A Letter from Francesca

Francesca Johnson died in January of 1989. She was sixty-nine years old at the time of her death. Robert Kincaid would have been seventy-six that year. The cause of death was listed as “natural.” “She just died,” the doctor told Michael and Carolyn. “Actually, we’re a little perplexed. We can find no specific cause for her death. A neighbor found her slumped over the kitchen table.”

In a 1982 letter to her attorney, she had requested that her remains be cremated and her ashes scattered at Roseman Bridge. Cremation was an uncommon practice in Madison County— viewed as slightly radical in some undefined way— and her wish generated considerable discussion at the cafe, the Texaco station, and the implement dealership. The disposition of her ashes was not made public.

Following the memorial service, Michael and Carolyn drove slowly to Roseman Bridge and carried out Francesca’s instructions. Though it was nearby, the bridge had never been special to the Johnson family, and they wondered, and wondered again, why their rather sensible mother would behave in such an enigmatic way and why she had not asked to be buried by their father, as was customary.

Following that, Michael and Carolyn began the long process of sorting through the house and brought home the materials from the safe deposit box after they were examined by the local attorney for estate purposes and released.

They divided the materials from the box and began looking through them. The manila envelope was in Carolyn’s stack, about a third of the way down. She was puzzled when she opened it and removed the contents. She read Robert Kincaid’s 1965 letter to Francesca. After that she read his 1978 letter, then the 1982 letter from the Seattle attorney. Finally she studied the magazine clippings.

“Michael.”

He caught the mixture of surprise and pensiveness in her voice and looked up immediately. “What is it?”

Carolyn had tears in her eyes, and her voice became unsteady. “Mother was in love with a man named Robert Kincaid. He was a photographer. Remember when we all had to see the copy of National Geographic with the bridge story in it? He was the one who took the pictures of the bridges here. And remember all the kids talking about the strange-looking guy with the cameras back then? That was him.”

Michael sat across from her, his tie loosened, collar open. “Say that again, slowly. I can’t believe I heard you correctly.”

After reading the letters, Michael searched the downstairs closet, then went upstairs to Francesca’s bedroom. He had never noticed the walnut box before and opened it. He carried it down to the kitchen table. “Carolyn, here are his cameras.”

Tucked in one end of the box was a sealed envelope with “Carolyn or Michael” written on it in Francesca’s script, and lying between the cameras were three leather-bound notebooks.

“I’m not sure I’m capable of reading what’s in that envelope,” said Michael. “Read it out loud to me, if you can handle it.”

She opened the envelope and read aloud.

January 7, 1987

Dear Carolyn and Michael,

Though I’m feeling just fine, I think it’s time for me to get my affairs in order (as they say). There is something, something very important, you need to know about. That’s why I’m writing this.

After looking through the safe deposit box and finding the large manila envelope addressed to me with a 1965 postmark, I’m sure you’ll eventually come to this letter. If possible, please sit at the old kitchen table to read it. You’ll understand that request shortly.

It’s hard for me to write this to my own children, but I must. There’s something here that’s too strong, too beautiful, to die with me. And if you are to know who your mother was, all the goods and bads, you need to know what I’m about to say. Brace yourself.

As you’ve already discovered, his name was Robert Kincaid. His middle initial was “L,” but I never knew what the L represented. He was a photographer, and he was here in 1965 photographing the covered bridges.

Remember how excited the town was when the pictures appeared in National Geographic. You may also recall that I began receiving the magazine about that time. Now you know the reason for my sudden interest in it. By the way, I was with him (carrying one of his camera knapsacks) when the photo of Cedar Bridge was taken.

Understand, I loved your father in a quiet fashion. I knew it then, I know it now. He was good to me and gave me the two of you, who I treasure. Don’t forget that.

But Robert Kincaid was something quite different, like nobody I’ve ever seen or heard or read about through my entire life. To make you understand him completely is impossible. First of all, you are not me. Second, you would have had to have been around him, to watch him move, to hear him talk about being on a dead-end branch of evolution. Maybe the notebooks and magazine clippings will help, but even those will not be enough.

In a way, he was not of this earth. That’s about as clear as I can say it. I’ve always thought of him as a leopardlike creature who rode in on the tail of a comet. He moved that way, his body was like that. He somehow coupled enormous intensity with warmth and kindness, and there was a vague sense of tragedy about him. He felt he was becoming obsolete in a world of computers and robots and organized living in general. He saw himself as one of the last cowboys, as he put it, and called himself old-fangled.

The first time I ever saw him was when he stopped and asked directions to Roseman Bridge. The three of you were at the Illinois State Fair. Believe me, I was not scouting around for any adventure. That was the furthest thing from my mind. But I looked at him for less than five seconds, and I knew I wanted him, though not as much as I eventually came to want him.

And please don’t think of him as some Casanova running around taking advantage of country girls. He wasn’t like that at all. In fact, he was a little shy, and I had as much to do with what happened as he did. More, in fact. The note tucked in with his bracelet is one I posted on Roseman Bridge so he would see it the morning after we first met. Aside from his photographs of me, it’s the only piece of evidence he had over the years that I actually existed, that I was not just some dream he had.

I know children have a tendency to think of their parents as rather asexual, so I hope what I’m going to say won’t shock you, and I certainly hope it won’t destroy your memory of me.

In our old kitchen, Robert and I spent hours together. We talked and danced by candlelight. And, yes, we made love there and in the bedroom and in the pasture grass and just about anywhere else you can think of. It was incredible, powerful, transcending lovemaking, and it went on for days, almost without stopping. I always have used the word “powerful” a lot in thinking about him. For that’s what he had become by the time we met.

He was like an arrow in his intensity. I simply was helpless when he made love to me. Not weak; that’s not what I felt. Just, well, overwhelmed by his sheer emotional and physical power. Once when I whispered that to him, he simply said, “I am the highway and a peregrine and all the sails that ever went to sea.”

I checked the dictionary later. The first thing people think of when they hear the word “peregrine” is a falcon. But there are other meanings of the word, and he would have been aware of that. One is “foreigner, alien.” A second is “roving or wandering, migratory.” The Latin peregrinus, which is one root of the word, means a stranger. He was all of those things—a stranger, a foreigner in the more general sense of the word, a wanderer, and he also was falconlike, now that I think of it.

Children, understand I am trying to express what cannot be put into words. I only wish that someday you each might have what I experienced; however, I’m beginning to think that’s not likely. Though I suppose it’s not fashionable to say such things in these more enlightened times, I don’t think it’s possible for a woman to possess the peculiar kind of power Robert Kincaid had. So, Michael, that lets you out. As for Carolyn, I’m afraid the bad news is that there was only one of him, and no more.

If not for your father and the two of you, I would have gone anywhere with him, instantly. He asked me to go, begged me to go. But I wouldn’t, and he was too much of a sensitive and caring person to ever interfere in our lives after that.

The paradox is this: If it hadn’t been for Robert Kincaid, I’m not sure I could have stayed on the farm all these years. In four days, he gave me a lifetime, a universe, and made the separate parts of me into a whole. I have never stopped thinking of him, not for a moment. Even when he was not in my conscious mind, I could feel him somewhere, always he was there.

But it never took away from anything I felt for the two of you or your father. Thinking only of myself for a moment, I’m not sure I made the right decision. But taking the family into account, I’m pretty sure I did.