[Letters sent between C Moran and R Maheu during the week before the Arbor Day event.]
[The letter comes on old stock paper, the typewriter letters uneven and sometimes nothing but faint indents in the page. The return address is for a mailbox rental shop in Seattle.]
I saw you today, but you didn't see me.
I think you look calmer, happier somehow, and it made me glad and sad, all at once. It was like that novel where the heroine leaves, only to find it was her body that left and nothing more. Where did you go? In a sentence, in a phrase, in a paragraph, in a novel: tell me.
[The letter is written by hand. It is written by hand, and with the utmost care.]
Heroine,
I wish you had said hello. Are we past that now? Was leaving too much of a break for you to greet me on the street?
I went to Europe. I went to Italy, where it's beautiful but I don't feel at home - sun and dusty roads and rich wine, warm colors, none of them felt right.
Paris suited better. I was there a month, in a rented house on a narrow street. I couldn't see the Eiffel Tower from my window, but I could see the tops of all the buildings around me. The caretaker of the house was a rotund woman who seemed upset that I was in Paris on my own with no apparent occupation. No patience for rich tourists, I suppose. I didn't see much of her, but one night she did invite me to have dinner with her and her daughter. She cooked fish drowning in butter with white cake and strawberries for dessert. I remember thinking that I had forgotten what food meant, what savoring the work that went into it meant. It was still snowing in the city, then, but I can tell you now what the sun looked like when it is setting over snow-covered rooftops in Paris. It was beautiful. I thought of you, of the places I wished you could go.
I didn't spend the entire month on my own. I went out, and went to markets and the Louvre and every tourist spot one is supposed to while in Paris. I sent home two trunkfuls of rare books, which I picked out after squeezing past other people in rows of bookshelves so narrow I felt sure I would be buried beneath the avalanche and killed via musty execution. I sat by the window in the house I rented while it snowed and read books, and did a little writing of my own. I had a dream where you were on a rooftop in Paris, drenched in the setting sun, shivering in the snow with lips that were red and smooth. I woke up, and I remembered that you were in Seattle - I remember thinking that I ought to have dreamed of you in rain. You may have been gone from the city by then, I don't know.
I looked in Italy and Paris for something I didn't find, so I kept moving. I went north, building my own, shortened grand tour, and I visited Germany and spent a week in Spain. The last few weeks I was in London, in a hotel, where it alternated between rain and snow. In London I had terrible food but good whiskey, which I still haven't managed to develop a taste for. I walked. I met people, you will be shocked to hear no doubt. I attended a short and informal class at Cambridge on Shakespeare and the ethics of the law, and a man I met there took me to a pub you have to enter by climbing through a crawlspace from the library next door, where I had the good scotch. I don't remember the last time I went out drinking with people, but there you are - I did it.
I might go back to London still, because I think London suited me best. It rains, there, and the people have dark dispositions with an appreciation for black humor, light humor, whatever makes a break in the clouds. But what I was looking for - whatever that is - wasn't there, so I came back here again to see if it was just where I'd left it. This thing - it's like something I've lost, like a set of keys, never where I thought it was or should be. I don't know where it's gone. I do, however, think it might still exist, otherwise I would stop looking.
I had: A vineyard owner, the housekeeper's daughter, a tour guide for the Louvre, and a woman from the class at Cambridge with dark eyes and short, cropped dark hair. I have gotten better at holding my tongue, and I have started to come to terms with the fact that I had something once that I will never have again, because if I find the same thing it will still be different for not being her. I have not let go. I have not made that much progress in a few short months. I am trying, though. I am terrible at letting go and admitting when I am wrong and when I have lost. So here you are, reading a letter from me that I think I have been writing since I left Seattle, in a sense. You'll be pleased to know that you have been to Europe - in every place you were with me, your imagined reactions informing my own, sliding through narrow spaces at my side, never far from sight.
-C
[Sent the next day from the same mailbox rental facility, and typed on the same quality stock paper and with the same typewriter.
C, which is a letter and not a name at all,
You seem certain I am someone you have met. Isn't it possible that I'm no one you know? That I saw you on the street, and you did not see me, and I followed at a distance to find out where you lived. And once home, I wrote that letter and sent it out into the world to see if anything came from it.
I am no one you know. I am not that girl you think you addressed your letter to. I would tell you that she is dead, but I don't know that for a fact. I don't think I know any facts, so I weave a story instead. It's a story about being alone, and it isn't happy tale. You'd be much better off with your dusty books and the rooftops of Paris. Did the lights shine brightly there like they do in stories and on the screen? If they don't, lie to me. I don't mind lies so much anymore; they hurt less, I think.
These imagined reactions from this girl I am not, were they as dark and stormy as your London? I'm afraid that is what you'll get with me, if we keep corresponding. I can pass your response along to someone sunny, perhaps? A girl with strawberry curls and a bright smile that lights up her face? A girl who looks at life and sees possibilities? A girl who isn't waiting for the next shoe to drop without warning?
For, you see, I don't need warning. I already know what is around the corner.
- L, since we are to be letters to one another
L,
You said I looked calmer and happier, and you knew that I had left and come back. I do not have so many friends that many people could know those things.
The lights in Paris shone as brightly as you can imagine they did. I am not sunny myself, and I do not know how I would fare with someone sunny. The girl I addressed my letter to was not sunny, but that never made a difference to me.
Whether you are the girl I addressed that letter to or not, I worry about you. Are you in danger?
-C
[The following day.]
C,
I am not in danger. I have never been in danger. Perhaps once I was a girl prone to danger, but I left that behind long before I left behind my pigtails and baby curls. Danger is something that only happens to people who are alive, and I died four years ago.
Did the girl, the one you think I am, ever tell you about that? About how she died?
I could talk about nothing, instead. I'm very good at that, at being a sponge that absorbs other people's hurts and shares none of my own. It's funny, but when you left, I lost the only person that allowed me to hurt for myself.
I think I hated you for that a little, at least at first.
- L
[The scratched out words are visible, if you look carefully. This letter takes longer to come back, and yet is shorter than the rest.]
L,
No. She never told me about that.
I wish I would What does You have every right to hate me. Tell me what happened four years ago?
-C
[This response takes two days, and it is not a letter. It is a clipping from an Florida newspaper, thin from fingers and dampness. The article is more informative afterthought than anything else. It explains that a fifteen year old prostitute was beaten near to death outside of Key West, and that the attacker had been given probation, as he was a first time offender. There is, between the words, the implication that the unnamed girl's profession played a role in the lenient sentencing.]
[The return letter takes a long day before it goes into the mail to the rented mailbox. The reply is short and written with a heavily pressed in pen. The clipping he keeps, because he can think of someone who might be able to make use of it.]
L,
It's wrong. They were wrong. He should have been in jail for the rest of his life and that life should have been short and punctuated with misery.
-C
[Her response comes quickly enough that it's obvious she had been waiting on his reply. It's handwritten, quick and on paper that smells of vanilla and tobacco.]
I expected more in return.
[The reply is written on different, thicker paper stock, with small wells of ink at the bottom of letters indicating places he halted and tried to think of more to say.]
L,
I'm going to take care of him.
How long were you in the hospital?
-C
[She almost doesn't write back, the space between the letters making her doubt her original decision to tell him. When she does respond, it's typewritten again in an obvious attempt to purchase distance.]
C,
That girl never came out of the hospital. She died, or don't you remember me telling you so? And the man paid for his crime, and he did his time. I've never taken anyone's life from them, and I don't want revenge in my name now. It's bad karma, and bad things come to people who seek that angry blackness.
Please, don't. Not for me.
Did you love anyone in Europe? You, who always said it was such a strong feeling, who always believed in it in a way I did not. Did you love anyone?
-L
L,
I don't believe that she died. And I don't believe that man paid for what he did. I don't mind bad karma and I am comfortable with angry blackness. But I never said anything about killing him.
No. I hoped to, but I didn't.
What does the L stand for?
-C
[Again, handwritten. This time the slip of paper is butter yellow, and it smells like sage and lemons.]
You pick. Then tell me why you came back.
[Cass's pieces of paper never smell like anything specific, just the apartment they come from - dust, mostly, like they've been laying alongside his books.]
L,
I'd like you to pick something for yourself for once.
I came back because I didn't find what I was looking for in Europe. It doesn't really matter how far away I go. What's the saying? Where ever I go, there I am.
-C
[The return sheet is crumbled, as if she threw it away and fished it out again before sending.]
You didn't ask why I left.
[The return letter is almost immediate.]
L,
I thought you would stop sending me letters if I asked. Will you tell me?
-C
[Another article, this one about a billionaire's kidnapped son. The name is circled in lip liner.]
[He isn't entirely sure what to make of the name.]
L,
I spoke to him a month ago when I came back and asked where you'd gone. He seemed upset that you had disappeared, and said it had happened without warning. But he's safe, now. Why did it make you leave?
-C
[Again with the typewriter and the distance.]
C, All the things you said about love, the ones I never believed...
... they were true. But you never said how much it hurt. - L
[This is hard to respond to. He knows he should somehow be glad she was able to feel love for someone, no matter who that was or how it ended, but he can't.]
L, I never said it didn't. But it doesn't have to.
C,
It does when they don't love you back. It does when they love someone else, someone you like and want good things for. It does when you can't pursue them, not really, not without betraying your friend. And then you lose everything, and it's gone, and you know they're still going without you. That they can go on, even when you can't stop thinking about them.
- L
[The first letter reads: Now you know how I felt. He doesn't send it.]
L, He isn't the only person you're ever going to find worth loving. I know it doesn't seem that way, but you're very young, and you will meet someone else. I'm sorry that it happened to you that way, that it couldn't have all worked. You deserve a love. - C
C, Now tell me how you really feel.
[There's a slight delay in the return letter. When it comes, it's written on the back of the letter he didn't send to her for his last reply. The paper is crumpled, and 'Now you know how I felt' is on the back.]
L, I left because I loved you, and you couldn't love anyone. Then while I was gone you found someone and suddenly love worked for you. So you were capable all along - just not for me.
I still don't wish misfortune on you, and I'm not glad that you found yourself in the same situation I did. I wish a lot of things, but I don't wish that.
-C
C, You left me alone, with no one. You gave up, you stopped trying, you ran away, after everything you said about it being so strong and so true.
I left, yes, but I left him with someone else. With multiple someones who cared and could keep him safe. And I left because he would realize how I felt someday, and then he'd be uncomfortable around me. I left, yes, but I didn't leave him alone.
If you care like you say, love like you did, how can you leave someone behind with hardly enough money to cover the rent as their payment? If you hadn't left the money, it would have been better.
My uncle left, and his friend, after you did. And I couldn't work anymore, not like I had, not after what happened. Yes, I know what love feels like now. But I also think people leave. When feelings get to be too much, if it's too hard, they leave. They stop caring like they never cared in the first place.
Someone should write that in a book, I think, and press it between the pages. They should scream to the world that people only stay when it's easy, when it's fun, when they feel happy. Me, too. I did it, too. I'm not excluded. People leave. Some do dangerous things and die, and with some, you just wait for dangerous things to take them from you.
It's all about leaving, Cassidy, one way or another. I think that's the constant.
What is the point?
- L
L,
I didn't run away. I did give up, Wren what was I supposed to do? You told me unequivocally that you didn't believe in love, and everything I said and did was wrong, still is even now. I wasn't even a particularly good friend to you, and neither of us were happy when we were around one another. I am not a criminal for realizing that it could never work, and you will not make me one. Leaving you was harder than you realize, even though you seem to think of it as some grand betrayal. I begged you to stay with me. I begged you to quit your work. If you had wanted to travel with me I would have taken you in a second, but you wanted to be here in this town and do the same work you have always done. If you had at least given your heart to me, even the smallest piece of it, I would have found reason to stay. What would I have stayed for? To argue with you every time we spoke? To fight about your profession and the other work you did at nights?
I gave you what I gave you because you rejected the gift I wanted to give. I would have given you all, had I thought you were willing to take it. I would have paid for you to live happily for the rest of your life, even if you never saw my face again, but I knew you would refuse it! You, with your moral high ground on charity of any kind, your thousand rejections of the things I offered you, you dare criticize me for not leaving you more? I would have given you anything you wanted. But unless I justified it and fit it to your reasoning it would have been rejected. Do not pretend that it isn't so.
I never stopped caring about you. I left because you had no feelings for me. I won't allow you to make me into a demon for that.
People stay through hard times all the time, Wren, even if you yourself have never seen it. I stayed longer than I should have, because I loved you, and love will rob you of sense without you knowing it.
I'm sorry that your uncle left you behind. When I left, he was still here, and I thought you had friends around you - I hardly left you alone, and I'm sorry if I was wrong. But the point is that sometimes they don't leave. Sometimes people stay. You can't know if they will until they never leave, but it can happen. You have to be willing to risk that to have love. There are no guarantees, except a guarantee of risk.
-C
[Handwritten, messily.]
Is that it, then, with you, C? Love or nothing? Love to the exclusion of everything else? I either loved you, or I could have nothing at all? That is, above all things, selfish, Cassidy. It is like the books you argued over, the ones you hated. I concede, now, that there is love. But there is much, much more. Turning your back on someone you care for, entirely abandoning them, that is wrong, Cassidy. I know that, because I did it. And I am no more in the right than you, not when it comes to this.
I returned because I should not have left. You returned because you could not find something you sought.
Do you see the difference?
[He's angry enough that it's two days before a reply comes.]
L,
I don't know what you want from me. It wasn't love or nothing, Wren, it was love or neither of us being happy. If I had stayed, we would have continued to fight constantly, like we're doing now, and I would have kept making you miserable, and I would have been miserable, and there would have been nothing gained. You seem to think I was a boon to you that I never was. I don't know why you could have possibly wanted me to stay. And I am so tired of being made into a villain because you and I were equally unbending on our separate points.
-C
[The note that comes back is crumpled and still a little damp.]
C - If you care, you don't leave. -L
[Immediately.]
L,
That's not how it works. I'm sorry I hurt you. But I didn't intend to, and you hurt me first.
C, Not loving someone is not the same as leaving. I couldn't control my feelings. You could control your actions. I am not making you a villain, but you're trying to make yourself a martyr.
-L
L,
No I'm not. I'm trying to find a middle ground. I But it hardly matters now.
Is this boy still in the city?
-C
C, I don't know. I didn't write to him. I wrote to you.
[On a scrap of paper.]
L, Why?
[No reply.]
[Sent three days later, after no response has come.]
L, Let me know when you're willing to enlighten me.
[On the sixth day, an invitation to the club arrives.]