Gryphon_ New and Selected Stories - Charles Baxter [146]
“I liked childhood,” Emily says to me, softly. “I liked being a kid. A lot of the other girls wanted to grow up, but I didn’t. They wanted to go out on dates, the excitement of all that—boys, cars, sex, the whole scene. But not me. I didn’t want to launch my ship into adolescence, I didn’t want my periods to start, I didn’t want what was about to happen, to happen. I had this dread of it. I wanted to stay a kid forever. I thought being an adult was the awful afterlife of childhood.”
I can’t remember ever being afraid of growing up, so I don’t say anything in response. Even at this late date, Emily can still surprise me with what she says.
“And it was awful, I mean, it is awful. It’s terrible, but of course you can learn to live with it, and it’s okay after a while even if it’s terrible, and besides, what choice do you have?”
“No choice,” I say to her. The woman on the bench calls to her son again, and this time he comes down to where she’s sitting, and he stands by her side and put his hand on her arm as a signal that he’s ready. She nods, briefly looking at him, then folds her paper, stands up, and takes his hand. These gestures are of such gentle, subtle sweetness that they feel like a private language to me, and my mind clouds up, given the weight of the day, given my own situation.
“You know,” I say to Emily, as I swing back and forth in my swing, “I’ve been getting postcards. Anonymous postcards.”
“Dennis,” Emily tells me, “I don’t have time for another story. I have to get home. I have a date tonight, if you can believe it.”
“No, listen,” I say. “They’ve been arriving in the mail every few days. They’re anonymous, I don’t know who’s sending them. Not to work, but to my home address, the apartment. And they have these picture postcard photographs on the flip side—Miami Beach, the Bahamas, the Empire State Building, the usual. But on the message side, it’s something else.”
“Dennis, really,” she says, “I have to go.” But she’s still sitting there, in the playground, on her swing. “I have to get ready,” she says, in a flat, neutral tone.
But I’m going to finish, and I say, “And what it is, these messages—they’re always handwritten, always in blue ink, always in large letters, uppercase, all of them. Short, punchy sentences. Condemnations, against me. Judgments.” I hold up my hand to suggest a headline, even though the words have to fit on postcards. ‘Your work has come to nothing.’ ‘Your life is a disaster.’ ‘Someone is watching you.’ ‘Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ Now who do you suppose would send postcard messages like that?”
She looks over at me, in the gathering dusk, a genuine expression of surprise, and I understand at the moment that I see her face that it’s not she, it’s not Emily who has been sending me these postcards. All along I had thought it would be her idea of retribution, these insane postcards. But she hasn’t been sending them, and this sends a brief shudder through me. But really, perhaps I had known all along. After all, I would know what her handwriting was like even if she tried to disguise it. We’re almost twins that way.
“If you’re thinking it was me,” Emily says, “think again. It wasn’t.”
“And last week, I got one that said, ‘Have you no remorse?’ ”
“Well,” Emily says, after a pause, “whoever is sending them must know you. That’s a good word, ‘remorse.’ I could have used that word on you. A flea-market word. Maybe I actually did. It would’ve been one of my grandparent words. You never used a word like that. Must be one of your little girlfriends sending these messages. Somebody who’s a little obsessed with you, Dennis.”
“Some poor devil,” I say.
“Yes,” she says, “a poor devil, that sounds about right.” She gets up out of the swing and goes over to the climbing structure. “Which one do you suppose it is?”
“Well,” I say, “I don’t know.” But actually I think I do know. Once this woman and I were at dinner together,