From the Improvement Era, July 1969 –

Button, Button

By Beverley Swain

The game began a year ago when we all were sitting around the picnic table— the annual Goss get-together at my cousin Carl’s place in the country. The familiar subject was being passed with the potato salad, the barbecued chicken, and the pecan rolls. My husband took another of the rolls. “You know,” he said, “as an outsider who happened to marry a Goss, I’ve developed such a curiosity about your cousin Wallace that I figure he must be at least eight feet tall and running a schooner between the Maldives.”

Amid our laughter, Phelps Goss rose and rapped for attention. “Lawrence has pretty much spoken for us in our attitude toward Wallace. I hereby propose a game of button-button. Who can find Wallace by next year’s picnic?”

All of us liked the idea. I could see the brightened interest on everyone’s face.

“Isn’t it only fair to pool our background material?” This was Sally Goss Anderson. “I saw him last when he came home on liberty from the navy in 1944. I was only seven years old and so impressed with his knowledge of the world.”

“I think that was about it for the rest of us,” said Phelps. “I never saw or heard from him again.”

But Mary Goss, who divulged information as if she were addressing the board meeting of the savings and loan association of which she was an officer, added a postscript:

“In 1952 I was in New York City, attending a bank training seminar, and I found a Wallace Goss listed in the telephone directory. With more than usual temerity, for me, I dialed the number.” She paused, and we v waited in fascinated silence before she apparently decided to speak her mind. “Although he rather emphatically denied he was our Wallace, I feel quite certain it was he.”

“Why?” one of us asked.

“He sounded familiar. After all,” she said, defensively, “we grew up as first cousins right in the same small town. But the following year, when I was again in New York, he was no longer in the phone book.”

Carl’s wife produced some of the old family snapshots. However, a picture of a ten-year-old in a belted bathing suit with a sort of sleeveless T-shirt top wasn’t very helpful. I studied the face. It was extra sober for a youngster, but then, he was orphaned the year before by a car accident and had come to live with our grandparents.

“He always did seem aloof.” Reflectively, Phelps put down his punch glass. “But I guess none of us ever tried hard enough to include him.”

In the little ensuing quiet I realized that I wanted very much to know what had become of Wallace Goss. My first opportunity for searching came when I stopped by the business office of the telephone company to pay our bill. The racks holding the fat directories for major cities across the country caught my eye. Mary Goss had used one— why couldn’t I? Of course, it was a very small needle-in-a-haystack way to hunt. As my husband had pointed out right after the picnic, there are more than three hundred cities in the United States that have over fifty thousand in population. And how did I know Wallace wasn’t residing in a quiet little village somewhere?

Flopping open the first directory, I sighed. I just could hope he liked, or his work kept him in, a big city. Akron, Atlanta, Baltimore, Birmingham— Gosses there were, but no Wallace T. (Turner was his mother’s maiden name.)

Then I hauled out Boston and there it was! Goss, Wallace— Commonwealth Avenue. Excitedly I copied the name and address into the little purse notebook the children gave me last Christmas.

Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati— I checked out a dozen directories before the name suddenly appeared again. Indianapolis— and this time it was really Wallace T., West Eighteenth Street. I was certain I’d found him! But five cities later here was W. T. Goss in Louisville. Carefully, I listed him in the notebook. And now I wasn’t very surprised to come across Wallace Goss in Newark. Since that was just a river or so away from New York, wasn’t he the most likely? Dutifully I also put down the Wallace in Phoenix as well as the one in San Francisco. There was another W. T. in Washington, D.C. It was a physical relief to come to the end of those heavy directories.

“So you have seven candidates.” My husband took a helping of summer squash. “Are you going to write the same thing to each one?”

“If I can just formulate a reasonably clear letter.” I handed the platter of corn-on-the-cob to our daughter, Shirley.

“Let me do the typing,” she begged. “I need the practice.”

She did indeed. But after something like twenty starts she produced seven very professional-looking letters. “Now let’s hope they’ll all be answered,” I said, licking the envelopes.

For awhile it seemed nobody would answer. Our postman left mail for everyone except me. “They all probably think I’m trying to intrude on their privacy,” I moaned.

“Some of them may have changed their addresses,” my husband suggested kindly.

“Mother!” cried Shirley a day later, as she shot through the front door. “You’ve heard! You’ve heard!” She was holding out two letters, one envelope a long white business size, the other a social correspondence-type in beige.

I was too curious to open them carefully. “It’s the Wallace T. from Indianapolis!” Eagerly I scanned the few typed paragraphs.

“I regret to tell you the T in my name stands not for Turner but Tertle, which caused me in my childhood to be known as Wally Turtle. Oddly, I was born the same year as your Wallace T., but I’ve never even crossed your state. . . .”

“His secretary typed it for him.” Shirley pointed to the WG:ec at the letter’s end.

“Cross off one hopeful,” I said, ripping open the beige envelope. A sheaf of ripe wheat decorated the note paper.

“How perfectly charming to be suspected of being a Wallace Turner Goss!” The large, graceful handwriting continued on the inside page. “But I must inform you that the W. T. are the initials of Winifred Taylor Goss. I am a professor of drama at our university and have tried to be a lady all my life!”

“Cross her off,” Shirley giggled merrily.

The next day the answer from the Washington W. T. arrived. Although he wasn’t Wallace, he wrote, but Walker Thaddeus Goss, he did hope we’d look him up if we came sightseeing in the capital.

“Might just do that,” my husband commented.

That made three down, with four more to go. I wondered how the other button-button players were doing. Suppose several or all of them hunted by way of the telephone books? Being asked over and over if you were Wallace Turner Goss when you were really Winifred Taylor Goss wouldn’t stay a “perfectly charming” experience for long.

“You find more things to worry about!” my husband said.

Several days later a letter came, postmarked Boston, and I began to smile after the first sentence.

“You’ve found him!” Shirley shrieked.

I shook my head. “No. But his letter’s nice.”

“I do indeed wish I might tell you I am your misplaced relative and I do wish I was eligible to attend that family reunion where I expect the food is delicious and the company affectionate. In actual fact, my birthplace was England more than eighty years ago, which does place me rather distantly in age and otherwise from your cousin. I am now living in retirement after half a century as a minister of the gospel. Our Savior’s parable of the ninety and nine (Luke 15) contains a verse I pray you will find true for your reunion.

“‘And when he cometh home, he calleth together his friends and neighbours, saying unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.’”

Shirley sighed, refolding the letter and slipping it back into its envelope. “He’s the best un-relative we’ve met yet.”

So the next reply was quite in contrast— a coolly polite few sentences from Newark. Mrs, Wallace Goss informed us her husband passed away several years before, and “his well-known background makes your assumption totally incorrect,” she added.

“Assumption!” I laughed ruefully. “I can consider my wrist slapped.”

The sixth answer was the Wallace in Phoenix. “I’m sorry I can’t say I am the Wallace Goss for whom you are searching. I’m sure your intention is kind, but in my unasked opinion it might really be kinder to let him remain as he has apparently chosen— on a separate path. Yours is one of several inquiries I’ve received— hence my opinion, for which I apologize.”

“Maybe he’s right,” said our older son. “Maybe Cousin Wallace likes being lost.”

“Maybe,” said my husband, “it isn’t kindness but just curiosity motivating this button-button business.”

I drew a long breath. “Maybe,” I said, uncertainly.

When the final answer came I felt embarrassed to even open it. How many other Gosses had written this Wallace in San Francisco? He didn’t say, and his letter was the most business-like of the seven. “As a member of the police department, I am giving you several suggestions to aid in your search.” There followed quite a listing, including the Missing Persons Bureau.

Although I really did appreciate his time and effort. I found it depressing. Was the real Wallace Goss a man in the shadows of an unpleasant past? Was it better to follow the advice of the Wallace in Phoenix and “let him remain as he has apparently chosen”?

For a long time I did nothing more— just thought about it while a busy fall rolled into an equally busy winter. If any of the other Gosses had located him, no one included the news in Christmas card notes or regular correspondence, and I never asked. Then one March day when our clumps of daffodils were beginning to nod in yellow welcome by our front steps, I got out the seven answers. I smiled again over Wally Turtle and Winifred Taylor and the lovely message from the retired minister. I read them all and— a startling thought came to me.

No one was home with whom to discuss it. Perhaps if there had been, I’d have been dissuaded. But, after an hour of floor pacing and talking to myself, I wrote a letter, then hurried to mail it in the box on our corner before I changed my mind.

Our next reunion came the third week in June. It was a beautiful, sunny Saturday, and I was helping set the long picnic table. A car with Arizona plates pulled under the enveloping shade of the walnut trees and, as we all watched, a tall, middle-aged man got out. I started to say something, but Mary Goss spoke ahead of me.

“Wallace!” she cried in happy astonishment. “Wallace!”

His sober face lighted just a little when he smiled. “It’s been a long time,” he said.

“Not too long,” I said shakily. “Not too late.” And his smile deepened.

Amid the hubbub that burst out I stood back, waiting my turn to greet him. Nobody knew, and I wasn’t going to explain what I’d finally realized. Of the seven to whom I’d written, only one mentioned being queried by others. If those “others” were utilizing out-of-state telephone directories, then why just Phoenix? None of us lived in that area. But more important, he hadn’t written “I am not the Wallace Goss for whom you are searching” but “I can’t say I am. . . .” And then “it might really be kinder to let him remain … on a separate path.”

That March day I’d left it up to him. “We yearn for a second chance to include you in the family circle. The decision is entirely yours, but don’t let the past shut out the present.”

He hadn’t replied. Instead— he had come.

With a deep feeling of gratitude I looked around at the smiling faces.

“. . . Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost.”