THE LETTER
by Daniel Shea

The letter arrived in a hard cracked envelope. It was dirty and stained and looked as if it had been lost for some time. A dusty envelope with black and green and brown fingerprints – fingerprints of different sizes and textures and times. It stood out against the rest. Battered and bruised against the bleached white perfection of cable bills and bank statements.

She had never before gotten a note like this in her life and her heart sank for that fact.

This letter comes once in a lifetime. And that’s only if you’re unlucky. They come bearing broken promises. The stuff of tears and wretchedness. They come in movies. A handsome young man with a soft face floating above perfectly pressed clothes delivers them to bewitched and pitiable women. Or at least he does in the movies. He sits women down and offers them consolation, carries a jar to catch their tears. She had seen this before, but where was that nice young man now? He hadn’t even knocked.

She didn’t know what to do. She recognized the handwriting but couldn’t make out exactly what it said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to. The letters all poked their heads out of a black mailbox on the wall next to the front door. The mailbox was old – from another time when letters were smaller and people were smaller, even though there was just as much to say. But now none of the correspondence fit. The black lid to the mailbox propped open like a yawning jaw.

The day was cold but bright. Despite the look of things, the weatherman had called for rain and maybe even a snowstorm overnight. She stood in the open doorway, staring blankly at the mailbox. Her eyes flickered like faulty bulbs. Sunlight warmed the lawn. It clambered up the steps and onto the porch and dove into a heaping pile at her ankles. The rest of her was shrouded in shadow. Her heart beat heavy under an Army sweatshirt and her jeans were worn down at the knees. Her face was calm and vacuous. It just stared, the large blue eyes flickering irregularly.

She looked at the clump of letters and the mailbox as if this were the first time it had seen the contraption and now she was only trying to figure out whether to call the police to file a report of some kind. It was a pretty face: plain and sweet. It was round and softened by freckles, with a tendency to redden. It did this in spite of the woman. It would flush with even the suggestion of cold or the presence of alcohol. It had been that way for weeks, even though she hadn’t been anywhere near the stuff since well before he’d gone away.

Sloppily, she rubbed her nose with the sweatshirt. A boy rode by slowly on a bike. He raised one hand in a kind of salute to shield his eyes as he looked her way. It looked like he was saluting her, she thought.

A car was parked in the driveway. It had a dinged left fender and a small crack up the windshield. Next to it, in the grass, lay the remains of a hastily discarded crimson bike. The training wheels were bent and deformed.

She breathed heavily. Just once, as if by a very conscious choice.

She took a step and then walked down the four steps off the porch and over to the bike lying motionless on the lawn. She bent to pick it up but stopped as she began to straighten herself.  She just looked at the bike and felt its cold red frame in her hands. She let the coolness of the metal seep into her skin. She absorbed it, felt it slowly progress up her arms until it gripped her chest tightly, and she threw it sharply back down and made a noise like some great pressure built up in a chamber but a gasp is all that’s able to escape. She gathered the sleeves around her hands and again wiped her small nose, this time roughly, reddening it. She looked up at the sun and became dizzy for a moment before regaining her vision with large white sundrops expanding in her eyes like rain in a pond. When the white drops cleared, she was looking at the bike again. She leaned down and picked it up and walked it back to the garage. One of the training wheels dragged and scraped along the driveway.

She went in the back door and sat at the kitchen table. There was plastic everywhere. And paper. She looked at it all like there was a personal grudge involved. Looked at it like it smacked of insult. But then she got up. In long sloppy steps she walked over to the laundry room and grabbed the vacuum. She sucked up all the excess hair and dirt. She pressed hard into the rug and crashed into walls and corners. She grabbed a bucket of cleaning supplies and wiped away all the dead skin and crumbs scattered about. Her face began to leak. Saltwater collected in droplets at the tip of her nose. It stung her eyes. She scrubbed the floors on her knees using both hands to grip the brush. She polished the windows in large sweeping strokes. The house took on a chemical smell.

She went upstairs and undressed. Took off the sweatshirt and then the jeans. She hadn’t bothered to put on anything else when she’d gotten dressed that morning. She looked at her pale body in the mirror. It was white – almost transparent in some places. Her cheeks had flushed with the flurry of activity. Her face burned red. She turned herself around for inspection. She started with her face, rubbing the cheeks roughly with her palms. She touched the acne scars, knowing each one intimately, as if posthumously treating them. She bent close and surveyed her teeth, forced into alignment years before by thick bulging braces, and she ran her tongue along their slippery smoothness. She took down her hair and let it sit in a loose mess. Then she put the hair back up. She leaned back to get a better look at her full belly. She swept her fingers under as if to support it and moved them slowly over the warm bulge, feeling for movement. Nothing stirred. She looked reluctantly at her breasts. They were large and swollen and hung loosely. She cupped them in her hands and raised them up, only for them to drop again without support. She turned sideways and looked at the reflection of her ass in profile. It had grown too. She grabbed great handfuls and squeezed it and stretched it and loosened it in greedy bites. Her mouth hung down at the corners. She turned fully around, with her back to the mirror, and stood up on her toes to make her legs look longer and glanced back over her shoulder. Turning back around, she traced her fingers through the tight twists of brittle hair between her legs and back up to her swollen belly. They rested there for a moment until suddenly she felt flushed and hot. Her chest began to heave. Her breasts rose and sank dreadfully and she looked up at her face in the mirror. Her features had twisted. Her lips were moist and flared. Hot air steamed from her throat and she choked on the cold air that replaced it. She found it hard to breathe and her heart felt like a foreign object trying to pry its way out of her ribcage. She placed her hand over the inflamed organ as if to ensure it would not escape her. The other hand she placed on her belly for support. Her knees went loose and her nose looked broken. She sank down to the floor. Her large blue eyes melted as she finally let out a cry. Cries that came in heavy gasps and moans. They ripped her insides and stung her ears. Her body folded into a heaving pile of flesh and blood and bone. Water poured down her face in sheets and sank into the carpet. She choked so violently she thought she would drown in them. Her throat closed up. She lost herself and stopped struggling against it. She welcomed it now. Surrounded herself in misery and pain. She knew now how someone could die of grief and she knew she would be one and she would be alone by herself when it happened.

She would never see him again – she already knew that. But she would never hear his rough voice again or touch his rough skin or wake up to his rough face scratching her shoulder again or know the warmth of his smile ever again or feel him deep inside her and that rush of ecstasy or the deep warming joy that filled her soul as he swallowed up their son in his arms or even the poisoning fear of never really knowing ever again. She would never even suffer that fear. That terrible fear. Because now she knew. She knew. She’d known this.

Her stomach turned on her and she thought she would be sick but there was nothing in her to come up. Her hands clutched at the carpet and she heaved over it. Her forehead and nose dug into the floor and thick flowing drool dripped from her mouth. When it ended she gasped loudly, as someone who has been saved from drowning. She suddenly felt hollow but for her heart – that wild heart beating ferociously – and air filled her again. It felt like it filled her whole body, down to her toes. The child moved inside her. It moved violently and desperately but even that comforted her. She breathed deeper and slower and her eyes reappeared and her nose realigned and she looked beaten and abused but calm and breathing steadily again. She laid on her side and wrapped her stomach in her arms and cried softly into the floor.

After lying there a long while, she sat up and, without looking in the mirror, went into the bathroom and started a shower. She stood under the showerhead as she turned it on. The cold water shocked her and tensed her skin. Everything tightened around her. But slowly it released her again. The water gradually warmed as it streamed down over her face and body.

After getting out and drying herself, she looked at her phone. It was nearly three o’clock. Her son would be home soon. She picked up the phone and dialed a number. She stood by the bed as it rang, the towel wrapped around her bulging body. When the other line picked up, she slowly lowered herself to the edge of the bed and put both hands up to cradle the phone under her right ear.

“Hey there sweetie, how you holding up?” the other end said.

“I got a letter.”

“A letter? What kind of letter, sweetheart?”

 “It’s from Jesse.”

“From Jesse?”

“Yeah – Jesse.”

“Darling, I don’t understand.”

“The letter’s from Jesse. He wrote it. At least, I think he did. It’s his handwriting on the envelope.”

There was a pause. “But – I’m not sure I’m following what you mean, babygirl. How’d he write a letter?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. But, yeah – it looks like he did.”

“Babygirl, he’s dead. Jesse’s dead. He’s been dead six months.”

Silence. Some sniffing and moving around and clearing the throat and then silence. “Yeah – Yeah, momma, I know that. I have been made aware of that.”

Silence. “I’m sorry. You just–. I’m not sure I understand, babygirl.”

“I’m not sure I do either, momma. Maybe it got lost. I don’t know. I haven’t read it. Haven’t even touched it. It’s still in the mailbox. He must have done it sometime before he–”

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

“I don’t know, momma.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I mean I don’t know!” A pause. Quiet sniffs. “I mean, it’s the last thing of him that I’ve got. Do you know what that’s like? What’s he going to say? What if it’s not enough? How can anything be enough? How can anything make up for that – for what he did? And you think – he thinks – that some little letter’s going to make up for that?”

Silence.

“You can’t make up for that. You can’t make up for dying, momma. Not for that.”

“No, babygirl. No, I guess you can’t.”

“And this only makes it worse! I already took his death once and now I gotta take it again. I can’t have him die every couple months on me and kill myself all over again. I can’t do that! How could he do that?”

“I wish I knew, babygirl. I wish I knew.”

She tried to breathe evenly, but it ebbed and ended in a cough that masked quite a bit more. “Okay, Momma. I gotta run, you know, Brian’s going to be home in a bit and I gotta clean myself up. He can’t keep seeing me like this.”

“You do that, babygirl.”

“Bye, Momma.”

“Be strong, babygirl.”

She lowered the phone to her lap and looked at the number for a while before hanging up. Her hands shook and she looked at them for a minute, studied them as they quaked.

She walked over to the closet to pick out clothes. His clothes were still there, lined up on hangers and stuffed in drawers before her. She looked through them for a while, pulling out sleeves and pantlegs. Then she picked up the Army sweatshirt and placed it back on a shelf. She went back to her side of the closet and found a sweater she hadn’t worn in a while and maternity pants from when she’d been pregnant with Brian. She walked downstairs and opened the front door. She looked at the mailbox and grabbed what was inside. The envelope said this on the back: “Please, only read if I don’t come home. Please.” She scoffed at this and her eyes fluttered for a bit before she caught hold of herself and sat down on the steps.

The sun was lower in the sky now and it shone in over the whole of the porch, providing a warmth against the cold air. She placed the stack of letters on her lap, and then picked out Jesse’s. She felt the letter’s weight in her hands and softly traced her fingernail along the envelope’s seal. Her nail tucked under the seal at one corner and started to make its way down, moving inconsistently against the resistance from the adhesive. The nail forced its way down to the vertex but then stopped shortly after beginning its ascent. It rested there, under the pointed flap of the seal for a moment, and then slowly withdrew. She placed the letter at the bottom of the stack resting on her lap and looked up at the sky.

It was clear but for a few small storm clouds. Maybe the weather would hold off. Her son would be home soon. And when he got home she would be there waiting for him and she would take him in her arms and say, “Come on, now, babyboy. Come on in out of the cold.”