The Correspondent: A Novel by Virginia Evans - 58

( cont. May 29, 2019, previous pages UNSENT )

I’m going to be finished after this, darling. It’s gotten to the point I don’t enjoy the writing, gives me an awful headache and makes my hand cramp, I suppose because of the focus required now, and maybe it’s silly of me to continue to address you, but it’s—it hasn’t felt silly.

When I started writing to you, it was in an effort to live—not just shrivel up and die—and it’s worked. It’s kept you beside me. I looked back. The first time was when Daan moved back to Belgium. Each time I’ve sat down to write you, I have imagined you sitting at some celestial desk and looking down over my shoulder, and perhaps that is absurdly delusional, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is not and perhaps it is.

You know, I imagine what it would be like if you were here. I’ve taken your personality, all that I knew of it before you were gone, and stretched it out as far as I am able. It’s like trying to press out pastry dough as thin as possible without tearing it. I stretch you out to now, imagining you as a fifty-four-year-old man. However, what I have very rarely allowed myself to do is remember you. When I start to think back, I often slam the door—well. But this morning I was sitting in my sister’s garden listening to the birds and the breeze and the cattle nearby, my eyes closed, and a memory came to me, a gift, and I didn’t slam the door. I allowed myself to remember. An afternoon one autumn I took you all down to the park, down that hill through the neighborhood past the houses, and remember they got bigger as you descended, and it got pretty steep (walking back home was monstrous). You always took off running full speed down that hill. You with your long legs would fly. It was miraculous. By the time you were this age, six or seven, you know, it didn’t even concern me anymore, you were like a limber bolt of lightning with that blind assurance and comfort in your body. Anyway, at the bottom of the hill that path along the stone wall, just lovely there, and then you would come out under the shade of that magnificent weeping willow tree. It was like heaven. I am thinking of this one afternoon when the four of us came into the park and you all went to do the things you often did—you and Bruce climbing one of the gnarled oaks, never pruned, massive limbs dipping nearly down to the earth, and Fiona searching for four-leaf clovers in the grass or sending leaves down the rush of the creek. There was one autumn when she was building a village from sticks and things for fairies, but I can’t remember if this was that very same fall or not, but on the day I’m thinking of there was a homeless woman sleeping on one of the benches, wrapped up in various blankets and jackets, and her bag was beside her. She was facing outward and I can still see her face. She had an old dog that was awake and watching us. I’d never seen this woman before, and it was unusual to see the homeless around there. It was like she had wandered off her path and found herself somewhere lovely and just set herself down, but anyway, you and Bruce were startled when you noticed her. You know, it derailed you from your amusements for a few minutes, or maybe it was only a moment, and you did get back to playing, but I could see as I watched you play that you kept glancing at her, and the dog was following all three of you with its eyes. As we were leaving the park, the woman had woken and sat up and she was feeding the dog sections of a small orange. She gave us a nice wave as we left the park and she had these bright eyes. Isn’t it amazing when it comes back, with the details? She was wearing an old red ski coat torn at the front with the stuffing, brown with filth, coming out. Later that night I was reading in my chair and you’d all been in bed for some time. I think Dad was already asleep, it was very dark, the fire had gone out, it was quite late, and you came to the study to find me. You were wearing long pajamas with red lines and you looked positively sick with anxiety. You couldn’t sleep because you felt guilty, and I said for what, and you began to tell me. When we had come home from the park that evening and I’d gotten to work on the dinner you had gone to your room to count the money you’d saved in your money box in order to buy some toy or another (you were always saving up for something) and found you had forty-three dollars. I remember you saying that number all these years later. You told me you knew you ought to give the money to the homeless woman in the park, but you hadn’t wanted to because of how much you wanted to keep it for whatever it was you were saving. And of course I told you it was all right, you didn’t have to give your money away and all the rest, but you cut across me with the conviction you ought to have taken the money to her but hadn’t, and you were ill about it. I tried to soothe you and in the end the only thing that settled you was that I said in the morning, if you really wanted, we could go back down to the park and if she was still there, you could give the woman some money. I figured in the morning it would have all blown over, but you came down the next day with a fistful of money and you said you were ready to go, so what could I do? I walked with you down the hill. The money bulged in your pocket. You didn’t run, but you did stay about two or three paces ahead of me. When we got to the park, she wasn’t there, of course. I admit I felt relieved. But you turned to me, positively in despair. We went home and got in the car. We drove around for a while, but there wasn’t any sign of that woman and her dog. It was all forty-three dollars you wanted to give over to her, and you were grieved when you weren’t able to. And you know, Colt, remembering that, I wept. For so, so many things, I could just weep. There is not language sufficient for me to express the depth of my sorrow for what happened, my son. Sorry doesn’t begin to scratch the surface, but I think you know that. You would know that. Oh, Gilbert.

I considered going back to read all of it, this whole meandering opus, but it isn’t necessary and it would be very difficult for me at this point. I think there are very many things I’ve forgotten by now, which is for the best.

When I started writing to you I don’t know what I thought it was for. Maybe what I wanted was for you to know me. I have missed you all this time, of course, but the fact is that I got every moment of you there was. Enough of this now.

It is with love I’ve been writing,

Your mother