Jody stood at the foot of her bed, opened letters scattered over the quilt her brother’s wife had knit for her. Jody didn’t particularly like the quilt, the colors were unappealing, the fabric stiff and itchy, but obligation prompted her to keep it nonetheless. She slowly touched the letters, carefully pulling creamy papers from yellowed envelopes, running her finger over the indents of the writing. Her eyes eagerly ran across the pages, devouring the words and thoughts of people she did not know, strangers who existed only in the contents of their letters.
She read over all twenty letters, absorbing the messages then tediously folding up the paper and sliding it back into its envelope. She arranged the envelopes in their shoebox then pushed it to the back of the closet shelf, tucked far away so the kids couldn’t reach it. Her brother insisted that his boys knew not to go into Jody’s room, but something about those wild-eyed creatures made her suspicious.
Through the thin plaster of her bedroom walls, Jody could hear her brother’s thick voice calling his boys. “Fox, James, let’s get a move on it!” He called from the front door, then there was the sound of little feet treading carpet as the kids scampered past Jody’s bedroom and out the door. They breathlessly ran under their father’s arm as he held the door for them and Jody could hear them yell their goodbyes to their mother.
Fox and James knew of the aunt that wordlessly lived down the hall from them yet they hardly ever uttered her name, hardly encountered passing thoughts of this pale, old ghost. Jody sighed. She had watched them grow, heard them learn to speak, yet they barely knew her.
***
Colin burst through the office door, pulling on a cigarette and pushing a cart of boxes. Jody watched him as he pulled up next to her and dropped a box on top of the papers on her desk. Jody watched her hands in her lap as Colin pulled a second box from the cart and dumped it on top of the first. He puffed his cigarette slowly, holding in the smoke so that his lungs absorbed the bitter taste. Jody finally pulled her eyes from her hands and looked up at him and he exhaled the smoke in her face. He smiled slyly as she watched him with tired eyes.
“You got somethin to say?” He said, gruffly. She shook her head. They both knew he wasn’t allowed to smoke in the office. But above that, both of them were blatantly aware that no one was going to say anything. He pointed to his boxes with his cigarette then popped it back into his mouth, savoring it like candy. “Hank ain’t gon be here today, so you gotta pick up the slack.” Then Colin was gone, a trail of wispy smoke in his wake.
The office was small, only an open room with three desks and a small bathroom at the back. Colin’s desk was at the front, closest to the door, yet it was oftentimes unattended. Hank’s desk faced Jody’s, towers of papers and envelopes barely balancing on the slightly slanted desk surface. Hank was a walking contradiction. One day he would be hairy and loud, breath laden with alcohol and hands heavy with sleep. Then he would be clean and shaven, his hair combed and his comments intellectual. Some weeks he worked tirelessly and efficiently, plowing through letter after letter. Other weeks he didn’t show up to the office at all, sometimes he didn’t even call. Jody didn’t mind too much. Hank was either too enthralled in his work or too drunk to talk to her.
It was the Dead Letter Office, where all undeliverable mail was examined and ultimately delivered or terminated. The job was easy enough. Read the letters and see if you can pull any information from it that will somehow connect the letter to the receiver or to the writer.
Jody relished these letters, relished the stories and emotions people poured into the envelopes. All the lovers who had sprayed their letters with perfume, all the college students who missed their parents, all the children who wrote with wax crayons or washable markers, they all somehow ended up here. They all somehow found their way to her, Jody, the only one whose eyes would ever read their letters, the only one whose hands would ever smooth the paper. These were her friends. They were the only ones who never asked anything of her except to listen, except to read and to hear them.
Most of the letters were inevitably disposed of, they contained stories but never information. There were names but no places, descriptions of homes but no addresses. Sometimes Jody couldn’t throw them out, sometimes the sadness or the lust or the happiness or the love of the letter grasped onto Jody, as though it was meant for her, and so she slipped them into her purse and took the strangers home with her. She put them in her shoebox and let them rest at the back of the closet until she needed her friends and she would read them. Over and over and over again. Until she didn’t need to read them at all, until she could just recite the words herself. But to feel the curl of the handwriting under her finger, to trace the words was to hold their hand, to feel their presence.
Jody sat quietly at her desk, meticulously reading letter after letter as she twirled a strand of grey hair. She constantly stopped reading to smooth her dark purple skirt or to adjust her black turtleneck. She would consistently touch the curls of her short hair or take off her glasses to wipe them with her skirt. Sometimes she could feel Colin’s stare on her back as she would do these things, only prompting her to do it even more. What if he was staring at a tag that stuck out? Or maybe her hair was out of place. Or maybe she smelled or maybe she looked fat or maybe she was just funny looking, maybe Colin just liked to stare. She would press her hand to the back of her head to smooth her hair over and over until the sensation of Colin’s gaze had surpassed or he pulled himself from his ogling to call her out on her ticks.
“Jo, Jo, Jo, Jo, don’t you think you’re a little old to worry about appearances?” Colin would chirp from behind her. “Jody, oh, poor Jody, maybe if you focused more on working than on how you look, you might get a promotion and actually make enough to get a decent wardrobe.” And she tried hard not to react but sometimes she would flinch, just ever so slightly, and Colin would chuckle and settle back down, as though he had accomplished something.
***
The letters of the day were relatively unmoving. Becky missed her parents and Shauna sent a postcard from Seattle; Jonathan wish a happy belated birthday to his brother and Alex apologized to Polly for breaking her heart. None of the letters struck Jody as special, as something that was truly meaningful, something that really needed to be remembered. Jody filed through the first box of dead letters before her lunch break, then sat on a bench outside of the building and silently chewed her sandwich. With the second box came another snide remark from Colin and an apology written on pink paper. It read:
Dear Dad,
I'm sorry things turned out this way. For a long time, I wasn't. For a long time, it was just me and mom and everything was okay. We were okay. We laughed and loved and cried and we were a family, even without you. And I wasn't sorry about that because I told myself that you abandoned us, that you didn't love us and so we loved ourselves enough to fill that hole where you once were.
But I see now that I was wrong. You didn't walk away, we pushed you. I've done a lot of reflecting lately and I've come to realize that all my life I believed that you just abandoned us when, in reality, we had abandoned you. You tried so hard to stick around and love me and I just shut you out.
I can see the way my husband looks at our daughter, like she has all the answers, like the key to happiness and tranquility lies in the small hands of this little girl. And I remember you, I remember before you left, you used to look at me like I had the answers. I always thought it was because you expected me to have all the answers, like I was supposed to know everything and tell you everything. But I know now that I didn’t need to know the answers because I was the answer. I was your answer to everything difficult, to everything backbreaking, ballbusting, heartbreaking, I was the answer. I was your answer and I pushed you away, I left you with only questions and for so many years I had so many questions too, so many questions about you and me and I realize now that I am the answer. I have always been the answer.
I know it’s been 10 years and I know that this might not even be the right address and I know that you might not even want to write back, might not even want to read this. I know all these things and I understand them and I accept them but regardless of whether you ever respond, I need you to know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry for forcing you out of my life and hating you for believing that you had forced me out of yours. I’m sorry for never answering, for refusing to be the answer. I’m sorry.
Your daughter,
Elizabeth
PS. Here’s a picture of my family at that diner we used to go to in Savannah. The place did some remodeling, but it still feels the same. Still feels cozy and inviting. Maybe one day we can go together again.
Jody put down the letter and, with shaky hands, pulled from the envelope a little polaroid picture. She gently held the edges of the photo as she examined the faces that looked back at her. The young family smiled brightly in front of a brick storefront with the gleaming sign “Pat’s Pancakes”. The young mother, with her light hair pulled away from her face and her lips perfectly glossed, propped her small, blonde-haired, green-eyed child on her hips. The father wrapped his arm around his wife’s back, his face still but his eyes dancing. She gently traced the faces of the family, breathing slowly as she put the picture down and picked up the letter again, her fingers grazing the curling letters.
Behind her, Colin stirred from his lazy slumber and pulled from his desk another pack of cigarettes. Jody could hear the whooshing of the match as the flame breathed to life, climbing down the shaft of the match as Colin lit his cigarette. Colin rolled back his chair and stood, the chair sighing with relief. Jody quickly jammed the letter and photo back into the envelope and dropped it in her purse as cigarette smoke wafted to her desk and Colin neared.
“Anything interestin?” He asked, leaning in closely to look at the paperwork. He reached over her shoulder to pull up the top papers and gaze at the ones underneath, his breath sweaty with stale food and tobacco. Jody shook her head quickly, staring down at her hands again. Colin hovered for a bit, slowly inhaling the sweet smoke, sighing as he exhaled, his body visibly relaxing as the nicotine rushed through his veins. A bit of ash fluttered to the ground next to Jody’s feet, smoking for just a moment, then dying out. Colin ground his foot into the ashed carpet, then wordlessly walked away.
***
As she walked through the door, Jody could hear the chatter of her brother’s family as they ate dinner. There was the firm voice of her brother, asking his boys what they had learned that day. Fox and James talked over each other, excitedly telling their father about the paintings they had painted and the dances they had danced. Jody silently walked up the stairs to her room, clicking the door shut then locking it. She placed her purse on her bed and sat next to it, bending over to pull her shoes from her feet. She sat for a moment, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror and instinctively reaching her hand to the back of her head to smooth her hair.
She had her mother’s thick, corkscrew curls. She remembered crying, as a little girl, her mother trying to untangle the knots in her long hair. She would sit Jody in front of her ivory vanity, cluttered with creamy eye-shadows and rich lipsticks. And Jody would sit quietly and watch her face become red and blotchy, her eyes puffy and watery, as her mother would stand behind her and run the comb through the knotted hair. “Beauty is pain, Jody” her mother used to say. And when her mother had untangled as many knots as she possibly could, she would lean next to Jody so that their faces were pressed together. She would wrap her arms around her daughter and, squeezing her tightly, would say “look at that beautiful little girl staring back at you, isn’t she breathtaking?”
And Jody would nod and smile and swipe at her tears. She would stare at the mirror long after her mother had left and try to see the beauty her mother spoke of, tried to see how perfect her curls were, yet the only thing she saw looking back at her was her bloated face, tense from the tugging of her hair.
“Perhaps we could cut it,” Jody ventured to say one day when she was older. The suggestion took her mother by surprise, “cut it?” she had responded as she twirled her own long strands. Jody nodded slowly, as though she might answer incorrectly. “Well, if that’s what you would like.” And so her hair was cut. And so it never grew back. And her mother would always say the same thing, “look at that beautiful little girl staring back at you…” but with less conviction, but with an empty, almost sad, smile.
Thinking of her mother, Jody’s eyes wandered to the framed photo of her family that rested on her mother’s old vanity. Covered in a thin layer of dust - Jody didn’t wear makeup, the vanity sat in the corner of the room, not for its use, but for the familiarity of its presence. The vanity held only the framed photograph and a wooden jewelry box, also her mother’s, also hardly used.
The photo was taken when Jody was in her twenties. Jody stared at the camera, her lips turned up just slightly, her short curls crowding her face, her skin dull and clothes plain. Her brother towered next to her, his face gleaming at the camera. His dark hair shiny and combed so not a single strand was out of place, his thin-framed glasses emphasizing the color of his eyes. Jody could not recall the occasion in the photo, but from the way her brother commanded the photograph, the way he embraced the camera, she supposed that it was a celebration for him. They were always celebrating him.
Next to Jody was her mother, with her perfect curls and her expensive makeup. And standing, proudly, alongside her brother was Jody’s father, the tall, rigid chief of police that had taken a bullet once or twice and always left the room when Jody cried. The man sent shivers running down Jody’s spine. She could hear his voice clearly, bouncing off the walls, filling rooms, a booming thunder that slipped through the cracks of her fingers when Jody covered her ears.
Jody could recall countless family dinners when the meals had long gone cold but her father forced them to remain seated until Jody contributed enough to the conversation. “George, don’t be so harsh on the girl. She’s not a talker, nothin wrong with that,” her mother would sympathize. But to no avail.
Jody’s father would shake his head, “if she ain’t got much to say then maybe that’s cause she ain’t done much thinking, ever thought of that, Evelyn? We got to get those brain cells stimulated.” The dinners would painfully drag on, her mother nudging her foot under the table, prompting Jody to say something, anything. But Jody could not find the words. She hardly ever could. Her tongue felt like a foreign object inside of her mouth, like the words it formed were somehow wrong or insufficient. She could feel her vocal cords tremble as she would speak, her voice sounding like that of a stranger’s, like she was never meant to talk and that’s why it never sounded right to her. And her father never understood it, never got why his daughter, the creature born of his strong genes and tireless labor, was so weak and feeble and inadequate.
The pitter-patter of feet rushing down the hallway pulled Jody from her thoughts. She forced herself to look away from the photograph. Look away from the mother, now dead for twenty years, who bore the shy little girl with the short hair. Look away from the brother, who four years Jody’s junior, supported her financially, graciously welcoming her into his home without receiving a vocal “thank you”. Look away from the father, from the eyes that still peered at her with disgust, even from the rotting grave. Look away.
In a hurry to bury the gurgling panic inside of her, her father always stirred a hot panic that itched her skin and upset her stomach, she pulled from her purse Elizabeth’s letter. She read it, over and over and over again, until the panic settled.
Sitting on her bed, Jody understood that this was one of those precious letters that she craved. It seemed to be calling her name, seemed to be begging to be kept, to be read and remembered. Yet when she ran her fingers over the bubbling letters of Elizabeth’s writing, Jody understood that this wasn’t her letter to keep.
It couldn’t be terminated, couldn’t be tossed away or burned to ash, but it also couldn’t be hers. She read the letter over once again, tracing the words with her fingers. She was about to fold it up and put the envelope in the shoebox, as she had done so many times before, when her finger grazed the back of the letter. She could feel the rise and fall of the paper where something had been written.
Quickly she unfolded the letter and turned it around, examining the back of the page. And there it was, as though a last minute thought, a phone number quickly scrawled on the backside of the letter. “P.S. In case you ever decide you want to talk, here’s my number,” Jody whispered to herself. She swallowed a yelp of surprise, a yelp of utter joy and astonishment.
Never, literally never, had Jody ever come across a letter like this. A letter she could actually save. Sure the ones she collected were saved in some sense, because they were not thrown away. But still, they suffered a fate other than which they were designed for. These letters existed in the back of her closet, their messages known only to her. They lived in isolation, separated from those who they were destined to be with. But this one, Elizabeth’s letter, this was the exception.
***
Jody tugged at a loose thread on the sleeve of her turtleneck. She stared intensely as the edge of her sleeve frayed and unraveled. She hated herself for tugging the thread, it was ruining one of her favorite sweaters. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to stop. She willed her hand to cease its pulling but it did no such thing. She had just come back from her lunch break and was sitting at her desk nervously, reaching for the phone once, twice, a third time, but never actually touched it. She picked up the letter, which lay limply on top of all her papers, the envelop with the photo inside sitting beside it. She ran her fingers over the number, one more time, reminding her of what she had to do.
Jody breathed deeply and picked up the phone on her desk. She brought it to her ear and carefully punched in the numbers on the keypad. In all her years of working at the Dead Letter Office, Jody had never used the phone, not even to call her brother. She had touched it to clean it, to wipe off the dust that quickly accumulated, but never to talk into it.
The phone rang once, long and slow. Jody had never been good at talking on the phone. Her hands would shake, her voice would stutter, her words nearly inaudible. The phone rang a second time and Jody felt her tongue swell in her dry mouth, the idea of speaking horrified her. Maybe they won’t pick up, maybe they aren’t home. The phone rang a third time and it occurred to Jody that she could just hang up, nothing was stopping her.
And then the phone wasn’t ringing. And then there was a breathy voice on the other line, saying “hello?” into the phone. Jody paused, froze, completely freaked out inside her head yet remained physically still. “Hello?” The voice asked again, “is anybody there?”
Jody breathed, deeply, slowly, trying to still the chaos in her mind. “Ye- yes, I’m here. Here…. Here I am…” She spit out. “Is this… Is this Elizabeth?”
“Yes,” the voice replied.
“I’m… I’m Jo- Jody. I work at the Dead Letter Office…” Her voice was low, her words crawling out of her mouth reluctantly. “We came across your letter. The one you sent to your father but the address was invalid.”
“Invalid?”
“That means… That… It means that the address was wrong or doesn’t exist and there was… no… no return address… This normally doesn’t happen…. We usually have to throw… throw these kinds of letters away…. But you left this number on the letter…” Jody stopped speaking, her body visibly shaking. She was out of breath, she hardly ever spoke. Fox and James barely knew the sound of her voice, her brother had long ago stopped trying to involve her in family discussions or any discussion at all. And now here she was, on the phone with a stranger, explaining the rarity of Elizabeth’s letter. Elizabeth remained silent on the other end of the line. Jody forced herself to continue. “We could either… either send the letter back to you… or if you have a new address… we could send it to…. send it to the father…”
“Alright, ummm…” There was a pause, the shuffling of papers. “I suppose you can just send it my way.” Jody fumbled around in her purse to grab a pen and something to write on. Elizabeth gave Jody her address. Jody wrote it down on a new envelope. The two women ended the call, Jody’s heart racing while the other woman probably carried on as usual. Jody placed the old envelope with the letter inside the new one, her hands still shaking yet not as much. She sealed the envelope, the first time she had ever done so in this office. She couldn’t help but smile as she stood up and walked confidently over to Colin, the first time she had ever done so in this office.
“What’s with you?” He asked as she approached proudly.
“I… I found one…”
“Found what?”
“Someone to send a letter to…” Colin looked up at her quizzically as he took the envelope from her hand. He examined it then nodded his head.
“Okay.”
Jody waited, thinking he would say more. But he did not speak. And she did not speak. And so she walked back to her desk and sat down and the day carried on as any other day would, except Jody found herself smiling every so often.
And the day ended and she drove home and walked through the door while her brother’s family was seated for dinner. Typically she would have silently walked to her room and shut herself in there until everyone had settled for the night and then she’d slip out of her room, like a mouse, and find something small to eat. Yet today she found herself walking into the kitchen. And she found herself saying “hello”, the first time she had done so in weeks.
Her brother’s eyes sparkled with delightful shock as his wife asked if Jody would like to join them for dinner. Jody nodded yes and the wife stood to set a plate and silverware for Jody. Fox and James politely acknowledged their aunt yet did not know what to say to her, but their acknowledgment was good enough. Throughout the dinner, Jody managed to tell her story, and they all applauded her and were delighted by the sudden color that filled her thin, pale face.
The day that would follow would be more like the days where Jody hardly existed and she would find herself retreating back into her room. But there were days that followed later on where she found herself pulling herself from the isolation of her room and her shoebox and forced herself to sit at the dinner table, something she had very rarely done.
And Elizabeth got her letter back and maybe she sent it to the right address and maybe she didn’t. Maybe she threw it out and maybe she kept it in a shoebox of her own, but there would never be a way to know. But it wasn’t about knowing where the letter inevitably ended up, it wasn’t even about the relationship between father and daughter.
It was about Jody, it was about the part she played. The pebble that rippled the water in ways she could never fully comprehend. It wasn’t about where the letter ended up, it could end up in a thousand different places, touched by a thousand different hands and read by a thousand different eyes. No, it wasn’t about the end, it rarely ever is. It was about where it started, with Jody, with her sudden courage to pick up the phone, with the sudden urge to speak and to be heard instead of merely listening. And the sudden understanding that she could make a difference. It started with Jody and where it ended up, well, that’s not as important.