On Mystic Lake

All you think about is making us happy. What makes you happy, Mom?

Or: This spring . . . you sounded so di ferent. So happy.

And the most surprising of all: Do you love Dad?

Annie had meant to respond reflexively, to say, Yes, of course I love your dad. But then she’d looked in Natalie’s eyes and seen a grown-up understanding. And so, Annie had spoken to the woman her daughter had become.

I’ve loved your dad since I was a teenager. We’re just going through a hard time, that’s all.

He loves you, Natalie had said. Just like he loves me, but . . . his love . . . it isn’t very warm . . . I mean . . . it’s not like being loved by you, Mom.

It had brought tears to Annie’s eyes, that quiet observation. She was saddened to realize that Natalie would never really understand what a father’s love could be. It would be a loss in Natalie’s life forever. . . .

Unlike Izzy.

She closed her eyes and leaned back in bed, remembering Nick and Izzy when they’d played Candy Land, Nick hunched over the board . . . or when the two of them had played Barbies on the living room floor, Nick saying in a falsetto voice, Have you seen my blue dancing shoes?

Yesterday, when she and Natalie had gone into the doctor’s, Annie had been unable to stave off the memories. It was simply too painful. There had been no husband there to hold her hand and laugh at how badly she had to pee. No husband to watch the fuzzy black screen and marvel at the miracle.

No Nick.

How long would it be this way? she wondered. Would she spend the rest of her life feeling that she’d left an essential part of herself in another place and time?

The first letter, when it arrived, was small and crinkled. A blue, faded postmark read Mystic, WA.

Annie stared down at the pink envelope. Very gently, she eased the back open and pulled out the paper. It was a pen-and-ink drawing of Mount Olympus. Inside was a letter from Izzy.

Dear Annie:

How are you? I am fin.

The flwrs are pritty. Today I learnd to ride a bike.

It was fun.

I miss you. When are you cuming home?

Love, Izzy.

P. s. My Dadde helped me rite this lettr.

Annie clutched the note in her hand. Everything about it, every misspelled word, tugged at her heartstrings. She sat stiffly in bed, staring out at the blue, blue sky beyond her room, wishing it would rain. She knew she would write back to Izzy, but what would she say? A few hopeless words that held no promises? Or a string of pointless banalities that pretended they’d all be friends. Nothing but friends, and sometimes friends moved on. . . .

There were only a few words that mattered, and they were the truest of them all. “I miss you, too, Izzy. . . . ”

She opened the nightstand drawer and pulled out Izzy’s hair ribbon, stroking the satin strip. She knew that tomorrow she would answer the letter, and she would fill a sheet of paper with words and more words, but it wouldn’t say what mattered. It wouldn’t say what Izzy wanted to hear.

She picked up the cordless phone from the table and listened to the dial tone for a long time, then slowly she hung up. It was unfair to call Nick and Izzy, unfair to let the sound of their voices soothe her loneliness. Don’t do that to me, Annie, Nick had said, don’t throw me hope like it was a bone to be buried in my backyard. . . .

“Mom?” Natalie poked her head into the bedroom. “Are you all right?”

Annie sniffled and turned away.

Natalie hurried over to the bed and crawled up beside Annie. “Mom? Are you okay?”

No, she wanted to say, no, I’m not okay. I miss the man I love and his daughter, and I miss a place where rainfall is measured in feet and your hair is never dry and where grown-ups play Chutes and Ladders in the middle of the afternoon with a six-year-old girl. . . .

But none of that was the sort of thing you said to your teenage daughter, no matter how grown up she looked. “I’m fine, honey. Just fine. ”