Time of My Life_ A Novel - Allison Winn Scotch [30]
I unfold the lined paper and recognize the handwriting with a start. The words are eerily familiar but only like a mirage might be: I remember them from long ago, but they were never committed to memory—years ago, after reading this same note, I fled the office for a gasp of air, then balled up the monogrammed stationery and angrily threw it into the garbage on Seventh Avenue. And then I pushed the words from my mind and vowed that I wouldn’t retrace either them or the meaning behind them again.
Child-sized beads of sweat form on my brow, and I allow myself to read, knowing that I’d both hate myself for doing so and regret it with a full heart if I didn’t. Her handwriting curves and loops just like an elementary-school teacher’s might. It is flawless, as if her penmanship might be a testimonial for her character.
Dear Jillian,
I hope that this letter finds its way to you. I have been holding on to it for many years, trying to find the right time to send it, but failing to do so each time. But now, the time feels right. So I hope that this finds you, and I more hope that you accept the intrusion.
I realize that it has been nearly eighteen years, and that I left your father and your brother and you without explanation, and that—I realize this more than ever now—was terribly unfair.
I would like to find a way to explain myself. I’d like to be able to tell my side of the story, though I do know that this is a lot to ask of the daughter who has been without me for most of her life.
But I am writing nevertheless to ask this of you: If you could find it within yourself to meet me, to, perhaps, listen to my apologies. Because I would like to be able to offer them to you. And I’d like even more so to get to know you.
If you’d be amenable to this, please do call me at 212-5253418.
All of my love,
Your mother, Ilene
I reread the letter three times; each time, it brings something new back to me from when I read it the first time—seven years ago. Calling my father and listening to the heartbroken shock of a man whose ghost just came back to haunt him. Trying to contact my brother, trekking through some godforsaken manure-filled pasture in the remote regions of Asia to let him know that our mother had resurfaced. Coping with the boiling, furious shards of rage that her audacity inspired in the angry circles of my mind.
Today, with a quick jerk, I push my chair back and rise to tear out of the building. To circle Seventh Avenue until I find the quasi serenity I need in that moment, serenity that would be so fleeting, so temporary that I’d remain incensed at my mother’s actions for the next half decade plus. To curl up her letter in the balls of my hands until it is solid enough to be used as a weapon, and to hurl it into the trash so I can’t call her, even if I am tempted.
But instead I sit as quickly as I stand.
I press the paper against my desk and smooth the creases in it, over and again, until they are nearly invisible. My pulse drums loudly in my neck, and I exhale, trying to push it all, so much, away. Then I open my desk drawer and tuck the letter inside. It might be, I decide, something worth hanging on to for the future.
Chapter Ten
The upper tier of advertising’s elite is sandwiched together at the Coke extravaganza, and true to Josie’s word, it is quickly evident that my invite might catapult me to the hallowed halls of our industry’s high society. The taxi pulls up to the looming stone structure that housed Cipriani, and as I step out, I barely avoid a pigeon that is grazing on a stray crumb from an abandoned bagel. The skies had opened up that afternoon, turning the color of steel, and furiously unloaded on the city, so the air, still bursting with heavy humidity, blew over us, and felt more like early October than late August.
Jack swoops around from the other side of the cab and grabs my hand, a tacit symbol to move beyond the argument we’d been having on