A life that might prosper September 21, 1985

  

Her letter came mixed in with the junk mail, like something innocent, when nothing Louise does is ever innocent.

I don’t imply guilt. She is caught up in fate that she cannot control, a sour destiny that moves in and out of her life.

I should have suspected something when Bob at Fotomat informed me welfare had come to collect, meaning Louise went back on the dole.

And apparently had been for three months, only some delay in book keeping by the county kept them from coming to me.

Her letter should not have surprised me. This a time of year when I should expect the unexpected, a time when I rake up the falling leaves, a time when change comes without warning.

Now I need to find out just where this place is on the return address, a tiny spot on the map, though the post mark comes out of New York State.

I keep thinking maybe she’s finally escape Pennsylvania, but I know better. She is as entwined with that state as she is with me.

For some reason, fate has decreed we remain connected, perhaps to accomplish something that has not yet made itself manifest to us.

She usually contacts me only when she’s desperate, and I’m scared to ask what mess she’s gotten herself into this time.

She always reaches back into the past when life slams her against a brick wall. She always needs a white knight, and her letters are always a cry for help. But the tone of this letter is different. She opens with an excuse as to why she’d not written sooner.

“I haven’t written to no one so don’t feel bad,” she says. “I just got out of the hospital. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not going to die tomorrow – at least, I hope not.”

Did I sense terror in that sentence? Has her fear shifted from jail to death? The last 15 years have been all about struggle, staying out of jail, keep our daughter Ruby clothed, Now, she drops a hint of ill health or dying.

“I was in one day to have a lump checked out and the next day I was in the hospital,” the letter said. “It wasn’t cancerous, just infected. So, I’m stitched up and its draining.”

Life/death?

I remember in Portland when I had an infected lung lining and thought that I had cancer. I even stopped smoking for a whole three days until the news came back that I wasn’t among the inflicted. I have lumps now that I wonder about. Thinking about death changes your perspective, what you value before and afterwards changes.

Then came the punch line.

“I’m alive and well and living in a trailer I have to be out of soon,” she writes.

Trailer?

Safire, the woman I’m seeing romantically has her life wrapped up in a trailer as well, one that she is currently trying to sell.

“I feel like a 60s drifter with my sleeping bags,” Louise writes, saying she had to find a new place to live before winter sets in.

Then she gets to the painful parts, unintentionally, of course, inserting bad new between otherwise objective facts, I suppose testing the waters a little as not to scare me off.

“Your last few letters were bitter,” she says, and then a few lines later added, “I’m not trying to keep you from seeing your daughter.”

This refers to letters I wrote when I thought I would not see either of them again.

Then, she gets to the painful point again, “I’m Ok,” the Ok is underlined, “There’s no use in complaining.”

But she can’t get off the topic of my letters, especially those I wrote back when the court issues were still unresolved, misinterpreted as threats, rather than warnings about her possibly ending up in jail for welfare fraud, and quoting my pained passages such as “How many more years of my daughter’s life will I miss?”

“She made a personalized father’s day card for you, then waited to see how you would react,” she writes, “but you didn’t respond to it until three letters later.”

She says she wants to come visit be before winter, but then adds something that really doesn’t have anything to do with me.

“I have a garden; my tomatoes are doing good and my cucumbers and yellow squash. I’ve picked some and eaten them. It’s very rewarding to do that. I hope I’m living here long enough to see my whole garden prosper. But if not, it was fun.”
Roughly translated, “I have a life. I’m doing good sexually (cucumbers and squash). I have a career in the sex trade and it’s very rewarding. I hope to live long enough to see my whole life prosper. If not, well…”

Time for me to be kind.

 



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