Obsession (9780061887079) by Gloria Vanderbilt Page B

heavily on me was that I kept putting off the day of opening the annex that housed his archives to curators—for once I did, it represented a final letting go…. And so I delayed. Until one summer night, as if sleepwalking, I rose, covered my nightgown with a robe, and, barefoot, ran from the house across the lawn to find myself leaning against the metal door of the annex, trembling. I opened the lock and stepped into that room I knew so well but had not entered since Talbot’s death. Dazed, I gazed around at the built-in units sized to fit architectural drawings, files on another wall detailing in his hand the contents justas he had left them. I walked along the walls, touching labels, pausing at one marked “Private.” Inside—letters piled one on top of the other, each neatly tied with string. Letters from parents, a sister, letters written in a hand hardly recognizable—mine, going back to my school years. He had saved everything. Pristine, in a neat pile, one on top of the other. I started opening at random, running my finger over the crisp white initials of my maiden name cresting the candy-pink stationery.
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    Dear Talbot,
    Here I am after the divine Christmas vacation back at school, but all I think about is our meeting at the Metropolitan dance. My fat roommate only thinks about food. All she wants to talkabout are hot fudge sundaes.
    All I want to talk about is you. Please write soon.
    Love,
    Priscilla
    P.S. How do you like my new stationery?
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    Dear Talbot,
    Why haven’t I heard from you? Well, I’m busy too. Lots going on here. The Randolphs had a big party, friends coming from everywhere to celebrate the wedding. Lots of bubbly and many admirers (are you jealous?). Then Monday Ginny arrived so it’s been one party after another.
    We were in the Adirondacks last weekend and so you’ll know what a serious person I really am, I’m sending a present I spotted in a store at Tupper Lake. A burlap pillow with a spruce treehand-painted in oil, inscribed “Spruce up and come—I balsam” (bawl some). Stuffed with real pine needles no less. I was going to say I painted this example of kitsch myself, but I’ll never lie to you. So put your sweet head on it and dream of Pris. But why not take the hint—spruce up and come spend next weekend at the Ads? It’ll be fun.
    Love,
    Pris
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    Darling Talbot,
    Have you read Emerson’s essay “Circles”? In it he says, “our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning; that there is always another dawn risen on mid-noon, and under every deep alower deep opens.” Oh, sweetheart, when I read this I think of us. How it’s going to be when you place the wedding band on my finger, because our marriage will be a circle of truth that never ends.
    Your adoring,
    Pris
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    Under the pile of my letters I came upon another, tied with magenta grosgrain ribbon—dove-gray envelopes with writing in magenta ink in an unknown hand—Mr. Talbot Bingham, Box 964, Easton, Maryland. I turned an envelope over and saw the return address—Akeru, Montecito, California. From inside the envelope, lined with magenta tissue, I took out a sheet and studied a crest engraved at the top in magenta—a small butcostly crown, and, under this, a bee.
    I started reading…
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    Master,
    One night, when you least expect it, when you are asleep and having only faintly uneasy dreams of an indefinite kind, I will appear in your room (because you once demanded as proof that you own me that I wear an invisible golden chain around my waist with the key to your apartment, I’ll have no problem getting in the door). I will be carrying only a single match but that match will find its way to your body’s middle, where, even as you sleep, you are thinking of me as I make my honey. It’s as if that