The Correspondent
About this book
Sybil Van Antwerp is a mother, grandmother, divorcée, retired lawyer, gardener, and devoted correspondent. Most mornings she sits at her desk to write: to her brother, old friends, family, authors she admires, and a university president refusing to let her audit a class.
The letters show a woman who is exacting, funny, generous, and often difficult. They also circle an unsent message and a painful part of her past. As her eyesight begins to fail, writing becomes both less secure and more urgent.
Virginia Evans tells the novel entirely through correspondence, including replies that correct Sybil's version of events. The gaps between letters carry as much weight as their declarations, allowing family history and new attachments to emerge without a separate narrator explaining them.
Published in 2025, The Correspondent is an epistolary novel about revision late in life. Sybil cannot alter what happened, but she can decide which letter must finally be sent and whether forgiveness is still a form of action.
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From the opening
A Preface
At last, on Monday around ten or half past, Sybil Van Antwerp carries the mug of Irish breakfast tea with milk to her desk. The bed is made, the dishes clean and drying on a towel beside the sink, the plants watered, the shelves dusted. She scoots the chair with precision, then gazes for a few moments out the window over her garden and toward the river off and below, at the few white triangle sails there in the distance, the reflection of the sky on the wide water, the square mansions on the Annapolis side. With satisfaction, she straightens the stack of letter-writing paper and the short, always-turning-over pile of books she will read next. She arranges the pens in the mug. She counts her stamps. She consults the stack of what letters she has received and not yet answered; a list she keeps of letters she means to write; a stack of upside-down pages in the drawer, a letter she has been writing going on years now, still unsent. Sybil is a mother and grandmother, divorced, retired from a distinguished career in law, these things are all there around her, but it is this correspondence—
On Wednesday it’s the same.
And on Friday.
And on Saturday.
On Monday around ten or half past Sybil Van Antwerp sits down at her desk again. It is the correspondence that is her manner of living.
Felix Stone
7 Rue de la Papillon
84220 Gordes
FRANCE
June 2, 2012
Felix, my dear brother,
Thank you for the birthday card, the fountain pen, and the book, which I started the day it arrived (Thursday) and finished today. It was exactly as you described. Unlikely and electric, inventive, and right up my alley. Seventy-three feels the same as seventy-two for what it’s worth, arthritis, constipation, and trouble sleeping, and I’ve decided to stop dyeing my hair. I don’t care much for my birthday, as you know, though it’s always nice of you to acknowledge it. Trudy and Millie of course came for appetizers and cards. The children both contacted me—Bruce had a strawberry tart delivered from a bakery (he’ll be up next weekend to clean out my gutters anyway), and it was awful, so I threw it out. Probably cost him a fortune. Fiona called from London. She said she won’t come home again until Christmas because work is keeping her jumping and now she is designing something in Sydney, for heaven’s sake, so she’ll spend a month in Australia. She assured me Walt doesn’t mind how often she is gone, but I’ll tell you, I don’t know how their marriage will make it. She’ll certainly never be able to have children at this point. (They’re not even trying. At least she hasn’t told me if they are. When I bring it up she chastises me.) Theodore Lübeck down the street brought me cut roses from his bushes, as he does every year, which is good of him, even if he is a renegade from the lawless fringe of the American West.
How is France? How is Stewart? What are you writing? Thank you for the invitation to visit, you’re always good to refresh it. Yes, I loved The Château, but that was a novel, and as much as I would love to see your new house, no, I’ll not come. Just as a summer afternoon is gorgeous from inside air-conditioning, and you step into the day, hot, muggy, miserable, a postcard of France with all the lavender and sunflowers, I imagine, is far more alluring than the place itself. It’s such a hassle to fly these days with the security and all the regulations about the size of bag and transferring the creams and contact lens solution into the small bottles. Honestly, it doesn’t appeal to me in the least, and I made it clear when you moved continents I wouldn’t be coming.
I was going through boxes and found this photograph (encl.) from the day they brought you home from the Sisters. Your little trousers and absolutely bald head. You’ve come full circle. Mother looks gorgeous here and I’ve never seen another photo of her in this green skirt suit, but I remember it clearly. I remember that day as clearly as if it were yesterday. I remember there had been a bad storm, no rain, but a strange wind and warm temperatures and there was a tree down in the yard and branches and sticks, and I remember the neighbor, Mrs. Curry, had made a dinner of pot roast and a chocolate pie and I’d been waiting all afternoon for the car to pull up and bring you. Mitsy hadn’t been able to get there for the morning chores because the storm had downed the lines on the Canton bridge, so I had dusted, made the beds, drawn the drapes. Can you think of who it would have been taking the photo? Mother’s sister Heloise was there looking after me, but I can’t imagine Heloise taking photographs. I suppose this is our first family portrait. I’m giving it to you, as I have my own photo of the day they brought me in.
My regards to Stewart, of course, from your loving sister,
Sybil
Postscript: Felix, I got into a little scrape last night. It was nothing, really, I’m fine, but the Cadillac is in the shop. More of an inconvenience than anything else, honestly.
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June 2, 2012
Dear Mr. Lübeck,
Thank you for the exquisite white roses you left on my porch on my birthday, May 29. Furthermore, I received your voice message this morning. I was delivered home by taxi last night due to a minor car accident, but everything is being taken care of.
Regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp
Ms. Ann Patchett
c/o Parnassus Books
3900 Hillsboro Pike
#14
Nashville, TN 37215
June 2, 2012
Dear Ann,
I am writing to congratulate you on your most recent novel, State of Wonder, which was given to me for my birthday by my brother. I finished reading it this morning. Today is Saturday and I only started the book Thursday, which says something in itself, though you wouldn’t know that as we are strangers, though not utter strangers, as we have exchanged letters on one previous occasion, and that was when I read your first big smash Bel Canto in the very early part of the millennium and you sent a reply, remarking on my penmanship and encouraging me to address you by your first name. You might, though perhaps not, depending on the volume of letters you receive and read on a regular basis, recall from that letter that I enjoyed Bel Canto very much, but this new book is even better. (I should add, for clarity’s sake, that I did write to you when I finished reading the book before this one, Run, but I never heard back, but that’s just fine, so don’t give it a second thought.)
It typically takes me four days to read a novel of standard length, but I was flying through the pages of State of Wonder, that exotic Amazonian backdrop and those smart, tremendously complex women Drs. Singh and Swenson. How did you come to be so knowledgeable about these things—the details about the Amazon, all the science—? Did you travel there? I found myself wondering about the balance of fact and fiction with the matter of the tree bark. The scene when the behemoth snake comes up from the water onto the boat and wraps its muscular snake body around the child Easter with the Americans looking on in horror, the silence of that scene was positively cinematic. I didn’t take a breath for what was it then, five pages or more. And of course, the matter of Dr. Swenson, at her age (my age! Dr. Swenson is seventy-three, and so am I) being pregnant. I can’t imagine. When they retrieve the baby there near the end, well that sent a chill right down my spine, but it was wonderful to read such a complex woman of her vintage, bold with her intelligence and dignity as well as her errors, and the layers upon layers of her. I am not a scientist; my own career was in law, but I saw some reflection of myself in her. The agonizing ethical questions for which the reader puts her on trial. That amazement one feels at this stage of life—a sort of astonishment that is also confusion, which leads to a sort of worry, or a sort of fear, I guess. How did we get here? How can it be? My sister-in-law Rosalie and I exchange books, and I am positive she’ll love this one, so that’s perfect.
Please keep in mind if you ever visit Annapolis, I’d be glad to host you. I have a small house, tucked away in a charming old neighborhood where the homes are well spaced and with massive old trees, you know. It faces the water on a point, and the upstairs is a nice big guest room with its own lavatory and a dormer window that looks toward the Severn River so you can see the boats and the large homes across the way and my garden, which I tend meticulously, there below the window. I live alone, and furthermore, I only ever go upstairs to clean after I’ve had company, so it’s completely private and I think you would be very comfortable there. I am not a writer, but if I was I think it would be a nice place to write a book, so again, you are very welcome if you ever visit. Just a stone’s throw from DC.
Until the next book, or your visit, and with warm regards I write,
Sybil Van Antwerp
(cont. June 2, 2012, previous pages remaining UNSENT)
I wrecked the car. I was coming from a presentation at the library, and it was night, and I ran into a low concrete wall. The vehicle is most likely irreparable, according to the mechanic. I am fine in the body, but it’s given me an awful shake. An awful shake. Of course the accident itself—the sound, the result of the Cadillac reduced to scrap,—but also because what happened is that—what happened. I’m not sure I. Well
What I think happened is that as I was driving out of the library parking lot, away from the lights and into the darkness, you know, well—I suppose I can’t say exactly what happened. I was driving just like usual, slow and steady, but something occurred. I can’t remember it exactly, but what I think is that quite suddenly I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see! But how? That stretch of time, was it a moment or was it minutes? It was as if my life was a movie and went black, wasn’t it, but I’m not certain, and that’s what’s troubling me. I’m not certain it was my vision, that black chasm. It wasn’t as if I’d closed my eyes; it’s as if the space of time has been deleted from my memory, up until I crashed. And this has happened to me before, this feeling of deletion. That’s what makes me afraid. How does a thing like that happen? I suppose it must be underway, Colt—the loss of vision. I suppose that must be what this was. I have known conceptually I would go blind, but as an eventuality. Now it seems the blinding is underway, and this is how it will go, but I didn’t anticipate it being like this. This confusion.
The car went by tow, I was delivered home by a cab, and I sat awake all night afraid of the darkness. Afraid to turn off the lights.
I have nightmares. I may have mentioned this. In the nightmares I can still see, but I know I am blind somehow. So I am looking out the window at the sailboats, but maybe they are fuzzy, or maybe I know it’s daytime, but it looks like night. Or I’m in the garden and I don’t recognize the flowers—What is this?, I think. Or I’m looking at the text in a novel but I cannot make any sense of the letters or the words. But the worst dream, this is the one I have over and over, is I’m sitting down at the desk to write and there is the stack of letter writing paper, there are my pens, there are the envelopes, and I’m pawing at them like a cat, but I cannot pick them up. Or I pick up the pen and it lists like a noodle in my hands. I press the thing to the page and it softens or disintegrates. Or there is one version where I get as far as the ink on the page, but I can’t make sense—I can’t write a thing, it’s all scribbling. It’s the way my fear imagines blindness. You’d think the dreams would just be a black void, which is what I suppose it will actually be, though if I were dreaming of a black void I suppose…I wouldn’t be dreaming at all. I would be simply asleep, but I don’t think I sleep, at this point in my life, without dreams, the mind being far too saturated for that. Far too many haunts for that.
My ophthalmologist Dr. Jameson said that with my condition, once it gets going, it could be a year or it could be ten years until it’s complete, and as things progress it can sort of come in and out. I will have to make an appointment. I’ll do that today. I haven’t told anyone other than Rosalie and the child Harry I’ve mentioned in the past, the child with whom I exchange monthly letters, son of my former colleague Judge James Landy. Oh, I’ve also told Joan Didion the author. I haven’t told Bruce or Fiona.
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: Jun 2, 2012 1:00 PM
SUBJECT: Regarding Garden Club meeting June 4
Dear Alice,
Please accept my regrets for the garden club meeting this Monday, June 4. I am sorry to miss the presentation about soil pH and its effect on growing hydrangeas, however, I have an appointment that cannot be moved.
I will look forward to July.
Additionally, if there is a vote taken at the meeting Monday (June 4) regarding moving from the Sunday school room to the basement of the church in order to accommodate a larger number of attendees, I vote a very enthusiastic “NAY.” The club has already grown so large as to become unwieldy. One can hardly hear during the social quarter of an hour. Furthermore, the basement is musty, probably riddled with mold, and the church board has not yet prioritized the necessary renovations that would make the space usable.
Warm regards,
Sybil Van Antwerp
FROM: [email protected]
DATE: Jun 25, 2012 03:31 AM
SUBJECT: Hi from Sydney
Mom, I caught up with Bruce on the phone last night and he told me you totaled the Cadillac. Why didn’t you tell me when we were texting? He said you ran into a barrier of some kind (??) but you’re OK (??) Were you not able to see it, or were you confused in some way? Seems…unlike you. Bruce said you’re fine and you don’t need to be seen by a doctor, but Walt and I were thinking maybe you should get checked over. I’m not trying to boss you around, but it’s worrying.
I know Bruce has mentioned you moving to be closer to him. Have you given that any thought? You’d be able to see Bruce and Marie and the kids more easily, and he’s said he’d love for you to be there. I’ve done some research, and there is actually a really nice retirement village a mile or two from his house called Happy Hills (you can click the link). They have openings in both the independent cottages (yard) and the condos (no yard), and the pay structure is kind of complicated, but your house will sell high despite the lack of updating because those waterfront lots are in such high demand. I would be happy to make some calls to get more information for you if that would be helpful. Maybe just think about it.
I should be back in London by the end of July. Let’s talk on the phone then. My schedule here is packed and the time change makes it harder. Talk soon,
Fiona
Ms. Van Antwerp
17 Farney Rd.
Arnold, MD
21012
July 1, 2012
Dear Ms. Van Antwerp,
Thank you for including the Expert Puzzles book with your last letter. I like it very much, and I was able to complete all but three of the ciphers. How are you? Did you get a new car to replace the one you crashed? I am doing mostly fine. Here is what happened in June:
My parents got me a puppy (FINALLY) after I was begging for nine years. She is a golden retreiver and her name is Thor after my favorite Greek god, the god of war.
We are going to take a safari trip in Botswana over Thanksgiving break because my sister Susannah is working for the Peace Core there.
My science fair project won second prize. Thank you for helping me with the paper. The judges said my research was flawless, but there was a girl younger (sixth grade! What!) than me who built an entire robotic whale that could swim in water. My mom said it was a sure thing her parents helped her because her dad is an engineer, and my parents did not help me, so I should be proud and feel like a first place winner, which is really stupid because I didn’t win, but also I agree with her somewhat.
My psychiatrist Dr. Laura had to move to Alaska because her husband works for an oil company, which is repugnant and I told her so, and he got relocated. I have a new psychiatrist named Dr. Oliver and I hate him. He has bad breath and there are flakes on the top of his head and one huge disgusting scab, so every time he looks at his notepad to write down things I have to look at it and it makes me want to throw up. I am trying very hard not to say anything to him about it, and Mom says every time I go, if I keep it inside, she’ll take me to pick out a candy bar at 7-11 as a reward. I made it through the first appointment, no problem, and got a Twix. Dr. Laura made me feel less weird than I really am, but Dr. Oliver makes me feel more weird than I really am (I think).
I can’t wait to recieve your letter on July 15. I would also like you to check your used bookstore for any more of the older science fiction like what you sent me for Christmas, namely, H. G. Wells.
Warm regards,
Harry Landy
Postscript: I will keep your stones. I like using this code word for secrets, too. I am a very good stone keeper. I have not told anyone, not my dad or anyone, that you are going blind. Why is it a secret?
Postscript 2: Do you think President Obama will win a second term in office?
Sybil Van Antwerp
17 Farney Rd.
Arnold, MD 21012
USA
July 18, 2012
Syb,
France is splendid! You’re missing out. Stewart lies around in his swimsuit all day reading magazines and he cooks at night. It’s bliss. I’m working on a serial for the Times a bit and riding my bike every day (only at a moseying pace; don’t get to thinking I exert myself), and I walk to the shops every afternoon for bread and cheese. I’m slim again, despite the food and wine.
You’ll wear the gray well (hopefully it’ll go silver), but don’t cut it short at the same time; too much shock at once. My suggestion is to keep it shoulder length.
You better not say those kinds of things about her marriage to your daughter with things already strained—your own marriage was a filthy sewer even though you were home from work every night by six. It’s a different time and plenty of women are having children into their forties.
The photo is great. Thank you. I’ve framed it and set it in the parlor and all my friends love it. They can’t believe, with my accent, I’m Irish. When I take time to think about it, you know it really is something, two orphans like us, ending up Stones, living in a house with maid service. Real life rags to riches. You look wise for nine, but grave, as you always did. That neat little bob and your loafers and jumper like a doll, and then that expression on your face! It kills me. Your watchful little look, the way your little mouth is set. I feel I remember you so clearly as a child, but it’s not possible. I only know you through photographs.
Heading up to Paris next week for a few shows, Xxxx,
Felix
Forgot—all OK with the car?
Rosalie Van Antwerp
33 Orange Lane
Goshen, CT 06756
August 10, 2012
Dear Rosalie,
I haven’t heard from you. Waiting for your response to my last, but cannot wait forever. I own your life is busier than my quiet one, so I’m humbling myself and writing again. Did Paul’s new wheelchair arrive? And how is Lars holding up?
Listen to the latest from my own thankless offspring. You remember I mentioned I was in a little car accident. Well, it’s all sorted and I was due for an upgraded vehicle, so now I’m driving a modern Volkswagen Beetle (looks like something out of the future, a lovely red) but nearly a month after the fact I receive an e-mail from my daughter. She happens to be not in London but in Sydney, Australia, so the e-mail arrives in my inbox at four in the morning, and the meat of it is that FROM HALFWAY ACROSS THE EARTH she has heard from her brother that I was in a wreck and she has plenty of advice to give me, not the least of which is that I ought to sell my house (which she deems old, out of date) and move into a nursing home. Makes a suggestion about my financial security (and that is PRECISELY why I’ve never told the children what I’m worth, dollars and cents). Apparently it’s something they’ve been discussing behind my back. As a matter of fact, Guy and I heard a case in oh, I don’t know, the late eighties, and it was a woman just a touch older than myself SUING her CHILDREN because they’d duped her into selling her house and installed her into a place that was more like a prison or an insane asylum than a home for old people. Rats in the toilets, that sort of thing. Real hell for this woman. I can still picture her. Elizabeth Franklin was her name, teensy little thing sitting up on the stand and holding up her handbag, which had been chewed by rats at night. Vile. Never in twenty lifetimes would I have thought it would be me, my own children. Now I’m sure you’re wondering how I replied: I did not. She is back from Sydney, rang me last week—I saw her calling and let the thing go straight to the machine. That child is brazen as brass, I’ll give her that. Nerve enough to sink the Titanic. Can you imagine? She has not one single thing to do with my life, might as well live on another planet, sees me once a year if I’m lucky, and thinks it’s time for me to move into a brand new nursing home in Falls Church! Well. I will do no such thing.
Pivoting. I wrote to Ann Patchett when I finished reading State of Wonder, and yesterday morning there was a reply in my mailbox! An adorable little postcard with a dog. I always love to get a note back. I am reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese (I had to look how to spell that one). It’s very long. What are you reading?
Love,
Sybil
The Honorable Judge James Landy
98 Dumbarton St. NW
Washington, DC 20007
September 3, 2012 (Labor Day)
Dear James,
First things first. How is Harry doing? In his last letter I did think he seemed awfully melancholy. It’s good you finally got the child a dog, but I think you also need to get him a different therapist than this Dr. Oliver. The man sounds dreadful. Are you certain he’s not a pedophile? And as a matter of fact, as long as we’re on the matter, you know I really don’t even think Harry needs a psychotherapist. Leave it to your generation to take someone who is absolutely brilliant and turn it into a problem.
Now I’m sure you heard, but in case you hadn’t, and in case you’ve gone down the toilet like the rest and are failing to maintain a proper newspaper subscription (IN PRINT, adequately edited, without the muck of advertisements blinking away) and only saw it on the internet, I’ve included the obituary. (Guy died over the weekend.) The article is a bit bland, watered down, evidently striving for the neutral language that won’t stir up one political spat or another, but the photo is nice with the courthouse in the background. I think it’s the same photo the papers ran when he retired. He looks very distinguished. Imagine, I thought him decrepit back then, HA, and now I’m almost the age he was.
I’d gone to see him oh, I don’t know, maybe a few months ago now. You know, I don’t typically travel. I go out to a few places, but I don’t journey. Bruce gave me a GPS system for my car last year and it even speaks to you. Do you have one of these? It’s very clever. You plug in an address and adhere the device to the windshield by suction cup, and the map moves along with you and the English voice says ‘turn left here, turn right in one hundred feet,’ so it would be easy for me to use it, but I don’t. I’m not sure why I don’t, but anyway the point is that I’d gone to visit him. (Guy, I’m talking about. He has been exclusively at his house on the bay there the last few years.) Had to drive across the Bay Bridge. I’ll say I hate to drive across the Bay Bridge. I always have. Four miles, so high up it makes you sick, I was gripping the wheel. Oh, my sons used to find it so funny, if we’d drive over for the day, how I couldn’t speak on that bridge. Anyway, he sat with me for about a half hour before he was tired out, and honestly most of his mind was already gone. It’s a hell of a thing, to lose one’s mental faculties. Guy never forgot a case, not ever, but then this series of strokes and a heart attack last year. You think of all the years, all the cases between us, this memory we shared. Honestly, I hated to go, it was very disturbing. When I first got to the house he was trying to hit on me like I was some call girl, although eventually the mists did seem to clear. He said something about the courthouse, so I knew he’d found his way back there in his mind. I was really going for Liz. I haven’t spoken to her since, but it was obvious he wouldn’t last much longer. Dear God, if I hope I don’t live to be ninety-three. A nightmare.
The Sun did a big spread about him yesterday and you’ll never believe it, but Alex Toole featured ME in her What Ever Happened To column (you cannot believe this): ‘What Ever Happened to Sybil Van Antwerp?’ You know I saw it there in print and I gasped. Honestly, the absurdity of it. Can you imagine? (I couldn’t have. Not in a million years. Absolutely absurd.) Journalist said she tried to contact me; she most certainly did not, but even if she had I would not have dignified it with a response. The thing is foolishness, but I bought a few extra copies of the paper to be able to send the obituary, et al., to the children, Felix, etc., so it’s enclosed here with the obit because I knew YOU would get a kick out of it.
How’s Marly? How are the girls? Harry said you’ll be traveling to Africa. You’ll need to make sure you have your proper vaccinations. How’s Washington? (Honestly, from my angle Washington is looking like a carnival on fire, but what else is new? I will say, it surprises me how much I like President Obama. He’s a wonderful speaker, I could listen to him read the phone book.) I’m fine. It’s been a nice summer. My dahlias are splendid, I am very pleased. And look, this is what I’ve been reduced to, an old woman writing with gardening reports while you crack on at the center of the world trying to keep the ship right.
It’ll be fine to see you, presuming you will be at the funeral. The paper says they are postponing the ceremony, which is, frankly, gauche. To leave the dead in limbo like that, but nobody is consulting my opinion.
Warm regards,
Sybil
Enclosure
What Ever Happened to Sybil Van Antwerp?
Baltimore Sun Opinion/Editorial
by Alex Toole, Columnist
The honorable Judge Guy D. Donnelly of Frederick, Maryland, and St. Michaels, Maryland, has died. Judge Donnelly will be well known to many after his twenty-eight-year service to the Circuit Court of Maryland in Frederick County (1971–1999), a sober, thoughtful man of very few words who ruled with a crystal-clear justice, respected by both sides of the line, a renowned feminist. In other words, a unicorn in modern times. He died in his home with two women at his side: his wife, Elizabeth, and his daughter, Nancy Louise (married name Young), but what ever became of the other woman in his life?