A Midnight Sun Read online

  “Yeah, but now they are yours, aren’t they?” Syth says.

  “Not really. They’re not mine. They’re part of this person, Parker.”

  “You won’t know that until you read the letters, you silly woman. Open them for Christ’s sakes.” Braff says standing. “Can I do it for you?”

  Syth stops him. “No, Braff. Let her.”

  I move to the window and shift on my feet. The afternoon has now turned to night and my heart is beating fast, the only sound I can pay attention to at the moment. Although the others are crowding over me in wait. Braff sitting on the coffee table with his hands over my knees. Amistad sitting on the arm of the chair and Syth standing to her right.

  Looking at the letters, I marvel at their age and caress them softly with a love I don’t understand. The paper is scented with the faint aroma of perfume and fading, like the paper which feels thin between my fingers. I suddenly wish for more time between the single breath I take and the moment I pull on the twine, undoing the knot and releasing a clout of old accumulated dust. When I begin to unfold the one at the top, I see first the date to the left.

  “This was written in Annapolis, and it’s dated May second, nineteen thirty-six.” I know who’s written before I open the bottom flap. I read it for them.

  Dear Parker,

  I have begun rigorous training at the base. The amount of work and the countless hours of this difficult passage in my life, can only be eased with the knowledge of your existence on this earth, and the perfunctory notion that I will see you again come next autumn during the thanksgiving leave.

  My deepest desire is to express my sincere and increasing sentiment for the woman I could only ever hope would accept me as her betrothed, let alone consider a formal arrangement as husband and wife. Be it still your desires to continue as we are, I shall make you the most loved wife in the history of humankind.

  The passing of my days go between crawling on my elbows and thinking of the gradients of your hair, the beguiling beauty of your face, and climbing a muddy net, after which I have to climb over a wall where only more awaits. The last virtuous kisses you and I shared, upon the knoll in which I made my first declaration of the sentiments I still hold for you, are still fresh in my mind when I close my eyes to rest.

  In this wait, my feelings for you grow fonder, along with the admiration I will carry with me of you and your beauty, from when I first laid eyes upon it on the silver screen in the movie which you so detest that first started your film career.

  My last lines are therefore to wish you a fair experience in your first few weeks, and to reinforce the thought I passed onto you on that merry day.

  Do not despair in worries. Your chances of accomplishing this task, with merit even, is my absolute certainty.

  I shall wait with anxious anticipation the return of this letter with a word of your life and love for me, should you wish to do so,

  In loving hand, yours devoted,

  Sydney Fischer Gaynes

  The signature of his name is of molded letters that are symmetric and almost perfectly square, yet they have swirls in places, showing careful attention to detail and a loving candor you wouldn’t expect from a man like Fitch. I run a thumb over it and wonder if the signature reflects on who he was. My heart glows as it thumps like a distant drum inside my chest. I feel my eyes welling up with tears.

  “Damn!” Braff says standing. “The guy was a sweet talker.”

  “Writer. Sweet writer.” Syth corrects.

  “If only this happened more often, especially nowadays.”

  “What, Amistad. Finding old letters to read?”

  “No, Syth.” She flicks him. “More guys wrote like this.”

  Braff laughs. “What century do you think we’re in, Amistad dear? I thought you were all for liberation and being modern.”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t mean you have to throw every romantic gesture out the window. I mean…” She comes to the letter with both hands on her chest, reads it again and swoons. “The gradients of your hair…the beguiling beauty of your face? He speaks of kisses as being ‘virtuous’ and ‘renewing sentiments.’ I’ll take that over any bar line any day of the week.”

  “I think,” I interject, “It is beautiful, but I also think I need to understand these words well before we can continue. I am overcome with feelings.”

  “Mir, what do you make of it?” Syth says softly.

  “I’m not sure,” when I turn fully to look at them, I start crying, “but it moved me in a strange yet wonderful way. It also feels more than I can take now, which is why I want to take some time to fully comprehend its meaning.”

  They all become strangely silent. “Can we go see a movie, or go to the Needle? Do something fun?”

  “What are…Mirim, are you sure?” Amistad says.

  “Yeah. We can discuss this in a while, and also whatever you said you needed to tell me about or show me…”

  Braff looks hesitant and looks at the others. “Oh, yes, that. Hmm. It’s at my office so we better wait till, Monday. It can wait.”

  Syth appears suddenly with our coats. “Where should we go first?”

  Before we leave, I put the items back in the box, something that has become almost a ritual. The rest of the unread letters I put on top with the ones I’ve just finished. I now relish reading them, like they have been mailed directly to me.

  Chapter 24

  Marquee

  Flight Of The Manuscripts & The Value Of Coffee

  Seattle, January 18th, 1990

  Ordinarily, I go to market on Sunday mornings to get ready for the week because of the brunch and being away. I was left with nearly empty cabinets, so I had to stop at the corner coffee house for an extremely satisfying latte with loads of foam.

  I sip on the way to work before hailing a taxi and fumble with my purse and my briefcase. People are flocking to their workplace as I am, but gather in the street corners or the edge of sidewalks and I feel blocked from view and it makes it difficult to find a taxi. I rearrange everything to the left hand and raise my right as high as I can, attempting to be a flagpole within the busy street. Struggling inside the human flow, I manage to just step inside the edge of the curb, when I feel a shove from below the hand I’ve raised. I whirl because of the force of the push and fly sideways, landing hard on my hip and spilling everything, including the seven-dollar cup of java which is now slowly seeping into a grate.

  The manuscripts I’m reviewing are stepped on, and so are my purse and my scarf. I hurry to my feet and crouch around my belongings to pull them near me. The human flock becomes a human cloud above me. In an instant, I go from surprise to terror, when a hand grabs my arm and pulls to lift me, so I pull against it.

  “Mam, are you alright?” Somebody says from above me.

  “Sir, release my arm.”

  “Please, allow me to help you.”

  When I look up and finally see his face, I see a gentle smile peeking from the crowd. There’s an imperfection to his smile which reminds me of a young boy I used to date before he got braces and fixed his teeth. His smile was luminous and imperfect but handsome. He is wearing a bright blue scarf that stands out in a sea of blacks, browns, and grays of the customary office attires and coats of winter.

  He had my attention.

  My eyes will not get away from his as I nod carefully and start packing my documents and the embarrassing spillage from my purse. He helps me while hunkered like me, we push people aside and I shout and point whenever I see anything that is mine. “There!” A compact case, the mirror shattered, coins everywhere, sanitary napkins I luckily get to first, an old lipstick I hadn’t seen in years, notepads, pens, and pencils, sunglasses, and a tissue box.

  “Women carry so many things in their purses!” He yells at me from behind the noise.

  “I guess, well not always.”

  When we’re finally done, he stands and so do I. His hands and pockets looked filled with my things. “Come this way,” I say to him,
“There’s a café on the corner.”

  I shrug instead of telling him that’s where I had just wasted a big chunk of my daily expenses, on coffee I spilled for not going to market when I should have, instead of entertaining my friends while discussing a possible inquest into a love story from a woman I have never met.

  “I’m Mark.”

  “Mark?” I say, “like…Twain or Aurelius?”

  He smirks. “You know, most people would just ask Mark with a K or a C…like Twain I suppose.”

  “Okay, Mark with a K, it’s really great to meet you and everything, but please hand me my belongings. I’m insanely late for work.”

  “You’re welcome. First day after the holidays?”

  I continue to shove papers into my briefcase instead of looking at him. “Sorry, I just feel flustered because I’m late. Uh, yup.” I speak fast now, trying to rush things and feel awful because he has been really nice to me.

  “Nah. Then, don’t worry too much. Everybody is late the first day. Can I offer to replace your coffee?” He speaks slowly and clearly. I relax just to hear him speak.

  I look up from my papers and feel everything stop. The offering has somehow brought me to my senses and I suspect it’s more the gentleness of his polite demeanor than the idea of hot coffee. Maybe it’s his voice.

  Come to think of it, it might be a combination of both.

  Really. “Yes, thank you. That would be really nice.” I emphazise the overuse of a word I’m trained to extinguish from manuscripts.

  “Mark Turner, at your service.”

  “Mirim Teasdale.” I shake his hand and we walk together.

  “Wait, are you in any way related to the American poet Sara Teasdale?”

  “She is my aunt.” He smirks as we walk away and gives me a lipstick, I must have forgotten behind me on the ground. “You look a little bit like her. She is one the ugliest aunts I have. His smile dismissed my evident shock.

  “Were you joking?”

  “Perhaps.”

  --------------------------------

  When I’m finally sitting at my desk, it is almost ten in the morning, but it turns out Mark had been right, many people were late, including my boss, whose car was stuck in a traffic jam near the bay road into town. I had a distant flashing memory of an office party where I heard him say to his wife living that far would make his commute difficult.

  After arranging my dismantled and wrinkled manuscripts in piles that made some sense, I started answering emails and phone messages.

  I step out of my office mid-morning and grab another cup of coffee –a second cup for Amistad. This is our ritual for every Monday and she does it Fridays. We have yet to coerce Syth into our coffee custom because he doesn’t drink coffee and refuses to so much as get up from his desk without a real reason. I like doing it because it breaks up the routine and gives me a reason to chat with Amistad for a while.

  “So, I met a guy,” I say to her from the corner of her cubicle.

  She speaks from behind her desk while grabbing her coffee. “Handsome?”

  “Quite.”

  “Tall?”

  “Tall enough?” I show her with my hand.

  “Rugged? Clean? Hot?”

  “Polite. True gentleman.”

  “Not many of those.”

  We both sigh and sip from our coffee.

  “He bought me a coffee latte and asked me to dinner.”

  “Are you going?” She is so excited her face looks like it’s about to spasm.

  “Yep, Thursday.”

  “Nice!” She moves back to her work. “If it doesn’t work out, I’m available for introductions.”

  I laugh. “Is Braff in?”

  “No. He called and said he had a meeting uptown and would call after lunch.”

  “And Syth?”

  “In his office. I guess we’ll have to wait for Braff. He’s got the paper.”

  “Which paper?”

  “That’s right! We haven’t told you. I think it’s better if I give you the abridged version.”

  Amistad tells me there was a mix-up, and I somehow left a paper with Syth, which he mistook for a proofreading sheet, but they had noticed the pattern was odd. When they met that night with Braff for dinner and drinks, Syth showed them. Braff insisted that the squiggles could mean something else, although it didn’t look clear, but her story the previous night had prompted him to make more connections.

  “The first thing he saw that night with us was a name. We weren’t sure until you said it, but it looked like Park.”

  “That’s why you guys looked aghast when I said her name.”

  “Yes, and we didn’t tell you because Braff suggested, when you were retrieving the box, we didn’t say anything to see what would correlate.”

  “Fact-checking.”

  “Uh-hum. I wish we had the paper to show you.”

  “We have the copy from the Xerox I made,” Syth said from the door. “Braff kept the original since then.”

  When he came to the desk, he put a sheet of paper in front of me. It was my handwriting but strange and in disarray. It took only a single glance to see what they meant. “It does look like proofreading marks.”

  “Look,” Syth tapped with his finger. “It’s Parker, clearly. And, there?”

  I had to turn the page to read it right-side-up, but it clearly read Fitch.

  “Now, that is not a common name…”

  “Nickname, Syth.” Amistad corrects.

  “Still so, and the coincidence is absolutely incredible.”

  “My brother doesn’t believe in coincidences. We should show him this.” I say.

  “You should probably take it Mirim, and try to see what else comes up before we meet with Braff,” Amistad tells me.

  I pick it up, and trancelike walk back to my cubicle, only a few feet from Amistad’s. The large office we share with a few more girls, feels small at this moment. I walk outside for fresh air taking the paper with me.

  Chapter 25

  Marquee

  It Happened Between The Lines and Some Plastic Covers

  Seattle, January 23rd, 1990

  Dear diary.

  Friday afternoon is usually quiet in the office. Work for the last few days has been mostly about finishing reviews and sending a few manuscripts to Mr. Pearson, my boss, those I know he’ll actually read -with my cliff notes attached- over the weekend, sipping on a mug of cold beer, feeling satisfied for the likelihood I have just discovered a new Hemingway, a less troubled and of the female variety version of Hemingway, reading her novel, beautifully titled The Runaway Sparrow, my choice, a romantic tale of tortured young love and opposing interests in the midst of the Vietnam War, made me cry so much, my eyes ended swollen and puffy.

  On a post-sob fest trip to the restroom to wash my face Tuesday morning, I ran into Braff. Thankfully, I had cleaned up and reapplied some makeup. He still shot me a glance of mock disapproval.

  The nerve!

  He asked me if I was still letting these new novelists get to me as he passed, to which I replied that if I didn’t enjoy the read on an emotional level, embarking into the story’s path like I was feeling it myself, there was no point.

  He said, “Crying over sappy love stories is not enjoyment”

  I mean, is he kidding me? Anyhow, I told him it was a feeling and this story was so marvelous, I had a hard time not reading the next page way into the late hours, past my bedtime. Which could also explain some of the puffiness of my red eyes. He laughed and said I was a complete liar. He kept laughing while I angrily accepted, he was right, and I’d been bawling my eyes out from the tragic love affair.

  “But,” he said, looking like he wanted to uncover a mystery, “Is it the new Hemingway you and your boss have been searching for?”

  “Not sure yet, but she is pretty good.”

  “A woman! I’m genuinely pleased. Off to see Pearson, I gather then?” he said and I almost left, but he stopped me again to ask for the paper and
if I’d seen it. When I said nothing in particular jumped out at me, he asked me to meet him for drinks at his house Friday night, along with Syth and Amistad as we usually did when we wanted to discuss work.

  I confessed to him I was having difficulty with an ethical dilemma, telling him I knew it made absolutely no sense at all, but I just couldn’t bring myself to reading the other letters, knowing full well that such issues were not as strongly ingrained in him. He called me a nonsensical fool and that I knew as much as he the reading of these letters was critical. Excusing himself to go to a meeting he was already late for, he turned and left me there in the hallway.

  I nodded like a goof and returned to my desk.

  On Wednesday and Thursday, I had so much catching up to do, I barely had time to think about anything but work. Yesterday, I stayed late and had to take home some mockups for a new circulation Mr. Pearson is Pitching to the top brass. My eyes hurt from proofreading alone. When I was finished, it was nearly midnight and I was exhausted. I made tea and sat by a window to relax before bed.

  Parker comes to mind again.

  I decided I still had time for another read. A short read.

  -Mirim

  ------------------------------

  After a long shower and getting dressed for dinner at Braff’s, I get the box from the library shelf I keep it and pull the bundle of letters. The twine is getting so weak, I think it’s about to break, so I put it in a corner of the box to safeguard it. I want it intact. Something in me wants to preserve its aged quality like a museum piece. I have the fleeting idea that I should frame them, the letters and the twine, but I still want to touch it, to handle it between my fingers. It feels like an old memory about to fade, roughed with time, yet soft with handling. I wonder where Parker got it. I remember I have a scrapbook I’ve never used, so I put each letter inside a plastic cover. I do likewise with everything else that will fit –the stamps, the postcards- and also the twine.