literature

Pen-Pal

Deviation Actions

bruxing's avatar
By
Published:
1.5K Views

Literature Text

For 15 years I’ve been writing letters to Someone.

 

No, not just anyone, in fact…Someone, whose name I don’t know because my mother told me to write a letter to Someone the summer after my dad passed, so that’s exactly what I did. Dear Someone, I wrote, and I signed it sincerely, Me. In some ways, it was like writing a letter to Santa, but Santa’s replies were stock and bulk printed to apply to the typical general letter, and Someone’s replies changed each time. My mother photocopied all my letters before I sent them and collected them in a booklet as precious mementos. I collected my replies.

When I was 15, I asked my mom if she had been the one replying. Honestly, I said. I mean, who else would I be writing letters to? Someone, with no address. Yet somehow, the letter got places, and somehow one always returned with no address other than “Me.” I went through a phase of tests to get my mom to confess, a phase of disbelief, a phase of skeptical letters to Someone. But I never could get her to fess up, not even now, living on my own, talking to her over the phone.

“Mom, why don’t you just say that you’re Someone?” I sighed every now and again as she crunched down on a bag of Lays over the phone. “I’m twenty-three. It’s not gonna shatter my mind if you say so. I just want to hear it from you.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t say so because it’s not me. All I did was tell you to write letters because it helped you to heal. I didn’t actually think the postman would take them anywhere. I don’t know who’s replying to you. The postman, maybe?”

“The postman from home,” I snorted as I fitted another puzzle piece into the window of the half-put-together 1950s Chevy truck splattered out on my table, “who somehow followed me all the way to Maine just to keep this up. He takes the 6AM from Ohio to Maine, drops off his response, and goes home to his 2PM route. Sure.”

“Okay, well it was just a suggestion. I’m surprised you’re still getting letters—no, I guess I’m more surprised you’re still sending them out,” she laughed.

I shrugged, and gazed for a moment out the window, where snow gathered like a white board over the windowsill, a perfect rectangle. “I wasn’t going to when I moved. But I was curious, so…well, then came a reply. It’s kind of creepy when I think about it. Like, who’s stalking me?”

“But you keep doing it.”

“I don’t know, Mom. I guess it kind of feels like a tradition. Like Christmas, you know. I feel obligated.”

“Are you afraid you’ll hurt Someone’s feelings?” she teased. “Someone, who got along just fine before you.”

“I just wonder,” I said, popping in a piece of the tire. “It’s just something I have to do, I think.”

“But why?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“Okay. Well, how’s work, anyway?”

Such was the routine. For a few days, I left my most recent letter opened by the phone, unsure of myself now and the anonymous Someone who harnessed a piece of my attention despite whatever else occurred in my life. There was always Someone. Midterms, break-ups, dates, movie nights. Always Someone to get home and write to. Now, in my sensible (or paranoid?) years, I questioned my trust, I questioned my judgment. You couldn’t just write letters to anyone, because they might find your address and get in through a window…they might be a pervert or a serial killer, you couldn’t be sure, and it wasn’t like the 1940s when you could trust your kids to wander aimlessly among other neighborhoods, among strange adults. But there was a difference between anyone and Someone, I supposed.

I got around to the letter again eventually, reread it. Held it for a while with the television turned off, thought about what I should say now, at twenty-three, when marriage was a prospect within the next decade and when all things childlike were expected to have dissipated to the last grain. No one wrote letters anymore. All my mail was bills and junk. Could I send an e-mail to Someone? Does Someone have a computer? Maybe a 1990s dinosaur with the ye-old you’ve got mail. Maybe a Macbook Air; maybe Someone is high tech.

I considered ceasing all reply. Again. But I couldn’t shake the feeling—deep into the night, I couldn’t shake the feeling—that I would be losing something, deeply losing something, that I would be a half instead of a whole, that I would be a child without Santa Claus. And who was there to say that adults shouldn’t experience the fantastic or unexplained, my mother actually or no? Maybe when elders go ghost hunting like the Warrens, that’s really what they’re looking for. They lived their whole lives and never saw a single thing they couldn’t explain, and now they’re begging something, anything, to baffle them. They’re begging for Someone to send a letter from Nowhere, addressed to Me.

Is this really the only chance? As I picked up my pen and my floral stationery, fresh out of Staples, I thought what it would have been like if I never wrote letters to Santa, if I never believed a human-sized bunny broke into the house and delivered candy, if I never believed the tooth fairy might give me a puppy in exchange for a molar. Those legendaries were gone now, and Someone waited on the other end of the line, considering me a lucky case because I never stopped.

 

Dear Someone, I wrote, using the most beautiful cursive I could manage. Someone always said I would be a calligrapher, and now I was—I could equal computer typeface any day, and I helped create that, too.

 

How many people have written to you? How many have stopped since?

I get to wondering if you’re lonely, I suppose, so I never stop writing. I’ve never been able to explain how these letters get from one place to the next; all of the postmen must be in on some kind of dirty secret.

I thought I might not write back this time. But here I am writing, and I don’t think I’ll ever know exactly why. I love you, I suppose, because you’ve always been waiting for me wherever you live. If I were to stop, I’m afraid you would have no one.

There’s our world as we choose to see it, I think, and then our world as it really is. The brain is so powerful—what if it can erase things that really are there? When children become ashamed of something, they block it out. So, maybe I became ashamed of Santa because the world tells you you should, that you’re at the age of reason, therefore Santa should be obviously false to you…

But I never became ashamed of you because no one tells you how to feel about Someones.

Please don’t ever stop writing. I won’t ever stop replying.

 

Sincerely, Me.

 

I put the letter in the mail the next day despite the resistance of snowdrifts. To: Someone. And whatever the postman thought was up to them, but like it or not they took the damn thing and put it somewhere instead of returning it. The reply was late for Someone; it came on Friday, and as the postman gave it over (we met by the box as I arrived home), he gave me a box alongside. As if predestined only for delivery, he never said anything about the address issued and only scooted along to the next house in his vehicle. The box and the letter alike were from Someone, and this was something new. Were we Secret Santas now?

I opened the letter first and was shocked to find a short reply on a large piece of fall-leaf stationery.

Dear Me, it read in standard face, written out by a steady hand that could rival any printer.

 

You are not the only one. But you are the only one to whom I have replied. I do love you for keeping me warm all these years.

Whenever you need Someone again, I will be here waiting.

 

Sincerely, Someone.

 

I failed to understand why Someone would have a sense of waiting…at most it took me a day or two to reply, even though there wasn’t much substance here to branch off of. I would need to start a new conversation. We might talk about the holidays.

I opened the package with more vigor. Something new, to liven our routine; something mysterious. Beyond layers of bubble wrap I expected to find a magic orb, or a lucky stone, something as evidence of Someone’s unusual being. I could show it to my mom and explain to her that I understood now—she wasn’t the one writing letters.

Instead, I found a tightly packed, stiffly bound bombardment of letters, letters beaten and fresh, encased safely within their envelopes. As I wedged the mass out and turned it up, I read the childish print written in crayon over the front: “To: Someone.”

And, stamped crudely over that, over the unopened envelope, was the statement, “Invalid Address.”

 

The neighborhood often visits my garden for the sake of revitalizing themselves when the days are dark and the nights all too serious. I am a fan of floral arrangement and flower fields in general; I take pride in my rows of lavender, too beautiful for photos, reminiscent of France. My home smells always of honey and the neighbors linger at the door when they bring brownies just to absorb it.

My husband passed twenty years ago and I never remarried. I stay indoors more now than ever and rely on assistance with transportation. During the winters I have no choice but to coop myself up inside and have a spry neighbor help me buy groceries. I break out my puzzles and contemplate over the one-thousand-or-plus pieces that seem at first to go nowhere at all—about fifty of them are the same gradient of blue with minor shift.

I am sad, and I suppose I always say it in the winter because the frozen rows of dormant lavender remind me of the snowmen I used to build in between the rows to liven the season. My children, both of whom have become very successful, are busy. They will not be over this Christmas, and that’s okay. They have their own children to entertain with the nostalgia of home-spent holidays and real trees, and because I can’t bring home a real tree or clean it up myself, I feel bad bringing the grandkids home to plastic. Most of my neighbors are away. The drifts are silent; they stare inward and I feel paranoid. My puzzle is silent. My house won’t even creak.

Grabbing for a new puzzle, I see the box on the very top shelf beneath the dislodged clutter. I remember my fifteen years spent in paradise, and the years after of empty letters sent to no replies. I wonder why Someone stopped writing. I wonder if Someone is just a figment of my imagination; it’s all so distant now.

But Someone reaches my head, reaches my bones, rattles my body. I am old and it’s winter again and I can’t suffer the snow to make little men between the rows. I pull out a crispy piece of stationery, and I write, I actually write and send off:

Dear Someone,

Hello, old friend. Are you still waiting?

Sincerely, Me.

 

Two days later, stuck in between bills for heat and electric, I find:

 

Dear Me,

Hello, my dear. How nice it is to hear from you again.

Sincerely, Someone.

Oh, feeling sentimental tonight. :heart:

Feedback is l-o-v-e-d ! !
© 2014 - 2024 bruxing
Comments60
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
YppleJax's avatar
My interpretation was that she's writing them herself.  It's less mystical but a different kind of inspiring?

Congratulations on the DLR! :)