You notice little things about them first, like who receives notices from collection agencies, who still subscribes to magazines, who gets wedding invitations every month or two. You can tell a wedding invitation from a regular letter because people have gotten so fussy about weddings that everything from the stationary to the actual event is over the top. The envelopes are a thick cardstock, always, and usually have a sheen to them. Plus, there’s the calligraphy. Always calligraphy.

You drop the square, iridescent, hand-lettered invitations into the mailbox of a couple you assume to be young and well-liked. You rarely ever see them, but you’ve formed a pretty good idea about what they’re like based on the catalogs they receive: J. Crew, Restoration Hardware, and L.L. Bean, mostly. They left you a Dunkin gift card last Christmas. Ten dollars. You used it on half a dozen donuts and a couple of black coffees that you brought to your ex-wife’s house because, at the time, she was dying of pancreatic cancer and you felt shame at the thought of her dying without the two of you reconciling in some way. She had looked annoyed when you showed up, like you again? She always acted like you were a nuisance. But you held the box of donuts out like a peace offering and she sighed before pushing the door open with her foot so you could come inside. You spent the afternoon together, and she was dead a month later. Since your grown kids didn’t want you to stand in the receiving line at the wake, your only job was to keep your grandkids from climbing on chairs or sneaking into the empty adjacent parlor rooms. Your twelve-year-old granddaughter cried on your arm for so long that her sadness soaked through your navy blue suit jacket. Your white dress shirt was still damp when you took it off and dropped it on your bedroom floor later that night. 

You had a close call with a dog the first time you walked your route, a few months before she died. It was a mild spring day. The air smelled like damp soil and the snow was finally over. It was thrilling. You were on foot, your truck parked at the top of the block. Your pockets were full of biscuits, which you planned to use to appease any dogs especially angry to see you. As you rounded a corner by a thick magnolia that had just started to fill with white blooms, a German Shepherd lunged at you, sniffing and eyeing you up and down. You froze. He pressed his wet nose to the pocket of your jacket, then licked your hand, sat down, and locked your gaze. To say you nearly shit your pants is the understatement of your life, but you tossed him a treat and he walked back to his yard. Your limbs were jelly for half an hour afterward even though the dog didn’t bite. But still. Now you carry a little canister of pepper spray, though you probably wouldn’t use it on a dog. You carry it to make you feel safer than you are. 

There’s not much variety in your day-to-day with this job, but you like to play mental games with yourself. Doctors say that brain plasticity is important in older people, so you exercise your memory as often as possible (The Browns live at number 39. The Willards live at number 41.) You’re not only rebuilding the gray matter you damaged with years of idleness and beer, but also mentally mapping an entire neighborhood. Somehow, that feels like important knowledge, which is funny because it’s not your own neighborhood. You don’t even know the name of the guy you share a living room wall with, but you do know the particular tenor of his voice when he’s mad at the girl he lives with.

You try to remember all sorts of things: which folks leave their Christmas lights up year-round, which ones let their pumpkins collapse with rot long after Halloween has passed, who gets a new car every few months. You’re not trying to be nosy, but it’s hard not to pay attention when you’re walking right up to these houses five days a week. You’re not trying to notice that there’s something clearly going on between the husband in number 115 and the wife in number 118 on Sweet Ave. Like how she leaves the door cracked at number 118 and he slips up the front stoop and into the house like an apparition sliding between rooms in a haunted house, clicking the door shut behind him. It’s midday. You assume they’re on lunch breaks and that their spouses are on business trips making their own mistakes. Both of those houses get a lot of junk mail. Credit card offers. Coupon booklets. Postcard advertisements from dental offices. 

It’s none of your business. You’re just there to deliver the mail. But you can’t help wonder if you should tell them what it’ll look like in the end: acid-hot resentment, money burnt up in lawyer’s fees, every other weekend with the kids in a too-small apartment by the highway where you feed them boxed mac and cheese that they refuse to eat, one of you eventually dying of a disease you hope you didn’t trigger with your carelessness decades earlier. 

You slip the mail into the boxes on the same roads every day and listen mostly to the sound of your feet on the pavement and the cars driving by and the dogs that bark when they sense you’re nearby. The dogs always know. Sometimes you act like a burglar and try to be as inconspicuous as possible. You might go undetected by the humans, but the dogs never let you pass with a good yelling-at. You deserve it. That’s why you carry the treats: you deserve their anger, but you’re not above trying to make peace. 

Some days you bring Bluetooth headphones and listen to voicemails you’ve saved on your phone just to hear the sound of her voice telling you Benny’s graduation is at 3 pm, don’t be late or it’ll ruin the entire day and you wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you? Or the sound of your daughter wishing you a happy Father’s Day, the one time she called. You were in the store buying a carton of milk and some granola at the time, reading the ingredient label to find one that didn’t list sugar first. You heard the voicemail and called back from your car. She didn’t answer, but to this day you pretend she did. You pretend a lot of things. Like: you don’t mind the spots of black mold growing on the ceiling of your bathroom. Or: it’s ok that you lied about keeping the small gold hoop earrings your ex-wife wore daily for years when she asked you repeatedly if you’d seen them. You had palmed them off the dresser out of spite the day she made you leave. Over time, their significance shifted. Now they’re little worry stones you carry in your pocket, your thumb rubbing the smooth curve of the hoops as you walk your route. They always feel warm, like the gold has a pulse. Or like they remember hers.

– Kristin Offiler