Forever Yours, Anna

Forever Yours, Anna

By Kate Wilhelm

« Hello, Anna, » he said softly, and tension seeped from him; the ache that had settled in behind his eyes vanished; he forgot the traffic jams coming home from Long Island, forgot the bickering his children seemed unable to stop.

He took the letters to the living room and sat down to read them through for the first time. Love letters, passionate letters, humorous in places, perceptive, intelligent. Without dates it was hard to put them in chronological order, but the story emerged. She dad met Mercer in the city; they had walked and talked, and he had left. He had come back, and this time they were together for a weekend and became lovers. She sent her letters to a post office box; he did not write to her, although he left pages of incomprehensible notes in her care. She was married or lived with someone, whose name had been cut out with a razor blade every time she referred to him. Mercer knew him, visited him apparently. They were even friends and had long serious talks. She was afraid; Mercer was involved in work that was dangerous, and no one told her what it was. She called Mercer her mystery man and speculated about his secret life, his family, his insane wife or tyrannical father, or his own lapses into lycanthropy.

Gordon smiled. Anna was not a whiner or a weeper; but she was hopelessly in love with Mercer and did not know where he lived, where he worked, what danger threatened him, anything about him except that when he was with her, she was alive and happy. And that was enough. Her husband understood and wanted only her happiness, and it was destroying her, knowing she was hurting him so much, but she was helpless.

Forever yours, Anna

He pursed his lips and reread one. “My darling, I can`t stand it. I really can`t stand it any longer. I dream of you, see you in every stranger on the street, hear your voice every time I answer the phone. My palms become wet, and I tingle all over, thinking it`s your footsteps I hear. You are my dreams. So, I told myself today, this is how it is? No way! Am I silly schoolgirl mooning over a television star? At twenty-six! I gathered up all your papers and put them in a box giggling.You can’t send a Dear John to a post office box number. What if you failed to pick it up and an inspector opened it finally? I should entertain such a person? They are all gray and dessicated, you know, those inspectors. Let them find their own entertainment! What if they deciphered your mysterious squiggles and discovered the secret of the univerdse? Do any of them deserve such enlightenment? No! I put everything back in (ecised) safe….”

(The Year`s Best Science Fiction, edited by Gardner Dozois. St. Martins’ Press, New York)