The Letters (11 page)

Something strange is happening to me. I have your letters here, and I want to go through them point by point, answer everything you said about Daniel, lob some more defensive strikes at Martha. I’m tempted to tell you that I had coffee with John Morgan just to get a rise out of you. The truth is, I did, but all he wanted to talk about was his sculpture and the big one-man show he’s having in the spring. He’s split with his wife, and there’s someone else—a beautiful grad student he met at, of all places, Clyde Lorus’s villa in Greece. Clyde collects his work or something, and the grad student was there with a boyfriend who’s signed to whatever the hell record label Clyde Lorus is connected with, I should know but I don’t, and John stole the grad student right from the hot young rocker, and John’s wife is depressed and calls him crying and can’t talk except to whisper she wants him back, wants their marriage back, and he doesn’t know what to do, he’s stopped caring about that part of his life, he can only think about when he’s going to see Lyra—that’s the grad student’s name—again, because he’s worried she might go back to the hot young rocker, but he has to stay here and finish his work for the big spring show. I sat silently and listened and felt a little sick. How stupid we all are.

What you wrote about Daniel is haunting me, because now I see what you saw.

There’s a poem by Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese,” that goes, “You do not have to be good / You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.” But I feel as if I did have to do that, repent. My knees are rubbed raw. I’ve felt so terrible and guilty. I’m not sure that I’ve come to Monhegan exactly to forgive myself—I think I’m just too tired to keep doing this.

I’m really tired. So I’m going to stop.

I think I’m beginning to really get the hang of on-by…

You’re turning me into a Buddhist, my darling. I read something by the Dalai Lama on the Diamond Cutter Sutra and seventy verses on emptiness. He speaks of the scope of suffering. I think he might have been writing about parents who’ve lost children. Is that the ultimate emptiness? I know it’s the ultimate suffering.

Hadley

December 3

Hi Sam,

It’s twenty-four hours since I stopped mid-letter, and all I can say is the sun is out. Bright, shining sunlight hitting the rocks and harbor all day long, moving across the island, making it warm enough to sketch outside, at least for brief periods. The wind is strong and steady, but I’ve been drawing in the lee of some granite boulders. I’m enclosing some of the sketches here so you can get an idea of the landscape.

Cathedral Woods is so thick with tall pines, almost no sunlight penetrates—but neither does snow nor strong gusts of wind. It’s eerie, with boughs creaking and the air whistling through the pine needles at the very tops of the trees. This morning I walked through on my way to the lee shore, and I really understood why they named it as they did. I was all alone—not another human being around; the sound of my boots walking across the soft bed of pine needles made me feel I was the only one on the entire island. But I felt a presence—a warmth inside and a sense that I was surrounded by goodness. I had to stop, try to hold on to the feeling—and I wished you were there. It reminded me of how nature was always our church, yours, mine, and Paul’s, how mystical and sacred the outdoors always felt to us.

Down a sloping hill I found a small hollow, dug out between boulders and looking over a series of rocky inlets. The coastline is jagged and treacherous, with waves crashing and churning, salt spray shooting into the sky. It’s impossible to imagine anything surviving that wave action, yet the coves are full of seals. They sunbathe on the rocks, which ice over between tides—and they curve, snout and tail upward, just like bananas. Then they dive and glide, and ride the cold frothy waves, their heads poking up to watch me draw them, their eyes so black and bright.

And there are shorebirds, too: harlequin ducks, common eiders, white-winged scoters, surf scoters, long-tailed ducks, alcids, and black-legged kittiwakes. Yesterday I saw what looked like a soccer ball washed up on the seaweed above the tide line, and it was a snowy owl. And all I could think of was, you must have them up there, too—you’re close to the tundra, and that’s their natural habitat.

You mentioned the moose and the bear, and even the polar bear and the German, and now you have me worried about you being attacked by beasts. Here on Monhegan there is no dangerous game—other than sharks in the sea, just birds and squirrels and-deer and raccoon. (I’m collecting a series of delicious shark stories for you, one involving Turner baiting his lobster pots when he heard a great breath, almost like a whale or a dolphin coming up for air, and when he turned to look, he saw a great white shark with its entire head poking up out of the calm sea, trying to get a peek over the gunwale of his lobster boat, to see what morsels he could steal…)

And islanders. There’s a camaraderie that exists here just by nature of living so far at sea in so few square miles. When I walk back toward town from the inlet, I see smoke wisping out of chimneys and feel a kind of coziness and homecoming, as if I’m somewhere I belong. The town is tiny, just a street and a general store and a post office and the ferry dock. There’s the Island Inn overlooking the harbor and un-inhabited Manana Island, and the sunsets, and there’s a tiny library.

Now that I’m officially a year-rounder (at least this year) they’ve told me the big secret—Jamie Wyeth doesn’t live here anymore! The myth of Jamie looms large over the summer art community. People really do make pilgrimages here to connect with the Wyeth mystique. I’m not sure whether they’re afraid that if tourists find out they wouldn’t come, or whether—and I think this is more like it—they enjoy the joke. But the truth is, there’s an austerity to the beauty here that reminds me so much more of Andrew Wyeth, Jamie’s father.

That subtle palette he always used, shades of wheat and gray, white and cream. Voile curtains at the window, weather-beaten barns, salt-silvered shingles. When I used to visit my aunt in Hartford, she’d take me to the Wadsworth Atheneum, and my favorite painting was by Andrew Wyeth, of a house on the coast; it was painted from the perspective of the wood-shingled roof, looking past a lightning rod with a pale-yellow glass ball pierced by the needle, and the late-year beach and sea spreading out behind and below in the distance.

The canvas was so simple, so not showy. His brushstrokes were fine, almost invisible. He used gouache, the first time I took note of that as a medium. The painting had the sense of a photograph, very fine and precise, the view neither added onto nor subtracted from but simply rendered, not exactly black and white but delicately colored, almost as if time and memory had bleached it of any rich or strong hues. The feeling was pure November—clear light, a sort of sadness, a moment of reflection. I loved it.

That’s what Monhegan feels like to me: that painting, my favorite by Andrew Wyeth. No matter that the seasons will pass, there’s a November quality to this island. Summer is over, the prettiest part of fall has gone by—there are no bright yellows, no sugar maple reds, no flowers left. Christmas is still to come—no lights yet, or trees, or wreaths or decorations. There’s no artificial cheer. Everything is brown, gray, black, white, and dark, dark forest green. It suits the way I feel, and it’s beautiful.

I’ve rented the house through May—and I know I said I wanted to buy it, sell our house and stay here, and maybe I still will. But after all my enthusiasm in the first few letters, I’m suddenly not sure. This might sound crazy, but I feel I was meant to come here for right now, this very winter. But equally, I feel as if perhaps I’m not meant to stay. Annabelle has been silent lately, leaving me alone with my thoughts.

I feel very in-between right now.

Two nights ago I had another dream. I won’t give you all the details…I can’t understand them myself. But I know I was on the sunporch at home, and the feeling that you were there, too, in another part of the house, was very strong. I heard your footsteps coming up behind me, and closed my eyes to wait for you to hold me, and then I woke up.

Did you know the part of the brain that dreams is very old? I get this mixed up, but I’ll try. There’s the front part of the brain, the midbrain, and the hindbrain. The midbrain is where dreams and emotions occur. The limbic system. The front part is where reason and logic happen—things that only humans have, while the midbrain is closer to an animal’s—it’s almost primitive. That’s why dreams are so illogical…because they take place in the less developed part of the brain, where there’s less order and ordering.

I’m sitting with Cat—she’s right on the arm of the chair beside me—and thinking of you with Grabby and Sneak and the other dogs, and I know you know how alike them we are. Animals aren’t burdened with reason; they don’t have to think about whether they like or trust someone, whether a person is good or bad—their instincts just take over and tell them how they feel. And they know what they know and don’t second-guess themselves.

You know what I’m realizing? I don’t know what I want. I feel I’m on this island so far out in the Atlantic, separated, in some ways, from life. There was before Monhegan, and someday there’ll be after. What will “after” look like? I have no idea. I thought I knew something of what I wanted—to start painting again. That’s happening, but now what? There has to be more.

Doesn’t there?

This is where the animals have it easier. They don’t ask such questions. They just live….

Hadley

December 4

Dear Sam,

If my writing looks strange, forgive it. Yesterday I slipped on the ice and cracked my right wrist. My drawing hand is all swollen and bruised. It’s hard to write, but I wanted to tell you. Also—this is awful to say—they gave me some pain pills at the clinic, and I took one. Am I still sober if I take a Vicodin? Some people in the program would say no.

I was across the island, on those rocks I love so much. The sun was out, and it was late afternoon. Shadows had stretched over the land, and I was cold, but I couldn’t leave—it was a pure moment, with sun and shade and the light changing so slowly, thin sun coming through a veil of clouds that had an aspect of parchment, this lovely obscured yellowed-ivory light.

Finally I was shivering so much I couldn’t hold the pencil anymore, so I stood up to leave. And that was all—I took half a step and my heel hit some ice, and my feet just flew out from under me. I landed right on my side, and when I stuck my hand out to brace my fall, I really banged it. It’s not broken, though.

Can you believe it? Sam, I was so scared. I landed flat on the rocks, and the pain was so intense I passed out. I’ve never broken anything before. I know you have, and of course there was the time Paul broke his leg at Mad River. So when I came to, that’s what I thought had happened—that I’d broken my leg like Paul, and that I’d have to lie there and wait for help. I thought maybe I’d freeze there and die. But I didn’t—I was fine, or almost fine.

It was almost dark when I fell, and by the time I dragged myself home, it was pitch-black. I heard Cat meowing as I came down the street; it sounded as if she was crying, and that made me cry, too. Not for me, but…oh, Sam. I don’t even want to write this, but if I don’t ask you, I’ll go crazy.

Do you think Paul was hurt? I mean, did he feel pain before he died? I’ve never had the courage to voice this until now, and I can’t bear to think it, but I have to know. Don’t hide anything from me. When I fell there on the rocks, I went out so fast. I almost didn’t know what happened. But when I came to—oh, Sam, I knew instantly. I felt the pain, and saw the purple shadows on the water, saw little dots of light, the kind you see when you’re just passing out, because I hurt so much—and I wasn’t sure I could move. I just thought of Paul, those last minutes. What were his like, his last minutes?

This is what I don’t want to think—I don’t even want to write it. Sam, did he know the plane was crashing? Did he feel himself falling out of the sky? You said it was ice on the wings, making the plane too heavy. So that means it wasn’t sudden, right? There was time to think and react.

It means he knew what was coming, that’s what I don’t want to hear but have to know. Just tell me. Please, as soon as you can. Even though I’m not sure I can stand to hear it. I read a book once that said when planes crash and the black box picks up the last words of the pilots and anyone in the cockpit, they’re heard calling for their mothers. That’s what’s killing me, Sam—the idea that Paul died calling for me.

Julie is coming out here. She and I always like to see each other during the holidays, so she’s taking the ferry out from Port Clyde next week. I’m not prepared for her this year. Three years now and suddenly it seems harder than ever.

And that question I asked in my last letter—what do I want? How does it all add up? The painkiller has a strange side effect; it keeps me from being able to block out thoughts. I can’t censor or stem what’s coming up. I’m getting an answer I never thought I’d get. Chalk it up to the Vicodin, maybe…