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Mason
If I’d found the three dozen or so letters from my mother before reading my nan’s letter first, I probably would have burned them without opening them. Coaxed up a hearty flame. Tossed the whole stack in without a second’s hesitation. Enjoyed a stiff glass of whiskey as I watched the edges shrivel, the pages blacken, the ash waft up the chimney to stain the night sky.
If I’d learned that my mother had been trying to contact me for years all the way up until her death before everything went down with Rachel, I would have laughed. I would have revelled in the fact that she’d suffered. I would have praised the universe for the blissful irony of that woman who left me as a child failing to find her way back to me.
If I’d stumbled upon that shoebox any other time in my life than that very moment and opened any other letter first than my nan’s, I would have shoved everything back inside. Closed the closet doors. Locked the bedroom door. Shut down Dublin Ink. Moved to a different city. Run and run and run. And never stopped.
I would never know for sure, of course, could never possibly know for sure, but a part of me believed it was Rachel. It was her chaos like a hurricane. Her anger like a thunderstorm. Her turmoil like a tornado destroying everything in its path, but so beautiful to behold. A part of me believed it was Rachel first knocking over my nan’s shoebox of secrets as she gathered her things in a fury to leave that shifted my nan’s letter to the top. Like a miner shaking his pan to bring the flecks of gold to the surface. A part of me believed if Rachel hadn’t made such a mess, then my nan’s final words to me would have remained hidden, buried beneath my mother’s final words, final words I would have rejected out of hand.
Like I said, I would never know, could never know. But I believed nonetheless. Believed it was Rachel.
Dearest Mason,
Oh, how to start, how to start, I don’t want to start, how to start when it’s the last thing in the world you want to do, start.
I read my nan’s tidy, neat hand. I’d never known her to hesitate. Not once. She took me as her own when my mother left. From that moment on she was my rock. Sure. Certain. Never wavering. I drew my fingers over those first few lines like they were my nan’s hands, hands that I’d never known to tremble because they couldn’t. Because they always had to be strong. For me.
I almost stopped there. I almost stopped reading after those first few lines as I sat there on the edge of my nan’s bed in my nan’s old house. Because I’d failed her. She’d been strong her whole life for me and the one chance I had to be strong for her…it was almost too much. It was her next line that prevented me from stuffing the pieces of paper back into the envelope and shoving it along with the others back into the shoebox, back into the closet, back into the recesses of my mind where I did not dare go.
Well, I love you. I guess that’s the only way to start, now isn’t it? I love you, Mason. I always have and I always will.
These were words I could hold onto. Words that could keep me steady. Words that I could follow in the dark as I plunged into the rest of my nan’s letter.
Please believe that everything I’ve ever done was because of this, because I loved you. Because I wanted to do the right thing for you. Because I never wanted to see you hurt or in pain or suffering, even just a little bit. That’s what I thought I was doing…protecting you because I loved you…
Maybe I should really start now. With the beginning. With your beginning. With mine, too, maybe.
The day your mother walked out on us was one of the most horrible days of my life. You were just a child. Hardly old enough to speak more than a few simple words, though “Momma” was, to my dismay, already one of them. I knew that you were unlikely to have any real conscious memories of that day, which was a blessing. But for me it was like a dagger through the heart.
To hold such a perfect little thing in my arms, to stare into those bright green eyes, so full of life and joy and potential, to feel your tiny fingers wrapped around my thumb with such ferocity, oh, my dear, dear Mason, I didn’t know how I was going to do it. To one day explain to you that the woman who was supposed to love you more than anything, the woman who brought you into this world, something you never once asked for, the mother who was yours, your one and only, had left. Something so sweet, so tender, so precious and I was the one who had to break his little wings before he’d even taken flight?
It was almost too much for me to bear. The anger I felt. The indignation. The overwhelming, crushing, inescapable feeling of injustice. Unfairness. Meanness. Ugliness. I was angry at the world. Angry at humanity. Angry, above all, at my daughter. My own daughter!
I suppose it’s ironic that the fuel for my anger and the dousing waters for my rage were one and the same: you.
If you hadn’t been in my life there would be nothing to be angry about, and yet, if you hadn’t been in my life there would be nothing to keep me from burning the whole damn place to the ground. Please forgive me such language. You know I never allowed it. Nor condoned it. But we’re both adults now. And we’re being honest. Or at least, trying to.
Okay, okay, here is the start, the real start: one day I received a letter from your mother. From my daughter. I’m not even sure I remember how many months (or was it years) later that it arrived in the mail. I can’t check because that first letter didn’t survive. The rest barely did. I flipped through junk mail, some bills, a postcard from my sister on a vacation in France, and there it was.
It was addressed to you. But I didn’t even need to open it to know who it was from. What it said. Why it was sent. It must have been winter when your mother sent that first letter because I remember I threw it in the fire. Though, maybe we don’t even know that for sure. Maybe I built up a fire in the middle of summer, on the hottest day, just to make sure not a trace of that damned thing survived.
I didn’t even think twice about it. Didn’t pause to consider whether I should give it to you, let alone even open it myself. The answer was so clear and obvious to me that burning it, destroying it seemed the simplest thing in the world: your mother had made her decision. She had left. She had abandoned you. And she could live with that decision. That sin. That pain.
The letters kept coming and I’m really not all that sure why I didn’t do the same thing with those that I did with the first. It’s possible I caught a glimpse of her in you from time to time. Heard a bit of her laughter in yours. Noticed that you crinkled your nose the way she did when she was just a baby, just a teeny, tiny precious baby in my arms. It’s possible that I searched out those links, those links between you and her, those links between me and her, mother and daughter. It’s possible those letters became a link as they piled up in a shoebox in my closet. I probably scorned this softness in me. I probably cursed myself for not being stronger, for not just tearing them up, ripping them up, burning the whole goddamn lot of them.
Would you look at me, dear, cursing like a sailor? Your grandfather would be proud, I suppose. Smiling up at me from Hell.
I started reading through them one day. Your mother’s letters. She wanted back in your life. Wanted a second chance. Wanted forgiveness and mercy and grace. Ha! Let me tell you, I felt quite good reading those letters. I’m not proud of it now, but I revelled in it. Rolled around in her grovelling like a pig in the fucking mud. Excuse me. I wanted her to feel pain. To suffer. Like she’d made you suffer. Like she’d made me suffer.
The years went by and the letters kept coming. You grew and the letters kept coming. Your childhood come and gone and the letters kept coming. I told myself I was doing the right thing. You were fine without her. Better without her. It would be too much to ask you to forgive her. To put that burden on your young shoulders.
I thought I knew that weight, because I couldn’t forgive her. Just couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Didn’t want to. Didn’t ever want to.
Ah, I see we’ve at last come to the real start, my dear. The start that we can put off no longer. The real beginning of this letter:
I was wrong.
Perhaps that’s always the start. Admitting we were wrong.
