Next to Sarah, on the other side of the puckered crease, stood a uniquely attractive man. He projected a quiet intelligence and an air of intense pride that made him stand out. Unlike the others, his attire was civilian: a cracked leather vest, plaid shirt, baggy wool pants, and mud-caked rubber boots. One of his hands was bandaged. The other hugged Sarah’s waist in a possessive gesture which she clearly welcomed.
The photograph stood at an angle, in a wooden frame, on a dresser across from Sarah’s bed.
A few years ago, after Zachary died, Sarah removed the photograph from a trunk in the attic, from beneath the books which concealed it, and put it next to the snapshot of she and Zachary and Melanie on the canopied lawn glider. Zachary was a good husband, a loving one, but a man of rigid discipline and conservative principles who would never have understood.
Sarah’s eyes became distant, her concentration so intense she took on the unseeing stare of the blind — a signal to those who knew her that she was making up her mind about something. Then she sat up decisively, and swung her stiffened legs over the side of the bed. Her shawl slipped from her shoulders. She paused briefly to retrieve it, and marshall her strength. The dresser, once a few quick steps away, was an arduous journey now. She struggled to a standing position, and shuffled toward it. The room began whirling around her. Lately, every movement, no matter how measured, made her dizzy, and she despised being so feeble.
“Dammit, Zack,” she complained aloud in a dry, little-used voice, “I hadn’t planned on dying angry — let alone angry at myself.”
Sarah steadied herself against the dresser, grasped the photograph, and turned it facedown. It had a brown paper backing that was glued to the edges of the frame. She pierced it with a nail, and hooked her finger in the opening, ripping a jagged line to a corner. Her fingers slipped between the backing and the photograph, searching for what she had hidden there half a lifetime ago.
Her heart pounded with anticipation and the fear of uncertainty. Maybe it wasn’t there? Maybe Zachary had found it and couldn’t bring himself to confront her? Maybe she had underestimated him, and he could have handled it? God, the thought of being married to someone all those years and not knowing him terrified her now. Sarah’s pulse rate soared. Her face flushed vermilion, warmer than in summer when she sat close to the window, her head thrown back, taking the sun.
She removed the backing completely, revealing an aged white envelope. The flap was sealed. The stamps cancelled and postmarked, Concord, New Hampshire, January 17, 1946. The letter was addressed to:
Gillette Blue
Allied Forces Headquarters
Sector 43-N, Florence, Italy.
Gillette Blue was the code name assigned to an OSS operative by the American Military Command during WWII. And Sarah knew, so addressed, the letter had the best chance of reaching the right person. Surely, Army personnel — who in tribute to his cool, finely honed intelligence had referred to him as “that guy with the mind like a razor” and code-named him accordingly — would see it properly delivered. Yet, stamped in red across Sarah’s precise, flowing script were the words:
ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN/RETURN TO SENDER.
At the time Sarah wrote the letter, she and Zachary, a carpenter by trade, had been married almost four years. They’d spent the first in a trailer while Zachary built their house. The second and third they had been apart — he in the Pacific with the Marines, she in Europe with the Red Cross. They had completed their service tours and returned to Dunbarton within weeks of each other, and those days in the spring of 1945 were the happiest of their lives. Shortly before Christmas of that year, Sarah gave birth to Melanie.
One morning, early in the New Year, Sarah sat in her bedroom nursing her month-old daughter. When the infant dozed at her breast, Sarah placed her in a cradle, and went to the desk next to the window. She placed a blank sheet on the blotter and began writing. The pen moved swiftly across the onionskin, for she had written the words in her mind many times.
On this winter evening, over four decades later, Sarah backed to the edge of the bed, clutching the envelope, and sat down. She lifted the phone on the night table, and painfully worked the rotary dial.
The phone rang once.
Sarah heard a recorded voice say, “Hi, this is Melanie. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave your name and number—”
Sarah sagged against the pillows as her daughter’s voice continued. A profound loneliness came over her. She pulled the quilt to her chin and waited for the beep.
Outside, the wind howled.
Sarah’s fingers tightened reflexively around the envelope, as if making certain it wouldn’t be blown away.
The polar gusts had pushed south into New York City that night. Manhattan’s litter spiraled in the corridors of dark stone. In a top floor apartment on East Twenty-First Street, loose-fitting windows rattled against their frames.
The tiny ad in the New York Times had proclaimed:
GRAMERCY PARK — grt studio, plstr
mldngs, mble f’plce, circ stair to
blcny, skylts, view, prk key $1250
Within an hour of spotting it, Melanie Winslow had won a footrace to a taxi; survived the crosstown gridlock; climbed four flights to a decrepit, trash-filled studio apartment; and — without a moment’s hesitation — had written a check for $3750, the first and last month’s rent and one month’s security.
Despite it’s condition, the apartment was a real find. Gramercy Park, long one of Manhattan’s prime areas, was an urban oasis enclosed by a cast-iron fence whose gates were always locked. The circa 1870 buildings on its perimeter stood on a parcel of land controlled by a century-old trusteeship, and only their residents had keys to the well-maintained park.
Now, six months and countless gallons of paint later, Melanie was in her bed on the balcony that was reached by the circular staircase when her telephone rang and the click of the answering machine cut it short. Her momentary reaction caused her muscles to tighten and rhythm to quicken, both to the liking of the young man beneath her, who let out a soft moan.
He caressed her thighs, moving his hands up toward her rolling hips, and pulled her down further onto him.
Melanie whimpered, and segued into a slow rocking motion. Familiar words began running through her mind.
Funny, she thought, how her mother’s favorite saying always came to her when she was with a lover. She’d never heard her use it in this context, of course, only in reference to chores or schoolwork — when Melanie had procrastinated and Sarah had caught her, and warned, “Either you’re on top of it, or it’s on top of you, kiddo.” It must have registered, Melanie figured. She liked being in control.
The young man lifted his blond curls from the pillow. His moist lips began delicately kissing the points of Melanie’s breasts that quivered in a taunting rhythm above him. He ran his tongue across them, across their smooth opalescence.
He did it repeatedly, slowly, unendingly.
Melanie began whimpering, “God, oh god, oh god,” then shifted to a patter of anxious squeaks.
Her movements quickened. Her head snapped from side to side, long brown hair whipping in constant motion. Her hands on his shoulders, pinning him beneath her, nails cat-scratching across his chest.
“Ohhhh, yessss,” she moaned, drawing the word out, then repeating it at closer intervals and with increasing volume, “Yessss, yesss, yess, yes, yes!” The last was an exuberant shriek that reverberated off the skylights and echoed through the cavernous space. Then a sudden rush radiated from her center across her trembling flesh, attending to every pore.