15
Sienna
Oddly, I am not infuriated by his suggestion that my mother didn’t write these letters but I feel I’m floating above it all, somehow, waiting to see how I’ll feel when I better understand what he means. Maybe it’s my meds. Why would he make something like this up and tell me now, a day after breast cancer surgery?
From my place of emotional suspension, I replay all the letter giving—mostly birthdays but also significant events. Dad knocking on my door, handing me a letter, saying that he would give Mom and me some time to ourselves, as though she might pop out of the envelope and sit on the edge of the bed for a visit.
Tyson is the only person I’ve ever let read the letters. They are the most private and personal things I own, and I’d shared them a few months before we got married because I had wanted him to feel my mother the way I felt my mother. He’s also the only person who knows that sometimes they make me feel guilty for not being the person she’d expected me to be. Tyson had held me after that confession—we’d been married about a year—kissed my forehead, and made no judgment. Had he already believed Mom didn’t write them when he’d comforted me? I imagine shadows moving behind a curtain, watching my life, fabricating my reality. And Tyson watching the shadows, sharing a quick nod of conspiracy while I was trying to be gracious about such a gift.
He holds my eyes, then lets out a breath I suspect he’s been holding as he’s watched my thoughts play out on my face. “I started to suspect after the wedding letter.”
It wasn’t hard to recall the wedding day letter. I had been curling my hair the morning of the wedding—no one was helping me—and my stomach was in knots because of time lines and rain during the night and the fear of sweating through my dress. I was thinking that maybe I should wear my Levi’s jacket over the dress. It would go with the cowboy boots, and only Tyson’s family would think it weird for the bride to have denim over her knee-length dress, but I hated covering up the pretty lace. Dad had knocked on my bedroom door and come in before I told him he could. What if I’d still been getting dressed? I had bitten back the impulse to take my frustrations out on him and instead met his eyes in the bathroom mirror with a forced smile.
“Wow, sweetie. You look amazing.”
I softened a bit—I’m such a girl sometimes. “Thanks, Dad.” I had to move my attention back to the curling iron, which was why I didn’t see the letter until he put it on the counter, between my Cover Girl mascara—waterproof just in case I cried, though I didn’t think I would—and my Wet n Wild blush. Thank goodness I’d put the K-Y Jelly in my bag a few minutes ago. I stared at the letter, hating the way my stomach dropped at the sight and wishing I could ask Dad to take it back. I glanced from the letter to Dad’s face to the strip of mahogany-colored hair—Clairol 113—wrapped around the curling iron and smoking as the hair spray burned.
Once I read the letter half an hour later, I felt bad for being so hesitant. It was sweet and encouraging and made me feel that I was on track to meet my mom’s expectations of me. That it made me cry a little because my mom wasn’t there to share the day was overshadowed by all the good things. I told myself that a lot of brides cry on their wedding day; my tears were just for a different reason than most, and I very well might have cried about Mom not being there without the letter reminding me. I slipped it into my purse so that it would go with me to my new life in Chicago.
In the present, I swallow, still looking at Tyson and hovering over this scene. “The wedding day letter?”
Tyson nods. “During one of our hotel stays, while you were getting ready.” He smiled like that nervous groom he’d been—the reminder makes me blush, but I refuse the temptation to indulge in memories of that night. “Anyway, a bunch of wedding cards and things fell out of your purse, and I was straightening up and saw the letter. You’d already told me about it, and I didn’t think you would mind my reading it, so I read it and . . . it just sounded weird.”
“Weird, how?”
“Well, it said something about you being the prettiest bride in the state of Wyoming.”
I nod. It hadn’t stood out to me. “So?”
“Well, how would your mom know you would get married in Wyoming?”
“My dad is from here and he’s always known he’d inherit the ranch. It wasn’t rocket science for her to assume we’d come back.” Because Mom had written the letters when she was dying. As a final gift to the daughter she would never know at any of the crossroads ahead. Surely, Mom and Dad had talked about Dad bringing me back to the ranch, right? Dad has told me that they all would have come back if Mom hadn’t gotten sick. I’ve never wondered why they hadn’t come back sooner. I’m coming down from where I’ve been apart from this conversation. Defensiveness is prickling through my extremities.
“It was just so certain, that’s all.” Tyson shrugged. “I mean, what if you’d been married on a beach in Hawaii or what if your Dad had stayed in Canada? And then all the letters had things that just sounded so old-fashioned. One of the letters talked about her looking at you in a cradle while she wrote the letter, and the advice about being subservient to your husband. It assumed you wouldn’t want a career, assumed you wanted a big family, and put all this pressure on you living out some legacy for your mom and dad, even Grandma Dee.” He pauses, and his eyes tighten as though he’s afraid he’s said too much. “And it’s not like I knew she hadn’t written it because of that, I just thought it was weird. So I flipped over the stationery and read the date, and then you came out of the bathroom and I flung it to the side and threw my arms open.” He throws his arms open to demonstrate, and I’m taken back to that exact moment—I had opened the bathroom door of the Holiday Inn wearing a pink lace nightie one of my high school friends had given me at my bridal shower. Tyson was in bed with the covers pulled up to his chest as if he were in an episode of I Love Lucy. As soon as he saw me, he threw his arms open. In that moment, I had been his whole world and nothing existed but us. I blush again to remember it, embarrassed to have been that girl with so many stars in her eyes. Now he is watching my reaction, and I am embarrassed by that, too.
The memory hangs in the air like a fly strip in August. Do I remember a flash of green stationery flying to the side? He’d known almost five years ago that the letters weren’t what I thought they were and he’d never told me? Never even hinted. Not even when I’d told him how the sixteenth birthday letter sounded like it could have been written by . . . Grandma Dee. I finish the fall and am back in my body, looking at Tyson and trying to make sense of this. He has proof.
“What was the date on the back of the stationery?”
“2000.”
I was six years old in 2000. My mother had been dead for four years. The letters had always parroted Grandma, but I’d assumed it was because she and Mom wanted the same things for me. A slow, hot burn starts in my belly, and I cross my arms over my chest as best I can with the bandages. My breathing is coming faster. I can’t swallow.
“You never told me you suspected anything.” My voice is low, showing the hurt. “All these years.”
“I should have, and I’m sorry. I just . . . I just didn’t want to ruin it for you. Didn’t want to cast a shadow on your dad.”
Dad had facilitated the deception even if it hadn’t been his idea. I am such an idiot. I hadn’t liked the letters and yet I’d not once thought to check for a date on the stationery. I should have looked into every detail of the paper, envelopes, looping Ls, and slanted Ys. Why hadn’t I figured this out before Tyson did?
The room spins slightly, and I feel as if I’m going to slide off the bed. Thoughts poke at me like pins.
“Sienna?”
I open my eyes. When had I closed them? Tyson has stood up from the cheap little table he’s been using as a desk and is now waiting next to my bed.
“Are you okay? You’re looking pale.” The look of sympathy on his face disgusts me.
I glare at him, and suddenly it’s so easy to be mad at him for this. “Oh, am I looking pale? My apologies.”
He stays where he is and pulls his eyebrows together. “Uh, I wasn’t being critical.”
He reaches out and touches my shoulder. I wrench it away from him, sending a jolt of pain all the way through my right side. I put a hand to my head, which is suddenly throbbing, and wish I could stand up and stomp out of this motel room. It occurs to me that every time I feel overwhelmed by something, I want to run away. My eyes are stinging, and I don’t want him to see me fall apart. “I need you to go.” My voice is shaky.
“It’s almost time for your pain pill.”
“I don’t need a pain pill, and I don’t need you!” I scream. I feel a splitting off again as though the tired, hurting, and scared part of me takes a giant step to the left and the angry, defensive, confused part stays here in this bed and tries to make herself big and loud like a grizzly bear. “Can you just go?”
His jaw tightens, and he looks as if he’s going to say something but thinks better of it.
He puts up both hands in surrender. “Okay, I’ll go grab us something to eat. I just—”
“Go!” I scream louder than either of us expects. He startles, then turns toward the door. I imagine him going through it and then me throwing all the furniture in front of the door the way they do in cartoons, so he can’t come back in. He shouldn’t have told me this. Not now. But then he should have told me a long time ago. And Dad . . . Dad. As one truth after another has crumbled, I’ve tried to put off judgment and remind myself of all the good he’s done for me. But this? How can I justify this? My chin starts to quiver, and I cover my face with my left hand. The door closes behind Tyson.
Who has seen the wind?
In the solitude I completely fall apart.
Dad lied to me?
Lied.
To me.
My whole life.
Mom didn’t write the letters.
Dad pretended that she did.
Tyson knew it.
He didn’t tell me either.
Someone else wrote the letters.
Tricked me.
Who?