Doris Fell - Long-Awaited Wedding

Ten yellowed one-thousand-dollar bills were held together with a rusty clip, still unspent after almost twenty years. Maureen shrank back from the money even now, still seeing it as Alexander Kladis’s payoff to a frightened seventeen-year-old, his silent warning to stay away from his son, to never use his son’s name. A son who was still alive—not dead as Alexander Kladis had told her.

As she waited for Eddie McCormick to arrive, she picked up Allen’s last note to her. Inside was the snapshot of himself, taken on board his carrier as it lay anchored near Cyprus. Her tears splashed on the picture—Allen at nineteen in his navy uniform, his sailor’s hat perched cockily on his head, his enormous dark eyes smiling out at her.

She clutched the snapshot and took up his note. She could almost hear him saying,

Dear Reeny,

I see you always in our last happy moments together. Mostly at the winter campsite where you sat on the log beside me above that frozen brook and wrote so intently on your notepad, I love you. I look forward to the day when I will see you again, Reeny. I am counting the days until this winter of separation is gone and we are together always.

Last, Maureen unfolded the letter that she had written as a seventeen-year-old. Words written to Allen, about Allen. Words that she had never sent to him.

Dear Allen,

I love getting your letters, but I wonder if I have them all. Sometimes Mother beats me to the mailbox. But would she keep your letters from me?

I have learned to listen for the mailman’s truck on the street behind ours and to hurry outside and wait for him to reach our block. When I do that, he waves and gives me the mail. Allen, I tuck your letters inside my pocket so Mother will not see them. And at midnight, when everyone is sleeping, I read them.

Mother tells me we are too young to be in love. It makes me sad. I want my mother to like you. To be nice to you. We were such good friends and now she seems like a stranger to me. My loving you has hurt her. She kept asking me about that weekend we went away together. Five months ago now. She knows.

Two weeks ago she took me to the doctor. Mother is furious with us. And so I must tell you that I am carrying your child. I am five months pregnant. Yes, I am going to have a baby. Your baby, Allen.

At first I was terrified. I didn’t know where to turn. I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my friends at school. I tried to hide it from Mother as long as I could. When we left the doctor’s office, she wouldn’t speak to me. Even now I can hear Mother upstairs, packing what we will take with us. She insists that we must move. She will not allow me to disgrace the family name.

I have refused to go back to Indiana with her. And so we are moving to Running Springs. But I will not be far away. I have promised you that I will wait for you. No matter what Mother says, I will be here.

Your father came to our house again last week. But Mother would not let me see him, not the way I look now. But I was leaning over the banister and heard her tell him to go away—the way she told you to go away. Your father insists that I must never see you again. Our parents are determined to keep us apart. But, dear Allen, summer is coming.

Of all the seasons, Allen, summer is best. For you will come again in summer. Back to me as you promised. For now, I feel like we have been torn apart like the dull brown leaves outside my window, drifting from the trees into the yard. Falling before their time.

Last month I found Cyprus on the map. I wish that I could be with you, but I am not as pretty as when you went away. I put my hand on my belly and it is full and round, blossoming with our baby. I am frightened, but I am glad, too, because it is part of you. I cannot touch your face or lips or hold your hands. If I could, I would put your hand on my belly and let you feel our baby kick.

Mother won’t talk about her grandchild. She keeps me isolated at home, but when we move to Running Springs, I can walk in the woods over the red-soiled trails covered with twigs that do not snap and leaves that do not crunch. I will look for footprints not my own. I will be looking for your footprints, Allen, and pretending that you are there with me.

* * *

Maureen sat at her desk at Fabian Industries, crying. She had never mailed the letter. Twenty years ago, while she was still penning the words to Allen, the phone had rung.

“It’s for you,” her mother had called up the stairs. “Mr. Kladis is on the line.”

“Allen? Is it Allen?”

“It’s about him.” Her mother’s voice had sounded shocked, stricken. And as she handed Maureen the phone, she had said gently, “Darling, you must be brave. It’s Allen’s father.”

Across the bottom of the letter, she had written the postscript that Allen would never read:

They tell me that you are gone now, Allen. Dead. Killed in Cyprus. Drowned in the waters near the island you loved. Your mother’s island. Your mother’s people.

I clamp my ears, not willing to hear those words. Surely they are lying to me—my mother and your father. How can you be gone and never know about the baby? You promised to come back to me. And I sit alone, feeling our baby kicking inside of me. Our baby is alive, and you are dead. I am so afraid. And I weep because you will never know about our child. No. They are lying to me, dear Allen. I must keep listening for your footsteps, longing for summer to come.

Maureen heard Eddie McCormick’s thudding, dragging steps coming down the corridor, then his voice speaking heatedly to someone else. The footsteps stopped, doors from hers, the argument between the two men raging. Maureen placed her treasures back into the jewelry strongbox, the beaded baby bracelet on top of Allen’s picture, her unmailed letter folded beneath them. She shut out the sound of the men in the corridor. Allen is alive, she thought. And Allen was married to someone else. Like I was married to someone else so briefly. The seasons had closed in on both of them. Still, she felt sadness for him. Allen with his unforgettable smile was too young to be a widower already.

Maureen pulled herself forward, her arms resting on the desk, her hands clasped. Her eyes remained closed. Even when she opened them seconds later, it was as though she faced a thick fog bank, the white vapors slowly lifting, a figure coming to meet her. It was an image at first, swirling her back in time…and then a remembered face. A remembered time. A remembered place.

Allen—the memory of all her yesterdays, the unhealed wound of her quiet tomorrows. Allen—tousled and barefoot in a blue wet suit, a surfboard under one arm. Allen—defiantly facing her mother, declaring his undying love for Maureen. Allen in uniform, turning back to wave as he boarded the plane that would carry him back to his ship. The ship that would take him to Cyprus.

Allen! Allen, out of her life so long ago, yet crashing back into her thoughts again and again. Refusing to leave on this harried evening as she sat alone at Fabian Industries.

It had not been like that with Carl Davenport, the vigorous, fun-loving man she had married. There had been good moments with Carl, but when he died, her grief had been measured. She had grieved for Carl, a dignified sorrow for someone who had been special. She remembered him periodically with sadness for his fast-paced commitment to racing, to living, even to her. With sadness for the dynamic, energetic way he lived, the foolish way he died.

Whenever she thought of Carl, she recalled a laughing, spirited man who lacked nothing financially, and yet who sacrificed everything careening around a race course. Sometimes on holidays or special occasions, Maureen still visited Carl’s mother in her isolated fifteen-room estate, enduring the long hours of a mother’s reflections while the elderly woman talked as though her son would walk into the room any minute.