Sam's Letters to Jennifer Read online

  “My dad was semiconscious or worse. He never realized that Sam was a stranger, and she never set him straight. Sam stayed the entire night with my father—just because he needed someone.”

  As Shep finished his story, I heard someone call my name, and it startled me some.

  I turned and saw a doctor standing in the entrance to the waiting room. It was Max Weisberg, blond and clean-shaven, wearing green scrubs and holding a chart in front of him. Max is a few years older than I am, but I’ve known him since we were kids on the lake.

  His expression was distressingly grave as he walked toward me and extended his hand. “Jennifer, I’m glad you’re here,” he said. “You can go in and see your grandmother now.”

  Eleven

  ON THE WAY to Sam’s room, Max Weisberg answered most of my pressing questions, but then he told me to go inside with her. I still had the freshly cut flowers in my arms as I walked up close to Sam’s bed and bent down low so that maybe she could smell them.

  “Hi, it’s Jennifer. I’m here to pester you again. I’m going to keep coming until you tell me not to,” I began.

  “Everybody in town is asking about you. They want you to get well immediately, if not sooner. We really miss you, Sam. I’m speaking for the whole town, by the way. . . . But more than anybody else, I miss you.”

  I found a nice place for the flowers on the windowsill near the bed. “I got your letters,” I said. “How could I miss them?” I reached over and touched Sam’s cheek, then kissed it.

  “Thank you—for sharing the letters with me. I promise I won’t read them in one gulp, though I want to.”

  I stared at Sam’s face. I thought I knew everything about her, but obviously I didn’t. She was still so pretty—real down-to-earth beauty. My eyes started to tear again, and I felt a pain in the center of my chest. I couldn’t speak for a moment. I loved her so much. She and Danny were my best friends, the only ones I ever really let inside. And now this had to happen.

  “Let me tell you a story,” I finally said. “This goes back to when I was four or five. We would drive over to the lake from Madison half a dozen times every summer. Those times at the lake were the summer for me.

  “Do you remember, Sam? When we used to leave, every single visit, you would stand on the porch and call out, ‘Bye, I love you guys.’

  “And I would lean out the car window and call back, ‘Bye, Grandma, I love you, too! Bye, Grandma, I love you!’ What you didn’t know is that I would keep repeating it all the way home—‘Bye, Grandma, I love you. Bye, I love you.’ I do love you, Sam. Do you hear me? I love you so much. And I refuse to say bye.”

  Twelve

  I HATED to leave Sam but I’d made a lunch date that I wanted to keep. I drove out of the hospital parking lot and was soon cruising down the main street in town.

  Lake Geneva is like a toy village, only life-size, and I’ve seldom met anyone, except the worst cynic, who didn’t love it. The wide and busy street is lined with pretty good restaurants and nice shops selling antiques, and the shining lake glitters magnificently as a backdrop.

  I stopped at the light and watched people drift in laughing clumps along the sidewalk, overlapping my memories of recent summers I’d spent doing the same with Danny. Oh, Danny, Danny, I wish you were here.

  I parked in front of what used to be my great-granddad’s pharmacy and entered the cool interior. John Farley was waiting for me at a booth with red leather seats in the back of the store. He looked dashing with his thick white hair, and was wearing a striped blue and yellow rugby shirt and khakis.

  He rose when he saw me. “You look like hell,” he said, beaming.

  “That means a lot, coming from an expert on hell,” I said, smiling for the first time all day. While many clergy seem to have gotten life’s lessons from books, John was as in touch with reality as a good Chicago shrink. We ordered grilled cheese sandwiches and chocolate shakes from a teenage girl who had no idea I was seeing the fountain through an old sepia-colored filter, remembering Sam’s description of meeting my grandfather there.

  “What kind of man was my grandfather?” I asked John after our lunch arrived.

  “He was a fine lawyer, crooked golfer, good family man. He was what you would call a man’s man,” he said.

  “Charles and Sam met right here,” I said. “Not ten feet from where we’re sitting.”

  John must have seen something sad cross my face. He reached out and took my hands in his. “When I think about your grandfather, what jumps out at me is that he couldn’t stand to get his clothes dirty, Jennifer, but he was always out in the yard raking or moving rocks around for your grandma. Or stacking firewood or tinkering with her car.

  “Meanwhile, she took care of him. Cooked what he liked to eat. Kept his spirits up. In their own way, they were devoted to each other.”

  I nodded, and wondered if he was telling me the whole story. “And what about Sam? What kind of woman was she?”

  John Farley had the most dazzling smile. “Your grandmother is the strongest person I know. I’m sure she’s going to get through this, Jennifer. Don’t ever count Sam out.”

  Thirteen

  THAT AFTERNOON I was back at Sam’s house, and I was trying not to let what had happened get me down. I was thinking about making one of Sam’s famous “wacky cakes” and then eating it all by myself. The huge oak tree out front cast a soft shade over the front yard. Just like always. A couple strolled along the footpath that encircled the lake; sailboats blew across the water, pulled by their colorful sails.

  A rosy-cheeked older man sat out in a wheelchair at the water’s edge, tossing a green tennis ball for a brown terrier mutt. The dog brought the ball back every single time. The man finally saw me, and as people on the lake do, he waved.

  I waved back, then went inside. I returned to the front porch with a big glass of lemonade and a packet of Sam’s letters.

  I had so many questions about Sam and my grandfather now. I never really loved Charles. Was that true? Was it possible? What other secrets did the letters hold?

  I settled into a wicker rocker, untied the packet, and gave the string to Sox, who took it off into the bushes to kill.

  Then, with a breeze riffling my hair, I began to read the story of who my grandmother really was.

  The first few letters were notes about Sam’s garden, her feelings about a provocative column I wrote on the post office disaster in Chicago, some thoughts on President Clinton, whom Sam both adored and was terribly disappointed in.

  Then I picked up the thread of her life story—and Sam dropped another bombshell on my head. Geez, I had hardly recovered from the last one.

  Fourteen

  Jennifer,

  This could be the worst of the letters that I’ll write.

  Charles and I honeymooned in Miami, as you know. We stayed at the Fountainebleau, a wonderful old hotel on Collins Avenue, right on the beach. But Charles was unhappy the whole time we were there. He complained that the hotel staff was too servile, the food too rich, the sand too sandy. To put it mildly, he found fault with everything.

  And he especially found fault with me.

  On our third night there, right after dinner, we were on the small terrace outside our room, listening to the ocean pound against the jetties. Charles had had several drinks.

  I was trying to make conversation. “I enjoyed meeting that couple from North Carolina. We had some good laughs, didn’t we?”

  His face darkened with a storm that seemed to come out of nowhere. He looked me straight in the eye. “If you ever stand up against me, if you ever cross me in any way, if you ever become a bore or a simpleton, I will leave you and without a dime.” Then he raised his right hand and slapped me across the face. Quite hard. Bone-jarring. I think it was the first time I had ever been hit in my life.

  Then Charles thundered inside, leaving me devastated on the terrace. I sat outside for a long time, listening to the surf of the Atlantic Ocean, or maybe it was the blood pounding
in my ears. I wanted to throw up, to run home, but how could I?

  Jennifer, I was crushed and terribly confused. Do you understand? I’d left my home, all my friends, so that I could be with Charles. Things were very different back then, especially for small-town girls. A woman didn’t get divorced, not even if she was struck.

  I grew up that first night of our honeymoon; I saw our future together and felt there was little I could do to change it. But I did do one thing. Before we left Miami, I told Charles that if he ever hit me again, I would leave him on the spot and damn the consequences. Everybody would know what a bastard and bully he was.

  After the honeymoon, Charles and I moved to a large apartment in Chicago. It still wasn’t very good between us, though. Once he’d passed the bar, your grandfather joined the family firm. Soon I gave birth to your mother, then to your aunt Val. But, Jennifer, I lived for the summers, when I always returned to Lake Geneva.

  But I dreaded the weekends, when Charles would come up from Chicago. He brought his moods with him, though he rarely raised his hand to me. He was selfish and enjoyed putting me down in front of the children and friends of ours. But he did provide for us, and he eventually did make good on the promise he’d made to tell me the dark secret in his past. What Charles would never tell me were the secrets in his present, the girlfriends he had in Chicago and elsewhere.

  I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you wanted to hear my story.

  Fifteen

  Sweetheart,

  Let me tell you some other things about your grandfather so you can understand how he came to be the man that he was. The husband, even the grandfather.

  Picture Charles telling me about what he called “sins of the father,” events that shaped his life—and mine. It was three years after we were married. Your mother was in her crib in the next room, and she was such a good little sleeper. Charles and I were in bed, and cars whooshed by in the rain, lighting our faces with headlights as they passed our window in the Chicago apartment.

  It was on this dreary night that Charles finally told me about the transforming event of his life. It had happened when he was just sixteen, and it is an incredible story.

  Charles’s parents had thrown a party in their imposing home for their older son, Peter, who had just graduated from prep school. It was after dinner and the guests had moved to the library for coffee. Peter was opening his gifts and Charles made a careless remark to his father that his older brother always seemed to get the best of everything.

  Arthur Stanford just snapped. He turned on Charles, called him an ingrate. He then said that it was time for Charles to know the truth. “You’re not even our son. You’re adopted!” his father yelled at him. Just like that, in front of everyone in the family. The party stopped, and in the brittle silence that followed, Charles ran upstairs to his room. His father was right behind him. When they reached the top landing, Charles screamed, “It isn’t true! I know it isn’t true!”

  Arthur Stanford had calmed some by now. “Believe me, Charles, I’m not your father. I’m your uncle,” he said. “Your father is my brother Ben. He got a girl pregnant, a little nobody from nowhere.”

  “You’re l-l-lying,” Charles stammered pitifully.

  “Go and ask your father then,” Arthur said. “It’s time you knew him anyway. The last I heard, he was working at the Murray Tap. It’s a gin mill in Milwaukee.” Then Arthur Stanford lowered his voice. “Caroline and I took you in. We’ve tried to love you, Charlie. We do our best.”

  That night, when he was just sixteen, Charles went to the Wabash and Adams Street train station. He bought a dollar ticket and caught the North Shore Line to Milwaukee.

  Inside our bedroom, Jennifer, passing headlights lit Charles’s face and I could see his eyes lit up in terrible pain. My heart went out to him. If I couldn’t completely forgive him for everything, at least I understood what had happened to make him so angry, and occasionally cruel.

  Charles continued his story, and some of the words were so vivid that I can remember them to this day.

  He told me that the train ride ended two hours later. His uncle’s phrase “a little nobody from nowhere” kept playing like a bad song in his head. He walked out onto Michigan Street at midnight. Two huge Milwaukee breweries were nearby, and the smothering smell of beer lay heavy in the air.

  He asked directions, then walked east, until he found Murray Avenue. He almost passed the place he was looking for.

  There was no sign out front, only a dirty window to the left of the door lit by a Miller High Life sign. Charles pulled on the creaking door and entered a barroom that was darker than the night outside. There was a long bar and a thick layer of smoke hovering over it.

  Men who worked at the breweries and smelled like stale malt looked up at him. No one said anything or seemed to care that he was there.

  When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Charles climbed onto a covered stool. He sat in the shadows, taking in every detail: the dice cups on the bar—a few working men gambling for drinks—a sign that said

  HOUSE SPECIALTY, PANTHER PISS.

  Mostly he looked at the bartender, a rough-looking man with a scarred face but unmistakable Stanford features: the aristocratic, slightly crooked nose, the stuck-out ears. Charles told me, “The love I felt for him was almost painful.”

  As he watched, he saw his father shortchange a customer and tell vulgar jokes about women, which made Charles’s face go red.

  Finally his father wiped down the bar with a greasy rag, leaned into Charles’s face, and sneered. “Get the hell out of here, kid. Take a hike before I kick your ass across the river.”

  Charles opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The terrifying moment dragged on. His face burned, but Charles couldn’t speak.

  “A pansy,” his father said to loud laughter. “Kid’s a pansy. Now get the hell out of here!”

  Shaking with emotion, Charles slid off the stool and left the bar. He never introduced himself to his father, never said a word. Not then, not ever.

  I asked Charles, “How could you leave without talking to your father?” His voice got very flat, as if it hurt him to answer. He said that when he looked into his father’s face, he saw Arthur’s eyes—the same cold lack of feeling. And he knew that his own father had never loved him, and never would.

  “I found him so easily,” Charles said. “Why hadn’t he ever found me?”

  That night I took your grandfather in my arms, Jennifer. I understood that I was his only friend, whatever that meant to him. But as I pressed his head to my chest and smoothed his hair, I knew something else. I knew why Charles had married me. I was a little nobody from nowhere. Our marriage had been an act of defiance, Charles’s way of putting his thumb in the Stanford family eye.

  I was twenty-two years old, but I felt that my life was over.

  Sixteen

  I WAS REELING from Sam’s sad story about my grandfather. As much as I had adored him, something about it rang true. Though she’d asked me to read the letters slowly, I wanted to know more. How could she have stayed with Charles all those years?

  I was sitting in the kitchen and had just opened the flap of the next envelope when I was startled by a movement out of the corner of my eye and the sound of footfalls on the grass outside.

  A man rounded the side of the house. The odd thing was, I thought I knew him but I didn’t know from where. I went out onto the porch to see what he wanted.

  His hair was light brown, with a soft tousled wave and a fiercely independent lock that sprang forward. He had very blue eyes.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi.” Tentatively.

  He was probably close to forty, wearing khaki shorts, a Notre Dame T-shirt, and the strangest old-man sandals.

  Then it clicked. The last time I’d seen him, he wasn’t wearing any clothes. This was the war-whooping swimmer.

  “Jennifer?” he asked, and that threw me some. I was wondering how he knew my name when he put his hand on the bani
ster and began to board Sam’s front porch.

  “Whoa,” I said. “Do I know you?”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m Brendan Keller. I’m staying with my uncle Shep, four houses down. He said he ran into you at the hospital. Brendan Keller? You don’t remember me, do you?”

  I shook my head no. Then I nodded yes. It was all coming back. Brendan Keller and my cousin Eric had been a big part of my early summers at Lake Geneva. They were the brothers I never had. I’d followed them everywhere for a summer or two. They’d called me Scout, after the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird.

  I didn’t remember having seen Brendan Keller since I was a little girl, though. I put out a hand. “Hey, long time.”

  The two of us wound up sitting on Sam’s porch, talking over a couple of iced teas. Mostly we reminisced about Lake Geneva “back in the day.” He knew my newspaper column, and I managed to get out of him that he was a doctor now.

  “Eric and I called you Scout. You were very advanced for a ten-year-old. I think you’d actually read To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  I laughed and cast my eyes down, embarrassed by something I couldn’t quite get a handle on. He followed my gaze. “You’re looking at my shoes.”

  “No, I —”

  A slow smile spread across his face.

  “I borrowed them from my uncle. Listen, speaking of Shep. He says the Lions Club is having a lobster boil over in Fontana. You’re invited if you’d like.”

  I shook my head, almost a reflex. “No. I’m sorry. Tonight’s not good. I’m writing my column. I’m way behind.”

  “If I change my shoes? I have really nice loafers. Sneakers? I could go barefoot.”