Chapter 3: Prison Pen Pals

In the bright cocoon of Marlene’s study, the old mahogany clock marked time in soft chimes as if to say the hours meant nothing to it. She was surrounded by worn paperbacks, yellowing hardcovers, pages of stories as comforting as well-worn quilts. A stack of blank stationery lay on her polished oak desk, an expectant hush in the warm air. Marlene held his letter written in impossibly neat handwriting, each sentence a soldier standing proud and in line: “Mrs. Weppler, your classes opened my eyes to the power of words. I often think about the passion in your voice when you read Shakespeare.” She smoothed the paper with careful fingers, and her pulse quickened with a forgotten thrill. Marlene’s gaze drifted toward a picture of her old classroom, where young minds were as open as new novels and the past seemed only a page away. She drew a deep breath, her thoughts alive with a whisper of what might be.

Finishing her newest correspondence letter, she read it through, whispering the words to herself, tasting each one as it passed her lips. “Your letter was a lovely surprise,” she concluded, “and I look forward to hearing more about your journey. With warmest regards, Marlene Weppler.” Simple, she thought, yet loaded with meaning beneath its careful veneer.

With a satisfied yet contemplative sigh, Marlene sealed the envelope, feeling the small weight of it in her hands. She turned her gaze again to the picture on the desk, the faces of her high school English literature students smiling back at her, frozen in a moment of possibility. Her own face, younger and full of hope, seemed to whisper from across the years, daring her to embrace this new chapter, to open herself to what might come.

The sun dipped lower in the sky, casting long shadows that reached across the floor like fingers of anticipation. Marlene placed the letter in to her purse, ready to be sent off into a world unknown. She sat there, quiet and still, surrounded by the stories that had been her life, and for the first time in a long time, she wondered what the next one might be. The clock chimed again, soft and unhurried, marking the end of an afternoon that felt like the beginning of something much more.

As summer lengthened into the swelter of August, the air grew thick with promise. Each envelope from Demarcus brought a whispered thrill to Marlene’s quiet days. Her world was a comfortable, familiar place of soft furnishings and familial obligations, of children who brought their own children for weekend visits. But something was stirring in Marlene, an undercurrent pulling against the stillness of her life. The letters arrived, always in the same crisp handwriting. But now they began to take on a stronger more personal tone, a tone that began to cross personal boundaries. “I dream of your soft hands turning the pages of a book. I imagine them on my skin”, he wrote. Marlene’s fingertips trembled over the lines, and she allowed herself the dangerous pleasure of dreaming of him.

They found their way to her with a kind of regularity, these letters, marking time in ways she had not known before. A fresh rush of feeling in each post, challenging the ordered days of her life. Harold, with his gentle oblivion, had come to expect the quick rise of color in her cheeks each morning when she brought in the mail. He only chuckled, his eyes a portrait of easy-going innocence, never asking what she might be so excited about.

She settled into her favorite armchair, its fabric worn and familiar, beside a window that overlooked the neat, tended garden. The radio hummed softly in the background, filling the space with the low murmur of news and talk. Her tea steamed gently on the table beside her, but Marlene found her hands too unsteady to hold the cup. Instead, she clutched the letter, re-reading the intimate words from Demarcus that sent tiny, delicious shivers through her.

“Mrs. W,” another line teased, “please don’t be cross with me but I can’t stop thinking about your curves in those pencil skirts you used to wear. Those sexy heels you wore. The wonderful perfume you wore. The great legs you had. My body aches for your touch, as I remember you from my school days”.

Marlene’s breath caught in her throat, a fragile and dangerous sound. She had never allowed herself to imagine that someone would ever see her this way, least of all a young black man like Demarcus, whose world she once inhabited only as an outsider, a kind interloper with good intentions. Yet here was the evidence of his desires, laid bare and unguarded, tempting her to admit her own.

Time moved with an odd, elastic quality, stretching out languidly before her and then snapping back with the crispness of new days. The weight of the letters filled the moments between family visits, their contents etched into her mind, becoming part of her in ways she had never expected. As she smoothed over Demarcus’s latest inscription, her heart quickened with both fear and a longing she could scarcely name.

A pen in hand, Marlene tried to craft a response, her fingers hovering over the paper with uncertainty. She had rehearsed the lines in her head so many times, wanting to match his candor without betraying the depths to which his words had reached her. It was a careful dance, one that required more balance than she knew she possessed.

Her teacup rattled softly as she placed it down, staring at the blank sheet that seemed to taunt her with its emptiness. “Demarcus,” she whispered, testing the sound of his name as though it held all the answers, and then the words spilled forth, hesitant and halting. She wrote about how much his letters meant to her, how they stirred memories she had thought long forgotten. “I find myself thinking of you often,” she admitted, a single bead of ink punctuating the admission with more force than she intended.

But where to go from there? Her mind raced with the implications, and the pen trembled as it scratched across the page. Her own handwriting, once a picture of steady composure, revealed the cracks in her resolve. Marlene paused, tapped the rim of her teacup, and then set her pen down in quiet surrender.

The days turned, summer giving way to the faint chill of autumn’s approach. Leaves began to collect in brown-edged drifts, the early casualties of the changing season. The Weppler household fell into the comfortable routine of a family bound by love and habit, children returning with their own children in tow, the weekends filled with laughter and noise that bordered on chaotic. Marlene found herself drifting through it all, a quiet observer in her own life, a smile fixed on her lips but her thoughts elsewhere.

When another letter arrived, she knew before she opened it that the words inside would send her heart racing. It had become something of a ritual, the reading, the re-reading, the time spent lost in thought as she puzzled through her replies. “Why haven’t you written? Did I scare you off? The anticipation of your letters keeps me up at night,” Demarcus confessed in his neat hand. “I hope my words do the same for you.”

The letter felt hot to her touch, and Marlene sat with it for a long time. This time, there was no gentle preamble, no easing into the language of longing. “I need you, Mrs. W,” the letter declared, and she felt her face flush with the power of those words. “I imagine the warmth of your skin. Do you think about me the way I think about you?”