Flying Solo(85)

He held it close to his face. “Well, I’ll be damned. That’s us, all right. That’s the bench out front of F.C. Glass, where I was working. She used to come see me. One of my buddies probably took this for me. I sure could never have enough pictures of her.”

John told them that he and Dot met in the mid-1950s when they were both in their twenties. She was working at the elementary school in Calcasset, and he was doing research for a company in Bangor, and they met at a friend’s wedding, drinking champagne under a canopy. They started dating, and he asked her to marry him, but as he put it: “She told me she didn’t think she was a getting-married kind of woman. Which, you know, back then, you didn’t hear that so much.”

Nick and Laurie glanced at each other, and she remembered wanting to smash the crystal ball with her wedding date on it.

After that, John and Dot didn’t see each other for a couple of years, but then they ran into each other at a party, and they were both still single. They went back to dating, but only in secret, since his family knew she had turned him down and they would not have approved. They stayed together until John was thirty-five and beginning to think that if he wanted to settle down and have children, he needed to go ahead and do it. “We talked and we talked,” he said. “But there’s not a lot of common ground between getting married and not getting married. Or especially between children and no children.” So they broke up for good, and just six months later, John met his wife. John said he and Dot exchanged letters from time to time for another fifteen years or so. “So the one you found, I would have written after I was married,” he said. “It’s nice to know she kept it, that I rated so highly, even in my absence.” Laurie could see the man in the pictures in his face now; his eyes were the same, and his smile.

“I know this is a strange question,” Laurie said, “but I’m wondering if you know anything about her relationship with Carl Kittery.”

“The duck man!” John said brightly. “Don’t tell me you know the duck man.”

“I very much don’t,” Laurie said. “He died quite a while ago. But when I was cleaning the house, I found this very nice carved duck decoy.”

“The wood duck?” John said.

Laurie physically reared back a bit with surprise. “You have a good memory,” she said, handing him a picture of the decoy.

“For a guy who’s ninety-four, you mean,” he said with a smile.

“For anybody,” Laurie said. “I regularly don’t remember why I came into whatever room I’m in.”

“Well, she sent me some pictures of that particular piece, and I kept one on my piano at home, so I looked at it for a long time. I called him Woody. Not too creative, I know.”

“She…she made it, right? She made it herself.” Laurie didn’t breathe for a moment. She wasn’t ready to hear that she was wrong. She wasn’t ready to start again, and she certainly wasn’t ready to be disappointed when she was so close to the end of this.

“You bet she did,” he said. “The duck man taught her. She was with him probably…ten years? I don’t know, maybe ten years. And he taught her. I got a lot of pictures of what she was working on over the years, and I wish I still had them. Sometimes they worked together, but she loved that one because she did almost all of it herself. I’m surprised she never told you about it.” He paused. “I suppose that would have meant talking about the duck man. Maybe not a thing you tell family. But I’m glad you know she made it. That would make her happy, I think.”

“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.”