Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,12
of all the sermons in Friday chapel about turning the other cheek, and in spite of all my mother’s efforts to find some reconciliation with me (spring shopping trips to Godchaux’s department store in Baton Rouge, for example, or dinner plates that she wrapped for me to bring back to the dorm on Sunday nights), nothing could make me forgive my parents for keeping me and Tim apart. They still refused to let me see or talk to him whenever I took the Greyhound back to Zachary for the weekend. Any kind of reunion was out of the question; it wasn’t even mentioned. My parents, of course, knew nothing about the letters—at least not until that May, when the event I’m about to describe to you took place.
It was almost the end of the school year, and despite last-minute anxiety over exams, the halls and classrooms of SHA felt giddy with the prospect of summer. The sun spilled onto the lawns and oaks outside. Squirrels chased each other through the branches, blue jays squawked. Senior boys from Cathedral High, emboldened by their imminent graduation, cruised their cars around the perimeter of the school grounds, luring the more reckless girls to dash across the sidewalks to their windows to exchange notes or kisses or promises.
I was passing through the first-floor hall after lunch hour when I was drawn to the front lobby by some commotion there. A bunch of girls were crowded around the bulletin board opposite the main office, laughing and shoving one another. When I stepped into the lobby one of the girls gasped, “Oh my god,” and they all fell silent. A sick, scary feeling coiled up in my stomach. The girls moved aside as I approached, but stayed close enough so they could watch me.
On the bulletin board, pinned up behind the glass in the middle of the usual announcements about club meetings and lunchtime menus, was a letter from Tim. “Who did this?” I asked, looking around. The only people who ever handled mail at the school, I knew, were the nuns and the Beta Club office assistants. “How’d this get here?” No answer, of course. I turned back to the letter. It was one I hadn’t seen yet, dated just two days earlier, and written with even lines on clean white typing paper, as if Tim had taken special care with it. Feeling a dozen pairs of eyes on my back, I scanned the letter.
“Dear Laura My Love,” it began. After that I seemed to see only the most private parts, the sentences standing out on the paper as if they were scored in incandescent ink: “We’ll find a way to be together again,” I read. “Nobody or nothing can keep us apart. Don’t you worry.” And, “Next time I swear I will hold you and hold you and never let you go. I can’t give you up, not that easy. I love you. Don’t you know that by now? Haven’t I convinced you of that?” On and on it went, each heartfelt sentiment more intimate than the last. “How can you ever think that I’ll stop desiring you? I will never stop desiring you. You are the sexiest girl that I ever did know.”
I could feel the girls waiting for my reaction to this cruel joke. I could see their reflections in the glass in front of me. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing me buckle, though, not yet. I tried to open the case, fumbling with the latch, but the thing was locked. I spun around.
“Who did this?” I shouted. “Who?” Some of the girls began backing away, some giggling, some horrified. I saw Anne Harding standing at the rear of the crowd, immobile in her neck brace, wearing a pained, tearful expression. I turned back to wrestle again with the case, but I couldn’t get it open, so I hauled back and punched it with the side of my fist. Wedges of glass dropped down inside the wooden case; a large piece crashed to the floor. Someone screamed. I jammed my hand in and grabbed the letter. By now it had become like a hurricane in my ears and eyes and I couldn’t hear or see anything clearly. People were jostling, someone was still screaming. I looked down and saw red everywhere. I wondered, distractedly, where it had come from. I watched it spread across my white blouse; I felt it gumming up the floor beneath my penny