She had persistent razor stubble. I liked it.
Dear Trevor,
Your story about Misty Lee reminded me of your mother’s legs. I know you don’t want to hear this sort of thing about your mother, but we’re being honest here, right? I mean, if a dead dad can’t be honest with his son, then what’s the point, right? From where I am now, there’s no sense in being anything less. Lies fall away up here. Almost everything does, I suppose, eventually. There’s not much left, but honesty remains.
My memories of my time there, where you are, have mostly fallen away, although writing to you is bringing many of them back in a rush. There are only a few memories that really stick with me and most of those are just tidbits—like individual slides that fell out of the slideshow carousel.
About your mother’s legs: I don’t remember the look of them all that much. I think they were really quite unremarkable, as far as legs go, and quite pale. I also remember goosebumps. But she was my wife, and so those legs were mine, in a matter of speaking.
Your mother was not what I would call a passionate woman, but we shared a queen-sized bed for 20 years. I loved to reach my leg over across the sheets until my leg touched hers, especially on a cold night when the sheets were cool and her skin was warm.
She had persistent razor stubble. I liked it. I never told her that. Maybe you could, some time, somehow, mention that I liked the stubble on her legs. It took her out of the realm of fantasy and into reality for me. A movie starlet would have smooth legs. A touch of your mother’s stubbly leg made me know I was touching a real woman, in bed, with my own bare skin.
There is nothing like that here. Nothing nearly that tactile. Your letters are wonderful, but they are—what would a lawyer say—hearsay? I’m not sure that’s right. They bear witness, but they are not my eyewitness. Do you understand me?
The closest thing that comes to sensory experiences here are the times I see the boat. And as awful as it is, I never miss it. I’ve never missed it once. The boat is horrible to look at and horrible to smell. It overcomes the salty, slightly fishy smell of the sea with the stench of iron and its own salt—the odors that only come from bloodshed.
At times, I think it would be worth getting on that ravaged boat, with its ravaged captain. What is the worst that could happen? I can’t die again, can I? If I were to suffer, would that mean I might feel something? Even pain would be a reprieve now.
Where does it go? What happens to the passengers? Where does it leave them? What is the source of the blood? Why does the mystery of it frighten me so? Because it does. It frightens me into paralysis and I stay behind and watch it motor away into the fog. Then I haul my heavy heart back up to my porch and I sit and look out into the fog, wishing I could get a glimpse of the boat and where it goes. I never do.
I hope you hear back from Drew. I’d like to hear what he has to say. And I have a sincere respect for clergymen, because of your mom’s pastor, Mel Landgren. I regret having never set foot inside his church—at least not a living foot–except on Easters. I suppose my funeral was held there. Was it? It is strange to think about such things.
I think one of the reasons I did make a deathbed confession to Jesus was because of the persistence of Pastor Mel. He was a very ordinary man. If you met him on the street, you would suppose he was a dentist or an insurance man before you’d ever think he was a pastor. In fact, I believe he may have actually been a dentist earlier in life. No matter. As your mother told you, he came nearly every day to visit me during the end of my time there. That persistence struck me as a deep kind of faith or perhaps a level of mental instability. I mean, he believed that my salvation mattered and that there was a reality to it and he believed it enough to invest his time in it every day.
I was doing quite poorly and getting sicker every day. Your mother always tried to put a smile on and pretend I was OK, so my best barometer to how I looked was Pastor Mel. I could tell my worsening condition weighed on him, because I had still refused to say the words and make a confession. His looks decayed along with my own. The only difference was that once I said the prayer and told Jesus I believed in Him, he returned to his apple-pie self and I continued decaying down toward the grave.
In a way, that response really pissed me off. In another sense, it was further proof of his faith in the process.
Honestly, I had more faith in the faith of Pastor Mel than I did in God Himself. Perhaps that’s why I’m here, in this annoying place.
Dad
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