RETURN TO SENDER • Matthew Hernandez

After our closing, mail intended for the prior owners continued to arrive. At my wife’s suggestion, we hand printed “return to sender” and dropped the letters in the blue collection box near the Panera. The junk—the flyers, directories, advertisements—we tossed. The lewd and pretentious—the lingerie catalogs and RH—Maggie and I might laugh and then pitch. It was spring and excessive. After one particularly irritating day at the office, I secretly opened one of the letters addressed to the husband:

Darrin—
I hope you can forgive me for writing you directly, but you aren’t leaving me many choices. I’m not going to just go away if that is what you’re hoping. I know we can figure this out, that all of this is happening for a reason. I am ready, if that is what you’re waiting for me to say. I miss you so much and I don’t know what I did to deserve this. Don’t shut me out baby!
Love,
Nikki

I knew from the real estate documents that the wife’s name was not Nikki or any variation thereof. Her name was antiquated–Mabel or Edith. I tore the letter and buried it under a crushed beer can and wet coffee grounds in the garbage.

“Don’t judge me, but I read something interesting,” I told Maggie that night.

“Is that right?” Maggie’s voice rang flat. Her eyeglasses were tinted blue from the glare of the laptop that sunk into her milky thighs. With one hand she compulsively twirled a strand of reddish hair around and around. I waited and waited, but she never looked up.

“I’m thinking of shaving my chest,” I said as a test.

She paused, then asked whether I could empty the bathroom wastebasket. I grabbed the liner fragrant with used pads and tissues before saying goodnight, as always with a kiss on the cheek.

One month later another envelope, thicker this time. Same exaggerated loopy handwriting and same return address in a college town far away. I tucked it inside my jacket. All during dinner, two cartons of takeout pan-Asian, I thought about the envelope. I must have barely spoken a word because Maggie asked whether I stopped for a drink before the train. I apologized and filled her glass with wine. It turned out that one of her associates innocently inquired if she was pregnant (she was not). Maggie had always been self-conscious about her body but was more so since doubling her wedding weight. Our wedding preceded almost a year spent trying to have a baby, followed by our current pause in which we barely touched each other in that way. After rinsing the dishes and resting them on the drying rack, I found her on the floor of the living room surrounded by lending agreements and due diligence. I retrieved the envelope and took it to our bedroom.

Darrin—
You can’t just disappear on me, not like this. Not now. You showed up in my life, not the other way around. I’ve been more than patient with all of the reasons and delays and making plans but never really making plans. I know you’re scared but baby, I believe in your ass! Do not leave me like this now. I know the situation with your wife changes things a bit, but I’m glad. You promised me, and I believed you, do not walk away from me now. I know you’ve changed your phone, but call me, asap. We need to talk…
Love always,
Nikki

Inside was a grainy ultrasound—swirls of gray, black, and white. I must have looked at it for a while because I heard Maggie climbing the stairs and I stuffed it underneath the mattress.

Later, with only the sound of Maggie’s toothbrush scouring her teeth in our bathroom, I asked her whether we had the prior owners’ forwarding address. We did not and why was I asking exactly? When I said I was curious, she reminded me how the house was vacant within days of the open house. I positioned myself on her side to cuddle but yanked the blanket and her laptop fell off the bed. She muttered something about a warranty and retrieved it before leaving the room. I was already asleep by the time she came back.

That night I dreamt of Nikki. She was petite with shoulder-length brown hair and an upturned nose. She had driven across the country in some shitkicker car that was now parked in our driveway, as she stood in front of our door in tight blue jeans and a soft cotton tee and repeatedly rang the doorbell. I waited on the other side of the door, while she said my name this time. She said my name and said that she wanted to talk, she wanted to see me, she wanted her body next to mine. The knob was missing from the inside of our door, and it was shut. From the side window, I saw her looking at herself in the reflection. She was showing now, and I could see it scared her, as it must have scared her every time she walked past a mirror or any window.

Summer passed. Fall came and we sat on the patio and drank too much wine. Sometimes, when we were still young and dating, we drank ‘til hysteria; until we screamed I hate you and found reason to never separate in the same night. Now we simply took the edge off together and summed up our days, our parallel existence in turn. One day, Maggie left the mail on the counter to go shower. In one stack, I saw another letter from Nikki, stuffed and sealed with tape. Maggie had written “return to sender” in red all caps lettering across the front. The envelope felt heavy, I counted back nine months—it must have come and gone. Picking up a pen, I wrote “deceased” underneath my wife’s handwriting and returned the letter to its pile.


Matthew Hernandez is a fiction writer in Chicago, Illinois.

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