The Last First Letter

JULY 12

Dear Mr. Harlan,

I am writing in response to your advertisement in the *Cape Lookout Gazette*. The one that said: *Seeking thoughtful correspondence about books, ordinary days, and the strange gift of later life.*

That last part caught me. The strange gift of later life. I read it three times standing at the kitchen counter, coffee going cold in my hand. Most ads want to sell you something or fix something broken. Yours just wanted company.

I should tell you I am seventy-two years old. A retired librarian. Widowed five years this October. I live alone in a house that is too big for one person, with a garden that is too much work and a cat who has opinions about both. I have been writing letters my whole life. To my mother when I was away at college. To my husband when he traveled for work. To my daughter when she moved to Seattle and forgot how to call.

The world has forgotten how to write letters. But I haven't.

I thought you should know that before you decide if you want to write back.

I will tell you one more thing. I am not looking for anything. I am not lonely in the way people mean when they say lonely. I have my books and my garden and my Wednesday bridge group. I have a daughter who calls every Sunday whether I answer or not. I have enough.

But I read your ad and I thought: here is someone who might understand that enough and full are not the same thing.

So I am writing.

If you would like to write back, I would be glad to hear what you are reading. I just finished *The Shipping News* for the fourth time. It gets better each time, which I think is the only honest test of a good book.

Yours truly,

Eleanor Whitaker

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JULY 18

Dear Mrs. Whitaker,

You are the only person who answered the ad.

I placed it on a Tuesday, feeling foolish. By Friday I had convinced myself it was a mistake. By Sunday I was checking the mailbox twice a day, which is embarrassing to admit at my age. I am seventy-four. I should know better than to hope for anything.

Your letter arrived Monday morning.

I read it standing at the end of my driveway. The mailman waited. I think he thought I had received bad news. I told him no, quite the opposite.

You are right about the letters. The world has forgotten. I taught history for forty-one years and I watched it happen. The death of patience. The death of sitting still long enough to form a complete thought. My students could not write a paragraph without checking their phones. They could not read a page without their attention scattering like startled birds.

I do not mean to sound bitter. I am not bitter. I am just old and I miss the way things used to be.

I am a retired history professor. Widowed two years ago in March. I moved to a cottage near Beaufort because I could not bear the silence of the house we shared for forty-three years. The silence here is different. It is the sound of water and wind and birds. It does not remind me of her.

I am not looking for anything either. I think that is why I placed the ad. Because I was not looking. Because I had given up on looking. And then I thought: what if I just put my hand out into the dark and see if anyone takes it?

You took it.

I am reading *The Name of the Rose* for the seventh time. It is a book about books and murder and the terrible things people do when they are certain they are right. I find it comforting. Not the murder part. The part about how we are all just trying to make sense of a world that does not make sense.

Tell me about your cat. Tell me about your garden. Tell me what it is like to live by the water.

I have never been good at small talk. But I think we have already passed that.

Sincerely,

James Harlan

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JULY 25

Dear Jim,

May I call you Jim? James feels like a man in a suit and tie, and I suspect you are more comfortable in cardigans.

I am right, am I not? Cardigans?

The cat is named Pumpernickel. She is sixteen years old and has decided that my lap is her personal property. She does not ask. She simply arrives, turns three times, and settles. If I move, she glares at me with the kind of disdain only a cat can manage. It is the same look my mother gave me when I talked back as a teenager.

The garden is a disaster. I planted tomatoes in April, and they have grown into something that looks like a science experiment. Too tall. Too leggy. My neighbor, a woman named Carol who gardens like she is preparing for the botanical apocalypse, told me I should have pruned them. I did not prune them. Now they are taking over the yard like an invading army.

I do not have the heart to tear them out.

Living by the water is like living with a secret. The sound is always there. A low hum beneath everything. Some nights I walk down to the beach and just stand there. The waves do not care about my problems. They do not care about anything. They just keep coming. I find that calming.

You asked what I am reading. I started *Gilead* by Marilynne Robinson. I have read it before, but I wanted to come back to it. There is a line in it that I underlined years ago. *This is an important thing, which I have often said to you, and which I mean: this is an important thing.*

I do not know why I underlined it. But I keep thinking about it. How we tell people things are important and they do not believe us until it is too late.

Tell me about your wife. If you want to. If you do not want to, tell me about something else. Tell me about the worst class you ever taught. Tell me about the best book you ever read. Tell me about the time you were most surprised by joy.

I have time.

Yours,

Ellie

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AUGUST 2

Dear Ellie,

You were right about the cardigans. I own seven. My daughter bought me a fleece jacket last Christmas. It is still in the box.

Her name was Margaret. She was a botanist. She could identify any plant by touch. She would close her eyes and run her fingers over a leaf and tell me its name, its family, whether it preferred shade or sun. I watched her do this for forty-three years and it never stopped feeling like magic.

She died of ovarian cancer. It took eleven months. I do not recommend it.

I am telling you this because you asked, and because I think you are the kind of person who can hold difficult things without dropping them. I can tell from your handwriting. It is careful but not rigid. You leave space between the words.

The worst class I ever taught was a survey course on the French Revolution. Spring semester, 1998. Twenty-three students. Three of them actually did the reading. The other twenty spent the entire semester looking at me like I was speaking a foreign language. I was, in a way. I was speaking in 1793 and they were speaking in MTV and the gap was too wide.

I gave them all C-minuses and felt bad about it for years.

The best book I ever read is impossible to answer. But the book that surprised me most was *A Month in the Country* by J.L. Carr. Have you read it? It is short. Quiet. About a man who goes to a small village to restore a medieval painting in a church. Nothing much happens. And by the end I was weeping.

I do not know why it hit me so hard. Maybe because it is about the kind of life that looks small from the outside but feels enormous from the inside. Maybe because I am living that kind of life now.

Tell me about your husband. Tell me about the best day of your life. Tell me what you are afraid of.

I will tell you what I am afraid of. I am afraid of becoming invisible. Of being the old man people step around at the grocery store. Of having nothing left to offer.

But your letter arrived this morning. And for a few hours, I felt seen.

Yours,

Jim