“It was hard to figure out because it has part of his mark on the bottom.” Laurie showed him another picture of the bottom of the duck.
“That’s right,” he said, pointing. “I remember that. She said he liked it so much that he put the studio mark on it, like she was an apprentice, I guess. I’m sure they didn’t realize they were creating such a mystery for you, though.”
“Left off the dots for his wife and daughters,” Laurie said.
“Yeah,” John said. “That seems right. It was a little messy, certainly. But as far as I know, they were pretty happy. You know, fifty years ago, not too many men were looking for women who were going to be just as good at whatever they were doing as they were. I think the fact that he wanted to teach her, wanted her to get really good, that was part of why she liked him.”
“He was married the whole time, though, right?” Laurie said.
“He was. And she knew, he didn’t lie to her. But if I remember, his wife was sick. For Dottie, I suppose it really wasn’t a bad situation, because he was never going to bug her to get married like I was. She got to have somebody, but only so much as she wanted.”
“Do you know how long that lasted?”
He stopped and closed his eyes. “Well, when did she carve that, early seventies?”
“In 1972,” Laurie said.
“I don’t think it was too long after that when they broke it off. He had children, and they were even having their own children, and it was getting a little more complicated. So probably a couple of years after that.”
“Can I ask why you two fell out of touch?” Laurie said.
He shook his head. “You know, there wasn’t any big fight or anything like that. I think it was just she started traveling so much, doing so much, she had so many friends. And I had my kids, and they were getting older, too. My wife and I, of course, we had rough times like everybody. It didn’t seem right to be talking to Dottie about all that, telling her my problems. Not really fair to her or my wife. We just lost track of each other, kinda slow.”
We just lost track of each other, kinda slow, Laurie repeated inside her own head, looking at Nick and looking down at her hands. “But we still knew some people in common, so I’d hear how she was doing now and then. At least until everybody got so old.” He chuckled. “But a few years after my wife was gone, this would have been maybe five years ago, I did call her.” For a minute, he just looked down at the picture. “I was lonely. Bored. I called her up, said ‘Dot, how have you been?’ And we were on the phone probably two hours. Talked about you, talked about your brothers. Your mom. My kids.”
“That must have been really something,” Nick said.
“It really was.” He reached over and put the photo on his windowsill, propped up in front of a small flowerpot. “I sure loved her.”
“I did, too,” Laurie said.
“She was proud of you, you know,” he said. “When we talked, she was ‘oh, my niece the writer’ this and ‘oh, she’s in a magazine’ that. Don’t tell anybody else, but I think you were her favorite.”
“She was my favorite, too.”
They stayed with John for a couple of hours. They ate lunch with him in the dining room, where they sat at a big round table with a couple and two single women in their seventies. Everyone who walked by would put a hand on John’s shoulder, ask him how he was doing, drop a piece of gossip or ask him how the food was. The food was forgettable, honestly, institutional and resolutely acceptable, but the place hummed with overlapping casual and less casual bonds, like a college dining hall.
When it was time to go, John walked them out to the lobby. Laurie admired his straight back, his confident walk. Dot would have added him to her list of people in their nineties who aged well. In fact, she probably had. He took both of Laurie’s hands and said, “I am so glad that you came by.”
“It was my pleasure,” she said. And she leaned over and kissed his cheek. She picked up a Gatecrest brochure, plucked a pen off the desk, and wrote her phone number on the back. “Call me anytime you want to chat. Really.”
“Nick,” John said, and they shook hands. “Thank you for putting this together for us.”
Nick nodded. “If you don’t mind my saying so, sir, you might enjoy meeting my grandmother. Maybe I’ll bring her by sometime.”
“What a good idea,” Laurie said, thinking about his need to connect things to other things, people to other people, a person to a book, a woman to her family.