But I am trying. I don't know how quickly I can do it. I don't know if it will be fast enough to be any use to you.
This belongs on a wall and not in a warehouse.
Be happy. I did want that. I only ever wanted it in the wrong shape.
Mom
Iris reads it twice.
Then she folds it in half, puts it in her pocket, and stands there with her hand pressed flat against the frame.
"She kept the letter," she says.
"Yeah."
"She never read it. Thirty years. But shekeptit." Her voice does something complicated. "She kept it, Cat."
I don't sayshe's trying.I don't sayit's a start, orgive her time, or any of the other things that would be true and useless.
I just stand behind her and put my arms around her, and look at my grandmother — thirty years old and lit up like a window, gazing at something we can't see.
We hang it above the fireplace that afternoon.
The night before, neither of us can sleep.
"I've forgotten the vows," Iris says into the dark.
"You wrote them down."
"I've forgottenwhereI wrote them down."
"Kitchen drawer. With the string."
A pause.
"Why do you know that?"
"Because you say everything out loud when you believe you're thinking," I tell her, "and it is the single most useful thing about you."
She hits me with a pillow.
We lie there a while.
"Cat."
"Mm."
"A hundred and ten people are coming to a field to watch us do this."
"Yes."
"Some of them are bringing apiano."
"They've already brought the piano."
"Right." She's quiet a moment. "I don't know most of their names."
"Nor do I," I say. "One of them tuned an instrument we didn't own. I think at this stage we simply have to accept it."
