The Letters

by Luanne Rice

  So much to say to you, but my hands are shaking. I’ve tried calling your motel, and you’re registered, but you’re never in the room. I’m in shock at what you wrote. Paul…is it possible? I’m afraid to fly right now. It’s completely crazy, but I’m terrified the plane will crash before I have the chance to see him—and you—again.

  My mind is spinning. Did I dream your letter?

  Is this all a dream?

  H.

  Still Dec. 22…

  Dear Sam,

  I’m writing into the void. Where are you? There was no answer in your room, all the times I tried you on the road between the boat and the Portland airport. I tried you from JFK, and even had the manager slide a message under the door to have you call my cell if you came in—but now we’re in the air, all electronics turned off, with a seven-hour flight ahead of me, and I don’t know where you are. I’m so glad to be writing to you right now, anyway. To hold on to that.

  Wondering about all of it, I’m losing my mind. Are you even sicker than you’ve told me—have you gone to the hospital? I’ve never felt so out of control in my life. My thoughts are racing. I find myself thinking of Mrs. Kilkenny, of what she meant. And then I think—but we saw him, we identified his body. And then—oh, Sam, you must be thinking it, too—there was so little, really, to identify. What came back to us from the crash, that wasn’t Paul. Trying to pull it together now, I’ll try to keep writing. I’ll hand you a sheaf of letters when I get to Alaska. The simple things, just forcing myself to breathe and stay sane.

  I’ve got a window seat, right in front of the wing, and we’re flying west into the sunset. There’s snow on the ground below, and the lakes in western New York are frozen, and everything is orange, butterscotch, from the setting sun. The pilot warned of chop over Lake Erie, and indeed we’re just flying out of a turbulent stretch.

  I’m still shaking, but not as badly as before. I’m thinking of what I’m flying to, and it’s got me careening between panic and ecstasy. I feel as if I’m levitating. Then I close my eyes and think of how shocking this all is, and I feel as if I’m going down in flames.

  Taking this seat, I caught sight of a young family behind me. A mother, father, and little boy have the wing seats, and I had the strongest, wildest memory of flying with Paul. When he was—what, four? five?—you told him that flying over the wing was the most comfortable, stable place to sit on a plane, and nothing else would ever do again. He always took your word; it always became gospel for him.

  I’m surrounded by people right now. That family in the seats just behind, and a couple sitting next to me, many of them part of a tour group on their way to the Alaska Railroad, some sort of train trip to see the snowfields and the northern lights. I’m overhearing conversations about Talkeetna and Fairbanks, and the flight attendant just came to ask what I want to drink, and I can barely think or speak. I just want to sit here, write to you, and ask if it is real.

  I know you say Mrs. Kilkenny isn’t believable. But Sam! Could Paul be alive? Okay, I’m up in the air, it’s like a time capsule, far from anything in my ordinary life. Maybe I’ll rip this up before I hand it to you, if I ever find you, if you ever return to your room at the Fairtown Motel—or maybe I won’t. Right now, my grip on the pen, and the sight of my handwriting on this sheet of paper, are the only things holding me together.

  My son, my boy, my baby…You have no idea what it’s done to me. What do I even mean by that? Losing him? Or that he might be alive? All of it, ripping me up, as if I’m being clawed from the inside out. I’m indulging myself here—you’ll never see this letter, so I’m just going to go for it.

  He was in my body. You and I made love, and we made Paul. And I know there was never any doubt, not for a moment or a second, that you wanted him and loved and adored him—but you don’t know what it was to have him living inside you, Sam. From the moment we conceived him—I knew. I felt him there, and not just the biological fact of an embryo, but his soul. I felt the Paul he was—the little boy, the good man—all of it right then, that very first instant.

  And we were together—nine months. Every breath, we took it together. Every beat his heart pumped, I felt it. My blood was his blood. And then he was born—I won’t even ask if you remember. I know that was the day of days for both of us—hard labor, I went through it, but I don’t take credit—you were there with me, and I couldn’t have done it without you, not the way we did it—that zone I got into, pain and bliss and clarity, and then Paul in my arms—you handing him to me. I don’t remember the doctor, the nurse, the midwife, none of them—I only remember you and Paul. We were three, we were one another, we were our family.

  But still…in some ways, he was mine alone. I know you understand. He was in me. His body lived in mine. So that’s why I’ve felt, well…frozen. As if without him in my life, in my sphere, nothing mattered or made sense anymore, and I was something like the Tin Man—frozen in place and time. This isn’t new to you—I’ve tried to explain it many a time, even in our letters this fall. Here’s the thing, though—I was frozen, not dead. I was like one of those intrepid, sad explorers who traverse the Jasper ice fields and fall into a crevasse. They don’t freeze to death all at once; they might be upside down or sideways, but they’re still alive, just caught in the ice.

  That’s been me. Sam, is this just wishful thinking—am I a Monday morning quarterback, looking back at the game, trying to make sense of what I felt by what I now know? Because I know so much more now! I know that some lady, a short strange lady who gave you a bad vibe, name of Mrs. Kilkenny, dressed in a brown bomber jacket, says that Paul is alive.

  THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID.

  I know you think she was conning you, all that about the spider spinning the web, and the ten thousand dollars and all, but SAM!! Here’s the truth—I know she’s right, I know he wasn’t on that plane. Think back to that moment when we identified his body—just think, Sam. We believed it was him because we were told he was on the plane. But he wasn’t. He’s alive. Those remains belonged to some other poor soul…

  And here’s how I know—I FEEL IT. Haven’t you read a million stories, seen a million movies, about people, and they’re usually mothers, who say they would know if someone they loved was dead? Their child. They’d feel it—in their own bodies, in their skin, deep in their bones. Well, I’ve never felt that. Not at all, Sam. I’ve felt frozen, it’s true, and I’ve wanted to stay numb. But I’ve never felt his death inside me.

  And that’s what I’m going on. I’m on this plane, desperately worried about you—why you’re not answering your phone in the motel room, why the manager seemed so evasive when I asked—actually demanded, and okay, at the top of my lungs—that he slide that note under the door for you. I can barely stand it, here in my window seat, two rows ahead of the wing, bouncing up and down in rocky air as the pilot keeps the seat belts–fastened light on and as the plane gains altitude as we try to find a smoother path. I’m frantic with worry over you.

  But I’m also—God help me, truly—beside myself with joy. Because here’s what I think. Not hope—think. I think you’re with Paul. You came to your senses, and cashed in whatever it took to get ten thousand dollars to pay Mrs. Kilkenny. She’s not scary, she’s not a con—she’s an angel. That’s where my thoughts are going.

  You gave her the money, and she told you where our boy is. She gave you directions, or a map, or GPS coordinates. You walked or drove or flew or crawled to wherever he is. And why ever he’s there—it doesn’t matter. He’s our sweet, sensitive boy. The trauma of Julie losing the baby—that has to be it. He had a breakdown. Maybe he had to go live alone in nature for a while. That would be our boy, wouldn’t it? Maybe he had to ford the river and climb the mountain and live in the shadows all by himself, to heal his heart.

  Sweetheart, wouldn’t that be Paul?

  And you’ve gone to him. I pray, and I haven’t turned to God in years, not since Paul’s been gone…that you are well. That you’ve healed enough to tak
e the journey in safety. Your lungs are fine, your fever is down, your heart is steady…Your mind is clear, and you’re going to save our son, bring him home.

  Back when I still believed—as I do again—one of my favorite prayers was by Thomas Merton. Remember when I went on that retreat, down to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, outside Bardstown, in the smoky hills filled with bourbon distilleries—back when Paul was little, when being a mother, as much as I loved it, took me away from myself, from my own heart, and from my painting—and I went down to the abbey to connect with the Holy Spirit? I chose that place because it’s where Thomas Merton had lived and written.

  And I loved Merton. He was a Trappist monk—and you know the Trappists are the marines of religious life. They’re rigorous and devoted, up at three each morning to go to chapel, and he was a poet and scholar, and I loved the place. It was spring, and there were monks in silence, and chants through the hours, and redbuds and dogwoods in bloom all along the woodland paths. And although Merton had died years earlier, I felt inspired by his presence—by the fact that he had once loved a woman, a nurse he’d met while in the hospital in Louisville…he’d written her letters right there at the abbey. He’d called her “M.”

  That made him so human to me. I felt that a monk who’d fallen in love, who’d felt the pull of desire—away from his religious vows, straight into the love affair that he and M had, short as it may have been—would understand a young mother who adored her husband and son more than air and sunshine, yet needed to escape those bonds for a time, felt she needed to regain her mind, life, and ability to paint.

  I found Merton’s prayer on that trip, and I used to say it every day—and I find myself saying it now, as I fly west toward you and Paul, toward Mrs. Kilkenny’s secret, toward Alaska. It’s almost Christmas. All these people are flying there for a special holiday event—they want to see the Aurora Borealis on Christmas Eve. Something like the star, I guess.

  I love Merton’s words—about trusting God “though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.” It speaks to worst fear. The dread, the demon, the darkness, death itself—everything we fear most. That’s where we’ve been, in the shadow of Paul’s death—all three of us. You, me, and Paul. But we’re not now. We’re not now.

  Soon we’ll be together.

  The little boy with the seat over the wing just ran up the aisle—he’d gone to the bathroom with his father. The seat belt sign is still on, but the flight attendant let them get up, and even though the plane is bouncing like a ship on high seas, the boy seems so happy. He loves flying, just like Paul did. Remember when he was in second grade he read about flight, became obsessed with airplanes? We had to take him to the Outer Banks, to Kitty Hawk, to see where the first flight took place, and that was the year he named the chickens Wilbur and Orville. Two of the best laying hens we ever had…

  He didn’t die in a plane crash. He didn’t, and you’re with him now, and I’m halfway there, and soon we’ll all be together.

  H.

  December 23

  Dear Sam,

  Am I a fool? I guess maybe I am. How can I look you in the eyes next time I see you? Now that we’re both in Alaska, you might well ask why I’m writing you this letter instead of sitting at your bedside, bringing you tea and asking you to understand. Not that you blame me, at least not outwardly, and not that you want me to feel guilty. I’m doing that all on my own.

  Seeing you yesterday, after traveling all day…maybe I wasn’t at my best. Especially seeing you so sick. You completely played down how ill you are—I should have known from your letters, the fact that you’d checked into that motel, settled in really, when you had planned to be on the move. At least you were at the doctor’s yesterday, getting some heavy-duty antibiotics, fighting him for wanting to put you into the hospital for a few days of IV treatment. You have pneumonia, an infection, and all I can think of is Jim Henson, the guy who invented the Muppets. How he got an infection and was dead in days. But you have a reprieve from my hovering because I was—and still am—completely blinded by the news about Paul.

  I didn’t want to fight with you yesterday—not after all we’ve been through, and not seeing you that way—and I know you want me to believe what you saw in Mrs. Kilkenny’s character (or, as you say, lack thereof ). I realize you think it’s saving me, us, future heartache. But…I’ll get to that in a minute.

  First, you. Seeing you after so long apart, I felt such a surge of emotion, of happiness, it nearly knocked me down. I can’t believe you met my flight. When I told the motel manager my arrival time, it was just to give you fair warning. I really never meant for you to come to the airport, but I’m moved beyond words that you did.

  That hug you gave me. Do you know, I can still feel it? I’ll try to describe it for you. I came through the gate, tired and disoriented, bedraggled as hell after a day that started by crawling behind the woodpile to scoop up Cat—try catching a feral cat who doesn’t want to be caught—then delivering her to Turner and Rosie’s, crossing Muscongus Bay in near-gale conditions, continuing at that pitch the whole way to Alaska…

  Arriving in Anchorage, looking around the baggage area for signs to ground transport, instead I saw you—gazing at me from across the floor, as if you’d held back a minute to watch me, maybe decide whether you wanted me there or not. I saw, and at first I thought it was hesitation, but then I realized it was something else—that smile of yours always gives you away. You were taking me in, the way I’d have done to you…you walked toward me, and the smile got bigger, and your eyes were gleaming. I guess I dropped my bags because my arms were suddenly open, and you were in them, and I felt your beard against my cheek, and I was afraid to turn my head because I didn’t want you to know how much I wanted you to kiss me, but I didn’t have to worry because suddenly I didn’t have to think about anything, you were doing it all, kissing me. Holding me, and there we were, just rocking back and forth in the concourse of the Ted Stevens International Airport, and the hug was so deep I felt your heart against mine, and I felt your warmth in my bones.

  Feel it still, I do, I do. In spite of how angry you are at me right now. Back to that in a minute.

  You’re so thin. I was shocked, once the reality of having your arms around me began to sink in. You were whispering to me, and I did hear what you said—and let me say right now, I felt and feel exactly the same way, even though I was too stunned or whatever to actually reply in words.

  Your body felt lean and strong, and I know it’s from mushing through the wilderness on the way to the crash site. You’re all sinew, there’s absolutely nothing extra, and that’s what’s got me crazed with worry right now. What are you living on? That cough is terrible, and so is the fact that you can’t eat, and stop telling me you don’t believe it’s anything serious. I know you do. And as soon as I get back to Anchorage, I’m bundling you up and making you nothing but chicken soup.

  For now I’m trusting that you’re still in bed, where I left you. I still believe the adjoining rooms are best—we’re both overwhelmed with the situation, and I don’t want to confuse matters even more than they already are. But I slipped in this morning, curled up next to you, pressed against your back, trying to decide what to do. You were so mad last night, when I insisted that we pursue this thing—and I know you think you’re right. But lying there in bed with you, for the first time in so long, I felt surer than I have about anything in years.

  By now you’ve probably read the note I left you on the pillow…so you know I was on my way to Kilkenny Charter Company. The cabdriver seemed oddly silent when I told him where I wanted him to take me. I pressed him, and he just said, “There are other charter companies if you want to go to Denali.” When I asked what he meant, he just shook his head. Suddenly we were there—I saw the ghost letters on the side of the silver Quonset hut, and I stepped out of the car and felt the coldest wind I’ve ever felt in my life, and then he drove away and left me there.

  And here I sit right now�
�waiting for someone to come to the desk. I’m in the room you described in your letter. There’s the woodstove, right there. Crackling and spitting away, throwing very little heat. The place has an almost-abandoned feel. You did say Mrs. Kilkenney is selling the business—maybe that’s done. But then why is the stove burning? I sit here on a torn black vinyl chair waiting to find out. And writing to you, hoping you’re not too upset. And that you’re feeling better…

  Sam, I have so much to tell you. It’s two hours after I wrote that last part, and the entire world has just changed. First, oh help me, Paul is alive. I’ll tell you all the details, but I’m on my way to him now. I am in stunned, overjoyed awe.

  After I had waited for about twenty minutes, Eileen (that’s her first name, Mrs. Kilkenny) walked into the office. I was pacing around, shivering, the woodstove barely throwing any warmth at all, and I could see my breath. She looked straight at me. This is the spookiest thing, and I can’t possibly do it justice, but she knew just who I was.

  “Mrs. West,” she said. She had a glint in her eyes, and she said, “That day I met your husband, he said how much you loved your son. That’s what he said. And I knew that meant you were coming. I knew you would have to come and hear what I have to say.” Then she gestured for me to sit down, which I had to, because my knees were buckling.

  I told her I was sorry about her husband, and she shrugged and pointed at a picture of him on the wall—you probably saw it. A cowboy, leaning against the strut of his plane—Stetson and all, and weathered face with the greatest grin ever, as if he loved being in the sky and was just raring to go up for another visit. I liked him. And in spite of your instincts, which are usually pretty dead-on, I liked her.