October 27, 2007
Ruth came to collect her letters on a Saturday when the rain had settled into the steady gray kind that made every room feel farther from the street. I had brought the envelope to the shop so she would not have to climb my stairs.
She took it, checked the names on the outside of the packet, and put it into her handbag.
“Thank you.”
I waited for her to open it. She did not.
On the table lay an old photograph of the workroom. Ruth appeared near its edge, turned away from the camera. Dad stood in the middle holding a finished sheet. The picture had been taken on a day she remembered because she had left early to meet her husband at an appointment.
“Could we use that story with the photograph?” I asked.
The question came out before I had properly examined it. It would have made the photograph warm and specific. It would have shown what the work had cost somebody. It would also have taken us straight back to the place she had asked me not to go.
Ruth rested her hand on her bag.
“I came for the letters.”
“You're right. I'm sorry.”
I turned the photograph over. In my notes, underneath the date, I had written: Tell how she kept working while husband ill.
I drew a line through it.
Ruth watched. “You can say I worked there. You can say what I made. It doesn't need to hurt for the work to count.”
I had been trying to correct a display that made one man important by making everyone else disappear. Now I was in danger of making the others important only because they had suffered. Ruth had not asked to become a lesson. She wanted her border credited correctly.
We put the photograph aside and examined the supper card. There was a way to crop a reproduction so the border could be shown clearly without assigning the lettering. Ruth traced the turn of a leaf with one finger, stopping short of touching the paper.
“That curl was supposed to be thinner,” she said. “It filled in when we printed it.”
“Do you want us to use the drawing instead?”
“No. That's what the customer got. Show the work, not the dream of the work.”
We wrote a label together. Border design by Ruth Bell. Lettering not identified. Printed at Hale Type & Print.
Ruth read it once and nodded.
When Peter came downstairs, she asked whether he had photographed the room. He brought out the camera and showed her the small images on its screen. She pointed to a shelf near the back.
“Your mother used to keep peppermints there.”
Peter smiled. “Only the wrapped kind. Dad hated sticky paper.”
They remembered which drawer held the good scissors, which chair tilted, how cold the workroom got before the heat reached it. I listened without writing anything down.
After Ruth left, Peter asked why I had not taken notes. “That was the sort of thing you wanted.”
“It was the sort of thing we got to hear.”
He considered that distinction, then slipped the camera back into its case.
At home I removed the private-letter paragraph from the display introduction. The empty space looked accusing at first. I filled it with nothing. The introduction became shorter and easier to read.
I also took the green-folder entry off the exhibit working list. Leah had never lent us those letters. They did not belong there as a possible object, a question mark, or a future conversation in which I might persuade her.
Before bed, I put Ruth's approved label in the final folder. Beside it I placed a plain list of the permissions we had actually received.
It was not a dramatic document. No visitor would see it. But it was the first page I checked the next morning, before I looked at the beautiful things.