A 3rd letter

 A 3rd letter, and a 3rd person coda  

Moira, before she died
(though not long)

Dear Ted,    
     Who told me you were reading Freud? What in God’s name for? I am about to ask, when I think, “He is amusing, isn’t he, dear old Sigmund?” — always abuilding, a house of straw and sticks, altering the plans as he goes, changing the purpose of the rooms he's built already, tearing down walls between them at the same time he is building new walls within them. Adding rooms, adding stories. And now his disciples are coming around him with mud, glues, and cements, trying to keep the structure from collapsing. A philosophy like rock ‘n’ roll. I make fun, but only because he thought of himself as a scientist, not as the fabulist he is, and one constantly changing his mind about where his story was going.
     Speaking of stories, where is yours going? Are you only going to rip off my letters? They may fill space, but it won’t move matters forward, will it? Aren’t you only building rooms that will turn into storage closets?
     But enough about you. What about me?  I keep to my pattern, which is nevertheless porous enough that all kinds of things, new and old, exciting and indifferent, can seep in; some can even widen a weak space and rush in. Yet the house built on rock will not fall.
     Today, for example. I woke up as usual. I ate breakfast as usual while Potato, the cat, wandered in and out of the window over the kitchen table. I put on my coral-red dress with its million white buttons down the front and walked barefoot to the park, where I sat with a sobbing Max. Then, I started to Alma’s to write you
     when it began to rain. So, I ducked into a magic store I had never noticed before, run, it turned out, by Søren of Søren, Kris (for Kristian), and Hamlet, who also have an interest in the store but are never there. “It’s pretty much all me,” Søren said, “here 24/7.”
     “So, you’re pretty easy to find,” I said. He said, “Yes, why?” I shook my head. [But see here.] “Show me something I might be interested in,” I said.
     “Are you easily fooled?”
     “Probably so.”
     And he showed me some tricks with spongy balls that appeared and disappeared, multiplied and hung in the air. And I laughed, and he laughed at my laughing.
     “Do I know you?” he asked after the gravity-defying climax.
     “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m a friend of Alma. In fact, we went to high school together, Alma and I. I know Kris when I see him.”
     “But not Hamlet,” he said, more as a statement of fact than a question.
     “No,” I said. “At least not so far.” And I looked out the window, and the rain had stopped. “Gotta go,” I said though I didn’t “gotta go.” But I did go — on to Alma’s for pen and paper to write to you. Which she brought to my booth with my coffee.
     “I didn’t know Søren had a magic store,” I said. “Does he?” She didn’t sound interested.
     And that is my day so far. I am back “in pattern.” I’ll walk this to campus mail, hoping for a letter from you that won’t be there. But there will be one soon after you get this, I hope.
                                                                                                                                     Love, Moira
                                                        _______________________________

“This is the third-in-row letter from your dead sister,” Axel said. “Have you lost interest in the living?”
     “No, of course not,” Ted replied.
     “But?” he asked.
     “I don’t know what to write about them. There is very little movement these days, and I don’t know what they are thinking.”
     “Do you never speculate?” Axel said and looked at Ted, who looked at him, puzzled as if he didn’t understand the question. So, he (Axel) interrupted his (Ted’s) silence. “No, I don’t think you do.”

                                                                    07.04.23