Chapter 82: Envelopes

Tuesday, January 24, 1984

We headed straight to Jane’s office after school. That delayed our getting to Study Group by half an hour, of course, but there was nothing else to be done.

We didn’t even see Jane. The receptionist had the note and handed it to Angie, and then we took off for Study Group.

Angie carefully opened the note in the car as I got it started. Paige took Angie’s hand as Angie started to read from it:

Thank you again for writing to me, and for being willing to write to me. Your note arrived at just the right time. I felt as if I was losing — that the part of me that says ‘This is all too hard, and life could be so easy’ was winning. It wasn’t just hearing from you that helped, it was your words about recovery taking its own time.

Please tell your therapist I am beyond grateful for the help they’ve given you. The one thing that I’ve never wavered on since I came back to myself at all is to hope that you never falter or lose the path, as I have too often.

You are right that it isn’t the time for many things, but I hope, and believe, there will be a time.

I am trying to help others here. When I think of them failing, falling back, losing the fight, it makes me realize that I can’t fail either.

With love,

S

P.S. I want to open these notes with something like ‘My Beloved’ or even ‘Dear A’, but that feels wrong, after everything. It also feels wrong to just start writing. My therapist says that it’s good that I want to say those things.

Everyone was quiet for a minute, then Angie said, “So...?”

Paige said, “What any of us think isn’t the point, right?”

Angie hesitated, then said, “Right, I guess. So ... I ... feel good about it. All of this waiting is chafing me, but I think it’s a blessing. I can get angry and then calm down. Not that this note made me angry, exactly, so much as ... oh, hell, I don’t know what I mean!”

“You can be angry,” Paige said.

“Of course, you can,” Jas said.

“No, that’s not it,” Angie said. “Steve gets it. It’s like his story. If the awful, terrible, totally fucked up shit with Sharon hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t be here. It had to happen for me to physically wind up living here and ever meeting you, and it also had to happen in my first life to make me the person who’d live the life that taught me to be better.”

“Yes, but that still all sucks,” Paige said. “It doesn’t forgive anything.”

“Yeah,” Angie said, “But that’s not the point. It’s just ... inextricable. I can’t step outside my experiences and be objective. I can’t really say ‘I wish Sharon hadn’t been such a fuck-up,’ because if she hadn’t, it’s nearly impossible that I ever would have met any of you or be living the life I’m living now. It doesn’t make it right, just ... sometimes I’m furious with her and sometimes I completely understand her and sometimes I’m completely furious with her because I understand her, if that makes any sense.”

“It does,” Paige said.

“You’ll have to explain it to me, then, ‘cuz I don’t get it,” Angie said.

That got a laugh.

“What next?” Paige said.

“I’m going to take at least a couple of weeks on this. We have time. I want to talk to Jane, then write the note, then talk to all of you. It’s gotta be my note, but I also want everyone involved.”

“You know we’ll help,” Paige said.

“Of course,” Jasmine and I added.

Study Group was much like Sunday, except that it wasn’t anyone’s birthday. Many of us had a test or two done already, but we were concentrating on the rest.

We were still more than a month away from when we expected National Merit Finalist notifications. Nothing we did in the spring should affect that, at least unless someone flamed out spectacularly. Still, better safe than sorry. Except for Jimmy and Connie, we were all hypothetically at risk, and even they could lose their scholarships if they did anything particularly egregious.

That was much harder in 1984 than it’d been in 2021 (or the decade leading up to it). Right now, by far the easiest way to ‘do something egregious’ would be to get arrested for something serious. For most of us, that seemed unlikely. Aside from that, or my really putting my foot in my mouth if the press talked to me again, it was hard to get enough notoriety for a college to learn about it.

In the days of social media, though, many students had posted things they really shouldn’t have, only to find out that their chosen educational institution didn’t want to be associated with whatever it was they had shared.

We would almost certainly be safe from anything of the sort, but our kids wouldn’t be. Hopefully, we’d have raised them to understand that.

It was no surprise to me at all when Angie, wearing her PJs, came in just after nine-thirty and demanded that I get ready for bed. I’d already been planning to, and it didn’t take long before we were snuggled up.

“Is it bad that part of me wishes you were Paige right now?” she said.

“Not at all,” I said. “That’s really good.”

“I don’t want to lose... us,” she said, sighing and snuggling up a little closer.

“We’re never going to lose us, but Paige needs to be that go-to person for you, like Jasmine is for me. If we don’t get there, we’re doing it wrong, and it’s unfair to everyone.”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “I’ve never had that go-to person, not really, not as an equal.”

“If I did, it was briefly, before things went crazy. But, in my 20/20 hindsight, things went crazy very early. I’m really not sure I ever could have brought the hard stuff to my ex-wife and been certain of the outcome. And, I mean, you ... wait, maybe not.”

“What?”

“I was going to say that you completely understand complicated relationships, but in a way, you don’t, maybe.”

“I’m not sure I follow.”

“Try to think of a time when you went to Sharon, or maybe better, Max, or ... well, maybe Carrie ... anyway, went to them with a big problem that was going to create a serious, heavy discussion and they worked through it with you and it was good and productive.”

Angie snorted. “Yeah, right. Carrie, sort of, but we avoided a lot of real-life problems and said we’d sort them out when we were free. Max? Sharon? Nuh-uh.”

“And that’s my point. If I’d never had that, the marriage would’ve just crumbled. We handled years of fertility treatments fine. We navigated the relative craziness of the adoption process unscathed. School, doctors, medical stuff, house repairs, tight finances — we had tough conversations on all of them and worked stuff out. It’s just that sometimes one of those things, or a much lighter subject, would bring a crazy tirade. It was complicated.”

“Ahh! Okay, I get that, and no, I don’t completely understand them at all.”

I nodded, then said, “Anything I brought to her, from ‘We’re completely fucked financially and we need to take out a personal loan to make it six months until this other thing kicks in that’ll fix it’ — which happened — to ‘We’re out of toilet paper’ might be fine or might start a screaming fit, so I never really had that go-to person, exactly.”

“But closer than me.”

“Closer than you, but you never got halfway there. We both have to bridge the gap, just in different ways.”

“And we will,” she said.

“We will,” I agreed.

“I’m glad she’s writing, and I’m glad she’s doing better. Maybe we can be friends one day. I’d like that.”

“Me, too, for you. Well, and for me. I’d like to be able to be friendly with her.”

Angie nodded, then said, “Paige, too. Paige knows how much she’s hurt me. She also knows that it’d mean a lot to me if we reconciled enough to be friends.”

“Paige is going to be fiercely protective of you, I think.”

“And Jasmine of you. And vice versa, for both of us.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“I was thinking about something tonight. It’s... I have never met this Sharon. The, um ... me ... that was this me before I was this me — yeah, I know, but I can’t phrase it any better — she obviously met Sharon, and I have her memories, but I know they’re not my memories, not really, even if I remember them.”

I slowly nodded, saying, “That makes sense. You’re right, too, of course.”

“It distances me just a little. I think that’s a good thing.”

“Then it is. You’re the only one that matters in deciding if it’s good.”

She nodded. “True enough.”

“We probably need to try to sleep,” I said.

“We do,” she said.

We rubbed noses, then kissed softly.

“You promise we’ll never lose each other?” Angie said.

“You know I do,” I said.

“Me, too. Never!” she said.

“Love you, little sis.”

“Love you, big brother.”

Wednesday, January 25, 1984

Jess and I talked about tomorrow night. We tentatively decided to include Angie, Jas, and Paige, now that she knew they were part of the club. They’d have to agree, but I thought they would.

During Debate, I got a note to call home. That was unusual, but not a big deal. The big deal was that Jasmine also got a note. That probably meant that it concerned both of us.

It turned out that it did. Meg was nice enough to let us use the office phone. When I got Mom, she let me know that two large envelopes from A&M had arrived. Jasmine had one, too. We guessed, and hoped, that Paige had one, too.

We agreed to head home, open the envelopes at home so parents could participate, and then go out to celebrate. If Paige didn’t have one, we would wait at least a couple of days.

All for one, and one for all!

We dropped Paige off first, then Jas, and then headed home. I phoned Jas and Angie phoned Paige. Fortunately, Paige’s letter had arrived, too, and was in a similarly sized envelope. Mom hadn’t been kidding about ‘large,’ either. This was a Tyvek envelope that weighed several pounds and obviously had a heavy object (probably the course catalog) shifting around.

All of us were fairly certain that bad news did not come in large envelopes with course catalogs, but the odds of truly bad news were nearly nonexistent. We were guaranteed admission by state law (unless our class rank slipped drastically), and our SAT scores were so high that, even then, we’d be in without a doubt. The question was entirely over whether we would receive scholarships and for how much.