Ferreol's call

I didn’t think this last day of the month would ever come. Something about writing every day makes the days slow down to an absolute crawl. Also all the work. So I’m hoping to get to some of the other writing I want to do this summer. And reading. Of course I now have someone living with me. Which is not a burden but requires a little extra mental energy. And dollars. As always, it is interesting to witness the young man growing up. And the mirror of who I am in his doing so. (Of course it’s always about me. Whoever me is.)

Three months ago, at the end of February, my phone rang just as I was getting ready to go out the door. Often, I’d ignore the ring and just head out for work. But for some serendipitous reason on that day I did not. The voice on the other end asked “Is that Belle’s Mouthpiece?” I said yes, but I could not quite place who I was talking to. “This is Ferreol Welter. In Holland.” In such shock I had to sit down, all I could say was “how are you?”

As the conversation continued it turned out he’d come across my name in some papers he was clearing out, isn’t that always what happens, and was calling to inquire about whether I’d gotten on with the story I was writing about Belle. His father is in the story, far in the past at an early point. I’d tracked Ferreol down years ago and had a phone conversation with him. We had a couple of email exchanges and then, as with the entire project, I’d allowed it to drop. One of my problems in working on this project has been maintaining contact with the folks I should be talking with. The only one I’ve been good at has been Marguerite.

So here I was on the phone with Ferreol, it’d probably been at least five years since we last spoke and he was remembering me and asking about my project. The call came completely out of the blue. And, given this golden opportunity, I fell down completely. I didn’t get his new address – he’d moved after a bad car accident. I didn’t get his new email address – all his info was changed, he’d said. I didn’t insist on getting his phone number – he promised he’d send it all to me in an email later that week. And then. The great silence. I waited each day to hear from him, but no email came. And now, three months later, it’s just a strange and coincidental blip in the course of Belle’s story.

Belle’s story that is still sitting in pieces in a cardboard filing box behind me. Bits of it are on the table next to me. Three small blue spiral notebooks, none completely filled, smirk at me. As I leaf through them I see notes about events I have no memory of. People I’ve talked with once but never followed up with. At the time follow up seemed unnecessary. During the conversations it felt as though I was digging frantically with a pick axe for the tiniest bit of information they could mine from their memories. But if I’d made more time I could have gone in with small and nimble archaeologist’s tools to pick away miniscule bits of earth and brush away the dust to see if anything was revealed. My desperate desire that they remember didn’t help. And now, as my friend Rafael warned, most of them are gone. “Every moment you don’t work on this someone you need to talk to dies.” And now I’m left with my blunt force notes of conversations with people I barely remember. Each time I dive back in I feel enormous sadness. For what I missed while staring at it, for what I’m missing because I cannot return, for a story that must be reconstructed – if at all – from shards.