The Love Letter

  “The Love Letter”

  Brenna Aubrey

  For Brent, in loving memory

  I never expected to pull a mystery out of a self-addressed stamped envelope. One yellowed page removed from a novel. In my hand, it flapped in a sudden breeze that rose up that November morning. One page. Torn from a book. Something I’d never read before. At the time I couldn’t know that this page would change my life forever.

  My own spidery scrawl leapt up at me from the snowy paper of the envelope: Dr. Mark Hinton, followed by my post office box at the medical school. As a new doctor about to finish my residency, I had sent out a stack of SASEs to medical groups around the country who were looking for physicians in my specialty. Though I’d already accepted a position to practice with a prestigious local group, I’d been curious to know what was in the envelope. It was odd, though. I thought I’d got the last of them back months ago.

  The fragment came from pages 307 and 308 of some unidentified book. The top of the sheet had been torn so that I could not see the title of the work. I read it, front and back. The style of writing was old-fashioned, as if from a classic. I felt I should recognize it, but the fact was that I only did well enough in my undergraduate English courses to maintain my GPA for medical school.

  That’s how I’d met Justine. She’d been my English tutor. An unwanted memory invaded my thoughts—the slim arch of her neck as she bent over my term papers, shaking her head in mock horror and wielding her red pen like a scalpel. I could watch for hours the way she twirled a long strand of her honey-colored hair around one finger.

  Wind stung my eyes but I stood glued to the spot. I shook my head, determined to clear it of the bothersome thoughts, and concentrated on my surprising “fan mail.” Or a blackmail letter, maybe. In the movies, sometimes, threat letters were cut and pasted from magazine pages. Was this a kind of threat?

  In the text on the page, a gentleman had entered a room to leave a note for a lady named Anne. For some reason, they could not speak. I assumed it was because they weren’t alone.

  After this man—the captain—left, Anne found the letter to be a declaration of his love. Unjust I may have been, the captain wrote. Weak and resentful I have been but never inconstant.

  The wind intensified, sending needles of ice into my uncovered face. Fog billowed out from my mouth, as I was still breathing heavily from my run. I retreated to my apartment and threw the mail aside to listen to my phone messages while I stretched.

  For some crazy reason, instead of listening to my mom drone on about the plans for Thanksgiving at my sister’s, I kept thinking about lines from that mysterious page.

  I am half agony, half hope. The guy had it bad. I felt sorry for him. I offer myself again with a heart even more your own than when you broke it eight years and a half ago. Don’t do it, Bro. She’ll only squash it again. Like a grape.

  It was impossible for me not to think of Justine. I gritted my teeth, sinking into a series of challenging squats. I’d spent six years putting her out of my mind. I was proud of myself. I had succeeded. Until last summer.

  I finished my lunges and went to the kitchen of my studio, where windows overlooked the Denver skyline. The Rocky Mountains cut a jagged horizon in a partly cloudy sky that promised snow soon. I’d smelled it on the air during my run, heavy and wet.

  Downing a liter of water before coming up for air, I continued to puzzle over my mystery mail. I returned to the mail pile again, in search of more pages. Nothing. Postmark? Again, nothing. I’d had the self-addressed envelopes stamped POSTAGE PAID when I’d sent them out. There wasn’t even a mark of the city of origin. No clue as to who had sent it or why. Just one page. Torn from an old novel. And I didn’t even know which one.

  ***

  Hours later, I sat in my favorite study carrel on the fourth floor of the university library with a thick copy of On Call Principles and Protocols. Medical board examinations loomed: the last great test of every doctor early in his career. Once boards were out of the way, I’d be ready to get on with my new life.

  But I could not concentrate on the open book before me. My eyes slid over the highlighted page like a pedestrian on an icy sidewalk. Nothing gained purchase in my brain. I doodled. I unfolded and refolded dog-eared pages. And yet only the lines of a fictitious love letter dominated my thoughts: You pierce my soul. Tell me not that I am too late…

  I sighed in frustration and nodded at my study-buddy, Eric, elbow deep in a handbook on toxicology. Then, I descended to the second floor. Literature. I’d had no further interest in reading those musty old books once I was no longer an undergrad. They were haunted by ghosts. Or, rather, just one ghost. From my past.

  Was it my imagination when I heard the whisper “Justine…” as the elevator doors slid open? I willed the odd sense of foreboding away as I trod over to the desk of the librarian’s aide. I mustered my best “ignorant science guy” grin and placed the page before her.

  “I didn’t ruin one of your books, I swear,” I said in response to her raised eyebrows. “It’s kind of a weird story, actually. I got this in the mail. I have no idea where it came from or what it means. Can you help me out?”

  She sat up, eyes widening in interest as she took up the page. “Oooh. A mystery! A secret admirer, perhaps?”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  She took less than a minute to read it. “Yep. It’s Jane Austen.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Is that like Jane Eyre?” I’d been forced to read it in high school. I didn’t remember much besides its weirdness—something about a madwoman locked in an attic.

  The librarian’s eyebrows crinkled in exasperation. “Jane Austen is an author. Jane Eyre is a book.”

  “Okay. So Jane Austen wrote this. What book is it?”

  “Persuasion. Is that a clue, maybe? Are you being persuaded to do something?”‘

  I shrugged. “Do you guys have a copy of this book, maybe?”

  She appeared to suppress an eye roll. “I’m sure we have several. You up to reading it?”

  My doubt must have been clear on my face because she laughed. “It’s not all girly stuff, you know. Men like Jane Austen, too. Besides… there might be a clue in the text of the novel.”

  I followed her down the farthest fiction aisle, skimming the books’ spines and noting the names of authors whom I recognized but had read only under the duress of my English grade—Zola, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Conrad. At the As, I scanned the brightly-tagged book spines. Would this Persuasion be as impossible to decipher as Heart of Darkness? And would it be worth the slog through the archaic prose just for a clue to this little mystery?

  “Here you are. This copy is annotated, coming complete with margin notes that give definitions of word—”

  “Hey now, I’m an M.D., I do know how to read the English language.”

  “Really? So you know what a ‘curricle’ is?”

  At my frown, she laughed and handed me the book. “I’ll check it out to you down there. It’s a type of carriage, by the way.”

  Carriage… great. I scowled. Horses, carriages, people dying of smallpox and children getting caught in soot-clogged chimneys. This will be a fun read.

  ***

  Back in my carrel, I cracked open the novel to the first page:

  Sir Walter Elliot, of Kellynch hall, in Somersetshire, was a man, who, for his own amusement, never took up any book but the Baronetage—

  I shot a quick glance at the margin notes though it bruised my pride to do so only three lines into the book. Baronetage –an annotated list of baronets.

  I slapped the book closed and sat back in frustration, running a hand through my hair. I had rounds at the hospital in an hour. What I didn’t have was the slightest clue why I was indulging
myself in two-hundred-year-old literature that didn’t pertain to any question on my board exams. Jumping up and waving to Eric, I tapped the back of my wrist and pointed in the direction of the hospital.

  ***

  I tossed the library book and my medical tome into my locker and changed into my greens. Pulmonology boards were in four weeks. In addition, I’d be giving up precious study time to fly across the country to Rhode Island tomorrow for Thanksgiving at my sister’s. Was I actually contemplating making time to read a novel? No. This was why the Internet was invented. The search engine gods would guide me on my path to clues.

  My smug resolve faded when I was faced with my last patient of the day.

  “Hello, Mrs. Kellerman! I see the roses have returned to your cheeks. How are you feeling today?”

  Her mouth twisted in her wrinkled face; gray hair splayed out around her head against a bleached white pillow.

  “Rotten. What else is new?”

  I consulted her chart. “Well, the good news is that the results of your lung plethysmography were normal.” Proceeding to the next test, I wheeled over the spirometer. Mrs. Kellerman eyed the machine as if it were a vicious dog about to rip off her arm.

  I helped her to a sitting position. “Mrs. Kellerman, you were an English teacher before you retired, weren’t you?”

  “I was a professor at the community college, why?” She gave me a wary look that suggested she’d picked up on my tactic of distracting the patient during an unpleasant procedure.

  “I have an honest question, actually.” I took the mouthpiece of the spirometer from its resting place. “I was just loaned a novel called Persuasion. Have you ever heard of it?”

  She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Of course. Jane Austen. One of my favorites.”

  “Really? She wrote a lot of novels, then?”

  She frowned. “Just six. She only lived forty-one years.”

  “I see. So. Can you tell me what the novel is about?”

  “You should read it.”

  “I’ll get to it eventually. I was wondering—”

  Her cold stare pinned me down. I had no doubt that in her day she had been formidable professor.

  “Young man, if I can sit here all day with this blasted mask on my face, take every prodding, finger prick and blow-in-the-tube test that you order up, then you can damn well read a masterpiece of a novel.”

  I twitched my eyebrows in surprise but let the subject drop. “You know the drill, ma’am. Take a deep breath.” When she was ready, I pressed the tube to her lips.

  ***

  Instead of returning to the library, I grabbed a quick bite at home. I opened the book again with determination—and the image of Mrs. Kellerman’s stony gaze at the back of my mind.

  Hours later, I glanced up at the clock and was shocked at how much time had passed. The feeling was like coming up for air after swimming underwater—like I’d been breathing in another world. With reluctance, I remembered I had physical needs to see to. I had to pee.

  At two a.m., I stopped reading again, this time due to fatigue. I was nearly finished and I wanted—no, I needed—to know the ending. Only a few chapters into the story, I had begun to see myself in Captain Wentworth. In Anne, I read Justine.

  Unfinished, I closed the book and rolled over, my eyes closing on the porous ceiling tiles. Memories overwhelmed me like a strong current at high tide…

  ***

  Until the past summer, I hadn’t seen Justine in six years. And at that time, seeing her was the last thing I’d wanted. After six years, the sting of her rejection still cut deep.

  It was only once I had arrived at my sister’s house for a short stay that she informed me that Justine was staying with her brother. Across the street. In their parents’ old house, where she had lived when the two of us were undergraduates together at Brown University.

  For the next two weeks, we would be neighbors again. I shrugged it off. It didn’t matter to me. I kept busy, playing with my nephews and helping my brother-in-law with home improvement projects.

  But I ran the neighborhood tract every morning. I refused to look at the corner section of the sidewalk where Justine and I had once carved our initials into the wet cement. I had no interest to see if they had lasted longer than we had. I tried not to notice that the tree where I’d usually kissed her goodnight had grown taller. I tried not to see her everywhere in the neighborhood.

  My luck expired after three days, though I’d chosen an early hour for my runs. I’d been rising before the birds. Like I had to do when I was on call. But one morning, sure enough, when I left the house she was standing on her brother’s front lawn like a lost soul with a trowel in her hand.

  At the periphery of my vision, the movement of her bending over a flower box brought me to a stop. Her brother’s gardening gloves made her hands look five sizes too big for the rest of her. She straightened and our eyes met. A ghost from the past greeted me and my chest tightened. It was all I could do to keep my mouth closed despite the shock.

  Justine truly looked like a ghost. “Hello, Mark,” she said, a shadow of a smile crossing her pale features.

  She had cut off all of her gorgeous hair and dyed what was left of it black. And she had lost so much weight that I barely recognized her. She looked terrible. As terrible as Justine could ever look.

  She still had those eyes. Those haunted blue eyes.

  “Um. Hi,” I croaked.

  “How are you?”

  I clenched my jaw. “Fine. Great. Awesome. You?”

  She nodded. “Better. I’m getting better.”

  I didn’t ask. I burned to ask. But I didn’t. I wouldn’t.

  My feet began to move. I made a stupid show of jogging in place. “Well. Excuse me, have to keep up the heart rate.” With an exaggerated wave, I plugged in my earbuds and left.

  I rolled over in my bed, interrupted in my memories for the briefest of moments by remembrances of the words I had just read.

  It is over! The worst is over. They had met. They had been once more in the same room.

  ***

  “I heard you saw Justine,” my sister said that same afternoon, as she loaded the dishwasher. I sank my teeth into the tuna sandwich she had fixed for me. The way I love it, with mayo and relish.

  “I was running early. I didn’t think she’d be out at that hour. Gardening. Since when does she garden?”

  There was a long pause. “It’s part of her therapy.”

  I stopped chewing and swallowed a too-large lump of sandwich. “Therapy?”

  Kathy didn’t hear me. Or chose not to answer, I couldn’t tell which.

  “So is she back here visiting, or…?”

  “She’s been living at her brother’s for a few months. She told me she’ll be looking for her own place when she gets on her feet.”

  “She moved back—for good? L.A. wasn’t her cup of tea after all?” For some reason this news brought hot resentment burning up from my stomach. My empty fist clenched but I forced it to relax.

  Kathy dried her hands on a dishcloth and turned to look at me for a minute. I feigned sudden intense interest in the quartered newspaper left on the table.

  “She had a nervous breakdown, Mark.”

  “Hmm.” I grunted without looking up so Kathy wouldn’t be able to see how my heart lurched at the news. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  Kathy stared at me for a long time but I refused to look up. “What did you think, when you saw her?”

  “I almost didn’t recognize her.”

  I almost didn’t recognize her. Those words echoed to me in the present as I contemplated the horror of them again. She had a nervous breakdown, Mark. I rubbed my eyes through closed eyelids.

  Captain Wentworth is not very gallant by you, Anne. He said you were so altered, he should not have known you again.

  ***

  The following day, Kathy committed me to a favor before specifying what I would have to do. With the bribe of her delicious carame
l turtle cookies thrown in for good measure, she had me trudging across the street with her Rototiller to help with the garden project.

  Justine stood surveying a dirt mound next to her fledgling flower box—the location of her future garden—when I got there. She held a shovel in a gloved hand and wore a sleeveless tank top. Her arms were thin and pale, like dried sticks. I forced myself not to look at them.

  “So where do you want your dirt?”

  “Here. Thanks, Mark.”

  “What are you planting?”

  “Roses. I know it will be too late to see any bloom this year, but I’m going to get some grafts from the nursery. If we have a warm autumn, I might get lucky.”

  I spent two hours over there churning the dirt for her while she dug a shallow trench around the border of the lawn. Fortunately, there was little occasion to talk over the loud whirring of the machine. And when I was done, all I wanted to do was leave. But I couldn’t help but notice the shoddy job she was doing with the watering trench. I suspect she tried her hardest, but there was little strength in her limbs.

  I moved next to her to ask if she needed anything else. I wanted to offer to dig a proper trench, but I couldn’t. Something inside me wouldn’t allow it. I swallowed a spiky ball of resentment. Even then, after all those years.

  She crammed the ancient shovel into the ground and yanked it back with every bit of her strength. The handle snapped at the tongue and she fell back. On instinct and reflex, I grabbed her before she fell.

  Her shock prevented her from crying out. I held her for a moment too long while registering my own shock. She felt so much lighter in my arms than she once had.

  What the hell had she been doing out in LaLa Land? Starving herself?

  I straightened and helped her stand. Her hair brushed past my face. I caught a whiff of her familiar scent—flowers and mint. My body responded on instinct, flooding with heat. She still used the same shampoo. Memories flashed through my thoughts: holding her in my arms, tasting her lips, pressing my body to hers.

  The heat turned to anger at my own subconscious reaction. I released her as if she had burned me. Preparing to retreat across the street, I moved to the tilling machine and locked the blade.