LETTER FROM A STRANGER AN UNEXPECTED BUT TIMELY GIFT

The Boston Globe

BEVERLY BECKHAM

I had been thinking about her. That's the way these things happen. Coincidence? A random pairing of events? Or something more? Sound just out of earshot? Sunlight, bright and steady, but in another room?

I had been remembering who knows why? being a child sitting on a kitchen chair, my face pressed against a window, waiting for my aunt to come and play with me.

I could hardly say her name. "Rain coming?" I would ask my mother, "Lorraine" too big a word, "Aunt Lorraine" impossible.

She was my mother's only sister and 11 when I was born. So she played with me and took me for walks and painted my fingernails red and brought me to the five-and-ten. She let me try on lipstick and sleep in her bed, and when she was 16 and 17 and 18, she introduced me to all of her boyfriends.

She looked like Snow White. She had pale skin and dark hair and blue eyes and ruby lips, and when we walked through Central Square, boys whistled at her and the florist always gave her a rose. I was 8 when she got married and I was miserable, certain that I had lost her, that as in all the fairy tales, "happily every after" meant happily ever after with the prince, and without me.

But she didn't desert me. She still painted my fingernails, took me to the five-and-ten, and let me try on lipstick. And although I didn't get to sleep in her bed anymore, I got to sleep on a couch under a cuckoo clock in the next room.

We were that close our whole lives. In the next room. In the next town. On the other end of the phone.

She died eight years ago. She was sick for only three weeks. I didn't think then that I could live a day without her. But here I am, and now whole days go by when I don't think of her.

But then something happens and I do. And I think I want to tell her this. I want to call her on the phone and talk to her.

I wanted to call her after I read the letter. It came a week ago in a sealed, plain 8-by-11 manila envelope, with no return address. I took it out of the mailbox and thought, this is trouble.

But I was wrong.

The letter was written by a woman who'd worked with my aunt many years ago.

"I didn't know that your Aunt Lorraine who you often mention in your writings was Lorraine Haley until she passed away," this anonymous person wrote. "She had a nice job in the credit department of the First National Bank and was the substitute receptionist on the upper bank floor. . . . Lorraine was 17 and I was 24 and married. She probably thought of me as Methuselah! She was a beautiful young girl with flawless skin and was pristine clean. She'd come in at 9:00 a.m., ruffled-neck blouse, straight seams in her nylons, everything just so and at 5:00 p.m. be just as neat."

I could see her, flawless and pristine and perfect. These words brought her back to me. This is who I watched for from my kitchen window. This is who took me to Central Square every Saturday. This is who held my hand in one hand and a rose in the other, who loved me almost as much as I loved her.

You lose witnesses as you age. My mother. My father. They'd remember this Lorraine. My uncle? He remembers.

But her children? And my children? This young Lorraine doesn't exist for them.

The woman enclosed photographs, too. "The girls in the office used to have our Christmas party at Blinstrubs. It was a club in South Boston and all the big stars used to come in."

And there in these posed shots is my aunt in December 1953, "4th from the left in the back row," one of 28 women, a girl still, only 18, standing, smiling, beautiful. And there she is the next year, "1st row, 2nd from right," seated this time, her hands folded on her lap.

I had been thinking about Lorraine. And the letter came. I had been remembering pressing my face to the window looking for her. And an anonymous someone sent her to me.

Coincidence? A random pairing of events?

Or sunlight, bright and steady, escaped from a distant room?

Thank you for this gift, Anonymous. I know Lorraine is thanking you, too.