Chapter 1.
"A Letter for Emily"
Prologue.
“So, you came back to collect your car?”
“Right.”
“And?”
“It will be a week or two to get things fixed. It sat most of the winter in River Falls, then Richard brought it to Schenectady. I’ll help with Sammy, visit some family and be headed back.”
“Then?”
“It depends on the lawyers.”
* * *
Chapter 1. The Chair.
“Where do you keep the others?”
“Oh, I really don’t like the style. But it would be nice to have a matching set…”
“Table and chairs?”
“Sure, Pete. At least the dining room would match.”
“I’ll bet Sammy doesn’t care.”
She smiled, swaying slowly to the sofa where she eased herself down. From where she sat, she could imagine the complete set, table and chairs. Still and all, the sideboard was black with age.
“It’s walnut,” her brother said gently, stroking the grain of the old table in the poor afternoon light.
“That’s what Dad said.”
“Table’s still solid after all these years, Grace.”
She watched him.
“Okay, if you want to try rebuilding a chair,” Gracey went on, speaking in uncomfortable, labored tones.
Her brother looked over.
“You seem better today,” he said.
She gave him a belligerent glance, grasping her abdomen as if it were a laundry basket.
“Have you and Richard picked out a name?”
She was about to answer when from the landing, a small boy hopped down the stairs like a robin, two steps at a time.
“Super heroes!” he shouted with dark glistening eyes, and flexing the unmistakable signs of strength, even at his age.
His mother grinned weakly.
A screen door slammed and they were alone again.
She smiled after him, thinking how lovely and bright her young son, how good-natured and, at the same time, marveling at his boundless waste of energy. Through the bay window, she could see him striking upward at a low-lying branch with a stick.
“You be careful with that, Sammy!” she tried to shout, reminded she was days overdue.
“Oh, Pete,” she signed, putting up feet on a sofa pillow.
“So, Grace,” Unca Pete continued. “The others are upstairs in the attic?”
Gracey lay there, one exhausted hand resting on her brow with a lovely look of resignation about her as she rested bloated ankles on the cushion. The couch she hated.
If only.
If only, her look said.
The door from the cellar opened.
“Hi,” said Richard, drawing out several syllables. There was a hint of concern mixed with contentment as Richard wiped his hands on a towel and looked after his wife.
To the three of them, it seemed a lifetime had passed between this and the previous July.
During the few days Unca Pete had been there at the Agnosto’s, he had said nothing. It was now this summer, not last, and there would be no talk of infertility, or tumors or lawsuits or any glimpse of how it had been. That was then; this was now.
Now.
“Emily,” Richard was saying to his brother-in law. His wife smiled through her discomfort.
“Emily Rose,” she added approvingly in the general direction of Unca Pete, eyebrows offering the name for comment.
“Rich?”
“Yeah?”
Richard knelt beside the sofa, softly stroking his wife’s dangling hand.
“Honey?”
Gracey turned her head toward Richard and smiled. Unca Pete saw it and silently promised himself he would remember the details of that look the rest of his life.
He could not bring himself to talk about the chair. The others were somewhere in the attic. She had run her hand over the smooth edge where her older brother had rubbed and polished the back of that old chair he had spent the last few days rebuilding. No, when this were over, when all the details were set, he would be contented to leave the chair as mute testimony.
“So, the others are…?”
“Up in the attic, Pete.”
Richard turned his attention out the window where Sammy ran his curious head-down run, and Richard looked back, pleased with his son.
“Upstairs,” said Richard. “Let me show you.”
The two climbed the stairs, those two who were close enough in size and stature that from a distance, they might be mistaken for brothers.
In a shadowed niche where dust collected, sat the remains of two more dining room chairs, one inverted on the seat of the other, waiting.
“Gramma Esther gave us these,” said Richard matter-of-factly.
“You and Gracey are lucky to have lived so close here in Schenectady,” replied Unca Pete, squinting past the ceiling lamp.
Richard carefully, patiently lifted one as if were precious, over the clutter of boxes and rolled carpets toward the illuminated circle of light where Gracey’s brother stood.
“Here. Right here,” Pete pointed and glanced from its crack to Richard. “It won’t be too much trouble.”
“You really think you can fix it?”
“Sure,” replied Unca Pete. “But look at this.”
Richard grimaced at the wire holding the delicate antique stretchers to the chair as if it were a bale of hay.
“E. Glenn?”
“Yeah,” said Richard.
The wire surprised Unca Pete.
“No, it won’t be too much trouble,” he murmured, touching the shanks of the legs where they had withstood years and children, school and war, college and grandchildren, divorces and deaths. He ran a hand up the flat back of the classic Queen Anne chair.
It was a task he could do…