11 Farney Road
Arnold, Maryland 21012
USA
May 11, 2019
Oh, Theodore. How can I describe it? I will do my very best, though the gluttonous eyes have nearly quit. They’ve seen a golden glimpse of heaven on earth, and now they demand rest (this is my first clear seeing day in a week, so I’m taking the opportunity to write). How to put words to my pleasure? What little my eyes have seen? I am home. The landscape soars, immense and distant and gentle, and the sky is crisp and alive, clear, moving, and textured, the air a raw quality I never knew existed. All the green, the stone, the water. My sister is wonderful, clever, and quiet. You know who she most reminds me of? Harry. Hattie and my three half brothers, well, it seems as if I’ve had all four of them all along.
I don’t know how it is that I’ve waited until the age I am to begin traveling, and now being nearly blind, but then that’s not true. Of course I know, and I want to tell you. I want to tell you something I have never told anyone. I should have. You’ll see I should have once you’ve read what I have to say. Bear with me; my penmanship has gone to shit shit shit.
Gilbert did not die from drowning, as I told you, but now I want to tell you exactly what happened. I have never toldthisto anyone. I probably couldn’t tell it, but I am going to try to write it. We took the children to a lake on the border of Canada for vacation. Bruce was ten, Gilbert eight, and Fiona four. We stayed in a lovely little lodge right on the water, two connected bedrooms, the children in the one room with two single beds, with Fiona always tucked in against Gilly, and Daan and me in theother room with a nice big four-poster bed and we had a view of the lake and a fireplace in the room. Rosalie and Lars came along, too, and Rosalie was hugely pregnant with Paul. We were served all the meals as part of the stay. It was July, so we’d escaped the wretched heat and gone on up to Canada by train. Can you remember how lovely it used to be, traveling by train? We were there by a small lake—Lake Saint-Pierre, in the French part, but Daan could translate for us. It was Fiona I’d always worried over (my baby, only girl), and the boys were always so capable it was like when I had Fi, in my mind the boys had grown up. And anyway, what happened is that Daan was playing chess with Bruce at the house and Fiona was napping. Lars and Rosalie had taken a canoe to a small island, so it was only Gilly and me down at the lakeside. I had been distracted all week. Daan and I had been arguing in the weeks leading up to the trip, an issue of our competing careers and whose would take precedence. I’d brought some legal documents along and that had bothered him because it was supposed to be family time and there I was with my briefcase, so I was sneaking work in whenever he wasn’t around. I’d brought a file down with me to the little fishing dock there and Gilly had been sitting fishing for some time while I looked through the file, but he wanted to swim. He’d been patient. He was always very kind to me, Gilbert was. Quick to forgive, not demanding. That boy was so kind to me. Anyway—where was I, yes, he had waited patiently, but he started to beg and whine. He was a moving, athletic, energetic child, not suited for sitting still at all. I was absorbed utterly, making notes on the case, ignoring him. It was a case about a robbery, I recall. He asked me again and again, would I please swim with him, but I was irritated, being distracted, and indignant that I should have a moment for myself. I told him shortly that I would not, that I had to read the file, or whatever I said. I’m sure I raised my voice. It makes me sick to think about it now,Theodore. Finally he asked me, if I wouldn’t swim, then would I watch his dive and give him a score, and I waved him off, told him yes, to go ahead, I was working, but I would score his dive. There around the fishing dock the lake had been cleared of underwater stones and things, and it was deep, but they’d told us clearly that there were low, hidden stones and shelves all around the waterline, never to dive or jump from a place other than the fishing dock, and we’d told the children that, too, but Gilbert was fearless, reckless, and maybe he was punishing me for ignoring him, but I didn’t see Gilbert step off the dock and onto the shore. I didn’t see that he had climbed up onto a smooth boulder about fifteen feet away and that he was standing there so high. I heard him call out to me, thinking he was there at the end of the dock, or not really thinking of him at all, Theodore, I was irritated with him, and he said, WATCH. Watch me. Watch my dive, Mom. I wish I could remember, but here is where things go murky. I lose the trail in my memory, but one thing is clear, Theodore. Without looking up, I said, JUST GO, COLT. JUMP! It was the nickname I used for him. We were obsessed with the horse races, had loved to watch the horse races together. Secretariat had won the Triple Crown just the month earlier, and it was how I called Gilbert, my child, swift as a colt.
Sometimes I imagine it, his body folded against the summer sky, then stretching out, then down into the lake. Hands arms head body legs pointed feet toes toenails. I didn’t see it, but I imagine it. There was a shelf there where he dove in. His neck broke and he didn’t come up, Theodore. It took me a few seconds to register the lack of him. That’s how Gilbert died, and I’m sorry. I am so very, very sorry. I’m going to put the pen down for a bit.
I never told Daan. I tried many times, I wanted to, but now he’s dead. I’m sure it’s why our marriage ended. I have wondered ifRosalie knows. Maybe not the details, but my part in it. I’ve always felt she knows.
That was the end of many, many things, one of which was any desire I had to go anywhere. No more travel. Look at what Sybil on travel had turned out—a dead child. My second son, gone like that. You can imagine the aftermath: grief and guilt on repeat for forty years. I guess in one way I am a writer. I am a correspondent. It’s been terribly difficult writing this, yes, because of my eyes, but also because it’s a hideous story that would be better by far if it could simply be untrue, but here we are and I wanted to write it once before I can’t write it anymore. I spent my life afraid, but now I am trying—trying not to be. After all, what is there to fear in the end, really? Loss? I’ve lost the most. Death? I’ll welcome it. I am trying to drive the haunts out of myself and to the page. This is my last one.
I told my daughter recently that my grief has been an unbearable noise in my head for decades, and yet now, finally, I have written this letter to you and I’m surprised to find it is finally quiet.
There is a quote from one of my friend Joan Didion’s essays. It’s from the last essay inThe White Album. The quote is: “What I have made for myself is personal, but is not exactly peace,” and then it goes on, and then, “Most of us live less theatrically, but remain the survivors of a peculiar and inward time.” This feels like the truest thing I have ever read.
I guess there’s no bottom to a person, but I feel you have left fewer stones unturned than anyone else who’s ever passed through, and it’s taken me some time to recognize how knowing you has been like coming in from the cold, lonely road to find a warm fire and a table laid, so thank you for that, Theodore.
Hattie says I can stay here as long as I like. She lives in a lovely, flat house on a small loch, plenty of rooms. I wonder, is it mad for me to ask, would you like to come over to Scotland for a fewweeks? You really can’t imagine the cows here, like Chewbacca from the Star Wars films Harry had us watch. You have to see it to believe it. Furthermore, I wonder, when I get back, if you might want to just go ahead and move into the house with me. Why not? I need a companion, with my eyes. I know it’s rather forward of me, but you said yourself that your house doesn’t mean anything immense to you, and it’s mine after all with the good view through the trees of the cove. Consider it. I’m being absolutely serious. Bruce even said we could spruce up your house and keep it for a rental property. Wouldn’t that be smart of us? And with the money we make on the house we can travel—
It would be lovely if you were here. Of course you know I’m yours, have been for quite some time, with affection,
Sybil
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: May 15, 2019 04:45 AM
SUBJECT: Harry, and other things
Dear Sybil,
I hope you are enjoying England with your daughter. I had you on my mind, and this morning, Saturday, and with little to do I find the time to sit down and fire off a message. I started reading. Well, listening to audiobooks mostly. I just finishedThe Girl with the Dragon Tattooseries of three books. Have you read them? They were great.
Harry will be in New York for the summer with an internship at a literary agency. I was hoping he’d come to Washington, but he’s dead set. Marly’s still in California, and I imagine she’ll stay there. She’s in and out of treatment, and her sister manages it while I pay the bills. The girls are off and doing their own things. I’m considering selling the house. It seems absurd to keep it. I don’t entertain. You ought to come in for a dinner or something when you get back from your trip. It would be great to see you.
James
By the way, I was sorry to hear things fell through with Mick Watts. Had he proposed to you? I’d heard a rumor.
(cont. May 29, 2019, previous pages UNSENT)
I’m going to be finished after this, darling. It’s gotten to the point I don’t enjoy the writing, gives me an awful headache and makes my hand cramp, I suppose because of the focus required now, and maybe it’s silly of me to continue to address you, but it’s—it hasn’t felt silly.
When I started writing to you, it was in an effort to live—not just shrivel up and die—and it’s worked. It’s kept you beside me. I looked back. The first time was when Daan moved back to Belgium. Each time I’ve sat down to write you, I have imagined you sitting at some celestial desk and looking down over my shoulder, and perhaps that is absurdly delusional, but perhaps it is not. Perhaps it is not and perhaps it is.
You know, I imagine what it would be like if you were here. I’ve taken your personality, all that I knew of it before you were gone, and stretched it out as far as I am able. It’s like trying to press out pastry dough as thin as possible without tearing it. I stretch you out to now, imagining you as a fifty-four-year-old man. However, what I have very rarely allowed myself to do isrememberyou. When I start to think back, I often slam the door—well. But this morning I was sitting in my sister’s garden listening to the birds and the breeze and the cattle nearby, my eyes closed, and a memory came to me, a gift, and I didn’t slam the door. I allowed myself to remember. An afternoon one autumn I took you all down to the park, down that hill through the neighborhood past the houses, and remember they got bigger as you descended, and it got pretty steep (walking back home was monstrous). You always took off running full speed down that hill. You with your long legs would fly. It was miraculous. By the time you were this age, six or seven, you know, it didn’t even concern me anymore, you were like a limber bolt of lightning with that blind assurance and comfort in your body. Anyway, at thebottom of the hill that path along the stone wall, just lovely there, and then you would come out under the shade of that magnificent weeping willow tree. It was like heaven. I am thinking of this one afternoon when the four of us came into the park and you all went to do the things you often did—you and Bruce climbing one of the gnarled oaks, never pruned, massive limbs dipping nearly down to the earth, and Fiona searching for four-leaf clovers in the grass or sending leaves down the rush of the creek. There was one autumn when she was building a village from sticks and things for fairies, but I can’t remember if this was that very same fall or not, but on the day I’m thinking of there was a homeless woman sleeping on one of the benches, wrapped up in various blankets and jackets, and her bag was beside her. She was facing outward and I can still see her face. She had an old dog that was awake and watching us. I’d never seen this woman before, and it was unusual to see the homeless around there. It was like she had wandered off her path and found herself somewhere lovely and just set herself down, but anyway, you and Bruce were startled when you noticed her. You know, it derailed you from your amusements for a few minutes, or maybe it was only a moment, and you did get back to playing, but I could see as I watched you play that you kept glancing at her, and the dog was following all three of you with its eyes. As we were leaving the park, the woman had woken and sat up and she was feeding the dog sections of a small orange. She gave us a nice wave as we left the park and she had these bright eyes. Isn’t it amazing when it comes back, with the details? She was wearing an old red ski coat torn at the front with the stuffing, brown with filth, coming out. Later that night I was reading in my chair and you’d all been in bed for some time. I think Dad was already asleep, it was very dark, the fire had gone out, it was quite late, and you came to the study to find me. You were wearing long pajamas with red lines and you looked positively sick with anxiety. You couldn’t sleep becauseyou felt guilty, and I said for what, and you began to tell me. When we had come home from the park that evening and I’d gotten to work on the dinner you had gone to your room to count the money you’d saved in your money box in order to buy some toy or another (you were always saving up for something) and found you had forty-three dollars. I remember you saying that number all these years later. You told me you knew you ought to give the money to the homeless woman in the park, but you hadn’t wanted to because of how much you wanted to keep it for whatever it was you were saving. And of course I told you it was all right, you didn’t have to give your money away and all the rest, but you cut across me with the conviction you ought to have taken the money to her but hadn’t, and you were ill about it. I tried to soothe you and in the end the only thing that settled you was that I said in the morning, if you really wanted, we could go back down to the park and if she was still there, you could give the woman some money. I figured in the morning it would have all blown over, but you came down the next day with a fistful of money and you said you were ready to go, so what could I do? I walked with you down the hill. The money bulged in your pocket. You didn’t run, but you did stay about two or three paces ahead of me. When we got to the park, she wasn’t there, of course. I admit I felt relieved. But you turned to me, positively in despair. We went home and got in the car. We drove around for a while, but there wasn’t any sign of that woman and her dog. It was all forty-three dollars you wanted to give over to her, and you were grieved when you weren’t able to. And you know, Colt, remembering that, I wept. For so, so many things, I could just weep. There is not language sufficient for me to express the depth of my sorrow for what happened, my son. Sorry doesn’t begin to scratch the surface, but I think you know that. You would know that. Oh, Gilbert.
I considered going back to read all of it, this wholemeandering opus, but it isn’t necessary and it would be very difficult for me at this point. I think there are very many things I’ve forgotten by now, which is for the best.
