A postcard for the moon

The drawer stuck at two seventeen, just as I needed the blotting paper. I pulled harder than I should have. It came free with a wooden shriek, and a stack of forms slid across the scarred sorting desk.

Mr. Pell looked up from his stamps. “That drawer will outlive us both, provided you stop arguing with it.”

“I’ve tried being polite.”

“Try being persuasive.”

He pressed another stamp to an envelope. The gum had left a shine on his thumb. Between us sat the monthly bag of letters addressed to the moon, which I was meant to file before morning. Most were from children. A few came from people old enough to know what postage could and could not buy. Mr. Pell said the bag weighed less each month. I thought he had started saying that after the notice about our rent.

I reached for the next piece of mail. It was a lime green postcard, its corners soft from travel. On one side, in careful block letters, someone had written:

Dear Moon,

Please stop coming through the gap over my curtain. You wake me up. I have to get up early and my mother says I am cross at breakfast.

Nell, above Brindle Laundry

There was no street number and no stamp. Children often put moon letters in the blue box outside the laundry, trusting the shape of a mailbox more than any address printed on it.

I turned the card over. A pale crescent lay across the green surface. I moved my hand to block the desk lamp, but the crescent remained. Then something fine and silver shook loose onto the blotting paper.

Mr. Pell leaned close enough for his glasses to slip down his nose.

Beneath the crescent were four words in a narrow, gray hand.

Where shall I answer?

---

For twenty-three years I had filed moon letters under U for undeliverable. There were six drawers of them. People came in sometimes, embarrassed, asking for a letter back. I could usually find it.

Mr. Pell held the postcard by its edges. “Did you see who put this on your desk?”

“It was in the bag.”

“The bag was sealed.”

“Yes.”

He tipped a grain of silver onto his finger. It sat there without smearing. When he put it down, it rolled across the blotter toward the card.

“We could ask somebody about it,” he said.

“We are somebody.”

“I mean somebody who pays.”

The notice from our landlord was pinned beneath the clock. Unless we paid the balance by Friday, he would rent the back room to a shop that wanted storage. Our contract for sorting the district’s night mail covered our wages and not much more. Without the back room, the six cabinets and the late collections would have nowhere to go. Mr. Pell had already measured the front office twice, as if it might have grown overnight.

He knew a collector named Mrs. Voss who bought unusual local objects for exhibitions. She had once paid forty dollars for a misprinted bus ticket. Mr. Pell wanted to call her before sunrise.

I put the postcard flat on the blotter. “It’s Nell’s mail.”

“The answer is.”

“The card is, too.”

“She asked the moon to leave her alone. She might be glad to hand it over.”

“Then we can ask her.”

Mr. Pell gave me a look usually reserved for envelopes sealed with tape all the way around. “By Friday, Yara.”

I said I knew.

The crescent had faded by the time the morning clerk arrived. The dust had not. I covered the card with a clean sheet and locked it in my desk, though I kept the blotter out where I could see it.

At home I slept for three hours. Then I went back to the office and took a small mirror from the bottom of the sticking drawer.

It belonged to the office. Its tin lid bore an old parcel stamp, and most of its silvering had gone dark. Only a patch about the size of a postage stamp remained clear. I had seen it once in the hand of Miss Iven, who sorted nights before me. When I asked why she kept a broken mirror, she told me it was for replies that had difficulty finding their way.

I had been new then. I thought she meant customers who forgot to write their addresses.

The note tucked inside its lid was in her handwriting. I had read it years ago and put it back.

Only a small reflection will carry a reply. The person offering it must know what they are giving. The glass cannot hold a face, and it cannot be made larger.

Below that, squeezed in later:

Ask the sender first.

I closed the lid. Miss Iven had left a good many notes. Most concerned the heating, which she distrusted with reason. I put the mirror in my coat pocket.

---

Brindle Laundry had steamed its front windows white. A bell rang when I entered, and a woman sorting towels behind the counter said that Nell lived upstairs. She called up to her rather than sending me through. A minute later Nell came down, followed by her mother.

Nell was nine or ten. She had ink on the side of her hand and the steady expression of a person waiting to learn whether she was in trouble.

“I’m Yara,” I said. “I sort the mail at night. Did you send a postcard?”

“To the moon?”

“I held it at the window first,” Nell said. “The green side shone on the glass. I told the moon it could have that little green bit if it would read my complaint.”

I turned the card toward the light. One corner had lost its glossy finish.

Her mother looked at her. “You said you mailed your drawing to Aunt Kit.”

“That was yesterday’s drawing.”

I showed them the lime card. Nell read her own words aloud, frowning at the line about breakfast.

“I’m not always cross,” she told her mother.

“Only while the kettle heats,” her mother said.

I held the card so they could see the writing on the back. Neither spoke for a while. The laundry machines turned behind us with a low, uneven thump.

Nell reached toward the gray letters, then stopped. “It answered the wrong part.”

“It doesn’t know where to write back,” I said.

“It knows where my window is.”

“Perhaps it knows it as a window.”

Her mother asked if we could talk upstairs.

Their room faced the lane. A blue and white striped curtain hung across the window, except where its top corner drooped below the rod. Light came through the gap and struck the wall beside Nell’s bed. Even in daylight, I could see why it would reach her face at night.

“I put a towel there,” Nell said, “but it falls when the window is open.”

Her mother touched the rod. “I’ll mend the missing loop on Sunday.”

“You said that last Sunday.”

“I did.”

Nell’s mother worked mornings at the laundry and cleaned offices in the evening. Sunday, from the sound of it, contained everything the rest of the week had pushed out.

I took the little mirror from my pocket. The clear patch showed part of Nell’s curtain, one white stripe and the edge of a blue one. I told them what Miss Iven’s note said. I also told them I had never used the mirror and did not know whether it would do anything.

Nell studied the patch. “If I let it have that stripe, will the curtain disappear?”

“I don’t think so.”

“That’s not the same answer.”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t.”

I put the mirror away.

There was another thing to ask. Mrs. Voss had called the office while I slept. Mr. Pell had described the dust and the new writing, leaving out Nell’s name. She had offered enough for the card to pay most of what we owed, if she could exhibit the original and tell its story. She wanted to meet the child who sent it.

I explained this to Nell and her mother. I unbuttoned my coat while I explained what the collector wanted.

Her mother said, “You came to ask us before agreeing.”

“Yes.”

“Would the card come home after?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t agreed to anything.”

Nell looked from the card to the gap above her curtain. “Would people come here?”

“Some might want to.”

“I don’t want them in my room. I want to sleep in it.”

Her mother rested a hand on her shoulder. I put the card back in its paper sleeve.

Nell asked to see the mirror again. “Can I send a different address?”

“You can choose what to say.”

She considered the window. “The room above the laundry. The blue and white curtain. Is that enough?”

“I think so,” I said.

“What if it answers while I’m asleep?”

“I’ll ask it to send the answer to the sorting office. I can bring it here.”

Nell nodded. She went to the window and lifted the drooping corner with one finger. “And tell it I mean this gap. It keeps shining at the wall after I turn over.”

Her mother took the card and read Nell’s complaint again. “You can try the mirror,” she said to Nell. “I’ll stay here.”

---

At the office that night, Mr. Pell was repairing the handle of the undeliverable drawer with a screwdriver too small for the job. He set it down when we came in.

“Nell,” he said. “I’m Pell. I’m sorry your letter ended up with us.”

“It got there, though.”

“It seems it did.”

Nell inspected the sorting desk. “Do you put all the moon letters in that drawer?”

“In the cabinets at the back,” I said.

“That is a lot of drawers.”

“People have a lot to say.”

Her mother remained by the door while I placed the lime card beside the open mirror. Under the desk lamp, the silver dust showed in the grain of the blotter. The mirror’s clear patch held a narrow reflection of the card.

I gave Nell a pencil. She wrote on a fresh slip of paper, pressing so firmly that I could hear the point drag.

Please answer at Yara’s office for Nell in the room above Brindle Laundry, behind the blue and white striped curtain. It is the gap at the top.

She paused, then added:

Thank you.

Mr. Pell read it when she offered it to him. “That should be clear,” he said.

Nell laid the slip beside the card. Nothing happened.

“The reflection,” I reminded her. “Only if you want to.”

“What should I give it?”

“A small reflection of something of yours. The note says you have to offer it freely.”

Nell turned the mirror toward herself. A corner of her eye appeared in the clear patch. She snapped the lid shut.

“I don’t want to send my face.”

“You don’t have to.”

She searched her pockets and brought out a brass button. Her mother recognized it at once. It had fallen from Nell’s coat weeks ago and had been traveling about with her ever since. Nell set it under the lamp, opened the mirror, and angled the glass until the button’s bright rim occupied the clear patch.

“You can have this bit,” she said to the mirror. “I want the button back.”

The reflection went dark. Nell picked up the button. It was still warm from her hand, with a dull place along one edge.

The paper slip folded in on itself without a breeze. It became a small, tight square and settled beneath the lime postcard. I lifted the card. The square was gone.

Mr. Pell made a sound in his throat. “Well.”

Nell turned the mirror over, looking for a seam. “Will it answer now?”

“I don’t know how long it takes,” I said.

We waited through the next bag of ordinary mail. Nell helped by placing envelopes in stacks according to the numbers I called out. Mr. Pell found her a stool high enough for the desk. Her mother stood behind her, occasionally catching an envelope that slid too far.

At eleven forty, a crescent appeared on the lime card. Nell saw it first. A few grains of silver gathered along the lower edge and fell onto the blotter.

New words formed beneath the question.

Fold the white stripe over the top. I will keep the sill.

Nell read them twice.

“That’s not an apology,” she said.

“No,” said her mother.

“But I can do that.”

She looked at the fastening clips beside Mr. Pell’s stamp book. They held bundles of envelopes while the gum dried.

“Can I borrow one?”

Mr. Pell pushed the whole tin toward her. “Bring back whichever ones you don’t need.”

When Nell and her mother left, I tucked the postcard into an envelope. I wrote Nell’s name on the front and gave it to her. Mr. Pell watched her carry it out against her chest.

“We still owe the rent,” he said.

“I know.”

“She might have let us show it without her name.”

“She didn’t want people coming to the room.”

He picked up his screwdriver. “I heard her.”

He tried the drawer handle. It held, though the drawer still stuck.

---

The following evening I went to Brindle Laundry to collect the clip. Nell opened the upstairs door before I knocked a second time.

“I’m keeping it until Sunday,” she said.

“Mr. Pell sent two more. He says the first one will fail out of loneliness.”

She took them solemnly, then led me to the window.

She had folded the curtain’s loose white stripe over the rod. The clip gripped the fold where the missing loop had been. Nell had moved her pillow as well, so she could see the window without lying in the band of light. The bottom of the curtain stopped a little higher now, above a painted wooden sill.

The moon’s light rested there, no wider than my hand. It did not reach the wall by her bed.

Nell put the lime postcard on the sill. Its pale crescent showed faintly against the green, beside the shadow of the curtain. She checked the clip once more and climbed into bed.

Downstairs, a laundry machine finished its turn and fell quiet. I stayed until Nell’s mother came in with a basket of folded towels. Then I went back to the sorting office, where Mr. Pell had left the rent notice beside a fresh bag of mail.