Sam's Letters to Jennifer Read online

  I smiled. “I can’t,” I said. “Sorry. I have a deadline. Honestly.”

  Brendan stood up and set down his tea. “Okay. Well, I’m just down the road. I hope I’ll see you around. Brendan Keller.”

  “Scout.” I smiled.

  We mumbled good-byes and I waved as he walked back in the direction of his uncle’s house. My former contemplative mood was blown. I put Sam’s letters aside and went into the house.

  I did some work that afternoon, and once or twice I thought about the lobster boil going on in Fontana without me. Eventually I made a salad for dinner, wondering why I’d been so hell-bent on eating alone.

  But I knew why. Danny.

  And our little “peanut.”

  Seventeen

  THAT NIGHT I had the dream about Danny again, the one I hate more than anything, the dream where I am Danny but I’m also myself watching him.

  It’s always the same.

  Danny is surfing on the north shore of Oahu, at one of the most beautiful beaches anywhere. The waves there are some of the biggest in the world one day, and then the ocean can be as flat as glass the next.

  The bad part is that Danny is alone this day. He’s supposed to be on vacation with me, but at the last minute I have to stay in Chicago to work on a big story for the Tribune. It’s my choice to stay behind.

  So there he is, waiting for his wave. And then he’s up. The trouble is, the wave crests a lot faster than he expects. Suddenly he’s slammed down on the seafloor some twenty feet below. Danny can’t tell which way is up, which is down. He remembers a basic rule: one hand up, one hand down; feel for the bottom, feel for the air.

  Then he’s smashed to the ocean floor again, and he can’t believe the strength of the wave. His ears are pounding and water’s being rammed up his nose. His body is wrenched and twisted. His legs feel numb. Has he broken something? There’s a terrible burning sensation in his lungs.

  Then Danny lets go of everything . . . except for me and the baby. . . . He calls out: Jennifer! Jennifer, help me! . . . Please help me, Jennifer!

  I woke up from the dream in my old room in Sam’s house. I was in a cold sweat and my heart was racing. How could I put the past behind me when Danny was always in my dreams? I was late meeting him in Hawaii—everything that happened was my fault. Everything.

  Eighteen

  I LAY IN BED for a few minutes until I heard someone yelling outside. I finally perked myself up and parted the curtains of my bedroom window.

  There he was, but at least he was wearing a bathing suit this morning. I watched him do a perfect racing dive from the dock into the lake. “Grow up,” I muttered, then wondered when I had become such a grump.

  I showered, dressed in yesterday’s jeans and a Tribune softball T-shirt, clipped my hair into an upside-down ponytail. I walked outside into the fragrant summer morning. I needed to be outside and away from my nightmares.

  There are about twelve hundred identical white docks around the twenty-six-mile circumference of Lake Geneva. Each dock is eight feet wide, thirty or so feet long, and nearly every house on the shore seems to have one. In November the docks are taken out of the lake for the winter; then come spring, they’re painted and placed back in the water.

  I took my coffee mug down to the end of Sam’s dock, where I could watch the mallards and the swooping seagulls fishing for breakfast. Wisconsin is crazy for fish, mostly perch, some cod, and trout. This is the birthplace of the Republican party, but also the fiscally responsible Democrat William Proxmire, he of the Golden Fleece award given to government agencies that waste taxpayers’ money. Interesting state.

  Out on the lake, I could see Brendan Keller doing that strong freestyle I’d noticed the morning before. As I watched, he started swimming toward me. He got bigger in frame, closer, then he came right up to the edge of Sam’s dock and hauled himself up.

  He shook himself off like a dog.

  “Hey!” I said.

  “You ought to get into a bathing suit and come for a swim, Scout. The water is unbelievable. That is not an exaggeration.”

  “Can’t,” I said, sounding a little like a poop even to myself. “Previous engagements.”

  “Working?” He smiled as he sluiced water off his body with the edges of his hands, as I’d seen him do before.

  “I’m on my way to see Sam,” I said. “I was just thinking about doing a column on government waste. Life of the mind, y’know.”

  “You eaten?”

  “Drinking my breakfast this morning,” I said, lifting my mug.

  “You can do better than that,” he said. “Now, don’t give me any trouble. I make five-star blueberry pancakes. Really fast. Trust me, okay?”

  Trust him? I opened and closed my mouth, but I was tired of sputtering. And I didn’t want to argue right then, or even have a discussion.

  So I did what he asked. I trusted him to make five-star blueberry pancakes.

  Really fast.

  Nineteen

  EVEN AS I WAS walking down the shoreline with Brendan, I was asking myself what I was doing. But what was the harm? And to be honest, I was hungry and five-star blueberry pancakes sounded pretty good.

  Shep Martin’s place was new but homey. The kitchen had tall windows and skylights, spanking-clean marble counters, hardwood floors. Acoustic jazz was playing (someone great singing “Stagger Lee”). And the pancakes were excellent. Not gummy, not burned, not dry. They were jussssst right.

  Unfortunately, it was turning out to be a little awkward between Brendan and me. He said that he’d gone onto the Trib website to re-read some of my old columns. He’d been touched by my kidnapped child story, and my survey “Who would you rather be stranded with on a desert island—your spouse or your cat?” made him laugh out loud.

  I nodded pleasantly but didn’t really give much of a response. It was starting to feel a little uncomfortable for me. I didn’t want to be there any longer, but I didn’t know how to make a graceful exit.

  As we finished the pancakes, Brendan told me that he was a radiologist and that he lived in South Bend, Indiana. I said that was great—a one-word answer.

  He shook his head, seemed puzzled. “I don’t usually talk about myself,” he said. “I guess all this fresh air is working on me. I’m taking a sabbatical. You can sit in the dark looking at X-rays for only so long before you want to go off screaming in search of some sunlight.”

  I really had stayed longer than I’d meant to. I had planned to eat and run. Finally I thanked Brendan for breakfast, then headed back to Sam’s. It was all I could do not to run.

  I walked east a hundred yards along the path at the edge of the lake, until I reached the foot of Sam’s long front lawn.

  The girls greeted me with little meows, and we climbed uphill toward the house, taking the path beside my grandmother’s perennial border. Sam did so many things well, didn’t she? Except maybe find the right husband. And God only knew what else was coming in the letters.

  She had planted a lavish three hundred feet of flowering plants that ran the length of the property from the lake almost to the road. The border was already at its summer peak. Antique pink and red shrub roses exulted; irises fluttered like flights of bluebirds on their stems.

  Then I noticed that someone else was in the garden, a man, and I found myself grinning. “Hey, you,” I called.

  Twenty

  “HENRY! It’s so good to see you,” I said to the tall, wiry man who was taking gardening tools out of a pickup truck. His hair was a snowy semicircle around a balding pate, his bright eyes sparkled, and he moved with more agility than you’d expect from a man in his mid-seventies.

  “Jennifer, I was hoping I’d see you,” he said. “I missed you at the hospital by a couple of minutes yesterday. You look beautiful, sweetheart.” Then Henry gave me a big kiss and a hug that might have left a permanent impression.

  I told him what I knew from that morning’s call to the hospital—that Sam was the same. Henry nodded and I saw the pa
in in his eyes. I was remembering all the times I’d seen him and Sam putting the garden through its paces.

  Henry Bullock had trained at Wisley in England and was Lake Geneva’s resident master gardener. Sam was an obsessive amateur. But Henry always bragged that “Sam has a great eye. She’s a great partner.”

  “I almost died myself when I found her on the kitchen floor,” he told me, shaking his head as if he didn’t want the memory in there.

  “You found her?” I asked in surprise.

  “I did,” he answered, touching a handkerchief to his eyes. “I wish Sam could see her border this morning.”

  My God, his pain brought back mine. I hugged him again, and we murmured assurances to each other that Sam would be home soon. Henry had always seemed like a part of our family.

  Moments later, a machine chatter made our conversation just about impossible. Joseph, one of Henry’s sons, had started up the mower in the front yard. I said good-bye, then mounted the porch steps.

  My watch read twenty to nine, and I figured I had time to read a couple more letters before I went to see Sam.

  Twenty-one

  Dear Jennifer,

  I want to ramble on a little about the importance of second, and even third, chances. I was helping out in the library one day when a bookmark fell from the pages of a novel. Actually, it was a handwritten note, a quote attributed to a Father Alfred D’Souza. D’Souza had written: “For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin—real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

  Jennifer, that’s how I felt as my life creaked forward. I know that I always put up a cheerful front, but that’s how I felt inside.

  More than twenty years had passed since I’d sworn I’d give myself a second chance and still I hadn’t done it. I’d raised two wonderful daughters. I’d made about ten thousand dinners, thirty thousand beds, Brownie trooped and PTA’d and lawyer-wived my heart out. But I was resigned to my marriage with Charles, and you know what? I no longer believed that a second chance was really possible.

  That little quote moved me.

  And maybe it prepared me for one of the most important moments in my life.

  I was only forty-three, but I had been married for nearly twenty-six years. My children had grown, and I felt that my spirit was drying up like a bug in a web in the corner of a dusty room. Jennifer, I had never really been in love. Isn’t that something?

  Three weeks after reading that note at the library, I met someone. I won’t tell his real name, Jennifer. Not even to you.

  I called him Doc.

  Twenty-two

  Jennifer dear,

  If this blows your mind a little, and it should, imagine how it blew mine. KA-BOOM! Rockets to the moon!

  Let me tell you how it happened. Actually, Doc and I had known each other for years, but the night I began to really know him was at an endless dinner for the Red Cross at the Hotel Como. We happened to be seated at the same table, and once we began to talk that night, we never wanted to stop. I can’t even put it into words, but soon I was glowing. I was feeling something again, too. I think the electricity between us straightened my curls right to the ends. I could have talked to him all night, right into the morning. We even made a joke about doing just that.

  Of course Charles never noticed a thing.

  I remember exactly what Doc was wearing that night: a beige linen suit, with a blue oxford shirt, and a hand-painted blue tie. He was slender and tall, with thick blond hair streaked with silver, easily the most handsome man in the room (in my eyes, anyway). Over dinner, he told me about the stars, in particular about a comet that was about to cross our patch of the universe and wouldn’t appear again for two hundred years. He knew about all sorts of things, and he was passionate about life, which I loved and had been missing for years.

  We had many common interests, but electricity aside, I felt comfortable with him. Immediately. He liked to listen, and for some reason I felt I could trust him to accept who I really was. Jen, for that night anyway, I felt that I was home. For the first time in twenty-five years I almost felt like myself again. Can you imagine what that’s like? Actually, I hope that you can’t.

  I should tell you why you’ve never heard of Doc until now. It isn’t his real name, but it suited him perfectly (because he looks nothing like a Doc), and I loved calling him a name that was just ours. It was one of our “secrets”—one of many, as it turns out.

  We saw each other several times that summer, accidentally and accidentally on purpose, and I think we were a little in love before we knew enough to admit it. I think I fell for him first, but he wasn’t far behind, and he fell as hard and as far as I did.

  Jennifer, I know how terribly sad you still are about Danny. I understand as much as anyone can. And no one can tell you how long to grieve. I just want to tell you this one important thing. Don’t shut out love for good. I couldn’t feel this more strongly, my sweet, sweet, smart, smart girl. It’s why I’m writing these letters to you.

  Please don’t shut out love—it’s the best thing about life.

  Now, stop reading right here. Think about what I’m telling you. These letters aren’t just about my life, Jen; they’re about yours.

  PART TWO

  Young Love

  Twenty-three

  I WAS SETTLING into the quite wonderful ebb and flow of life on Lake Geneva, and I was loving it even more than I thought I would.

  Sam’s friends were there for me at every turn. I could have eaten at somebody’s home every night if I’d wanted to. In many ways, I was on summer vacation. Except that, of course, Sam was sick, and I didn’t know if she would get better.

  Early one afternoon I sat in her kitchen, an old-fashioned black phone cord connecting my laptop to the Internet. My e-mail in-box was crammed with notes from readers, many of whom said they missed me and hoped I was okay.

  I absolutely love this connection to my readers. It’s one of the best things about my job. Actually, keeping my job depends on it. If readers react to me emotionally, they buy the Trib. So an hour ago my editor and I agreed that I’d write from Lake Geneva for now; 750 words per column, three columns a week, just like always. Only completely different.

  I opened my word-processing program and was fooling around with a couple of ideas, but my thoughts kept drifting to Sam. And I thought about my mom, who should’ve been there but wasn’t. My mom, who shouldn’t have died but had. And I thought about Danny, of course. He was always on my mind, or not far from it. And then I stopped thinking about the past. I just had to.

  A light tapping on the back screen door broke into my thoughts. I went to the door and discovered Brendan Keller standing there. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days and was surprised to see him now.

  He smiled and asked, “Can you come out and play?”

  Twenty-four

  “OKAY,” I said, probably surprising both of us. Then, before either of us could change our mind, I stepped outside. I wasn’t in the mood to write, anyway—or rather, to stare at a blank computer screen.

  “Double-chocolate thick shake,” Brendan said, and I immediately knew what he had in mind.

  “Daddy Maxwell’s,” I said, and smiled.

  Daddy Maxwell’s Arctic Circle Diner is a white stucco, igloo-shaped local eatery at the highest level of low cuisine. It has blue-striped awnings, and what it lacks in class, it makes up for in really good food. Just two miles from Knollwood Road, it took all of three minutes to get there.

  Nothing seemed to have changed since we were kids and Maxwell’s was the place to be seen. We took a table by a window and turned our attention to Marie, Daddy Maxwell’s latest perky waitress. She took our order, then disappeared into the kitchen.

  Less than ten minutes later, I was staring over my veggie burger at Brendan’s plat
e. He’d ordered the special of the day. Plus a chocolate thick shake. The special was a scrumptious-looking southern omelette made of three eggs wrapped around grilled onions, “dirty” fried potatoes, and extra cheddar cheese.

  “You’re a doctor,” I said.

  “You only go around once.” Brendan grinned. “Show some guts, Jennifer. Give it a try. The omelette and the shake.”

  I laughed, reached my fork over to his plate, and lifted a bite of steaming omelette to my mouth. Then I had another bite.

  And a sip of the chocolate thick shake.

  Then Brendan ordered me my own omelette and shake.

  “You’re too thin, anyway,” he said, which was one of the more endearing remarks I’d heard recently.

  We lingered over the meal, and then coffee. I was surprised that I was kind of enjoying myself. We were filling each other in on our headlines of the past twenty-five years. I told him a few details about Danny, but he already knew. Brendan told me that he’d been divorced for a year and a half—his ex-wife had been having an affair with a partner in her law firm. “Figures, that ma belle Michelle would get involved at the office,” he said. “Workaholic that she was—is, whatever.”

  I nodded, then had a guilty thought about how Danny had called me a workaholic, and he’d been right. I felt a curtain of sadness drop. Brendan noticed, and he touched my hand. I told him I was okay. Reflexively, I pulled my hand away. So maybe I wasn’t okay.

  “I have to get back,” I said.

  “Sure,” said Brendan. “Let’s go.”

  Once we were in the car, I told Brendan that I had another deadline and would probably be working half the night.