The Letter

by Eli Joyce

I sat in the center of my bed, my feet tucked under my patchwork quilt. I’d laid the unopened letter in front of me, the stamps and postmarks staring me ominously in the face. His familiar scrawl beckoned me; I wanted to open the letter but I wanted to take as much time as possible, to make the ritual last longer. I slowly reached for the letter and turned it over in my hands a few times, feeling the rough cardstock and the indents from the pens he wrote with. I slipped my finger under the seal and gingerly ripped open the envelope.

…..

I remember the day he told me he was enlisting. It was the end of May, just a few weeks before the end of my sophomore year. I sat alone at the kitchen table, staring listlessly at my open algebra textbook. I was procrastinating, as usual, and he came up behind me and gave my shoulders a gentle squeeze.

“Looks like you’re getting your work done, kiddo,” he laughed.

“You know me. I love me some algebra.” I smiled back.

He made his way to the other side of the kitchen and threw open the door of the refrigerator, rooting around for condiments to put on his mid-afternoon sandwich. It was a daily ritual of his, much to the dismay of our mom who always claimed it would ruin his appetite for dinner. She was proven wrong everyday when Dan ate second and sometimes third helpings. This fact was also not surprising, as he was an 18 year-old boy who could eat his way through the kitchen in an afternoon if you let him.

I watched him intently as he spread seeded mustard on a slice of sourdough bread. He was the picture of perfect youth; his mop of blond hair shimmered as the late afternoon sun came at a slant from the window opposite him, his muscled swimmers arms now delicately opening cabinets as he looked for a plate. I was beyond jealous of my brother. In a few weeks, Dan would graduate high school a straight-A student, the captain of the debate and swim teams, and one of the best young painters I’d ever seen. But that wasn’t why I was so envious. He apologized for nothing; he did what he loved and never ascribed to anyone’s vision of what he should be. He was a true individual.

He finished assembling his sandwich and sat in the maple wood chair across the table from me.

“Whatcha thinking about?” I asked him, responding to the confused look on his face. He sighed and waited a moment before acknowledging my query.

“I need to talk to you about something, Amanda. It’s pretty serious and I haven’t told mom or dad yet, so can I trust you to keep it between us for a few days?”

Instantly, I expected the worst. Had he gotten some girl pregnant? Was he in trouble with the law? He’d never been a troublemaker; he’d only gotten caught cheating on a test once in 7^th grade, and he’d been so traumatized that our parents didn’t even have a chance to scold him before he’d started bawling in the backseat of our car on the way home from school. Our mom had felt so sorry for him with his teary face and little whimpers that she’d never gotten around to punishing him.

“Yeah, I promise not to tell mom and dad. What is it?”

“I was walking home from school yesterday and I decided to take the long way. I was coming up to the corner of Bleaker and Jefferson, where that Army recruitment office is and I stopped for a second to tie my shoes. When I stood up again, I looked into the front window of the office and I saw a guy, who looked about my age, shaking hands with the sergeant at the front desk. I couldn’t see the sergeant’s face, but the look on that guy’s face surprised me. He looked stoic, but I could tell that above anything else, he was proud. And as I watched him grab his duffle bag and leave the office, I knew I wanted to enlist. So I did. I leave for North Carolina in three weeks.”

…

He left on a Sunday afternoon from the Greyhound Bus Station downtown. The heat was stifling, even at 9am and I could see sweat already beading on his brow. He made his way down the line; kissing our mom first on the cheek, then shaking my dad’s hand, and finally ending with me. He reached out; arms extended to give me a hug and held me to his chest for a long minute.

“I know you’re angry, kiddo” he said, “But I need you to understand that I’m not doing this for no reason.”

I said nothing. He ruffled my hair, big brother style, as the bus driver stuck his head out of the front door.

“You coming, son? This bus ain’t gonna wait forever in this heat.”

Dan picked up his backpack off the sidewalk and turned to face the looming bus, a lithe greyhound leaping across its side. He ascended the metal steps and the door closed behind him as the bus driver hit the gas and the bus began to accelerate slowly down the street. He smiled at me from the window, winked, and he was gone.

…

That first summer was a blur. I went through my days as if they were a careful ritual, each piece and task was to be done with the utmost care and precision. I would wake up every morning and take each carpeted step down to the kitchen, being sure to ignore all of the family pictures in the hallways. I would pop a piece of wheat bread into the toaster and once it popped up, I would spend 2 minutes or so carefully spreading butter from the top to the bottom. I would take the 10 minute walk to the movie theater where I worked and before sitting down in the ticket booth, I would straighten every piece of machinery and every ticket stub to ninety degree perfection. I’d become close to obsessive compulsive, but it was all I could do to ignore feeling abandoned by him. He had always been my best friend, the one who mended my scraped knees, who helped me with my homework, who cared more than my parents ever had.

A few days before the start of my junior year, I came home from work and checked the mailbox for something of interest. I brought what looked like a stack of coupons and bills inside, but decided to take a closer look just in case. Safeway coupons, PG&E bills, a Country Curtains catalog for my mom, and a letter addressed to me. I never got mail, except report cards and the occasional birthday card from my grandma in Rhode Island, but this envelope was clearly addressed to me in neat black script. At that moment, my mom walked in the front door.

“Hello? Anyone home? Amanda sweetie, you home?”

“In the kitchen mom.”

She walked into the kitchen and dropped her purse down on the counter, her keys jingling inside.

“Who’s the letter from?” she said.

“Not sure. I’m gonna go upstairs, okay?”

She was already settling herself down at the table to make a phone call, so I slipped out of the kitchen without another word.

Up in my room, I sat on my patchwork quilt and carefully ripped open the envelope, making sure the edges weren’t too jagged. Just another effect of my recently acquired obsessive behaviors. I pulled a piece of yellow lined paper from the inside of the envelope and read:

Amanda,

Hope you’re doing well. I’m sorry I haven’t been able to talk to you for a while, but I just wanted you to know how I’m doing here.

The training is difficult to say the least, but I’ve met so many guys here who’re my age and we can sort of commiserate together. There was just so much I didn’t know about the Army and how they work, the intricacies of keeping men alive and out of harm’s way is fascinating. And my sergeants and commanders are some of the noblest men I’ve ever met. They’ve seen more than I could ever imagine and I’ve gained so much respect for the operation and these men who fight for their country with such pride, never questioning but simply putting their whole selves into everything they do. It’s inspiring. And if you take nothing more from this letter, I want you to know that I’m proud to be one of these men, and that when I ship out to Iraq in a month and a half, that I’ll think of you everyday and write as often as I can.

Love you,

Dan

I was a strange mix of terrified and elated. I was so happy to hear from Dan, but he was shipping out. I could hardly handle him being in North Carolina and alive, but knowing that he could be hurt or worse in Iraq was too much. It was the first of many letters.

…

Through my entire junior and senior years, the letters went back and forth between us. The mail was slow coming back from Iraq, but I waited patiently and checked the mailbox at least ten times a day. The prospect of any word from him was enough to keep me going to school and coming home every day. His letters would paint the picture of a brutal war, while mine were simply the ramblings of a teenage girl and her life drama. I felt so unworthy in comparison to him. He was across the Atlantic, fighting for a for his country, fighting to stay alive, while I was at home, doing my homework, living under a roof with clean water and home cooked meals. And still, I was selfish and wanted him home. Even though he’d attempted to explain it all in his first letter, all his noble reasons for wanting to fight, I wanted him to come back. To save me from the introvert I was becoming. From the girl who neglected to hang out with friends afterschool so she could go check the mailbox and re-read all of those letters when the mailbox was empty. I was only half a person without him there to remind me of what I could become, of what I could be someday.

…

It was two weeks before my graduation when I got the last letter. I’d come home from a graduation rehearsal to find the mailbox empty expect from a letter from Dan. My heart raced as I opened the metal lid, and I saw a thick white envelope, the kind he’d been using for the last 2 years, so I knew it well. I grabbed it out of the mailbox and took a slow walk up to my front door. I’d learned to prolong these moments when I got his letters, so I could savor them. I could never hold out very long before ripping them open in an elated frenzy.

I got up to my room and dropped my backpack on the chair next to my door. I sat on the edge of my bed, and kicked off my shoes, the letter still in my left hand. I scooted back into my pillows and laid the unopened letter in front of me, tucking my feet under my quilt. This was the hardest part. Just staring at his handwriting, the half dozen stamps, the postmarks from three different countries, not knowing if this letter would be the last one. I made myself wait for a moment before picking up the letter and turning it over in my hands a few times. I slipped my finger between the seal and the letter inside and ripped it out. I pulled out the letter, gingerly unfolding a single piece of white paper.

Suit up, kiddo. See you at graduation.