Untold Story (21 page)

I always felt my grandmother’s presence, even after she left this earth. People scoffed when I used a medium to contact her. You never did, but now I do think that was a bit silly. I can talk to you without help from anyone.

Your Lydia

12 December 1998

Dear Lawrence,

Looks like I’ll be on my own again for Christmas. No one’s speaking to me. Not Maggie, not Liza Beth, obviously not Elsa Peterson. I felt like going round there and saying, look Elsa, I don’t want your husband, you can have him. Why did he have to tell her? He said, “Lydia, it would have been on my conscience.” So now he’s told her it’s all okay for everyone except me.

I have to get away from this place. Don’t expect me to stay here after all this. Have I done something so very bad? Is it always me in the wrong? Why are you blaming me, and not him? Am I the one person in the entire world who never deserves to be happy?

Lydia

30 January 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I’m not even sure that you care where I am or what I’m doing so I haven’t bothered to write to you. For your information, I’ve moved again, but it’s not so very different here. Was my life really worse than this before I dived off the boat? Tell me that. In what way is this an improvement?

I don’t know. Maybe it’s better because I’ve stopped caring. If you can stop caring then you can’t be hurt. In the morning I wait for the day to end. After that I wait for the night to end. They always do. The next day and night always come around. You can rely on that.

I can hardly hear you, Lawrence. Speak, if you have anything to say.

I am still your Lydia

25 February 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I can’t write down a scream, can I? I can’t write down endless blank hours. Write it down. Write it down, you tell me. But what? Here I am. I exist. I’m making these marks on the page. I must exist. I am no more alive than you.

Talk to me.

Lydia

14 March 1999

Dear Lawrence,

If I could keep the vomiting down to once or twice a day that wouldn’t be too awful. You know, at my worst it was six or seven times in one day. I’m nowhere near as bad as that. It’s not as though I’m harming anyone.

You are really very faint. You haven’t left me, have you?

Love as always,

Lydia

27 March 1999

Dear Lawrence,

Every day for the past month I have wanted to write you a proper, long letter and tell you everything. I have all these thoughts swirling around. Then when I sit down there’s nothing. I’m all empty again. I go and eat. You know what I do after that. It’s getting worse. What shall I do, Lawrence? I want it to stop.

With love,

Lydia

11 April 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I left my life. I left my children. I left everything. And I left you. I let you die without me there. How could I have done that? I could only think of one person. So I left everything but I took that one person with me. I thought I was leaving her behind too.

With my useless but eternal love,

Lydia

14 June 1999

Dear Lawrence,

You know I’ve moved on once more. Another fresh start, a new beginning. I thought you would be skeptical but you seemed to approve. That makes a difference, you know. I feel you watching over me again. Always when I am walking I feel you near. So I walk and walk.

You were with me when I made an appointment with the craniosacral therapist a few days after I moved in. “Ma’am,” you said, “if I may be so bold as to venture an observation—you have tried all of these therapies before.” I told you to be quiet, of course. And to stop calling me ma’am. But I didn’t go. I canceled the appointment, and instead I went for a walk. I have to say you were right. It is surprisingly difficult to be angry with anyone, even with yourself, when you are surrounded by trees, trees, and more trees. I always hated the country. My husband’s mistress was mistress of our country house. “Their” country house, I should say. Balmoral was bloody awful, as you know. Endless jigsaws and shooting at animals. I couldn’t stand it.

Now it’s just me and the trees, and I can walk without wondering where the photographers are and where the pictures will appear. My legs are stiff at the end of the day. I am getting muscles in my calves. Swimming helps stretch it all out. I toyed with joining a health club but it was very expensive, and I’m not touching the money you said to keep aside for when I’m ready to buy a house of my own. The municipal pool is only crowded at weekends.

I have to think about getting a job. The money for bills and food and rent won’t last forever. Thank you for reminding me.

Your devoted,

Lydia

23 June 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I don’t know how long this calm will last. I don’t trust it yet. But I’ll carry on doing what I’m doing. If nothing else I’m going to be very fit. I find myself looking forward to the day: walk, swim, walk, that’s all. I don’t have to drag myself out of bed.

In hope,

Lydia

2 July 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I have been thinking it all through, over and over, on my walks. I changed everything, so I thought everything would be different. And nothing was. Not really. Not different enough, anyway. I always had someone to blame before. I’ve run out of culprits now.

Sometimes I don’t think at all when I’m walking. I look at the colors of the leaves. I look at the way the moss shines on a stone. Or I find myself squatting down, studying creatures on the forest floor. Today I watched two huge stag beetles locking antlers. Then I went for a swim in the afternoon. I was starving this evening. It’s good to eat when you’re hungry. I’d forgotten that. In the last month I’ve only had four episodes. Not perfect, but a lot better.

Thank you for bearing with me.

Your Lydia

6 August 1999

Dear Lawrence,

You can’t escape from yourself, but you can learn how to live with yourself. You can try, anyway. If it’s possible for someone else to teach you how, I never found that person. And goodness knows I looked hard enough.

I just read through all my letters. Still demanding, aren’t I? No more, I promise. I’ve kept them all in a box and I’m going to hang on to them. Maybe at some point in the future I’ll look at them again.

Truly yours,

Lydia

30 August 1999

Dear Lawrence,

I’m going to stop writing these letters now. I can choose what to put in a letter and what to leave out. As though you can only see what I want you to see. A letter just gives you a tiny bit of a person. I’d like to give you more than that, my whole life as a letter to you.

There will be days when I don’t make you proud. I hope they will be few and far between.

I always knew when I fell short of your standards, Lawrence, even when you pretended to approve. You did that too often. You were too kind.

There’s that little lift in your eyebrows. I know what you’re thinking. Tomorrow, she’ll be writing again to tell me off for something. That’s okay, Lawrence. Maybe I won’t be able to change. I might manage it, though, if I put my heart into it. I nearly said, if I put my mind to it. I’d rather count on my heart, wayward though it has been sometimes.

I see you, Lawrence. I know you see me.

Your ever-loving

Lydia

Chapter Seventeen

When Wednesday came around again Lydia helped Amber change the window display. They lifted down the four mannequins and stripped them and dismembered their arms. The mannequins bore their indignities with Mona Lisa smiles.

“I was thinking I should put the evening gowns in,” said Amber. “But maybe all four would be too much.”

“No, go for it,” said Lydia. “Let’s make a splash. How many have you sold?”

Amber smiled ruefully. “One. Plus the one you insisted on paying for.”

“Let’s get to work. We’ll have them lining up and down the block.”

They tried the peach chiffon first but the tone didn’t work with the mannequin’s coloring.

“No,” said Lydia. “Not unless we give her an instant tan.”

They took it off and replaced it with the blue taffeta. Lydia stepped onto the platform and Amber handed up the mannequin. The dress needed pinning in at the back of the waist, and when she had done that Lydia whisked around to the front to check the alignment across the collarbone.

Mrs. Deaver from the drugstore waved as she passed by at a pigeon-chested strut. Across the road, Sonia from the florist added pails of yellow and white chrysanthemums to the display outside her store. She wiped her hands on her apron and stretched her back and then leaned against the doorpost, her movements as languid as a cat’s. Kindergarten had let out for the day and mothers and children paddled casually, stopping and starting, between the lakes of sun that fell between the buildings and the cool pools of shadow in front of the stores. They eddied generally in the direction of the bakery, from which the children emerged with a swoosh of sugar-fueled high hopes.

Albert Street was wide and generous. A grass verge extended the sidewalk on the east and the road itself was wide enough to turn full circle with a horse and cart. The town hall crowned the north end with erect Georgian symmetry, and the stores that mingled with the houses bore fascias and awnings in tasteful cottage-garden hues. The buildings, all clapboard or half-timbered, had air around them. It was the town’s main street but it wasn’t squeezed. It was a street with room to breathe.

Lydia looked to see if Mr. Mancuso would emerge from his bungalow. He liked to sit out on his little steel tube stool at this time. There he was, beaming as always, as if he couldn’t believe his luck in living through another day. He was getting so frail now that perhaps there wouldn’t be too many more. He set up the stool at the bottom of his stoop, and when a child stopped to have his cheek pinched Mr. Mancuso nearly fell off his stool in delight.

Six weeks to go, thought Lydia, until Albert Street put on its finery for the annual fête. She was looking forward to it. She smiled to herself. There had been a time when she could scarcely stay in one city, one country, one continent, for more than a day or two without being burned by the apparent certainty that she was in the wrong place. She’d step off the jet and be wondering if she had better cut short the trip.

Now she lived here round the seasons, three full cycles so far, through the calendar of annual events, and the daily parade, and she let herself (though she smiled at it) be cradled by the quiet rhythms of this place.

“What shall we do next?” said Amber. “The green silk?”

“Yes. Now give me the progress report.”

“Phil?” Amber checked herself in the mirror and smoothed down her skirt. “We had dinner, it was nice. I thought he’d call yesterday but he didn’t. Do you think he’ll call today?”

“Oh, so you like him? You didn’t sound too sure before.”

Amber groaned. “You’re right. I wasn’t.”

“And now you are?”

Amber arranged herself on the fainting couch. “A week or so ago I’d have said I wasn’t really interested. He’s nice, good manners, bit short, bit of a potbelly, not particularly handsome but nice eyes. The kids have met him—only in passing, because he lives so close, but I think they’d get along okay. He’s a dentist. He talks about teeth a lot.”

“Wow,” said Lydia. “That’s a big subject.”

“I know!”

“If you like him, you like him.”

“A week ago I could take it or leave it. I was thinking it might be . . . a little fling, maybe.” Amber got off the couch to help with the next mannequin. “Honestly? Last week I’d have said he was nice but kinda boring. This week? If he doesn’t call me, I’ll die.”

Lydia laughed. “And if he does you’ll run away to Acapulco with him.”

“Oh, why am I always like this?” said Amber. “I
know
he’s not exactly thrilling but when he calls I’ll pee my pants.”