When To Leave or Love a Writer
A letter from a reader brings about a sharing of perspectives in the author’s life.
My name is unimportant. I’m a 38-year-old woman living on the big island of Hawaii, and over the past year, I have come to know your husband through correspondence.
From reading his last letter, I understand that I have received his final response. The reason he gave — that you had uncovered letters on his computer might lead you to think your husband is having an extra-marital affair. If he is, it is not with me.
That said, I have received several communications from him. Your husband and I, however, have never met. I understand it must be upsetting that any correspondence between him and I has been kept secret.
Richard has never led me to believe he has feelings for me. There has always been a ‘mystical’ distance written into his letters. And yes, his words to me are fabulous, mixed with excitement and romance, and it’s true, sometimes erotic and sensual.
I choose to believe you have no inclination of what motivated Richard to write to me, another woman.
A year after my husband died, I was struggling to come to terms with living alone. I had suffered days when feeling suicidal. I cannot give a reason for thinking such a terrible thing other than that of being depressed and lonely.
It was about this time I came upon your husband’s book, ‘Heartbreak.’ I sat in the library and read it from cover to cover in one afternoon. That evening, at home, I sat at my kitchen table and wrote to the author, your husband.
I wrote that his story made me feel he knew me, I mean, really knew me, everything I’d gone through and was going through. His words, frankly, well, they spoke to my heart. I felt I had to tell him how much his book had moved me away from the idea of doing harm to myself. I never expected a reply.
His response, however, was to write and say that receiving such personal feedback inspired him, making the effort of writing the book so worthwhile. It was short, but it felt personal.
That seemed to set off a chain of letters.
I’m not saying that I didn’t fall in love with the man through his writing, I suspect I did, but there was never any way he was going to allow a chance to meet.
Richard helped me see my way out of misery, loneliness, and low self-esteem. He only ever responded to my letters, not once initiating any correspondence.
His letters were better than prescribed medicine. For over a year, he answered my letters, dismissing all requests to meet, and to this day, I have only the book cover as a reference to what he looks like.
I understand that he couldn’t give more of himself because he has already given everything to you and never left me in doubt.
I am confused, hurt, and sorry that my letters inspired him to respond and that those responses have become an issue for you both.
You are married to a compassionate man, a man, it seems, who could not resist helping a ‘stranded’ woman. I will keep his letters all my life, knowing how his words brought me through a terrible time.
I can see through them today that his intention was never to meet. He had no interest in me that way. He has a love of writing, enabling me to see his vision of what being well again looks like. Perhaps you have those letters and others, too.
I can only imagine you, too, love what he writes. It must be difficult to accept that other women can want him for the person he appears to be through his writings.
I will miss his correspondence but understand why I won’t receive more.
If I have contributed to your sadness and mistrust of him, then I’m sorry and regretful. Richard always mentioned you in his letters. Please understand that his letters written back were my life support and his way of bringing me through some challenging times.
I hope he can find a way to bring you through yours.
I, too, shall write no more.
Richard sits deeply in the leather living room armchair, his right foot resting on his left thigh, wearing slippers and holding a glass of whiskey.
Ruth, his wife of twenty-eight years, had read the letter aloud and, on finishing, prompted a question to her husband.
“How many letters were written back and forth, Richard?”
Richard sets his glass aside and answers. “A dozen, maybe. Not sure. Less, perhaps.”
“You still have them? The letters she wrote to you?” Ruth asks, holding the letter in the fingers of her right hand.
“Yes, but heaven knows where. Somewhere in my study.”
Ruth lets the letter slide onto the coffee table, substituting it for her glass of Pinot. Outside the window, an overcast sky prevents an otherwise visible sunset.
“What did you tell her to have her declare she will write no more?” She asks.
Richard reaches for his whiskey and takes a moment, studying it through the crystal.
“Truthfully, I sensed she was developing a dependency, completely assured I would write back. Of course, I had never wanted to hurt her feelings, but felt I was being drawn into something, that with a wrong word, or mistaken sentiment, I would find myself in need of an explanation; that it would become troublesome,” Richard says.
Ruth leans forward, a glass of wine in hand, forearms resting on knees. “You think you’re not in trouble, Richard?”
“Am I? If so, I apologize, Ruth.”
Ruth remains stoic. “We’ve been married twenty-eight years, Richard, never once have I imagined you’d keep a secret from me.”
Something about the word ‘secret’ stirs inside Richard.
“Darling, it’s hardly that. I receive letters all the time, many critical, others kind, too many wanting their money back, you know that.”
“Yes, I do know,” Ruth says, her voice drifting to a whisper, as if not wanting the following to be heard, “none, however, from a woman confessing she is in love with you,” and again Ruth refers to the letter, picking it up and scanning through it, then says, “where is it, oh here. It must be tough to accept that other women can want him for the person he appears to be through his writings. What do you think she means?” Ruth asks, not in a pointed or accusing manner.
Richard has hold of the whiskey glass in the fingers of both hands, resting on his lap. “I think the woman, by the way you never asked her name, she told me in one of her early letters, Jane, but whether that’s true, I don’t know. I do know this, she has never had to endure a life lived with me in the same household,” Richard says, putting the glass back on the side table and accepting he is a difficult man to deal with.
Ruth allows herself to fall comfortably into the back of the settee, crossing one leg over the other, showing an extent of recently tanned thigh.
“You are very difficult to live with, Richard. Not impossible, all our friends love you, I love you, but they never see you the way I see you.”
“They don’t?” Richard says, surprise written into his brow.
“You know very well, they don’t. When you’re with them you’re fun. You never let them down. They don’t see the writer, the man at his desk, the frustration, anxiety, the anger that is a part of you. They see only what you’re prepared to show them,” Ruth pauses reflectively, then continues, “this woman, Jane? you said, she has no idea how hard it is to live with you. To be constantly reassuring you,” she says, adding, “you have romance in your soul, Richard, the man sitting across from me at the breakfast table, leaving me darling notes before disappearing to his study. But there is another side, a cruel side, selfish, secretive, a dark depth. It is a side of you our friends never see,” she says, her voice tinging with frustration, “isn’t that enough to contend with without learning about women writing to you confessing their love if you were only free to give it.”
For the first time, Richard felt defensive, “not me, Ruth. They love what I write. I have no explanation for that and you’re right, my writing doesn’t truly reflect the man I am, the man you live with. I want to be a better man, of course, and naturally I want to be the man others believe me to be, but more especially, Ruth, to be that man for you.”
Richard stands, taking his whiskey to the window. “Love can be a fantastic and absolute thing when it is written in books, but is never that way in real life,” and turns to face Ruth. “The way I should like to be, which you are implying I’m not, is to be less selfish, not mean or bad, as I sometimes can be, but in the beautiful, surprising, and heroic manner of my characters, or those times when I’m reinventing myself for public adoration,” he says, and returns to the armchair, “Ruth, you are my best written book — if you have any blemishes, I don’t remember them — if you wore a different dress every day of last week, I don’t remember which one you wore or on which day. The same as I don’t remember all the ways I’ve told you I love you, only that I do, more than anyone in the world, you know that, right?”
Ruth uncrosses her leg and brings her back straight.
“Yes, of course I do. Yet, I know also you will sometimes leave our bed without warning to go wandering alone in a strange city like some phantom — as if you cannot wait to get yourself into trouble.”
Ruth pauses, but Richard knows very well she is not finished.
“I understand you think and dream great things, but sometimes, well, I want my husband to forget he’s a writer, be a husband who doesn’t need to be loved by others or disappear into the night looking for trouble. You’re not twenty something,” she says. “I wonder if you’ll ever settle into a life that is permanent. You write about the pots and pans of a normal life, but of course, it’s not your life, Richard. It’s the life you want your readers to believe you have.”
Richard feels her frustration building.
“Wait, how did we get to this from a woman writing letters to me?”
“Because her letter in many ways confirms my fears. I’m trying to make the point, you allow people into your life if you can keep up the secrecy, tell them any fantastic thing. On its face you want people to recognize that your life was once so full of torture and struggle there comes that strange eager listening, as if your life is frantically without bounds. How easily you fool them, Richard. Your life is a secret fortress. Inside that fortress you build yourself up and from that comes a picture of your life,” Ruth explains. “It is fiction applied to you, the writer, not one of the figures you’ve created, but I think it is a fiction that may be more real than reality. You alone know where it comes from, your need to be loved,” Ruth says, “as long as you know that I recognize that need, Richard.”
Richard hasn’t moved while Ruth speaks, not even to sip at his whiskey.
“I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me, Ruth. There are no words sent or received that have the power to wipe away the love we have for each other, and you know this is true. But there is something I have never discussed about the way you love me, something I have never tackled. Knowing you these years has been a miracle, having you as my wife has meant faithfulness and fidelity. The bastard of a writer I have created is not full of goodness or greatness. There is always a rumble in that writer’s heart, a creaking of bones, a writer who has no time to explain why he wakes on Monday and goes immediately to Paris, or….”
Ruth interjects. “You, Richard. The other you are not a product of your imagination. The writer you are referring to is no one else. Not a character, it is you; it is the difficult, deep, selfish side, often cruel, hard-bitten by tragedy, furious at the world you! I cannot live with you and not understand the truth of who you are, how you think, act. Writing is the one thing that satisfies you and is right for you. I know you will go on and on until oxygen no longer fills your lungs. I wish I could live it with you, but I am not good at that. I’m good at keeping a tidy home, pots and pans cleaned, put back in their place. You seem to take it for granted, but it’s one of the ways I have to prove my love. Many women would scoff at me, a dutiful wife, as if I’m someone who might chase to the fruit stand just to buy you a pear. But I am that woman, Richard.
I want you to talk to me about writing, but you can’t do it on paper. You’ve told me it is the greatest gift in the world, writing. I’d give my ears to be able to do it, but for me, well, it is to love a writer.
Some mornings I can wake up and you’ve created a fairyland; other mornings, my heart stops when you decide to go away. A day later, the phone rings; maybe it’s you telling me you’re coming back from one of your wild impulses. But it isn’t you. You’re happy as a vagrant, looking for and finding ugliness,” Ruth says.
Last night in a pub, two men took exception to a remark he had espoused, daring to become positively abusive. As a result, hot with whiskey, he had it out with them, running one violently into a door and seizing another by his neck in ridiculous, childish conduct which today fills him with shame and self-loathing, not to mention a visit from the police.
Richard reaches his right arm across himself toward a whiskey canter, pouring another, knowing he has yet to explain the bruising around his right eye and to settle something deep within him.
Ruth sits in contemplative silence, a silence that bristles dry, frozen, cold, sad, and distressing. Richard wants to wash it from her thoughts with more than the shame he feels.
Since childhood, a streak of meanness has plagued him; time served in an orphanage, then as a man constantly aware that only the blood running from a cut on his face, dripping into the hairs on his chest, had defined his very nature.
As the two sit in a moment of reflective silence, their dog, Loki, wanders in from the kitchen and settles next to Ruth’s feet.
Richard speaks softly, caringly. “I was thinking this morning what strange things words are, how they are spoken, stolen, how they travel, and how they are received having crossed oceans. How we can send replies, messages each other, always reachable, passionate declarations…” but Ruth interrupts Richard.
“I want you to burn those letters, Richard. I want you to receive no more declarations of love by other women. I want you to promise me that will be so. You and I know these things have a horrible way of being found out.”
Richard listens to the timbre in Ruth’s voice, ebony in tone, silver sharp in its delivery.
“Ruth, I will not scratch one word of my ravings, for no one but you know the half monster that lurks. These writings create the texture of my life, its wilderness. When you came into this life, I wanted to be different. You shone light into my heart, sharp as a cat’s claw. It tore away the past. It was brutal, as it had to be. But the truth has a way of finding a man out. Memory is like cancer; it doesn’t determine what we recall or don’t want to remember. No matter how good the surgeon, the drugs and fragments of our worst selves remain waiting,” he explains.
But Richard, looking into the whiskey glass, remembers their conversation last night.
Tonight, there is no one in the house but him.
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