Grandma died a week ago. I was devastated. I knew about the cancer, and I knew there was no hope at her age. Still, I refused to believe it. She was the nicest person I’d ever known, and after mom had died, she’d taken care of me. It was only thanks to her I could attend college.
Going through all the things she’d collected over the course of her life felt strange, like I was an intruder. Who was I to so simply decide what to keep and what to throw away? Yet it was necessary. I couldn’t hope to keep all of it. There was her collection of ceramic figurines, old photo albums of her and family, yellowed books, paintings whose colors had long faded, and so much more. One day, as I went through another box of memorabilia, I found one filled with stacks of letters.
As I looked through it, I noticed they were of varying state. Some were neatly tucked away, others seemed to have been crumbled up before she decided to keep them. When I gave them a closer look, I saw they were all sent by the same person, a woman named Elisabeth. Reading through them gave me this warm, fuzzy feeling. Elisabeth sounded like such a nice person, and I was sure she’d been a close friend of grandma’s.
As I checked the dates on the letters, I saw that the last one had only arrived recently, just shy of my grandma’s death, but others had been sent decades ago. I teared up as I stared at what must’ve been hundreds of letters. What was in front of me was a testament to a lifelong friendship between two women.
It was the middle of the afternoon when I read the very first letter. The topics ranged from serious to mundane. In one, Elisabeth gave advice on marriage and childbirth, in another, she talked about gardening and TV shows. As they got closer to the present day, they talked at length about the cancer that would ultimately be grandma’s demise. Elisabeth’s words never wavered and were filled with nothing but hope and kindness.
When I put the last letter away, it was long past midnight, but my decision had long been made. I was going to visit this Elisabeth, my grandma’s lifelong pen pal.
***
I wrote down the address I found on one of the last letters and started on my trip to the other end of the state.
When I rang the doorbell, a tiny old lady, almost half my size, and about my grandma’s age, opened the door. For a moment, she looked at me in confusion before she smiled.
“You’re Margaret’s daughter? No, you’re too young. Her granddaughter, then, right?”
I opened my mouth, but then closed it again, and nodded. The tiny old lady chuckled.
“You’re her splitting image! You look exactly like her when she was your age. Come in, come in. What brings you here?”
Before I could even answer, she hurried back inside and motioned for me to follow her.
“Well,” I finally started, once we’d made it to the living room, “I came to say thanks for being such a good friend to grandma over the years, and for all those letters you sent.”
“Nothing to thank me for, girl. It was the only thing I could do.”
“Because you were such good friends, right?” I asked, smiling.
At that, the old woman chuckled again, but this time it wasn’t merry. No, it was nothing but wicked. When she stopped, her face was distorted into a mask of purest spite.
“Oh, you silly girl. Friends? Oh no, I wrote those letters out of spite!”
“Wait, what are you talking about?” I asked, taken aback by her outburst.
“I did it to make her pay for what she did,” she almost spat at me.
“But those letters, they were all so nice.”
“Of course, that was the whole point! You see, little girl, Margarete and I grew up together. We were the closest of friends. But, oh, we were so different. Your grandma was smart, and even prettier, while I was nothing but a gray little mouse. She had it all, and I had nothing. At least, until I met Stephen. I don’t know why he did it, but the moment he asked me out, I was the happiest girl in the whole wide world. I got pregnant, Stephen proposed, and soon I was busy preparing for my wedding.”
For a moment, she smiled, reminiscing, before her face grew dark again.
“But your grandma, she had to ruin it all! You want to know what she did!? Well, the big day arrived, and Stephen didn’t show up.”
“How’s my grandma related to-?“ I started, but she promptly cut me off.
“Because it was her! She couldn’t take it! For the first time, I had something she didn’t. I had a fiancé, soon a husband, and even a family. She’d never had a serious relationship before! So instead, she seduced my soon-to-be-husband, slept with him, and he left me behind. Oh, how I pleaded with him to come back, told him I’d forgive him, but he told me he’d been in love with her all his life. I’d been nothing but a second choice! And now that he could have her…”
For a moment, she broke up, shaking, her mouth quivering in sadness and anger.
“Wait, but my grandpa’s name isn’t Stephen,” I blurted out.
“Of course not! She was never really interested in him! It was just another one of her petite little games. A few months later, she left him behind like every other guy before him. To him, though, it meant the world. He’d left everything behind for her, his family, his reputation, and even me. There was nothing left for him. They found him a few days later, dead. I remember little after that. They told me I had a breakdown, lost my mind as well as the child, and was hospitalized for the better part of a year. And all because of your grandma.”
I gasped at this revelation. All the power left me, and I slumped down in a chair. This couldn’t be true. She had to be lying!
“But those letters… why did you send them?”
Slowly, a smile appeared on Elisabeth’s face. It could almost have been benevolent, if not for the hint of mockery around the corners of her mouth.
“She came back to me years later. Told me she was sorry, and that she knew I must hate her, detest her even, and blame me for all that happened to her. But you know what I did? I told her there was nothing to be sorry about. There was nothing to forgive, not a single thing. No, I told her all was fine in the world with the brightest of smiles. You know why?”
I stayed quiet, not able to utter a word.
“Because she could tell it wasn’t true. She knew it was a farce. What she wanted was closure, the truth, to move on and make good of the bad things she’d done. She cried and pleaded with me to admit it, but I only hugged her and told her it was fine. Oh, she was furious. She screamed and raged, and in return, I gave her nothing but kindness. She said she needed to hear it, but I never said a word. Instead, I told her I’d be her friend forever. It was the last time I ever saw her in person. About a month later, I sent her the first letter. I knew she was pregnant by now and was about to get married. So in this very first letter, I gave her a few tips on marriage, childbirth and children. I read all those books after all, I wrote, so it would be a shame if it was all for nothing. Of course, these letters were full of sarcasm, and I’m sure she must’ve noticed it.”
“Did she ever acknowledge you?” I asked, my voice nothing more than a whisper.
“Oh, but of course she did! When the letter arrived, I couldn’t believe it myself! She begged with me ‘Please Elisabeth, just say it!’ But I didn’t, of course, I didn’t. And soon I sent her another letter, and then another.”
For a moment, she cackled to herself before her eyes focused on me.
“Now how about I show you what else your oh so nice little grandma sent me?”
With that, and before I could answer, she hurried toward a cupboard and took out a stack of letters of her own. She searched through them meticulously before she brought one of them over to me.
I recognized grandma’s handwriting right away, but I couldn’t believe what I was reading. The letter was filled with nothing but rage and profanity. Grandma called Elisabeth a bitch, a horrible, evil person, and told her that everything had been her fault to begin with. Everyone had looked down on her, Stephen had never wanted her, and she was happy the child… At this point, I couldn’t take it anymore.
“This… this is terrible,” I mumbled. “How could she…?”
“Didn’t know that side of her, did you, girl?”
I only shook my head, but then I wondered about something.
“How did you keep this up for so long?”
When Elisabeth spoke again, it was with profound sadness in her voice.
“What else was there for me? My body was broken, I had no children, no trust, and certainly no hope for a family of my own. But I had her letters. Every insult, every profanity, and all her emotions; oh, I relished them. It made it all worth it!”
Her voice had changed once more. It was almost euphoric now. She hurried over to her stack of letters again and brought over one from just a few months ago.
I prepared for profanities, but this one was… different. It was a last, heartfelt plea by grandma. She wrote again that she knew she’d ruined Elisabeth’s life. She didn’t know why she’d done it. Back then, she was just a dumb young girl. All she wanted was to hear from Elisabeth, from her former best friend, that what she’d done was terrible. It was the last thing she wished for, to finally get closure. At least, now, Elisabeth could do it, couldn’t she? Now that the cancer was eating away at her body and mind. I felt tears coming to my eyes. My hands were shaking, but when I looked over at Elisabeth, the old woman was beaming.
“I wrote her the nicest, most empathetic letter I’d ever written. I told her it was all my fault. That she’d been right to send me all those ugly letters. It had all been me, and she, Margaret, wasn’t to blame for a single thing. She began to cackle again.
“Oh, I was her friend till the end. I never wrote a bad word about her, and never acknowledged what she did, never.”
In sheer revulsion, I watched as the body of the sad little creature in front of me began shaking, her cackling growing more and more intense.
“I’d never let her have it! I’d never give her the satisfaction of acknowledging what she’d done to me. She died never getting the one thing she begged me for so much: closure. And I know that hurt her more than anything.”
