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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
Week of May 8, 2005
Fiction published as
a WIP dated February 13, 2001
© 2001 by Bud Grossmann. All Rights Reserved.
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Mother & Child, 1987
© 1987 by Bud Grossmann
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TWICE-FOUND LOVE
In this morning’s mail I was astonished to discover a letter of love, a letter that was not mine. I had found the exact same letter once before, and attempted then to return it to its author or direct it to its intended addressee. Evidently I did not succeed. If anyone can tell me what I should do, I’d be glad to try again.
Last spring, on the first day of June, my high-school-senior son and I visited a gallery in Golden Gate Park, in San Francisco. We were about to leave, when I noticed a work of art I’d missed, a life-size, life-like sculpture of a mother and nursing child. They were so nearly motionless, on a bench, softly lit by a single bulb above, that a moment passed before I perceived that they were real.
The mom looked up and saw my stare. She smiled. I stepped toward her to apologize, and I saw she was not young. Close to forty, I’d suppose. Before I could say a word, someone else, a man with a mop, quietly asked if she please could move. The mother shrugged and nodded, and, still smiling, hoisted the straps of a large leather backpack onto one of her shoulders, and she stood. The infant contentedly continued to consume its meal.
From behind a desk a few yards away, a uniformed security guard called out, “Miss, come here. Please take my chair. I like to stand, anyway.” And that’s when I noticed the letter.
It was on the floor beside the bench where the mother and child had been. What I found was more than just the letter; I found a small, flat, white paper bag imprinted with the logo of the gallery gift shop (and a gritty gray shoeprint, too). I snatched it up and presented it to the woman. “Ma’am? Did you drop this?” I asked. “Is this yours?”
She said it was not. She settled herself into the borrowed desk chair, and the three of us—the guard, the mom, and I—took a look.
“Dad, can we just leave?” asked my son.
“Two seconds,” I promised him.
I emptied the white bag onto the desk. We found five loose notecards with envelopes, none of them written upon, each card featuring a photo of a female figure in the form of a marble sculpture or an oil-on-canvas. “Nice choices!” said the mom, touching one of her lacquered fingernails to a John Singer Sargent portrait of a woman with a glass of wine.
A sixth item was a cream-colored envelope, neither sealed nor stamped, but with something inside, and embossed with a monogrammed initial on the square-cut flap. On the envelope’s front was a woman’s first name, placed high and off-center as if the writer intended to add the surname and the address but would have to look them up. The name was one that parents frequently gave to girls when I was a kid, in the 1950’s, a name seldom selected for newborns in the United States today.
“Hey!” the nursing mother laughed. “That’s me! That’s my name! This must be mine, let’s have a look!”
I took out the letter, a single stiff sheet, creamy and folded, and, of course, embossed to match its envelope. We silently read the neat, blue-black script. The name at the bottom, a man’s nickname, seemed as quaint as the woman’s name at the top.
San Francisco
Thursday, 1 June 2000
Dear —,
Not that looks matter so terribly much, but, my gracious, are you gorgeous! I’m breathing hard, just writing that sentence.
Thank you, dear, for what I think we can fairly call a “date” to the Giants game. Sorry about your stale hot dog bun, sorry about my telling a few too many stories (to seatmates on either side of my wheelchair). Thank you for your head on my shoulder, for your nearly-Meyer lemonade “kiss,” for your gloved hand warming my bare fingers as your China Rain warmed my heart.
See you soon? Not soon enough, but always & forever, seeing you soon shall be my wish.
Love, —
“How sweet!” said the mom, ostensibly without irony. Having buttoned her blouse, she was burping the baby with tiny taps of a bejeweled and freckled hand.
“Giants against the Phillies!” said the guard. “I was there!”
“I wish I’d been there!” sighed the mom. “I haven’t seen the new park, yet.”
“Dad, can we go?” my son asked again. He wasn’t talking about a baseball game.
“I assume,” I said to the guard, “that you’re the Lost & Found? If the guy doesn’t come back, looking for his letter, I’d like to have it. The letter and these cards.”
“Well, you see, if someone finds, like, a camera, say, or a wallet with no I.D., what we do, sir, is we hold it, you see, for thirty days, and ...” He explained the procedure, and he and I filled out a form. I left some postage stamps with him.
The letter, cards, and sole-smudged paper bag are in my possession once again, today. (Why the gallery held them so many months no one has explained.) I’m still puzzling about the letter, but with the five empty notecards I know what I must do. I will fill them with affectionate effusions, and send them off to friends. ♦
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