Buddy was eighty now. Marjorie had written to him when he was an infantryman during the mid-60’s. He was technically her second cousin, but he looked so much like her father he could have been a brother.
She didn’t tell people she wrote to him because it wasn’t cool to be positive about the military during Vietnam. But Marjorie’s dad had been a Navy man. Family supported family and always the enlisted.
She really didn’t remember the context of the letters. Some folk music lyrics and perhaps a few thoughts about the military and war. Always about him. Never about her. Seemed a bit of a mystery to a fourteen-year-old. Marjorie felt a burden but also a responsibility to write regularly. After all, he was serving his country. In some way, she reasoned, he served her.
Communication stopped once he came home from wherever and married. Carol seemed nice, a trained nurse. Marjorie never met her until forty years later at Anna’s funeral. Anna was Bud’s aunt, Marjorie’s grandmother. She remembered kneeling before her grandmother’s coffin in a turquoise dress she thought made her look good and hearing Bud say to Carol, “My God, she was always so skinny! What happened to Marjorie’s butt?”
Carol shushed him and rightly so. The bald S.O.B. Who was he to criticize. So, she gained a few pounds, big deal. Still looked better than him. At least she had hair and was tan. Why was he looking at her ass anyway?
Another decade passed and email happened. They began communicating about inane topics like his part-time job at the local golf club, his work with the Republican party and bowling. Again, it was mostly about him. She was absolutely sure after fifty years he would be unable to recite one fact of consequence about her. She wondered why she even bothered keeping up with this annoying second cousin.
When he recovered from colon cancer, he sent a joke about President Biden, knowing it would irritate her. At the bottom was a line mentioning casually he still kept her letters from all those years ago.
— Mugsy
She didn’t tell people she wrote to him because it wasn’t cool to be positive about the military during Vietnam. But Marjorie’s dad had been a Navy man. Family supported family and always the enlisted.
She really didn’t remember the context of the letters. Some folk music lyrics and perhaps a few thoughts about the military and war. Always about him. Never about her. Seemed a bit of a mystery to a fourteen-year-old. Marjorie felt a burden but also a responsibility to write regularly. After all, he was serving his country. In some way, she reasoned, he served her.
Communication stopped once he came home from wherever and married. Carol seemed nice, a trained nurse. Marjorie never met her until forty years later at Anna’s funeral. Anna was Bud’s aunt, Marjorie’s grandmother. She remembered kneeling before her grandmother’s coffin in a turquoise dress she thought made her look good and hearing Bud say to Carol, “My God, she was always so skinny! What happened to Marjorie’s butt?”
Carol shushed him and rightly so. The bald S.O.B. Who was he to criticize. So, she gained a few pounds, big deal. Still looked better than him. At least she had hair and was tan. Why was he looking at her ass anyway?
Another decade passed and email happened. They began communicating about inane topics like his part-time job at the local golf club, his work with the Republican party and bowling. Again, it was mostly about him. She was absolutely sure after fifty years he would be unable to recite one fact of consequence about her. She wondered why she even bothered keeping up with this annoying second cousin.
When he recovered from colon cancer, he sent a joke about President Biden, knowing it would irritate her. At the bottom was a line mentioning casually he still kept her letters from all those years ago.
— Mugsy
I think you make a good point about the multidimensionaliy of people. I enjoyed this.
ReplyDeleteReally liked this! Passage of time captured reslly well.
ReplyDeleteI so enjoy reading characters with dimensions. Beautifully done!
ReplyDeleteOMG, that last bit! It makes it all complicated again! If he kept her letters there was something there! But there isn't! But there is! (Butt there is.) The funeral scene is priceless. I love the lack of sentimentality in the description; it's all so precise; that's what Marjorie remembers, and rightly so. We are left wondering if Bud's admission that he'd saved the letters affected Marjorie in any way, and that wondering is like a sprinkle of spice on the already-tasty story. ---Macoff
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