An Invitation

As you check your mail, you notice a letter that makes you stop in your tracks. It is perfect white, almost gleaming. The envelope is square, with no wrinkles, and no blemishes to its Kansas surface. You can see no return address on the back, but as you tear it open and read its contents, you find that it is not necessary.

Inside is a paper folded in half of the same blinding white, empty save for an unfamiliar address in cursive with a date and time printed neatly below it. And below - you almost miss it - a signature, bearing your last name.

That can’t be right. All of your worldly relations are gone. Even when you did have them, they were few, few enough to count on one hand.

Your father worked everyday building houses, never once showing any signs of illness or poor health, until he dropped dead one beautiful autumn day.

Your mother was cold and distant, with a voice like knives. Everyone agreed that the house felt 10 degrees warmer after she drowned in a steamboat accident. It wasn’t cruel, just true. Or both.

Then there was your uncle, your father’s twin brother, bald at 20 and balder still at 40 when you came to him orphaned twice. He was clumsy like a newborn giraffe. He slipped for the last time on the eve of your 18th birthday.

You have attended a total of three funerals in your sad, lonely life.

You cannot make out the first name of the signature (It is smudged, you see, and your spectacles are on your bedside table instead of your nose.), but you are nearly certain that the first letter is an E. Or maybe an F? You move the paper closer to your eyes, but it doesn’t help.

It is clearly an invitation, but from who?

You begin listing plausible E names in your head, and when you run out, you move on to F. Fiona, Felix, Finnegan, Fanny, Femur, Follicle... Before you know it, you start listing body parts instead. A fading anatomy textbook was the only book to be found in your uncle’s house. He used it as a doorstop.

At your feet, your ever-silent cat meows loudly. It is likely this is because he is hungry, and it is 10 minutes past his usual lunchtime, but you take it as a good omen, as you are inclined to do at times. You are meant to go.

One day from now, just home from the office, you will start to regret your decision. Perhaps there’s a reason you had no idea about this relative. But you are late to feed your cat again, and his yowl will convince you that you need to go. 

Two days from now, you will stand in front of your mirror, trying to choose an outfit. You will worry about being over- or underdressed. But then again, you don’t know the nature of the event, so the fault lies with your host in that case. You will wonder if you are the only guest, and if your host is a man or a woman. You will wonder how they got your address, and how the invitation has managed to stay perfectly spotless despite laying in your dusty desk organizer for 48 hours. You will start to suspect that it might not even be real paper, but some odd stone variety. You will wonder whether one could call stone paper a “paper alternative”, as if it is soy milk or vegan cheese. You will wonder why you’ve never heard of this mysterious relative, seeing as they are only a 17-minute drive away. Are they a lunatic? Were your parents tired of their unnecessarily cryptic ways? You will realize that you don’t really care.

Three days from now, your rubber-soled feet will jump out of a taxicab. You will spend 8 minutes puzzling out the gate before you figure out how to get in. You will knock on a dark blue door five times, a good number. The door will seem to open all by itself, and you will let yourself in, feeling a bit like Goldilocks, and pray that there are no bears in the vicinity. You will sniff the air and think it smells like pistachios and newly-opened puzzles. You will feel something brush past your trousers’ worn hems, and you will wonder for your host's sanity when, upon closer inspection, you find that it is a raccoon. You will see that the pesky thing is following a trail of breadcrumbs (Do raccoons even eat breadcrumbs? If they can eat rubbish, then they probably do.), and you, in turn, will follow the raccoon around the corner, down the hall, and into a cramped sitting room. By then, the tea will be cold, and the fire dying. At least the tarts will still be good.

In the corner, there will stand a piano once grand, now screeching and faded, but just as beloved. In the center, you will see two corduroy armchairs, one green and one blue. On the green one will lay a piece of paper with your name on it. The chair will be reserved, as if for a middle-school play. Your name will be barely there, because the cartridge is nearly out of ink. You will look around for any other people, but it is only you. It will strike you as odd to reserve a chair for the only person present.

Ah, but you will be mistaken! You will, in fact, be the only person in the room. But that’s only if you’re overlooking the strange figure seated in the blue chair. You will hardly be able to see her outline, if it even is a her, because she will have sunken Titanically into the chair. But it will not matter. Because there, waist-deep in armchair, with an oversized winter coat sitting upon frail shoulders and a paisley scarf twisted around the neck in a fashion from times past, I will be waiting.