Her husband made the call. When I answered the phone, I didnt understand why he was on the other side of the line and not she. Before picking it up, I had looked at the caller ID and seeing her name, expected her voice saying, Congratulations its about time.
I have your letter to Michele, he began. Now I was confused. I read it, and it was beautiful, and she would have loved it. He paused, and in the seconds of silence that followed, I braced myself for what was to come next, yet never anticipating these words. Michele passed away last spring.
After offering condolences, the medical jargon passed through my uncomprehending brain: coronary problems, blocked arteries, stents, MRIs, right angles, heart blockage, blood not pumping, and a thirty-pound weight loss. Impossible, I thought of her slender frame.
This past spring? was all I could muster at that moment.
Yes, he said. On March 26th.
How are the girls? I asked. When they married each had brought a daughter to the marriage, close in age they were sisters, now grown women with children of their own. They were so close I could never recall who her biological daughter was. Ray and Michele were Mom and Dad.
Devastated, he said. Especially Tracy, and Danielle, too, of course.
Im so sorry, I managed to say through the shock of the news.
Your letter would have meant so much to her. She would have been so proud of you, he said. She talked about you often.It had not been a good day. As I drank my morning coffee, feeling hopeless and depressed, a snippet of my dream returned. Someone was holding the stationery I had used to write the letter on, the single page in one hand, the envelope in the other, mocking me. All day I felt myself on the verge of tears that I willed back, and in the late afternoon, I finally pulled myself together, and ran my daily errands. I had written Michele a real letter, a thank you noteSo many times you told me to get out of my own way and just write. Well, I finally did. After basically kicking around for most of 2006, I had an idea for a novel. Realizing that I had reached another fork in the road, this time I took the right road. In January 2007, I began writing and I finished the book in this past May. There were many days when I remembered not only your advice but also your voice as I mentally admonished myself to stay out of my way and just work on the book. I also told her that I had been pitching agents, and two of them were currently reading the manuscript.A few years ago I had reached out to her and when her office e-mail bounced, I assumed she had retired. Still, I had time, I thought. I would wait until the book was done. I had Googled her periodically, to no avail. This time I asked a friend to log on to her Facebook account to help find her but the search produced no results. So I went old-school and checked Verizons White Pages. I knew she had a house in Rhode Island and the phone number listed with the address matched the phone number I had stored in my Outlook contacts.
When I sent the letter, I had no doubt that I would hear from her, even though we hadnt seen each other in four years. She was always there in my mind, in my heart. I felt sick. All this time secure in the knowledge that she was out there, I had waited to write until literary agents expressed interest in my book. I wanted her to know that I had written a good novel, and now she would never get to read it. After the call my mind wandered over the times we shared, the years tumbling out in episodes, the mental pictures crisp and clear. When we met she was Director of Administration to my Director of Finance at the law firm where we both worked. I had been there for a few years before she arrived and we quickly became friends. She had faith in me from the start. I was living the wrong life and struggling to transition to the right one and she was there for me.Two years later I decided to go back to school at night to finish my degree in writing. She read everything I wrote from academic papers to works of fiction. She told me I was good. When I lost faith in myself, she restored it. She told me the only thing in my way was me. She always told me to write. Seven years my senior, she was the older sister I never had, the mother I always wanted, and my best friend. She was the approval I sought, the advice I would take, and the love and encouragement I needed. And she gave it all generously.
Together we smoked and drank a lot. Our favorite haunts were the Bull & Bear at the Waldorf Astoria and the cigar lounge at Patroon, where we consumed bottles of Opus One. We shared long drunken lunches at the upscale Chinese restaurant around the corner from our office where we would go to hide when the partners behaved badly, sometimes not returning to the office at all. Michele would call her assistant, Kendall, who would shut down our computers, lock our doors, and bring over what we needed to take home. When my grandparents threw a surprise birthday luncheon for my mother at a restaurant outside of Philadelphia, Michele came with me. She was at my graduation; I have a photo of her on the steps of Low Library standing next to my mother and another from the family dinner held afterwards. She was a much better friend to me than I was to her. I was needy and insecure. I acknowledged that in the letter and apologized for it. I knew her for almost twenty years. For the first eight we were part of our daily lives. Then I left the firm, returned, and left again. The second ten years I didnt see her often. I was in San Francisco for five of them, and she had taken a new job at a large prestigious law firm. Each time I was in New York I would call, but she was crazy/busy and it was hard to coordinate schedules.
My letter arrived five months too late. Michele was only 63-years-old. The pain of her death is fresh. It is selfish. I want her back. No one in my life right now knows how much she meant to me. I truly loved her and I will never be able to tell her that again. She is gone, irrevocably gone. My eyes hurt from crying. There is no one I can talk to about her. There are people who are indelibly part our lives even if years pass without contact you know they are there, their influence never waning. I regret that I was sloppy and let her drift out of my orbit but I always thought there would be more time. I had hoped that the letter would open the door to our reconnecting. In the end, we dont always know how much of an impact we make on others. But what I do know is that Micheles influence helped me grow up. She was my friend and for that, I am profoundly grateful. About the author: Frani Schwartz is a New York City-based writer. She is currently working on her second novel.
