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212 Spoons, commemorative. In the package that came on November 17 were two commemorative spoons from the Chicago World’s Fair of 1933—polished by Joel before he sent them. The front of the stem reads “A Century of Progress,” the theme of the Great Exposition at the fair. At the top of the reverse is a reproduction of the Hall of Science. The spoons are worth no more than his stamp collection. Joel did not say how he came by the spoons or why he kept them. He was born in Chicago, as was his mother, who lived there with her family at the time of the fair. Richard learned some of these facts when he sorted through the stamp boxes, having carried them down from the attic in hopes of assembling a chronology, of understanding Joel’s life and making an order of his death. Richard worked through the empty envelopes and found among those with postage from foreign countries an envelope mailed from Ohio. It turned out to be the one item of value to us in the collection, an item Joel would never 213 have let us see had he known that the envelope still contained its letter. It had escaped his rage to order and dispose, to cruelly conceal from us his plot to end his life. I cherish the letter, as a crack of light through the black shutter he drew down between us. It was written by Gale, with whom he lived during the brief years of his best chances, and was sent in the first days of their romance. The letter says, “To realize that you love me, too, is a prayer come true.” At first we kept the spoons with the other items that arrived in the final package. Later we thought we’d try to use the spoons, and mixed them in with others in the silverware tray. There you find the remains of Richard’s bachelor-days tableware , a scattered set my mother no longer wanted, cheap storebought spoons we added as others were lost at the park or fell into garbage disposals. But it turns out that we always choose other spoons with which to eat our ice cream or oatmeal. I have never polished Joel’s spoons and don’t know if I ever will. If I can ever bring myself to lift one to my lips, I’d prefer the taste of tarnish, bitter and lingering, and proper to my lifebeclouded eye. ...

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