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Authors: Susan Choi
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Hendley.
Perhaps Lee would just check his mail and then return home. He let himself into the departmental mail room, that claustrophobically windowless chamber, barely more than a truncated hall, with a door at one end to the corridor and a door at the other to the cubicled space of the departmental office, today deserted, a graveyard of inert monitors and cold copy machines. He did not really expect to fi nd anything; the usual ream of irrelevant memos would not have been issued in the two school days after the bomb. He was surprised, then, not just to find he had mail but to find that it was actual mail, an envelope stamped and postmarked and addressed to himself. Instinctively he tore the envelope open and read where he stood.
Dear Lee,
What a bittersweet pleasure to see your face after all of these years, even if through the mesh of newsprint. You are still a hand-40 S U S A N C H O I
some man. “Princely,” I believe, was the word sometimes used around campus for you. I know that you, like me, are rational, and that you won’t be offended when I say that the sight of my grad school colleague almost seventy years (is that right?) from his start in this life, was a bracing reminder to one of his peers as to how many years of his own life have passed. Let me compensate for the great gaffe of mentioning age by asserting you wear it admirably well, a lot better than I do. I wonder if you would agree that there is some relief, in becoming old men. What poet wrote “tender youth, all a-bruise”? I can admit that you bruised me, that last time we met.
Lee’s horror was intense and imprecise; like helpless prey, he felt himself the narrow focus of amorphous scrutiny; he was the paralyzed deer in the woods, hub to eyes and gun sights. He felt his bowels loosen.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured. He straightened and looked around himself quickly, his heart pounding away at the door of his ribs. Of course he was alone. All morning he’d thought about ghosts, and yet here was one to blindside him he had not even deigned to imagine.
The rest of the letter was absorbed in an unremembered instant, during which he also burst out of the mail room and traveled back down the hall toward his office, almost tripping over the feet of the watchful policeman.
“Good morning,” Lee exclaimed.
The policeman nodded to him with brusque courtesy. “How’re you feeling, Professor?”
“Just fine,” Lee replied, attempting to sound stoic and warm and forgetting all about going into his offi ce. He hurried out of the building, back into the sun, and took a left down the concrete pathway, toward University Station.
The letter must have been delivered either yesterday—Monday—
or today. The postal service kept on implacably regardless of spring breaks or of what deadly freight it might ferry. Its vast, branching, impersonal systematicity revolted him suddenly. Like a poisonous river, it had brought Hendley that bomb, spewed it out on the banks of his life without the least word of warning. Now it had brought Lee this letter. He still held the single sheet of white typewriter paper, bent A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 41
against the twin folds that had thirded it by the surprising pressure of his hand, which had now left a rippled damp spot in the margin. This proof of his own physical contact with the letter made Lee feel somehow compromised. He refolded the letter quickly and slid it back into the envelope. The envelope was as characterless as the paper: white, business-size, cheap, with no watermark. It was addressed—snidely, Lee felt—to Dr. Lee. The italics were Lee’s own, in angry echo of his correspondent. So Gaither had never finished his degree, as Lee had predicted he wouldn’t—this was what the sour fastidiousness of Dr.
Lee clearly betrayed, if unintentionally. Lee knew Gaither well enough to see through his fraudulent courtesies. The painful and intoxicating brew of shock and fear, of uncertainty and
Perhaps Lee would just check his mail and then return home. He let himself into the departmental mail room, that claustrophobically windowless chamber, barely more than a truncated hall, with a door at one end to the corridor and a door at the other to the cubicled space of the departmental office, today deserted, a graveyard of inert monitors and cold copy machines. He did not really expect to fi nd anything; the usual ream of irrelevant memos would not have been issued in the two school days after the bomb. He was surprised, then, not just to find he had mail but to find that it was actual mail, an envelope stamped and postmarked and addressed to himself. Instinctively he tore the envelope open and read where he stood.
Dear Lee,
What a bittersweet pleasure to see your face after all of these years, even if through the mesh of newsprint. You are still a hand-40 S U S A N C H O I
some man. “Princely,” I believe, was the word sometimes used around campus for you. I know that you, like me, are rational, and that you won’t be offended when I say that the sight of my grad school colleague almost seventy years (is that right?) from his start in this life, was a bracing reminder to one of his peers as to how many years of his own life have passed. Let me compensate for the great gaffe of mentioning age by asserting you wear it admirably well, a lot better than I do. I wonder if you would agree that there is some relief, in becoming old men. What poet wrote “tender youth, all a-bruise”? I can admit that you bruised me, that last time we met.
Lee’s horror was intense and imprecise; like helpless prey, he felt himself the narrow focus of amorphous scrutiny; he was the paralyzed deer in the woods, hub to eyes and gun sights. He felt his bowels loosen.
“Jesus Christ,” he murmured. He straightened and looked around himself quickly, his heart pounding away at the door of his ribs. Of course he was alone. All morning he’d thought about ghosts, and yet here was one to blindside him he had not even deigned to imagine.
The rest of the letter was absorbed in an unremembered instant, during which he also burst out of the mail room and traveled back down the hall toward his office, almost tripping over the feet of the watchful policeman.
“Good morning,” Lee exclaimed.
The policeman nodded to him with brusque courtesy. “How’re you feeling, Professor?”
“Just fine,” Lee replied, attempting to sound stoic and warm and forgetting all about going into his offi ce. He hurried out of the building, back into the sun, and took a left down the concrete pathway, toward University Station.
The letter must have been delivered either yesterday—Monday—
or today. The postal service kept on implacably regardless of spring breaks or of what deadly freight it might ferry. Its vast, branching, impersonal systematicity revolted him suddenly. Like a poisonous river, it had brought Hendley that bomb, spewed it out on the banks of his life without the least word of warning. Now it had brought Lee this letter. He still held the single sheet of white typewriter paper, bent A P E R S O N O F I N T E R E S T 41
against the twin folds that had thirded it by the surprising pressure of his hand, which had now left a rippled damp spot in the margin. This proof of his own physical contact with the letter made Lee feel somehow compromised. He refolded the letter quickly and slid it back into the envelope. The envelope was as characterless as the paper: white, business-size, cheap, with no watermark. It was addressed—snidely, Lee felt—to Dr. Lee. The italics were Lee’s own, in angry echo of his correspondent. So Gaither had never finished his degree, as Lee had predicted he wouldn’t—this was what the sour fastidiousness of Dr.
Lee clearly betrayed, if unintentionally. Lee knew Gaither well enough to see through his fraudulent courtesies. The painful and intoxicating brew of shock and fear, of uncertainty and
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