She grins. “So boring. First clue: the letter is dated September 13 of 1965, and the sender starts it with ‘Dear Smitten Kitten.’ It’s signed ‘Ardently’ by Dear Heart. Ready to hear the rest?”
I settle into my chair, ready to listen, and I smile. “I have so many memories of sitting in this same spot. My grandad would invite me into the library to talk about all kinds of things. We would discuss anything and everything. ‘Cabbages and kings.’ It’s from a Lewis Carroll poem.”
“I know it. ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter.’ My grandma would read me that book when I visited her. I didn’t like it, especially that part.” Then she winces. “I just stomped all over a nice memory for you. I’m sorry.”
“I haven’t read the book, just the poem,” I said. “Why didn’t you like it? The walrus was only being a walrus.”
“He ate the baby oysters.” She looks at me like nothing else needs to be said.
“They were dumb baby oysters. It was Darwinism. If it wasn’t the walrus and the carpenter, a shorebird would have eaten those idiots by dinnertime.”
“But would the shorebird have tried to convince the oysters he was their friend? Or would he have consumed them honestly, with straightforward violence as nature intended?”
“Why is this shorebird a guy? Maybe it’s a lady shorebird.” I shake my head. “This is concerning, your majestical directorness. You need to challenge your implicit gender biases.”
She laughs at me. “I’m beginning to see how you and Foster would end up talking of cabbages and kings.”
“I never knew where those talks would take us. One day he might bring me in to discuss the migratory habits ofmonarch butterflies. Another day, it might be the Federalist papers.” I smile as more memories come. “It was probably the Federalist papers. That came up a lot.”
“We once got into a heated debate about who owed whom an apology between Adams and Jefferson.” She laughs when I wince. “Don’t worry, he sent me a bouquet of hyacinths the next day with a card that said they were sympathy flowers because it must be painful to be so wrong.”
I shake my head, imagining Grandad’s glee when he dictated the note to the florist. “So you also spoke of cabbages and kings.”
“It was a privilege.”
I glance around the library, and his absence overwhelms me for an intense minute. My grief at his death has never been sharp. He’d been ready to go at the end, satisfied with the time he’d had and how he’d used it. But I still miss him.
“Whatdoyou think about the migratory habits of monarch butterflies?” she asks.
I appreciate her trying to lighten the mood. “They’re highly intelligent, obviously. Florida is a much better place to spend winters than in Massachusetts. Clearly smarter than dumb baby oysters.”
The corners of her mouth turn up. “My lunches with Foster were one of the highlights of my job. He knew so much about so many things, but he could listen as well as he talked.”
“And he collected knowledge like treasure.” That was Grandad for sure. “I’m surprised he never mentioned you to me.”
“You came up,” she says. “Every now and then he would say something like ‘my grandson went to Stanford like some kind of infernal hippie.’”
I laugh outright. “He did not.”
She grins. “No. But he would say things like ‘my grandsonthis’ or ‘my grandson that,’ and he never said your name, so I thought he had more than one. You’re the grandson who played baseball for Stanfordanddid an internship in the Senate?”
“That’s me.”
“You have range, I’ll give you that.”
“Yes. Baseball, Congress, and research. My history senses are now activated, so do you want to read that letter?”
She glances down at it, her mouth twisting for a moment before she pulls off the gloves and picks it up.
My darling Smitten Kitten,
Is the fur rising on your adorable neck that I dared to call you that? It seemed appropriate. What was it you said when you stormed out of the club and left without so much as a goodbye? Let’s see … oh, yes, the words are etched into memory. “I’ll never be one of your smitten kittens, so save your breath.”
You’re correct, of course. You could never be “one of” because there’s only one: you. How could another girl turn my head when you’re around?
Imagine my surprise when I went to the club to tell you as much last Friday, assuming you would be there with your parents as usualand instead found out you’d fled to Serendipity Springs. Of all the places to run away to, Kitten, you picked there? I imagined you as a Paris girl or, at the very least, New York.
What in the world could have sent you running so suddenly out of Boston? You say you don’t care about me at all, but I don’t believe that. I think you care about me too much, that’s why you’ve run. If you didn’t care at all, you’d still be here, laughing at me.
