A Beautiful Day
I must take the rest of summer vacation day by day. I wish it would rain. It's hardly rained over the last month, save for a few paltry showers. We need a good soak to saturate the earth, to bring back the green grass.
Employing last-minute camps, lingering acquaintances with other moms, and a few day trips, I've kept June and Rudy reasonably occupied, and I fill summer by making different salads, homemade popsicles, and strawberry-green tea ice cubes, which Pete admits are pretty good. At least we found something he likes, and I smirk as he plunks one more into his second glass of iced tea. "Right," I tell Pete, "just drink your tea and don't forget to put the empty glass
in the sink.
" The same glass I'll collect from the water ring-imprinted table by the easy chair later on.
About a week after the last phone call, I stand by the kitchen window, staring at the parched lawn and the empty driveway, and hold an ice cube at the hollow of my throat, melting, trickling down my chest, tickling me between my breasts underneath my linen blouse. I bring the ice cube to my lips, the sweet cold melting over my tongue and spreading through my mouth until I swallow. Tart, sweet--singular.
The mailman approaches the steps, drops the mail in the box, and continues his route. I wait until he's a few doors down, then I and my ice cube go out onto the stoop and retrieve the mail. I lay the pile of whatever on the kitchen table and start leafing through it. A bill (Pete), a bill (Pete), the grocery circular, a charity request, addressed to me.
Start checking your junk mail.
I pop the reduced cube in my mouth and study the light blue envelope. Some kind of 'charity' on the return address. Postmarked Manhattan. My hand shakes, but I can't stop smiling. I look around me before I open the envelope, even though Pete's not home and the kids are in their rooms. Inside the envelope I find three folded sheets of letter paper and another envelope. On the return envelope, a Manhattan address. On the back flap, an ink sketch of a hillside and trees, just like the one from Central Park.
The envelope falls to the table. I gaze out the window, insulated from the dry late afternoon heat, sliced by a speeding commuter short-cutting through our quiet suburban street. Blank sheets of writing paper and an envelope. I don't think I've handwritten a letter in decades. Shame, it's a beautiful way to correspond. I mean, who saves emails from loved ones? Our children and grandchildren and so on will have no record of the relationships among themselves and their ancestors since digital took over. The impersonal world wide web will have it.
I peek into the kids' rooms. Rudy clicks together a homemade Legos castle. Junie cobbles together a collage with the contents of her pockets from the last three days, spread all over her floor. Time for Mom to get busy, too, warming up a pen and composing a letter.
Window shade drawn, I hunch over the cluttered desk in the den. My pen hovers over the paper. No emails. No texts. Letters are bygone, flying under the radar. I hope. No one checks the mailbox for infidelity anymore, besides Pete leaves sorting the mail to me. I bring a sheet of Jimmy's writing paper to my nose. Oh, no--it smells like his cologne! My fingertips brush the soft vellum, and I start,
Dear J.,
So nice to see you again, so to speak. Everything's moving along nicely
here. The weather's too hot and dry, though. We need a good rain to bring back
the lawn. Funny how I miss the spring grass, naps under trees, tubs of water for
