Dear Edward(69)

Florida pictures herself rollerblading down the twisty boardwalk. She doesn’t have a plan for her new life, but she has possibilities. She can join a band. Creating music with other people always nourishes her, and she needs nourishment. She could read tarot cards. She’s not a great card reader, but she’s good, and customers always walk away from her readings with satisfaction and insight. She pays real attention to the person who sits across from her, and real attention is hard to come by. Florida looks deep into their eyes and finds their inevitable goodness. Sometimes that goodness is a pebble; sometimes it’s fireworks.

More intangible, and yet the foundation of her California plan, is to love. Not men specifically. She will not marry again. She refuses to bicker, or ride moody silences, or eat broccoli because he likes broccoli and wants her to do the same. She will quite simply love everyone who crosses her path, starting with the girl beside her. She will act as a mama to Linda, who badly needs one, and a grandmother to her baby.

When Linda told her that her boyfriend was a scientist who studied whales, Florida had a rare glimpse into her own future. She nearly always traffics in her past, but occasionally she has a vision that stretches forward, like the steel cables of a suspension bridge, toward a land she hasn’t yet touched. She pictures herself, Linda, and Gary on a boat in the middle of a gusty ocean. A low horizon and whitecaps are visible in every direction. They’re wearing bright-yellow slickers and rain hats. They stand side by side, pressed against the railing, staring in the same direction. There is a whale fifty yards from the boat. It breaches the surface, sprays water at the sky, and dives back down again. The three humans gaze at the spot where it disappeared, in a state of perfect wonder. They wait, and don’t mind waiting. Moments later, as if to reward them, the animal of impossible size and beauty leaps into the air.





January 2016

The ripping of the envelope sounds violent in the quiet garage. The sheet of paper is white, thick; Shay unfolds it carefully.

Dear Edward,

I hope you are well and are recovering from your injuries. God has certainly blessed you with your life.

My daughter, Nancy, was on the flight with you. She was our only child, and her death cratered her papa and myself. She was grown—forty-three years old, but grown makes no difference in my heart. She was still my baby, my redheaded girl.

She was a doctor—a brilliant physician—but her hobby was photography. I want to ask you for something. I want to ask you to please take photographs for her. She took pictures of everything: her nursing staff, her cat, Beezus (who lives with Papa and me now; that cat is as devastated as we are), buildings, nature, you name it. It was her passion.

It will heal my heart to know you are taking photos for her. That the camera wasn’t put down but passed on. I hope it’s not asking too much, but I figure everyone takes pictures occasionally, right? I am simply asking you to do so with more deliberation.

I wish you well, Edward. Thank you.

Sincerely,

Jeanette Louis

Shay looks up from the letter, her eyes wide. “The doctor in the folder.”

Cratered, Edward thinks.

“Another one?” she whispers.

This one is on gray stationery, from the husband of a woman on the plane. Her death left him alone with their three children. He asks Edward to please write to each of the children, telling them that he met their mother during the flight. I know you probably didn’t meet her. Who gets to know strangers on a flight? But my kids won’t know that. They’ll believe you. Please tell them that she told you how much she loved them and that she knew they would be okay. In the letter to Charlie, add that his mom wanted him to keep reading. Tell the little one to keep her sweetness. And tell Connor that she wouldn’t want him to drop out of the science competition.

There’s a photo with the letter. Shay holds it up. Three black kids standing in height order. The two older boys wear striped sweaters, and the littlest one, a girl, wears a matching striped dress. They’re smiling for the camera.

“Mierda,” Shay says.

Edward wraps his hands around his skull, as if palming a basketball, fingers spread. His head is pulsing.

“A few more, and then we stop for tonight,” Shay says. Edward knows that she wants to keep reading in the hope that they can end on a better note. Whatever that might mean.

The next letter is from a mom whose daughter died on the flight. Her daughter’s dream was to honor her Chinese heritage by walking the Great Wall of China. Please, Edward, find it in your heart to fulfill this dream for my daughter.

It turns out that almost all the letters ask Edward for something. The next letter requests that he write a novel. The one after that implores him to move to London, hopefully into an apartment overlooking St. James’s Park. A mother whose son had aspired to be a stand-up comedian wants Edward to open a comedy club in their small Wisconsin town and name it after the dead young man.

Shay’s face looks how Edward imagines his own does: stricken. He thinks, Can we bear this? He has to force his voice out of his throat. “How many letters do you think there are?”

“If the other bag is full of them too, then hundreds.” Shay is still holding the photograph of the three kids in matching outfits. “Why didn’t they email you? Why did they write real letters?”

“Because John gave me that obscure email address. It’s all numbers and hyphens. So no stranger could find me that way.”