The Letters (15 page)

But what I’m sure about is how quiet he was when he got back. He’d spent the night at her house, driven back home the next day. And you know, Sam—he never really seemed all himself after that. Remember how we worried about him that spring, how he just seemed to disappear into himself when he came home the next time, and for the summer? And then he told us he wanted to take time off…that he’d found the village in Alaska where he wanted to go and live and teach…

Julie told me it wasn’t because he’d stopped loving her, or because he’d stopped wanting to finish Amherst—it was because he’d realized that he loved everything too much. He’d fallen in love with their baby even before it was born, before it had a chance to be born. She told me she’d started bleeding heavily in the car right after they left the house, and he’d been so worried, he’d driven her straight to the nearest hospital. She’d gone straight into the ER, and it turned out she was miscarrying.

She’d made him promise not to tell us—and she didn’t tell her parents, either. She felt ashamed, confused, all of it. And since there was no baby, why muddy—as she put it—everyone’s view of her? I tried telling her we would have loved her anyway, it wouldn’t have changed our feelings at all; she said she knows that now, but back then she felt ashamed. Paul understood her wish, and of course he’d done as she asked. But meanwhile she could see it had changed him—he went through a depression that spring, realizing how delicate life could be, and how powerful love was, and not knowing how to reconcile any of it. She said that when they were honest with each other, they were partly relieved by what had happened—losing the baby. And that troubled Paul.

He had to leave because of love, that’s what she told me. Because it was both too much and not enough. He’d always loved nature so much, and the idea of going to extremes, to the very top of the world, to help poor people—give them some of what he had, what he knew, what he’d learned—while, he thought, finding a way to learn how to survive in harsh conditions, to enjoy the simple joys of life while struggling to endure hard things, he thought that might be the best way to figure out how to go on.

That’s what she said he said—“go on.” I told her it made him sound almost suicidal, as if he were having doubts about this life. And she said no, it was the opposite. He was wildly alive. She hadn’t wanted him to go, but she’d known she couldn’t stop him. Besides, the miscarriage had woken her up, made her question a lot of the status quo and what she’d always imagined she wanted. She knew that she wanted Paul, and they both wanted children someday, but she also realized she had to make a mark on the world in her own way. And she wanted and needed time alone, to think about what that would be.

She said she and Paul stayed in constant touch, all through his journey from home to Alaska, right up until the day he flew to Anchorage. They talked and texted and emailed; he’d warned her that contact would be difficult once he got to the village, but that he’d be with her all the time—all she had to do was think of him, and he’d feel it, and he’d be thinking of her, too. She said that she felt him “out there,” is the way she put it, for two years after he died. And then…not so much. The feeling of him faded. She’d search for him in her mind, but she couldn’t find him anymore.

She told me all this now for two reasons. One, because you’re in Alaska, you’ve done it—gone to find his plane. Somehow that seems to comfort her, as I’ve realized it does me as well. She’s sad that we’ve broken up and asked me more than once if I was sure it was the right thing. She sounded so mature, as if we were the troubled kids, you and I, throwing something precious away. Then she said the funniest thing: she said, “Sam and Hadley—you two always seemed so perfect together. Just the way Paul and I would have wanted to be.”

Here’s the other thing. It’s hard to write, Sam. Julie’s with someone new now. He’s not Paul, she said—he never could be. He’s very different, big and athletic—played football for Michigan. Born and raised in Chicago. But he’s an environmentalist, an activist—he’s a lawyer, went to Georgetown, and she loves and admires him. His name is Matt Brady. They started seeing each other last June, and they’ve started talking about getting married. She said he supports her decision to go to law school—she’s taking the LSATs soon. And they’re thinking about a summer wedding…

She took two days off from work to come here—she’s been working in New York for an environmental advocacy firm. They take action, which is to say bring lawsuits to bring about change. She’s passionate about her work, just the way she used to be about everything else—college, mountain climbing, Paul. From the minute she arrived, we started talking, and basically never stopped.

She worked to keep oil companies from drilling in the Chukchi Sea and Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She showed me amazing photographs by Subhankar Banerjee—he went up there and took the surreal, poetic pictures of the region—my favorite is of a herd of caribou migrating over the sea ice—taken from the sky, they look like ants on a blue-green ribbon, just moving across the land in grace and profusion. I saw the picture and immediately flashed on your letter, the dead caribou you saw being carted by the three hunters on “sleds.” You would love the picture…these caribou are so alive and on the move. Julie left the book for me—an exhibition catalogue called
The Last Wilderness
—and I’ll save it for you.

Her current project has to do with restricting the Navy’s use of low-frequency sonar across 70 percent of the world’s oceans. What I didn’t know is that the sonar emits dangerously high decibel levels that harm marine mammals. It’s one of the reasons for mass strandings and death of whales and dolphins. She reminded me of how intelligent they are, and of the pain they feel from the sonar. It causes staggeringly sharp pain and acute disorientation.

We settled in while the snow fell, and I remembered instantly why we liked her so much right away…and why Paul loved her. She’s so intelligent and kind, and she’s lovely—that porcelain skin, and long dark hair, and those gray-green eyes. Hearing her talk about the environment, hearing her fervor—of course I thought of Paul, and of how alike they were. He was every bit as mad about the things that drove him as she is about her work.

As important as the projects she’s working on, she realized she could make a bigger difference if she could actually work on the briefs, go to court. She said that with the environment in such fragile shape, she feels pressure to contribute her time and work right now, at the highest level she possibly can. I listened to her with such pride and admiration—for her, but also for Paul, that he recognized so young a girl who was truly his—excuse the phrase—soul mate. I really feel that they were that for each other. They wanted to change the world together.

And now she’s going to do that with someone else.

Sam…I’m both so happy for her and so brokenhearted. To look into her beautiful eyes and think of the baby she and Paul would have had. Almost did have…I can’t believe he went through all that, and how it informed his decision to leave school and go to Alaska, without telling us. I held her hand, and thought of Paul holding her hand, and we both started to cry. I pulled out your letters, let her read the one about you finding the plane, leaving the picture.

“He would have liked that,” she said. “He would have liked that so much…”

She asked me to give you her love. And she left, and said she’d be back next year—she’d come to the house. I told her to bring her guy, that we’d love to meet him, and she said she would—but I know she won’t.

Oh, Sam. And you know, I wouldn’t want her to. I really wouldn’t. Does that make me terrible?

We almost had a grandchild. I don’t know why, but right now I’m holding on to that thought very tightly. Paul would have married her, and he would have been such a good father. Because he learned from the best.

Can this be over? The grief, and where it’s led us? Sam, I’m not sure I can stand Christmas without you.

H.

ORION

I knew the stars, the flowers, and the birds,
The grey and wintry sides of many glens,
And did but half remember human words.

—John Millington Synge
from “Prelude”

December 18

Hadley—

Your letters arrived almost as I started out the door of Laika Star. I stayed there much longer than I had anticipated, but it was good. How strange and fateful our timing is and always has been. I am writing this on the small plane that is taking me to Anchorage. Gus’s girlfriend, Cindy, is flying me. I should be looking out the window and appreciating the view—a great white sheet, like furniture stored for winter—but I am tired of Alaska. Cindy understood without asking. One can sink into this land and risk never coming out. I need to leave soon or something will be broken inside me. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I know it in my clearest mind.

I read your letters and hardly know how to respond. I need to think a little more about it, about all that you included. I also hope that you will not think it peculiar if we continue to write letters. I will be able to pick up a phone and call you within the hour, but I am reminded that we have been kinder and more open to one another in these letters than we have been in person or on the phone—for too long. I suspect we are making a record, or a map, in these letters that a phone call would undermine. Perhaps it forces us to slow down and examine what we want and what we say. I thought the other day that whatever happens finally between us, these letters represent the best of us. It is too easy to talk things away. I want to talk with you in a slower world.

I’m thinking of you, Hadley. I’m hoping your wrist is better and that Christmas is bringing all its sweetness to you. I remember how you love this season, and how you kept Christmas well, as Dickens said of Scrooge, and how your painter’s sensibility wrings all the beauty out of the light and fragrance and makes it a gift to those around you. It sounds so strange and oddly 1950s to say it, but I loved how you kept house, Hadley. I don’t know if I ever said that quite so plainly before. I loved the home you made for us, the appeal to our senses, the beauty and arrangements, the still lifes you created and thought no one noticed. Paul and I would find them and marvel—a bowl of apples beside a piece of barbed wire, a length of barn board beside a metal last—but we depended on them and could not imagine living without them. I long for that. I can close my eyes and it doesn’t matter where you are—I know you have a fire going, and you will find large, knotty logs, and you will have found bittersweet and winterberry and braided them into whisks, and you will have something good on the stove, mulled wine, or black cider, and it is not a pose, it is simply an extension of you and how you interact with the world. To be with you is to be swept into that delightful corner. You know what I mean. Beauty is truth and all that. You live that ideal more closely than anyone I have ever met.

I confess I feel slightly overwhelmed with all you have imparted. Julie, a miscarriage. I have difficulty getting my mind around it. And I’ll admit, too, that my health is still not 100 percent. Gus nursed me along and Cindy has been wonderful—she is a tall redhead with freckles and enormous breasts, a kind of Alaskan cowgirl by way of Tulsa, and she has a tattoo of a rose across the side of her throat—but I am weak a portion of the time. I’m getting better, but if it takes me a while to digest what you’ve written, please understand.

In fact, I have to stop here. We are following the Yukon River south. Our shadow flies beside us along the ground, going east and south toward you.

Sam

H—

It is evening and I am safely ensconed, if that’s the right term for it, in a Fairtown Motel in downtown Anchorage. I thought about trying to follow your dictum that by discovering new lodgings—B&B’s, rented rooms, the little byways—we discover where we are, but then rejected it in favor of plain old-fashioned American vanilla comfort. See, I am a peasant at heart! Besides, I wanted a big, comfortable bed, a TV with a laser-accurate remote. I tell myself, as I tell you, that it is part of my job to catch up on sports, but mostly I like the abundant light right now, the solid warmth, the sense that I am anonymous. Especially that. I did not want to mosey down to breakfast and chitchat with a retired schoolteacher/innkeeper, who wanted to serve me something-something muffins with homemade something on fancy something china. Forgive me. Going to that kind of place is a delight with you, but for now, just back from Gus’s Laika Star, I want central heat and boring everydayness.