“I know a forged letterhead when I see one, Craig,” I said, and I held the letter from the doctor up to the window so the afternoon light came through the paper. “You see this faint ghost of the logo? Faxed, then cut and pasted, then photocopied. Any apprentice in my shop could tell you that. I have been looking at paper for fifty years.” The living room of the big colonial house had gone completely quiet. Pink and blue balloons bobbed against the ceiling. Forty women in sundresses sat holding plates of tiny sandwiches. Craig stood with his hand frozen on a paper napkin. Jennifer, in a maternity dress the color of buttermilk, had gone still as a rabbit.
The father of Jennifer had opened the Louisville envelope and read the first page. He was a spare, dignified man in his late sixties, a retired judge, and he had a way of looking at a document that made you want to confess to something. “Mr. Whitley,” he said slowly, “I believe I have had a misconception about you. My daughter informed me that you were severely impaired.” I said, “Judge Hollis, I am seventy eight. I am impaired in the knees. In the head, I am as sharp as I was at forty.” A ripple of laughter, quickly stifled, ran around the room. The judge did not laugh. He turned to his daughter.
“Jennifer,” he said, in the quiet courtroom voice that had once sent men to prison, “did you petition for the guardianship of this man?” Jennifer said, “Daddy, it was the idea of Craig.” Craig said, “It was both of us.” Jennifer said, “You said he was forgetting things.” Craig said, “You said it first.” They turned toward one another, like two animals in a corner, and for a moment the whole room could see exactly what the marriage was. Two frightened people. Judge Hollis pressed his lips together and put the letter back on the gift table. “I think we should all sit down,” he said, “and listen to Mr. Whitley.”
A faxed logo on a letter from a doctor gave away a forged guardianship and gave an old printer the name of his granddaughter in type.
I did not want to speak. The truth is I wanted to go home. I wanted my own bed and my own chair, with the radio on, and a cup of tea with honey. But I had taken the composing stick out of my pocket and laid it on the table, the old brass one from 1971, with the little chipped corner, and it seemed to me that it was waiting for something. I looked at Craig. He had the chin of my brother and the eyes of his mother. “Son,” I said, “do you remember when you were seven years old, and you came to the shop on Saturdays, and I let you set your name in type?”
He did not answer. He stared at the stick. “You set it backward,” I said. “You always did. Letters read from the right when you set them, you see, so they come out right on the page. You had trouble with the idea. You got so frustrated that you threw the stick on the floor and cried. And I picked it up and said, Craig, it is only hard until you see it.” My voice wobbled. “Son, I do not know what happened. Somewhere along the way you stopped being able to see what was in front of you. You started thinking that people were obstacles.”
Craig put the napkin down. “Dad,” he said, “I was drowning. the family of Jen has money. They live a certain way. I took on a mortgage I could not afford. And then we found out about the baby. I thought, he has six print shops. He is not even using them. I saw a way, and I took it.” He pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead. “I did not even want to do it. I hated myself every single day. I took your checks. I made the letter. I told myself it was for the baby.” Jennifer began to weep, in great gasps, with one hand on her belly.
The retired judge, to my surprise, was the one who spoke next. “Mr. Whitley, I have sat on the bench for thirty three years,” he said. “I have seen many guardianship cases. I have seen families destroyed by them. I have also seen a few cases where the family did something monstrous, and the court saw only a paper. I am glad this one was caught.” He turned to his daughter. “Jennifer, I am deeply ashamed. You will withdraw the petition on Monday. You will return the thirty four thousand dollars. And you will beg the forgiveness of your father in law, in whatever form he chooses.”
I chose a plain form. I asked for four things. The petition withdrawn, the money returned, and the freeze lifted from my account. And a fourth thing, which I thought of in the moment. “When the baby is born,” I said, “I would like to hold her.” Jennifer looked up from her handkerchief. “Mr. Whitley,” she said, “you would want that?” I said, “Child, I have wanted it for a year. I have just been afraid to ask.” She stood up, awkwardly, with her hand on her back, and crossed the rug. She knelt beside my chair, as best she could, and put her arms around my knees.
Her name was Eleanor. She was born in January, with a head of dark hair and a furious opinion about everything. I held her at the hospital the day she came, in a green wool sweater, with my old fingers shaking under the blanket. Jennifer watched me from the bed, tired and radiant. Craig sat at the foot, rubbing his face. Nobody spoke. The baby opened her eyes and looked straight at me, as babies do, with the gravity of a judge, and then she yawned, and I laughed, and I cried, and the nurse brought tissues.
I make her cards now. Every month, a small, hand printed card, set in type on the old press at the Main Street shop, which the new owners allowed me to keep one corner of. The letterhead says Whitley and Granddaughter. Each one has a little poem and a woodcut. Last week I set her name in type, backward, as I always do, and I pulled the first proof and held it to the light. It read, clear as water, Eleanor. Craig stood behind me. He said, “Dad, can you show me how?” I handed him the stick.
