Sincerely,

Genevieve Waugh

A psychological handwriting analysis! Dear god, what kind of person was this Mrs. Waugh? I decided I would have a little talk with her. Maybe I’d wait for her on the steps outside, later on.

Then came the clerk with the surprise object. To her credit, Mrs. Waugh did not let on that she had not requisitioned it. And the box is so exquisite, if Tante Claudette herself were presented with it she would, I am sure, not do a single thing to betray the fact that she had not asked for it. She would, like Mrs. Waugh, let it arrive.

“His poem,” said the clerk, “is in a box within a box within this box.” She lifted the first lid and took out a layer of card, then lifted the second box out and laid it in the sparkling cradle. “You can take it from here.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Waugh, as if all were normal.

The inner box is oxblood red. It has a fragrance: fruity, like dried figs. It looks but does not smell like leather. Inside lies my very own copy of Thomas Gray’s famous poem, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” My book is chocolate-coloured and also chocolate-scented: pure chocolate from cocoa without sweetness. From three desks away I smelled the fig and chocolate, felt the plumes rise and disperse in that vaulted pentagonal room with its five floors of rare manuscripts and tomes rising up so very far above us to the distant ceiling. But not without curling first around Mrs. Waugh’s torso and hair.

Mrs. Waugh gasped.

We both understood that an animal had had its enclosure opened and we were able to smell its body. Together we inhaled my old, familiar vapours.

Ha! Gotcha, Mrs. Waugh. The vapours have got us both.

I waited outside on the steps for Mrs. Waugh to come out. I gobbled half a cheese sandwich tossed in a bin by some member of the university’s extravagant student body, that crowd sprawled down the edges of the stairs—none of them anywhere near as serious as I’d expect: civilian life becomes progressively harder for me to comprehend. Mrs. Waugh slowed when she saw me. I nodded. She came closer, looked me in the eye.

“You do look like him. Like Wolfe.”

“I should say.”

“Heather Forest explained to me that you—”

“Would you like an interview?”

“I—”

“If you wanted to bring me to your house, I could explain things that aren’t in my letters: missing pieces, gaps, in-between things I wish people understood—you are writing a book about me, are you not?”

“I’m trying my hand at a book based on the letters of—on Wolfe’s—I’m a journalist, or have been one, not so much anymore, but—these days I’m, to tell you the truth—it began as a rather personal inquiry. I’ve studied letters for years, finding connections between mothers and sons—or daughters—who try to understand each other across time and distance but who can never seem to…and, when I found this collection of Wolfe’s letters to his mother, in which at times he seems so lost…”