The Letter

The phone didn't ring much at his house, not since his wife had died three years ago. So this morning when the phone rang as he was puttering around the kitchen frying his egg in the two-egg frying pan and listening to the news on the radio, the sound poured into an alternate reservoir. At first he couldn't quite make out the sound and when he did, he pulled the skillet off the flame and listened harder. It must be the neighbor's phone, he thought. But still it rang. Insistently. It made him afraid somehow. He couldn't have explained why, it just did. Vonnie always answered the phone. She was the social one. She was the diplomatic one. But she was gone and he was here. Finally he moved across the kitchen and into the hallway to pick up the phone.

"Is this Roderick Hamilton, class of 1957?" The caller sounded young, childish almost, so full of enthusiasm it all most bowled him over. What time was it anyway? He looked at his watch 9:02 a.m.

"Yes?"

"Well, I'm from the office of the registrar at Nebraska Poly Tech, and we have a letter for you."

" So, send it," he said looking over at his egg and wondering if he would have to toss it out and start again.

"No, you don't understand. This letter was sent to you 53 years ago and it just showed up in our mail system last week." He could picture her, bobbed dark hair, flip-flops, doing her obligatory work-study in the registrar’s office.

"Hardly a recommendation for Nebraska Poly Tech," he countered. "Mail it, toss it. Too long ago to be of any importance now." He hung up and went back to the stove and tossed the unappetizing egg into the garbage and started over. The phone rang again but it didn't frighten him anymore. He let it ring. It rang while he fetched the newspaper from the front stoop and smoothed it out on the kitchen table. It rang while he poured the orange juice and made the toast. And it continued to ring while he drank his coffee and ate his perfectly cooked egg and watched the gold finches at the bird feeder outside his window.

It was Tuesday and on Tuesdays he walked the 14 blocks to the senior center and played pinochle for an hour or two and had lunch. When he returned there was a note on his door---from a reporter it said, from the Channel seven news.

"We would like to do an on-air interview with you regarding the lost letter. Please call us as soon as possible."

He crumpled up the letter and stuffed it in his pocket. “God damn world has gone crazy,” he said. If it had been money that would be different---if someone had sent him money, a lot of it--that would make a difference 54 years later. But it probably would have been a check, which wouldn't be any good by now anyway. But it wasn't money---it was a letter. It was just a god damn letter. Who the hell gives a shit after all this time.

That night he lay on his side of the bed and talked to Vonnie as though she were still sleeping beside him. At night in the dark it was easy to pretend that the tiny little woman he had spent the best years of his life with was still there, still listening, still loving him. "Why are they making such a big deal out of this, Vonnie?"

Of course she didn't answer, couldn't answer--but if pressed he would swear that she took his hand and squeezed it and only then was he able to let it go and fall asleep.

He was cleaning up the morning dishes when the doorbell rang. He wiped his hands on the dish towel and draped it over one shoulder and went to the door. Scooter, the neighbor’s cat who he had let in earlier this morning, followed him to the door.

Outside was a crowd of news cameras and trucks. On the porch was a woman with a microphone and a small teenager in a business suit.

It was a spectacle-- a bit of trumped up drama--manufactured to fill up a slow summer news day and he was drafted to play the pivotal role--only by god, he had no intention of playing into the triviality.

"Can’t you leave me the hell alone?" He said and closed the door but not before Scooter, squeezed out and took a bow on the porch before sauntering off home. Put that on the 5 o’clock news.

It took them several hours to give up--to pack up their cameras and microphones and questions and move on. In all that time, he didn't go back to the living room or to the front door, but sat in the kitchen working the cross-word puzzle and listening to the radio.

It was that evening when he noticed the envelop that had been pushed under the door. And it would have made him mad--almost did--but there was something about that envelop even from where he sat in his reading chair--that called to him. Like a memory. Like a train ticket. Maybe it was the shape of the envelope--more square than rectangle---maybe it was the handwriting. Whatever it was, he understood now why it was important--why all the fuss. But it wasn't meant for them---it was meant for him. And as he picked it up and carried it up stairs, he knew it was meant to fill the hole.