Copyright © 2008 Pam Weppner. All rights reserved.

The summer of 2007 started out hot and clammy. That's why I was glad to hop aboard an air-conditioned Madison Avenue bus on 34th Street that June evening after work. I was headed uptown to my apartment on the eastside of Manhattan.

My job was with a graduate school book research project at Manhattan University around the corner.

My office was nestled on a lower floor in a room filled with photographs of New York City. Part of my archival research was to catalogue them by photographer and enter that information in a computer program designed for the project.

I was in the post-war years, 1946-1950, and it was overwhelming me. There were so many military uniforms in the photos, I had begun to see double. There were also an abundance of society photos, as they were known; elegant people in elegant evening wear; smoking cigarettes, club hopping. The photos spanned the sublime to the ridiculous but were fascinating to look at.

It was almost 7:00 PM when I swung aboard the bus, dipped my MetroCard into the ticket machine and was lucky enough to claim a single seat on the left side of the bus.

Two women got on after me, one a short, dark-haired woman who I recognized as one of the cafeteria workers. The other was a thin, young Asian woman carrying an armful of sheet music.

The air brake release hissed and just as the driver started to close the doors, an older man rapped on the door with his cane.

A striking looking older woman was with him. They had to be in their late 70's or eighties. They smiled, thanked the driver and climbed in. She carried a straw bag with Acapulco stitched on the face of it in orange yarn.

His change plinked into the metal lips of the ticket machine to pay each of their fares.

As he did so, the bus lurched forward. He twisted and almost fell down; his silver lion's head cane rattling to the floor.

Starting up before passengers are seated is one of the evil habits bus driver's have.

But the couple laughed, collected the cane and then settled in the front row of seats.

An ash blonde, the woman's hair was styled in the 1960's manner of the hairdresser Kenneth, Jackie Kennedy's stylist of choice. She wore large, round tortoise shell glasses, tan linen slacks and shirt, topped off with a bright tangerine scarf tied around her neck. She had a broad grin on her face.

The gentleman, because that's what you could see he was, wore a lightweight navy sport coat over a white shirt open at the collar. His slacks were khakis, his feet showed off a new pair of white sneakers with rubber toes but he wore no socks.

He had wavy gray hair combed to the side, with a little pompadour reminiscent of 1940's movie actors. They were a handsome couple.

She put her arm through his and they sat close. He held her fingers, toying with each, right down to her little finger where a gold signet ring perched.

His fingers were long and slim but if you took a good look at their hands, she seemed the older. A swirl of freckles and age spots dotted her hands and arms. Betrayed by an era of too much sun everyone once thought was so glamorous but that was back in the day.

With all of my hand watching, I never noticed if either wore a wedding ring. It's something that still bothers me.

We bumped to a stop at 42nd Street and a dozen people climbed on the bus. In doing so I lost my full view of the couple.

I leaned my head against the window and began to imagine what they must have been like in their twenties, sixty or so years ago.

I could just hear the music from a swing band in the background at the chic Maisonette in the St. Regis Hotel as they nuzzled and swayed to the music; each stylish in their evening wear - he in a wide lapel tuxedo with yellow rosebud, she in a wash of floor length, pale yellow chiffon.

She tossed her head back as she danced, laughing at whatever he had to say. He, with head turned down slightly, kissed her neck as they wheeled and glided to Cole Porter's "Night and Day."

Couples around them stopped to watch, "You are the one, only you beneath…" the music continued.

In my mind's eye, she was from a Park Avenue family. He was from Connecticut just back from war duty. Thin, his eyes carried lines that had never been there before.

He was over anxious to be in the arms of a beautiful young woman - she was his confection, he her adoring prince.

The music stopped and he laced his fingers through hers. They walked toward a balcony to get fresh air and steal a few kisses.

My eyes fluttered open. The crowd parted a moment and I was glad to see the couple still sitting in their front seats. He whispered something in her ear and she pulled back in mock horror. "No, you don't mean it, she said" as I read her lips. They both laughed. Their foreheads touched one another's.

I smiled, wanting to be included in their joke then gazed out the window again, a little embarrassed. We passed by the Furla, Mont Blanc, Crate and Barrel and FAO Schwarz stores.

I imagined it was 1948. Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner were the hot romance of the moment, a young Dizzy Gillespie was opening at the Royal Roost jazz club on Broadway, Truman had snookered Dewey and won the presidential election.

It was a new world filled with dreams. New York City was home to 40,000 companies that made everything from ladies garments to processed food. Life was good.

A blue-collar generation of returning veterans was the wave of the future but the society set was still off to the Stork Club. People crowded into the new movies, Key Largo flaunting the romantic itch between Bogart and Bacall and Easter Parade with a bubbly Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.

Comedian, Milton Berle was starring in The Texaco Hour, a debut television show and a newly formed dance company; New York City Ballet with choreographer George Balanchine would soon burst upon the stage.

We hit my 72nd Street stop but I decided to ride a little further. The couple had me hooked. I was smiling, my heart was dancing and my reverie had taken me deep into their world.

A clot of riders got off and I noticed that the woman had fallen asleep, eyes closed, her face pressed into his shoulder, his cheek rested on the top of her head. He talked quietly to her, a story? a song? I couldn't really see the words he mouthed. He still held her hand, the straw bag now on his lap. His toe tapped silently and I imagined he sang her a lullaby.

At 96th Street, I felt I had to get off the bus; I had gone too far. Tomorrow was a busy day and I had to get back to photo sorting early. There was barely time to have a light supper, shower and climb into bed.

As I got off, I heard myself say to him, "You are a beautiful couple." He smiled at me.

I stretched off the bus step onto the pavement, as the bus doors folded shut behind me and continued on its way uptown.

It was almost six weeks later, when I climbed aboard the M4 headed up Madison Avenue, that I noticed a flyer pasted on the window above the front row of seats.

It was torn with the usual expletives scribbled all over it but I could read…

MISSING

On or about July 8^th, Mrs. Edward Renley, 83 years old, of

Carnegie Hill House Assisted Living - 1160 Park Avenue

Disappeared at approximately 7:OO PM

She suffers from Alzheimers

Anyone having seen her, should report it to

The NYPD 19^th Precinct, Carnegie Hill House

or Call 1-8OO-MISSING

There was a Xeroxed photo on the paper and as I looked closer, all I could make out was a pair of large tortoiseshell glasses. The photo was of the passport or driver's license variety but I thought to myself, it was probably her induction photo to Carnegie Hill Assisted Living; it was too institutional for anything else

My breath caught in my throat and I automatically turned to the driver.

"I remember her, I said, and, I'll bet it was about the time she disappeared. She was on the bus with a man"

The driver was impatient, as his hands in fingerless, leather driving gloves turned the steering wheel, a NASCAR wannabe in a lumbering coach.

"What? Miss, you'll have to get back behind the line. I can't move forward until you do."

The disgruntled sighs of passengers were loud and impatient. I sat down quickly and the bus moved ahead. Their eyes were cast downward, away from the troublesome blonde.

I grasped the paper flyer, read and re-read the notice and decided I had to go to Carnegie Hill House.

I jumped off a couple of blocks away and walked the leafy neighborhood streets up to Carnegie.

The entrance was a dark green, canopied affair that extended from the sidewalk back thirty feet or so to the recessed French doors of a scrubbed, red brick building.

Inside a female concierge sat behind a high front desk. The reception area was decorated in a muted willow green, glass lamps adorned small pie crust tabletops. A lumpy, big sofa leaned against one wall; fashion and architecture magazines graced a large oval coffee table.

"Excuse me," I said to the receptionist. I believe I have information about Mrs. Renley, the woman who disappeared from here."

She smiled but her face was blank for a moment and then her eyes opened wide.

"You do? Where is she?"

"I don't know but I think I saw her on the bus that night, the night she went missing," I replied.

"Don't move, let me get Director Perez for you. Please sit down, I'll be right back."

I sat in one of the Queen Anne chairs, then got up to look at the botanical prints on the wall. I couldn't sit still.

It was probably five minutes before the receptionist returned with a petite woman wearing a royal blue knit suit.

Director Perez was a Filipino woman and lovely. Dark, shiny hair in a smooth pageboy, gold watch, pearl collar pin, high heels and her glasses clutched between thumb and forefinger. She strode toward me with efficient steps. Everything about her was efficient.

" Miss…?" her voice was a tentative query.

"Harden, Ann Harden, I said, turning to face her."

"You know where Mrs. Renley is?" she asked, her voice incredulous.

"No, no. I have no idea but as I told your receptionist, I think I saw her on the bus around the time she disappeared.

"I'm Amelia Perez, the Executive Director of Carnegie House, Miss Harden, and we are very concerned about Mrs. Renley's whereabouts. Any information you can provide will be a help

"Claire, thank you but you can get back to your desk now, she directed, as she effectively dismissed the young receptionist. I'll have a chat with Ms. Harden."

She led me toward the receiving area, as she continued.

"I've asked Beatrice Spellman, Mrs. Renley's in-house companion, to join us."

As if on cue, a black woman dressed in white slacks and Navy blue polo shirt popped into the room, breathless.

"My Lord, woman, do you know where Mrs. Renley is?"

"Beatrice, Beatrice, calm down," Mrs. Perez instructed. If she could have shaken her finger at her, she would have.

"No, I'm sorry. I just thought I saw her on the Madison Avenue bus around the time she disappeared. She was with an older man but it's the glasses, the tortoise shell glasses, that's what stuck out in my mind when I saw the notice on the bus."

I struggled to explain but these two women looked at me, aghast.

Both started to talk at once but Mrs. Perez put her hand on Beatrice Spellman's arm to quiet her and signal she was in charge.

"Well, first of all there never would have been a man with her. Are you certain about the glasses," she asked.

I pulled the flyer out of my bag, hoping my eyes hadn't played a trick on me.

"Oh, I'm sure. I unfolded the notice and looked at it again. No, this is the woman I saw, really and she was with a man, a tall…" she cut me off.

"Let me get a better photo of her that's in my office. It was taken at last year's fund-raiser.

Excuse me a moment, I'll be right back. Beatrice, why don't you sit with Ms. Harden and tell her a bit about Peggy, uh, Mrs. Renley."

Miss Efficient clicked out of the room.

"Lord, miss, was she really with a man? Did she look okay, not hurt or nuthin', right?"

"No, she was fine, really just fine, having a good time."

"What did this man look like, and call me Bea, everyone does."

She sat down opposite me on the lip of the sofa.

I gave her a full description of what I saw, the handholding, the nuzzling and closeness of the couple I watched as we rode uptown on the M4 bus.

"A grand girl," she said nodding, then raising both hands in the air as if in hallelujah. Tell me more."

I gave Bea the best description I could, how they were dressed, where they got on, right down to his new sneakers. She listened, carefully, to every word I said.

"Miss, Peggy Renley was a very sick woman, oh, not so much physically, just this Alzheimers' plague was eatin' up her mind. When she did talk it was about her husband, Edward. They had a wonderful life together. She wanted to be with him.

Before the Alzheimers came, she used to tell me the story of how they met at a fancy party. It was on Long Island, everybody all dressed up and she was with a prissy fellow her mother thought she should marry. Then at this party, there was this tall man who asked her to dance. They loved to dance.

They talked and talked. He even told her, "your father's in paper and mine's in pens, I think we were meant to be together."

She would laugh and laugh at that story and then tell it to me again five minutes later. That's when I really knew the Alzheimer's was with her.

She left the prissy little man and Edward took her home that night.

Then, she would fold her hands in her lap and always explain, all confidential like, that as he walked her to her door, he murmured,

"You're a grand girl and I think I'm in love with you."

"He blew her a kiss and got back in his father's car."

"They married a year later. June 26th, 1949."

"Isn't that the best story, Miss Harden, right out of an old movie."

Tears were trailing down Bea's face and I must say my eyes had welled up, too.

"Miss Harden, I'm going to say something to you I believe with all my heart. You don't have to answer or nuthin', just keep this to yourself. The man you described is definitely Edward, her husband. It's him right down to the new tennis sneakers he had to have every summer; some kind of passage."

"They're his personal equinox, Bea," Mrs. Renley would say.

Edward Renley's been dead for ten years, massive heart attack that took him away.

She would cry and cry, all these years later. She was bereft, that's what she would say, Miss Harden. "I'm just bereft, Beatrice."

"Let me tell you, she paused and said, I think he came to fetch her, Miss Harden. To take her with him, so they would always be together. I don't think anyone will ever find Mrs. Renley.

I don't know why they chose you to see them. It's somethin' crazy but that's what I think."

She put her head down, became very quiet, then said, "Will you keep what I say to yourself, Miss Harden? Let them go and don't say anything more."

Beatrice's words raised goose flesh on my arms and sent a shiver down the back of my neck. She was so sincere, so practical in her request.

My own experience on the bus had been, I don't know, so other-worldly or maybe it was my little nap or the photos I was researching that created this vignette in my mind.

"Beatrice, I don't know what to say, what if she needs medical attention or…?" I blurted out. I didn't know what to do.

"If I don't help her, my heart will hurt forever, Miss Harden. She was always good to me and I owe this to her."

"Well, here I am," Mrs. Perez proclaimed as she came around the corner and back into the room where Beatrice Spellman and I sat.

"This is the photograph I mentioned to you."

She put the silver frame in my hands, pointing to a wheel chair ridden woman who gazed at the camera, a deer in the headlights, her glasses reflecting the camera flash.

What I saw was a frail, old woman whose spirit had abandoned her. She sat with a blanket covering her legs but she did wear the tortoise shell glasses I had seen on her; now a pair of joke glasses on a skeletal face.

The lady I saw on the bus was a healthy, rosy-cheeked woman out for the afternoon with her gentleman friend.

"Is that the woman you saw, Miss Harden?"

I looked up at her and then glanced at Beatrice whose eyes were pleading with me.

My heart was a rock in the center of my chest. I paused, maybe a moment too long.

"No, no that's not the woman I saw, Mrs. Perez. I must be mistaken. I'm so terribly sorry, I thought I could help you."

At least the part about this not being the same woman was true. This definitely wasn't the lady whose laugh and animated talk had enthralled me as I watched her so carefully on the bus ride.

Beatrice took a deep breath, stood up and I followed.

"I understand, Miss Harden, and I thank you for your concern."

"It's not everyone that would take the time to get involved like this."

Mrs. Perez smiled her official smile, ever the professional.

Beatrice said, "I'll walk you to the front door Miss Harden. I can't tell you how impressed Mrs. Renley would be by what you've done."

She smiled a big, warm smile, a midday Caribbean sun, that spread across her face.

"Well, alright, Beatrice. Then, I'll say goodbye, here, Miss Harden, and thank you again."

She turned and walked back to her office, wherever it was.

Beatrice and I didn't say a word as she led me to the front door. She opened it for me and we stepped outside. The day was bright. Full summer was upon us and a slight sweet fragrance of flowers was in the air.

"Miss Harden, you're a very special young woman. Mrs. Renley and I thank you for making her wish come true. I don't know how it happened but I'm convinced it did. Edward and Peggy are together again, as it should be."

"Good-bye, Miss Harden."

I walked down the path and around the corner toward the Lexington Avenue downtown bus. My cheeks were wet as I climbed on. The bus was nearly empty and I found myself looking for the couple. But, they weren't there, no one even close got on as we rolled down the avenue.

In November, I finished the war years phase of the photograph catalogue and signed off on the project, ready to take on the next stage I was assigned. This round would take me to Coney Island.

I sealed up the last archival box of photographs going off to storage. I was peeling off my white cotton gloves, when Rick Newfield, our office assistant stuck his head in my door.

"You won't believe this one, Ann. I found about fifteen photographs that fell behind the viewer table. You never catalogued them."

He raised his eyebrows, tossed them on my desktop and saluted, cowlick spiking, as he departed.

My heart sank. How could this have happened? I wanted to cry. Well, it was only fifteen or so. I could probably…I could probably what, I thought. I needed to talk to Dr. Furletti who was in charge of the project and see what his suggestion would be.

For a moment, it occurred to me to just chuck them. Who will ever know? Then I thought, I will, I can't do that.

I fingered through the photos. Times Square, Grand Central Station; all 1948 photographs. Two slid to the floor.

I picked them up and turned them over. They were in color. Curled around the edges, the pictures had faded but were in pretty good condition otherwise.

Still, my throat closed and I stopped breathing for a moment. In front of me were two photographs of a couple dressed in evening wear. They were dancing, halted mid-step by the photographer.

He wore a wide lapelled tuxedo with a yellow rosebud in the buttonhole. She wore a pale yellow chiffon dress. The love in their eyes was unmistakable.

A caption was written on the back of one photo.

Young Edward Renley dances with his one and only "Grand Girl" to the music of Cole Porter at New York's St. Regis Hotel. Two smiling faces, two hearts meant to be together forever.

I looked down once more. Young Mr. Renley was a debonair flirt. As I gazed at the photo, they seemed to look directly at me. They grew older before my eyes.

I blinked and looked again. Her smile was broad and I would have sworn I saw his lips move.

"Thank you" he winked, as he swirled his Grand Girl away, dancing to the gay music.