The Letter

THE LETTER

Thaddeus B. Griswald heard the mail scrape through the slot and hit the floor. He glanced at the time on the ancient grandfather clock, turned his wrist over, and looked at the new Rolex. The times were the same. Thaddeus gave a satisfied grunt. He demanded accuracy.

The mail was late. It was the second time this week. The postmaster would hear about it. He gathered the mail from the floor and returned to his big red leather chair by the fire, Gas, not real logs. He had switched after the house next door had burned down when an ember popped from the fire onto the old, tan wool carpet. The carpet, quick to burn, had gone up in flames, then poof, the curtains caught, and the rest, as they say, is history. Thankfully, his old friend Randall had not been burned alive, having been pulled from the chair he had fallen asleep in by his golden labrador dog Max.

Good dog, that one, Thaddeus thought. One to keep. He leafed through the mail, mostly bills and advertisements, but then a letter.

“Nice, “he said. He thought,” I haven’t had a letter in God knows how long, probably last Christmas, from my sister Patricia, recounting her past year.”. That was a yearly gift that he looked forward to getting.

He held up the letter and studied it. He saw an out-of-state return address but no name. How odd. The letter appeared very old. He looked at the postmark, and it stunned him; twelve years ago, the date read. Thaddeus opened the letter. Before he could take the pages out, a puzzled look swept his craggy-lined face. He brought the letter close to his nose, inhaling deeply. A memory gate fell open. Her perfume filled his nostrils. He knew who the letter was from.

Thaddeus spread the pages on his lap, staring at them as his memories filled him. Emotion roared to life, sadness now replacing the joy he once knew. He knew the writing, could see the perfect hand holding the pen and the face he would never forget.

“Vanessa, my beautiful Vanessa,” he whispered.

Their love was red, passion lighting up a sun that never set, always fire, always heat. That love sustained them through four glorious years. They were soulmates, soon to be married when they each turned thirty. Then, as Thaddeus was riding his motorcycle to the university where he worked, a truck lost control and smashed the future out of him.

Multiple broken bones, ruptured spleen, lacerated liver, and a fractured skull and coma. The doctors told Vanessa that he would not survive the night. Fear gripped her then, overcoming her, wrapping her in a vice so tight that she, too, thought she was going to die.

              Vanessa fled then, running from the angel of death in Thaddeus’s hospital room and the one trying to catch her. She never went back. Sometimes, the only thing you can do to survive and not lose your mind is to run, but the mind is lost anyway.

              Thaddeus did not die. He woke from his coma two weeks later. His first words were, “Vanessa, where is Vanessa?” Pain was the only thing that answered him: pain in his heart, pain in his soul, and pain in his body. Pain was his companion now. His body healed the pain first, after two years of rehab and surgeries. His heart and soul, now with permanent holes where Vanessa had lived, never healed, but with time, he learned to suppress the pain and live his life.

              Thaddeus lived his life teaching literature at the university, his specialty being tragedies. He was one of those stories now, a protagonist who didn’t die and was living a life sentence for that. Sometimes, he even got through a lecture without crying, with tears hidden behind his tinted glasses.

                He smoothed the pages with his hand, imagining it was Vanessa’s glorious skin, reliving their passion again. Finally, he started to read.

               “Dearest Thaddeus, do I still have the right to call you that after I violated our love?

When I saw you in that hospital bed, encased in tubes penetrating your skin, lungs, belly, and bladder, a machine breathing for you, electronic monitors with screens dancing your every breath, heartbeat, and brainwave, I went into shock. I cried, but I ran; I breathed, but I ran; my heart still beat, but I ran. Fear attacked me, pierced my heart and soul, then chased me as I ran, wanting more of me. Then, after a year, I stopped running, but fear and I still circled each other, warriors in an ancient, bloody arena, seeing who would strike the next blow.

                  I learned you lived, defying the doctors who told me you wouldn’t live through the night. Of course, you did, defying expectations. That was just so you, dear Thaddeus, giving the finger to death.

                  Now, after a year, I am striking my first blow against my fear. This letter is my apology to you for my behavior, for having inflicted more pain on you, and for my cowardice in leaving you. I still love you, darling Thaddeus. Can I come to you, speak to you? If I can, please write to me and, even a little bit, open that door that I don’t deserve to have opened once more.

                                           My love has never fled,

                                                                 Vanessa

              Thaddeus stared into the fire, wishing the flames were from real wood, cracking with the same intensity he felt inside. Then he got up, poured Jack Daniels Tennessee whiskey into half a large crystal glass, and sat down by the fire. Over the next few hours, he read the letter over and over, savoring this, the closest he had been to her in twelve years.

             Finally, he folded the letter and gently put it into its envelope with as much care as a museum curator would handle an ancient piece of the Dead Sea Scrolls. He placed the envelope on his thigh and again watched the fire. How odd he thought that a fire destroys, but watching a fire brings to life so many emotions and memories. So, he watched and floated in the good memories for a while. The love at first sight, soulmates forever, and blow me away with mind-boggling sex we will have for many, many years, even when we are old, perfect kids, perfect jobs, then the fantasy blown to pieces by an accident, and the woman who ran away. So ended the good memories that even a real fire could not sustain.

            His eyes were drawn to the envelope's upper left corner. Her address grew large and melded with his brain. He knew he would go there as his love was stronger than her inflicted pain and anger. Love you forever was a vow he would not break. He went to his computer and googled her address. There she was, not five hours away. She was so close, yet a distance unbridged in twelve years. So close, so close, just a return letter away. He threw the crystal glass into the fire, threw back his head, and roared, a scream tearing past the shattered dream and giving birth to hope.

            The next day dawned brighter than the day before. He packed a bag, and as he did so, he thought how odd it was that her fear had driven Vanessa away, but his fear of losing her again drove him towards her once more. The symmetry was impressive.

            For the next five hours, Thaddeus drove, wishing he was already there. Autumn had exploded with color, but he saw none of it. Even his driving had become automatic, and sometimes he realized he had not seen the last fifty miles.

He pulled his car up to her address. A mansion rose above, on a hill. It was three stories of elegance, he decided: white brick, black shutters, garage doors, and an ornate, oversized front door. She had obviously either married well or had a great career. He double-checked the address on the pillars guarding the double-gated entrance to her property against the letter he had brought with him.

              Pressing the intercom, he listened to static and looked up at the camera, which was aimed right at him like a gun. “Wow,” he thought, “this is so Impressive.” He drove three hundred yards on crushed white quartz and another fifty on black-painted cement, expanding into a huge black cement circle abutting the white steps leading to the black front door. It would look like a long black stem with a colossal white petalled bloom, if you were two hundred feet above and looking down.

              He parked and got out of his car, which looked like the bad cousin who never got invited to dinner. He started slowly up the steps, tentatively then faster, in a burning desire to see Vanessa. He stood before the massive black door and rang the buzzer. No one came. He pressed the doorbell once more, and the door cracked open five inches, and a face peered out at him.

“What do you want?” said the very young, clean face of an eight-year-old boy

“What is your mother's name, boy.”

“Vanessa Hatch”

“Then that’s what I want, to see your Vanessa.”

Skeptic, the boy's eyes studied Thaddeus. “a brave one, this lad,” thought Thaddeus

“We are old friends.”

“What’s your name,” the skeptic boy asked.

“Thaddeus Griswald”

As if he just answered the riddle in a fable, the boy pulled the door wide open.

Please come in,” the boy said, and so Thaddeus did.

“Mother said that if you ever knocked on our door, that I should let you in.”

“What’s your name, boy?”

“Benjamin Hatch, sir.”

“May I see your mother, Benjamin”

“She is with the doctor and nurses now, but I can ask if you can.”

“Thanks, Benjamin”

The boy ran off, feet pounding loudly on the marble floor. Thaddeus was alone and concerned. Doctor and nurses, he mused. That’s not a good sign. Fear awakened in him. He sat on a marble bench in the foyer. After about twenty minutes, he heard the rapid pounding of feet on the marble floor, and Benjamin was coming at him, his pace faster, then he dropped and slid on the floor, sliding and stopping just before hitting Thaddeus’ feet. Benjamin popped to his feet, and Thaddeus thought that the run and slide was a trick Benjamin had used many times before.

“Mother says not right now because she is in the middle of her chemo, but that since it is getting dark, I should show you to a room where you can spend the night.”

Perhaps the only word Thaddeus would remember from the boys' statement was “Chemo.”

Thaddeus’s room was beautiful, with a king-sized bed, antique desk, lamps, and a large Persian rug. Thaddeus did not see any of it. He sat in an oversized leather desk chair, pondering what the boy had said. The boy’s name was Benjamin Hatch, and Vanessa was in chemo. So, she had married and had a son. He was glad of the boy. Vanessa had always wanted kids. Her last name was now Hatch. He wondered about the father. Thaddeus sighed, his mind unable to focus beyond those facts. He rose, went to bed, and lay down, staring at the blue-painted ceiling. No answers were written there.

A knock on the door startled him. “Come in he said.”

The door opened, and Vanessa, in a wheelchair pushed by a nurse, entered. Physically, she looked horrible, thin and gaunt, her face puffy and red splotched, an IV running into her chest port, legs swollen at the ankles, and bruises all over her. And yet, to Thaddeus, she had never been more beautiful than she was now, here at last with him.

He got up and went to her, kneeling beside her wheelchair. Vanessa placed her hand on his cheek, a benediction of sorts, and he raised his eyes to hers.

“Hello, Thaddeus”, two brief words that held all the volume of words ever spoken, and tears filled his eyes, tears for him and tears for her.

“I only got your letter yesterday, twelve years late,” he said as if apologizing for his tardiness.

“Ahh,” she said, as if that knowledge explained many things. Her nurse rolled Vanessa to a spot next to the desk chair, and Thaddeus got up, went to the chair, and sat. His legs had wobbled, weakened by the reunion.

“I would not have blamed you if you had gotten my letter all those years ago and never answered it because of the blow I dealt you. In fact, that is precisely what I believed.”

“Tell me”, he said, “everything.”

So, she did. She told him how her fear had overtaken her reason and her heart. She told him about her too-late apology that she thought went unanswered and about the awful times after that. She told him of finally accepting that she and Thaddeus were done and how she had accepted the proposal of a kind man that she had learned to love, even to giving him a son, hoping all the while that the canyon of loss in her soul would heal, but it never did.

Thaddeus, in turn, told her of his lonely years, of his never having blamed her for leaving, and how, still in love, he thought about her every day

Vanessa told him of the death of her husband, a heart attack whisking him to the afterlife, and the raising of her son. Lastly, she told him of her cancer, the progressive death sentence that it had given to her, and her despair over leaving her son.

Thaddeus felt a shift inside, tumblers whirring and opening. He got down on his knees.

“Vanessa, marry me, marry me tonight. I don’t want to live another day without you in it for however many days. Marry me. If we only have until tomorrow, then that day will fill me for the rest of my life.” Thaddeus brought her pale hand to his lips and kissed it over and over.

Vanessa studied his face as only a woman could study a face, searching there for truth.

“Yes, Thaddeus, yes, I will marry you,” she whispered.

The past shattered then, and more love than they ever thought possible swept in to fill the space. Then it was done, a priest found that night, for money can buy many things. Her staff served as witnesses and had dressed her in one of the most beautiful gowns she owned. Benjamin served as ring bearer of two plain gold bands that Vanessa had saved to use if their wedding had ever come to pass.

In the days and weeks that followed, Vanessa rallied, a testament to the power of love and forgiveness. A year later the cancer was gone, leaving her oncologist baffled, but the truth is that he had seen recoveries like hers before.

Vanessa and Thaddeus framed her letter and hung it over their bed, where it stayed for the rest of their lives