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listening to Mr. Rogers.
And he would lose himself in her inner child and wonder, Man, how could I be so
lucky?
I scrolled down about five pages.
Alexander picked up the letter. It was postmarked twenty years ago. Twenty
years! Such a nice, even number what were the odds? He gingerly slid his fingers under
the back flap of the parchment envelope and moved them so as to preserve as much of it
as possible. It opened with ease. He removed the thin paper, folded neatly in threes, the
creases so tight that they were in danger of ripping the letter, its fountain-pen cursive
preserved, like a body inside a sarcophagus. With slow, calculated precision, he opened it
and began to read.
Dear Son,
Who, me?
I scrolled back to the top and read every word from beginning to end. Twice. A
man receives a twenty-year-old letter from his long lost father that takes him on a journey
to Peru. What if he had received the letter when it was originally sent? Where would he
have ended up? As he traces the steps based on clues in the letter, he starts to piece
together the synchronicity of his life, and offers a series of stories.
Daring to envision a different life.
Sam was only about thirty-five thousand words in; and yet, I was riveted. How
come he never told me? I thought in anger. I wasn t ready to show you yet, I could hear
him answer. That was like him; he was protective of his first drafts, and clearly this was a
first draft. Maybe he thought I wouldn t like it. Maybe he didn t like it. Maybe he was
going to show me the day after our anniversary celebration. Surely he was going to show
it to me at some point, wasn t he?
I called Maggie.
Listen to this. I read the first couple of pages to her.
Sounds good, she said. What is it?
Sam started writing a novel. I just found it.
You re kidding me!
I told you he had been thinking about it, didn t I?
I think you did. So?
So what? I asked.
So when are you going to finish it?
I dropped my jaw and held out the phone before putting it back to my ear. Me?
Yes.
Are you crazy?
No well, yeah, but not about this. Come on, Andi! This is something for you to
do! Summer break is almost here. Why not write?
For one thing, I ve never written a novel before. It s not my genre. I m a
nonfiction prose kind of girl you know that.
What, you can t write fiction and use what you know? Talk to Nora Ephron. You
think it s a coincidence that all her characters are journalists who live in New York and
cook? Heck, talk to Sam twentieth century rhetoric? You think he wasn t writing about
what he knew? Besides, couldn t you tell that the description of Cassandra was totally
you? Even the name: Cassandra? Please!
I hadn t noticed. Why hadn t I noticed that?
C mon, Mags. I know rhetoric and creative nonfiction. I don t know fiction.
Those were his areas, too, and it wasn t stopping him, obviously. Besides, fiction
isn t rhetorical?
You know what I mean.
You ve never read a novel before?
Mags&
Andi, you re a writer. When was the last time you wrote something non-
academic?
Sss
not including Sam s eulogy, she stopped me before I could even say his
name.
Not since the last collection of essays came out when was that two, three years
ago?
If you can t even pin down the date, it was too long ago.
You really think I could do it? I mean, this is clearly a first draft, and I don t
know where he wanted this to go or how he wanted it to end. What if I end it in a way
that is totally bogus?
When you get to heaven, the two of you can argue about it over a slice of
cheesecake. Come on, you can do this! It s not like you don t know his writing style.
Think of it as something the two of you can work on together.
I thought about this, about what Melody had said about not only re-seeing my life,
but his. Ours.
I ll think about it, I said.
The next day, I called Devin and met him late in the afternoon at the Starbucks on
Church Street in Harvard Square. I told him about the novel and asked him what he
thought.
I think you should do it, he said. I think it would be good to immerse yourself
in such a creative project. I m surprised it s taken you this long to get back into writing,
actually. I thought you would ve written about the accident and the grieving process.
It s already been done by Joan Dideon. And no one can catch up to Joan
Dideon she s the creative nonfiction queen.
Who said you had to write to sell books? Who said you had to write it for anyone
other than yourself? Who said it even had to be good? he asked.
I could hear traces of my voice from our past tutorials echoing in his own. For
sure, this guy was my former pupil.
I confessed, I can t write anymore.
Because of the eulogy? Geez Andi, you ve got to get past that.
It s not that. I just can t do it anymore. I can t write. I can t teach. There s
absolutely no desire.
You can. You re just afraid of fucking up, as usual.
Geez, Devin, you re a real ego booster, you know that? Remind me to hire you
to get the Patriots revved up at halftime.
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