C.J. had waited for me to finish at the nursing home and was taking me home, saving Wyatt an extra trip. He spent the time rattling on about what a bad idea going to Knoxville was.
I finally interrupted him by blurting out, “Did you know Shelby kept every letter I sent her when I was in the air force?”
Startled, and probably trying to figure out what this had to do with anything, C.J. slowed the truck to take the next turn. “She told you that?”
“After they diagnosed her with Alzheimer’s and she went to live at Mountain View, I was organizing her stuff. It was hard to look at her clothes every day when I knew she wouldn’t ever come home. In this one drawer, she had all her, you know, delicates. I guess she figured I would never look in there, and she’s right, I didn’t until she was gone. When I pulled the clothes out, I found all these envelopes bundled together with lace strings.”
“Your letters.”
I turned my head to look out the window and sniffled. I hadn’t planned on telling him any of this, but it suddenly seemed important. “Every one of them. At least I think it’s all of them. It’s not as though I remember them all, but she had the letters she had sent to me too. I knew I had brought them home but just figured I’d lost them or something. She had organized everything in order—her letter to me, my reply, her reply, and so on. They were worn and faded as if she had pulled them out over the years and read them. I never knew she did that.”
My friend nodded. “Women are so much more romantic than we are. When Wanda died, I found all sorts of things I didn’t know she had kept. She even pressed flowers I had given her in her Bible.”
I felt a tear slip down my face and kept my focus on the passing tobacco field. “When things went downhill, she remembered less and less about what she had for breakfast. The nurses suggested I read to her—a favorite book, journals, her old letters. After dinner now, I’ll sit beside her bed and read them to her like it’s a novel until she falls asleep. It’s like reliving an old conversation just on paper.”
“She must really like that.”
“When she knows they are between us, yes.” I sighed. “I must’ve read them a hundred times by now. Probably more. And I figured something out.”
“What?”
“I love her like crazy. I don’t know if she knows it.”
He startled, his eyes growing wide in disbelief. “Of course she knows it. You two have had a long, happy marriage.”
“We had our rough times.”
“Everyone does.”
I didn’t want to dig into all that. I told C.J. almost everything about my life. Almost. “Sometimes she doesn’t realize they’re our letters. She doesn’t remember my name or who I am. She thinks I’m just an employee or a volunteer reading her a Nicholas Sparks novel or something, just letters back and forth.”
“That must hurt.”
More than I could explain. “But I go for the nights she remembers some. Sometimes, she can say the words of the letters along with me, her eyes closed and conjuring up the memory somewhere from that fog. And I don’t just mean her letters. She quotes my letters too. That means she read and reread them all these years until she memorized them.”
“Those must be the best nights.”
“They’re good but not the best.”
C.J., bless him, waited on me to explain rather than asking. It gave me the time I needed to choke back the emotions. “There are nights when I go inside, and she recognizes me but not the now me. She’ll be back in the days Wyatt first came to us, or maybe before Jessica left, or just some random day in between that was good. But the one that happens a lot is she thinks it’s the day I came back from the service, knocked on her door, and asked her for a date. I’ve pulled up in front of her house in the new-to-me Nova, my discharge papers still wet with ink, and asked her dad to let me take her to the movies.”
“And you play along, like that’s what’s happening?”
I nodded. “I get permission from the nurses to take her onto the grounds, outside the security doors. We wander around the parking lot, hand in hand like it’s our first date. She asks to see my new car. Asks if it has a radio as if she’s never seen the inside of it. I guess, in her mind, she hasn’t. I take her over to that old clunker, but she thinks it’s smelling clean and new. I open the passenger door and hold her hand as she sits down. I cross around the front, watching her watching me, and then get in behind the steering wheel. I don’t even start the car because it’s like halfway between being real for her and being a dream. We pretend the car is new, and we’re watching the movie. At some point, just like on that first date, she’ll slide across the front seat and rest her head on my shoulder.” My voice failed me. I studied my gnarled fingers in the silence.
C.J. pulled a red handkerchief out of his overalls’ pocket and blew his nose with a loud honk. “Damn allergies,” he muttered as he gazed out the windows at the mountains rising like hulking shadows against the evening sky.
“I know I’m lucky she’s still alive. It’s not fair because you don’t have Wanda around anymore, but I get to relive the best night of my life over and over because of that car, only it took me a lifetime to figure out it was my best night.” I turned to my friend. “What if tonight had been one of those nights? What if she was ready to go on our date, and I had to tell her I’d lost the car?”
C.J. wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. “That can’t happen. We’ll get that car back.”