The Eighteenth Night

 

It was raining heavily that night. Nick stood by the window, quietly taking in the view while I was finishing up the dishes after dinner.

Then he turned to me and said,

“My sister wrote back to my email.”

“Really?” I stopped what I was doing. “And? How did it go?”

“Well… she wrote back. She was… polite.”

I left the last few plates behind and turned fully to him, drying my hands with a towel.

“She said something like, ‘Hope you’re well, take care, talk later’?”

“No. She actually wrote quite a bit.”

“Women do talk quite a bit. An email is a written piece, though; unlike listening, reading strips away emotion. Writing a lot isn’t the same as writing with clarity—especially emotional clarity. That said… does she still strike you as polite?”

“I dunno… I told her it’d been years since we last spoke and I thought maybe that should change. I mean, we’re the only ones left in the family, and I didn’t see why we couldn’t try to rebuild something. After that, I talked about me—what’s happened since I left, how I’ve been, stuff like that. She told me how she felt getting my message, about the damage I’d done to the family and… yeah, it was painful, y’know?”

“So, is she saying—or hinting—that it’s nice to hear from you, but no need to write again? Or the opposite: yes, please, write back, I want to see you?”

“Neither one. Not really.”

“Well, that’s good. I’ll lend you my laptop—write her back now.”

“I’m not sure I can...”

I smiled candidly to him and said: “Of course you're not. I don’t think she’s sure either. You left home, got into drugs, became a prostitute, lived a wild life that nearly killed you. Do you think she didn’t suffer? Do you think your mother didn’t suffer? All those years go by and suddenly—bam!—you show up in her inbox from the other side of the world. Of course she’s afraid to reconnect. Probably just as afraid as you are. Don’t waste time. Write her. Ask her if she wants to know the truth about why you left, that you were just a kid—immature, terrified, deeply wounded.”

“You think she can forgive me?”

I paused for a moment, considering the weight of my words: “I think you ought to ask for forgiveness. For years you’ve avoided this moment, and now you’ve moved a piece on the board. She responded to that move, and now it’s your turn again. That’s how the game goes. You’re not kids anymore. You’re grown people—over fifty. It’s time to move forward.”

“I don’t know if it’s worth digging all that up...”

“You already have. The only choice now is whether you’ll follow through—or walk away again. And you know why I think this is shaking you so deeply? Because she matters. Talking to me about your past was hard, sure, but imagine if I had turned you away—for this or that reason. You’d just have walked out the door and that’d be that. But she’s been walking beside you all these years, all this years she had been in your heart, sometimes visible, sometimes hiden in the shadows. Do you get what I mean?”

“You mean, if she didn’t matter, I wouldn’t be trying to bring her back into my life."

"Yes, I said. Friends are the family we choose—but she’s the family I have. You could stop being my friend, but she’ll never stop being your sister. Not even after death."

"Alright… let’s go to your laptop. If you’re up for it… I’d love your help writing back to her.”

“You want me to hold your hand?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course! I mean… am I Mary Poppins or am I not?”