Calliope: Voice of the Writers
The Great Novel Race 2008:
Shattered Places
by Emily Craig
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Chapter 3
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It was a wicker letter case. It once belonged to Aunt Sue, but now it and every letter it contained belonged to her. Some of the envelopes were flat and crisp, almost like they had never before been opened, while others were fat and wrinkly. They made her mouth water for every morsel of information scribbled inside on long sheets of floral-bordered stationary. In the past three months that had followed Sue’s death, an unfamiliar loyalty had paralyzed Kae, had disallowed any snooping in Aunt Sue’s old things. Every dress the woman had worn in her youth had been bagged away, every piece of costume jewelry had been boxed, every letter pushed away and forgotten—but not really. She itched for the closeness, the smell of Aunt Sue, but she dare not touch those things, not until now. Now she had a reason.
For half an hour the case sat on the motel’s stiff bed, unopened, undisturbed. The young woman sat on the bed a couple feet away, with her legs folded beneath her and her toes peeping out from her soft green pajama bottoms. Kae had come back from the college two hours ago. Her bubble bath was cold and her book boring, but still she felt secure behind the bolted motel door, back in her world, separate again from his. But underneath that wicker lid was a hundred little envelopes in which her world and his connected, in which past touched present and present might touch future. She was not frightened. Actually, this is what she wanted. She wanted to be back in Faye, she wanted everything back.
Her soft palms braced the mattress, her fingers spread out over the rough quilt. Her knees inched forward. The wicker was scratchy against her skin, and the smell of old paper drifted through the air like fine dust. The letter on top was the last Aunt Sue had received, and it was still sealed. Above the Birmingham address, a neat cursive read Ms. Susan Danner, and in the top left-hand corner it read, Ms. Doris E. Windsor. She slipped a nail underneath the loose flap of the envelope and pulled the stickiness apart. Let the timeline begin.
Mrs. Windsor’s handwriting was an elegant but nervous script. Her sentences were choppy, sometimes ending in unexpected places and sometimes running on, even through a countless amount of blotchy-inked periods. Most of what she had to say was irrelevant to anything, and many things she mentioned more than once. Kae remembered this style from a long-ago letter she had once received from the older woman. In a patchy mess of words and dashes, the simple message was sprawled across three whole pages—of floral-bordered stationary. It was not until Kae had studied the letter for the fifth time that her young, inexperienced self finally sat back in shock, as she realized what had been written. Please stop all attempts to contact my son. Andrew has another life now.
But there was no time for bitterness now, Kae had work to do. One by one, she tore open all the envelopes and letter by letter, she unfolded the other life. The pages fell onto her lap like dying leaves, and newspaper clippings and old photographs and gems she never knew Sue had, scattered the bed in a colorful mosaic of mystery. The eyes of an adult Andrew stared up at her from the face of a young boy captured in a picture printed on one of the many booklets Mrs. Windsor had collected from her son’s piano recitals. “He is not like himself,” Andrew’s mother had written on the card with which she had sent the booklet. “He still struggles with his father’s death. Confused a lot. He barely played a thing at his recital.” It was unlike Andrew not to play, Kae knew that. As a boy, he played piano better than he knew how to speak English. Music was his language, and it seemed to drift off of him and fill the air everywhere he walked—at least it did back then…
Back then was before Mr. James Windsor’s heart attack—the fatal heart attack he had had twenty years ago on one crisp and sunny April morning. Maybe she barely remembered the past, as she had told Andrew, but she could still smell the sympathy flowers, still feel the over-heated funeral home as guests filed in to view the body, and still hear the whispers, “No, don’t let the child look at him, she’ll be frightened.”
The newspapers had mourned Mr. Windsor’s passing as not only a heavy loss for family and friends, but for the whole town. “He will be greatly messed, especially at Faye Swanner College where he taught English for thirty years,” Kae read from the news article. However, Kae was not especially concerned about the town. She continued to rustle through all the letters, determined to follow the change in young Andrew’s character and whatever direction it had taken. “A boy needs a father,” his mother had written randomly in one letter that had nothing to do with the subject. According to her, it seemed Andrew’s life had not taken much a direction at all.
A year later, a young pianist organization seemed to disagree. “Last night’s recital was topped with a magnificent song written and performed by fifteen-year-old Andrew Windsor. The song, titled “Yesterday,” was filled with such an eerie mix of both warmth and emptiness, that it left the audience mesmerized through the rest of the evening. One woman who had traveled an hour to hear the young Mr. Windsor remarked, “He was able to express an amazing kind of emotion no normal child can or should ever know how to express.”
Finally, Miriam’s name began to appear in the letters. “He is seeing a girl named Miriam,” his mother had written. In a later letter she wrote, “She is a very sweet girl—in some ways reminds me of your little niece.” Through the young couple’s relationship, Andrew’s talent only seemed to flourish. “Music,” wrote Mrs. Windsor, “is the only sound in our house now.”
Kae slowly slid the white invitation out from its pink envelope. A wedding. It had been one of the few pieces of mail she herself had opened for Aunt Sue. The pain she had felt upon reading the ceremony and reception details had been less than she had expected. It was a strange airy pain, but more lonely feeling than if it had been severe. Please stop all attempts to contact my son. Andrew has another life now. Yes… apparently a better one. For a moment, the letters blurred and Kae could only see her own past, the haunting scenes of Birmingham…
She slung aside all dissapointments and dug into the letters so fast, that the words shot out at her like racing scenes in a movie theatre.
“There will be another child to laugh and play. In that old house—again.”
“He is different. Quiet. Always thinking.”
“Treats Miriam like she was a fragile china doll. Barely touches her now that she is going to have a baby.”
And suddenly a gap in the years. Kae checked the letters to make sure. Several years missing… Missing… She pulled out a flier from one envelope and sat back. A copy of the picture Andrew had taken from Barrie’s novel earlier that morning, stared up at her with warmth…and emptiness. An amazing kind of emotion no normal child can or should ever know.
Lisbeth Ann was discovered missing from her home on Cotton Mill Drive at 12:30 AM, the Missing Child flier read.
One of the last letters was scribbled on the back in a light blue ink. “He doesn’t talk any more about anything. We have lost him. We have finally lost him.”
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