Love Letters

"how lonely and vulnerable are these commuters' women, how they bloom beneath the saddest, cheapest ray of admiration," he thought as he laid the trap

He was tired of the long commute, the nerve-grating traffic tangle each morning and night, but he knew she would not move. Suburbia was made for women. With hubby packed off to work, they can settle back amid the stale comforts of morning papers, reheated coffee and color quiz shows. Do they really do this? No man knows.

At any rate, Mort knew that Betty would never consent to a move back to a "stuffy city apartment." Of course, that was exactly what he wanted, a stuffy apartment. Ask for it by name. Search the classified section. Never mind those ads with the five spacious rooms, view, private garden entrance, all utilities paid. Look for a tiny stuffy apartment next to a couple who like cabbage. That was the way the discussion always went, so several months ago he stopped mentioning it. Then he had an ingenious idea.

The little hamlet that formed the core of several tracts around them had existed before the city began its drunken sprawl, so it still had its own post office. If the letter bore the local postmark, she'd be sure to think it was someone in the neighborhood. But who? Who would make a likely candidate? Have to be someone purely fictitious, of course. Wouldn't want to actually get anyone in trouble, in case she got so hysterical as to demand an investigation.

He decided on a hulking young dropout type, for nothing scared him more than ignorance coupled with brute strength. Imagine, say, a brutish lout of about 18, fat lip and drooping jaw, slightly exophthalmic, no doubt a glandular imbalance that accounted for all his difficulties. Socially maladjusted and radiating sex hunger. He'd seen the type--one? he'd seen dozens--hanging around the concrete apron of the drive-in on the long summer evenings.

But how would such a creature write? And on what? During his lunch hour, he skipped the chore of dropping by the plant to check the print order and went, instead, to the dime store. He selected a school tablet of that pulpy paper with the thin blue lines, suppressing the flow of memories that the very heft and smell of it offered. My God, did school never change? Was it an inviolable epoch, the same for these space-age kiddies as for us old Pleistocene survivors? He bought a yellow wooden pencil and, on impulse, bit (continued on page 118)Love Letters(continued from page 115) the eraser. He was flooded with an old ambition to grow up to be an airplane pilot.

Dear Mrs Avery,

A bit too broad, perhaps, that spelling error. He tore off the page, crumpled it and threw it into the wastebasket.

Deer Mrs Avery,

When I look at you it makes me feel funny all over. The way you walk makes me think bad things. Somtimes at nite I look at the window where you are sleeping and wonder if youre husbend is home. Maybe somtime I will find out.

Printing in block capitals is tiring. Mort stopped to review his work, finding it good. He considered adding another line or two but decided against it. No need to get pornographic. And the implied menace of that last line could hardly be improved. He thought for a moment, then signed it "Youre Freind."

He stopped at the shopping center on the way home from work, picked up his clean shirts at the laundry (that big automatic machine up at the house didn't know how to starch), then went into the post office and bought five airmail and five regular stamps. Picking a moment when the postmistress was busy with another customer, he slipped the block-lettered envelope into the slot.

There was a minor accident on the bridge next morning that tied up traffic for five miles, but Mort didn't mind so much. He knew he was enduring this torture for, if not the last time, one of the last, and he was calmly reasonable about it. In a sense, he actually enjoyed the delay, the creeping and stopping, for it dramatized all the hated aspects of the evil he was escaping. He imagined the look on Betty's face as she read the letter, and he found himself grinning.

The mail was still in a pile on the mantel when he got home that night. She'd had such a busy day; it was garden-club meeting (none of the women who attended knew lilies from crab grass), then, afterward, there was a get-together at JoAnne's to see about a welcoming party for the new people up the street. It had been decided that the whole neighborhood gang would (one more time!) gather in the big back yard of the Hammersmiths' for a barbecue. Then everybody would get drunk and confide their deepest secrets to the newcomers. His lust for a quiet, private city apartment was a physical gnawing in his stomach as he sorted the mail, dropped the third-class solicitations into the fireplace unopened and ended up with just a telephone bill and a letter from Aunt May.

"Was this all the mail?" he asked, before he even thought.

"That's all," said Betty from the kitchen. The oven door clanged, then he heard the jingling of silverware.

It was possible, of course. The mail service was rotten, Zip Code and all. Letters went from New York to Los Angeles in hours and were delivered from one corporate office to another the same day. But mail from the city to the suburbs was apparently floated in bottles through the sewers; it took days. So perhaps it was reasonable that mail might take 48 hours or so to climb the half mile from the post office to Seaview Terrace.

Next day, just to be sure, he composed another letter. After all, anyone who reads the Sunday supplement knows that undelivered letters to General Washington are constantly found behind the plasterboard partitions when ancient post offices are dismantled. Take no chances.

Dear Mrs Avery,

I am watching you a lot of times when you dont know it. I like to think of you without any cloes on. I wonder if you get lonesom when youre husbend is gone to work. I woud like to find you alone in youre bedroom.

A Freind

Almost too soon, he found the note finished. To his surprise, he had enjoyed composing it. And to his greater surprise, he found he had not invented anything but had told only the truth.

In the neat stack of mail laid out on the coffee table next evening, there were two bills, a letter from a onetime friend now selling insurance and an invitation to join a highbrow book club at fantastic savings. There was even, to prove it possible, a club-meeting notice mailed only that morning at the local post office. But no envelope with block printing. Betty was out in the yard, trimming dead flowers with the garden shears, so he bent quickly and riffled through the accumulation of discarded papers in the cold fireplace. Not there. He rose, staring out the picture window at this strange creature who was his wife, seeing her acquire new dimensions. A faint chill passed over him as he noted that she had worked her way to the back of the garden, where she paused now, no longer trimming. She was half hidden by the hedge and she was looking at their bedroom window with a pensive smile.

The time to stop was now and he knew it. Instead, he began to write the letters regularly. One every other day for a while, then one every day.

Dear Betty,

As You Can See I have found out youre name. You smiled at me the other day without nowing it. You had on the blue skirt wich is sort of tite but I like that. You have very sexey legs. I am still watching youre house.

A Freind

It was amazing how much he managed to vary the letters without ever becoming downright dirty. It was a game that exercised a strange fascination over him. He stopped doing the crossword during the lull between the morning and afternoon invoices. He had to visit the dime store again for a new tablet and another batch of cheap envelopes. The pictures of criminals on the local post-office wall were becoming like old friends. Had he seen one of the missing convicts on the street, he probably would have nodded amiably, wondering where they had met.

The effects on Betty were wholly unpredictable and rewarding. She was no longer careless about her dress. Occasionally, he had come home at night to find her in the same threadbare housecoat she'd had on at breakfast. She was never unclean, but she often developed a fondness for particular garments, then wore them till they were rags. He'd had to burn one of her bathrobes in the incinerator to get rid of it. But now she was attractively dressed almost all the time.

Her make-up, too, was kept up. She began to apply lipstick and comb her hair even before she started to get breakfast. It was as if she felt herself continuously under the eye of a new admirer. She had become far more affectionate, greeting him in the evening with a kiss that was more than routine.

As for Mort, things had proceeded beyond his understanding. Or, rather, they had proceeded faster than he let himself analyze them; for though he was far from stupid, he was frankly afraid to let his puritanical mind go to work sorting his own and Betty's behavior. God knows what sort of Freudian mess he might find. It had begun innocently enough, sort of a gag, actually--that was the explanation he accepted now. And since the results were so gratifying, why pry?

He had been bored and unhappy, with a bored and unhappy wife. Now they were both interested in life and in each other. He even forgot how much he hated the long commute, for his mind was occupied on the way to work with the letter he was preparing and, on the way home, with the expectation of the vivacious and affectionate new Betty. She seemed to delight in preparing his favorite foods; she listened to his office anecdotes and she stopped retailing stale neighborhood gossip to him. In fact, she said almost nothing about her daily life, (continued on page 130)Love Letters(continued from page 118) as though she ceased to exist when he was gone. Her only peculiarity of this period was that she insisted on making love--which they did with the frequency of newlyweds--with their bedroom window open, regardless of the temperature. He was quite sure her brief cries could be heard as far as the hedge.

When jealousy suddenly smote him, it nearly killed him in his tracks. He was on his way to the supervisor's office with a batch of inventory reports and he actually stopped dead, paralyzed. How god-awful stupid of him not to have considered this before! He was lost in the ugly possibilities when he became aware of two secretaries staring at him, and he forced his unwilling legs into motion again. Muscle cramp, he explained with a feeble smile.

No longer with any thought of its effect on her, he sat down at his desk and wrote, his hand trembling:

Dear Betty,

I cant stand the thought of you in another mans arms. Somtimes I am afraid I will go Crazey and do somthing terrable. I love you.

At this point, he stopped for a long while. He had said what really mattered and he was calmed. Then he had a diabolical idea.

If you will rite to me I will know there is a chance for me. Please send it to Generil delivery in the city. Tell me when we can meet. This is not my name, but send it to

Jim Lovell

It took him quite a long time to think of that pseudonym. His imagination kept handing him such bizarre and unusable names as Tom Peeper, Dick Dropout and Sam Sexfiend. Lovell sounded a bit out of character for the Neanderthal oaf he had invented, but he let it stand. He was in a hurry to arrange his own ruin.

He watched her intently on the day she must have received this last letter, but he could see no change whatsoever in her. Women are truly inscrutable when they want to be.

She appeared at breakfast next morning in a chic suit of dark-green material. She was, he noted again, a very attractive woman. Small but firm breasts, slim waist, fine hips. Worth watching.

"Doing something special today?"

"Just going down to the shopping center with Myra."

"I thought you bought groceries yesterday."

She nodded. "I have to mail a letter and do some things."

His heart stopped, then began pounding so hard he was afraid she would hear it or see it through his suitcoat. "I'll mail it for you." His voice was like crushed gravel.

"It's not ready yet. Myra's not coming by until ten."

He started to protest and his voice saved him from being ridiculous by refusing to function. He coughed, pretending a bit of toast in his windpipe. He gulped his coffee, spilling some on his pants, then got away from the table as quickly as possible. His hands were shaking so badly when he left for work he could hardly get the key in the ignition.

He phoned in with a hasty excuse about a dental appointment, then spent the next two hours in an unfashionable bar built to resemble a beached ship. From its dark recesses, he could see the front of the local post office. He drank beer, a beverage he hated, because he had to drink something and he was determined not to be drunk for the ordeal ahead.

At 10:45 (women are never on time!), he saw Myra Hansen's maroon station wagon pull up in front of the post office. Betty got out, went inside and came back in just a moment. He moved so hurriedly then that he was halfway across to the post office before he realized that Myra's car was creeping up the road slowly toward the shopping complex and he might easily be recognized if either of them happened to look back. Nevertheless, he plunged on. He was beyond the ability to exercise caution. His mind was suspended in fear like a pear in Jell-O.

The scene in the post office did not go according to plan. The gray-haired lady behind the bars was blank and unsympathetic, her humanity lost beneath the bureaucratic shell.

"My wife was in here just a moment ago and mailed a letter. She'd like to have it back, please--we forgot to enclose the check that goes with it." Too late he knew, from her telltale wince, that his breath reeked of beer.

"I'm sorry, mail can't be given out except to the addressee."

He smiled a good-neighbor smile. "We live right up the hill on Seaview Terrace. My wife's name and return address are on the envelope. It'll be right on top--she just mailed it."

"Are you the addressee?"

"No, the address or. My wife is. But we have to enclose a check with it and we forgot."

"Mail cannot be given out except to the addressee."

He had that sinking feeling that goes with talking to a recording, a sense that no human intelligence is there to respond to need. He dropped the thin smile and became very businesslike. "Let me speak to your supervisor, please."

"I'm the postmistress here."

A grave tactical error. Now she was up on her tiny high horse. Nothing for it but to grovel. He used his most boyish, persuasive tone. "I'm sorry to bother you about this--but our letter concerns a debt that's overdue. There has to be a check enclosed or we're in serious trouble. Now, if you'll please look----"

"Can't do it." The postmistress, widowed 20 years, had wed the postal service and made the book of regulations the divine word. She was no more capable of breaking a rule than she would have been of riot and fornication. Especially not for this wild-eyed beery stranger, who had appeared suddenly a few weeks ago and had been in altogether too often with his furtive look. She wondered if he might not be looking for his own picture on the wall.

Mort's mouth was open, ready to shout, but a look into her pale, merciless eyes told him it was hopeless. With a sense of utter disaster, he turned away. As he walked out the door, it occurred to him that he had risked ruin for nothing. The tryst note he was trying to intercept was addressed to him, Jim Lovell, and he would receive it this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest.

But there was nothing for Jim Lovell in general delivery at the main branch of the city post office. And nothing the next day. Nor the next. Nothing at the main branch and nothing at the smaller branches, which he covered in the senseless waste of a whole day.

On the fourth day, he had a nice letter at home from Aunt May, thanking Betty for writing to send that recipe she had requested.

Dear Betty,

Since you didnt rite to me I guess there is no hope for me. I suppose you love youre Husbend. I still think you are the sexeyest woman I ever saw. Pleas have pity on me and let me meet you alone.

Jim Lovell, (Not My Real Name)

He endured an agonizing week of rushing to the general-delivery window every noon hour, but nothing arrived for Jim Lovell. He began to look so haggard, the supervisor told him to take Friday off and get himself rested up over the weekend.

Creeping along through the traffic tangle that Friday morning, an empty and planless day ahead of him in the city, Mort finally began to see his way through the swamp of undisciplined emotion to the solid ground of reason. The letters had been a bad idea, a rotten idea. It was symptomatic of the gulf developing in their marriage that he would try such a stunt to force her into (concluded on page 200)Love Letters(continued from page 130) moving. He was lucky Betty was such a great girl, a loyal girl. How disastrous, if he, in his vulgar voyeur disguise, could manage to steal his own wife. Horrible! But hardly impossible. How touchingly lonely and vulnerable were these women of suburbia. How they bloomed beneath even the saddest, cheapest ray of admiration.

That was what hurt him, the way Betty had changed when she knew someone cared and was watching. But he liked the change, had responded to it--they had been brought closer together. If he could just get rid of this goddamn spurious rival, he'd give her plenty of attention himself. Of course, he could have Dick Dropout run away and join the Army out of frustrated love. A tempting note to write. But that left everything unfinished, even gave the unseen admirer a sort of mysterious glamor beside the workaday husband. He imagined Betty starting to flirt with Servicemen and an absurd jealousy tore him.

Walking the morning away through the green pathways of the park, thinking in endless circles, Mort was hardly aware of the sunny day and warm breezes around him. He was startled to be accosted by a bleary-eyed young hulk, a flower child badly gone to seed, who made no bones about wanting a quarter toward a bottle of wine. Looking at the lumpy features, the sparse stubble and matted hair, Mort had the complete idea in a single flash.

"I'll give you five dollars," he said, "just to come with me and deliver a note."

The young wino stared, suspicious and disbelieving.

"You won't say a word to her," said Mort, "just hand her the note and let her look at you a minute. Then get out of there. OK?"

The hulk made a face. "You oldies are all sex freaks. Deliver your own note, pops, I ain't gettin' busted as no pervert." He turned and shambled off into the foliage.

Mort laughed aloud when he realized what the stupid kid must have thought. But it didn't matter, he could find somebody else like that, the city was full of failed hippies. He could destroy his wife's suitor by giving her a single look.

But wait.

Oh, God, what a terrible idea. And yet he was going to have to do it, he knew that instantly. It was a challenge he couldn't decline. For it proved nothing if Betty reacted with revulsion to find her admirer an ugly young lout. He could win her back that way, but it was no real victory, it did nothing to restore his confidence in his ability to hold her. His jealousy would still torment him.

On the beach that afternoon, he found the perfect candidate, a sun-bronzed young athlete with good features and a go-to-hell grin. It took a certain amount of explaining, most of it lies, but Mort got the kid to agree by paying him ten dollars in advance and letting the kid use his own car, so he could be sure of leaving the scene as soon as the note was delivered. Inside the sealed envelope, it said:

Dear Betty,

Now that you seen what I look like maybe youll let me visit you wile youre Husbend is at work. Leave a note in youre mailbox tonite saying what day and time.

Jim Lovell

From two blocks up on Seaview Terrace, Mort watched his own front door through binoculars, holding his breath while the youth fidgeted on the front step, sunlight gleaming from his sun-bleached hair. Then the door opened and Betty appeared. The boy gave her a big smile, handed her the envelope, turned and totted to his open-top sports car at the curb. Betty was still staring at him from the porch as he roared off.

She was unnaturally silent through dinner that night, seeming not to notice that Mort was hardly able to eat any of the salmon steak, one of his favorite dishes. She sat through the evening gazing at the prattling TV set, not laughing at any of the comedy lines.

At ten o'clock, Mort complained of a headache--very real and went off to bed, where he lay in a rigid sweat until Betty came in quietly half an hour later. He waited what seemed a very long time, until her regular breathing guaranteed sleep, then he crept out of bed and through the dark house to the front door. Standing barefoot on the cold front step, heart pounding, he reached into the mailbox. He thought he would faint when his hand closed over the folded sheet of paper. Trembling, he opened it and held it up, squinting to see in the faint glow of the street light:

Stop bothering me. if you write again, I will call the police.

Mort exhaled with a quivering sigh, weak with relief. He went to the kitchen, drank a glass of milk that tasted wonderful, then returned to bed. It was all over. His wife was his alone. Before he could gloat over the fact, he fell into a deep angelic sleep.

On Saturday morning, after Mort had driven off to do some shopping, Betty checked the mailbox. Her note was gone. Pensively, she went to the bedroom, opened her lingerie drawer and took out the envelope she had received the day before. In it were two notes, the block-printed one and another.

Your hubby paid me to deliver this weirdo message, so I decided to read it. I don't know what freaky game he's playing, but if you need some good straight sex, just call me at 836-2332.

Jerry

She thought it all through carefully, then she went to the phone and began to dial the number.