LETTER 1
Dear Wren,
You won't remember me.
That's all right. I'm not sure I would remember me either, in a crowd. Half of Valor City turned out for Eli's birthday. The Banks family has a way of making outsiders feel like family. I almost didn't come. I'm not naturally comfortable around small children. They have a directness that I find difficult to prepare for. The ones who can form coherent words ask questions I am generally not equipped to answer. But I came anyway, and I'm glad I did.
I'm glad because I saw you.
I realize that sentence reads a certain way. I mean it the way Cyrano meant it when he said, "A kiss, when all is said, what is it? A rosy dot placed on the 'i' in loving." He was a man who understood that the feeling comes first, and the words are just the shape it takes on paper.
It's with words that I have to admit that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I can write that. I'm writing it now, and my hand is entirely steady. The sentence sits on the page as if it was always supposed to be there.
Say it out loud? To your face? I couldn't. My words would get their coat caught in the door on the way out. Something would go wrong between my brain and my mouth that I couldn't account for, and you'd be left standing there waiting for a sentence that never arrived. I've been this way my whole life. It's not something I've found a solution to.
But paper is different. Paper doesn't require me to do anything with my face while you're reading it.
I watched you for the better part of three hours. I'm aware of how that sounds. I mean only that I couldn't look away. There was something about the way you moved through that yard that made paying attention feel less like a choice and more like an inevitability. I'm surprised you didn't catch me staring. I wasn't subtle. I was, in fact, approximately the opposite of subtle. But you were watching the kid, and I was standing near the back, and no one was paying much attention to me. Which is the way I've always moved through the world, and it has never bothered me much since, as I said earlier, I'm not one for words. The spoken kind, at least.
Which brings me to the other thing.
There's a scene I've always loved in Cyrano. Not the play, but the film. Roxanne with Steve Martin and Daryl Hannah. In the scene, Charlie stands in the dark and gives his best words away to Chris, who doesn't deserve them because Charlie can't imagine Roxanne could want them from him directly, from him and his big nose.
I don't have a big nose. I'm not unattractive. I just don't have a big mouth. Or one that has a lot of words. My fingers could make words for days, or pages.
On paper, I don't get my words crossed or my expressions wrong. On paper I can tell you that you're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and that I noticed the gap between your front teeth when you laughed, and that you had frosting onyour elbow for a full twenty minutes, and that when you said whatever you said to make your brother smile, something in my chest did something I'm not going to try to describe because I'd only get it wrong.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to write to you for a little while. You said you'd like that. I'm not trying to date you. It didn't sound like you wanted that right now. I just wanted to talk to you, and this is the only way I know how.
I won't sign my name. Partly because I'm a coward, and partly because I'd like you to read the letter before you decide what you think of the man behind it. I walked home that night thinking about all the things I would have said to you if I were any good at saying things.
Instead, I'm writing them down.
Here is the first one: you should be told, as often as someone can manage it, that you are extraordinary. You carry yourself like you know it some days and are working on believing it on others, and that combination is something I have never seen before and will not forget.
— Your Secret Admirer
