Читать книгу I'll Be Seeing You - Loretta Nyhan - Страница 35

August 8, 1943

IOWA CITY, IOWA

Dear Glory,

My sunflowers have grown taller than me. They guard the house, like good soldiers, blocking me from the assault of Mrs. K.’s disapproving glances, but also from the sun, the sound of street traffic, the children playing hopscotch down the block. I’m cowering behind them, Glory, but you are not. Obviously your sunflowers have not reached the same heights. Or maybe you took hedge clippers to them? Or made Levi do it?

I was surprised by the contents of your last letter, but not shocked. I tried to muster a fair amount of outrage, but it seems I already know you too well for that. Did it feel like jumping off a cliff when he kissed you? I imagine it did.

I’m not one for cliff-jumping. You were right about the fear. It’s getting into everything—my thoughts as I make the bed, the fibers of my dress, the dust settling on our dining room table, the lettuce on my sandwich. It whispers in my ear as I tend the garden, calling “Sal” or “Toby” or, sometimes, my own name. I’m afraid, Glory. Afraid of what I read in the papers. Of not knowing if Western Union will deliver a telegram from someone I’ve never met, telling me my husband or son died on soil my feet have never touched.

I’m also afraid of what I might do, that without my family I am unmoored and untethered, about to float into the horizon, never to be seen again.

Is this weakness? I don’t know. The first time I read your letter I blamed Levi for catching you in a moment of weakness, the skips in the phonograph record where we forget who we are, no longer mothers or wives or citizens, but simply beings without a thought to the past or future, just the present. It sounds crazy, but I wanted to yell at him, to force him to give the moment back to you, so you could decide what to do with it. But then, you took it, didn’t you? You didn’t push him away.

Which makes me want to yell at you. Why aren’t you hiding? Why aren’t you sitting in your front parlor, the windows darkened by the flowers planted with your own hands? Why are you kissing men on sunny days, your hair wild, your conscience untroubled?

I’m sorry, Glory. My mind and heart are skipping beats. I’m looking at the photograph of your mother right now, holding her baby, and I can’t help but wonder that if she knew—if any of us really understood the nature of things at the start—she’d have scooped you up and run like hell.

Rita