Read Bereavements for Free Online

me include briefly a physical description of myself and a few facts of personal history which you may deem of import . . .”
    Mrs. Evans smiled, enjoying herself, and the letter, which had some of the quality of having been written a hundred or two hundred years ago. Why this was so became obvious just a little further on.
    “. . . of personal history which you may deem of import. I am a young man of eighteen from the mid-west, Iowa to be exact—a small town called Benoit. I am of more than conventional good looks facially; I say this modestly because I am simply quoting others and (although I have a steady job) I do, from time to time, when I am called upon by my agency, freelance modeling. I am fair in color, with light hair and blue-green eyes, but I am, unfortunately, and I must emphasize this, very short in build. This was a source of suffering to me in the past, particularly in school where children can be cruel. In addition, I suppose all men desire to be tall, equating tallness with manliness, but I have since found out how untrue this is and that stature per se means little or nothing in the adult, mature world of social intercourse and commerce.
    “My mother, a widow, died eight months ago, leaving me her modest savings and a small house—an ‘unworked’ farm, really— which I quickly disposed of, all of which—after my profound grief had sufficiently spent itself to allow me to think, feel, and plan rationally—afforded me the means to realize my greatest ambition: to move to New York City and become a writer.”
    Ah now. Light!
    “. . . I must add that this dream is now being realized; I write every night, without fail, and am well into my first novel. I don’t know how many words so far, but I have completed 151 pages in long-hand on legal-size, yellow ruled paper. I remind myself of Henry James, or Proust, in style, but this may be temporary. I do suppose all novice writers are imitative in style, following in the footsteps of those they so greatly admire.
    “In addition to my writing, I have, as I mentioned, a daytime job, providing bread-and-butter living, fortunately close enough to the novelist’s world to be stimulating. I am a mail clerk.for a large publishing house—McGraw-Hill to be exact. Perhaps you have heard of it. It is one of the largest in the world, I believe, though their fiction list, I must say, is small and ultra-conservative.
    “In any event, I am there and have endless opportunities to handle books, although, alas, most of them are of a highly technical, scientific or other esoteric nature. Still—they are books: beautiful and weighted in my hand; I may touch them, stroke them, inhale the heady aroma of printer’s ink and bindery glue! All of which must sound like a fetish, but it is not. It is genuine love—a love I have had all my life, the one love I know could never betray, mock or abandon me.
    “But I must conclude!—else go on all night.
    “Dear lady, through intuition or loneliness, if you find in what I have written any clue to me —my character, my capacity for friendship, my deep sympathy for you in your intolerable loss and bereavement, my empathy (since my own loss was similar if not the same) then let us, by all means, spin the mysterious wheel of fate and make our lives cross. Please write. Please. Tell me I may meet you. Do you remember Blake from your high school or college days? I recall one of his Proverbs of Hell in particular: “Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.”
    “With this wisdom providing strength, I know I shall find the final courage to go out and mail to you what is essentially my heart.
    “That done, I shall be—
    “Waiting . . .”

    Mrs. Evans could not read the signature momentarily, her eyes too filled with tears. This boy, this “writer’s” absurd prose—pretentious, florid, some of it brilliant for an eighteen-year-old, and utterly sincere, aching with loneliness, had touched her so painfully