Who Could Ever Love You: A Family Memoir by Mary L. Trump

Author:Mary L. Trump [Mary L. Trump, PhD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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I wanted to create my own worlds, too, so I began to sketch an idea for a short story. In it, two friends, a boy and a girl, discover an odd-looking book with a metallic cover, half-buried in a deserted lot. It turns out to be a journal written in English, but some of the symbols are foreign and some of the words unfamiliar. In the end, they learn that the journal is a warning from a future that is both dangerous and terrifying: it has been sent back in time by its writer in hopes that whoever finds it will change the course of history.

I labored over this story for weeks, especially the language of the journal. When I finished, I looked in the back of one of my favorite science fiction digests to find out how to submit it. I wrote the address on a manila envelope and brought it to the post office on the way home from school one day.

I waited every day for a response, alternately excited by the prospect it might be accepted and horrified by my hubris in sending it in the first place. Weeks passed. I’d almost forgotten about it when I got home from school one afternoon and found an envelope waiting for me on my pillow.

I felt a thrill of excitement, tinged with a bit of dread. I jumped onto my bed and opened the envelope carefully. The letter was typed, filling most of one sheet of paper, and signed in blue ink. The editor opened with his thanks for the submission and his regrets that they would not be able to publish my story.

He could have left it at that, and I would still have been grateful that he’d bothered, but he went on. He explained some of the story’s deficiencies—the language, some of the weaknesses in the plot—but beyond that, he was very encouraging. He praised my imagination and creativity, as well as my courage in submitting the story in the first place.

“Again,” he wrote, “while we cannot publish this work, please keep writing.”

The editor must have intuited how young I was and understood the potential impact his response might have. It was so kind and generous and encouraging that I don’t think I would have been much happier if my story had been accepted.

It was the kind of letter that deserved to be framed. Instead, I hid it between the mattress and box spring. I couldn’t have said why, but I didn’t want my mother to see it or even know about it. A few days later, I went to take the letter out—I wanted to read it again and bring it to school to show a couple of my friends—but it was gone.

I stripped my bed, felt inside the pillowcases, looked to see if it had fallen on the carpet underneath the bed. Maybe I had misremembered where I’d put it in the first place, so I went through all of my drawers and checked to see if I had placed it inside one of my books.

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