The Correspondence: A Typewriter Diaries Story

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The Royal Quiet De Luxe sat in the corner of the room like a forgotten relic of a bygone era. The body had a mint green finish, surprisingly clean for something that was over sixty years old. The bright white keycaps made it look brand new. I worked the keys and inspected the machine, finding a tag attached to the return lever.

“$45.00. Works perfectly,” the tag said.

I’d been looking for a typewriter for months. Ever since spending a sleepless night browsing YouTube and finding too many videos about writers abandoning their laptops in favor of the focused simplicity of mechanical writing on paper. Something about that Royal tugged at me. Perhaps it was the color. Or maybe it was just the way the afternoon sun caught the chrome trim. 

“You’re interested in that old thing?” A voice came from behind me, making me flinch slightly.

I turned my head to find a woman in her seventies at my shoulder. Her silver hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail at the back of her head. Her blue eyes were rimmed red. Something had been bothering her, but I dared not pry. Instead, I simply nodded.

“How old is it?” I asked, running one hand over the case and the other gently across the ribbon cover.

“1956 I believe. It was my mother’s. She was a writer.”

 There was a sense of pride in her words, and something else I couldn't quite pin down. 

“She used that typewriter every single day until she passed away last month.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” was all I could think to say.

She gave an obligatory nod, still not quite meeting my eyes. “She’d be happy that someone was getting some use out of it. Are you a writer?” She paused. “I’m sorry. I didn’t get your name.”

I smiled. “Mike. Mike Hedstrom. I dabble in writing, yes. I’m a freelance blogger and copywriter by trade, but I’ve been looking for something to bring out the creativity I thought I always had.”

She smiled thinly. “I’m Elizabeth. Nice to meet you, Mike. I hope that old typewriter gives you what you’re seeking. Lord knows I can’t stand to look at it anymore.”

I paid the forty-five dollars and carried the typewriter, secure in its case, to my pickup truck and set it on the passenger seat. As I drove toward my apartment, I couldn't help but wonder what stories this typewriter held and why it bothered Elizabeth so much. 

The first night, I set the old Royal up on my kitchen table, where my laptop normally sat, and loaded a sheet of paper. The keys had a satisfying feel, even for someone used to computer keyboards. I was not lacking strength in my hands and fingers, though, so after a few lines, I had it down. The bell at the end of each line was bright and cheerful. It reminded me of the bell signaling new customers at my favorite coffee shop. I’d definitely take this typewriter for a spin there. For now, I simply typed a few sentences about my day, getting a feel for the machine. 

When I returned with my coffee the next morning, the paper was gone.

I stared at the empty carriage, dumbfounded. I was sure I’d left the paper rolled in, carriage pulled back so the print position was at the left margin I’d set. I remembered the last sentence I’d typed too. I wrote myself a reminder to buy milk while I was out today. The typewriter sat innocently on the table, right where I’d left it.

Maybe I took it out and just forgot, I thought. Maybe I was more exhausted than I thought.

I looked at the typewriter one last time, shrugged, and loaded a fresh sheet before retiring to my home office.

When I finished work and returned to the kitchen, starving and intent on starting dinner, I stole a glance at the typewriter as I preheated my oven and withdrew a frozen pizza, not feeling like spending too much time cooking. What I saw almost made me drop the pizza halfway to the oven. The blank page I’d left this morning was still there, but it was no longer blank.

The letters looked old, slightly uneven. Definitely a sign of use. Some keys appeared to strike harder than others. I noticed that when I did my tests. Another reason to check the platen. The message was brief:

“Thank you for telling me about your day. It’s been too long since I’ve spoken to anyone. Who are you?”

My hands shook as I removed the paper. Somebody had to be messing with me. I must have left a window open or a door unlocked. Someone must have found their way into my place, typed these words, and left. The problem with that theory is I lived in a third-floor apartment and the door had been locked when I checked at lunch time. Who the hell would go to that much trouble, anyway?

I skimmed to the bottom of the typed page. There was what appeared to be a signature at the bottom. One letter. “M.”

M. The woman at the estate sale—Elizabeth—mentioned this typewriter belonged to her mother. Could that be what “M” stood for? Or was it an initial?

Against my better judgment and every other instinct I had, I loaded a fresh sheet into the Royal and typed.

“My name is Mike. I bought this machine at an estate sale three days ago. If this isn’t some sort of prank, tell me who you are.”

I left the paper in the machine, took the rest of the pizza I’d made to the living room, and watched some TV before going to bed. I half expected to wake up to an empty typewriter and a lifelong story I’d tell at parties about the weird paranoid episode I had.

I came out to the kitchen and poured my coffee the next morning, paying the typewriter a casual glance at first. As I sipped my first cup of coffee, I noticed the paper was still there. There were words below my question from the previous night, in the same uneven type I’d noticed before.

“I’m Margaret. I owned this typewriter from 1956 until last month. I have no recollection of the last month, and I have no idea why. Time moves strangely here. Some of your questions suggest I’m dead. Am I?

I fell hard into the kitchen chair, coffee spilling over the edge of the cup in my left hand. 

Over the next week, there was a pattern. I would type something to Margaret in the evening. At first, it was just a question. Then I started telling her stories about my day, subconsciously trying to showcase my ability to tell stories. Sometimes, I would just vent about my work and my dating life—or lack thereof. When I sat down with my coffee in the morning, there were words underneath what I’d typed, her words.

She’d been a writer, just like her daughter had said. Like me, she’d mostly written short pieces. She’d been published in a few magazines in the late fifties to the mid sixties. There was one novel. Her words seemed hesitant when she talked about it. She’d never found a publisher. She was married briefly to a man she called Jack. She had one child—Elizabeth—and divorced. This Royal Quiet De Luxe had been her best friend. Five decades of rejection letters, the occasional acceptance letter from a magazine and the slow recognition that her career would never be what she’d dreamed, all in the constant company of this typewriter. 

“I typed my last words on this machine, Mike,” she said on another night. “A letter to my daughter explaining why I’d been so difficult. My ex-husband could probably tell you a few things, but what it comes down to is my emotional availability. I had no business getting married, Mike. Lizzie deserved better as a mother. I poured everything I couldn’t say out loud onto paper through these keys.”

“What do you mean by emotional availability,” I asked, leaving the sheet in the typewriter as I retired to my office the next morning.

“I wasn’t capable of unconditional love, Mike,” came the response. “I couldn’t express love for anyone out loud. I could write it on paper just fine, but I couldn’t say the words. I gave up too easily. One bump in the road was the end of things for me. That wasn’t fair to Jack, and it wasn’t fair to Elizabeth. She lives in my old house, Mike. There’s a box in the crawlspace above the garage. There are letters in that box that I never sent or handed out. I think she needs to see them.”

I sat in my den that night with a heavy heart, scotch in one hand and the first Marlboro Red in six weeks in the other. I understood Margaret’s pain. I thought of Nicole, the one who got away. She was the one woman I could count on, loving me despite my flaws. But since she seemed too good to be true, I assumed she was and retreated into myself until she couldn’t take it anymore. My inability to love unconditionally and let myself be loved got the better of me yet again.

 My grandparents' faces flashed in my mind as well. The conversations we’d had played on a loop, voices seeming to drown in my glass. I thought of my grandma telling me she loved me at the end of every call, and my inability to return the sentiment out loud. I raised my glass, thinking of all the times Grandma and I shared a drink together. Before taking my obligatory sip, I whispered into the dark, “I’m sorry.” The words seemed to disappear in the smoke. 

She knows, a voice whispered back.

Despite the heaviness of some conversations, the correspondence became the highlight of my day. I’d leave my home office with a spring in my step, ready to start my dinner and see what Margaret had left for me. I was eager to tell her about the promotion I’d gotten with one company that contracted my services. I was now their head copywriter.. The short story I’d begun writing was going well, and I was eager to tell Margaret about it. I felt she would be the only one who would understand.

“You’re a writer too?” Margaret typed one evening. The words seemed to convey excitement, if a typewriter could do such a thing. “What do you write? Besides the stuff for your job, that is.”

“I’m still unsure,” I typed back. “There was that short story I wrote a few days ago, but I’ve been having doubts. It always happens. I’ve never finished anything I’ve written for myself. I either get stuck or doubt myself. Sometimes those two things fit together.”

“They always do,” Margaret wrote back. “The trick is pushing through it, putting your love for the craft before your doubts in yourself. The first draft is always terrible, I know that from experience. That’s what the editing process is for.”

She began giving me writing advice. I would type a story on the typewriter and leave it threaded in, and she would respond with feedback the next morning. She pointed out weaknesses I couldn’t see, even with my prevalent self-doubt. I would find notes suggesting ways to strengthen character or tighten up dialogue. It was like having a mentor and beta reader in one, someone only I could interact with, existing in whatever space separated this life from the next.

“Do you know you’re dead?” I asked her one night, my internal filter lifted by scotch.

“I know I’m not alive,” she wrote back. “But I’m not sure I’m dead either. I’m here, in this space between the keys and the page, the space I occupied for so many years in life. I’m in every letter I ever typed and every word I struggled to find. When you type, I can sense it. When you leave pages in the machine, I can respond. It’s not life, but it’s also not nothing.”

After three months of correspondence with Margaret, I finished my first story. I was emotional as I held the pages in my hand, amazed I’d finished something and it was tangible.

“You did it!” Margaret typed that night. “I’m proud of you, Mike.”

I had to choke back tears when I read those words. Nobody had ever said that to me before, not even my own mother, at least not when it came to my writing. 

“I wish I could have met you,’ I typed, a tear trickling from each eye now. “When you were alive, I mean.”

“I’m not sure you would have liked me, Mike,” she admitted. “I was difficult, sharp tongued, emotionless sometimes—too often.” I was impatient, impulsive. Elizabeth probably painted me as a monster, and I deserved that.”

I thought about Elizabeth, the look in her eyes when I picked up the typewriter, her inability to look at it.

“She told me about your writing, that you used this machine every day for over 50 years. She seemed sad when she spoke of you, not angry.”

Margaret’s next response took longer than usual. The words that appeared were less steady.

“We wasted so much time, Lizzie and I. Years of tense silence, neither of us knowing what to say or how to say it. I wrote letters to her. It was the only way I knew how to express what I was feeling. But I never sent them. She’d come to visit from time to time, and we’d sit in the same room, feet from each other, and say nothing. When I was on my deathbed—I know that’s what it was now—I wanted to tell her I loved her, that I was proud of the woman she’d become. The words would only come on paper, always on paper.”

“Did you tell her,” I asked. “In the letter you mentioned? The last one?”

“I tried. I’m not sure if she’s found it yet. I don’t know if she’ll ever read it. I hope so. I want her to know.”

An idea came to me just then. Crazy, likely impossible, but then again, I was talking to someone who had passed on, corresponding through her old typewriter, so impossible didn’t mean much anymore.

I found the estate sale flyer and drove to Elizabeth’s address, the Royal in its case on my passenger seat. A folder full of correspondence sat on the dash as I drove.

Elizabeth answered the door almost as soon as I began knocking, as if she’d known I’d be coming. Her face looked older than I remembered, exhaustion evident in her eyes. She smiled weakly with recognition, her eyes shifting between me and the typewriter case in my left hand. 

“Hello, Mike,” she said, ushering me inside. “What can I do for you? Mom’s old typewriter working out ok for you?” 

I nodded. “It’s working well.. Can we sit? I need to show you something.”

She led me to the kitchen and we sat across from each other at the old oak table. I pushed the folder of correspondence across to her. Three months of communication, a tenuous bridge between the living world and the afterlife. I watched Elizabeth as she read the pages, her expressions running the gamut between disbelief, shock, and tears. As she neared the end of the file, there was something else on her face. Was it hope? 

“She never opened up to me like this,” she said finally, her voice shaking with tears. “These pages sound like her, but there’s something different. The voice is softer, more vulnerable.”

“She wanted to have these conversations with you,” I said, covering Elizabeth’s hand with my own. “She told me she desperately wanted to communicate with you properly. She just didn’t know how.”

Elizabeth nodded, standing after a few moments and leaving the room. She returned with a stack of papers that had yellowed with age.

“I found these a couple days after Mom died,” she said. “Letters she’d written to me over the years. I couldn’t bring myself to read them.” She pushed them across the table. Could you leave them with the typewriter tonight?”

That evening, I put all of Elizabeth’s letters on display, spreading them out around the typewriter, rolling a fresh sheet into it.

“Margaret, Elizabeth found your letters. She’s been carrying them for the last thirty years, unable to read them. She’s ready now. She asked me to tell you she loves you, always did. She read your last letter, the one you wrote before you died. She understands and forgives you. The words you’ve written are enough, more than enough. She hopes you can soon forgive yourself.”

After writing that last paragraph, I covered the Royal and retired to my den. This time, I raised a toast to my grandma and crushed the rest of my Marlboro Reds. I never bought another pack. 

As I made my coffee the following morning, I took the cover off the typewriter. The paper I left in it the night before was now full of text. Line after line of the same three words covered the page. 

“Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

Below that, written in steadier letters:

“I can rest now. Tell Elizabeth I love her. Tell her to allow herself to live the life I was afraid to live. Live loud, messy, imperfect, and most importantly, real. The words on paper matter, but the words we speak to those we love matter so much more.”

I smiled, a single tear in my eye as I read on.

“Thank you for giving us this, for being the bridge we couldn’t build ourselves.”

I wiped another tear, taking a sip of coffee to give myself pause.

“Write your stories, Mike,” Margaret continued. “Finish them. Perfect is the enemy of done. Done is the only way anyone will experience your brilliant mind and beautiful heart. Goodbye, Mike, and thank you again.”

Everything changed after that. The letters appeared less frequently, abbreviated. Finally, I loaded paper one night and came back to nothing the next morning. I tried again for a couple more nights, but there was nothing. Margaret was gone. 

I kept that Quiet De Luxe with reverence. I still use it for first drafts. The feel of the keys and the bell at the end of each line are the symphony behind my creative process. Sometimes I think of Margaret and Elizabeth and the words we leave unsaid. 

Two weeks after my last message from Margaret, I finished that short story I’d started, submitted it to a magazine, and received my first rejection letter. Despite the initial sting, rejection letters seem to be a rite of passage in the writing community, and that’s how I viewed it. I submitted again, and got rejected again. The third time was the charm, and after years of doubt and rejection, I’d finally made it. I was always a writer, but now I was published. 

I sent Elizabeth a copy when the magazine issue that featured my story came out. She replied with a handwritten letter thanking me for bringing her and her mother together again, even if it was only temporary. 

“I talk to her now,” Elizabeth wrote. “I tell her everything, talking to her picture in the hallway. After my kids visit, I tell her about my grandchildren. On Saturdays, I sit in the small chair I set up in the hallway near her picture, glass of wine in hand, and talk about the garden, the one she started. Sometimes I just sit there and tell her about my day and whatever is on my mind. It’s not the same as having her here, but it’s something. It’s enough. Thank you, Mike, for walking into my life when you did. I wouldn’t have been able to do this without you.”

I’m typing this story, the first draft anyway, on Margaret’s typewriter. The distinct sound of the keys echoing off the walls of my apartment. When I finish, the digital workflow begins with revision and editing before I send it out into the world.

Even in this digital world, my first drafts belong to the typewriter, to Margaret. Each word carries with it the understanding that the dead are not gone as long as they remain in our hearts, as long as we speak of them and to them. As long as we keep their legacy alive, our loved ones will always be with us. With each word, each draft, I’m doing my part to keep Margaret and her legacy alive while at the same time building a legacy of my own with this typewriter.

At the end of each line, the clear bell rings. My left hand pushes the carriage return from muscle memory now, and the satisfying clicks brings me that much closer to another finished project. 

All the while, I’d like to think Margaret is smiling.