All right, now that’s done, thank God.
Other things have happened of which I would like you to be aware. Mick Watts proposed formally and wants to sweep me away to Texas. Stewart cheated on Felix, so they broke up and Felix is in Los Angeles and doing poorly. Things came to a head with the dean of English at UMDCP, the result of which is that we became friends and I am taking a poetry course. I will also need to talk to you on the phone to tell you about another very strange, complex, horrible thing that has happened over the course of the past few years related to a case Guy heard in the seventies. Lastly, I have heard nothing from Hattie Gleason in some time. That’s all.
Write me,
Sybil
Postscript: I am reading with greater difficulty now. Trying to get throughPride and Prejudiceone more time. Sometimes I can see enough to write; for instance, today it’s rather clear, and sometimes it’s nearly impossible. I thought when I started to lose my sight in this way, when it actually began to slip away, I would cling to it with all my might, but that isn’t the way I feel now. Now that it’s become such a strain, I almost find myself ready to let it go. Not totally, and you know I might go back on that tomorrow, but today that is how I feel.
FROM:[email protected]
DATE: Oct 2, 2018 08:08 PM
SUBJECT: Felix
Hi Sybil,
I hope you’re doing well, enjoying your grandkids. Did you get my letter? I assume you’re angry with me, and you’d have a right to be, but you don’t know the whole story. Felix himself doesn’t know the whole story, but he is still unwilling to take my calls or texts, or open my emails. I would get on a plane, but I don’t even know where he’s staying. I imagine you think that by standing between the two of us you are protecting your brother, but it’s not the case. Felix and I need to talk. I’m almost certain that if we could just talk, I could apologize and explain, we could get the train back on the tracks.
This is what happened. I got to know a Frenchman too well. It was a mistake. Felix and I had been having some troubles. Felix was writing a long essay and it wasn’t going well. He had placement for it, and then the funding for the anthology fell through around the time he was finally breaking through his mental block, and he was disappointed. As you know, when the work is going well he is happy, and when it’s not, he becomes far-off, selfish, and sullen. It’d been months (or longer) of the latter and I was tired of it. We fought, he brought up marriage, and I said we had always agreed we wouldn’t.
Around that time I’d begun meeting this man for coffee or the occasional walk or glass of wine (we first met through a work project). I am going for transparency here, Sybil, so I admit it gave me a delicious feeling I knew I ought not to have, but I was angry with Felix and hurt, so I didn’t heed the internal warning sense. I became closer with this man (Luc) behind Felix’s back, only as friends, but itwasn’t that simple for him, I realized later. He was falling in love with me. He told me, but it wasn’t like that for me. In December Felix picked up my cell off the table because an alarm was going off for my medicine, and there was a text message from the man, and Felix went ballistic. I wasn’t, I am not, in love with the other man, but Felix didn’t believe that. He wouldn’t let me say a word in my defense so he doesn’t know that nothing came to pass between myself and Luc (once he kissed me, but I did put a stop to that), but again, I couldn’t convince Felix. He’s a skeptic, or superstitious or something. I love, and have always loved, your brother and when it all blew up with Felix seeing the message, all of that, whatever that was with Luc, was over. I flirted with fire and I got burned, but I’m not a fool. I was wrong, but I learned my lesson and I need you to help me find a way to reach Felix. Please, Sybil.
Stewart
Dezi Martinelli
138 South Carrington St.
Hasbrouck Heights, NJ 07604
October 4, 2018
Dear Dezi,
Learning about the circumstances of your father’s death caused me tremendous grief, and my offering is small, but it’s all I have: I am sorry.
I am enclosing one of the letters your father wrote to me from prison. I was moved by this letter, his articulation of how much he loved you and your brother. If you’d like the others, I’ll send them as well.
Would you be willing to send me the address of your mother in Italy? I’d like to write to her, and soon.
Yours ever,
Sybil Van Antwerp
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Road
Arnold, MD 21012
USA
4 November 2018
Dear Sybil,
