You’ve Got Mail
“Dorothy, please, call me Florence.”
“Um, right, sorry Miss…um, Florence.”
“That’s better.” I smiled at her. “Hm, what’s this?” I glanced at the postcard, then, flustered, I quickly nodded back at Dorothy. “Thank you!”
The art depicted a naked woman riding an enormous black cat with a message that said, “My pussy, my rules.”
“Jesus!” I chuckled, rolling my eyes because I already knew who that was from.
I flipped it back.
Apart from an actual address that belonged to my parents’ house, there was another message addressed to—oh, God, I hoped that my mother, or anyone else, had not seen that.
To:
Florence Horny Bitch
Wanna–Masturbate Street 69
696969 Hoetown
Slutmania
We hope you are having a great time and find THAT outfit very handy. Wink, wink.
Love, Alex and Hetal.
“Seriously!?” I snorted a laugh, wondering how someone could come up with that and what exactly they were imagining I was doing back home, here, with my parents under one roof—although now, if you thought about it…
“Honestly,” I puffed a breath, a slow grin playing on my lips. “Gotta write those sluts back.”
As I found myself in the library, I headed towards my mother’s desk.
Surely some of our monogrammed stationery would be there—just in case my name wasn’t enough and my friends needed a reminder of exactly who that ridiculously pretentious person gracing them with a letter was.
Later we could all laugh at it together.
I grabbed a sheet of paper—okay, fine, it wasn’t just a sheet of paper.
It was a subtly woven sheet with elegant, embossed family initials at the very bottom of it.
And suddenly, I felt like a scribe or secretary, quill in hand, should be drafting this very correspondence on my behalf for it to later be delivered by a pigeon.
Not sure how reliable, but luckily I’d already befriended one or two.
I yanked the drawer open, my fingers scrabbling through its contents. “Pen…pen…where is…?” Then I froze. A yellowed newspaper clipping, my face staring back at me. What the—? A cold dread coiled in my stomach as the headline blared:
HORRIFIC CAR CRASH: PARAMEDICS FIGHT FOR MULTIPLE LIVES
Images flashed through my mind: sirens wailing, shattered glass glinting against the flickering emergency lights, the screams of the injured…
the article…it was about what we all went through that night.
The memories came flooding back: the adrenaline, the fear, the desperate struggle to save all those people.
But why did she still have this? After all the fights, the criticisms, the constant doubt of my decisions. Did she keep it to remind herself of my failure? Or…was there something else? A pride…perhaps?
No, it couldn’t be. Could it?
I traced the lines of the photo—hi there, it’s me, the major disappointment.
Refusing to believe it but still hoping for the possibility that my mother might have thought she misjudged me, but also, knowing that woman, I knew she’d never admit it.
With a heavy sigh, I shook off my sentimentalities and quickly put the newspaper back in the drawer where it belonged.