She sat down to read it in the lobby of the Ritz, in one of the straight-backed chairs. Kathy squirmed in to sit beside her. She leaned her chin on Mary’s arm.
Darling Mary:
Since we talked I’ve tried a dozen times to get you but it’s only that Ahmed character who answers. He’s promised to say I’m calling but every number I can give is temporary. I don’t think he ever gave you any message. That’s misery—but not like before, when I thought you’d split. Now I know you won’t.
I told you I would have to give up and sign up, shed this whole trial mess. Hayden came here and we talked, a good visit. There was Paco, too, like old times, and Father Tomlinson. I felt they were launching me, like a ship. One phrase keeps running through my mind. We must have said it dozens of times: We’ve helped, we’ve done what we could, We’ve helped, we’ve slowed them. We’ve helped, maybe even stopped them. We’ve helped.
I think if this judge had been all, he would have let me off— he’s about as anti-war, etc., as you could find. But my case has boiled up high on his docket and the best agreement he can get is to let me run away to the conflict. What a good joke it must be to somebody. We may never know who. Something’s been at work.
Judge Madero is pretty unique. We’ve had some talks. He was in Korea, but since then, he says, the country’s gotten wrong-headed, “A beautiful face broken out with smallpox. Go on out there and die.” He was joking, but I got the drift.
My draft board was in Baton Rouge (still), so I had to call the old man to go down and get papers for me. We hadn’t talked in what’s maybe years. I’ve lost count. He’s fine! Went AA along with his woman friend after the police had found them both passed out on the sidewalk down in a bad section of town. Some blacks had hauled them in off the street. He’s getting married.
Maybe I should have stuck it out down there with him instead of plunging in with Ethan to try and turn things around. You’ve got to understand, though, that I’m not backing down. But to go to prison, what good would that be to you and Kathy? At least you’ll get a monthly check. Ramparts showed up, when I didn’t make the date in Chicago. They want news from another sort of front lines. A book will come out of it, and I’ll tell you why. I’m going to be in on the last days. I’m certain of it. It’s dying from the head down but the tail is still thrashing. How long? Don’t know. I’ll be in on the end. That’s some consolation.
What I lie awake and wonder is, who got them to smoke me out as exploding a minor little munitions factory two years ago up north of Sausalito? Who? Does it connect to the fire at St. Jovite? My imagination sure gets active around three A.M., especially without you and Kathy around to touch and hold.
We had such a good few months in Montreal. Remember our little A-frame in the Laurentians? I’ll rerun those like a private home movie all the rest of the time I’m away.
Another thing I keep wondering is how you must have felt that time you tried to write yourself off. You told me it was so you wouldn’t be there for your mother to reject anymore. It would be a scene without you, and better. You thought. But, believe me, nothing could ever be better without you.
I keep thinking of the old man. When I get out of this, I want you to know him. I never said it before, never thought it before. He’s come up out of it all, whatever held him down. That’s something.
Let’s say I’m going off the scene now, but just for a while. We’ll strike up some new music once all this is over. They’re bound to let us come back someday. There are some with big hearts still. Let’s believe in them.
I think your Estes character cares enough not to let you down. I’ll be back before you know it. I’ll find you dancing.
Jeff.
When Mary finished the letter she walked over to Aunt Jane.
“Jeff’s signed up for Vietnam. He’s going out there, in spite of everything.”
Aunt Jane then said a curious thing. “Then it will all be regular.”
“Yes, regular,” Mary agreed, seeing how the reasoning went. If he gets killed, he gets killed regular. That would be better than doing anything that’s irregular and staying alive at peace with what he thought was right.
She was knotting her hands, standing there with Kathy just behind her (the child for one long singular moment utterly forgotten and knowing that she was). Mary felt the color draining from her, whitening out to nothing. Only to be free of them, free of them all forever, their thinking so awful, so wrong, so nothing like Jeff. Get out now, at once, forever. Suddenly she wheeled around, searching wildly until she found the door, then plunged for it, and would have made it through to wind up God alone knew where.
But what stopped her was something unexpected from Aunt Jane, who with the surprise athleticism of a girls’ camp counselor, sprang up and ran in front of Mary and cried out, loud enough to be heard all the way to the mahogany registration desk.
“Mary Kerr, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t love you! I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t loved Ethan!”
Mary felt herself stopped, her body rejoining itself, her color coming back. Love. The manicured hands with their pale-colored nails and the rings, the white gold filigree and the star sapphire, pressed against her shoulders. She was stopped. Love.
Jeff had said it once: “When you stop, your strength goes. When you look back, you crystallize. When you hesitate, you’re lost.” She thought it was true.
She would always see that one moment when she didn’t make it through the door of the Ritz, as the drop over a cliff’s edge, the point of her own special strength’s sudden decline.