Sam's Letters to Jennifer Read online

  To my right was the old white clapboard lake house, porches all around, rising up to two asymmetrical stories of added-on dormered rooms. My grandparents’ home sweet home. I knew every curve and angle of the house and the view from every porch and window.

  I released my seat belt and stepped out of the car into the humid summer air. And that was when the fragrance of the casa blanca lilies hit me. They were Sam’s and my favorites—the prize of the garden, where we had spent many a night sitting on the stone bench, smelling the flowers, gazing up at the sky.

  It was here that she’d tell me stories about Lake Geneva—how it freezes east to west, how when they were digging ground for the golf course at Geneva National they unearthed a cemetery.

  Sam had stories about everything, and no one told them the way she could. This was where I became a writer. Right here at this house, and Sam was my inspiration.

  I was suddenly overwhelmed. Tears I’d been holding in broke free. I dropped down to my knees on the hardpan parking area. I whispered Sam’s name. I had the terrible thought that she might not ever come back to this house. I couldn’t stand it.

  I had always thought of myself as strong—and now this. Somebody was trying to break me. Well, it wasn’t going to happen.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there in the parking area. Eventually I stood, opened the trunk, shouldered my duffel bag, and started inside with the cats. They were vocalizing from their cages and I was about to liberate them when I saw a light go on in a house a hundred yards or so down the shoreline. A second later the light winked out.

  I got the feeling that somebody was watching me. But who knew I was there?

  Not even Sam.

  Five

  SAM’S HOUSE was my favorite place in the world, the sanest, and always the safest—until tonight anyway.

  Now everything seemed off-kilter. The kitchen was dark, so I threw on the light switch. Then I put down the cats and opened their cage doors.

  The girls sprang forward like little racehorses out of the gate. Sox is three-quarters alley cat, one-quarter loudmouth Siamese. Euphoria is an all-white longhair with green eyes and a smoochy nature. My hands were still shaking from stress as I fed the two of them.

  Then I walked from room to room, and it all looked exactly the same.

  An old burnished hardwood floor secured with square-headed nails. A chaotic mass of houseplants crowding the bay window in the dining room. An astonishing view of the lake. Books spread everywhere. Bel Canto. Queen Noor’s memoir. A Short History of Nearly Everything.

  And the artifacts that Sam and I loved: antique ice tongs from the days when blocks of ice were shipped by horse teams to Milwaukee and Chicago; old snowshoes; paintings of the round pink crab apple trees along the lake and of the old train depot.

  I heaved a big sigh. This really was home to me, more than anywhere else, especially now that Danny was gone from our apartment in Chicago.

  I took my duffel bag upstairs to “my room,” with its views down onto the lake.

  I was about to drop the bag on the vanity table when I saw that it was already occupied.

  What is this?

  There were a dozen banded packets of envelopes, probably a hundred envelopes in all, maybe more. Each was numbered and addressed to me.

  My heart started thudding as I guessed about the letters. For years, I had been asking Sam to tell me her story. I wanted to hear it, and record it for my own children to hear. And now here it was. Had she known what was going to happen to her? Had she been feeling sick?

  I didn’t bother to undress. I just slid into the soft folds of bedcovers and took a stack of the letters into my lap.

  I stared at my name written in blue-inked script. Sam’s familiar handwriting. Then I turned over the first envelope and carefully peeled open the flap.

  The letter inside was written on beautiful white linen paper.

  I took a deep breath, and noticed I was trembling as I began to read.

  Six

  Dear Jennifer,

  You’ve just left after our most recent “girls” weekend together and my heart is full of you. Actually, I decided to write this when we were saying good-bye at the car. It just came to me.

  I was looking into your eyes and I was struck by a feeling so hard that it physically hurt. I thought about how close we are, always have been, and how it would be a shame, almost a betrayal of our friendship, if I didn’t tell you some things about my life.

  So I’ve made a decision, Jen, to tell you secrets that I’ve never told anyone before.

  Some are good; a few you might find, well, I guess shocking is the word I’m looking for.

  I’m in your room right now, looking out at our lake, drinking a mug of that heady spearmint tea we both like, and it makes me happy to think of you reading my letters a few at a time, just the way I’m writing them. I can see your face as I write this, Jennifer. I can see your lovely smile.

  Right now, I’m thinking about love: the hot, crazy kind that turns your chest into a bell and your heart into a clapper. But also the more enduring kind that comes from knowing someone else deeply and letting yourself be known. What you had with Danny.

  I guess I believe in both kinds of love, both kinds at the same time and with the same person.

  By now you’re probably wondering why I’m going on about love. You’re twirling your hair around your finger, aren’t you?

  Aren’t you, Jennifer?

  I want, I need, to talk to you about your grandfather and me, sweetheart. So here goes.

  The truth is, I never really loved Charles.

  Seven

  Jennifer,

  Now that I’ve written that difficult sentence, and you had to read it . . .

  Please take a good look at the old black-and-white photo I’ve clipped to this letter. It was taken the day the direction of my life changed forever.

  I remember it was a humid morning in July. I know it was humid because my hair had sprung into those stupid Shirley Temple curls that I just hated at the time. See the apothecary jars inside the plate-glass window behind me? I’m standing in front of Dad’s pharmacy, squinting in the sun. My dress is blue and a little faded. Note my hands-on-hips stance and the self-possessed grin. That’s who I was. Confident. A little forward. Naive. Full of potential to be anything I wanted to be. Or so I believed.

  Here’s what I was thinking at that very moment.

  My mother had died some years before and I was managing the store that summer. But the next year I was going to leave Lake Geneva, go to the University of Chicago, and eventually become a doctor. That’s right, I planned to be an obstetrician. And I was proud of myself for working hard to make it come true.

  After this picture was taken, I followed my father back into the dimly lit and narrow store. I swept the wooden floor with Dust Down compound and set the daily newspapers out on the radiator near the door.

  I was sponging down the marble counter at the soda fountain when the door opened and slammed shut with a sharp bang.

  It would be accurate to say that my whole life changed right there, with that bang!

  I looked up, scowling, and my eyes locked with those of a most handsome young man. I noticed everything about him in a flash: that he was limping, and I wondered why; that he was dressed in expensive clothes, which probably meant he was a lakeshore person, a summer visitor; that he looked at me hard—bang—like a shot to the heart.

  We continued to make twenty-twenty eye contact as he slowly walked to the soda fountain, then sat down on one of the swivel stools. On closer look, he wasn’t conventionally handsome. His nose was a little too wide and his ears stuck out some. But he had jet-black hair and dark blue eyes and a nice mouth. That’s exactly what I thought. I remember it to this day.

  I took his lunch order. Then I forced myself to turn my back and I made him an egg salad sandwich, no onions, extra mayo on the side.

  I put coffee on to perk, feeling his eyes on me. I could almost feel stea
m coming off the back of my neck.

  I had lots of things to do that morning. Cartons of Listerine, Ipana, Burma-Shave all needed unpacking, and my father had asked me to help him measure out prescriptions.

  But I was stuck there at the soda fountain because that boy wouldn’t leave. And to be completely honest, I didn’t want him to.

  He finally pushed back his plate and asked for another “cuppa joe,” which made me laugh.

  “You’re beautiful, you know that?” he said as I poured more coffee into his cup. “I think we’ve met. Maybe in a dream I had? Or maybe I just want to know you so badly that I’ll say anything right now.”

  “I’m Samantha,” I managed to say. “We’ve never met.”

  He gave me a brilliant smile. “Hi, Samantha. I’m Charles,” he said, and extended a hand for me to shake. “Will you do a soldier a big favor? Have dinner with me tonight.”

  Who could say no to that?

  Eight

  Jen,

  Charles and I had dinner that night at the posh and wonderful Lake Geneva Inn, where you and I still have two- and three-hour lunches. I’d never been inside the place before and I was dazzled by the grandeur, the lights, the class. (Remember, I was all of eighteen.) Candles winked, glasses clinked, silent waiters served lavish dishes, and the wine kept coming—champagne, too.

  Charles seemed so much older than his twenty-one years, and I was fascinated by everything he said and everything he didn’t say that night. After much urging by me, he finally told me about the bullet he’d taken in Sicily, and he hinted at a deeper hurt that he said he’d tell me about someday.

  I found this promise of future intimacy by Charles irresistible.

  At eighteen, I was very impressionable. I was a small-town girl, and being with Charles opened me to a much larger world, one that intrigued me. How could it not?

  You have to understand that life felt very precious during the war, Jen. Gail Snyder’s brother had been killed at Pearl Harbor, my uncle Harmon had been wounded, and nearly every boy I knew was fighting overseas. (I say “boy” because that’s what most of them were, and that’s what war has always meant to me—a place where boys are sent to die.) It seemed a miracle that Charles had come home and that we had met that summer.

  We went out every night for a month and a half, and he usually stopped by for lunch as well. I got my spunk back and began to have more fun than I’d ever had before. Charles talked easily about all the countries in Europe he’d seen and cracked me up by singing popular American songs with a French accent. He was moody occasionally, but it mostly seemed a dream come true. He was so handsome and quick-witted, and a war hero.

  Then one moonlit night on the lake, Charles whispered that he loved me and always would: he was so certain of it that he convinced me. When he proposed marriage nine weeks after our first date, I almost bounded over the moon. I shrieked, and he took that to mean yes. Then Charles kissed me tenderly and slid a large emerald-cut diamond on my ring finger. Oh, I was the happiest girl in the world.

  We were married on a late September day, the sun shining brightly one moment, disappearing behind woolly gray clouds the next. The changing light was like a curtain falling between acts of a play, and the wedding, too, felt like a dazzling Broadway production. I was mad for Charles. Nothing felt completely real, but it was wonderful.

  The ceremony was held at the Lake Geneva Country Club. We weren’t members and my dad couldn’t pay for a wedding like that, but the Stanfords could and did, so we deferred most decisions to my in-laws-to-be.

  But my dad had interceded with Mrs. Sine in town, who made the most beautiful white silk dress. It was high-necked with dozens of buttons down the back and more buttons from the sleeves to the wrists, and a long, full skirt that bunched around my feet.

  You know it well, Jen, because you wore it when you married Danny.

  I can still see it. The country club, all our guests, Charles with his slicked-back jet-black hair, his ramrod-straight posture. My dad handed me off to the handsome groom. An Illinois Supreme Court judge officiated. I shyly whispered my wedding vows, meaning them with all my heart.

  Charles and I exchanged rings, and then he lifted my veil to kiss me. There were cheers and applause, and everyone spilled out of the main country club building and onto the sprawling lawn. Billowy white tents had been set up near the edge of the lake. The best catered food money could buy was served and a top band from Chicago played Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller.

  Half the guests had polished manners and wore clothes that had been designed in Chicago and New York; my friends and family wore their Sunday best and stared down at their shoes a little too often. But the champagne worked its magic. We danced and danced on the lawn, and huge flocks of migrating geese winged across the sky. My friends fluttered around me as the sun set and they told me that I was the envy of them all. I understood what they meant, and I had to agree.

  It was just perfect, Jennifer.

  Or so I believed for that one glorious night, my wedding night on our beautiful Lake Geneva.

  Nine

  I READ only a couple of the letters, as I’d been told. Then I fell asleep in my clothes, no doubt dreaming of Sam, past and present. I awoke with the vaguest feeling of dread, as if I’d been shaken out of an awful nightmare, a fantasy not of my choosing.

  It took a moment to place the apple green walls and the fluffy mohair throw over my legs, but then I got it. I was at Sam’s house. I was supposed to be safe and protected here, happy too. I always had been in the past.

  There was a weight on my chest—Sox in deep slumber.

  I had just dislodged the cat when a high-pitched, almost bloodcurdling scream came through the thin panes of the bedroom window. Was someone being murdered outside? Of course not—but what was that awful noise?

  I bounded over to the window, parted the curtain, and peered out into the front yard. It was early morning.

  I couldn’t see too much out the window, mostly shadows and wisps of mist coming off the lake. A row of shingled houses stretched south. Then I saw and heard a man yelling with the exuberance of a ten-year-old. He charged across the lawn of a house maybe a hundred yards down the shoreline.

  The running man cleared the lawn quickly and nimbly, negotiated the length of rickety-looking dock painted white, and, without breaking stride, performed a shallow dive into the lake.

  What a neat dive it was. And what an odd scene for so early in the morning.

  I watched for a minute or so as he stroked a smooth freestyle before disappearing into the mist. He was a good swimmer—graceful, strong. That made me think of Danny. He’d been a great swimmer, too.

  I turned away. I was awake now, so I pulled off the day before’s clothes and tugged on clean jeans and a blue Cubs sweatshirt from the top of my duffel bag. I picked up Sam’s letters, which had fallen to the floor. I remembered “I never really loved Charles.” I couldn’t deal with that one yet. I had loved my grandfather. How was it possible that Sam hadn’t?

  I went downstairs to the homey, golden oak kitchen where so many summer mornings had started. I fixed coffee and called the hospital to check on Sam, and to make sure her doctor could see me later that morning. Sam was holding stable. She still hadn’t opened her eyes, though.

  I slammed around the familiar kitchen, making breakfast for myself: Grape-Nuts, orange juice, a “cuppa joe,” whole wheat toast with sweet butter. I fed the cats—and peeked to see if the swimmer had returned. He hadn’t. Maybe I’d made him up.

  While I sipped the last of my coffee, I watched Lake Geneva. God, it was beautiful. The early fog had lifted some. And what is this? The swimmer was hoisting himself up on his dock and was sluicing water off his body with the edge of his hands. I noticed something I hadn’t seen before. He was naked.

  Well, he had a decent body, whoever he was. Obviously, he liked it, too. Typical male narcissism, not to mention thoughtlessness. “Jerk,” I mumbled.

  Maybe ten minutes later, the J
ag was purring softly under the oak. I set a big bunch of freshly picked flowers next to me on the passenger seat. I hit the road to see Sam. She had some questions to answer.

  Ten

  I SHAVED a couple of minutes off the usual fifteen-minute run to the hospital. Once I was there, I found my way to the ICU. Visitors were already gathering at the nurses’ station, but I caught the attention of one of the physicians. Dr. Mark Ormson apologized but told me that I should wait. Sam’s doctor was examining her right now.

  There was a coffee machine in the waiting room around the corner. I pressed quarters into it and was thinking that I needed to see Sam but that I didn’t need any more coffee.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man of about seventy-five, tanned, with a well-trimmed beard. He waved, then rose from one of the linked plastic chairs and walked toward me. It was Shep Martin, Sam’s lawyer and a neighbor on the lake.

  We sat down, and when he started talking about Sam, it was obvious that Shep was as surprised and shook up about her condition as everybody else seemed to be.

  “I’ve adored Sam for forty years,” he told me. “You know, I met her right here at the hospital.” Shep then told me a story that sent shivers racing up and down my back and neck.

  “One night, this was about forty years ago, Jennifer, I was out of town when I learned that my father had been in a car crash. I got to the hospital the next morning—only to find a woman I’d never met before sitting beside my critically injured father. The woman was holding his hand. I didn’t know what to say.

  “Fortunately, Sam spoke first. She explained that she had been visiting a friend the previous night. Your grandfather was out of town. She was passing my father’s room when a nurse came out. The nurse mistook Sam for my sister, Adele. She gripped her by the wrist and brought her to my father’s bedside, saying, ‘Your father is asking for you.’