Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

now?”
    “My father wrote letters when he found out about the cancer. He wasn't much of a letter writer before. I don't know if he ever wrote. But he spent his last two months writing obsessively. Whenever he was awake.” I asked why, but what I really wanted to know was why I started writing letters after Dad died. "He was trying to say his goodbyes. He wrote to people he barely knew. If he hadn't already been sick, his letters would have been his sickness. I had a business meeting the other day, and in the middle of our conversation the man asked if I was related to Edmund Black. I told him yes, he was my father. He said, 'I went to high school with your dad. He wrote me the most amazing letter before he died. Ten pages. I only barely knew him. We hadn't talked in fifty years. It was the most amazing letter I'd ever read.' I asked him if I could see it. He said, 'I don't think it was meant to be shared.' I told him it would mean a lot to me. He said, 'He mentions you in it.' I told him I understood.
    “I looked through my father's Rolodex—” “What's that?” “Phone book. I called every name. His cousins, his business partners, people I'd never heard of. He'd written to everyone. Every single person. Some let me see their letters. Others didn't.”
    “What were they like?”
    “The shortest was a single sentence. The longest was a couple dozen pages. Some of them were almost like little plays. Others were just questions to the person he was writing to.” “What kinds of questions?” “'Did you know I was in love with you that summer in Norfolk?' 'Will they be taxed for possessions I leave, like the piano?' 'How do light bulbs work?'” “I could have explained that to him.” "'Does anyone actually die in his sleep?'
    “Some of his letters were funny. I mean, really, really funny. I didn't know he could be so funny. And some were philosophical. He wrote about how happy he was, and how sad he was, and all of the things he wanted to do but never did, and all of the things he did but didn't want to do.”
    “Didn't he write a letter to you?” “Yes.” “What did it say?” “I couldn't read it. Not for a few weeks.” “Why not?” “It was too painful.” “I would have been extremely curious.” “My wife—my ex-wife—said I was being crazy not to read it.” “That wasn't very understanding of her.” “She was right, though. It was crazy. It was unreasonable. I was being childish.” “Yeah, but you were his child.”
    “But I was his child. That's right. I'm babbling. To make a long story short—” “Don't make it short,” I said, because even though I wanted him to tell me about my dad instead of his, I also wanted to make the story as long as I could, because I was afraid of its end. He said, “I read it. Maybe I was expecting something confessional. I don't know. Something angry, or asking for forgiveness. Something that would make me rethink everything. But it was matter-of-fact. More of a document than a letter, if that makes sense.” “I guess so.” “I don't know. Maybe I was wrong to, but I was expecting him to say he was sorry for things, and tell me he loved me. End-of-life stuff. But there was none of it. He didn't even say 'I love you.' He told me about his will, his life insurance policy, all of those horrible businesslike things that feel so inappropriate to think about when someone has died.”
    “You were disappointed?” “I was angry.” “I'm sorry.” “No. There's nothing to be sorry for. I thought about it. I thought about it all the time. My father told me where he'd left things, and what he wanted taken care of. He was responsible. He was good. It's easy to be emotional. You can always make a scene. Remember me eight months ago? That was easy.” “It didn't sound easy.” “It was simple. Highs and lows make you feel that things matter, but they're nothing.” “So what's something?” “Being reliable is something. Being good.”
    “And what about the key?” “At the end of his letter he wrote, 'I have something for you. In the blue vase, on the shelf in the bedroom, is a key. It opens a safe-deposit box at our bank. I hope you'll understand why I wanted you to have it.'” “And? What was in it?” “I didn't read the note until after I'd sold all of his belongings. I had sold the vase. I sold it to your father.” “What the?”
    “That's why I've been trying to find you.” “You met my dad?” “Only briefly, but yes.”