been.”
She said, “All right.” In such a way that it sounded as if she wanted me to understand the opposite.
We spoke for a while about nothing. I updated her on William, the brother whose closeness to me I exaggerated on a whim in one of my notes to her. I told her he was doing very well and was in fact retiring next year after a celebrated career as an architect. I told her that last month I had visited family in England and that yesterday I’d spent in Manhattan, visiting an old friend. Then I told her I’d taken up photography.
“Great,” said Charlene, & I too said “Great.”
“Are you still teaching?” said Charlene.
“No, I’ve stopped teaching,” I said—I said without thinking.
And she said O no in such a way that she sounded utterly utterly disappointed & forlorn.
So I said “But I tutor now.” Just so it would seem as if I had been doing a little something all these years.
At this she brightened & told me that this was in fact why she was calling.
“I’m going to send you a letter, Arthur,” said Charlene. When I focused on her voice I realized she sounded very strange, faraway & remorseful, & slower than she was when I knew her, as if her tongue had gotten heavier. She very possibly sounded drunk. It was two in the afternoon.
“All right,” I said.
“Look for it,” she said. “You’re still at the same address,” she said.
“I am,” I said.
“Look for it,” she said again.
“All right,” I said.
“What will be in it,” I said, but she had already hung up the phone.
I sat on the couch for a while. Then I went into my bedroom & sat on my bed. Then I opened the drawer of my bedside table & from it pulled a stack of all the letters Charlene ever sent me. They are a slim volume altogether, perhaps forty pages in sum. Her handwriting in these letters is tight as a drum, small and overlapping. I read all of them in a row that evening—an indulgence I have rarely allowed myself over our two decades of correspondence—& I granted myself permission, just for a moment, to dream of Charlene, to remember our brief relationship with the same affection & passion that, for many years, has sustained me.
& then this morning, with nothing much else to do, I sat down and wrote the letter to her that I have composed over & over again in my head—the truth-telling letter, the healing admission of my darkest secrets—the letter I knew I would have to send her if we were ever to meet again. The letter I would, indeed, send her right this moment if I were not very cowardly indeed. As it turns out, however, I am.
• • •
Here is Charlene Turner: Walking into my classroom two decades ago, her cheeks as pink as a tulip, her face as round as a penny. Short and small, rabbitish, the youngest in the room by a decade. I too am young. The class is a seminar & we sit at a long oval table & as teacher I am at the head of it. Her lips do not gracefully close over her teeth. The frames of her glasses are too wide & they give her a look of being mildly cross-eyed. Her bangs are worked into an astounding arc at the top of her head. One can tell she has put thought into her outfit. Her shoulder pads threaten to eclipse her. She has turned up the cuffs of her blazer. She wears red and green and yellow. Accordingly she looks like a stoplight.
It is a night class. The other students are older, mothers and retirees. They are dressed in long black skirts and flowing blouses. Many are rich and idle, many are taking this class for pleasure. Not Charlene Turner. One by one we go round the table, identifying ourselves. I give my full name with Dr in front of it & then I tell my students to call me whatever they like. When Charlene’s turn comes she opens her mouth and a very small noise comes out.
“Could you speak up, please?” I ask her.
“Charlene Turner,” she says, & in her accent I detect something beautifully native, a New-Yorkness that none of the other students possess. She nearly drops the first r in her name. She comes very close to dropping it. When she speaks, she ducks her head like a boxer.
“Welcome, Charlene,” is what I