What of the Sea? by Marta Rainer
This happened, then this happened, then this happened.
She got a potential invitation. It was stuck in between the mesh and tin brace of her screen door, with her name boxily hand-written on the front of the envelope. Across the seam of the back of the envelope was written the acronym S.W.A.C., and no reference was made to its sender.
Sticky, wet letters.
She stood at the entrance of her bungalow, plastic bags of recently-purchased groceries at her feet, and pondered, turning the envelope in her hands, and occasionally meeting her nose to it to sniff for clues, as to its origins. The air was too chilled to glean much information from it that way. It deadened the senses. It was meant to.
Sealed with a kiss, she knew, signing something S.W.A.K.
But S.W.A.C.? What did this C portend? Once a thing is opened, it cannot be closed again, not really. Hasn’t that been proven time and time again in this town?
Today’s delivery flummoxed her, and she wondered if this letter reception was being stealthily observed. Had the Man in the Tan Jacket been accounted for lately? Sometimes he was everywhere. But no one could remember for certain what he looked like, except he had a tan jacket, and a deerskin suitcase – which was full of flies.
Had a librarian escaped? Sometimes they tried to lure prey by sending library cards to potential book lovers. In fact, there were periods this year where a librarian seemed to be escaping nearly every day.
Sealed with a card? No.
Perhaps a Vague, Yet Menacing, Government Agency! Or another political flier from the five-headed dragon Hiram McDaniels, or the Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lived in Her Home. It couldn’t be the former, as there were no scorch marks, and definitely not the latter, as the Faceless Old Woman mostly scrawled her messages on the insides of closet doors, and in the margins of her municipally-required dream journal.
It could have been innumerable letter writers. There were three hollow trees just on her block that someone could be hiding in. A blimp careening overhead. An overturned car down the way.
She ceased her conjecture. She had to get all the black garlic ice cream pints and paper towels into the freezer. She should put all these sundries into the fridge and secure all her glassware before today’s scheduled earthquakes.
She swiftly checked if other mail was waiting for her in its proper receptacle – none yet, but the postman Angus may have been lollygagging or gagging full-stop en route – and ventured inside.
The letter was most assuredly hand delivered. The door chased her backside with a uproarious schoomp!, caught itself at the last minute, and politely bopped closed.
Sealed with a…
It might have been a misspelling, of course. Perhaps the sender did in fact kiss it just after it was sealed.
Perhaps the sender took pleasure in imagining her gussied up in her aubergine dress and kitten heels, tights with line designs, a crocheted shawl, her froofy hat, and wielding a mottled cane – which she didn’t need, but enjoyed the feeling of swagger that it provided – and also, glasses framing her green eyes. Contact lenses always seemed to rebel against their function in her eyeballs, like fire. Fire. But, specifically, her bedazzled cat-eye frames, rather than her everyday browns. And also, eye makeup.
She smiled at that image of herself in her brain, which was much more acceptable than the untrustworthy image of herself in the mirror.
She hoped the content of the envelope would be revealed to be an invitation to a party, where such a getup would be appropriate. It had been three weeks on a rigid diet of black garlic ice cream and sundries: apples, deli mustard, goat’s eggs, et cetera. You know it. And she was seeing results. Trendy diets be darned! If a thing works, a thing works. And this thing works. Sometimes things are trendy for a reason, she justified.
S.W.A.C.
Perhaps the sender meant K, for kiss, because the act of their lips meeting with the paper had already taken place, but then they were so overwhelmed by their vision of her that their hand briefly didn’t work?
But…it could have been from an unfriendly rival. Or a vindictive ex. It could have been from a genetically overachieving wombat, with orthographic training and questionable spelling.
What did that C portend? Sealed with a compliment? A consonant? A carton of glue? A cartouche? A carat, as in gold? A carrot, as in vegetable? A century’s worth of spite?
Sealed with a charm.
Aaah, a charm! And if so, should she open this at all? Fool me once, she thought, as she filled the freezer with the packed pints, reserving one out on the counter for immediate attention, from which she coaxed the plastic top and found a tin spoon where it should be, in the silverware drawer – which is always directly above the hot milk drawer.
She had a series of bites and thoughts, pressing the ice cream about her mouth.
What if, in the opening, something…horrendous would get unleashed, and all the fleeting thoughts that flashed in her brain that day would come to fruition? As an example.
And so, what did she think today?
She thought about postman Angus, lollygagging or gagging. That was a fairly recent thought. And, once remembered, it lingered. In her mind, he had spotted a wildflower blooming on, say, the old Bandera lot, and became consumed with picking it for his tinctures. He would fish his wire cutters from his mail bag, clip an Angus-sized hole in the wire fence, and squeeze himself through to gain his treasure.
She thought about how her letters would often come stained with pollen, as they increasingly shared the postal bag with this roving apothecary in the making. And how, once, an inchworm sat up from its self-claimed letter bed when she opened a bill from her podiatrist, as if she had disturbed its slumber.
She thought about the last letter she got from her sister, who lived a block over, but had impulse-purchased reams of Victorian-inspired stationary from a door-to-door salesdeer, and now wrote anyone about anything, just to regain her living room space. The letter was sticky with tree sap, and her sister had scribbled “Wait, what did you say?” And what she had said, on a previous day, in a previous month, sitting across from her sister as they shared an afternoon cocoa and rye toast (pre wheat ban), was “A green-blue ring.”
Her sister’s letters were confusing, because they were written in immediate response to a conversation, but posted in a big batch at the end of each day, and since the time of the post office’s vacuum portal, which demotivated its swallowed staff, were received sporadically, out of order, and in poor condition. The letters were therefore work to comprehend, and sometimes she thought about not reading them, then worried that she might miss one that truly was a complete letter, thoughtfully crafted by her sister about an intimate issue, and not a rhetorical “What?” or “Excuse me?” or a query about what song or brand of tea this is, or an unsupported rebuttal point long lost to chronological context. She would not want to miss the rare, real letter.
They were close, the two sisters. They took a trip together last year to a glacial lake, and didn’t come home with stories or tans, but lots of digital pictures of birds. People asked them, “Wasn’t there any sunshine, or lovely scenery? Did you get out on a paddle boat once, at least?”
“Birds,” the sisters said. “We saw incredible birds.”
C.
S.W.A.C.
The letter took on more ominous importance with each spoonful. She brought the missive, now warmer and violently (violet-ly) more fragrant, and the ice cream pint, now warmer too, over to the sleeper sofa, and placed both on the adjacent coffee table.
She could feel a change in the weather. She felt it in her knees, and in her hair.
[“Ruins” by Mortheth]
The mystery of the envelope weighed on her chest and eyelids, and she felt burdened by the responsibility of the unknown consequences of investigating the epistle’s insides. Was any societal gathering worth the dark magic its acceptance could unfurl? Isn’t magic just a fiction? Isn’t society?
Did nice people need Cs? She did not appreciate it, nor did she want it.
She took the straight end of the spoon and slid it underneath the slight separation between gum-shut seal and folded corner. The spoon fit perfectly. She contemplated the slight lift of her elbow, the outward flick of her arm and carpal follow through, a gesture which would send the tin spoon through the paper’s protective. – or secretive – crease.
What C would be revealed?
Or released?
The spoon slid out carefully, the crease unharmed. Gathering all her gusto, she instead reached under the sofa bed and found her stash of writing utensils. They were illegal, yes, but everyone had them. Secret Police rarely wrote tickets for pencil possession. She was careful. And, more than careful, she was private. And, more than private, she was…discreet.
She touched the tip of her tongue, then to her block printed name on the envelope. She drew calligraphic swirls with thick serifs and ornate curves.
She wrote, “For postman Angus” on the front, in an architectural script meant to hide her own name and original intent of receipt.
She ran her first two fingers softly along the sealed flap, as if to seal it with her own S.W.A.C.
Carefully snaking her hand through the gap of her slightly-ajar screen door, so as not to alert the windowless surveillance van across the street, she returned the newly-fashioned envelope back to where she herself had discovered it, and shut herself back inside.
The ground began to tremble. She looked at the clock, surprised to note that the city started an earthquake on schedule for once.
She trusted that Angus knew more about these things than she ever could, or cared to. She trusted that should something bad happen, he would have the herbal remedy, or floral tincture on hand, to immediately set it, or something, right.
She stood at the front window, and peeked out the peach-colored Venetian slats, making herself gray in the darkening afternoon room.
She cracked a goat’s egg over the liquid remainder of her ice cream. She put the letter from her mind, and listened for the rumble of him.
Today’s proverb: Remember that all sentences must have a noun, a verb, and the phrase “foolish mortals.”
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