Something Ive Been Meaning to Tell You

listening to her confidences. I am ashamed of such a fantasy. I feel envy in her presence, and a precarious triumph, and this frivolous desperate curiosity; I am ashamed of all this when I remember.
    I come at night—the store is open till nine—but she is usually not there. One night I come and she is there by herself. No one else is in the store. She goes to the back room and comes back carrying something, comes directly to me.
    “I think I know who you are.”
    She looks straight into my face. She has to lift her chin, she is so much shorter than I am.
    “We’ve all noticed you hanging around here. At first I thought you were a shoplifter. I told everybody to keep an eye on you. But you’re not a shoplifter, are you?”
    “No.”
    She gives me what she has in her hand, a brown paper bag full of papers.
    “He’s dead.” She smiles at me as a teacher would who finds you fatally compromised at school. “That’s why you haven’t been hearing from him. He died in March. He had a heart attack, at his desk at home. I found him when I came in at supper time.”
    I cannot, and should not, speak to her.
    “Should I say I’m sorry to tell you? I’m not sorry. How you feel is not important to me. Not at all. I don’t want to see you here. Good-bye.”
    I leave the store without saying another word to her.
    In my apartment I open the bag and take out the letters. They are letters, not in their envelopes. That is what Iknew I would find, I knew I would find my letters. I don’t want to read them, I dread reading them, I think that I will put them away. But then I notice that the writing is not mine. I start to read. These letters are not mine, they were not written by me. I skip through every one of them in a panic and read the signature.
Patricia. Pat. P
. I go back and read them carefully one by one.
    My dear love
,
    You leave me so happy. I went to the park with Samantha and it was lovely. I pushed her on the swings and watched her on the slide and thought I will have to love this park forever and ever, because I went there when I was so happy and after I had been with you
.
    Darling
,
    Remember the crazy old man next door? He came and ate the things off that pink tree in the garden. I mean the ornamental plum tree, they must be the ornamental plums, they are hard as rocks and nobody ever was meant to eat them I’m sure but I saw him grabbing them and swallowing them down by the handful. I was sitting on the floor in the sun room on the purple cushions, where you and I were—
    My darling
,
    I had a dream about you last night. It was a beautiful strange dream. You were holding my hair in your hands and saying, this is all too heavy for you, you’ll have to cut it off, it will sap your strength. And the way you said it was so lovely, so sympathetic, as if you meant something else not just my hair. How can I tell, love, what you’re saying in my dreams if you never write to me? So please write and tell me, tell me what you’re saying to me in my dreams—
    Love
,
    I try and try to keep from writing because I believe I must give you the choice, I don’t want to chase after andtorment you but it is so hard when you just drop off the earth like this, I feel so terrible alone. If you could tell me you didn’t want to see me or hear from me any more I could accept that, I really think I could, it’s just the awfulness of not knowing. I could deal with my feelings if I had to and recover from loving you but I must know whether you love me and want me any more so please, please, tell me yes or no
.
    And the last letter, really no letter at all, a large scribble on the page, without salutation or signature:
    Please write to me or phone me, I am going crazy. I hate to be like this but it is more than I can stand so I beg you
.

    “I didn’t write these letters.”
    “Aren’t you her?”
    “No. I don’t know who she is. I don’t know.”
    “Why did you take them?”
    “I didn’t understand. I didn’t know what you were talking about. I’ve had a grief lately and sometimes I’m not—paying attention.”
    “You must have thought I was crazy.”
    “No. I didn’t know what to think.”
    “You see what happened is—my husband died. He died in March. Well, I told you. And these letters keep coming. There’s no return address. There’s no surname. The postmark is Vancouver but what help is that? I’ve been expecting her to turn up. She is getting to sound so desperate.”
    “Yes.”
    “Did you