The Postcard

It was tucked between the electric bill and an oversized postcard from the local car dealership. It was in almost perfect condition, its corners slightly dog-eared.

She set the rest of the mail on the dining room table and sat on the third step of the stairs leading to the second floor.

Gloria held the postcard in her hand, trembling slightly, the deckled edge pressing gently into her skin. She read her name and address written in a script she didn’t recognize. The large “G’s” in Gloria Gundry were over accentuated and the entire address was tilted right.

On the left hand side of the postcard, someone had written, in the same blue pen:

Gloria,

France is beautiful. Just as we had always talked about. It’s all a dream – the architecture, the people, the language, the food.

Paris was rainy but amazing. I saw the Eiffel Tower and then at Notre Dame, I fell down some stairs (I’m okay). I am now in Nice for the next five days. I wish you were here.

Helen


Above the greeting, there was printed, “La Cote D’azur, Nice” and then below that it said that the image was of “La Promenade, la nuit” She had taken French in high school so she remembered that “nuit” meant that it was “at night." She turned the postcard over to reveal a retro image of Nice. It appeared to be a photograph, shot from above, that had been hand-colored. The sky was black, the water pushed against the road was black as well, with a hint of deep aqua green. Silhouetted palm trees ran down the middle of “La Promenade” separating the two lanes, with a bright yellow glow coming from the streetlamps reflecting off the street like fire. The road wound from the bottom of the postcard up, twisting left at the top of the card, vanishing in the darkness.

She flipped the card back over and gazed at the message. “I wish you were here.” Gloria did not know a person named Helen. She could not think of any Helen who might write her a postcard from France. It was obviously intended for her – her name was correct, the address was hers, it had been her home since she moved out of her parents house over fifty years ago. Jack had bought it right before they got married in September of 1954, just after they both graduated from North Hamilton High School. The postcard was meant for her, it had made its way to her mailbox, all way from France. But who was Helen?

Gloria rested her hands in her lap and looked at the wall. The same painting hung near the door. The same lamp and table near the couch, the same light coming in through the living room windows. The house was quiet. Janie and Tom were both grown, living downstate, both with families of their own, with teenagers of their own, as a matter of fact. She thought of Jack and how she felt lonely without him. She always felt that loneliness, it was always there, like a dull, throbbing pain, but in times like this, it was more acute. How she longed to simply ask him a silly question like, Do we know a woman named Helen? Her heart ached.

She thought about women in the neighborhood, up and down the block, but there wasn’t anyone with that name. She thought of the four or five women in church, those who sat beside her on the Liturgy Commission on which she served, but there wasn’t a Helen. She though of her fellow poll workers who work at the local elementary school gymnasium on election days. No Helen that she could remember. She did not know who this person was, how she knew her.

It was odd. She shared with this woman a love a France but yet could not remember who she was. As a matter of fact, the card implied that they had talked and dreamt about France together. “Just as we had always talked about.” But she hadn’t even given France a thought, not in any real way, in years. Countless years. Too many years.

She noticed the canceled stamp in the upper right corner -- a woman in a robe holding a vase, an ornate pale orange frame around the woman with the words “Republique Francasise” at the top and “25c Postes” along the bottom. Gloria looked at the cancellation over the postage stamp where the black ink formed an intermittent circle. She could vaguely make out “JU” for either June or July, perhaps, and “1955.” Gloria pushed her glasses back up on her nose and read it again. Nineteen and fifty-five. That was over fifty years ago, Gloria thought. Fifty-four years ago.

And then she remembered that there was a Helen Shamanski that she was friends with in high school. She was short and blond and a very sweet girl. She sat behind Gloria in their senior French class and she moved away soon after high school, a few years after graduation, class of ’54.

Gloria remembered Helen's face, and tried to remember her voice or something they did together, but she could not. She could not recall why or how they had bonded. Did they see each other after class? After school? Gloria didn’t think so but it all happened so long ago. She had lost sight of Helen, had lost contact with her. It had been so many years now. But as Gloria sat there, in her empty and quiet house, she realized that there had been something there, all this time. Something she never realized or even felt. The connection of a postcard that was carried across the miles, across the ocean, across two lives, so separate and yet so parallel. A connection that had taken fifty-four years to complete.