Ann Patchett - State of Wonder

At some point Barbara had gone to sit next to her husband. They held their wine glasses and watched the growing stack of mail with a flush of guilt on their cheeks. “What will you do with them all?” Barbara asked once Marina had combed the box for the final time.

Marina leaned over to pick up the few strays that had fallen onto the floor. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ll take them. I don’t know what I’ll do with them.”

“This one’s different,” Jackie said, and picked up a smaller envelope from the pile.

Marina took the envelope, giving it the most cursory inspection. “It’s from me.”

“You were writing to him too?” Barbara asked.

Marina nodded. There would have been notes from the boys in there as well. Karen would have addressed the envelopes for them.

“Were you in love with him?”

Marina looked up, her hands full of thin blue envelopes. Barbara Bovender was more interested now. She leaned in closer, a glossy chunk of hair swinging forward. “No,” Marina said. She started to say something sharp and just as quick had another idea entirely: yes. The very thought of it brought the blood to her cheeks. Yes. She hadn’t loved him when he was alive, and not when that letter was written, but now? She thought of Anders when she went to sleep at night and when she woke up in the morning. Every street she walked down she imagined him standing there. She imagined being with him when he died, his head in her lap, just so she wouldn’t have to think of him alone, and for a minute at least she had fallen in love with her dead friend. “We worked together,” she said. “We did the same research. We ate lunch together.” Marina picked up the letter she had written. It was no doubt full of statistics on plaque reduction she had thought he might enjoy. She was glad he’d never received it. “You get used to people. You get attached to them. It was seven years. But no.” As far as Marina was concerned the evening was over. She rested the stack of letters in her lap. She was tired and sad, and she couldn’t imagine that she and her hosts had anything left to say to one another.

But the Bovenders wanted her to stay. Barbara said she could make a light supper and Jackie suggested that they watch a movie. “We got a copy of Fitzcarraldo ,” he said. “How crazy is that?”

“You could even sleep over if you wanted,” Barbara said, her pale eyes brightening at the thought. “It would be so much fun. We’ll just agree now that we’ll stay up too late and have too much to drink.”

The twenty years between Marina and the Bovenders formed an impenetrable gulf. For whatever she thought of her hotel room, she knew a slumber party might well kill her. “I appreciate it, I really do, but all that sun this afternoon wore me out.”

“Well, at least let Jackie walk you back to your hotel,” Barbara said, and Jackie, in an unexpected flourish of chivalry, was on his feet at once and looking for his sandals.

“I’m fine,” Marina said. She put the bundle of letters in her bag. She wanted to go quickly now, before there was another offer to decline.

Barbara began to wilt as soon as it was clear her company was leaving. Her inability to come up with something more enticing to offer had defeated her. “We manage to make a worse impression every time we see you,” she said. Marina assured her it wasn’t true. Barbara leaned a shoulder against the wall. It couldn’t be said that she was blocking the exit, she didn’t have the girth for that, but clearly she was stalling. “It would be better for me if you didn’t tell Annick about the letters,” she said finally, twisting her bracelets. “I don’t think she’d like it if she thought I was letting people go through the mail, even though you were completely right to get the letters from Dr. Eckman’s wife.”

Marina thought of all the times another resident had asked her not to tell Dr. Swenson something, the lab results that had not confirmed a diagnosis, the details of a badly handled exam. She remembered Dr. Swenson’s canny knack for knowing all of it anyway. “I’m hardly in a position to tell her anything.”

Barbara took Marina’s hand in her two cool hands. “But you will be, when you see her again.”

“These letters belong to Anders and to Karen. They aren’t anyone else’s business.”

Barbara gave her the slightest smile of genuine gratitude. “Thank you,” she said. She squeezed Marina’s hand.

Once Marina was back at the hotel she put the letters on the night table and looked at the neat stack they made. She didn’t like having them there. They were certainly too personal to leave in Dr. Swenson’s box but they were too personal to be with her as well. She moved them to the night table’s shallow drawer beside a Portuguese Bible before calling Karen. She had a need to hear her voice, thinking it would tamp down the guilt for that sudden bout of love she’d felt for Karen’s husband.

“It’s so late,” Marina said. She hadn’t thought about the time until she dialed.

“I never sleep,” Karen said. “And the worst part is nobody calls after eight. They’re afraid of waking up the boys.”

“I didn’t think of that.”

“I’m glad. Nothing wakes them up anyway. I called you this morning. Mr. Fox gave me your cell phone number.”

“You’ve heard from him?”

“He checks on us.” Karen yawned. “He’s a better person than I thought he was. Or he’s lonely. I can’t tell. He says you haven’t found her yet.”

“I found the Bovenders.”

“The Bovenders!” Karen said. “My God, how are they?”

“Anders talked about them?”

“And very little else for a while. They drove him out of his mind. He did not love the Bovenders.”

“I could see that.”

“He felt like they were stringing him along, like they were always about to produce Dr. Swenson but they never quite got around to it. He was never really sure whether or not they knew where she was, but he spent a lot of time being nice to them.”

“Well then, I guess I’m right on schedule. How much time was he in Manaus before he found Dr. Swenson?”

Karen thought about it. “A month? I’m not positive. I know it was at least a month.”

Marina closed her eyes. “I don’t think I can spend a month with the Bovenders.”

“What did they say about Anders?”

“They didn’t know he was dead,” Marina said.

There was a long silence on the line after that. Back in Eden Prairie, Marina heard Karen put down the phone and then there was nothing to do but wait. Marina laid back across the bed and stared at the pale water stain on the ceiling that she had contemplated every night since she changed rooms. She wished she could put her hand on Karen’s head, stroke her hair. Such is your bravery. Such is my good fortune. When Karen did come back her breathing had changed.

“I’m sorry,” Marina said.

“It comes on so fast,” Karen said, trying to catch her breath. “They didn’t know he was dead because she didn’t tell them. Why wouldn’t she tell them?”

“She didn’t tell them for the exact reason you just said — they have no means of communication. She only comes to town once every few months. She doesn’t even check her mail.” Marina didn’t know what she was going to do with the letters but she wasn’t going to tell Karen that she had them. That much she could at least be certain of. From thousands of miles away Marina listened to her crying. The boys were asleep in their beds. Pickles was asleep. “Should I call Mr. Fox?” she said. It didn’t seem like a good idea but it was the only one she had.

Karen put down the phone again and blew her nose. She was trying to get a hold of herself, Marina could hear it. She made the sounds of a person who was trying to wrestle an enormous sorrow to the ground. “No,” she said. “Don’t call him. This happens to me now. It’s part of it.”