15. Evelyn
15
Evelyn
Read other people’s mail: Wednesday, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. @ Love Letter Museum
T he Love Letter Museum has been at the top of my list of places to visit since I first browsed through blogs detailing the local attractions. If I can’t come up with my own words dripping with love and sincerity, maybe I can find some glimmer of inspiration in someone else’s. It’s housed in a robin’s egg blue Victorian with a few dedicated parking spots out front.
It’s no surprise to find Garrett a few feet from the door tapping away at his phone. I pull out my own phone to take a picture of him and find a notification from Mom waiting for me.
Mom
Your father showed me this article. It’s good you’re out of the city.
Evelyn
Wow thank you for sending it. Very helpful!
I don’t even bother looking at the headline of the article that no doubt details a violent crime. Instead of actually telling me they want me to move back, they usually send articles or news clips to not-so-subtly convince me to come back. There’s a universe where I send them crime statistics showing that Nashville has higher crime rates. I don’t, I never will, but I like knowing that I have the option to throw an Uno reverse card into the mix. Anyway, what I know they’re really saying is we miss you and we care about you.
I lightly shake my head trying to dislodge the tense feeling that accompanies these types of texts.
I refocus on Garrett and open the camera app. Taking a step, I make sure to get the sign with the museum name and a small existed since 1927 in frame.
“What are you doing?” he asks as I press the capture button. With the clouds still blocking the sun, the light coming from his screen casts shadows highlighting the sharp corners of his face.
“Pulling my weight. You know you better come through for our part of the deal on Friday!” I call back then walk up the paved driveway to meet him.
I know the exact moment when he reads my shirt. I have other clothes, sure, but the way his eyebrows pull skyward every time is ever so satisfying.
Today’s selection reads, I wish Italians were real.
“Aren’t you Italian?” he asks.
“And every day I wish I was real. It’s really hard work being a figment of your imagination. Living in your head has its downsides. I mean, who gets turned on by dusty law textbooks when there’s better stuff out there?”
“I don’t think I could make you up if I tried to,” he says as his eyes flicker over me.
“I’m just that devastatingly fun and good looking.” I sigh as if exhausted by it.
He lets out a huff. “Something like that.”
The inside of the museum is reminiscent of a bed and breakfast with its large front desk the moment you step inside. An electric fireplace is running in the corner crackling under the acoustic pop music playing, adding to the welcoming ambience of the lobby.
Garrett goes to the desk to buy our tickets then returns with pens and two pieces of thick paper with uncut edges.
“Love letter supplies, it’s included in the ticket cost,” he explains as we start to wander into the first room. There’s a slight creaking overhead, likely from other patrons, but the downstairs appears to be empty.
Instead of the wooden benches I’ve seen in other museums, there are loveseats interspersed in the room. Antique pens ranging from metal-tipped feather quills to engraved ball points are arranged along one wall. Further down are an array of signet rings and wax seals. The room appears dedicated to the art of all the details that go into the perfect letter.
“Are you going to write me one?” I joke.
“I doubt you’d enjoy that. It wouldn’t stack up to all your other ones,” he says.
“You know I’m not like that. I don’t float through life on a cloud just collecting relationships dreaming of happy endings,” I tell him. Would it kill the man to take me seriously? He’s just as bad as my parents with how they act like I never grew up.
“You’re right, I don’t think that you float on a cloud. It's more of a bubble like the witch from the Wizard of Oz .” He keeps a straight face and even tone, but somehow that makes it feel even more like a joke than if he had tried to make it funny.
“Glad we have that cleared up. And just so you know, I am not a proud member of the love letter club.”
“Really?” he asks. “Because you're the exact type of person guys slip letters into lockers for.”
“Yes, of course, since you’re an expert on girls’ lockers from your time at an all-boys school .” I slide him a glance.
“You know what I mean.”
“I do. But you’re still wrong,” I say. “I wasn’t unpopular in school, but I had a tendency to scare guys off. I had dates to dances and friends, but there was no line of suitors knocking down my door with bouquets of wildflowers.”
I didn’t hate my high school experience. I’d even say I had fun. But that was back before I knew how to reign myself in. I was constantly in trouble for talking too much in class or being disruptive. It probably had something to do with having a famous brother and needing to feel seen in my own right, but back then I didn’t think about it that way. I just wanted to be noticed at full volume. I was fun at parties, but never the girl anyone wanted to sweep off her feet.
“What about that guy you were with who always looked like a Labrador who downed a shot of espresso?” he asks.
It takes me a second to realize first, that he’s talking about Oliver—who yes, always had this energy that verged on feeling artificial until you got to know him. Second, there’s the fact that he’s aware of my dating history. I don’t know how to feel about that.
“No love letters there either. That wasn’t our type of relationship,” I say as I walk over to the single letter in the room. One that’s never been opened, its rose-embossed crimson wax seal still intact. Alice scrawled on the front in looping cursive, the intricate penmanship like a fingerprint. Whatever is inside, it never got to Alice and I can’t help but feel sorry for the long dead lovers.
“But you wrote love songs about him?” he clarifies.
“He doesn’t know they are about him,” I say, as if that makes it better.
“And how exactly does that work?”
I’ve only confronted that question in my head, so it takes a moment to find any words. “We kind of had this low grade happiness. It was good, good enough that it made both of us satisfied that we weren’t settling. Our relationship wasn’t risky and I think that was a big part of the appeal of it. I think both of us knew that if we really wanted to, we could find someone else to make us happier, but we didn’t. It’s why after we broke up things were off, but we could still be friends.” Or at least, that’s why I think so.
Oliver and I had something important in common. We both wanted to belong somewhere stable. He’s the oldest and only boy in a slew of half-siblings. I’ve gone with him to three of his father’s nine weddings since we met. Oliver was never resentful. He always had this hope that it would work and always got along with his sisters. But, like me, he wanted something that wouldn’t be pulled out from under him. In a world where I didn’t have music, I think we would have lasted.
We almost did.
I kept music from him and Quinn because I knew what that type of career could do to people. I saw it happen with Wes and Avery. I saw it with Drew and his bandmates, with Garrett. I saw it with my family. I opted to not talk about music and hoped that would somehow limit its effect on my relationships.
“You still love him?” Garrett asks.
“I always will. Just not that way.” I take in a deep breath, ready to move onto something other than the past. “Enough about that. This is a research trip, let’s research.”
We split off because there’s nothing we’ve established that mandates that we have to spend time together. Still, there’s a part of me that is cleaved in two like someone has torn a letter off the wall and ripped it down the middle. Beyond Avery, there’s no one else I’ve been able to tell the truth to, and with Garrett I feel like I can tell him anything. Not because I think he’ll care, but because he doesn’t.
Unfortunately, the idea causes an old fear to bubble to the surface. I think I need him more than he needs me. He can take pictures all around town without my help. I, on the other hand, really am fucked if I can’t finish this album.
These thoughts follow me as I wander through the museum. It’s not large. There are five main exhibits with informational materials scattered through the long halls that connect them. The downstairs has three of the rooms. One holds donated letters from the last hundred or so years with words from soldiers to their lovers and sweethearts who maintained their affection across long distances.
There are newer letters too, some from this last year collected from visitors to the town. Another is a room painted from wall to wall with the words of a letter from the town’s founder to his wife. I spin around the room reading the words in their clear block letters that thank her for staying with him despite his faults and the time that is spent away.
I have been gone most days, yet you stay. Behind closed eyes I carry your image with me to meetings and across miles. When I return I rest my head next to yours. It is a gift to be the one you trust in sleep. There is no fruit as sweet as the charity you grant me in remaining by my side.
The letter is simple, but it pulls at something in my chest.
The last two exhibits are upstairs. The first has displays discussing how love letters can come in many mediums, music, paintings, monuments. I find Garrett in the last room filled with historic replicas sitting and looking down at his phone. The old wooden floors creak as I walk, calling his attention to my entrance.
“You could leave, if you don’t actually want to be here,” I say, acknowledging his disinterest.
“It’s disingenuous to send pictures pretending I’ve gone somewhere. And for all I know I’ll have a damned quiz waiting for me to recap all of our adventures.”
“I just love how desperate you are to spend your days with me,” I say as I take a seat next to him. “Enlighten me, then. Why are you so averse to being in the moment?”
“Asking me to ruin it for you?”
“I’m not a five-year-old at a puppet show.” I know things are a performance, but that doesn’t take away all the joy.
“Sure, but we all have things we’d rather pretend aren’t there.”
“I promise not to blame you for causing me to get a headache from thinking too hard.”
“I’m not calling you stupid. That’s never what I mean.”
“But I have the energy of a fairy who wears pink glittery dresses and flies around in bubbles,” I remind him and playfully nudge his knee. He stares at my leg for a moment before pulling away, creating more distance between us.
“First of all, she’s a witch, and second, I firmly believe that she was the mastermind of the film,” he says in his standard neutral tone.
“You know, your dedication to fact checking is kind of cute,” I say, fighting to contain a laugh.
“Well, the facts about this place aren’t as cute. The town is a bit over two hundred years old but the festival has only been going on since the seventies. Tourism was down, but when Woodstock started in ’69 other towns had the idea of starting their own festivals to draw people in. Originally, it was in August, but slowly changed to October 14th because of all the leaf peepers.”
“Leaf peepers?” I interrupt.
“Tourists. The ones who come to look at the leaves,” he explains. “Well, the festival started and Hartsfall changed everything down to its motto to make it work. There was no deep dedication to love, it was always about money.” His shoulders heave in a sigh then his gaze roves around the room until his eyes land on a particular letter. “All of these are replicas of the most famous love letters in history. Marilyn Monroe writing to Joe DiMaggio.” He points to one letter then another. “Elizabeth Taylor to Richard Burton. The promises written in these letters were lies we use to draw people back every year peddling the same fantasy.”
“I don’t think so.”
“That the relationships didn’t fail?”
“The promises weren’t lies,” I say. “I think they meant all of it, okay, most of it. But life just got in the way.”
His eyes narrow. “I thought you wanted my perspective, but if you just want to argue about something we can pick a more interesting topic.”
“I do. I’m listening,” I tell him then seal my mouth shut.
“You know I don’t actually have anything against happy endings or true love. But in these letters”—he gestures to the wall but his eyes jump to mine and hold them—“everyone ignores the truth. Everyone wants to be the exception.”
“I don’t think love is the exception. Love doesn’t have to last to be important, you know.” I feel like I’m talking to myself as much as I’ve been talking to him. I almost believe my own words because I have to. I want what I’m saying to be true, I need it to be. “There is one thing I don’t particularly like. These were all private once. I don’t mind the donated ones, but the ones that come from celebrities, not so much. They already had such limited privacy and then these vulnerable moments, that just feels too much.”
“I think I might be making you a pessimist,” he mutters.
“Or I’m a romantic realist and you’re finally getting to know me.”
We make our way out of the museum after the alarm goes off on Garrett’s phone. When we say goodbye and go our separate ways, it’s not like he’s my favorite person to be around but there's a black hole of unutilized time threatening to consume me. It’s not like I’m like Garrett who seems to love schedules and structure.
Before my move I was always doing something. My day job. Music. Going to the brewery Quinn, Oliver, and I found that was equidistant from all of our apartments with its live music and wobbly chairs. Now I feel like I’m drowning in time. Time that I want to be able to utilize, but instead it seems to paralyze me. I’ve spent days on my couch, balancing a pack of Oreos on my stomach, overwhelmed by the nothingness of it all. It was a paradox. Try and face the reality that all my risks aren’t paying off, do nothing and also fail.
I’m halfway back to Austen Dr. when my phone buzzes in my pocket.
Avery
You’d help me hide a body, right?