It's a likable face, the face of Bruce Wondersek. The man hated having his picture taken, but a few years ago he bothered to pose at one of those photo booths. The Dundalk man found a dark suit, a striped tie and even smiled for the camera. Wondersek sent the picture to his elderly mother in Virginia. He called her every Saturday, but it had been years since he saw her and he thought maybe she would like to see how her grown son looked. His hair was silver now, as was his mustache.
The photograph did not run with Wondersek's obituary in The Sun last month.
Karl Wondersek Jr. had supplied the information about his brother, who died at 62. Wondersek was a reclusive writer who "spent most of his time reading and writing at the North Point Library in Dundalk," the obituary read. "A frugal man, Mr. Wondersek made ends meet by working odd jobs. ... His brother discovered Mr. Wondersek's longest written work, an unpublished 300-page novel titled Irene Stoddlmeyer, among his belongings after his death."
According to his obituary, Wondersek did not have a wife or children. He is survived by two brothers and his mother, May Vivian Wondersek - all of whom once lived in Dundalk.
May Wondersek was Miss Maryland in 1937 and went on to the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City, N.J., that year. She is now 89 and living in a nursing facility near Karl Wondersek's home in Staunton, Va. He broke the news to her about Bruce, but she might not have grasped all of it, which is a kind of blessing.
She still has the picture of her son, who really never left home.
At Holabird Avenue and Merritt Boulevard in Dundalk, the North Point Library is a utilitarian branch - there's no attached Starbucks or breathy atriums or post-modern art dominating the basic entrance. The well-stocked bookcases are vintage public school. And the librarians - when they are done helping you, they will help you more. If this library were a man, you would not call him handsome, but you would call him a good man.
The staff, led by manager Beth McGraw-Wagner, also read Wondersek's obit. The name did not ring a bell. We have several people who come in regularly and quietly go about their reading, she says.
"Maybe if we had a picture." McGraw-Wagner says.
The search for a picture ended at the Best Western on O'Donnell Street, where Karl Wondersek and his wife, Sue, spent the week taking care of details familiar to anyone who has lost a family member. They drove from Virginia to Dundalk, a homecoming of sorts for Karl.
A day before picking up his brother's remains, he and his wife burrowed through the boxes Bruce stockpiled in his apartment. He found story outlines, rejection letters from book publishers, family photographs and letters, receipts (for everything) and 3-by-5-inch index cards full of Bruce's small handwriting. The man researched everything. He was a perennial student, his brother says.
Until this year, Karl had not seen Bruce in more than five years. Before growing apart, they grew up together in the 1940s and 1950s in their home off Liberty Parkway. Their parents, Karl Sr. and May Wondersek, had three boys - Karl Jr., Bruce and Richard. Their father worked at Bethlehem Steel. Mom, the beauty queen, was a homemaker. The family vacationed at Ocean City and Sea Isle City, N.J. Karl and Bruce were best friends.
At 17, Karl left for college in Ohio. He settled in Virginia, raised a family and worked for DuPont for 37 years. Richard lived in Baltimore until moving to Kansas a decade ago.
The middle brother, Bruce, stayed home. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in English. In the 1970s, Bruce worked nine years at Bethlehem Steel as a crane operator. Then, it was a life of odd jobs and a life spent at a public library. All the while, he lived at home with his parents. Their father died in 1986. Five years later, their mother moved to Virginia. Bruce stayed on at the apartment.
"He was pretty much a loner," Karl says. "He just wanted to be buried in his books."
Although Bruce was the best man at Karl's wedding 42 years ago (and his daughter's godparent), the two brothers drifted apart. They saw each other rarely. On the phone, Karl would nag Bruce about his cigarette smoking. The man rolled his own smokes - Bugler Tobacco - and smoked often. In later years, Karl would also try to nudge his brother into going to Virginia to see their mom. But his brother didn't travel.
Work was a thorny issue, too. Karl wanted Bruce to get a steady job if for no other reason than to be eligible for Social Security benefits when the time came. But his brother didn't have steady work - except briefly at a Baltimore lumber company. So, Karl helped him over the years with money.
Bruce stayed close to his apartment and the public library in Dundalk. His brother came to believe that Bruce was agoraphobic, a person fearing open or public spaces. But then again, he did spend time in a library; apparently this was the one public space his brother felt comfortable in. He always knew Bruce was shy. Lonely? No, Karl says, he didn't think his brother was lonely. He had just carved out a private life for himself.
In January, Karl got a call from a social worker at Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center. Bruce was in the hospital. He was sick. Throat cancer.
So, Karl came back to Baltimore to be with his brother. He really didn't know what to expect. With treatment, maybe Bruce would get better. He hadn't seen him for so long. What would they be like together?
What would they talk about?
When you get better, we'll take you down to Virginia to see Mom," Karl Wondersek told his brother at Hopkins in mid-January.
Bruce's eyes lit up.
"How long do I have?" he asked. But Karl didn't know - weeks, days, hours? His brother was skin and bones. It wouldn't be long.
"If I knew, I would tell you," he told Bruce.
Soon came the time to move Bruce to the Joseph Richey Hospice in Baltimore. Sue Wondersek, who always found her brother-in-law to be a bit of an enigma, now found Bruce to be more relieved, more happy, than the other few times she had seen him. For the first time maybe since their boyhood, the brothers really talked. His brother's personality proved to be a revelation to Karl. Well-read, of course, but Bruce had dry political wit, too. "He reminded me of Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken," Karl says.
The brothers talked about the war in Iraq. "He was quite the liberal. It would be nice to have someone in Virginia to discuss politics with me."
They talked about what happens after this life. "Bruce thought death would be the greatest adventure in anyone's existence."
They talked about cremation. "He wanted his ashes thrown in the ocean." No, Bruce was going to rest at Parkview Cemetery next to his father and one day, next to his mother. "You'll be the rose between two thorns," Karl told his brother. Bruce managed a laugh.
They talked about their mom. "You were always her favorite," Karl said. Bruce apologized for that.
They talked about more than 50 years of writing. Karl said he would go through Bruce's unpublished short stories (science fiction, apparently) to see whether he could get any of them published. Bruce didn't tell him then who Irene Stoddlmeyer was.
Bruce Marshall Wondersek, 62, of Dundalk, died in his sleep Feb. 6 at the hospice.
"He allowed me back into his life," Karl says. "I feel honored that for a short period of time he put his life in my hands."
It hadn't been the life Karl had envisioned for his childhood best friend, the best man at his wedding. But it was Bruce's life, and in a way, he had made ends meet.
The photograph of Wondersek was a revelation to the North Point Library staff.
"That's him," says library manager McGraw-Wagner.
"Oh, that gives me chills," says assistant circulation manager Beverly Hart.
This was the man who came to their library nearly every Friday and Saturday for more than 13 years. There are others like Bruce, people who quietly go about their business in the library. You never know their names, but maybe they feel at home. But Bruce was a dependable regular.
The staff would ask if he needed help. He said little. If anything, he'd ask for the week's TV listings; he wanted to know what was on PBS. Typically, he never made eye contact or talked to anyone. At closing time, he would stand outside the library, usually in his blue windbreaker, and have a smoke.
"We'll see you next time," the staff would tell him.
He wouldn't answer.
"It's nice Mr. Wondersek had a sanctuary here," says McGraw-Wagner, holding back tears. The library manager then made a photocopy of Bruce's picture.
"He had a nice face."
The Wonderseks beat the late February snowstorm and got home to Virginia. It had been a tiring week in Baltimore. In going through Bruce's belongings, Karl found their father's 1934 high school yearbook from Southern High. He found more than 50 tins of Bugle Tobacco, piles of Sun newspapers and three copies of Irene Stoddlmeyer.
Karl took some time to skim the novel, which is a dark, sprawling narrative on the meaning of life. Irene Stoddlmeyer, an older dying woman, is apparently Bruce's alter ego. Throughout the book, "Irene" shares with "Bruce" a lifetime of memories. In the course of writing his book, Bruce created someone he could talk to. Perhaps he even created a friend.
Stories can reveal an author's private life, one that can contradict a public life. From the last page of Bruce's book:
"I am unbounded power constrained by my own authority. I am myself. I am who may be anyone I want to be. I am who may even be Irene Stoddlmeyer. I am delicate."
Publishers were not interested.
Stung by rejection, Bruce told his brother at the hospital not to try to have the book published. Karl says he will honor his brother's request.
At his apartment, Karl also found Bruce's 1945 baptism certificate from St. Timothy's Church and, with it, a lock of his hair.
He found old family photos, including one from 1951 of May Wondersek and her three boys in their living room on Liberty Parkway.
He found scores of lottery tickets. Turns out Bruce got lucky last November and won $5,000. About that time, his throat really started to bother him. He had other symptoms, too. A doctor confirmed throat cancer. Alone in Periodicals at the Dundalk library, Bruce began to research the cancer.
"It is dangerous, it is aggressive, it spreads quickly - so rapidly as to astonish - it's deadly, and I have it," said an index card Karl found in Bruce's desk drawer last week. The note card, dated Nov. 4, was addressed to his brother.
"Let's get the important part out of the way," it read. "Drinking alcohol and smoking tobacco is generally regarded as chief contributors. You told me so. You told me not to. I wouldn't heed your warnings."
Karl found other scattered notes that led him to believe his brother - this "dedicated hermit" - was thinking of joining his brother and mother in Virginia.
Bruce Wondersek seemed ready, finally, to leave home.
rob.hiaasen@baltsun.com