@@CHAP@@ A Preface
At last, on Monday around ten or half past, Sybil Van Antwerp carries the mug of Irish breakfast tea with milk to her desk. The bed is made, the dishes clean and drying on a towel beside the sink, the plants watered, the shelves dusted. She scoots the chair with precision, then gazes for a few moments out the window over her garden and toward the river off and below, at the few white triangle sails there in the distance, the reflection of the sky on the wide water, the square mansions on the Annapolis side. With satisfaction, she straightens the stack of letter-writing paper and the short, always-turning-over pile of books she will read next. She arranges the pens in the mug. She counts her stamps. She consults the stack of what letters she has received and not yet answered; a list she keeps of letters she means to write; a stack of upside-down pages in the drawer, a letter she has been writing going on years now, still unsent. Sybil is a mother and grandmother, divorced, retired from a distinguished career in law, these things are all there around her, but it is this correspondence –
On Wednesday it’s the same.
And on Friday.
And on Saturday.
On Monday around ten or half past Sybil Van Antwerp sits down at her desk again. It is the correspondence that is her manner of living.
Felix Stone
7 Rue de la Papillon
84211 Gordes
FRANCE
June 2, 2012
Felix, my dear brother,
Thank you for the birthday card, the fountain pen, and the book, which I started the day it arrived (Thursday) and finished today. It was exactly as you described. Unlikely and electric, inventive, and right up my alley. Seventy-three feels the same as seventy-two for what it’s worth, arthritis, constipation, and trouble sleeping, and I’ve decided to stop dyeing my hair. I don’t care much for my birthday, as you know, though it’s always nice of you to acknowledge it. Trudy and Millie of course came for appetizers and cards. The children both contacted me – Bruce had a strawberry tart delivered from a bakery (he’ll be up next weekend to clean out my gutters anyway), and it was awful, so I threw it out. Probably cost him a fortune. Fiona called from London. She said she won’t come home again until Christmas because work is keeping her jumping and now she is designing something in Sydney, for heaven’s sake, so she’ll spend a month in Australia. She assured me Walt doesn’t mind how often she is gone, but I’ll tell you, I don’t know how their marriage will make it. She’ll certainly never be able to have children at this point. (They’re not even trying. At least she hasn’t told me if they are. When I bring it up she chastises me.) Theodore Lübeck down the street brought me cut roses from his bushes, as he does every year, which is good of him, even if he is a renegade from the lawless fringe of the American West.
How is France? How is Stewart? What are you writing? Thank you for the invitation to visit, you’re always good to refresh it. Yes, I loved The Château, but that was a novel, and as much as I would love to see your new house, no, I’ll not come. Just as a summer afternoon is gorgeous from inside air-conditioning, and you step into the day, hot, muggy, miserable, a postcard of France with all the lavender and sunflowers, I imagine, is far more alluring than the place itself. It’s such a hassle to fly these days with the security and all the regulations about the size of bag and transferring the creams and contact lens solution into the small bottles. Honestly, it doesn’t appeal to me in the least, and I made it clear when you moved continents I wouldn’t be coming.