Addressing Love and Letters

The truck roared to life again….that is, if you could say life. Tom wasn’t sure how much of a life it was to only stop and start, stop and start all day long. Yet, that’s what this mail truck has been doing...seemingly since before he was born. One day, he thought, he would take this baby out for a long drive, let her see the world beyond her assigned blocks and the post office parking lot.

As the pair rambled down the road, Tom took note of the comings and goings of the people he knew best, his route-mates. Unlike his counterparts, he didn’t merely drive absent-mindedly down each street, grumbling about this or that, only with intimate knowledge of numbers and streets. Tom knew people. He knew their names, the events of their lives, he knew the highs and the lows, the joys and the sorrows, the babies being born and jobs being lost. How did Tom come to acquire such intimate knowledge about so many people? Their mail of course. Careful to never let his eyes linger too long, Tom made mental notes as he flipped through and sorted each homes mail; he noticed things...he inferred, he surmised, he made sure to never breach protocol as he spun the stories of each household, for as much as Tom was curious... imaginative even, he had the kindest of hearts.

Bringing his truck to a crawl in front of the Lieber Household, Tom noted, with pleasure, that not only had their grass been trimmed and edged, but that Mrs. Lieber’s daughter must have planted hydrangeas over the weekend. This daughter was good to her mother, always there to help, even though she herself, was no spring chicken. It was the usual mail for Mrs. Lieber today, her social security check, grocery store sales circulars and another friendly letter addressed with perfect, flowy Catholic School education handwriting, to Mrs. Louis Lieber. Tom could picture this kindly widow, sitting at her kitchen table, cutting coupons, reading and responding to hand-written notes from friends and admiring her new flowers through the window.

Next was the Smith Household...a classic American family. Tom never found it a nuisance to navigate the obstacle course that was their front yard...in fact, if he saw that any of the kids were watching, he would make a show of it...tip-toeing around discarded pairs of brightly colored canvas sneakers, executing a long leap over a bike and it’s accompanying helmet, and sometimes, if he was feeling playful, he would complete his perilous journey with a spin and a bow. Often, when she could come up for air, Mrs. Smith would greet him at the front door, in a harried state, usually with a child or two hanging or clinging, and give him a bag of cookies she had made...cookies that would both pacify and energize her young brood.

The Smith’s always had a steady stream of mail, and today was no exception, there were lots of bills, magazine subscriptions and birthday cards for little Cecelia Smith’s upcoming birthday. There were always birthday cards arriving...he liked that about this house.

Tom loved all of the households on his route, but by far, his favorite, and most challenging story to spin, belonged to the twenty-seventh house on his journey. He found himself approaching the little cedar-shingled cape with a quiet reverence. Much had changed about this household and this home in his five years on the job. The lawn was still perfectly kempt, the yard simply landscaped and the leaves always piled and bagged….although, now due to the kindness of neighbors. He was always happy to see when there was a toy or small bike left strewn on the lawn, or a blanket left on the front porch swing….signs of life. This house lost it’s spark last year, when it’s patriarch passed away...the obituary he found online revealed that Henry Hayes was only 32 when he died. It was hard to remember how similar this house had once been to the Smith’s...children running amok with their readily available playmates, the Brittany spaniel and the golden retriever, sprinklers attached to hoses, waving hello, music playing from somewhere inside, and, most heart-breakingly….laughing parents. Eleanor and Henry seemed to his lonely, yet admiring eyes to have it all. He could tell, without needing the help of their mail, that they were in love and that, most likely, they had been together for a very long time. It was the way they sat entwined on the porch swing, thick as thieves, sipping coffee or cocktails, whispering about one of the kids as they watched them play. It was the way he had seen Henry suddenly use his wife as a human shield during a family water-gun fight, her hazel eyes shocked, offended, then laughing, as her husband snaked his arm around her waist and lifted her off the ground, her gun dangling helplessly from one hand, as she attempted to block her face with the other.

Each day when he parked at the inlet to eat his lunch, and, if he was lucky, the cookies from Mrs. Smith, he would fill more pages in his little black notebook about the Hayes Family than anyone else, making an entry of what he had seen and the mail he had delivered. First, there had only been the typical mail, notes of congratulations on the births of their second and third children, Owen and then only a year later, Emerson, birthday cards for all three, including the eldest, Sage, Valentine’s Day cards and Christmas cards, bills, sales circulars, manuscripts being sent back and forth to and from Eleanor and art submissions from Henry going out, envelope smudged with paint, but always returning to Henry, pristine. But then one day, he began to notice a pattern of mail from hospitals and doctors….first, he happily presumed that there would be another Hayes....but, soon after, noticed letters from oxygen supply companies, the Visiting Nurses Association and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The narrative he had spun, was never what he thought it had been….these weren’t happy care-free people...in love, yes….happy….mostly, he supposed, but far from care-free. As the days went by, there were less Hayes sightings….more unfamiliar cars, cars which he supposed belonged to well-meaning friends and relatives. He began to be filled with anticipatory dread, as his truck stopped two homes before, at the Marshall’s, started again, stopped at the Morgan’s, started again and cautiously crept forward, stopping always then, gently and quietly, parallel to the yellow front door.

When it happened, he had known instantly. The change from the day prior, to that day, was palpable. The street was silent, it was mourning, it was still. In two days time, he had found the obituary, online, and had gone to the services to pay his respects. Six days after he had been buried, he placed the white envelope with Henry’s death certificates sadly in Eleanor’s mailbox. Weeks after that, mail began arriving addressed to The Estate of Henry Hayes instead of just the Hayes Family, as if the family part of them had ceased to exist.

Today, his journey to the yellow front door was a little different, because yesterday, he had received unusual mail himself. Upon arriving home, to his own little apartment overlooking the opposite side of the same inlet where he parked to eat his lunch, Tom discovered the very thing he never expected...but did very much hope to see. A manilla envelope, which he calculated to be 9x12 and weighing enough to require $2.94 of postage, more than would have been required for a polite, ‘thank you for participating letter,’ laid in wait for him. The return address said, The Live Like Henry Foundation.

Hardly daring to breath, the mailman sat down at his desk, removed the silver letter opener from its place in the top drawer, and very carefully sliced a perfectly straight opening through the end of the envelope. Reaching in, he wrapped four fingers behind and a thumb in front of the papers, and freed them from their sleeve. What laid before him, was truly remarkable. It was his artwork….this relaxing hobby…. the paintings and sketches he had done over the years, all inspired by the stories he would weave...all written in his little black notebook….one of them now, took center stage….it was of a familiar family and a familiar moment, a water gun fight in front of a cedar shingled home with a yellow door.

He worried when he submitted it, if it would be too obvious, if it would be too painful for Eleanor, if it wouldn’t be good enough, if it could ever do justice to how she may play and replay that moment in her head. But now, looking down at the letter of congratulations, written in the rounded, hybrid handwriting of Eleanor herself, it seemed that what he had done, had been just right. It was some time, before his eyes could see past the blur of his tears, before he would notice the check, his winnings, in the amount of $20,000.00….his half of the money that had been raised with the generosity of family, friends, neighbors, and publishing and design companies for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

The contest required that one submit artwork that depicted love, plain and simple, love. And now, as he pulled to a stop in front of the yellow door, he brought the regular pile of mail, mail he hadn’t bothered to look through today, a bouquet of flowers, and his own sealed envelope, separate from the rest, for Eleanor. She would be surprised, or maybe not really at all, to find that it was him, that mailmen had last names, that inside there would be a long note, and a check, made from Mr. Thomas Hammond, to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, in memory of Henry Hayes.

It would be some time before his truck started again….in fact, it would go down in history as the longest pause she had experienced between starting and stopping on this familiar route….but longer pauses, at the twenty-seventh house, became customary as the years went on and lunch breaks….well, Tom found much more enjoyment in the view from the front porch of the twenty-seventh house, than he ever did from the inlet.