THE FIRST TIME I saw Chris, I didn’t see him. He had his back turned, standing next to the mill. I was scared until he turned around, smiled at me and waved like we’d known each other all our lives. I was out for a ride on my horse Nessy, our daily walk. Sorry, but this is private property. That was how I answered his greeting. He apologized immediately and started to go. I felt so bad that I said no, no problem, he could stay. You’re not from around here, are you? I asked him, still a little distrustful. He shook his head and told me he had been dragged to the island by a chance encounter with an old school friend from the University of Virginia, a John something or other, someone I didn’t even know. They’d been there together a couple of years, when John was defensive coordinator of the football team. Apparently, this John loved tennis and went to watch him pretty often. Later John had followed his career and was convinced he’d go far in the ATP, until John read he’d hurt his Achilles tendon. John had lost track of him years before. And when John found him that very morning at the New Seabury Country Club in Mashpee, playing with a potential client who happened to be John’s brother-in-law—Keith, obviously, though he couldn’t remember the name when we were talking—John went crazy, he was so excited, and he proposed a doubles game so they could talk and catch up. But that wasn’t enough, because then John invited him for a few beers, and when he was half-drunk, John told him, This guy here, my brother-in-law, has an island all to himself, and he’s redecorating or whatever you want to call it. He wants to put in a new tennis court because his old one is grass, a piece of shit, to put it frankly. So anyway, you gotta strike while the iron’s hot, right? John’s brother-in-law asked Chris for his card to get in touch with him and see him another day when he had more time. Then John invited him to take a tour of Robin Island. You’ve never heard of Robin Island? Better, perfect. Know why? Because it’s the best-kept secret in the country. And before he could react, they were on the ferry headed to the island. Chris accepted because his business was expanding and he was trying to put down roots in the states surrounding Rhode Island.
He came over, put out his hand, and introduced himself:
“Sorry, I haven’t introduced myself. I’m Chris Williams.”
“Barbara,” I said to him, shaking his hand, not getting off my horse. I felt safer up there. “So how did you end up here in front of my mill?”
On the way to the port, since he had a good bit of time, he decided to take a walk around and got hooked on the island, enchanted by its landscape and how peaceful it was. He traveled a lot and knew a lot of places, but the island captivated him in an unforeseen way. It was familiar and exotic at the same time, different but recognizable, cozy. “A little like my wife,” he blurted out, as if he wanted to avoid having me get the wrong impression, which I thought was charming and actually did relax me. Before he knew it, he no longer had time to catch the last ferry. John’s wife had insisted he stay and spend the night in the inn. A star like you gets the suite with the Jacuzzi, she had said.
“So instead of going back there and wrestling with all the excess hospitality from John and Karen, I’ve snuck onto your farm without permission.”
Then I got a message from my father saying that our pony Snow White had just given birth.
“I’ve got to take off, we have a little one coming,” I said by way of goodbye. “Oh, and by the way, wander around as much as you want. Make yourself at home. The sunset is spectacular from here.”
I liked him, and he liked me. A pleasant first meeting, friendly, innocent.
I didn’t know how long it was that I went without hearing anything from him. He reminded me of our first meeting, even his name, which I had forgotten, despite the fleeting attraction I had felt. “It’s been a month and a half. My name’s Chris. And yours is Barbara.” He also remembered Snow White and wanted to know how the foaling had gone. I told him very well and that if he was interested, I’d show him the result. It was then that he met Panda. “He looks like a panda,” he said.
“That’s why his name’s Panda,” I answered. “The mother’s white, hence Snow White, and his father, Batman, is black. He got the best of both worlds.”
Chris told me the reason for his visit. Keith had called him a month after the first meeting, finally having decided to redo the tennis court. Chris had just been there, and Keith had proposed he do it in secret, to surprise John, because John loved tennis and would probably end up being the one who used it most. Chris thought it was a great idea because it saved him from having to deal with John. Poor guy, don’t get me wrong, I like him, he’s a good guy, but . . . you know, he’s a little possessive, he said as an excuse. While he was on Napoleon Island, Chris had taken an interest in its origins and the life of Napoleon LeCaptain. Keith had told him the strange history of the architect and his dream of making the island a retreat for his family and the coming generations. Chris was particularly fascinated by the pains LeCaptain took to keep it a surprise and how he worked things out so that neither his wife nor anyone in his family would find out about anything. He did it with the help of his friend John J. Bresnam and his boys from the fire department in New York’s eighth precinct, whose station Napoleon had designed and built.
Chris told me that the day we met and he first set foot on the island had been complicated, tedious. But that the walk he had taken around the horse ranch had struck him as a well-deserved reward. He had discovered a marvelous place to bring you to one day, you and your daughter, and he’d decided not to tell you about it, because he wanted to surprise you and because your daughter had a weakness for horses in general and particularly for ponies.
“My problem is I have trouble faking. I don’t like to lie, in part because you can always tell. Especially Alice. She always catches me. Alice is the all-seeing eye: nothing escapes her attention, and our daughter Olivia has inherited that. They’re very similar, too much so. So to lie to her, I’m going to have to lie to myself first, believe my own lie, because if I don’t, it’ll be obvious.”
Then he mentioned Napoleon LeCaptain again and how he’d been a source of inspiration for him. That and my farm, my wild horses, my ponies and seeing the sunset from the old mill that was damaged after Hurricane Sandy passed through. He told me he’d had an idea, a dream, and he just needed to know if it was possible; if not, he’d understand completely, and he’d banish it from his mind. That’s why he told me everything all at once, because he didn’t think he could keep it all secret much longer without you finding out. I was really intrigued by what he had planned. I encouraged him to keep talking, to tell me what he had in mind.
Chris told me that WTT, his business, was his great professional project, but that for months he’d felt something was missing. He’d been playing competitive tennis since he was six. That had turned him into an adrenaline junkie, craving competition, status, risk-taking, cutting loose, effort, victory, defeat. All that, for him, was summed up in one word: passion. He needed to get it back, and he didn’t know how until he found himself on the path at the farm, walking among the dunes until he reached the mill, right when the sun was going down. And once he told me that, Chris stopped beating around the bush.
“I don’t know if that pony Panda is for sale. I’d love to give her to my daughter.”
“She’s still really young. She hasn’t been weaned yet.”
“I figured. I’m not in a rush. The pony’s just a part, a fairly small part, of the surprise I have in mind. Because what I really want is to buy the mill from you. Rehab it by hand, without anyone’s help, as a personal challenge and because the fewer people get mixed up in it, the better. Do it little by little, in the gaps between my business trips, behind my wife and my daughter’s backs. Make it a home. Our castle, our second home, our retreat, like Napoleon LeCaptain did. A place where we can spend happy times and my daughter can ride her pony. Thinking about that, about making that moment happen, inspired me. So if all this really seems viable to you, I’ll tell you how I’d like to go about it. I’ll need a battalion chief, just like LeCaptain had John J. Bresnam.” He paused, then he added: “And that’s where you come in. Barb, would you help me to be invisible?”
I wanted to say yes. Of course I did. I didn’t see why not, though soon I wouldn’t be so sure.
The windmill is hard to get to because the properties surrounding it are private. That makes it a very special place, and since it has a south-facing orientation, you can enjoy the sunrise and the sunset from there. It sat on a hill next to Haven Creek, which empties into the sea. It wasn’t for sale. Maureen and her husband Pat Heise had been trying to buy it from me for years, the mill and the land it was situated on, which we barely used. Just the horses went there to graze now and then, to drink water from the creek and eat apples off the trees. They wanted to build a golf course. It was my land, I had inherited it from my grandfather, so I wasn’t considering getting rid of it. But his plan struck me as a marvelous gesture on Chris’s part and so I thought it over.
I didn’t tell him yes, I told him almost definitely no, that I had to consult with my father, which was a lie. I told him we were very attached to that parcel. “I can tell,” Chris joked, making reference to the damaged mill. I asked for some time to think it over, which seemed like a less harsh way of doing things. He accepted and told me not to delay too long, so he could get it out of his mind and concentrate his energies elsewhere, though nowhere else was going to please him as much.
Before he left, in case it would help clear up my doubts, he reminded me of a Zen rule that said something like you had to treat matters of vital importance lightly and light matters as vitally important.
I didn’t share any of this with my father or Jeffrey. Not that I wanted to make it solely my decision, because the decision was made beforehand and it was no. But somehow Chris’s sparkling presence had awakened me, making me question things about myself that I hadn’t permitted myself to question before. When was the last time I had felt moved that way? Horses were a passion for me; they were my life. But they were also my refuge. Jeffrey said many times in a jocular tone that if only he had a muzzle, mane and horseshoes, I’d pay him a lot more attention. And I guess he was partly right. But we had what I thought was a good relationship. I liked life peaceful and orderly. Stability for me was one of the great pillars of my life. With Jeffrey it was always springtime; it was never cold, never hot. Love’s thermostat was set at seventy-two degrees. But there was something so comfortable that it seemed suspicious. Or at least it started to seem that way to me after Chris came into my life, with his white lies, invisibility and love for you. Chris’s heart raced when he saw the sunset from the mill. Mine raced while he spoke to me.
Four days after Chris’s visit, I got up and went out to ride Nessy to see the sunrise. When I passed by the mill and saw it clearly, my view unobstructed, I laughed at how much I’d debated the issue. Everything was much simpler. Treat matters of vital importance lightly and light matters as vitally important. It was true. I wanted to be John J. Bresnam, the chief of Chris’s battalion, to help him be invisible, to help him finally surprise you. And in passing, to do something about the creaky finances of the farm, because between the economic crisis and Hurricane Sandy, we’d been through some difficult years. Besides, I almost never went near the mill, in part because my heart sank every time I saw its sorry state.
I was fooling myself, lying to myself without realizing it. And after that day, I started to go to the mill regularly.
“You just made me the happiest man in the world,” he told me, and gave me an effusive hug.
“We haven’t negotiated a price yet,” I said, calming my spirit and my inner heat.
“Money’s not going to be a problem. But don’t think I’m a millionaire and try to gouge me. Anyway, if I pay in cash, you’ll give me a discount, right?”
Chris told me that all transactions and expenses related to the mill had to be in cash, without touching a cent of his business account or the one he shared with you.
Then I admit I got frightened because I thought maybe it was a money-laundering operation, dirty money from some illegal activity. Chris must have seen it in my face because he rushed to explain to me where the money had come from. When he turned twelve, he decided to start saving a dollar a day. It was mainly his father’s fault, because that same day he gave him a hundred-dollar bill, the first one Chris had seen in his life, and said: This isn’t a gift; this is a responsibility. Because someday, you’re going to need this hundred-dollar bill. You can spend it on whatever you want. I will never reproach you, believe me. It’s yours. It’s your decision. All I’m asking is, before you spend it, think about whether the thing you’re going to use it on is something you actually need. It’s not enough for you to want it; it has to be something you really NEED.
“Just imagine how weirded out I felt. That bill was worse than kryptonite to Superman. I had nightmares where I’d spend it on something fun, and I’d wake up crying. Since then, I have been obsessed with saving in case something terrible happened and we were stuck with no money and not even that hundred-dollar bill was enough. I set a goal of saving a dollar a day. I always had a good head for saving. Some call it being cheap; I call it being like an ant. My mother gave me two dollars for lunch money at school. I’d make myself a sandwich every morning without her seeing. And so I’d save my dollar. Now I’m thirty-two. For twenty-one years, I’ve been saving a dollar a day. Twenty-one years times 365 days is 7,665. That’s 7,765 dollars.”
“So with that money, you want to buy the parcel in front of the sea with a mill that may be ruined but is still historic?”
“No. It’s 7,665 dollars plus the hundred-dollar bill. That’s 7,765 dollars, Barb.”
“Oh, sure, problem solved,” I said, laughing.
“No, seriously, I made that promise to myself when I was twelve years old, and I’ve been working without interruption since I was fifteen. I’m not going to bore you with the endless list of shit jobs I’ve had. But from my first job, I started raising the amount I saved. I went from one dollar to two. At seventeen, three. At eighteen, five. And then during college . . . Have you seen The Color of Money, with Tom Cruise and Paul Newman, where they make bets, play pool and scam people all over the country?” I nodded. “Well, I did the same thing at college playing tennis. I made a lot of money letting rich yuppie kids beat me and then doubling and tripling the bet in the rematch. Then I finished my degree and I started playing as a pro, and let’s just say that daily amount went up considerably. And never, not once in my life since I was twelve, did I break my promise.”
“So where do you keep all that cash?”
“The hundred dollar bill is in my wallet; I always have it on me. I’m superstitious, maybe even a little manic. I think my daughter inherited some of that. And the rest of it here.”
He took a child’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack out of his glove compartment.
“They gave me this backpack on my twelfth birthday. A gift from my aunt and uncle. I threw a tantrum because, as you can see, it’s Donatello, and I was a Leonardo fan to the death, so I hated the backpack and never used it. It stayed in the loft space in my bedroom until I decided it was the perfect place to keep my money.”
“But your wife must know, doesn’t she? You’ve got God knows how much money there.”
“No one knows. Remember I told you I had to believe my own lie to be able to get away with it? Well, no one knows this. Not even Alice. Because this”—he pointed at the backpack—“doesn’t exist.”
I don’t know why, but it relieved me slightly to know he was capable of lying, that he wasn’t as transparent as he said he was, that he had his dark side. Curiously, that relaxed me and made me trust him more.
“And you’ve never touched a single cent of it?”
“Not one. Because I knew I’d need it someday, me or someone in my family or someone close to me. I wanted to be sure I was ready for the moment. I don’t know why, but I always thought I’d use it to deal with some dramatic event: a medical treatment, a robbery, an accident. But look, no, finally it’s going to go to what I hope is the most beautiful gesture of my life. Because in reality, all this has more to do with my wife than with me.”
He told me that, since you’d been together, he had seen how you’d been making little sacrifices for him, small stuff, but that came voluntarily from you, obviously. Renunciations that you wouldn’t even consider such, because they were just part of life, of maturing, of choosing your path. But in this case, he had the feeling that you had pulled away from your artistic dreams. Alice, he told me, is an art teacher at a primary school, and she loves it and she’s happy, but . . . He had his chance to shine as a tennis player. The circumstances were there. It didn’t work out, that was fine, but he tried. And he felt you had never tried, that you had been trimming your wings back little by little. Or maybe he had cut them unconsciously, which bothered him to think about. That evening at the mill, he told me about all those painters you had talked about with such admiration and how much that landscape he had before his eyes reminded him of the pictures you loved, and he thought that from there, you could have a real opportunity to try. He already knew that it wasn’t enough to have a beautiful and evocative view to become a great painter, that you have to paint from the inside out and not from the outside in. But Chris knew you had a lot inside you that you hadn’t yet figured out how to draw on. And when he got here and saw the name of the island, it seemed like a good sign to him. Robin Island. He imagined his robin stretching out her wings and flying around freely. That’s what he wanted to give you. Wings. A window for you in the top part of the mill, to look out of, to fly wherever you wanted to. To make your private space. Your studio.
He lifted up the backpack.
“Shall we see if I have enough money in this backpack to make my dream a reality?”
Yes, there was. Enough to buy the parcel and the mill. He knew there was, and I was really happy that there was. In any case he told me later he had an ace in the hole. He was going to invest all the money he made building Keith’s tennis court in the mill. In part as a poetic gesture, because it was what had brought him there, and in part because he didn’t want it to show up on WTT’s books or for there to be a contract. To all intents and purposes, he would make that tennis court for Keith under the table. To convince Keith to pay him in secret, he told him one thing: you want to surprise John, I want to surprise someone else. Keith agreed.
It was a smock mill, around sixty feet high, octagonally shaped, with a brown brick base going up three floors, a two-story wood tower, and a rotating top. Nathan Wilbur, a sailor from Nantucket who’d spent time in Holland, built it in 1752. They called it Wilbur Mill. In 1828 it was in deplorable condition and was sold for fifteen dollars to a carpenter, Donald Herring, for use of the wood, but he decided to renovate it to mill grain, and that was how it got the name Herring Mill. In 1894 it stopped running. And in 1899 it was sold at a public auction, together with all the land that composed Horse Rush Farm, for $1,550 to John Francis Rush, my great-great-grandfather, and so it became known as Rush Mill. It was added to the National Historical Register in 1978. The only condition I gave Chris was that the name couldn’t be changed. He accepted. We shook hands and he hugged me. He was happy.
Chris told me the plan he had come up with to pass completely unnoticed on the island. The idea was for the renovation to seem like it was mine and not his, as if I had hired him to do the work.
“No one can know you’ve sold it to me till the very end.”
He had bought a gray truck, secondhand—a neutral, unremarkable color—to come and go on the island and transport materials. Because if he did it in his Cadillac Escalade, he would draw people’s attention. This way he could look like a humble construction worker, which is what he was, deep down.
“And John? What happens if you run into John? What will you tell him?”
Chris was stunned.
“Shit, I hadn’t thought about that.” But then his smile came back. “Well, of course, I thought of that. But I can’t tell you all my secrets.”
I was crazy about the idea. The secrecy of it all. I thought it was so funny that, once more, I decided to hide it from my father and Jeffrey. Nothing would have happened if I had told them. They would have kept the secret; they also would have liked that grandiloquent gesture of love. But all I told them was a very rich gentleman from Rhode Island had seen photos of Panda’s birth on our website, had taken a liking to the animal and had given us a fortune to buy her for his daughter. Which was partially true. The lie I cooked up was that with the money, I was going to renovate the mill, because Miriam had told me the real estate market was looking up—that was true too—and since I’d been thinking about selling the land with the mill on it for years, I thought I’d get the most out of it if it was in perfect condition. My father trusted me, knew I was a responsible person, and didn’t question anything. Like Jeffrey, he offered to lend a hand with whatever was necessary, telling me not to hesitate to ask. But I never did.
I could stop here, Alice. Show you the mill, your mill, totally renovated inside and out, just waiting for furniture. But I’d be leaving out a big part of the story. Because that was just the beginning, the first three months. And he came here for more than two years.
Chris would come every month, more or less, using his trips to New England to escape or even planning fake work trips to be able to stay three or four days—the maximum he could justify without raising suspicions—and push the restoration work forward. I found him a couple of guys on the island to help him clear the rubble. All supposedly under my orders. Orders that Chris gave me beforehand. When communicating with me from elsewhere, he didn’t use email or his phone, nothing that could be traced in the electronic world we live in. He resorted to a lost art: letters. I remember them more of less by heart.
Hey, Barb:
What’s up? Hard winter? Well, don’t worry, there’s less of it to go, just five more months . . .
I’ll get to the island the tenth or eleventh of this month at the latest. I’ll be there a few days. To take advantage of my stay, I’m attaching a list of materials and addresses where you can get them at a good price in case you can’t find them on the island. There needs to be more than enough of everything when I get there (that’s not an order, it’s a plea).
You already know where the money is. And watch out how much you spend—Donatello’s got a bad attitude and he might tear one of your arms off if you go over budget.
Did the guys bust down the walls I marked with an X?
I hope they aimed well or else there won’t be a mill or anything, and the historic register will take me to court. Yeah, I know, I’m a little controlling and not being there day and night doesn’t help.
But I trust you—almost—blindly.
The X, the walls marked with an X, for God’s sake! I drew them really big! Oh Lord, I’m having nightmares about the letter X.
I wish I was there, Battalion Chief Bresnam. Can I call you Bresnam from now on?
Any request or craving from terra firma? Oh yeah, you can’t write me. Sorry . . .
See you soon,
C.
I loved getting his letters, though I wasn’t crazy about not being able to write back and answer his digs at me. Communication went in only one direction: from him to me. I carried out his orders—or requests—to a T. Not just that, those walls he had marked with an X, I had knocked them down myself, because, just like him, I didn’t trust those pot-smoking overgrown adolescents who just wanted to make a few bucks without breaking too much of a sweat so they could go on paying for Mike’s marijuana.
By the time Chris showed up, all the materials he had asked me for were in the mill, and not just those, but others that I thought were necessary. I had also taken care of the basic necessities for him so he could stay there and sleep without dying of hunger or cold. Everything he needed for a comfortable rustic life.
Every time he came and saw how much further it had come along than he had expected, he pretended to be irate. Bresnam, leave something for me . . . Bresnam, you’ve taken your name too seriously . . . Bresnam, looks like you’re trying to get rid of me as soon as possible . . . Bresnam, seems like I’m bothering you. If you want, I’ll stay away, no problem . . . Bresnam, it’s my mill; find your own and leave mine in peace . . . Always in a carefree tone.
I don’t know how I managed it, but those three or four days a month Chris spent at the mill, I managed to free myself from any domestic or professional chores and got my father and Jeffrey to understand, without giving too many explanations, that I wouldn’t be around. Just for emergencies.
And what happened when he stayed? Nothing, everything, lots. The important matters were easy. We worked. We listened to music on portable speakers. We took turns. He was more into heavy metal; I was more into pop divas: Madonna, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Alicia Keys, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Avril Lavigne, Rihanna, and especially Taylor Swift. A somewhat explosive mix.
We became friends. Close friends. We had that type of friendship that usually forms between the survivors of a catastrophe, an almost immediate, unique, iron bond. But in this case the origin had been something good, a common objective. That’s where I started to go wrong. A common objective? No, it was his objective. But I got so wrapped up in it that it seemed like I was the one who had sketched out the plan. I even told my father and Jeffrey to stop going around there so they wouldn’t see it until it was done and I could surprise them.
We laughed. We criticized each other’s obsessions, which were many. We danced, him to my corny songs and me to his hardcore ones. We drank beer, ate cans of Campbell’s black bean soup with hot peppers—his favorite. We held on to each other to keep from falling—literally and figuratively. We didn’t judge each other. We didn’t have to put up with each other because he was barely ever there. There were no conflicts. We didn’t try and please each other because he was happy with you and I was happy with Jeffrey. It wasn’t work; it was like being on the playground in elementary school. It was innocent. Innocent? A slow-motion touch of the hands when I passed him a tool. A glance when the sun was almost down. A smile I didn’t know I had. A touch that only existed in our wishes. A tickle that had been forgotten. A drunkenness without alcohol. A sleepless night looking at the stars, lit up every ten seconds by the lighthouse.
A summer, spring, autumn and winter camp. A camp you never want to end.
“It’s cold,” I said, not cold. “Are the heaters on?”
“You don’t have to stay, Bresnam.”
“I’m the battalion chief, LeCaptain.”
Sleeping, embracing without touching. Waking up in a way I never dared to wish for.
But this wasn’t from one day to the next; this was from one month to the next, that’s why it seemed so natural, so right. Because there was nothing more than that. There was nothing sexually explicit, nothing inappropriate that could be picked apart in front of a court of amorous accounts.
And in the meantime, during those long periods of time that passed between each meeting, he went on with his life, I went on with mine, and his letters kept coming, more and more frequent, always with the excuse of seeing if I could do this or that for the mill, but with the part devoted to the typical complaints pushed slowly aside, as though unwanted, to make way for feeling:
Come on, pick up the pace, Bresnam. I want to finish the mill in time for my retirement.
You know what I like best about writing you, Bresnam? You can’t answer me.
I want to be there, Bresnam, but not to see you, just because it’s getting nice out.
Don’t eat my cans of Campbell’s black beans and hot peppers, Bresnam. I’m watching you! At least wait for me and we can share.
You know, I’ve always been a big individualist; I don’t like working with a team. But with you it’s different, Bresnam. I like having you at my side.
I miss you a little bit, Bresnam. Just a little, OK?
How I want the fall to come, Bresnam. Save one of those pretty sunsets so we can see it together.
Hey, this is important, Bresnam: I’m reminding you that the confidentiality clause you signed also includes you not telling that I cried when we read the end of the second book of the Hunger Games together.
Good thing I met you, Bresnam. If I hadn’t, none of this would be possible.
You know what, Bresnam? I’ve stopped having Campbell’s black beans with hot peppers, but not because I don’t like them. It’s the opposite; they’re still my favorite. But now I associate them with the mill. I only want to eat them there with you.
You miss me a little, Bresnam? Look, now I regret you can’t answer me.
The mill isn’t a mill anymore. The mill is a mill and you. (I like the mill more and more.)
I miss you, Bresnam. I even miss Taylor Swift!
Then it was a year since we had met. I was particularly excited to get a letter from him that day. I remembered because it was Panda’s birthday. But I didn’t think it would occur to him.
A year, Bresnam, today it’s a year since we met!
Sometimes I ask myself if I want to finish the renovation. Every day I enjoy it more. At first I was stressed because I thought Alice would catch me. Every time I came or went, it was hard for me to pretend. That’s why I take the long route going there and coming back. To go I need time to stop feeling bad, and to come back I need to detox from the emanations of the island. Or are they from you, Bresnam? But now that everything’s on track and my plan is going right and reaching perfection thanks to you, I can’t wait to escape there. That said, I’m still taking the same route. I’m a creature of habit, you know me by now.
See you soon, Bresnam. I won’t tell you I miss you anymore because you know that well enough.
Kisses,
C.
PS: Congratulations to Panda from me. Because, I remind you, he’s mine, and well, yours a little bit too . . .
He was always more daring with his letters than face to face. As if he only permitted himself that now not-so-innocent flirtation from a distance. When we were together, he never managed to say the things he would write. So much so that sometimes I felt maybe I was making it up. That those I miss yous, I wish I could see yous, and kisses were nothing more than sweet afterthoughts without any romantic connotation. Which I suppose in part I was thankful for, so I didn’t feel we were doing anything bad. But if I scratched the surface, longings for more were there. His longings.
I started to believe our lie, and it felt like what he was doing he was doing for me, for us. Could it be happening to him too? Your name and Jeffrey’s barely came up in our conversations. We made decisions together about the tiles in the bathroom and the kitchen. The kind of wood for the flooring and the stairway. Decisions that at first Chris would make without blinking and that in time he needed my advice for. He wanted me to like it as much as he did.
The only thing that remained absolutely free of any kind of intervention was the attic in the mill. That was solely for you, Alice. It was left immaculate and diaphanous, for you to do what you wanted with it. To make it yours.
I could even stop here, Alice, forgetting a few paragraphs from the letters. But we still have a year of history left.
The first and only couple’s crisis we went through was when he found out you were pregnant again. He disappeared. He didn’t show up on his appointed day, and I was really worried: I thought something might have happened to him because the letters also stopped for a few weeks. Even though I was absolutely forbidden to call him, I couldn’t help calling his business phone from a hidden number. When he answered, I was relieved but furious. I hung up without saying anything. Had he forgotten about the mill? Had he lost interest? Had he forgotten about me?
Bresnam!
Excuse my absence. I’ve been up to my neck in work, something unexpected came up and I had to cancel my trip to the island. I’m really sorry I didn’t let you know.
And plus, I’m going to be a father again!! Tada! Alice is five weeks pregnant. We’re really happy, to tell the truth.
Obviously we still don’t have any idea about the baby’s sex. So let’s not paint the walls in the third bedroom till we know, OK?
I’m getting organized to see when I can go there next. I’ll let you know.
Take care,
C.
Take care? I cried for half an hour after reading that letter. It was reality slapping me in the face, and it took a long time for me to react. I felt betrayed, cheated and stupid. But it wasn’t Chris’s fault: I was the one who had betrayed and cheated myself. What was I playing at? Collecting his letters like an idiot, answering them all without sending my responses, keeping them in the same drawer, filed together in chronological order, because who knew if one day that wouldn’t be a beautiful love story for us to tell our grandchildren.
Chris’s next two visits to the island were horrible, interminable. I had an awful time, faking, smiling, pretending nothing had happened. I could have just stayed away, but no, I wanted to show him that I was super-happy about his good news and that nothing had changed. And though he tried to fake it as well, he too was acting strangely. We had gone too far without going anywhere. He had realized it, I had realized it, and we were dying from the shame, at least I was.
Why had I done something like that to Jeffrey? I asked myself. But there was something that almost irritated me more: Why hadn’t Jeffrey done anything about it? If it had been the reverse, I would have confronted him and probably left him. I had neglected the relationship; I was less caring, a little cagey and absent. I had been that way for months. It was obvious something was up with me. Was I still in love with Jeffrey? Or worse: Had I fallen in love with a married man with a kid and another one on the way?
I could even stop now, Alice, leaving out a few details. But we still have six more months.
I saw it clearly on Chris’s next visit. I decided to distance myself, to come over only to make sure everything was going all right. I had a terrible time. I was in withdrawal. My whole body was quivering. Not even by pulling my hair could I resist the force that was dragging me toward him. I was suffering. I was in love. I decided I couldn’t go on like that. At least not with Jeffrey. He didn’t deserve it. As soon as Chris left, I confronted Jeffrey.
“I don’t know if I’m in love with you.”
“I don’t know if you are either.”
“I need to figure it out.”
“If you need to figure it out, then you’re not.”
“Why didn’t you do anything?”
“Would it have mattered?”
We cried together and broke it off.
That night I only went home to get the box with Chris’s and my letters. I went out the back without my father seeing me. I didn’t want to break down in front of him and probably confess everything. I went to the mill to be alone. To burn the letters, to eat black beans with hot peppers and to drink beer. I was going to mourn, twice.
Then the thing Chris and I knew would happen sooner or later happened: he spotted John when he was going to catch the last ferry to Hyannis and turned back instead, losing his shot at getting off the island that night.
When he entered the mill, I was huddled up on the mattress, with the quilt over my shoulders, eating the beans cold straight out of the can. I had drunk two cans of beer. The first thing he said was, “I knew you’d been eating my beans behind my back.”
I thought he had come for me, as if he had intuited my breakup with Jeffrey and now saw no more obstacles to our relationship becoming a reality. But it wasn’t so.
“Remember when I told you that if I ran into John, I had a plan?” I nodded. “Well, I lied. I didn’t. I saw him at the ferry station when it was about to set off, and I scurried away like a rat. I missed the ferry.”
“That’s how you kept him from seeing you?”
Chris nodded.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I’m doing here?” I asked him.
“This is your house.”
“No, it’s not my house; it’s yours and your wife’s and your daughter’s and your future child’s.”
I wanted it not to sound resentful, but I don’t think I managed it. In any case he didn’t seem to get it, because he had turned all his attention to the bundle of letters, his and mine, lying on top of the mattress. I still hadn’t decided whether to burn them.
“What’s this?” he asked while reaching for them.
I stopped him.
“Don’t even think about touching them,” I threatened, grabbing hold of them.
“Have you been writing me?”
I said nothing.
“Did you answer my letters?”
“Some,” I admitted. Actually, it had been all of them. “Just with stupid stuff.”
“Once I burn them, they’re yours to keep.”
“Barb . . .”
“I’m not Bresnam anymore?”
“Barb, let me read them,” he said very softly. “I’d love to read them.”
“Why?”
“Because you wrote them to me.”
“I didn’t write them to you. I wrote them for me.” I was sulking like a little girl. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Neither should you.”
“You shouldn’t be in my life.”
He didn’t respond.
“I broke up with Jeffrey.”
“Do you want us to talk about that before or after I read the letters?” he asked with a soft, firm voice.
I went back over them all mentally, as if I were capable of scanning their contents in two seconds and detecting any offensive impropriety or excessive expression of love. I wasn’t, even less so in that moment, but I was sure there was a little of everything.
“There’s no need to talk about this after. And don’t read them out loud, please.”
I gave them to him, I had no strength left. I wanted him to hold me. Allowing him to read the letters was the best way, maybe the only way, to get that to happen.
Of course you can call me Bresnam. In fact, I would like you to call me Bresnam. Can I call you LeCaptain?
You pick up the pace, LeCaptain. I’ll remind you that, unlike you men, women can do more than one thing at a time.
Maybe you like writing me because I can’t write you back. But I like writing you because I know you won’t read me. Way more freedom to insult you, come what may.
I also wish you were here, LeCaptain, but not to see you. Just to . . . Yeah, I want to see you.
I’ll eat your cans of Campbell’s black beans and hot peppers if I feel like it. You leave me here adrift for weeks, that’s the least I can do. And another reason, a very small reason, I eat them is because they remind me of you. Oops, I know, I’m going over the line . . .
It’s funny, even though I know you’re not going to read me, there are lots of things I don’t dare write to you.
What are you doing to me?! You’ve got me in a daze! How gross! Idiot, imbecile, showoff!
I’m not going to answer any of your letters because I’m mad at you.
In truth, I’m mad at myself because I like you a lot. I think about you a lot. By the way, remember that Cavaliers T-shirt soaking in sweat that you took off and never found again? Guess who’s got it.
I’ll save all the sunsets in the world for you. I’ll save them all for you in my eyes.
Confidentiality agreement?! I didn’t sign anything! Ha-ha. But easy, I’m not going to tell anyone, because I wouldn’t be capable of describing what I felt when we were reading the last part of Catching Fire together, curled up under the same blanket. I really am catching fire . . .
Why don’t you say all those pretty things you write to my face?! Of course I do the same thing. What a pair of cowards . . .
You know what, LeCaptain? I also stopped eating Campbell’s black beans with hot peppers because when I eat them, they remind me so much of you that I get sad and nostalgic. Come soon, hurry. I don’t even have the energy to insult you anymore.
Sometimes I regret that you can’t read me.
I like you a lot, LeCaptain. I think I’m falling in love with you.
Don’t write kisses. Give me them.
O LeCaptain, my LeCaptain . . .
I think a lot of the first time you wrote kisses. I still remember the smell of the letter. I need you to kiss me. I need to kiss you.
Hello, LeCaptain:
What a delight to get your letter! And to know you remembered that a year had passed since we met and that you even mailed the letter beforehand so it would arrive today. I have to admit I was nervous, wanting you to remember, because since I got up, I’ve had it on my mind. After reading your letter I made Panda an apple pie with a carrot instead of a candle and sang her happy birthday from you.
It’s the same with me as with you, even though I don’t have a long trip back and forth because I live here, I still need to air out before returning to real life. Normally I go ride Nessy for a few hours until neither she nor I can take it anymore and I’ve scattered my feelings for you all over the island. I can’t bring them into my house, and I don’t want to. I don’t think I’ve ever been this corny in my life. It’s your fault!
Did you ever think that what’s happening to us might be because we’ve never kissed? Maybe we should do it to get it out of our heads once and for all. This is a little bit of a torture, isn’t it? For you too?
Bresnam
PS: I don’t want the renovation to end either. In your absence, I’ve wrecked things on purpose. I admit it. I’ll probably keep doing it. Sue me.
I feel terrible for Jeffrey. Under normal circumstances, I would have already left him. It’s not fair to him. But the thing is, in reality, we haven’t done anything. All this is nothing more than a fantasy! Though even the fact that I’m fantasizing can’t be a good sign.
You showed up in my life at a bad time, LeCaptain. Go, vanish . . .
No, don’t ever go. Stay with me. I’m already yours.
I don’t really know at what point he finished reading the letters, because the laughter at the beginning gave way to an eloquent silence as he came closer to the most intimate parts. And I had stopped watching him some time before. It was getting late, and I had drunk too many beers. I was curled up in the fetal position on the mattress with my back to him.
First I heard the sound of his hand gathering together the bundle of letters and setting them aside carefully. Then he undressed. He took off his boots, his jeans and his turtleneck sweater, the one I liked because it looked so good on him. He slid under the quilt. I could feel his body heat and his cold feet. I could feel him smelling my hair. I was half-conscious, and I didn’t dare move, like someone waiting for prey and not wanting to scare it off. He embraced me from behind. Isn’t that what I’d wanted, for him to embrace me? I didn’t want anything else. Don’t do anything more, I thought. And he didn’t. His measured breathing inhabited me and freed me from all my tension until I was deeply asleep curled up in his arms.
When I got up, he wasn’t there. He had left me a letter.
Hello, Bresnam:
I like you a lot. I have never liked anyone as much as you, except for Alice. Even more, I suspect that the idea for doing all this didn’t come to me from listening to the story of Napoleon LeCaptain or even seeing the mill at dusk. I think I got the idea when I saw you.
I couldn’t sleep all night thinking about all you wrote me. And while I remembered and I had you in my arms, lots of things occurred to me to write you, all of them pretty, but we have to stop. At least I do.
Nothing is going to happen between us. Nothing else, because clearly lots of things have happened. I swear to you, I would love it, every day I fantasize about it happening. I’d love to know what your kisses are like, smell your hair without pretending not to, but that would turn me into the kind of man I’ve always hated. I can’t do this to my wife, because I love her, I really love her, and I love all we’ve made together, and I also can’t do it to you, but above all I can’t do it to me.
I knew there would be obstacles on the road, but this has caught me by surprise. Now I have to turn this into a lie as well. The lie about the lie. I have to convince myself I don’t feel anything for you. And that lie is going to be much harder for me than the other one, which I’ve been preparing myself for since I was twelve. And now I don’t know if any of the lies will have a happy ending.
So, now, Bresnam? What do we do? I don’t know very well how to proceed, and that’s unusual for me . . . I need my battalion chief’s help. Help me so at least one of the lies will turn out right!
LeCaptain
I thought he would have left. I almost would have preferred that. But no, he was sitting outside, looking at the sun as it timidly peeped over the calm sea. He had the letters in his hand, his and mine. I sat down beside him. He looked at me a moment and smiled at me. It was the first time I saw him meek and insecure. I smiled back at him, but he wasn’t looking at me anymore. I felt good, really good in fact. It had calmed me a great deal to know that our feelings were mutual, that I hadn’t invented all those things that had happened without happening. That was enough for me; I didn’t need more. We had lived through a brief story of impossible love. It had to end. I took the baton he seemed to have passed off to me. I had come to the conclusion that we had called each other Bresnam and LeCaptain all that time because it distanced us from ourselves, from Chris and Barbara, and from them, Jeffrey and you. Created a barrier against our lives, turning us into actors, so we could act, feel and live things we wouldn’t allow ourselves otherwise.
“We’re going to burn the letters,” I said to him. “Together. And afterward, we’re going to finish what we started. We need to take a step back to reach the end. We have to call each other Chris and Barb again. We have to finish the mill.”
We burned the letters together. It was a moment of catharsis, of erasing, of purifying ourselves, of unloading and going back to being at peace with ourselves and with life. When we finished, he told me with his eyes watering from the fire and the smoke—at least partially, “I loved you calling me LeCaptain . . . And I knew you had kept my T-shirt.”
I could even stop now, Alice, leaving out a good number of details. But we still have a little more to go.
For the rest of the winter and the beginning of the spring, we continued working very hard. We set aside less room for contemplation and relaxation, but the heaviness of those last visits had dissipated. Breaking it off with Jeffrey had relieved some of the grief I felt when I was next to Chris. I even came to think that maybe my fixation and feelings of love for him had been a mere tool to help me leave my relationship behind. I realized that the best thing possible had happened. I was thankful it hadn’t come to fruition, that it hadn’t gone any further. That was what I hoped for from Chris. Because Chris was a guy who was worth it. I didn’t want to feel I could fall in love with a man capable of cheating on his pregnant wife. I don’t know if that ending was the prettiest one, but it was the best one. For all of us.
We went back to having fun, to enjoying that adventure. Like friends. It was nice to feel we were capable of putting things back in their place. We even sometimes joked about what had happened to us as if it had taken place years ago, when we were children or adolescents.
The problem was, much as I had believed the lie that everything was back in order, I was still hooked on Chris. But my fantasies had been reduced to a minimum. I barely thought about those things and they didn’t worry me, because I felt good and the spring always brought positive energy to the island. I had gotten back my practical side. The renovation was going ahead and coming close to the end. One of the most intense phases of my life had just ended. It hurt, of course, but there was no resentment, no yearning. Finishing the mill would end everything the right way, and Chris and I could both go on with our lives.
That’s why it caught me so much by surprise when I received a new letter from Chris. His last letter. He had left it on the doorknob at the entrance to the mill. It didn’t have a stamp. I suppose he had written it then and there. It was our last day. We had finally finished the renovation, the only thing left was the attic, the best room in the mill, with its enormous circular window and spectacular panoramic views of Nantucket Sound. Your painting studio. Chris hadn’t touched it. It was still completely empty for you to arrange how you liked.
We had agreed to do a thorough cleaning and then toast for having brought the adventure to a close. That’s why I’d brought a bottle of champagne and an ice bucket, to celebrate with him. But he wasn’t there. Not him and not his Donatello backpack. Instead, there was just a letter.
Dear Bresnam:
I’m writing you numb and weak, with my vision blurred. Dizzy and with the worst headache of my life. I haven’t slept in two days. I can’t concentrate and I’m scared, which is something that has rarely happened to me in my life.
I haven’t managed to believe the lie about the lie. I think I’ve gotten you to believe it, and even Alice. Both lies. But I haven’t been able to deceive myself. I’ve been with you in an unresolved fantasy, that has gotten bigger and bigger. And I can tell it’s about to explode inside my head. That’s why I’m going.
I’m going to stop coming, dear Bresnam. We’ve pretended to get over this together, like two reasonable adults who know how to put things where they belong and live together in harmony. But what’s certain is that every day, I still want to kiss your dimples and smell your hair without faking, among other things. So there’s no point in continuing.
I can’t take failure, and right now I feel like I’m failing. With everyone at the same time. And someone has to come out of this a winner, right? What happened, Bresnam? What happened to me? What happened to us? This was supposed to be my life’s dream, the one I’ve been saving up for since I was twelve, right? It was supposed to be. And we had just enough money to finish the mill. I say it in plural because you supervised it almost better than I did. The Donatello backpack is empty. It can’t be just by chance that I went to Dan’s True Value to buy a lock for the door of Alice’s studio, so she and she alone could have access to her world. But I can’t stop asking myself if that passion I missed, that I needed, that I found in the mill and with you, had to do with something lacking in my relationship, with a lack of excitement. If my great gesture of love had to do with an absence of love. I thought before maybe I was clipping Alice’s wings and wanted to give her new ones so she could fly, and now I’m asking myself whether I’m the one with his wings clipped, if deep down all this isn’t for me, so I can fly. Because I’m the one who’s scared of flying. Not her. I refused to believe it. Because this was a dream for us, for the family, but especially for Alice. And yet, however much I want to convince myself of the contrary, I can’t manage it. I want to erase it from my mind and I can’t, and it’s something that I have to figure out, to clear up.
I always thought this wouldn’t last, that the novelty of it would lose its grip on me. But more than two years have passed. It stopped being a novelty a long time ago, and I’m just as trapped, or more so. I need time. I’m going back to reality, I’m going to leave this lie behind. I want to be with you, but I love my wife. She is my reality, she and my daughters. It’s not an act of sacrifice and generosity; it’s an act of selfishness. I’m doing what I think is best for me. I want to be a good husband, a good father, a good person. For me. And for that to happen, I have to go back home, which is something I haven’t truly done these past few months. It’s time for me to be back with my wife and bring a precious little girl into the world.
But I swear to you I will come back with my problems solved and my questions cleared up. Clean. It may be weeks or months, but I’ll come back. I just don’t know with whom or for whom. I’m not asking you to wait for me. Don’t do it, Bresnam. Even if that’s on my list of fantasies. It survived the burning of the letters because it was in my head, and now it’s burning inside me. I need for my head to stop burning.
And I know we agreed we’d stop calling each other Bresnam and LeCaptain. But for me, you will always be my Bresnam. And I will be your LeCaptain. Always yours.
ILYSM, Bresnam.
And you too, Barb.
PS: You’ve managed to do something no one has done before: make me follow Taylor Swift on Instagram. (I needed to finish by trying to get a smile out of you.)
He got one. Surprisingly, he got one. And then I realized that I too hadn’t believed the lie about the lie. I don’t mean his lie about the lie. I mean my lie about the lie. I was still in love with him. And I would wait for him until he returned. No matter how long he took.
I could even stop now, Alice, leaving aside several more details. And this time, there wouldn’t be anything left to say. As you already know, Chris died a few hours later.