Sam's Letters to Jennifer Read online

  I didn’t complain—not a word, not a look. But Doc knew. “Don’t be sad, Samantha,” he said. “We just had the best weekend ever.”

  “I want to be with you,” I told him. “I don’t want us to be apart anymore. I don’t think I can stand it.”

  “You read my mind,” Doc said. “But I’ve been thinking about that for years. This divided life of ours, it can be, well, heartbreaking as hell. When Sara was sick, when we knew for sure that she was dying, I promised that I would raise our boys in a way she would always approve of. And you, you’d have to divorce Charles, and he’d fight it, wouldn’t he?”

  I put a finger to Doc’s lips, not because I didn’t want to hear what he had to say but because I could see the pain that it was causing him.

  “When you’re ready,” I said, “I’ll be waiting for you. There’s one more thing that has to be said, so I’ll say it. I love you so much. I feel like you saved my life.”

  “I love you, Samantha.”

  God, I loved hearing those words.

  I was in a kind of daze as we said good-bye to the inn’s owners, Mr. and Mrs. Lundstrom, and the hazy feeling continued for much of the drive back to Lake Geneva. I remember holding Doc’s hand the whole way.

  Then we were pulling into the parking lot of the Alpine Valley Resort. What an incredible letdown that was, what a heartbreaking moment. We held each other for a long time, just held on for dear life in Doc’s car.

  “I have to go, Samantha,” he finally said.

  “I miss you already, and you’re not even gone,” I whispered. “Please miss me, too.”

  “What a beautiful thing to say,” Doc told me. “I love your humility.” Then we kissed one last time, and I hoped it wasn’t for the last time. It took all my willpower and strength not to bawl like a baby in his arms. But I didn’t cry.

  My Jeep was where I had left it. I got inside, and everything seemed unreal to my touch. We honked our farewells, and I pulled out onto the highway. I let him speed ahead.

  As I made my way back to Lake Geneva alone, I thought about the aurora borealis, but also about losing Doc, and how I could possibly bear it. I cried all the way home.

  Fifty-four

  POOR SAM.

  A wind-driven rain forced me off the porch and into the darkening house. Sam’s loneliness, the unexpected sadness in her life, clung to me as I closed windows and mopped up raindrops from the windowsills. I thought about her good-bye to Doc, which sent my thoughts to Brendan. Where is he? It’s just awful outside. Teeming rain, and he’s driving in it.

  I put Sam’s remaining letters on the mantel next to the old marble clock—and that’s when something else hit me. I had a deadline at 6:00 P.M. I’d completely forgotten about my column.

  I settled into the blue velvet embrace of the sofa, booted up my laptop, and called up my file of rainy-day notions. Not one of them was worthy of 750 words, but after a couple of hours, a big idea did float up from the deep well of my brain.

  It was so big, in fact, I wondered why it had taken me so long to come up with it.

  I picked up the phone and punched in a number that I knew by heart.

  “Debbie, there’s no getting around this,” I said. “I’m no good to the Trib right now, and I’m not being fair to my readers. It’s hard to explain. So hard, I won’t even try.”

  I told my editor how sorry I was, but I had to take a leave of absence. But I didn’t tell her why. I didn’t want Debbie’s sympathy, and I didn’t want to have to explain myself and what was going on with Sam and with Brendan.

  When I clicked off the phone, I felt a rush of anxiety. It was like standing on the edge of a cliff and staring down into darkness and nothingness.

  I still needed to visit Sam that night, but the rain was absolutely sheeting outside, obscuring the lake, even the trees beside the house. I almost made it out to the Jag when the single toot of a car horn got my attention. Brendan! He was driving his black Jeep down the puddle-soaked lane behind the houses.

  He rolled down the side window and smiled, and all was forgiven. “Jenniferrrrrr. I’m back. The rain was terrible all the way from Chicago.”

  I was soooo glad to see Brendan’s smiling face. There’s your explanation, Debbie! That smile of his. I tacked to the left and leaned a dripping, yellow-slickered elbow into the open window.

  “Hey, buddy, mind if I hop in with you? I have news. Sam is out of her coma.”

  Fifty-five

  “YOU’RE GOING to love her. Sam’s much more interesting when she’s conscious,” I told Brendan as we rode to the hospital. “And she’s going to like you, I guess. Or she’ll pretend to, anyway.”

  Brendan started to laugh. “What’s gotten into you?” he asked.

  “Oh, I just heard a sad story, and then I saw your smiling face. Strange, interesting juxtaposition. I also took a leave of absence at work. Now I’m a beach bum, just like you.” Brendan and I slapped high-fives over that one.

  We arrived at Sam’s room, and—what was this?—dozens of shiny Mylar balloons and streamers hung from the ceiling, with cellophane-wrapped baskets of fruit and gaudy flower arrangements competing for space on the counters and tables. Obviously, word had gotten around Lake Geneva, and maybe the rest of Wisconsin and Illinois, that Sam was conscious. I wondered if any of the flowers or balloons were from Doc.

  She was wearing a blue-striped hospital gown and her complexion was still gray, but her hair was combed and she smiled when she saw me. She was alert and seemed almost herself.

  “Hello. Hello, Jennifer. And who’s the handsome one?” she asked.

  “This is Brendan. I told you about him, but you probably don’t remember. He is kind of handsome, isn’t he?”

  Brendan reached out and shook her hand. “Hiya, Samantha,” he said, and my jaw dropped. I had no idea where that came from. Samantha? Like in the letters. That was what Doc always called her.

  “Don’t I know you?” Sam said. “You look like—oh, you know who.”

  “My uncle Shep?” asked Brendan. “Just a wild guess.”

  “That’s the one,” she said. “Of course you do.”

  Brendan cranked up Sam’s bed a couple of notches; then we pulled a couple of chairs close. Sam started to give us a slightly fractured discourse on her day. But then she turned her eyes back to Brendan. She seemed just a little confused again. “I’m fine,” she said, and winked at me.

  Then she looked at Brendan again. “I hear you’re a very good doctor, Brendan. So why have you given up hope?” Sam asked. “How can you leave somebody as special as Jennifer without a fight?”

  I saw Brendan’s head go back as if he’d taken a punch in the nose, but then he recovered nicely. “It’s a good question, isn’t it? It’s the one I’ve been asking myself.”

  My eyes connected with Sam’s. I don’t know how, but she had gone right to the heart of the matter. Wham, bam, thank you, Sam.

  “As you said, Samantha, I’m a doctor. We’re a logical bunch, for the most part. Maybe too logical for our own good sometimes. I want to enjoy whatever time I have left, whatever time we have left, okay? I don’t want to waste a second of it. Not one second. Does that make sense to you?”

  Sam stared into his eyes and nodded. “Seems like a pretty reasonable philosophy,” she said. “Hard to argue with.”

  “Thank you,” Brendan said.

  “So?” Sam said, her eyes going to me, then back to Brendan.

  “So?” I said. Brave smile.

  Sam’s eyes stayed on Brendan now. “Fight it,” she whispered. “I did.”

  Fifty-six

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS were possibly the best, and most memorable, of my life. I was trying to live every day from sunup until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Suddenly it made all the sense in the world to me. I had a lot of time to make up with both Sam and Brendan.

  Brendan was a reflective person who liked to think things through, but he also loved to top off his best thoughts by saying something funny, usually at
his own expense, which fit with the way I saw the world. I was discovering that he had the most generous and giving nature. He wasn’t overly protective, but he was there for me when I needed him.

  Every time I looked into his eyes, or even saw him at a distance, I couldn’t help thinking what a senseless, awful, messed-up waste it was that he was going to die. I wanted to argue with him about his decision, but I just couldn’t fight. He was too smart, too nice; besides, it would have been a waste of our time together. The precious seconds of our summer.

  We went swimming every day, even in the rain. We visited Sam, sometimes three times a day, and she and Brendan became friends. They were actually a lot alike. Brendan and I took long walks, and we had dinner together every night. We didn’t eat much during the day, but dinner was always special.

  Except for those blueberry pancakes, Brendan was not a good cook—though given more time to practice, he swore that he could be mediocre. So I cooked the meals; he did setup and cleanup. When he worked, he wore this Red Cross lifeguard T-shirt that I loved on him.

  We really liked to dance to a favorite CD, or just the radio. I loved to be held by him, to be close, to listen to Brendan hum along to a song like “Something to Talk About.” Or Jill Scott’s “Do You Remember,” or “Sweet Baby James,” “The Logical Song,” “Bad to the Bone,” “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” Dozens of others, rockers and ballads—it didn’t much matter.

  They were our songs, the songs of our summer.

  One Sunday night Brendan fell asleep before I did, so I took one of the last packets of Sam’s letters into the kitchen. I had counted the letters recently—there were 170 of them. The longest was nearly twenty pages; the shortest, just a paragraph. I’d gone through at least three-quarters of them. Sam’s legacy to me. I’d be finished with her letters soon.

  I sat at the kitchen table under the harsh glare of an overhead light, and I read my grandmother’s next entry.

  Dear Jennifer,

  After Doc and I returned from Copper Harbor, our separation was even worse than I had thought it would be. Much worse. Which meant that we were deeply in love, terribly in love. But this I already knew. During a late-night phone call that fall, we arrived at the inevitable conclusion: we had to be together again.

  But then we had to wait months, and when Charles planned another golfing (or whatever) trip in June, I made plans, too. I also picked our destination: the town of Holland on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.

  As we’d done before, Doc and I met in the parking lot at Alpine Valley. We hugged and kissed and grinned like teenagers watching the submarine races. Then we took to the road. It was a six-hour journey: a two-hour drive followed by four hours on the S.S. Badger, a car ferry that was a minivacation in itself.

  I never wanted to leave Doc again. The two of us leaned over the railing and watched the ferry’s engines distance us from our real lives with miles of churning wake. We had hot chocolate at the restaurant onboard and saw our first movie together (The Pink Panther) in the Badger’s tiny theater. By the time we reached shore, our skin was flushed and our hearts were singing. We were so much in love, and our weekend in Michigan was even better than the first. Neil Simon hadn’t written Same Time, Next Year yet, but Doc and I were living it anyway.

  Jennifer, I’m going to shorthand this just a little and stick to the high points, and the low ones.

  The next summer Charles took his trip in July, and again Doc and I made our plans around his departure. We drove north, but then Doc surprised me. He had rented a houseboat in La Crosse, Wisconsin, a place where three rivers converge: the La Crosse, the Black, and the Mississippi. We set our course, and an hour and a half later we docked in the small town of Wabasha, Minnesota. Doc and I celebrated with roast pheasant, baked raisin beans, squash rolls, and apple brandy pie. Possibly the best meal ever. Afterward, we motored back down to the marina in La Crosse and anchored for the night. We stayed in a double berth under the sundeck. The next morning we showered on the deck, squealing under the spray. Then we joined a flotilla of every kind of craft imaginable in the annual Riverfest. There were late-night bands on the water, fireworks, and happy children everywhere. Especially Doc and me. For four days I was in heaven, and I didn’t want to return to earth. But, of course, I had to.

  The plan for our fourth annual was a glamorous trip to New York City, which I looked forward to for a full nine months. We booked a room at the Plaza overlooking Central Park, had tickets for two Broadway plays, box seats at Yankee Stadium, restaurant reservations. This would be our best time together yet.

  As we waited in the flight lounge at O’Hare, clients of Charles’s who were booked on the same flight to New York saw me and called my name. I nearly fainted and turned the brightest shade of red.

  Doc was leafing through the New York Times just a few yards away when he saw me greet the Hennesseys and make up a story about seeing a friend off on another flight. Doc got the picture and slipped away. As soon as we could, we met up again. We decided against New York and headed to his car. My heart was broken in little pieces.

  “A fine kettle of fish you’ve gotten us into this time, Stanley,” Doc said. He switched on the car’s ignition.

  “I just lied to the Hennesseys,” I said. “They’re going to tell Charles. We should head right home.”

  Doc nodded sadly, backed out of the parking space, then drove from the airport. It was such a beautiful morning, so bright with promise. What a shame. My mind whirred with heartbreaking disappointment as we eased into the stream of traffic on the exit ramp.

  “You know,” I said, “I have another idea.”

  Doc smiled ear to ear. “I knew you would, Samantha. No way I was going to take you home, anyway.”

  Fifty-seven

  Jennifer,

  The Lundstroms were obviously surprised when we arrived at the door of the lodge at nightfall, but they were also glad to see us and they had room. Once we had a key, Doc and I headed up the familiar moonlit trail that was alive with the sounds of the woods. I couldn’t wait to be in Doc’s arms again. We’d already wasted half a day.

  I’ll remember this for the rest of my life. Just when we rounded a bend in the path, a shadow crashed out of the underbrush and into the pathway. I didn’t know what it was, but it was bigger than a horse and smelled horribly. The thing brayed at us! I guess we gave it a scare, too. Doc and I froze as the beast clattered across the trail and down the hillside.

  “That was a moose,” Doc said, finally picking up our suitcases and the flashlight. We hurried to the cabin. Of course we couldn’t sleep. And late on the Night of the Moose, we finally laughed about our close call at O’Hare. Then we made a plan to make sure it didn’t happen again. From that day on, we spent our lost weekends on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Mike and Marge Lundstrom became our good friends, and the cabin in Copper Harbor, with its fieldstone fireplace in the bedroom and view of Lake Superior, became our hideaway.

  No one back home ever knew our secret, Jennifer. No one guessed about Doc and me, and our double life.

  And don’t you dare tell.

  Don’t put it in any of your columns, either.

  Or, God forbid, a book.

  Fifty-eight

  Dear Jen,

  This happened four years ago, but I couldn’t tell you how I really felt about it. Not until now.

  It was a chilly March night and snow was falling softly in Chicago, a great deal of snow. The wind was howling like a wounded animal, of course. Your grandfather and I were about to get ready for bed when he asked me to go out for a bottle of anisette. He had indigestion and thought the liquor would settle his stomach. It had worked before.

  I had always taken care of Charles’s needs and cared for him as much as I could, given how he had treated me. I had to go quickly because the package store would be closing soon. So out I went into the snow and wind. “Sam the dependable one” Charles called me sometimes, always thinking he was being endearing rather than condescen
ding.

  When I came back twenty minutes later, your grandfather was dead in his bed.

  Jen, he looked just as when I had left him; wearing his favorite blue pj’s from Henri Bendel, a Macanudo still burning in the ashtray, and the television tuned to the nightly news. It still shocks me when I think about how quickly he was gone. The heart attack must have come on him like a blown-out tire that slams a car into a telephone pole. Total devastation in an instant.

  None of us even knew that his heart was bad. But Charles had never been careful about what he ate or drank or smoked, or especially how he carried on late at night. Jennifer, despite all the things I’ve told you in these letters, we had children and grandchildren and many, many shared experiences. When I looked at him in repose, I saw the face of the young man I had known many years before. A quick-witted boy who’d fought in a war, been unloved by his parents, and had struggled greatly to make his place in the world. I remembered the promise I’d felt for us in those early days, the love I’d wanted to give Charles, and certainly would have.

  So sad. But some stories simply are.

  Fifty-nine

  THE NEXT MORNING I had a long, emotional talk with Sam about my grandfather, and about Doc. It was the best talk we’d had since she came out of the coma, and she was seeming more like herself every day.

  “I read some more of the letters last night,” I told her soon after I arrived. “I’m doing it the way you asked, a few at a time. I read about Grandpa Charles dying last night. It made me cry, Sam. Did you cry? You didn’t say in the letter.”

  Sam took my hand. “Oh, of course I did. I could have had so much love in my heart for Charles, but he just wouldn’t let me give it to him. He was a smart man in many ways, but so stubborn in others. I think he was so hurt by his father and his uncle that he never trusted anyone again. I really don’t know, Jennifer. You see, Charles wouldn’t tell me his story.”