In a drawerful of correspondence, I found a slew of cards addressed to my dour, sour father dated a few years previous, from one Gloria Greenberg on East 88th Street. Each message contained some sort of thank you – for flowers, a night at the theater, the card he’d sent her, and for being such a wonderfully kind and generous man on her birthday. What were his gifts, I wondered. Dinner out? Jewels? Art? From the handwriting, I deduced that Mrs. Greenberg–she used the title on her return address–was close to his age; each letter was carefully formed, slanting just so, her numerals curvaceous. Clearly, she’d studied penmanship, a skill dropped from the latter twentieth century curriculum. Naturally, I was glad to discover that this romance–how many were there?—had not been with some young gold-digger, though she might have been an old one.
This is an excerpt from a flash fiction by Annie Dawid.
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