Dear Sal,
Remember the time we got up in the wee hours to drive to the county fair in Marengo? I balanced my famous strawberry-rhubarb pie on my lap the whole thirty miles, only to drop it in the dirt ten feet before the judging table. I bawled so hard I scared Toby. But you...you picked up the mess and started eating with your hands. I think I called you a damned lunatic—I don’t remember, but I know my mouth and what came out wasn’t nice. I clearly remember what you said. “I’m not tasting this pie. I’m tasting all the pies you’ve made since you cut me a slice and passed it across the counter at the Mondlicht Café. I know what you can do.”
Oh, you wonderful man. You saw everything inside me, every pathway to my heart. Every thought, profound to petty. You laughed away the bad and celebrated the good.
To be known, really known, is the essence of love. To live without love is a shadow life. I crept in that darkness when you left for training, Sal. And it nearly swallowed me whole when you died. In a way, I wanted it to.
Until someone decided she knew me well enough to point out why I had to live. I’m sitting in the room she painted for me right now. The sunflowers on the wall reach for a heaven that’s lucky to have you. She’s stenciled your name on one flower, and mine on another, and Toby’s, Roylene’s and Little Sal’s on the leaves tying them together. She knows what’s in my heart. And she knows because you taught me how to let myself be known.
We arrived yesterday, a two-car caravan—one for us, and another for Mrs. K., Charlie and Irene. The ancient road slowed the wheels, and we chugged up the path like a cab heading to the peak of a roller coaster. So, so slowly. My breath went shallow, then stilled in my lungs. My heart pounded louder than the struggling engine.
The house was smaller than I’d imagined, and painted a peaceful shade of off-white, like fresh milk in a saucer. A woman stood in the screen door, her figure outlined in shadow. She cried out as she skipped across the porch, the wind lifting her dark curls in welcome. I pushed out of the still-moving car and tripped into the brightness of a New England sun. We’d both shrugged off our shoes, though we didn’t know it. Our feet barely touched the ground.
I took her in, no words, no sound, nothing but her steady gaze, a balm to soothe what the terrible war had ravaged. Her capable hands called to me. They held the pen that kept my soul afloat when I wanted to drown it in a bathtub full of grief, and still they reached, their strength holding me up yet again.
We pulled at each other, tugged even—making sure we were real flesh and blood, a dream come to reality. We laughed. We caught tears with the pads of our fingers.
It was glorious.
I’ll remember this moment forever, I thought. I will take its beauty with me.
She was the one who told me I could do that. When I felt you slip from my grasp, she showed me how to dance cheek-to-cheek with my dashing soldier. She taught me how to take the past and press it carefully onto the present moment, so, so gently, as to not mar the future.
It is in these moments, when the past gives the present its rosy glow, that we will find each other.
So I’ll be seeing you, Sal. When your grandson laughs delightedly as his mother pulls a face, I’ll be seeing your sense of humor. When your son sits under an oak tree, scribbling epiphanies in a composition notebook, I’ll be seeing your erudition. When I catch myself swaying to a tune on the radio, I’ll be seeing your grace.
And as I sit here in a room warmed by the sun, in the house of a woman you brought me to, I see your love.
I’ll be seeing you, Sal. Always and forever,
Rita