A few days before school began for my freshman year of college, I got a call from a friend. He'd been admitted to a fraternity but had already committed to a room, and needed someone to take the room he no longer wanted. I wasn't sure if I wanted to live off-campus but I agreed to stop by. The address was 55 Oak Street. I liked it and moved in.
I came to love the place. I loved the grand old trees that surrounded it, towering twice as high as the house. Studying in the evening my eyes sometimes strayed from my books to admire the green depths of their canopies. Sometimes I would take my sleeping bag and sleep out under the stars, and watch late into the night as the silhouettes of their branches moved back and forth against the sky. And I loved the chandeliers and the old wood floors and the banisters and the sense of history. Never did I love it more than in the spring of my sophomore year. What a spring that was! I have seen spring come and go many a time, but never one so mirthful as that wild, intoxicated ecstasy of a season which beatified the world. Somehow that year I could feel the gratitude of the ground as it drank the snowmelt and breathed the free air, and of the trees warmed by the sun. The flowers were as bright as fireworks and as soft as music; the leaves poured out of the twigs and branches like wine; and every time my feet touched the grass I felt like dancing. I could not be a spectator: the moment I was out of doors the rejoicing of all nature flowed into my veins and I became a part of the giddy resurrection, I felt a perfect bliss and desired nothing but to be. And I woke up each morning looking up into the ocean of leaves, the grand old trees, transfigured by the strange magical pink light of sunrise. Was it those trees that cast the spell, that granted me the soul of a poet during those strange, vivid weeks? Or the flowers that teemed in the garden? Or the dewdrop-strewn spiderwebs in the wild patch at the end of the big back yard? Or the early-morning birdsongs that greeted the rising sun? Anyway, I left 55 Oak Street to study in London the next year. I never lived there again.
Renny was a senior that year. He was a local boy-- a "townie"-- who had known our landlord Michael Brewer since childhood, and he worked for Brewer's real estate agency and held the title of "Resident Manager" at 55 Oak Street. Brewer himself was old enough to have retired a few years before, and had stayed on, or so we all guessed, partly in hopes that Renny would be his successor. Brewer liked the idea that the little establishment he had run for 35 years might outlast him. But Renny, who had a good head for business and plenty of ambition, had accepted a job from a consulting firm in Boston, and I think it was partly out of guilt-- for he loved his old mentor-- at letting the old man down that he arranged a birthday party for him that April. The old man was turning sixty-seven.
Michael Brewer was hearty, healthy, prosperous, almost handsome despite his age, and seemed to be known and respected by everyone in the town. But he had one grief: five years before, his beloved wife of thirty years had died, too young, of cancer. His six children-- four sons, two daughters-- had done too well for themselves to stay in Indiana: most of them held a Ivy League degrees, and they lived in New York and Chicago and Washington and Florida. But they visited, and sometimes there were flocks of grandchildren in his house.
None of them could get away that year, however, when the old man's birthday came around. Renny learned this through the grapevine, and invited Brewer to 55 Oak Street on the pretext of a fictional electrical problem which he wanted Brewer to take a look at. I got home from class at 4pm in the afternoon: two hours to prepare. We cleaned, and Renny cooked a steak and a cake. Others made fruit salad or bought beer and wine.
My token contribution was two bags of m&m's. I took two glass bowls from the pantry and pulled the bag to open it: it wouldn't open. I pulled harder and ripped it in two, and the colored balls exploded from the yellow bag and clattered across the floor. Everyone groaned. "Sorry... I'll pick them up," I said, to atone for my clumsiness, and began crawling under the table groping for looses m&m's.
Eddie, another housemate, helped. "Stupid crack!" I heard his voice from behind the pantry door, as he pried an m&m out of a crack in the floor, and then, "Hey..." in a tone that awakened my curiosity. I poked my head into the pantry.
It was the letter.
The crack in the pantry floor-- the same one where I found it again, fourteen years later-- was its hiding place. Eddie and I read it together-- "Wow..." I think we said-- but not knowing the history of the house, we could make nothing of it. We called Renny, the townie. He read it with fascination.
"This is amazing..." he murmured to himself, still reading the letter. Then he thought for a moment.
Remembering us, he began to explain. "The woman this letter is addressed to, Mary, was the wife of Lionel English, the first owner of this house. My father knew him a little bit later in his life... Well, he knew of him, anyway. English was a strange man. He was rich, but he was a recluse, and some people thought he was half-crazy. He had no friends really, except maybe old Mr. Brewer.
"Anyway, the amazing thing is that Michael Brewer was once charged with murdering her. Lionel English almost got Brewer sent to jail for murdering his wife. Mr. Brewer was acquitted in the end, and I don't think almost anyone in this county believes that he did it. But you see why this would be interesting for him, right? Nobody else was ever convicted. They never found the body. It's an unsolved mystery to this day. Now, this is new evidence. I don't know who this guy is, this Peter Marcielo. I've never heard of him. But if Mary and Peter Marcielo were having some sort of affair, maybe she ran away with him. Maybe she was never murdered at all. It might be painful to remind him of it all. Still, he'd probably be glad to clear his name for good."
I was taken aback to hear that Mr. Brewer might be a murderer.
"How do we know that she accepted the offer? How do we know she even read the letter?" I asked.
"The dates. January 4, 1959. I think it was in 1959 that the murder trial occurred. And I think it was in winter, because the stories tell how they were searching the snowdrifts for her body. So if I'm right, this must have been written only weeks or days before she disappeared. It's a little bit odd that he would write a date on a love letter..."
"He seems to have been a soldier. Maybe it's a habit he picked up in the military," I suggested.
"Yeah, maybe so. Anyway," continued Renny, "she must have read it. You found it here in this crack?" We confirmed that. "So she obviously hid it deliberately. And why would she have hidden it unless it was a guilty secret? She didn't want her husband to find it."
"It makes sense," I agreed. Inwardly, I let go of my brief suspicions of Brewer.
"Strange to think that this letter was here in Lionel English's house all those years, and he never found it."
"Do we know that he never found it?"
"Well, he would hardly have accused his best friend of murder if he had seen this. And then later, he would still have wanted to clear his friend's name."
"They were still friends even though English suspected him of his wife's murder?" asked Eddie.
"I don't know. That's what I hear. I was too young to know about it myself..."
"And if she were alive, is it possible that she wouldn't have sent no word to anyone?" asked Eddie. "Not to her husband perhaps, but to her family?"
The specter of murder returned, casting its shadow again on Brewer, but also bringing a darker thought: Perhaps this Peter Marcielo murdered her himself?
But we agreed to show the letter to Michael Brewer at the party. Thanks to the letter, all seven residents of 55 Oak Street decided to be present. Two of them had had plans for that evening-- an old man's birthday party isn't every college student's idea of a good time-- but their curiosity got the better of them.
Old Michael Brewer rung the doorbell promptly at 6 o'clock, along with his toolbox, ready to tackle the electrical problem that had bested his trusty lieutenant Renny. "Surprise!" we shouted, throwing confetti. Thanks and congratulations were exchanged; steak and cake were eaten; gifts, mostly from Renny, were opened; and then, before the wine, one last present was offered.
As Brewer read the letter and for a long time afterwards, he was not only silent, but seemed to have forgotten our existence. His thoughts played on his face: the distant expression of a man suddenly remembering things long forgotten, memories more vivid than present reality; the bittersweet, bemused expression of a man who finds that a riddle answered only opens up new riddles; also, faintly, the anguish of a pain that has hardened and aches afresh at the touch of salve. Then, though we were still invisible, he saw the house: his eyes devoured the floorboards and the walls and windows, as if searching, not seeking an object but peeling away time, and he began to pace, and he poured himself a glass of wine without seeming to notice it. This he brought with him, and he noticed it as he placed it on the table, and positioned it as if trying to recreate a scene. And then he sat down at the old table. "How the trees have grown," he murmured, as if it surprised him.
When he began to speak we scarcely knew if he remembered us or not. "He sat there, and I sat here, and we played a game of chess..." he began. "She went to bed. Afterwards, we began to talk. Only the trees were not so tall then. I looked out at the starry sky... That must have been late in the summer, because the trees were still green. It was 1958..." He was silent again, thoughtful.
Renny interrupted him. "We thought it might help you..." he stuttered nervously, "... the murder trial?"
"Yes," said Mr. Brewer without meaning: he was acknowledging the utterance, not agreeing. Finally his reverie passed, and his attention returned to us. "Yes perhaps, but that's not what I was thinking about," he explained, clarifying nothing.
He saw the curiosity and confusion in our faces, and suddenly laughed. "So you want to know the mystery behind this love letter, do you?" was his odd remark; odd, because that was not what we had asked for or expected. "It has to be told sometime I suppose. Only I'm not sure if I can do it tonight. But I do know something about it. I'll start from the beginning, if you like, but perhaps I won't go on too long."
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