The Boy Carl Wrote to for Twenty Years

Sunday

We did it at the kitchen table, with Beth’s laptop propped against the sugar bowl and Beth pretending to wash a pan that had been clean since Thursday, which is how I knew she was nervous too.

I had put on a blouse and taken it off and put on a different blouse. The screen blinked and the sound crackled, and then it was a room, and there was a young man in it.

I suppose I expected the boy in the white shirt. And that is nearly what I got, a man’s shoulders and short neat hair, with the cowlick still standing up in front. He wore a pale blue work shirt with the sleeves rolled. Behind him I could see a shelf of tools and a window with the bright hard light of high mountains coming through.

He had the same serious mouth.

“Mrs. Stoltz,” he said. His voice was lower than the letters. “Hello. I am Mateo. Thank you for this.”

“Marilyn,” I said. “Please. You have been writing to my husband for twenty years.”

He smiled then, and the whole face changed.

“My wife says I should say Doña Marilyn,” he said. “She says that is respectful.”

“Doña Marilyn is fine,” I said, “if she says so.”

A young woman leaned into the corner of the screen, dark-eyed, in a green sweater. “Lucía,” Mateo said. She said hello in English, shy and correct.

I told him about the shoebox, and about Denise and the register.

I told him about the truck fund. I had not meant to. I said, “I thought he was saving for a truck. All those years. I teased him every Christmas. He drove the same Ford the whole time.”

His shoulders shook.

“The Ford,” he said. “With the door.”

“With the door that had to be lifted.”

“I know about the door,” Mateo said, laughing openly now. “He told me, in 2014. He said, I will buy a new truck as soon as I figure out how to say goodbye to this one.” He wiped his eye with his wrist. “He did not get the truck?”

“No,” I said. “He did not get the truck.”

“Then it was a good fund,” Mateo said.