Chapter 4. Fortunately, I’m a simple soul

Fortunately, I’m a simple soul. A full tummy, a coffee and cigarette number three restored my good spirits. I leaned back in my chair and idly listened to the Rat’s fishermen harmonize on their familiar screed: quotas, shortages and price controls. Their outlandish threats to take up more profitable sidelines included running drugs, running guns and running people who wanted either to leave or to enter the country illegally. They would do none of it, of course, but it sounded macho. Harmon sounded the only note of caution.

“You want to be careful who you deal with nowadays. Seems to me, ain’t hardly nobody who acts like you think they really oughta be, no more.” He was more right than any of us knew, but at the time I simply found his syntax amusing.

People not being who they seemed turned my mind to the problem of a Halloween costume, which thrilled me right up there along with root canals. A lot of people in town went to great trouble and considerable expense, renting costumes in Boston or even New York. Some actually had them tailor-made. Of course it was entirely too late for that, even had I been so inclined. And the only thing I owned that even vaguely resembled a costume was one of those little black raccoon masks, tossed somewhere in a drawer. What a pain in the royal bootay!

Then I had a bright idea. I’d borrow Sonny’s camouflage fatigues left over from his army days. They’d be comfortable. I couldn’t stand the thought of tripping around in a sheet as a ghost or something. With the uniform cap and the mask, they’d have to do. Problem solved.

I unhitched Fargo and we started for my mom’s house. I’d pick up the uniform and ask if she could keep the dog while I was on my trip for the bank. She always loved to do that. She was sort of like a grandmother with Fargo, spoiling him rotten while she had him and then returning him to me with a comment that I really should take him to obedience school.

Coming from the Rat, the easiest way to reach Mom’s house was to walk up the Francis’s driveway and climb over the low wood fence that separated the properties. Or, if you were Fargo, to leap the fence gracefully and pause for a brief roll in the still-green grass. The house was typical for the Cape: pretty much square, two stories and an attic, with a small ground-floor room added on long ago to accommodate things like the furnace and hot water heater, washer/dryer and a few shelves. The house was in good repair, painted a light yellow, with a green roof and dark green shutters... the color scheme it had shown throughout my memory.

Mom had seen us coming and held open the kitchen door. Everyone said I was the spitting image of her when she had been in her thirties. I hoped that comparison still held when I was in my middle fifties!

As she leaned out the screen door to laugh at Fargo’s antics, I saw a woman of some five feet eight inches, with a straight build and square shoulders and long, good legs. She had an almost-pug nose, a mouth that liked to laugh and hazel eyes that gave away her thoughts and feelings. Her hair had been light brown with red highlights, but now held enough white hairs to give it a blondish-red cast. She looked great, my mom.

Inside, Fargo got water and biscuits. I got coffee and pie. Then I turned to the business at hand. “Mom, I’m going to a party at Cassie’s tomorrow night, and the price of admission is wearing a costume. I thought I’d wear Sonny’s fatigues. Do you know where he keeps them? ”

“In the upstairs hall closet. Is it okay with him if you borrow them? ” Always the mother.

“Sure.” I lied easily. Well, I’d call him later. I knew he wouldn’t mind. Always the younger sister.

A few minutes later I came downstairs in my costume. The pants drooped over my shoes onto the floor, my hands were half hidden by the shirtsleeves and only my ears kept the cap from covering my eyes.

My mother looked at me critically. “Well, at least you’ll never have to shoot anybody. The enemy will take one look at you and die laughing. I suppose you want me to hem them.”

I did. While she sewed, I explained my trip for Mr. Ellis, which pleased her greatly. She was always happy when my business didn’t involve someone having done something illegal. And she was thrilled with the bank’s choosing to display my photographs. As expected, Fargo was more than welcome to visit while I traveled. She showed me how to fold some paper towels and put them in the lining of the cap to make it fit and then I asked casually, “Have you met Sonny’s new girlfriend? ”

“Yes, I have been presented to that young lady of countless virtues. Did you know they’re going down to Gatlinburg on a vacation? ”

“So I hear, ” I answered.

“She’s here for the weekend, you know. She flew over this morning and Sonny brought her by for coffee.” Mom pushed her teaspoon around on the butcher-waxed white oak table. Something was bothering her.

“Is she staying here? At the house, I mean.” Had she plopped her suitcase down in Sonny’s room? No, he’d never let that happen.

“Why, heavens no, she didn’t want to impose upon my gracious hospitality, and she felt the Tip of the Cape Motel would probably do for a weekend.”

“Do? ” I asked. “It’s the best place in town.”

“I’m sure it beats heck out of your old room, ” she laughed. “I actually served them coffee and homemade crumpets in the dining room. Even so, she kept looking as if she’d like to turn the cup over and see if it had a ‘Made in Korea Exclusively for Kmart’ imprint.”

I laughed. “That bad, huh? Do you think he’s serious? ”

“I think she’s serious, and that’s worse. He won’t stand a chance if she really means it.”

“You’d miss having him around.” I raised my cup and looked at her over the rim.

“Yes, I would, ” she answered. “But I’m terribly afraid he’d miss having himself around. I don’t think Sonny is meant for that kind of big city corporate life and country club society. And the last thing he needs is another failed marriage.” Her voice trembled and then steadied. “She calls him Edward, ” she added drily.

I didn’t mention that I thought Sonny might feel he was hostage to two college educations and that a job with Paula’s father might be the ransom. “Oh, God. Say, Mom, how did Edward get to be Sonny in the first place? ”

“Just one of those stupid things. Your Uncle Frank’s father used to love to hold him in his lap when he was a baby and sing some old song to him—something about climbing on my knee, Sonny Boy. Somehow everyone started calling him that. I know it’s—what do the kids say? —hokey, but it stuck. By the time we realized it wasn’t cute anymore it was too late.”

She snipped a final thread and began to fold the jacket. “Well, here’s your costume, m’dear. You will remember to wash, starch and iron it before you bring it back, won’t you? ”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way! I’ll drop it and Fargo off— washed starched and ironed—Monday morning.” She gave me a yeah-sure look and I went out the back door. I managed to catch my elbow and drop the uniform onto the grass. Picking it up and refolding it, I muttered, “Damn that witch, she’s following me! ”

“What did you say, dear? A witch is following you? I don’t see one.”

I explained my encounter and Mother laughed. “Probably a disgruntled tourist. Buy some garlic and drive a stake through a head of lettuce or something. Bye, darling.”

I grinned and felt silly. An old woman enjoying moments of a second childhood was hardly threatening.

As Fargo and I walked home, I decided for the thousandth time I was lucky in my family. The three of us loved each other and we liked each other. We were there when it counted without being all over each other. We tried to help, if needed, without sitting in solemn judgment. Aunt Mae completed our little family with much the same attitude.

It hadn’t always been that way. When I was a kid, tension had been constant. I realized now it had emanated from our father. He was a rather bitter man who tried to cover that with strangers by being spuriously jolly. He was assistant manager at the local A& P, and I always thought he felt he could have done better, that Mother and Sonny and I held him back in some way. He frequently drank more than he should, and while he was never physically abusive, he was often depressed or sarcastic and unpleasant.

When I was twelve and Sonny fourteen, the edge of a powerful hurricane hit Provincetown. My father struggled home from the store to find that we were already without electricity, the house cold, dark and dank. I was terrified, and so was Sonny, though he tried to cover it by being loud and unconcerned. Mother tried to get some sort of cold dinner on the table. And Dad drank. It was a frightening, nervous evening. And we were all restless and uneasy through the night.

Next morning a gale still blew and rain still came relentlessly down. Power remained off. In the night a tree had come down, taking power lines with it, leaving some of them draped across our driveway and blocking my father’s exit. He was hung over, tired, hungry and as miserable as the rest of us. He paced and snarled as the battery radio repeatedly warned listeners to avoid downed lines and stay inside until things improved.

Finally, exasperated, he donned his coat, saying, “I have to get to work. Those lines haven’t sparked once since I got up. I know they’re dead.”

In less than a minute, it was not the lines that were dead but our father. Dr. Marsten tried to comfort us by saying, “He didn’t suffer. He just touched the line and that was that.”

That was far from that. In seconds we had gone from a family with a father, who may have been far from perfect but was present and reliable, to one without. We had changed from a family with a breadwinner to one without. It was not easy, and I’ve never been entirely sure how Mom held it together, although Sonny and I tried to help as best we could.

Of course Sonny did not go to school to become an airline pilot. He spent a couple of years in the army and returned to become a police officer, now being groomed for a someday chief. And he would be a good one.

I didn’t become a lawyer, but I did manage to go to community college and get my PI license. A devoted, if not particularly devout Episcopalian, Mom had gone to work for—and still worked part time for—the local Catholic Church. Both the priest and her rector regularly teased her about being a spy in the other camp and she loved it.

Over time we discovered a great pleasure in each other, in the lives we led, separately and connected. And we lived—although not in the lap of luxury—at least on the knees of comfort. I looked at Fargo and realized you couldn’t really ask for a helluva lot more. Well, maybe one or two things more.

As I draped the fatigues over a kitchen chair I heard the fax machine growling and walked into my office as the last of several pages came through. Nacho had not let me down. I took them into the kitchen, poured a Sprite and sat down to be informed.

Nancy Baker seemed a young woman of true virtue. Nacho had checked police records in Boston and in her hometown. Her only “oops” was going forty-five in a thirty-mile zone, which ticket she had paid with a check which did not bounce. No civil suits, past or pending. She might be dull, our Nancy, but she might be just what Mr. Ellis ordered. Boring, bright and hardworking. A woman you would trust with your money, even if you didn’t want to sit next to her on a long flight.

George Mills surfaced on the next page with considerably more entries, and disturbing ones at that. He’d been pulled over for a couple of DWI’s, which had been reduced to reckless driving charges. He must have had a good lawyer and a friendly judge to get that done. Another DWI, a couple of years later, had cost him six months loss of license.

Norwalk police had twice been called by neighbors to his home on domestic incidents, no charges filed. Then they’d been called to his home by neighbors again, this time for disturbing the peace during a Halloween party almost a year ago now. This sounded interesting. I hoped Nacho had been able to get the police report. Well, she’d gotten at least some details and included this note:

Cops went to Mills’ condo and finally got someone to answer the door. The place was a mess—table filled with food overturned on rug. Mills (in a toga) had accused a guest of hitting on his wife. The guest told Mills to cool it and stuck his head in the bobbing-for-apples tub. Mills retaliated by beating the man with a violin—you suppose he was Nero? Other guests—and Mrs. Mills—cheering on the fight. Everybody busted for disturbing the peace. Assault charges dropped. Some party! Nacho

I was laughing aloud by the time I finished. It certainly had been a lively little evening. It did seem, however, as if Mills had a problem with his temper, his wife and his booze. I wondered if his ex-employer knew Mills had a drinking problem or perhaps if this incident had inspired him to correct it.

Just one more to go—and here it was. Ms. Cynthia Hart seemed quite law abiding. Nacho’s fax told me that Cynthia, too, had gotten a speeding ticket at one time and, in addition, had forgotten to renew some safety sticker demanded by the State of Connecticut. She had paid both fines. End of story. No, not quite.

A separate page reported that Ms. Hart had been arrested for running a yellow light, speeding, reckless driving, endangering the life of an officer, leaving the scene of an accident and resisting arrest. Good God, these Connecticut people were a spirited group!

According to Nacho, the charges had been dropped, but somehow Cynthia had ended up cited for contempt of court. She added that the officer’s notes mentioned, of all things, a stray cat. Now here was a story I wanted to hear in detail! I hoped I might be able to pry it out of her employer when we met.

I made copies of the faxes and put them in my briefcase to take along on Monday just in case I wanted another look, placed the originals in a folder marked Ellis and filed it. Then I decided I really had to go to the supermarket. I needed things like dog food to take to Mom’s, beer, maybe some chips and at least enough food to last me till Monday. I was tired of eating out and I’d be doing more of it, so off we went.

Later that night I forewent watching a Celtics game for an educational docu-drama about Ernest Shackleton and his second trip to Antarctica. After two stark, horror-filled hours I was shocked to learn he returned to London to a hero’s welcome although he had lost his ship, failed in his mission, shot his sled dogs and fed them to the crew and caused at least two of his men to lose part of their feet to frostbite while he left them marooned.

So much for explorers. As I thought of it, they all seemed rather drearily alike, with a kind of heartless tunnel vision I would never understand. Maybe that’s what it takes. If they waited for people like me to explore them, places like the polar regions, darkest Africa, the Himalayas and the Gobi Desert would all have map notations of Here Be Dragons.

Disgusted, I turned to the weather channel, where I learned that it would rain tomorrow morning, clear up for the afternoon and early evening, and rain again tomorrow night. That put the rain exactly at times I did not want it. For tomorrow morning, when everybody else would be sleeping late or partying early, I had let myself be trapped by Mary Sloan into helping get her boat out of the water and into her garage. Twice a year Mary stalked the unwary to assist in getting her boat in/out of the bay, always approaching those she would not have to pay. She felt free to criticize every move, and somehow remained dry while you got wet. I did not look forward to it.

Tomorrow night, of course, was the big Halloween parade, which I really did enjoy watching, followed by Cassie and Lainey’s party, which might—or might not—be fun. In either event, it all looked to be wet.

Sighing, I let the dog out.