The Lost Letter

by Jillian Cantor

  “Really,” she said sharply, pulling it back and holding it toward her chest. “I’m just fine. I’ve been doing this on my own long before you came here. I don’t need your help.”

  “But I want to help,” he said. “And it’s no trouble.” Elena glared, and he was suddenly certain that she was not shy—she just didn’t like him. And this realization bothered him. He had the urge to fix it.

  But before he could say more, Elena turned and began to walk back toward the house. Kristoff picked up another log from the pile and ran after her. He caught her just before they reached the back door, and he reached for her shoulder. “Have I done something?” he asked her, slightly out of breath from running in the cold. His words came out jagged and smoky against the chilly air.

  “Something?” she echoed back.

  “To upset you?”

  “Why should you think that?” Her breath made frosty rings in the air, and she shivered again.

  “Never mind,” he said. “We should get back inside. You’re freezing.”

  “Look,” she said. “It’s just that we’re not friends, okay? We’re not going to be friends. I don’t expect you to be here long. They never are.”

  “They?” he asked, considering, for the first time, Frederick’s last apprentice, or maybe his last few? Were they all terrible with the burin, like him, and promptly fired?

  But Elena didn’t answer. She carried the wood inside and placed it into the fire. Kristoff did the same, and then he excused himself to go to bed. Up in the attic, wrapped in two blankets, he took out his sketch pad and a nib of charcoal. He found himself sketching Elena’s angry green eyes and wondering how long this place would stay his home.

  The next day, inside Frederick’s workshop, Kristoff had trouble concentrating. His work with the burin was even worse, his practice lines even sloppier. And when they were cleaning up before dinner Frederick turned to look at Kristoff and frowned. “Are you going to fire me?” Kristoff asked.

  “Fire you?” Frederick was nearly bald, but his eyebrows were still bushy, thick, and gray, and they framed eyes as vividly green as Elena’s.

  “I’m not doing well with the metal,” Kristoff said, unable to keep the note of desperation he felt from creeping into his voice. “Maybe I’m not meant for this. Maybe you should fire me.” As much as Kristoff did not want to be fired, he also knew the longer he was here, the more accustomed he became to the warmth of the Fabers’ house and Frederick’s workshop and Frederick himself, the harder it would be to leave. Should Frederick want to fire him, it would be better for him to do it now.

  “Do you want me to fire you?” Frederick asked, looking confused.

  “No, of course not,” Kristoff said. “I just thought . . . Elena said . . .” He felt his cheeks turning red.

  “Ahhh, Elena.” Frederick sighed. “Don’t mind my Elena. She’s just mad about my last apprentice.”

  “That you fired him?” Kristoff asked.

  Frederick shook his head. “No, no, my boy. I’ve never fired anyone.”

  “So what happened to him?” Kristoff asked.

  Frederick frowned again but didn’t answer his question. “You want to be here?” he finally said. Kristoff nodded. “Then I want you to be here. I want you to learn. If you still want to learn?”

  “I do,” Kristoff said.

  “Good.” Frederick put his hand gently on Kristoff’s shoulder. “There are two necessary skills to becoming a stamp engraver, Kristoff. First is the ability to draw something worthy of going on a postage stamp for our beautiful Austria. You have that skill down.” Kristoff felt his cheeks grow warm with the unexpected compliment. “The other part is learning how to replicate that all to scale, in reverse, in the metal with the engraving tools. And you will learn. It just takes time. And patience. I didn’t have complete control of the burin either when I was your age.” Kristoff smiled, grateful for Frederick’s kindness. “Here, try one more time before dinner.” He handed Kristoff back the burin, his hands shaking a little, the tool vibrating in his palm. Kristoff pretended he didn’t notice.

  Mrs. Faber had a routine for weekly dinners. Thursday nights she made beef stew, and this became Kristoff’s favorite night of the week. They’d rarely had beef in their stew in the orphanage because it was too expensive, and so now the taste of Mrs. Faber’s delicious meat each Thursday night reminded Kristoff that he was no longer an orphan, no longer entirely alone.

  After dinner, Miriam and Elena would finish their schoolwork, and Frederick would smoke a pipe in the armchair by the fire in the living room and read a book. Kristoff wasn’t sure what to do with himself at first and he would excuse himself to go up to his room.

  But one Thursday about two months into his apprenticeship, after the girls had finished clearing the table, Miriam bounced up to him and asked him to play Monopoly with her. Frederick had brought the game back from a trip to London two years earlier, and Miriam loved it. Elena didn’t seem so enthusiastic, but Kristoff had seen her sitting on the floor by the fire, playing with Miriam before. This was his first invitation to play along.

  “Come on.” Miriam tugged on his shirtsleeve. “Don’t be a bore and run up to the attic like you always do. Play with us tonight. It’s so much fun. You’ll love it.”

  He glanced at Elena, who quickly looked away. “I don’t want to intrude,” he said quietly, willing Elena to turn back and look at him, to tell him that he wasn’t intruding at all. The truth was, he wasn’t exactly sure how to play Monopoly and he knew that was most likely why Miriam wanted him to play, so she could win. Not that he minded. He was happy she’d invited him at all. His belly was full from the stew, his skin warm from the fire. He wasn’t ready to retreat to the cold attic alone.

  “You aren’t intruding,” Elena said. “I have a book I want to finish, anyway. I’ll go upstairs. You play with Miri tonight.”

  “What are you reading?” Kristoff asked.

  She finally looked back at him, her eyebrows raised, and maybe she couldn’t believe that a person like him, a person who had left school at fourteen to become a street artist, might be interested in books. But he was. Ever since he was a little boy, he’d read everything he could get his hands on in the orphanage, and his favorite nun, Sister Marguerite, would often give him books when she’d finished reading them. Books on art, history, and war, and sometimes even novels.

  “She’s reading something boring,” Miriam said, tugging again on his sleeve, trying to pull him toward her game.

  “Dr. Freud is not boring,” Elena said. “Maybe when you get older, Miri, you’ll understand him.” Miriam rolled her eyes in response.

  Kristoff had nothing to add, as Freud’s books were not something he’d ever seen, and he only loosely knew of the man. Some kind of doctor practicing in Vienna, with all kinds of crazy thoughts. But maybe Elena didn’t think they were crazy the way the nuns had?

  “Elena,” Mrs. Faber chimed in, then leaned over to blow out the candles that had been burning on the dining table during dinner. “Why don’t you leave Dr. Freud be, and play the game with your sister and Kristoff.” She tugged affectionately on one of Miriam’s braids. “Someone needs to make sure this one doesn’t cheat. And three people can play together.”

  “I don’t cheat, Mother.” Miriam crossed her arms. “I can’t help it if I always get London’s best properties.”

  Mrs. Faber laughed, pulled Miriam close, and kissed the top of her head. “Right,” she said. “You never steal Elena’s money when she’s not looking.”

  “Never,” Miriam gasped, and Elena broke into a grin.

  “All right. Come on,” Elena said. “The game takes forever. We might as well get started.”

  He followed the girls to their normal spot on the floor in front of the fire and he tentatively sat down. Frederick lowered his pipe and his book, and he looked at Kristoff as if he was about to say
something, but then he changed his mind, smiled warmly instead, and announced he was going up to bed.

  Later that night, Kristoff couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed for a long while, wide-awake. The sound of Miriam’s laughter as she’d counted up her money, and Elena’s chuckle as she’d lost to her younger sister (yet again)—intentionally, Kristoff thought—all felt so near to him. As if they were his, as if he belonged to them now.

  The engraving tools felt so impossible still. The metal so different from canvas. Frederick continued to insist that Kristoff would learn. But what if he didn’t? What if he never did? Frederick couldn’t stay patient forever. But Kristoff couldn’t imagine losing him. Or Mrs. Faber’s beef stew. Or Miriam’s laughter and chatter, and Elena’s beautiful smile, even if it was rarely directed at him. He couldn’t fail at engraving and be forced to leave the Fabers behind. He just couldn’t.

  Though it was very cold now, and the middle of the night, he got out of bed and tiptoed down the two flights of stairs. He would practice at night. While Frederick slept. He needed the extra time in the workshop, alone, without Frederick’s watchful eye making him nervous.

  The dining room was quiet and still at this hour, and the fire had burned down to tiny orange embers. Kristoff put on his boots and his coat, and he opened the back door slowly, so as not to make noise. He ran across the snow-dusted grass to Frederick’s workshop.

  When he opened the door to the workshop, his eye immediately drew to the unexpected light of a candle flickering inside on the worktable.

  “Who’s there?” he called out.

  He felt the crush of metal against his skull, and he cried out in pain as he sunk to his knees.

  Los Angeles, 1989

  SUNDAY MORNINGS WHEN I was a kid, my mother would sleep in late, and my father would wake me early, sometimes before the sun even came up. We lived in the Fairfax District, in walking distance to twelve different synagogues, a farmer’s market, and CBS Television City. Most of the week we were ensconced in our own little section of LA. My father taught at Fairfax High (I eventually went there, once the rebuilt/earthquake-safe campus opened my junior year); my mother worked at a law firm across the street from Canter’s Deli. But on Sundays, my father and I would get into his red Mustang convertible and ride, with the top down, to parts unknown. Or unknown to me, as a kid, anyway. Every week it was a thrift shop in the valley, a yard sale in West Hollywood, an estate sale in Beverly Hills, all in the name of my father’s never-ending quest for stamps.

  Each week, we’d return home just before lunch—I’d be full from the donuts my father would buy me to eat on the way (a treat neither one of us divulged to my mother)—and my father never came home empty-handed. Sometimes, he’d have someone else’s old collection (or a piece of it); other times, letters—sent and saved or unsent and lost. Every once in a while, when our endless riffling through yard sales turned up nothing, we stopped at the post office on the way back, and he bought a sheet of the newest stamp that had come out that month.

  So you’re not actually going to use those to send letters? my mother asked when we came home with new stamps, her voice rising skeptically, the way I imagined it did at work. She was a paralegal for a firm that handled real estate law. I sometimes pictured her in the courtroom, even though I knew that the lawyers she worked with mostly did paperwork.

  My father just smiled at her, and took his stamps up to his hobby room to file them away with the rest of his collection.

  This memory returns to me today, this Sunday morning, as I drive toward Santa Monica to visit my father at the Willows. Not in a red convertible, of course, but in my old blue Toyota hatchback, which is on its last legs, pushing a hundred thousand miles. I remember so suddenly, so vividly, exactly what stamp he bought at the post office once—a five-cent Humane Treatment of Animals stamp, featuring a cute black-and-white dog, just like I always wanted for a pet as a kid, and never got.

  And what lingers in my mind as I arrive at the Willows is this: I am no one’s child anymore. I can never return to those Sunday mornings with my father. We haven’t done one of those trips in years. Not since before I left for college, since before my mother died. But still. Now there’s no going back.

  The good thing about the Willows is that it’s only a half hour from me, in a beautiful section of Santa Monica. The bad thing is also that it’s in a beautiful section of Santa Monica, which, in LA terms, translates to outrageously expensive. My father will run through his savings, his teaching pension, and his life insurance collection from my mother’s death long before he’s ready to leave the Willows, I’m sure. But the Willows is also the best memory care facility in LA, and every time I’ve been to visit my father so far, it seems he has been mistaking it for a grand hotel. He asks me if I can help him locate his plane ticket, when he’s going home. He can’t seem to find his itinerary, he says. And rather than reminding him, gently, of the truth, I promise him I’ll look. That I’ll find his documents, somewhere.

  “Morning, Mrs. Nelson.” The nurse at the front desk greets me as I walk inside.

  “Hi, Sally.” I wave, and walk up to the desk and sign in. Sally’s in her twenties and clearly green enough that dealing with memory care patients on a daily basis hasn’t worn her down yet. She’s petite and wears a giant sparkling engagement ring on her left hand, and though she’s a licensed nurse, she’s dressed in jeans and a sweater. The Willows doesn’t feel anything like a hospital or a nursing home. And one of the requirements for my father living here is that his health, his physical health anyway, is good.

  “You’re here early today,” Sally comments.

  I nod, but don’t offer a reason. What would Sally think if I told her that I haven’t been sleeping? That since Daniel left, I wake up at five a.m., even on Sundays, even if I don’t fall asleep until two. That my house, my bedroom, my bed, all feel strange and dark and empty. But I would never admit that out loud, especially not to someone who barely knows me.

  I’ve come to visit every Sunday since I moved my father in here three months ago, and to the staff, I’m still Mrs. Nelson. Okay, so I’m technically still Mrs. Nelson everywhere, given that I haven’t actually signed the papers yet. But in my head I dropped the Mrs. (and the Nelson) months ago. My father doesn’t know about Daniel leaving me, and why upset him or confuse him? Sometimes I feel a little guilty that his disease has turned me into such a liar.

  “So how’s he doing today?” I ask Sally. I like to prepare myself before going back to his room.

  “Not bad,” she says. “Ted’s having a good day so far. Lucid at breakfast. He went to art class this morning, and that put him in a good mood. Told me he was going to knitting with some of our ladies after lunch.” She laughs, and I smile in return. The Willows is like a cruise ship. Packed with classes and activities, to stimulate the mind and pass the time. No wonder my father always thinks he’s on vacation.

  Sally tells me I can go back, and I walk down the long hallway toward his room. The hall is decorated with patterned wall-to-wall carpet like a hotel, and large glass chandeliers hang from the ceiling, making the pathway brightly lit. Too brightly lit, for someone who drank a little too much chardonnay last night, as I am apt to do these days, and I pull my sunglasses down. He’ll know me today. He’ll be totally fine, I chant to myself in my head as I walk, as if by thinking it, wanting it enough, I can make it true.

  When I reach his room, I stop, stand in the doorway and watch him for a moment, before he notices that I’m here. He sits in a blue velvety armchair by the wide picture window, reading a book, his reading glasses arched at the bridge of his nose. He looks the way he always did, the way he always has: he’s very tall and thin, but also strong. He’s a little thinner now, maybe, and also mostly bald. But still my father.

  He looks up and sees me, and he breaks into a smile. “Kate the Great!” I smile back when I hear his childhood nickname for me. He knows me. Sometimes he thi
nks I’m my mother or even a nurse. But today, Sally was right. It’s a good day.

  “What’re you reading?” I ask as I walk into his room. He holds up the book so I can see the cover. “The Philatelist’s Guide to the Universe. Oh, Dad. That sounds so boring.” But I’m happy he remembers who he is this morning. What he loves. My father was never a reader of novels like me and my mother. He taught high school history for years, and he read nonfiction, thick books about wars and generals and history and, of course, stamps. This particular book is worn, and he must’ve looked through it many times before, whether he remembers that now or not. Though, maybe he does. It’s mostly his short-term memory that’s affected by his disease so far. The past is often still vivid to him, sometimes so vivid that he believes he’s reliving it in the moment. That he believes my mother is still here.

  “Speaking of stamps,” I say, and I pull up a chair to sit near him. “I’m having your collection appraised.”

  He opens his mouth and slams the book shut. “Why would you do that?”

  That wasn’t the reaction I’d been hoping for, and I immediately try to mollify him. “Well, you always said you were looking for the Hope Diamond of stamps, and I wanted to see if you’d found something valuable.” I try to keep my voice light, but I notice the way his face seems suddenly paler, his brown eyes a little darker, and I wish I hadn’t brought this up at all.

  He turns and looks out the window, as if the pale blue sky and the arch of the barren brown mountain beyond hold some kind of answers I can’t see. “Every stamp is valuable.”