun.”

  Kev never had liked being left out of a conversation. “You find anything worthwhile in that bundle of old letters from the trunk?” he asked, somewhat truculently.

  “Tim and I found a pile of old love letters in a trunk I picked up at auction,” his mother explained. “We’re quite fascinated by them, by the whole idea of finding something so old, so personal, so revealing of the people who wrote them. And who all are dead.”

  “How old are they?” his father asked.

  “I haven’t really checked them out that carefully yet,” he said, embarrassed at Kev’s bringing up the subject. He had wanted to keep them to himself for a while, until he had a chance to go over them carefully. “Some are dated, but not all. Some of them go back maybe a hundred years, maybe more.”

  “What fun! I’d love to see them sometime, Tim,” Joy said. As she spoke, she held her hand high and watched the play of light on her diamonds.

  “The language gets pretty flowery,” he said, laughing.

  “I guess people don’t write love letters anymore,” his father said.

  “You got me. Nobody ever wrote me one, that’s for sure,” he said.

  Joy put in her two cents. “Oh, I’ve had two or three in my day, and I’m not through yet!” she said playfully. She turned from him to his father in a manner he thought could best be described as coquettish.

  “All right if I clear now, Mom?” he asked, eager to escape.

  “Leave it, Tim. Kev will help. I know you have homework. Good night, darling.”

  He was the only one his mother still called ‘darling.’ He liked it when she called him that. She used to call his father ‘darling,’ but no more.

  “Good night, Dad, Joy, Kev.” He kissed his mother and nodded to Kev, who was sulking conspicuously. Kev didn’t like doing household chores. And with all that soufflé inside him, he might have a hard time managing.

  “Don’t forget the golf, Tim,” Joy said. “Maybe we’ll do it this Saturday, if the weather’s good. Does that sound all right? We could hit a few balls at the practice range.”

  “Fine,” he agreed. That would be great.

  Too bad Joy’s parents hadn’t had her teeth fixed when she was a kid. She had an overbite that made her resemble a chipmunk when she smiled. Too late now. It occurred to him, as he trudged upstairs, that Kev and Joy would make an excellent team. A magic love potion might be the answer. Whip one up and give them each a shot, and they’d fall into each other’s arms and take off, arm in arm, into the sunset.

  Talk about killing two birds with one stone!

  Chapter 5

  The name Sophie jumped out at him from the page.

  “Come, Sophie, that I may torture your unjust heart, that I on my side may be merciless toward you.”

  This was one of the world’s best love letters, written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the Countess Sophie d’Houdetout in June, 1757. His mother would flip. That really had some age to it, all right. The letter was talking to him, trying to tell him something, he thought, excited by its endless possibilities. A brief biography stated that Rousseau was a pioneer of the Romantic movement as well as a preacher of the return-to-nature creed. Wow. Even as far back as then they were returning to nature, and all along he thought his parents’ generation had invented it.

  Right on, Rousseau. Probably Rousseau, or J.J. as his friends undoubtedly called him, had a bright-orange tent just like Kev’s, which he and the Countess Sophie lugged into the woods for a little hanky-panky under the stars.

  “Why should I spare you whilst you rob me of reason, of honour, of life?” the letter continued. “Ah, much less cruel would you have been if you had driven a dagger into my heart instead of the fateful weapon which kills me! How often did you not say to me in the grove by the waterfall, ‘You are the most tender lover that I can imagine; no, never did a man love like you!’”

  The Countess Sophie did all right on her own, he thought, entranced. She knew how to sock it to old Rousseau.

  “Ah, Sophie, I beseech you, do not be ashamed of a friend whom you once favored. Am I not your property? Have you not taken possession of me?”

  Ah, Sophie, give me a break.

  There was lots more.

  “What! Your touching eyes will never droop again before my glances with that sweet shame, which so intoxicated me with sensuous desire? I am never more to feel that heavenly shudder, that maddening devouring fire, which quicker than lightning … oh, inexpressible moment! What heart, what god could have experienced you and resisted?”

  End of letter.

  No two ways about it. That J.J. Rousseau had a way with words. Where was the Count, old Sophie’s husband? It made you stop and think. Suppose the Count steamed open the envelope and got a load of what was going on? The fur would fly. The Count would probably figure out that the Countess Sophie hadn’t been wearing her chastity belt like she was supposed to while the Count was off to battle, suited up in his armor, fighting whoever the enemy happened to be that week.

  Pretty steamy stuff.

  He went through the table of contents and noted there were very few of the world’s best love letters written by women. Madame du Barry, of course, had dashed off a couple. But Madame du Barry was a tiger, a hot-blooded lady from all reports, who had been Louis XV’s mistress and had managed to get herself beheaded during the French Revolution.

  Then there was always Elizabeth Barrett Browning, some of whose love letters were in the book. A poet by trade, she wrote quite a lot of love letters to, of all people, her husband! He was Robert Browning. They were both poets, as a matter of fact, and they sent those old love letters flying back and forth. They must’ve traveled a lot. Separately. Else why so many letters? They were the only married people whose love letters had been recorded. Weird. He preferred to read passionate letters of love written by folks embroiled in illicit romances. It was more interesting. He marveled at the information to be found in books.

  Samuel Johnson stated, in the book’s foreword, that a love letter was a written confession of affection in which the soul lies naked. The soul, his own especially, had always interested him. A naked soul. What would it look like? How would you recognize it if no one told you what it was? Not that you were likely to run into a naked soul just anywhere. But it would be good to know what it was if you should see one, just sort of lying there. He thought it might look like protoplasm: colorless, translucent. Or an amoeba, perhaps?

  He liked to think that his soul had a character all its own, unique, different from all other souls. That was his ego bending itself out of shape, he figured. If he looked long enough, concentrated hard enough, maybe his soul might show itself. Maybe, in the deepest dark, his soul would stand up to be counted. Like a laser beam. A prick of light. That’s what he secretly thought his soul would resemble. A darting pinprick of light. To him, the concept of the soul was romantic as well as religious. The soul was forever. The laser beam was now, today. But there was no reason the two might not be compatible. One was scientific, the other spiritual. Reason enough. He intended to delve into the possibilities of uniting laser beam and soul at some later date. Digging out a stubby pencil, he began to compose a love letter of his own.

  “Dear Friend of my Bosom,” he started out, his handwriting chicken tracking its way across the paper. That salutation he had borrowed from a letter Admiral Lord Nelson wrote to his mistress Emma, Lady Hamilton (wife of Lord Hamilton, natch), while at sea, noon, August 1805. The same year he polished off the French and the Spanish at the battle of Trafalgar. Boy, talk about an overachiever, that was Lord Nelson—Horatio by name—to a tee. He was always blasting the enemy out of the water someplace, but that didn’t stop him from dashing off sweet nothings to
Lady Hamilton. Lord Hamilton happened to be the British ambassador to Naples, who presumably had other things on his mind than Lady Hamilton, which is why she and Horatio got something going between them. The Admiral was a star, pure and simple. There he was, one hand on the tiller, the other on his pen, letting Emma know he had the hots for her bod. You had to give the guy credit. Not a wasted moment there. Plus, Nelson had lost an eye and an arm in battle. So, minus an eye, minus an arm, he went on fighting for his country and writing love letters to Lady Hamilton. It was like Tim’s mother always said: busy people always found time to do the things that needed doing.

  It struck him that almost all the letters in the book had been written by people having illicit affairs. In other words, marriage apparently put the kibosh on love. Passion. Whatever you want to call it. He was fond of the word “kibosh.” Old-fashioned but apt.

  He’d taught himself to type when he was nine. From the start his handwriting had been awful, practically illegible. He thought of typing the letter he wanted to write, and realized the letter’s magic might be considerably diminished if he did so. No pencil, no typewriter, no word processor would do. It would have to be writ by hand. A crash course in calligraphy was indicated but he didn’t have time. It had to be done, and done soon.

  “Dear Friend of my Bosom” might be OK for Admiral Nelson, but somehow it struck a false note when Tim put it down on paper. Anyway, men didn’t have bosoms, did they? He crossed it out and began again.

  “Dearest Heart of my Heart.” Those capital letters did the trick. “Dearest Heart of my Heart. I have ordered the carriage for seven.”

  That looked good.

  Only, who drove the carriage while the lovers were trysting in the backseat? Whoever the driver was, he had better be deaf, dumb, and blind, else he might spill the beans. And where did the lovers tryst? The motels in the olden days were dirty and crowded, nothing like a Holiday Inn, of that he was certain. And no cars, whose roomy seats were perfect for a little making out. No wonder they used so many flowery words, such romantic hyperbole. They were sexually repressed. A terrible state of affairs.

  “I rush to press you in my arms.” That was an original. He had made it up and he was proud of it. It had the ring of authenticity. I rush to press you in my arms. Would she buy that? Watch out for overkill, he cautioned himself.

  “I love you more tenderly each passing day. My soul reaches out for you.” Copied. “Will you allow me to come to you this evening? My whole soul rejoices in the assurance of your love.”

  There it was again: soul.

  He’d been taught in religious instructions that the soul was immortal. That it lived on after the body was dead. Did it? He’d never been completely convinced. After he’d made his first communion, at age seven, he remembered, his head had buzzed with the things he’d been taught, had memorized. He had asked his mother to show him exactly where his soul was located, as if it had been his appendix, his liver, or his heart. He figured it must have a place of its own, and if it didn’t, it should. She told him his soul was all over, all through him, yet invisible. No one, she said, could show it to him, or touch it, see it, or take an X ray of it. It was a matter of faith, she said.

  There had been a lot of talk of organ donors, papers to be signed saying that if you were killed your organs could be taken from your body and implanted in a living person, so that they might live on using your organs. That had appealed to him and he had decided to donate his organs, all of them, in the event of his untimely death. Along with his organs, he might donate his soul, so if one of the sick people in the world needed a soul to go on living, they could have his. He had felt very worthy, very holy, saintly, even, after making this decision. This was when he was eight. His mother had had a tough time concealing her amusement when he broached this subject to her. He had donated his soul to the organ bank and she was laughing at him! It had taken some time for him to recover from that.

  “When you die, your soul will live on,” his mother had told him. He hadn’t believed her then, and he didn’t believe her now.

  “Like ghosts?” he’d asked her, and, again, he suspected her of laughing.

  Did souls come in sizes? he wondered. Was his soul the same size as his father’s, for instance? Was a baby’s soul tiny, and did it grow along with the baby? Did fat people have fat souls and thin people thin ones? Did souls come in different colors, to match people’s skins? The questions, all unanswered and perhaps unanswerable, were endless.

  Souls had been very big at one time. Just from reading One Hundred of the World’s Best Love Letters he could figure that out. Most of the letters had been written in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In every letter, scarcely a line was written without mention of the soul, as if it were a living, breathing thing. The soul had certainly diminished in importance. You didn’t hear people talk much about souls these days. Except for soul food. And soul kiss.

  His mother tapped at the door and stuck in her head. “May I come in?” she asked.

  He put down his letter and placed the book on top of it. “Sure,” he said. His mother never pried, but he didn’t want her to know he was writing his own love letter, half copying the masters, half original with him. Writing it to an unknown person.

  She sat on the edge of his bed. “How did you think your father seemed?”

  “All right,” he said. “About the same.”

  “I thought he seemed sort of down,” she said. “Not very happy.”

  What did she care if his father was happy or not? They were divorced, weren’t they? He wanted to ask her if she still loved his father, but he figured that was none of his business. His mother usually respected his privacy, and he thought he owed her the same courtesy. She didn’t delve into his personal life, such as it was, and he stayed out of hers. His personal life held no secrets, anyway. Unless you called his midnight thoughts secret. Which they were, and a darn good thing, too.

  “I wish he’d see someone else,” his mother said. “Someone a little closer to his age.”

  “Joy’s thirty-two. That’s only fifteen years younger than Dad.” What about Kev? he thought. He’s seven years younger than you. Maybe you ought to find someone closer to your age, Mom. He didn’t say it out loud but he’d thought about it more than once. It seemed a little undignified for her to be so much older than he was.

  “That’s Joy’s story.” His mother leaned close to him, as if she didn’t want anyone to hear what she was saying, although they were alone in the room. “Take a look at that neck next time. If that’s the neck of a thirty-two-year-old, I’ll eat it.”

  “Ma! You start taking nips out of Joy’s neck and you’re in deep trouble!” At the idea, he burst out laughing and, after a minute, his mother joined in. They laughed until tears filled their eyes.

  “Ah, Tim, what would I do without you?” his mother said. “You’re a good boy. I love you.”

  More moved than he wanted to admit, he said, “If your own mother doesn’t love you, who will?”

  She hugged him.

  “Ma,” he said, “I’ve been thinking about souls. If you could see yours, what do you think it would look like?”

  “A butterfly,” she said, right off. “When I was little, someone, I don’t remember who, told me that when I saw a butterfly, I would know it was a soul flying to heaven. I believed him. So I think that’s what a soul looks like. It’s as good an answer as any.”

  “This book of love letters is really something,” he told her. “Don’t you think it’s amazing, finding those letters in the trunk and also finding the world’s best love letters all laid out for you in a book? I mean, what a coincidence, right? Wild.” He held up the book.

  She nodded and headed for the door. “Is it fun? Let me see it when you’re through with it, will you, Tim?”

  On impulse, he asked, “Did you ever write a love letter to Dad? Or did he ever write one to you?”

  “I wrote him a couple and tore them up,” she said. “I was too
reserved, too afraid of making a fool of myself to put down on paper what I felt for him. And your father was never good at expressing himself. A shame, really. I’ve had to learn to tell people how I feel about them. It didn’t come naturally, Tim. It’s a good thing to learn. Don’t be afraid to tell someone you love how you feel. Everyone likes being loved, I think.”

  Her eyes took on a faraway look, as if she were seeing people and places of long ago. Then she said ruefully, “Enough of that. I got carried away.”

  Everyone likes being loved, his mother had said. True. And everyone loves being liked. And it was probably a good thing not to take loving, or liking either, for granted, he thought. And hard not to.

  He decided to change the subject. “Mom, listen to this, will you?” He read, “‘My treasure, my dearest life and love, how can I refuse you your happiness? My whole soul rejoices in the assurances of your love and to your exertions I will trust.’” He watched her to see how she’d react.

  “My heavens!” She drew her hand across her forehead, putting a strand of hair in place. “If you wrote that to anyone these days, they’d think you were a nut, wouldn’t they?” She smiled at him and said, “Good night and sleep tight, Timmy,” as if he were a child again.

  “Night, Ma,” he said. For some time after she’d gone, he thought about what she’d said about telling people you loved them. Expressing your feelings, learning how to express your feelings.

  It wasn’t a bad idea, he supposed, once you got over the initial shock.

  Maybe he’d try it.

  Chapter 6

  One thing about Patrick, he loved to go to parties but, once there, he clammed up and stowed himself in a corner and acted like a nerdy hermit.

  He and Patrick had sworn off girls. Not that they’d ever sworn on. Neither of them seemed to have the knack for girls, Tim often thought. They were able to give each other the bends, telling tall tales they concocted, jokes that reduced them to quivering blobs. But all their imagination dried up in the presence of the opposite sex. Girls seemed to stampede from them in droves, probably afraid of being corralled and bored to death.