A Light in the Rain
It was a time of great warmth and great cold — when winter parkas feud with terry cloths. A short but furious storm had just ended, and a gray stillness hung over the land like a swamp cloud, eerie and threatening. Edward Castlebaum had listened to the rain with the finesse of a seasoned eavesdropper, tracing the pitter-patter secrecy of its advance across the pond and field, the furtive scramble up the lane, and the final sweeping charge across his yard and into the porch. But he had not witnessed it, and, at least ostensibly, had not been moved by it, either. He was preoccupied with something else, something far more demanding of his interest then — a letter.
From the moment his companion, Gloria Springer, had roused him that morning, he had given his complete attention to it. How he could have misplaced it was a mystery that prompted an almost unspeakable frustration. All he knew was that it had disappeared sometime between the moment he’d paused to put on the afternoon tea and Gloria had left for the village.
For the next hour his insides had raged like the squall. In his panic he had discovered things he had not seen in half a century: faded soda caps, tooth-bitten toy soldiers, pieces of cork and old cigarette wrappers, tarnished sewing needles, shreds of dolls’ clothes, a thimble, even a decades-old copy of the Farmers’ Almanac, with its curious cover prediction of heavy rain for March. Naturally he had begun the search at his chair, which was where he had started the letter, and which was where he spent most of his waking hours, anyway. But all he found were his spectacles, which had fallen into a slipper. In an instant he had been on all fours, scouring every corner and crevice he could see. He sniffed beneath the sofa and the China cabinet, sneezing from the dust. He combed the pantry and foyer closet, peeked under mats and behind doors, even checked beneath the floor grates. By the time Gloria returned, maybe saving him, he looked as he might if his daughter would ever give him a grandchild, and he’d been chasing the little tyke for too long.
By then the swarming rain had tapered to a sprinkle, and the trees shook like wet dogs in the fleeing wind. As Gloria approached the porch, she called him in her singsong voice, still soft and resonant after seventy-one years. She was so small and lilting behind her grocery bags that even under their weight she seemed to tiptoe. She called again. As she listened, she brushed fisheye droplets from her plants and checked the mail. One of the letters seemed to sparkle in the timid sun. She dropped the rest. “Edward, they’re coming!” she sang, turning the envelope over and over in the light. “Suzy’s coming in May!” Edward heard, of course — his ears were not nearly as bad as he was always claiming his eyes were. Yet he made no reply; he was still sprawled on the floor beside his chair, staring at the ceiling and gasping for air.
After seventy-three years, Edward Castlebaum’s tired heart still seemed but a blueprint of feeling, for logic and prudence made his life’s domain. In his youth, he had tapped love’s promise of passion and deliverance briefly, its sweetness and luster having faded before a stoicism which had turned desire into an instrument of protocol. Besides his wife, who had died in the last year, Gloria had known his stoicism longer than anyone else. Yet she also knew of the deep well that was his heart. She had come to know this both by knowing him and by the accident of casual observation which had laid it exposed at least three times that she could recall during their long friendship. In each instance she had caught his tears at a distance as crystal reflections, once at a corner of his garage, another time at the magnolia tree in the field just beyond her porch, and the third time on a rainy day much like this, when his daughter, his only child, had left home.
With her grocery bags dragging at her feet, Gloria slid into the kitchen as if she were moving across ice in slippers. Between two fingers she still clutched the letter from Suzy.
She wondered why Edward was so quiet, why he had not greeted her. Though the possibility of a heart attack or stroke entered her thoughts, she did not seem concerned. He was either up to something or asleep; she hoped it was not the latter. He had promised her he would have the living room mess rectified before her return — that he would gather up the paper and pencils he had strewn about the floor and do something about his falsies, which it seemed were always making the centerpiece of the coffee table.
She saw only his feet first; the rest of him was hidden behind his chair. Now the heart-attack-or-stroke rumination seemed to slap her forward. She practically jumped on him. For the first time in the seven months they had lived together it was wonderful to confront his frown.
“What are you doing you crazy old fool?” she said sharply, wonderfully relieved that he still moved.
On his back, Edward’s face wrinkled into a bear yawn. “Tanning,” he said.
Gloria shook her head and yanked him by an arm. At the same time she began surveying the room. It was in worse condition than when she left. Much of the furniture had been moved, pillows and cushions were strewn about, and, though she did not know immediately what it was, she was eerily aware of his long winding trail across the carpet.
“I’m very disappointed in you,” she said.
“Wha—?” he mumbled.
“You heard me.”
He was coming to now.
“You broke your promise.”
“What promise?”
“Your promise to have this place back in order when I returned.”
Ever since she had moved in, Edward had been like this: lazy and sedentary — hardly the industrious neighbor she had known. And she was getting delirious for a clue as to what to do about him.
Many years had cultivated their love — a love each had nourished with gestures and glances and other indications of affection from opposite sides of the fence that had divided their once respective yards; yet each had also held this feeling in careful check with a mutual, almost reverential regard for the other’s spouse and family, and had managed to maintain composure into mourning.
Then one night, last fall, when the first leaves had begun to turn and the sweet smell of maple sap had filled the air, their long-suppressed love had bloomed during a long walk. Gloria had called on Edward to accompany her on an errand, and somewhere along the way — neither could remember any longer — each had stopped and embraced the other; and before they had been able to order their thoughts, had found themselves locked in the kind of prolonged kiss that neither had experienced since youth. Later, Gloria had attributed this abrupt display of affection to a kind of seasoned prerogative which had made such a sudden disclosure mystical, even fateful, after so many years. But not Edward. When prodded by inquisitive villagers for an explanation, he’d instantly pooh-poohed the episode as a silly blunder: an instant’s lapse of good judgment. “No one necks at our age!” he’d scoffed.
Now, as Gloria continued her effort to rouse him, she suddenly recalled that first kiss and tapped him hard on the shoulder.
“We’re taking a walk,” she said.
Edward rolled over like a prodded bag of sand.
“We’re taking a walk,” Gloria repeated, tugging him by his belt.
He resisted like a child at the doctor’s office.
“Get up you old fuddy-duddy!” she said. “You know what Doctor Hunter said!”
Before Gloria had moved in, barely a day had passed after his wife died that Edward had not taken a walk. Then, it had not been doctor’s orders; rather, the long excursions had helped him through his loss.
One day, his outing had taken him to the pond on the other side of the Sanders’ place, just behind his house: on its shutters of which he had detected the first taps of an afternoon rain. Canada Geese were known to nest along the shore during the winter, sometimes as late as April, and Edward had taken a few loaves of bread along to see if they might still be there. For the rest of the day he had sat among them as they had eaten his bread. Afterward, he had returned to the pond every day for several weeks to walk among the birds and feed them again, and he had often stayed well past sunset. It could have rained, or he could have been sick, and still he had gone.
But then Gloria had moved in, and suddenly he had traded in these daily jaunts for a sedentary existence in his chair. Now, after having tried for many weeks to stir in him an interest in something other than the radio plays and basketball games which seemed forever to entrap him, Gloria resolved to get him outdoors again, even if she had to drag him like one of her grocery bags. And this is precisely what she did. She dragged him from his chair all the way to the front closet, passing through the long hallway between the kitchen and the living room, where dozens of photographs of Edward’s daughter hung in neat symmetry. With each new step his whining increased an octave, until Gloria finally had to stop to appease her panting. He refused to look up at her; yet his mind teased this resolve such that soon he was gazing at the framed picture of his daughter and family that she had given him for Christmas. “I should be there,” he moaned. “I wouldn’t get so damned cold every time I have to go out.” Gloria felt a smile fill with sympathy as she guided him into the foyer closet. She thought of the radio plays he listened to, and of how he could sob and sob at a few simple lines between two lovers, yet seem so unmoved when he looked at a family picture, or read a touching letter,...
***
Outside, the late-afternoon shadows draped the porch gutters like black curtains. The rain-soaked alder and oak trees were decorated with a thousand reed-thin icicles hanging like tinsel.
“Oh, Edward,” said Gloria, looping an arm under his, “isn’t it a wonderful evening! — the kind that used to give us a fever when we were young! You remember those days, don’t you, Edward?”
“Huh?”
He was still struggling with his coat; and he lumbered down the porch steps in a sort of sidestep, like a person out of sorts.
“Where are we going?” he demanded.
“Why do you change the subject?” she asked.
“What subject? Where are we going?”
“For a walk,” said Gloria.
She tried to concentrate on her objective. She was leading him in the direction of a common ground which began beyond the house as a rugged hill before dipping as if graciously into the broad field that separated the neighborhood from the village.
“Where are you taking me?” Edward demanded. He wasn’t resisting anymore, but he wasn’t cheerful, either.
“You’ll see,” said Gloria.
In time they came to an old stone wall which defined the perimeter of the local grade-school property; and in another few minutes reached the main street. From there, Gloria took him directly to the Post Office, less than a block away.
As they entered the old brownstone building, she brushed off his coat and waved to the postmaster, Harry Wendlespoon, who was trying to get their attention.
“Well, if it isn’t Edward Castlebaum,” he called. “I thought maybe you’d flown south.”
Edward hardly acknowledged the postmaster, but Gloria waved enthusiastically.
Then she embraced Edward.
“What are you doing?” his dentures drooled.
“I just got the urge,” said Gloria.
Edward felt his face warm as he tried not to look at the postmaster. But Harry Wendlespoon exposed his neighbor’s embarrassment by pointing to a dried-out mistletoe still hanging overhead. “Just in case you get the urge again,” he said.
Harry Wendlespoon was a giant, jolly old man with hair so red, despite his years, that it looked as though it had been sprayed on, and a happy freckled face that matched. He had been the village’s postmaster for as long as the Post Office had operated on the main street, and that had been a long time — at least since before the Korean War, in which Harry had served and earned the Purple Heart and Bronze Star — indeed, as long as anyone else his age could still remember. In fact, Harry had been around so long that he even remembered how Edward used to be: how in his youth he had dreamed of becoming a poet, and how, even before he had graduated from high school, he had already achieved some regional fame for his graceful and sensitive odes.
“It’s nice to see you, Harry,” said Gloria, as she approached the counter. She seemed to float across the room as she extended an arm to him.
“And you, Mrs. Springer,” said Harry. “My, it’s been a long time!”
Edward had not moved since the postmaster’s first intrusion. He was still perched under the mistletoe, and in his wide black boots he seemed to be fastened to the floor.
“Come, Edward,” called Gloria, “you’re not going to get any warmer just standing there.” She faced Harry again. “Were your holidays nice?” she asked.
“Nice as they could be,” he answered.
“Any plans yet for the summer?”
“Naw,” he said, “just been thinking. Too often I do things without thinking, and then they don’t turn out just right.” He leaned around Gloria to look at Edward again. “Bet you’ve been busy with some things,” he called.
Edward continued to ignore the postmaster, looking outside into the street: still glazed with rain.
“Suzy and her family are coming next month!” said Gloria.
“Well isn’t that nice,” said Harry.
For another moment they gazed at each other as if heedless of Edward’s estrangement.
“Well, Harry,” said Gloria finally, “I need some stamps.”
The postmaster nodded eagerly and turned — but suddenly did an about-face and slapped the counter. “Oops, plumb ran out of them up here, Mrs. Springer,” he said. “But if you’ll kindly wait a minute, I’ll fetch some from the back.” And with this he turned again and split two swinging doors to the supply room.
Now, except for incidental motor traffic, the early-evening air was quiet; and Gloria imagined herself and Edward alone in a big old carriage house in a field without end — with enough Canada Geese for the both of them to tend to for another lifetime. And she retraced her steps and embraced him again.
“You eat something bad today?” he said.
“Nope.”
“What’s your problem, then?”
“Nothing. You.”
She was squeezing him so hard that she was surprised by her strength, and could see only his chin. “You make me feel good,” she said.
“Humph.”
She leaned away. “You know, Edward, you can be squarer than a butcher block,” she said. “Live a little!”
“When I get home.”
She curled her arms around his waist. “Do you remember when we met?”
“No.”
“Of course you do!”
“My headache disagrees.”
“It was on my side of the fence.”
Now he looked at her.
“It was at the very back, where Stan used to spread that horse manure he’d have delivered for his garden — back there when the poplars were still twigs.”
“How do you remember this?” mumbled Edward.
“How could I not?” said Gloria.
“I didn’t think I’d be able to control myself—.”
“Nor I myself.”
She saw Harry returning with a notebook overstuffed like a deli sandwich with sheets of stamps. “Well, Mrs. Springer,” he said, “would you like them gift-wrapped or as they are?”
“Oh, Harry Wendlespoon, always the clown!” she said. “How much do I owe you?”
The postmaster disappeared below the counter. Gloria and Edward heard what sounded like a metal box being tugged, then a rustling of papers. When Harry returned, his eyes rolled as if he were confused, as if he had misplaced something. He scratched a temple and his lips pressed together. “You know,” he said, placing the temple finger on his chin, “I almost forgot! There’s a letter here for you. I think it’s for Edward. —Guess it must have got left behind this morning!”
As of a sudden realization or reassurance, a smile flashed across Gloria’s cheeks. “Well, isn’t that kind of you to remember, Harry!” she said, “—isn’t it, Edward?” Edward shrugged.
Harry Wendlespoon handed the letter to Gloria. Gleefully she turned it over and over in the fading light before giving it to Edward. “I wonder who it’s from!” she said.
“Another damned bill,” said Edward, stuffing the envelope into a coat pocket.
“I don’t think so,” said Gloria. “Maybe we can open it on the way home!”
Edward nodded with disinterest as Gloria took him by an arm and winked at Harry. No one said another word.
***
Outside, the town glistened like a glazed pastry. A few raindrops spattered the noses of the old couple as they entered the main street, and a misty breeze skipped through their collars.
“Open the letter,” said Gloria.
“When we get home,” said Edward.
“Oh, but it’s so wonderful and dreamy out here,” she said, “what with these diamonds at our feet and that magnificent white pearl guiding us home!”
Edward looked at her as if she’d lost her marbles.
“Let me have the letter; please, Edward,” she said, nudging him for effect.
Now the arm she had looped earlier under his prodded; she tried to squeeze the letter out of his pocket — but he resisted with the possessiveness of a youth. She tried to tickle it out by poking his sides. “All right!” he finally relented.
When Gloria pulled out the envelope, Edward noticed there was no address on it, only his name. “No wonder they didn’t deliver it!” he snorted. Gloria hummed.
As she slit a corner with a fingernail, the question that had plagued him all afternoon suddenly shook him: What had happened to the letter he’d started to her that morning? Little gusts sprayed puddle ripples over his ankles and he shivered in lonely misery.
“Well, I’ll be—!” Gloria exclaimed.
Soon she had the letter fully open; however, before she could read it, Edward snatched it. His eyes went, as hers had, immediately to its lower fold. And now the letter felt as a brick in a lame hand.
“Let me have it,” said Gloria, taking it back.
Suddenly both were still: Edward listening nervously to the rising breeze, wide motionless eyes gazing at a streetlamp that had just come on; Gloria staring at him over a pitying smile.
“‘My dearest Edward,’” she began. Her body tingled; she felt like a schoolgirl.
“‘Oh, Edward, your letter to me is so beautiful. I just hope you don’t get all grumpy because I found it before you’d had a chance to finish. And yet, I pray that you will never finish — but that you will write and write and write to me like this forever...’”
She would have read on, but his eyes stopped her. Bright at their center, stars had just formed like the streetlamp in the puddles.
“I practically tripped over it on my way out this afternoon,” she confessed.
“Where?” he whispered.
“Beside your chair. Where else?”
“So...you and Harry—”
“Yes, Edward,” she said, “we were, you might say, partners in crime.”
His pounding chest made her quiver. Like a cat, he brushed his cheek against hers and laid his head on her shoulder. A car passed and flashed its lights, but neither one noticed. At the edge of the field they held their embrace, listening for the rain.
The End