A LETTER FOR LISA

He settled on the third draft and read it over again.

Drear Lisa,

Its been a while, hasn’t it? I hope you and you’re family are doing well.

I decided to write you this letter because you have been on my mind. To tell you the truth you have never left it.

The last few months have not been so easy for me since I came back home to Washington.

My mother died two weeks ago and now I’m all alone in the world.

But that’s not important.

I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for everything, and no matter what, I still love you and I always will.

I hope that you know that.

Sometimes I wonder if you still love me, too, like you said you did.

Oh well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?

Merry Christmas.

Yours Truly,

J.W.

The handwriting was larger on this draft and a little messier, but it was much more coherent and legible than the directionless ramblings he had scratched out in the others.

That’s what mattered.

It was shorter too, which was a good thing. It was distilled, he told himself. It was precise and straight-to-the-point, as a letter should be. He wondered if she would understand what it was that he had really said. Then he realised, like the fact of wether or not she still loved him, or if she ever did, it didn’t really matter all that much.

He got up from the table and looked out at the falling snow as he finished off the last of the lukewarm coffee in his cup. He watched the flakes fall and dance across the reflective surfaces of the the china dogs and brass picture frames that sat across the sill of the living room window and noticed something inside of his subconscious stir: He realised that he wanted, in a strange way, for the letter to hurt her, and for it to hurt her even more when she found out the truth behind it.

“It is her fault, isn’t it?” The thing inside him said.

Quickly, he put the thought out of his mind, went into the kitchen and burned the other drafts. He scooped the black, curled embers up in a blank sheet of paper and threw them into the waste bin.

He put the good letter in a plain white envelope that he had found while retrieving the bottle of pills and an empty glass from the cupboard, and slid it gently into the pocket of his overcoat as he was leaving the house, making sure not to bend the edges.

He walked down the street to the post office and joined in at the back of a long line of people who were all holding stacks of cards in red envelopes and boxes wrapped in an array of festive wrapping papers, ready to send off to family members who were complete strangers three hundred and sixty-four days out of the year.

It seemed to him that everyone in the line was suffering in some way, and, oddly it made him feel slightly more at ease. They sneezed and coughed and rubbed the cold mucus from their upper lips with gloved hands. He joined them, and felt for a moment something like peace.

When it was his turn he came up to the desk and passed the letter under the slot at the bottom of the window.

“Is that all for you today, sir.” The old woman on the other side of the glass said. Her cheeks were plump and red and rather fitting of the festive season.

“Yeah.” He said.

She looked down at the envelope and said, with a small laugh in her breath: “You forgot to write a name and address on it, honey.” She passed it back through with a pen.

“Oh, Sorry.” He said, as he uncapped the pen and put the ballpoint to the white paper.

“That’s alright, honey.” She said. “Happens more often than you’d think. Especially around Christmas time. You know…”

She went on a long spiel about a woman who had come in the day before, thirty-three cards with her, all made out to a single address. He tried to concentrate between the woman’s ramblings and the terrible Christmas music playing over speakers that were set into the ceiling tiles directly above his head. Then there was the rustle behind him, a symphony of loosely wrapped presents and phlegmy coughs, and dry over-used tissues rubbing agains chapped nostrils. He could hear all of it in excruciating detail.

Finally, he managed to remember the address. He signed the letter to: ‘Miss. Lisa Foster. 54 Park Street. Dayton, Ohio.’

The jolly little woman on the other side of the glass threw in a: “Thanks, hon.”, mid-sentence, then finished off the last of her story with: “Isn’t that just the strangest thing?” She looked down at the envelope again “Miss Lisa Foster.” She said, putting emphasis on the word ‘Miss’ and looked back up at him with a glint of recognition in her eye that made him feel uncomfortable. He nodded his head slowly and could feel the old woman run her eyes over him, analysing every little detail.

“Ah,” She said. “I know what this is.”

His blood froze and his heart rapped one big, off-beat thump against his ribs.

“Letter to a long distance sweetheart, is it?” She said.

He said nothing, kept himself as rigid as a frozen corpse.

There was something brewing in him along with the uncomfortable cold streak in his blood. He felt, in that instant, that every eye in the place was on him; that they knew something; that they knew everything.

“I was wondering when we’d get the first one of the season.” The little woman went on. “I tell you, it’s…”

Without warning, he exploded.

“Can I just send the goddamn letter?”

Everything fell silent against the tune of the music. He turned and realised that people were looking at him. They looked away sharply, one by one, as he locked eyes with each of them. Then they all went back to coughing and rubbing at their noses as if nothing had happened. He turned back around. The old woman looked shocked. All of the jolliness had drained out of her.

“S-sure, sir. I-I didn’t mean anything by it. I…” She cut herself short, pasted the stamp onto the front of the envelope. “Forty-three cents, please.” She put her hands palm down on the counter to stop them from trembling. He took a five dollar bill from his wallet and put it through the slot.

“Keep the change…I’m sorry.” He said, and left, walking back past the people in the line with his head down. Embarrassment kept him warm the whole way back up the street.

By the time he got home he was in a hurry to get the whole thing over and done with. He rushed into his bedroom, closed the door behind him and perched himself on the bed by the nightstand where a tall yellow glass of water sat next to a translucent orange bottle of pills. He opened the bottle, dumped three square pills into his hand, then stopped.

He could hear children playing outside. He went to the window of his bedroom and peered out through the slats of the blinds, looking out into the communal garden in the centre of the apartment complex.

Around the snow covered fence, where dead vines still clung, brown and thin, and patches of earth once rich with flowers lay bare and frozen over, he saw two little girls playing with a big chocolate lab. The dog wore a puffy red winter coat that matched their own and it was clear that their look had been co-ordinated by a mother. They played in the thick snow, throwing a ball for the dog to chase then hiding around the other side of the fence so that when he returned with his tail wagging, ready to fetch again, he had to go searching for them. Then when he found them they would jump up and giggle and repeat the process.

He watched the girls play for around five minutes, until a woman he took to be their mother called to them from the kitchen window of the apartment directly opposite his own.

He sighed a long breath and closed the slats back over as the girls and the big chocolate dog ran out of the garden and into the building. He sighed for a future and for a happiness that would never come to him.

He felt his own room too loud now, too exposed, and made the decision that he would carry out his final sleep in his mother’s bedroom. He put the pills back into the bottle, lifted the glass of water and went into the hallway.

For a moment he paused at his mother’s bedroom door, and felt a familiar sensation in his chest, as if he would open it and she would still be there, lying in the bed, looking at him with those sunken eyes, that somehow cried out for life and begged for death at the same time.

He opened the door to the empty room. Everything was just as it was, immaculate. He went inside, closed the door behind him and sat down on the bed. He put the glass and the pills down on the night stand next to a sun-bleached photograph of his parent on their wedding day. He lifted the photo and said his final apology to the man and woman who had given him a good life. He kissed the photo and lay it back down. He noticed, as he touched his tongue to his lips, how everything in the room was covered in a fine layer of dust.

The only thing that remained of his mother now was a fine grey silt that smelled and tasted like decay. Soon, that would be all that remained of him, and of Lisa, and of the people in the post office, and of the little girls that played outside with their dog…

Nothing but dust.

He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, took every pill in the bottle - finishing the entire glass of water to get all of them down - then he lay back on the cool sheets of the bed, interlocked his fingers and thought only of Lisa until the deep sleep took him…

The letter arrived at 54 Park Street the morning before Christmas Eve.

When she saw from the living room window that the flag was up on the mailbox, she pulled her nightgown tight around herself and shoved her feet into her husband’s work boots. The rough interior grated on the soft skin of her feet, but they were the only means of manoeuvring the sheet of thick ice that had formed under the snow on the wet stone path.

She trudged clumsily up to the mail box and found inside a stack of red and green and silver envelopes crammed in beside a small brown box. She bundled everything up and went back inside, saying a quick good morning to Mr. Langham as she stomped back up the driveway. The older man nodded, and continued to stare at the parts of her body that were accentuated by the cold and coming up through the surface of the fluffy nightgown. She moved quicker to escape his gaze, forgetting to leave the wet boots outside on the porch.

In the kitchen she lay everything down on the faux marble top of the island. She opened the little box first and saw that it contained a separate box made of vibrant pink cardboard. A doll looked at her from behind a plastic window. She smiled, admiring how nice the doll was, and how vibrant and exciting the package would be in the eyes a ten year old. She put it back in the dull outer box and sat the whole thing back down on the island, then started on the envelopes.

There was a Christmas card from her uncle Jeff in California that made a joke about the Ohio weather. There was one from her mother and step-father in Akron, which contained a fifty dollar bill, and another from her cousin in Arizona…

Then she noticed the envelope. It was pure white and tucked away in the middle of the stack. It didn’t have the stiffness of a card, but of a single sheet of paper. She drew it out prematurely, intrigued by its lack of festiveness.

Her heart sank as soon as she saw the scrawled handwriting on the front.

She knew who had sent this letter.

“Miss. Lisa Foster.” She read aloud in a whisper. Her stomach turned and a horrid acidic knot formed in her throat. She thought all this was over and done with when that man, that Jack Walton left Ohio. She thought it was all gone and in the past and forgotten about.

She listened for a moment, biting anxiously at her nails, to make sure that the house was all quiet and that she was alone. Her husband and daughter were both still asleep.

She turned the envelope over and over again in her hand. Do I read it?, she asked herself. Her nail was biting into the lip of the seal…

No!

She took a lighter to the envelope and turned it into black ashes that she washed down the sink.

An hour later her husband was awake He came into the kitchen and found her making breakfast for the two of them: Eggs and bacon. She gave him an uneasy smile and he could tell, by the pale green tinge in her skin that something was wrong, something more than just the usual lack of sleep.

“You alright?” He asked. “You don’t look too hot.”

“Yeah,” She said. “Just have a bit of an upset stomach. Probably just a cold.”

“It is going around.” He said.

“How is she?” She asked.

“Still sleeping.” He said.

“Poor thing. She was tossing and turning all night.” She said. “Did you feel her?”

He nodded his head, came over to her and put his arm around her.

“Nick? She said. “Do you think she’ll…” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

He pulled her close and kissed her on the forehead, let her bury her face in his chest. “Of course.” He said. “She’s a strong little girl. She’s just like you.”

The water that the eggs were boiling in began to bubble over the rim of the pot. She turned and took them off the flame, wiping the tears away from her eyes as she did. Nick went to where the cards were stacked and began looking through the ones that she had opened. He let out a soundless chuckle through his nose at the joke her uncle had written about the weather, then tapped the open flap on the brown cardboard box and asked: “What’s in this?”

She turned and looked at him with her colourless face, tears still present in the lower lids of her eyes.

“Oh,” She said, sniffing. “It’s that doll that we ordered for Lisa. I forgot to put it away with the rest of her presents.”

Kyle McCorquodale: I am a 26 year old amateur writer from Glasgow, Scotland. I have been writing seriously for about 5 months now and this will be my first published work. I like to write realist drama with a twist ending, and I am most inspired by writers like Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Bukowski, Shirley Jackson and Albert Camus. I have been working on a few short stories since completing ‘A Letter For Lisa’, and I am currently chipping away at my debut novella, ‘Hand Of Doom’, that I hope to have finished by September of this year.