May set the table and pulled her cardigan close. Colorado was colder than she remembered.
“Theo!” she called. “Breakfast!”
She surveyed boxes in the hall that needed unpacking. Or were they garbage? And where were her brand new corduroys?
“Theo! You’re late for work!”
The telephone shrieked.
“May?” said the caller. “It’s Judy… Are you well? Wanted to call… being a year since…”
Bitter whiffs of Marlboros, hospitals, antiseptics drifted through.
“I’ll… write later, Judy.”May dropped the telephone, ran down the hall to the empty bedroom, and for the third time that week lost her husband all over again.
I found this postcard at some vintage store maybe twenty years ago and I've just kept it around, shoved in a book, or tucked into a bookshelf, all these years. I've always wanted to know more about Maytie's story. The line, "maybe you don't think I am not sick!" and, of course that last line, where she's scratched out the word, 'come,' have just stuck with me. Has she left home or returned home? Having no way to hear her story, I decided to write it. In my head this story takes place the morning before she writes the postcard. I had four drafts that each went different directions, but, as I'm likely to do, I ended up with the saddest one.
Wed. Idaho Springs, Colo.
Maybe you don’t think I am not sick!
Have just discovered that the box with my best coat and some jackets and trousers (new) is missing.
It must have gone out of the apartment with the junk man.
It is cool and Theo doesn’t have a jacket to wear. Isn’t that something?
It would have been better if I had never left home.
Maytie
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