I remember the day because it was my first day working as a bookkeeper at city hall. My parents were proud even though I hadn’t been seeing anyone for months and the neighbors were already thinking I was going to be an old maid. It must have been about April because the sweet gum tree was in bloom with its little tufts of red flowers.
I sorted through the mail as I walked up the driveway from my first day of work feeling like a real professional woman. My name written across an envelope caught my attention. The hand writing was unfamiliar; it was neat and a little feminine the way the final ‘e’ of ‘Beatrice’ looped up on itself. I slid my red manicured nail under the lip of the envelope and sliced it open.
The letter was written on yellow lined paper that smelled like my high school and cigarettes. On it, in that same slightly feminine script, the letter read:
Dear Beatrice,
We met about six months ago at the hospital through my friend Angelo. I hope you don’t mind, I asked him for your address so that I could write you. I’m doing much better now and joined the Seabees — I’ll be helping build radio towers for the Navy. I’m shipping off to Puerto Rico — I may already be there by the time you get this letter — and would appreciate having someone to write home to. Would you mind if we became correspondents? I’ve written my new mailing address below. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely, your acquaintance,
Thomas Daly
“Mother, I need the phone,” I said as I burst through the front door.
“Beatrice, how was your first day of work?” she asked. She was up to her elbows in raviolis. My youngest siblings were running circles around the kitchen table and stopped only momentarily to recognize that I was home. Magdalena was trying to corral them.
“I’ll tell you in a bit.” I dialed the number I still knew by heart, then was bitter that I had remembered it after so long.
Fortunately, he picked up — I wasn’t sure what I would say to his father or mother.
“Hi Angelo, it’s Beatrice.”
“Bea? It’s been a while since I’ve heard from you. I’ve been thinking about you.”
Funny, I didn’t remember him trying to get in touch with me over the last six months.
“You remember your friend we visited in the hospital? Is he still alive?”
“Tony — yeah. He just left for Puerto Rico a couple days ago. He asked for your address to write to you. I hope you don’t mind. I figured he wanted to thank you for visiting him.”
“When did he get out of the hospital?”
“Eh, a couple weeks after we — after we visited him.”
I tried to imagine what the dying boy in the hospital bed looked like now, on the other side of this letter.
“Why did he join the Seabees?” I asked.
“Probably to get away from his mother.”
“And why did he ask to write to me specifically?”
“Probably because he has a thing for red heads.”
The bitterness in Angelo’s voice made me wind the phone cord tightly around my hand. Angelo wanted to know how I had been doing, but I didn’t care enough to tell him. Hearing his low voice over the phone again confirmed for me what I had known for the last six months — I was much happier without him.
After I hung up, I sat down at the kitchen table. Shielding my paper from marinara sauce, I composed my response. I told him I was glad to hear he was doing better and that I would love to be his correspondent. It was simple, but I was so nervous that I couldn’t write more than a few sentences.
I folded the letter, hiding its contents from my siblings who were now peering over my shoulder. Magdalena tried to snatch it from my hand and I swatted her away. Afraid I would never send it if I read it over again, I stuck it in an envelope and put it in the mailbox.
And then I waited.
The next letter arrived a week later. Another one arrived the week after that. And after that. We fell into a routine — every Thursday I would race home from work and find a letter tucked away in the mailbox. My mother was beginning to think I had fallen in love the way I would lock myself in the bathroom to keep my siblings at bay while I read Thomas’s words. I hid the letters under my mattress, the only safe place to keep them in the room I shared with my three sisters.
My father tried to remedy the situation by inviting eligible young men over for dinner every Friday night — I cared for none of them.
Through Thomas’s words, I explored Puerto Rico in June — the crystal blue waters and white sand took shape in his letters. I read about underwater radios and life in the barracks. I read about scuba diving and tropical fish. I tried to reconcile the image I had of Thomas in my head, hooked up to tubes, wheezing through his oxygen, with the image of him I had in his letters. He wrote to me that he had earned the nickname Fins because he managed to outswim a barracuda one of his friends had angered.
My letters back always felt boring — although Thomas told me that receiving my letter was always the most exciting part of his week. I wrote about bookkeeping at city hall and the local politicians I had worked with. I wrote about my father inviting Angelo over for cigars on the stoop again. I wrote about my mother and Magdalena constantly asking to read these mysterious letters, but I wouldn’t let them because I wanted something that was mine.
The last week of August, I didn’t get a letter from Thomas. Every day when I came home from work, all the mailbox offered me was bills, catalogues, and letters from my mother’s cousin. But nothing for me.
I wrote to Thomas, letting him know that his last letter must have gotten lost in the mail. I gave him the update for the week — they were building a new pharmacy across the street from town hall — but told him my week had been boring without his letters to entertain me. I tried not to think about Thomas too much after I had sent my letter. He wouldn’t suddenly stop writing to me. It must have been the post office’s fault.
As it happened, a few days later the post master had a meeting in city hall. I asked him if he could keep an eye out for any letters with my name that might have been floating around the post office. He gave me a big, toothy grin. “Expecting a love note, Miss Martinelli?” I tried to smile at him, but it felt like more of a snarl.
By the second week without any word from Thomas, I couldn’t sit still. My fingers pulled at the end of my skirt. I twisted my bracelet in circles around my wrist. At work, my foot bounced under the desk. The sound of my heel against the linoleum made my boss think construction was going on outside.
One night, I tried to fall asleep, staring at the ceiling and wondering what Thomas was doing. My skin shivered in a cold sweat when I realized I might never hear from him again. The tears started. Burying my face in my pillow, I hoped to muffle the sounds of my crying so as not to wake my sisters. I couldn’t have them thinking I was heartbroken over some boy who had written me letters. I wasn’t heartbroken, I reminded myself. I was scared. My stomach churned as a nightmarish vision drifted into my head of Thomas floating face down in the Caribbean. How would I ever know if something had happened to him?
My bed squeaked and shifted as someone sat down on the edge. Cold fingers brushed hair away from my face. I pretended to be asleep.
“Daddy has been hiding your letters in his nightstand drawer,” Magdalena whispered in my ear. “He goes out early and takes only letters from the mailbox before you get back, but leaves the rest for you. He wants you to think that boy stopped writing you.”
For the first time in two weeks, I took a breath without feeling like I was underwater. I sat up and rested my head against my sister’s shoulder. “Why would he do that?” I wiped the salt stains from my cheeks.
“Isn’t it obvious? He wants you to marry Angelo.” Only sixteen, Magdalena had already found herself a boy our father approved of. She considered herself an expert on love.
“Will you make sure I get the letters?” I asked.
“Can I read them?” Magdalena grinned; her white teeth were bright in the darkness.
“No. You can leave them under my mattress for me.”
Magdalena didn’t complain or tease. She simply squeezed my shoulder and went to bed. A few days later, when my father was at the bocce club, I stole my letters back from him. He never asked me about the missing letters when he returned. I suppose he couldn’t — it would mean he admitted to stealing them.
The next Thursday, a new letter was under my mattress. Magdalena has planted a kiss on the back of the sealed envelope, staining the paper with her Hot Coral lipstick.
Thomas and I fell back into our usual routine, though I decided it would be better if I didn’t explain the true reason behind the disruption of our correspondence. I did, however, sign the letters in a way I hadn’t before: Yours Always. Thomas signed it back.
