Page 23 of After His Eulogy
“Did you…“
He stops.
“Did I what.”
“Did you, when you sat in that apartment, in the new city, in the new… Reed. Did you ever try.”
“Try what.”
“To find me. To send something. A postcard with no name. Anything. In two years. Did you ever try.”
I look at him. I do not say anything for a second.
“I tried twice,” I say.
He looks at me.
“Twice.”
“Yes.”
“Tell me.”
“The first time was three weeks before I left. Before the apartment had been entered. Back when I still thought I was coming back in six months. I sat at our kitchen table at three in the morning. You were asleep on the other side of the bedroom door. Six feet away. I wrote you a letter.”
“What did it say.”
“It said I love you. It said I am about to do something stupid. I am going to be gone for a while. I am going to come back. Wait for me. It said something like that. I wrote it twice. I crossed it out twice. I tore the pages into squares and ran them under the faucet until the ink dissolved.”
“Why.”
“Because if you got it and waited, and then I did not come back, the waiting would have been the thing. The waiting would have been worse than the way I haven’t known. I could not do that to you. I could not. Griffin. I could not give you a sentence that said come back if I was not coming back. Mendez hadn’t told me yet. I still thought I was coming. But I could not promise it. I could not promise you something I might not be able to give. The not-promising made the letter useless. So I ran it under the faucet.”
He does not say anything.
“That was the first time.”
“Tell me the second.”
“The second was eighteen months in. I was in the second town. Not this one — the one before. I’d been there a year. I was — Griffin. I was bad. Had been bad for months. Wasn’t eating. Wasn’t sleeping. Sitting in my apartment for whole weekends not moving. I’d decided I was going to break the rules. Decided I didn’t care. I’d write you a postcard with no signature and no return address. One sentence.I am alive.That was all. I’ddecided you deserved to have it. Decided it for a week. Bought the postcard. Bought a stamp. Walked to the post office on a Saturday morning, stood in front of the slot, postcard in my hand.”
“And.”
“And I thought about who might be watching the post office.”
He looks at me.
“I don’t know if anyone was watching the post office. I’ve never known. The program had told me they did not think anyone would be looking that far out, that long after. But the program had been wrong about a lot of things. I was standing in a post office with a postcard that had your address on it. Your address, Griffin. Your name.I am alive.Anyone who picked it up before it got to you would have a thread — a city, me, you. The postcard wasn’t, Griffin. It wasn’t a letter to you. It was a way of telling whoever was looking exactly where I was, and exactly who I’d be looking for if I were them. I stood in front of the slot for I do not know how long. A long time. Long enough that the woman behind the counter started looking at me. I put the postcard in my coat pocket. I walked out. I went home. I tore it up.”
He is not looking at me. He is looking at his hand on the chair.
“That was the second time.”
“That was eighteen months in.”
“Yes.”
“You stood in a post office for I do not know how long with a postcard with my name on it.”
