Twice Shy, Sarah Hogle [100 books to read in a lifetime .txt] 📗

I read a few aloud, but I have to keep stopping to laugh. Violet bedeviled Victor with recaps of all the dates she was going on with basically every other boy but him, and her signatures were a riot: The Mighty & Majestic Violet Amelia Parrish, Knower of Her Worth, You’ll Wish You Had This, Runner-Up Miss Good-Looking 1953.

Victor wrote back with fevered desperation, penmanship atrocious to convey his passion, confessing how jealous she’d made him.

“Victor was working at his family’s shop in . . . I think Cookeville.” I squint. “Yeah. Cookeville. Once a week, Violet got dressed to the nines and flounced past his store, all carefree and stunning, rubbing it in. She’d send him photographs, too, of her posing on the hood of other guys’ cars.” I cackle. “She really let him have it.”

I check on Wesley, whose gaze flickers away. He slowly removes the leg of a table and gets started on another one.

“Victor begged her to go out with him again. She dangled him on her hook for a month, but of course gave in, and eventually they got married on Starr Mountain in the middle of a thunderstorm—secretly, since they weren’t legally allowed. The bride wore a ruby-red gown to match her hair.” It’s the reason I idolize nontraditional wedding dresses and why, if I ever do get married, I want to wear a bright color, too. “No one would rent them a house even when they applied to landlords separately, because everybody knew they were together. Her dad tried to buy a place for them, but the bank wouldn’t give him a loan, either, so Victor and Violet had to live with her parents for years. Violet didn’t give me a lot of negative details. She put kind of a glossy finish over the story, but by Victor’s account they were pretty badly harassed when they lived in Cookeville. When his business made him enough money, they bought the most remote home they could find and got a pack of dogs to guard them. They got a real marriage license in 1967 but always kept their symbolic one up there.” I point to the mantel. “It mattered more to them since they’d typed it themselves.”

I browse through more letters.

“Dearest Mighty and Majestic Violet Amelia Parrish, Angel Among Mortals, Only Woman for Me: I am begging for another chance. You once called me the man of your dreams. Try to remember that!”

Wesley is looking sterner than ever. This must be the face he makes when he’s firmly decided against feeling anything humor-adjacent.

I try another letter. I’ll get him to fold.

“Violet, how long are you going to make me suffer? I can’t sleep. I don’t eat. Your grandmother thinks you’ve put a hex on me and I don’t care if you did, I just need you to either lift the hex or marry me. Love, your future husband (hopefully).”

He bites his lip.

“My beloved Violet, I saw you at the skating rink with James and my spirit has faded away to almost nothing. Remember that being good at tennis doesn’t translate to being superior in other pursuits in the real world and I’m going to be a millionaire someday. Yours most sadly, Victor.”

I stop cold at the curious noise that punctuates Victor’s plea. “Was that a chuckle?”

Wesley’s eyebrows slam together. He doesn’t respond.

“Oh, c’mon,” I tease. “You’re so serious.” That was definitely a chuckle. Or a mouse.

I don’t think he’s going to reply. At least a minute passes in silence. But then he ventures, almost reluctantly, “What made her say yes to marrying him?”

“He broke his ankle on a skiing trip, but Violet was told by their scheming mothers that he was dying. She made another boy she was dating drive her up to say her last goodbyes. She took one look at Victor in his hospital bed, right as rain aside from the busted ankle, and said, ‘You can propose now.’ He tried to get down on one knee, with the cast on. Aunt Violet could never finish telling the story because she’d be laughing so hard.” I grin. “It was her favorite story to tell. Uncle Victor loved hearing it.” I think he loved hearing it because it made his wife laugh. He was always just so gone for her.

I reach for another stack but snatch my hand away. My heart beats fast.

The Lisa Frank stationery. The diligent cursive with hearts dotting the i’s.

From: Maybell Parrish

309 Ownby Street

Gatlinburg, TN 37738

There are twelve letters with twelve different return addresses, which, in retrospect, explains why I never got a letter back. I can’t believe Mom posted them. She said she did, but I didn’t believe her. Not when she hated Violet so much and hated how attached I got to her in such a short period of time. She wouldn’t let me call or visit.

I begin to open one of the envelopes but can’t complete the process. I stare at the off-yellow strip on the inside flap that a young Maybell licked and sealed, the stickiness long gone. I’m floored she got my letters. When did I send the last one? In my mind, I posted them all the way through my teenage years, but I only see twelve here and they’re all from the Lisa Frank set. I rack my memory trying to recall when I stopped writing. All I can recall is that I didn’t think it mattered anymore, that she probably never received a single one. I was careful not to say anything negative about Mom or anything negative about my life in general, since Mom was prone to snooping and I’d get in trouble over what she found if she didn’t like it.

As I scoop up the letters to return them to their box, the sharp corner of a Polaroid scratches my palm. It’s a picture of the manor, with a little girl in front. She’s in corduroy skort overalls and a bucket hat, face rosy with sunshine, front teeth a little too big.