Letters from Max. Sarah Ruhl

than moving into the abstract at the very end.

      Something about the ordinary scene of washing dishes with one’s mother . . . it’s very beautiful, Max.

      With your round of chemo done are you still immunosuppressed? Wonder if you’d like to see the kids or if they would still be too germy. Could be fun to go to the Ferris wheel in Santa Monica or something. Or Tony’s old kid playground.

      I wrote a poem the other day that reminds me slightly of some of the questions you are posing. It’s funny how mundane the impulse for a poem can be. In my case, I got a bad burn making cheesy grits, of all things! Pathetic kitchen accident!

      Consider the beauty of a horse.

      Consider the beauty of a foot.

      Then:

      Consider a blister. From a burn.

      How it covers the skin while it heals.

      Consider its ugliness and how it

      Hides the promise of new skin.

      Then:

      Consider the fact of considering.

      Considerate children, and considerate beasts.

      And then:

      How can one want to leave this earth?

      With its horses, feet, ugliness, and thought—

      all of its terrible regeneration?

      JULY 26

      Dear Sarah,

      More on your poem in a little bit. I want to ask you about your process—you produce things that are so alive and flexible and bamboo-like.

      JULY 29

      Dear Max,

      I don’t know much about my process except that it involves tea.

      Love,

      Sarah

      Max, at this point, had left New Haven, and was shuttling between his mother’s home in Los Angeles and treatments in New York at Memorial Sloan Kettering.

      Summers often have me visiting my in-laws in Los Angeles. On my family trip to California that summer, we all went to have sushi in the Valley. My husband, Tony; my three kids; Max; and me. Max joked that the only way to get him to drive to the Valley was to see my family.

      My oldest daughter, Anna, who was about seven at the time, adored Max. Children were drawn to Max because he was playful and empathetic, and didn’t care about grown-up social mores.

      At lunch, Max looked very skinny. Frightened. We did not go to a Ferris wheel. It seemed like too much.

      I remember that summer my twins were three years old. It was the summer they learned to swim.

      AUGUST 6

      Dear Max,

      I was so happy to see you. Even though the happiness was tempered by what you’re going through.

      I wrote a poem for you while I was filling the bathtub up with water tonight and when I finished the water had almost overflowed but didn’t. It is attached. (The poem, not the bathwater.)

      Take heart, take courage, you’re very brave.

      xo,

      Sarah

      FOR MAX

       With thanks to Maurice Sendak

      Death no wild thing

      and you a boy,

      Max.

      One night in your room

      (or body)

      a forest grew

      and the walls

      (or cells) became

      transparent

      because brightness

      invites

      transparency, I guess.

      Then a little boat

      to hospital smells.

      Doctors called

      the forest cancer,

      not obscuring leaves.

      and you a boy.

      You say:

      “Why can’t people use the word

      courage?

      instead of something

      vulgar and idiomatic

      about manhood?”

      Courage, I say,

      is you,

      Max.

      In your wild suit

      your small boat

      and terrible forest

      a man overnight

      no boy

      could ever scale those walls.

      You come home

      and dinner is waiting,

      still waiting, I hope, still warm.

      *

      And today my small boy

      learned to swim.

      He said: the water held me, Mama.

      It held me.

      AUGUST 8

      Speechless.

      Love,

      Max

      AUGUST 8

      Dear Max,

      I hope it was not too intrusive.

      Speechless can mean one of two things . . . but I trust you divined my intention.

      I’m thinking of you as you go into a difficult week.

      Just back from thirty-six hours in Disneyland.

      Oy.

      Tony sends his best and enjoyed meeting you.

      Please put us on your list to let us know how the surgery went, even if it’s a one-sentence email.

      xoxo,

      Sarah

      AUGUST 8

      No no no! Speechless only in the direction that it is one of the more moving things to happen to me in a while. You discern me, honor me—I just can’t . . .—just have to hold the poem up.

      Disneyland is very disorienting, isn’t it?

      I loved meeting your family, all of your children have a kind of calm joy in them that I think you put there. Or maybe Tony. Tony’s a doll.

      Hell starts on Monday: it’ll be three days of pretty constant scanning (and I’m a little afraid of MRI machines) and that’ll transition immediately into surgery. Then I’ll get to rest and probably lose some weight.

      X

      Max