Straying From the Path

She nodded. Her tears had started falling. It’d be hours before she got them to stop. He offered his hand. He wasn’t going to take hold of hers; he was letting her choose.

She put her hand in his and squeezed.

“So, I’m just a bluebox actor and you’re just an accountant. We’ve learned our lesson and we shouldn’t try to be anything we aren’t.”

She snuggled against him and leaned her head on his shoulder. “I don’t know. We just haven’t found the right glamorous artsy job yet. You know when Nathan said this sounded like a movie plot? I was thinking, maybe we should try writing it down.”

“Write a screenplay—you and me?”

“Sure. How many movies have we watched and thought, I could do better than that? I mean, you turn down how many scripts a year? You must see some pretty bad ones.”

“I’ve made some pretty bad ones.”

“So we know what not to do, right? Couldn’t hurt to try.”

Her eyes felt round and puppyish. He grinned back at her and kissed her forehead, humoring her.

“All right, but we have to give it a happy ending. Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds riding into the sunset.”

“I think you mean Roy Rogers and Dale Evans.”

“Them too.”

In Time

That’s what they call a metaphor in our country. Don’t be afraid of it, sir, it won’t bite. If it was my Carlo now! The Dog is the noblest work of Art, sir. I may safely say the noblest—his mistress’s rights he doth defend—although it bring him to his end—although to death it doth him send!

—Emily Dickinson, in a letter of 1850

Carlo died—

E. Dickinson

Would you instruct me now?

—a letter of 1866

First thing was to write letters. Make letters into words into sentences into letters. Tell the world—and a letter was how to do it because a letter stayed. Even when a person was absent, one could not disregard the page in hand. Immortalize the event, begin to turn the grief into something else, something that would live outside her instead of inside her.

“Emily, come down, please!”

Not supper yet, but still her sister Vinnie called, which meant visitors. Emily didn’t hear. She crouched beside Carlo at the foot of the bed and tied folded packets of paper to his collar with string.

“Take these with you when you go. If you can, bring some back for me.”

He looked at her with clouded eyes half-hidden under his coarse black hair, and his tail thumped the floor once.

From downstairs, Father’s orator voice sounded, and Mother’s soft immovable one, and Vinnie’s over all, shepherding the whole house with a will like a staff. More voices, more visitors.

“Mr. Dickinson! What a fine house—”

“—please, take off your wraps—”

“—how is your son and his lovely wife?”

The front door opened and closed. Carlo raised his head. In his younger days he’d run to greet everyone, tongue dangling and tail wagging the whole back half of his body. She’d have to hold him, leaning her whole weight against him. Carlo was so large, he sometimes scared callers. If she lay down very small, she could hide behind him. Vinnie could come in and not even see her. They’d all have a good laugh about that.

Emily tore a scrap of paper off an old envelope and wrote another note. This one would be to God, how could she forget to send one to Him, along with all the others?