Dear Edward(70)

“Do you want to tell him or Lacey that we found these?”

Edward tightens his fingers on his skull. He says, “Do you think they’re all like this?”

Buy a camera. Write letters to children who lost their mother. Go to China, England, Wisconsin.

“I hope not,” Shay says into the darkness.

When Edward finally makes his way to the basement, it’s three in the morning. He moves mechanically through brushing his teeth, switching off lights, climbing under the sheets. He closes his eyes out of a sense of duty and routine. He no longer has any hope of sleep; he lost hope days earlier. But as soon as his eyes are closed, something is different. The darkness inside him has taken on a new shade; there’s a richness to it. It’s slippery, like velvet. Edward can barely keep his feet under him; he’s sliding toward sleep like a child downhill on a sled. He hasn’t experienced this feeling since his family died, and it’s accompanied by an explosion of relief. He thinks, the thought blurred: the letters. It has to be the letters; nothing else has changed. It doesn’t make sense, but he’s too tired to care. He’s too relieved to care. He sleeps, and he can feel, as he disappears, his cells buzzing in celebration.

His dreams that night feel like actual experiences. Edward climbs a mountain on the other side of the world and then skypes with a victim’s family from the top. Then he’s balanced on a mossy rock, throwing a stranger’s ashes into a stream in Oregon. He swims in an Olympic-size pool to try to beat a specific record. He sweats through the sheets, several times over. He sees himself bent in prayer, a position he has never taken in his life.

Edward wanders from class to class the next day, not hearing anything anyone says to him. More than once, Shay has to take him by the elbow and change the direction he’s walking. He lets her do so but thinks, It makes no difference if I sit in English or social studies.

They wait only fifteen minutes after all the bedroom lights have been extinguished before crossing the lawn to the garage that night.

When they’re inside, Edward unlocks the duffel bag. Shay says, “I think we should have rules.”

“Rules?”

“Maybe we should only read ten letters a night, or for an hour or something like that. They’re … intense. And I think once we read a letter we should take it. We have to leave the bags here, obviously, but I can stuff them to make them look full, once we’ve read a bunch. I want to log the letters, and then we can respond to them if we decide to.”

“You don’t think John will notice?”

“He never opened any of these letters. My guess is that he was going to leave them in the bags forever. Or maybe give them to you when you were older?”

Edward has stopped listening. His arm is already plunged deep into the bag. He pinches his fingers around an envelope, pulls it out.

Dear Edward,

Sunrise was at 4:55 A.M. today, and I haven’t seen Linda or Betsy for a week. There have been no spottings of a baby blue whale worldwide for over a year. It’s possible that my colleague and I are following the last blue whales to ever live, and that is a sobering thought. Maybe that’s why I didn’t get off the boat after the last trip. I’m supposed to take a break—hand my notes to another scientist to keep up while I see movies and eat burgers. But I didn’t want to. And if I’m really honest, I worry that if I take my eyes off these girls, they might disappear for good. Which is, I know, stupid. But I’ve let my life onshore die off since my Linda died, so the only place I’m even possibly of use is out here.

Anyway, Edward, I hope you’re well. I appreciate having someone to write letters to. Best wishes, sincerely,

Gary

“Oh, that’s nice,” Shay says, clearly relieved. “Hi, Gary.”

“Hi, Gary,” Edward says.

The next letter asks him to visit a home in Alabama, to hug the bedridden mother of a man on the plane. Edward tries to imagine bending over the bed of a frail, dying stranger and gathering her in his arms. When he finishes the letter, he hands it to Shay. She brought a notebook to the garage so she could take notes and then compile all the requests into a spreadsheet.

The following two letters ask Edward to take on the vocation of the deceased: He should become a nurse, and then a violinist. A woman asks him to pray for her husband every night before bed. This letter is accompanied by hand-copied psalms, which he assumes he is also supposed to read before bed.

“You can’t do this many things,” Shay says.

“Maybe I can?” In the middle of every single letter, Edward thinks: I have to do that. I have to play the violin. I have to smile more. I have to learn to fish. At the end of each letter, he feels like he’s already failed.

Dear Edward,

My mother met you recently in Washington. Apparently she gave you and your uncle a ride to your car. She’d wanted my brothers or me to come to the hearing with her, but we all said we were busy. I think we’re just programmed to say no to her now, no matter what the question is, as punishment for the perceived crimes of our childhood.

My youngest brother is in rehab, so he was legitimately busy. What was I doing that afternoon? Reading William Blake. I’m torturing my mother by making her pay for my second PhD in poetry. I tell her that it’s her fault, since she gives talks all the time about how vital the arts are, even though she really means as a hobby for rich people, not as a vocation for her own children.