Continued, The Correspondent
Sybil Van Antwerp
Dear Sybil,
I apologize that our conversation on the phone last week was cut so short on my end and that it’s taken me this long to sit down to write.
I did end up having to take Paul to the emergency room the next morning (it was pneumonia again).
I had to ask a neighbor to sit with Lars, just complicated, but Paul’s fine now and I had a full night of sleep and I’m here at last. Thank God the wrist business is almost behind you—cast off in a few more weeks—no surgery.
That was the best case scenario. I just went and read over your letter from the week you fell and it made me laugh (now that I know you’re all right).
God, doesn’t Mr. Lübeck sound like the most wonderful man?
Honestly, Sybil. You know what I think, so I’m not going to keep saying it, but SYBIL.
(This is unrelated, but I had a moment when I was reading the letter again thinking about all the letters we have exchanged—those boxes in my closet!
—and thinking how if we pieced them back together we would have a MASSIVE decades-long tale to tell.
Probably boring to anyone other than ourselves.)
I know you don’t like me to bring up your vision, so typically I don’t, but you mentioned it in your letter.
What is the latest? When have you last seen Dr. Jameson?
And here, speaking of your health, I know you were joking about the cane, but take your recovery seriously.
You are very stubborn, and that is a wonderful quality except when it’s not.
I worry about you down there by yourself.
Now, another thing. In your letter you very briefly mentioned the strain in your relationship with Fiona, and while that wasn’t the main point of your letter, I’ve thought a lot about it.
I’m sure if I had a daughter (or a standard child of any sex) it would be easier for me to relate, but I don’t, and when you named Lars and me as Fiona’s godparents, already knowing that I wouldn’t ever have what you had, it was the greatest gift.
I understood you were offering me an important, lifelong position and, as you know, I have always taken being her godmother very seriously.
My relationship with Fiona is dear to me, and probably because I am not her mother she has felt, she feels, a strong connection to me without any of the tricky dynamics that always (inevitably, it seems) plague the relationships of mothers and daughters, and in fact, I have always had the feeling, even from the time she was a little girl, that Fiona knew she was providing me with something I could not otherwise have by allowing me to be a part of her life.
I am exceedingly grateful to you for this gift.
Over the years there have been certain times when I have felt that I needed to pirouette between you and Fiona.
I have a very strong allegiance to your family, but also to my individual relationships with you and with her.
I have typically found a way to do this with what I think (I have tried) is integrity and honesty, respecting you both.
However, after I read your letter I was moved to tell you something I kept from you.
After Daan passed away last fall Fiona came to visit me in Connecticut.
She was having a very difficult time with everything and then a few weeks before Christmas she had to be in Boston for a work conference, so she added a few days to the trip and came to see me.
It was a total surprise to me. She called the day before and asked if she could stop in, and I didn’t realize until she was here that you didn’t know she was in the US, and she asked me not to tell you.
I agreed. (I regret this) We really just talked.
That was all we did for two days, just sat on the porch out there and talked and talked, and it was Fiona doing most of the talking.
She talked a lot about Daan’s dying, and she was still in shock, very emotional, troubled by death in general, and still grieving all the agony of infertility, which I obviously understand, the years of negative pregnancy tests and the miscarriages she suffered before beginning IVF (I didn’t know about any of it, and was surprised you hadn’t told me), and she was just grappling with a great many things, one of which was her relationship with you.
It isn’t my place to disclose the details of the things she said, and I want you to know that I have always kept my loyalty to you primarily, and I did then, too, but in the same way you are disappointed by the way it is with her, the same is true for Fiona, and it seems like an honest conversation might fix it.
In your letter of May 25 you said you were pondering the reason for which you cannot seem to have a good relationship with Fiona.
The thought of you losing sleep over this bothered me, and I remembered you had told me she’d written you a mean note after Daan’s funeral, mad you hadn’t attended, and now I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines when perhaps, by suggesting you deal with this issue head-on, my position between the two of you could actually be put to use. You both love each other.
All right then. I think that’s all I wanted to say. I apologize for not telling you before now that she visited. Not telling you has made my stomach sour for the last six months and now I do imagine of course you will be hurt when you read this letter, so I am sorry. I’ll wait to hear from you,
Rosalie
P.S. I am reading Inferno, the newest Dan Brown. What are you reading?