Chapter 27
While they wait for the pizzas to arrive—it is taking a lot longer than Sylvie expected—Tommy has gone back to rifling through
the mail, threatening again to open the envelopes and read what is inside. “It’s illegal, Tommy,” Nadine scolds him. “A federal
offense.”
Tommy points at the poster of the USPS logo. “Ohhh nooo. The Sonic Eagle is gonna get me!”
“Just leave it alone,” Nadine says. “People sent those letters expecting them to get where they’re going. You don’t have the
right to interfere with that.”
At least a year ago—maybe longer, time runs together—Sylvie had watched an interview about a man who had picked up thousands
of pieces of mail that had been strewn about on the side of the highway. The man had said that when he called the post office
to report what he had found, they told him those letters had been deemed undeliverable. The man was upset and held up what
looked to be a personal card, perhaps for a birthday or graduation or in sympathy, lamenting that whoever sent that card,
and whoever it was intended for, would never know what happened to their attempt to communicate.
Since then, Sylvie had thought of that news report from time to time.
She could still see that pink envelope in her mind, the man’s sad face as he held it up for the camera.
It had been tossed aside like trash. Yet someone somewhere had gone to a store, taken the time to select the card, written a message in it, found a stamp and addressed it, then sent it on its way.
That person had trusted that it would reach its intended recipient, only to have it left on the side of the road.
Even now they might be wondering whatever happened to it.
It was just another example of how humans try, and fail, to connect with one another. And yet we persist, reaching out in
hopes of receiving love, acceptance, validation, forgiveness in return. She thinks of Tommy’s efforts to reach Nadine, misguided
as they are. She thinks of her own reasons for coming to the post office today, of how by pleasing one person she loves, she
will be hurting another. She doesn’t know how to prevent what feels inevitable.
She should’ve known her son was up to something when he asked her to go for a walk with him at the town park when he visited
last weekend. A lovely piece of land that sits right on the Intracoastal Waterway, the park features swings that overlook
the water, paths for walking, and picnic tables. Many times she and Robert have gone there to have a picnic. It is a peaceful
spot, a place ideal for reading or reflecting or gathering.
The town market is held there every Thursday, which is where Sylvie gets her produce since she no longer gardens. And on Wednesday
nights from Memorial Day to Labor Day, there is a free concert. They try to go at least a few times each summer, choosing
the performers who sing the oldies. “Oldies for oldies,” Robert says. Once they stumbled upon a wedding being held there,
and once they saw a gaggle of girls taking their prom pictures down by the water, all willowy beauty and bright eyes.
She and her son had strolled along the sidewalks, enjoying the spring weather.
She’d been happy, grateful for a little alone time with her only child, apart from his wife and daughters, who had gone to the beach.
Lulled by his ruse, she’d been blindsided when their conversation turned.
“Dad seemed out of it last night,” her son had said, seven words that sank her.
Sylvie willed herself not to stop in her tracks, to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
She thought she’d covered for Robert, that Robert Junior and his family were none the wiser.
Robert Junior, who goes by Rob, continued. “He’s called me before and been confused. One time when he spoke to the girls,
he couldn’t remember their names. They were pretty rattled by it.” He glanced over at Sylvie, but she made no comment, so
he kept talking. “I know you love living here, but I’m not sure the two of you should be so far from family,” he’d said. “You’re
all on your own here.”
Yes, Sylvie had thought. And we like it that way, the two of us against the world. It was the way we started, the promise we made on our wedding day. But she hadn’t said it. She hadn’t said anything, so Rob did. “You have to think about the what-ifs—”
“Put that stuff down and come sit.” Nadine’s voice pulls Sylvie out of her recollection. “The pizza should be here soon.”
Tommy looks up. “I don’t have anywhere to sit,” he says, sullen.
Nadine gestures to a space near where they are sitting on the stools. “You can sit on the floor and lean against the cabinet.”
Sylvie watches as he acquiesces to Nadine. Sometimes it seems that Tommy forgets that he’s in charge, that he’s the one with
the gun. She gives Nadine a sly wink, a reminder of what she’d said in the bathroom. The stage is set. Seated, with a place
to rest his head, he can eat the pizza, get full and sleepy, and nod off, and then they can flee. A surge of optimism courses
through her. It is almost over. Where is that pizza?
“In my day,” she says, just to fill the quiet and try to make the time go faster, “everyone wrote letters. There was no email. No cell phones. You called someone at their home or, if it was long distance, you wrote a letter. That’s how you kept in touch.”
Morrow chimes in. “I remember. We had pen pals. We wrote thank-you notes. We passed notes in school. I would meet kids at
camp in the summer, and we’d exchange letters all year long until we went back to camp the next summer.” She pauses. “I wonder
where all those letters are now.” She smiles. “They’d be fun to read.”
“There was something satisfying about receiving a letter,” Sylvie agrees. “The anticipation of wondering what was inside,
what bit of news or unexpected declaration might be waiting.”
Morrow, who guesses she’s probably the only other person in the room to recall a time before email existed, nods.
“I was a schoolteacher before I retired,” Sylvie continues. “Used to be letter writing was an actual unit that was taught
as part of English, which is what I taught. The students had to learn how to write a formal letter, a friendly letter, a thank-you
letter, and the different parts of each one. We were quite formal about it all.”
Now we aren’t formal enough, Sylvie thinks. Everyone is so casual about everything. Too casual. But she does not say this. Instead, she says, “I would have each student write a letter to the business of their choice and
ask for something, something that had to do with that business.” She gives a little laugh. “Oh, the things we got in return.
It was such fun!”
Tommy looks particularly skeptical. “Like what?”
“Once I had a student write to an executive at Coca-Cola, and they sent us free cans of Coke for the whole class.” She can’t
think of any other examples just then, but she knows there are many, as she taught school for many years. She wonders if they
still cover letter writing in school now. She doubts it.
“Whoop-de-do,” says Tommy. “Free cans of Coke.”
Ignoring him, Sylvie asks Morrow, “Do you still remember the parts of a letter?”
Morrow makes a stricken face. “Oh goodness. Let me think. Um . . . there’s the part where you write, like, where you are and . . .
the date? Right?” She looks to Sylvie, who nods.
“That’s the heading,” Sylvie says. She makes a little motion for Morrow to continue.
“And then there’s the part where you say ‘Dear so-and-so.’ And that’s the . . . greeting!”
Sylvie claps her hands together and nods her affirmation, remembering her years in the classroom. She did love teaching, but
she does not miss it as much as she misses that time in her life, the whole of it. The work and the family and the day-to-day
routine she took for granted. Sometimes in her dreams she goes back to that time, to the house they raised their son in. She
is never doing anything special in the dream, just going about her normal life. She is always sad when she wakes up. This
would likely surprise her younger self if she knew that someday she’d literally dream about that harried, hurried time in
her life.
Morrow continues, caught up in the challenge and glad for something to think about besides the situation. “And then there’s
the part where you just say what you have to say.” Again, she looks to Sylvie. “But I don’t remember what that’s called.”
“That’s the body of the letter. It’s actually in three parts: your introduction, your main points, and your summary. Or, as
I used to tell my students: Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.”
Tommy pretends to snore, but they all ignore him.
“Ha. I’ve never heard that,” says Morrow, who is thinking that if people communicated this succinctly now, maybe more would get accomplished.
She wonders if, when people lost the art of letting writing, they lost some core part of culture.
But she doesn’t add her commentary; she just says, “I remember being tested on this.”
“You got tested on letter writing?” Tommy interjects, and Sylvie turns to him, ignoring his comment and lobbing a question
at him instead. She did this with the troublemakers in her classrooms too.
“Okay,” she says. “So what do you think comes after the body?”
“The grave?” Tommy says, then laughs at his own joke as they all roll their eyes. Even still, Blythe feels a little shiver
go down her back as he says it. No matter how much it was said in jest, it’s never good for the man holding you captive with
a gun to be making jokes about bodies and graves.
Sylvie ignores him again and continues with her impromptu lesson. “So we’ve got the heading, the greeting, the body. But there
are five parts total. So”—she looks over at Morrow—“don’t you answer this. Let’s see if the young people can guess.” Morrow
smiles and nods.
“So you’ve said what you want to say. Now what’s next?”
“You have to close it out?” asks Nadine.
Sylvie claps her hands together. “Yes! Exactly! The closing!”
“No fair,” says Tommy. “She probably already knew that because she works here.”
Nadine turns on Tommy. “I did not! I guessed it. I mean, if you’ve said all you have to say—if there’s nothing left to be
said—it’s time to end it.”
Nadine stops talking and chews on her lip as her words seem to reverberate through the room. For a moment no one says anything
as Tommy and Nadine look at each other. For once Tommy doesn’t look angry. He just looks sad.
Blythe speaks up before things can go in an altogether different direction. “So what’s number five?” she asks. She doesn’t care what the fifth part of a letter is. She just wants to move the conversation past this awkward moment.
Sylvie is no longer caught up in the lesson. Perhaps she should’ve kept her mouth shut and not started this. It seems there
is nothing in this room that cannot turn on a dime. Her voice is quiet when she says, “The final part is the signature, and
we know what that is.”
For a time no one speaks. But then Tommy does. “What about the PS?” he asks.
All four heads turn to look at him; then, blinking, four sets of eyes return to Sylvie. One thing she always understood about
teaching: It is a responsibility, one to be taken seriously. Where you lead, your students will follow. At the moment she
feels this acutely.
“Yes,” she says. “You’re right. The PS can be part of a letter. It stands for postscript, and it’s something that can be added
on after the end, below the signature line.” She treads carefully, weighing her words before she says them. “It can be something
you forgot to say earlier that you’d like to add, or a reminder to the person you’re sending it to. Something you don’t want
them to forget.”
Tommy nods and looks down at the gun that rests in his lap. “I thought so,” he says. “I thought there was still something
left.”