The Gift Read online

  By

  Mario V. Farina

  Copyright 2016 Mario V. Farina

  All Rights Reserved

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  Mario V. Farina

  Email: [email protected]

  My wife, Dottie, bless her heart, told me that I wouldn't enjoy retirement and I didn't. I had been brought up in a sports-minded family and thought golf might be an enjoyable way for me to spend my recreation time, but after a few attempts, I determined that this activity required much too much walking and decided to switch to reading instead. I had been an instructor in English Literature at Livingston Junior College and had enjoyed my work very much. When the offer came to retire at fifty-five, I jumped at the chance, thinking that from now on, life would be even more euphoric than it had been in the past.

  But it wasn't! While the perusal of good literature was enjoyable, I missed teaching. I spent my days ensconced in the leather recliner absorbing the works of the masters while, at times, standing at the bow window, gazing into space, yearning for the classroom.

  I purchased books at the used-book store on Fourth Street spending only a few dollars each. This made sense, I thought. Why pay twenty or thirty dollars for the books of Shelly, Shakespeare, and Keats when the same ones could be mine at a fraction of the cost?

  It was from one of these books that a photo slipped into my hands. It was not unusual for things to fall out of old books. Over a period of several months I had found oak leaves, newspaper clippings, book marks, childish scrawls on scraps of paper, even locks of hair within the pages. From time to time, there had also been snapshots that meant nothing to me and I had thrown them out. But this picture was different. It displayed a large group of people posed for a photo at the side of a pavilion. Most of the people were adults, men and women, but there were a few boys seated in front The building seemed familiar. I thought it might be one I had seen in Freer Park, not far from where I lived.

  The photo was black and white, small, about four inches by six inches, but there were many individuals in it, adults and children. I reached for the large magnifying glass that I kept nearby and examined the tiny images.

  Some of the boys were wearing large leather gloves and holding bats ; I assumed that they had been playing baseball. It was a Sunday. Several of the adults were holding palms. Evidently, the photo had been taken on a Palm Sunday on some date in the distant past.

  But how long in the past? I didn't know much about clothing styles but it was apparent that this photo had been taken forty to fifty years ago, maybe more. Dottie felt that the designs of the plaids and the cuts of the collars had been popular in the forties or early fifties. If the picture had been taken in this time frame, the adults would be old. Those who were still living, would be in their seventies, eighties, even nineties. Surely it should not matter to me who the people were. But-it did! I didn't understand why. I thought it might be simple curiosity. No matter, I determined to find out who the people were and under what circumstances the picture had been taken.

  Well, I wouldn't do it now, I though. It was a cold day on Christmas Eve and it might be a better idea to return to my reading. I kept flipping the pages but nothing was registering. I picked up the picture again and began studying it more closely with the higher magnification circle of the glass I was using.

  This seemed to be a family reunion. There were thirty-six persons in the group, nine of whom were children, all boys. Where were the girls? Many of the individuals were standing; several were sitting in front or hunched up behind the sitters. The grass on which the people were standing seemed to be awakening from a long winter's sleep.

  My attention focused on an attractive blond woman who was standing at the right of the picture. She looked familiar. To her left was a young man with his face turned toward her. His countenance was ablaze with a smile, his jet black hair shimmering in the sunlight. The woman, also smiling, stared at the camera. She was wearing a light-colored sweater with a button-up dark collar ; her companion had on a loud country shirt with long sleeves.

  She shouldn't have seemed familiar. If the picture had been taken in the fifties, she must have been twenty or twenty-five when I could not have been more than a toddler. "Emma!" I suddenly vocally exclaimed. "Emma Urys, is that you?" Emma had been a classmate of mine at Troy Central High School. The person m the picture was Emma, without doubt, but the time element was all wrong. Also, the way her hair was arranged wasn't quite right. But it was Emma!

  There were a great many Urys in the phone book but there were no Emma's. This was understandable. The Emma I knew had probably been married a long time ago and her name could be Smith or Jones for all I knew. I would start with the Urys, I thought, and see where it led.

  The first few calls were failures. The people who answered did not recognize the name I was asking about. I thanked them and kept calling. I left messages when no one answered. Dottie popped into the den and asked why I was making so many calls. I told her that I was attempting to find an old classmate from Troy Central. She gave me an enigmatic smile and asked no further questions. I glanced out the window. It would be dark in an hour. It was snowing lightly. This was going to be a white Christmas, I thought.

  Christmas didn't mean as much to me as it had when the children were growing up. There had always been gifts around a tree and stockings hanging from the mantel. Laughter had filled the room as the children gleefully opened their presents. These days Dottie and I exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve that each of us had specifically requested. Each year she even wrapped what had I purchased for her. To me, it seemed that a gift should be more than a mere thing. Wouldn't it be better, I pondered , if it could be a sort of sharing, a giving of a part of oneself?

  The Christmases in my own childhood had seemed slightly out of tune, like an old TV set where the contrast hadn't been properly adjusted. I was an only child but my parents seemed aloof, almost as if I had been dropped into their homes by the legendary stork. The gifts they gave me were things like tennis balls and toy autos where I would have much preferred books involving ideas, concepts, and situations of human relationships.

  The phone rang. I seized it as if it had been a Tiffany crystal about to fall to the floor.

  "Mr. Nolan?"

  "This is William Nolan,"I exclaimed.

  "Mr. Nolan, I'm Tim Cady, returning a call you made to Todd Urys. He suggested that I call you. You're looking for Emma Urys?

  "Yes!" My heart was pounding.

  "I know Emma Urys," he said. She may be the one you're looking for."

  "I'm sure she is!" I gasped. "May I show you a picture? Where do you live?"

  "Eighteen Sixth Avenue in Lansingburgh," he replied. You don't want to go out now, do you? It's snowing."

  I assured him I did want to do exactly that and flew out the door barely putting on enough clothing to keep from freezing. I knew that my Justy would take me to the address he had given without any problem. The drive to North Troy took only a few minutes. I rang the bell of the lower flat.

  Tim turned out to be a rotund man in his sixties. He was nearly bald with a few gray hairs above his ears. He and his diminutive wife, Lillian, met me at the door and ushered me into the living room. I told Tim that I had discovered a snapshot that was haunting me and wondered whether he'd mind looking at it.

  Tim studied the picture for a few seconds, then began to smile." I know all these people," he said." The picture was taken a long time ago. There was a double celebration for
the Cady family. It was Palm Sunday and we were also celebrating the birthday of my cousin, Marie Louise. The girls were holding a party for her in another part of Freer Park. Where did you find this treasure?"

  Before I could answer, he called to his wife who was preparing coffee.' She joined us in examining the picture. "Look," Tim said, "there's Dad in the back with the cap, Uncle Ned with his hand on Nellie's shoulder, Aunt Sarah with her Coke. And here I am!"He pointed a dark-haired boy of about ten sitting at the right in front. The lad was on the ground, his left hand clutching the wrist of his right arm.

  "And who's this?" I pointed to the person whom I had known in my mind to be Emma Urys. "You said you knew Emma. Would this be her?"

  Tim chuckled." Close, Mr. Nolan," he said. "You're in the right family. The lady that you're pointing to is Marian Urys, Emma's mother. There was a strong resemblance between mother and daughter. Marian was a Cady before she married Thomas Urys. That's Tom next to her. They had three children. The oldest was Emma. At the time this picture was taken, Emma had not been born yet. She and her husband live in Cohoes. Did you know Emma?"

  "Not very well," I said. She was a classmate of mine in Troy Central High School. When I saw her mothers picture, Emma's name leapt into my mind. I thought the young woman was Emma though I couldn't see how this was possible. You've solved the mystery. Would you tell me more about the people in the picture. I have the eerie feeling that something besides Emma Urys brought me here."

  "Why do you feel that?" Tim asked.

  This can't be all it seems," I mused audibly. "There have been far too many snapshots and slips of paper falling out of books for this to be mere coincidence.

  "Someone may have been pulling strings that you needed to know about, "Tim said softly.

  Seemingly in a pensive mood, Tim pointed to various people in the picture and gave brief synopses of their lives, where they lived, what they did, their relationships with the family, and whether they were still living. Everyone in the picture was either a Cady or related to a Cady in some way.

  I caught an exchange between Tim and his wife. He glanced at her with a question in his eyes and she mouthed, yes. "I think you need to know something, William. (May I call you by your first name?)"

  I nodded when he paused for a few seconds. "You're not in this picture but you belong in it even though it was taken two years before you were born," he continued. "One of the women in this picture has been following your every move all your life and probably knows more about you than you do yourself." At this point Lillian Cady unobtrusively left the room. "She has been at your side more times than you could ever know. She knew when you met, fell in love with, and married Dorothy Grasso. She was often next in line when you were purchasing books. She slipped many a memento into them when you weren't looking, longing for the time when she could make herself known to you. She, and the family, and your wife, agreed that when the time was right, you should meet her. That time has arrived."

  "I don't understand," I said, completely bewildered. Which woman are you talking about? Why would she do that? What does Dottie have to do with all of this?"

  Tim pointed to a blond woman in the picture near the middle of the group. She was holding her hand up to her face, partially obscuring a smile. "This is Nadine Cady," he said. "She and a young soldier, William Bradley, fell in love during World War II, and conceived a child without the sacrament of matrimony at a time when the public deemed this to be an unforgivable disgrace. The soldier was later killed at Okinawa. When the child was born, arrangements were made through the Church and he was adopted by the Nolan family. The Nolans never told the boy that he had been adopted. And Nadine never married. She has lived in the upper flat of this house with only one interest during all these years, the welfare of that child."

  The door opened and Lillian entered holding the arm of an elderly woman. Though much older, I recognized her as the woman in the picture. She was smiling timorously as she gazed in my direction.

  Tim continued speaking quietly, his next several words casting me bodily into the brand new world of ideas, concepts, and situations of human relationships that I had longed for as a child. "William, this being Christmas Eve, I'd like you to accept what I'm going to say next as a sort of Christmas gift from the Cady family, especially from my cousin, Nadine. On behalf of the family, I wish to welcome you back into the fold, and to reunite you with your mother."