Searching for Caleb

The morning the letter came he had been sitting like this in the social room. He remembered that when the attendant tossed the envelope into his lap he had expected a good half hour, perhaps, of studying pictures of floral arrangements. (Altona Florists were his only correspondents.) Bouquets named "Remembrance," "Friendly Thoughts," and "Elegance," which you could send clear across the continent without ever setting foot in a shop. But when he ripped open the envelope what he found instead was a typewritten letter of some sort. He checked the outside address. Mr.

Caleb Peck, yes. All the postmark said was "U.S. Postal Service Md."

Whatever had happened to postmarks?

Maryland.

He shook the letter open. "Dear Caleb," he read He skipped to the signature. "Your brother, Daniel J. Peck, S," A stone seemed to drop on his chest. But he was glad of course, that his brother was still alive.

He remembered Daniel with affection, and there were certain flashing images that could touch him even now, if he allowed them to-Daniel's yellow head bent over a schoolbook; the brave, scared look he sometimes gave his father; the embarrassed pride on his face when Maggie Rose came down the aisle in her wedding dress. Yet Caleb shrank in his vinyl chair, and glanced about the room as if checking for intruders. Then he read the rest of the letter.

It seemed that Daniel was inviting him to pay a visit. He was asking him to come to a place called Caro Mill. Caleb had never heard of Caro Mill.

He found it difficult to imagine his brother anywhere but Baltimore. And when he pictured accepting the invitation he pictured Baltimore still, even with this letter before him-a streetcar rattling toward the sandy, shaded roads of Roland Park, a house with cloth dolls and hobbyhorses scattered across the lawn. Daniel descending the steps to welcome him, smiling with those clear, level eyes that tended to squint a little as if dazzled by their own blueness. Caleb smiled back, nodding gently. Then he started and returned to the letter.

He learned that his parents were dead, which of course he had assumed for many years. (Yet still he was stunned.) And the baby, Caroline, whom he had forgotten all about. But where was Maggie Rose, had she ever returned? Daniel neglected to say. Caleb raised his eyes and saw her small, dear, laughing face beneath a ribboned hat. But she would be an old lady now. She had grandchildren. Her sons were lawyers, her husband a judge. It was 1973.

Yet the language in this letter came from an earlier age, and the stiff, self-conscious voice of the young Daniel Peck rang clearly in Caleb's ears. All the old burdens were dropped upon him: reproaches, forgiveness, reproaches again. An endless advancing and retreating and readvancing against which no counterattack was possible. "You must surely have guessed ..." "But we will let bygones be bygones." But, "You were always contrary, even as a child, and caused our mother much ..." Then Caleb reached the final paragraph, skimming rather than reading (so that none of it should really soak in). "To tell the truth, Caleb," his brother said, and held out his hand and stood waiting. As in the old days, when after weeks of distance he would climb all the steps to Caleb's room simply to invite him for a walk; or some other member of the family would, for they were all alike, all advancing and retreating too, and Caleb had spent far too many years belatedly summoning up his defenses only to have them washed away by some loving touch on his shoulder, some words in that secret language which, perhaps, all families had, but this was the only one Caleb had ever been able to understand. He was angry and then regretful; he rebelled against them all, their niggling, narrow ways, but then some homeliness in the turned-down corners of their mouths would pull at him; then he reached out, and was drowned in their airless warmth and burdened with reminders of all the ways he had disappointed them.

So he asked an attendant for writing paper, chafing and excited for the three hours it took her to bring it, but once it came the stony feeling weighed him down again and he found it impossible to form the proper words. Besides, his hands ached. His fingers would not grasp the pencil firmly. He folded the blank page and stuffed it in his pocket, where Daniel's letter was. Days passed. Weeks passed. For a while his family infiltrated every thought he had, but eventually they faded, returning only occasionally when he put on the coat that served as bathrobe and a rustle in the pocket cast a brief shadow over his morning.