Collected Short Stories: Volume III Page 5

  “He’s evil… the devil incarnate.”

  “That’s a bit simplistic,” Dr. Wong replied. “To be sure, Mrs. Edward’s son is badly flawed… a dysfunctional jerk.”

  Kirsten agreed wholeheartedly with the doctor's dour assessment of Mr. Edwards. The fellow had a distracted, morose manner, responding to the discharge planner's light banter with monosyllables. Kirsten slit open a packet of creamy poppy seed dressing and drizzled it over her garden salad. "I've been researching atheism," she deflected the conversation.

  The doctor looked up with mild surprise then grinned good-naturedly. "And what have you discovered?"

  "A meager two per cent of the world's population identify themselves as godless."

  "Yes," Dr. Wong replied, "that's absolutely true, but in the Scandinavian countries, those numbers are inverted." His tone was more instructive than argumentative. "In Japan upwards of sixty-five per cent of the populace don't believe in God at all, and in the Nordic countries such as Sweden the figure climbs to eighty-five, just a few percentage points lower in Denmark, Norway and Finland."

  Kirsten inadvertently stumbled across similar statistics when she Googled the topic on the internet. Among the intelligentsia, belief in personal gods or a heavenly afterlife were at an all-time low, the implication being that more educated and cultured individuals felt no compelling need to fill the churches. Similar findings had been duplicated in studies dating back to the late nineteen twenties, establishing an inverse correlation between IQ and religiosity. "In the U.S., those communities with the highest percentages of atheists tend to have the lowest murder rates," Dr. Wong mused, "while in rural communities where people are the most religious, violent homicides are considerably higher than average."

  Kirsten speared a cucumber wedge and raised it to her lips. She had no desire to debate the issue. Dr. Wong’s logic was rock solid, any opposing position indefensible. "Less than one per cent of the prison population is made up of non-believers while atheists are historically more tolerant toward women and homosexuals. We also beat our children less often and tend to donate more to charitable causes."

  "Ouch!" Kirsten raised her hands in an attitude of capitulation. "Okay, I'm throwing in the towel!"

  "No, please don’t!” “Unlike that gasbag, Father McNulty, you're one of the good Catholics. The church need you more than we do," he parried the humor like a tennis ball across a sagging net. "I just wanted to make the point that we non-believers aren't ogres."

  * * * * *

  Later that night Kirsten babysat her eight year old nephew, Wilbur. Her sister, Alice, had a PTO meeting and her husband was away on business.

  "Tell me a bedtime story," the dark haired boy insisted as she was settling him under the covers.

  "What would you like to hear?" Kirsten drifted over to a bookshelf crammed with illustrated offerings - Junie B. Jones, Grimm's Fairy Tales, the Richard Scary series and a mishmash of Disney picture books.

  "No, I don't want any of those. Make one up."

  "Off the top of my head?" Kirsten settled into the rocking chair alongside the single bed and sat thinking for the longest time.

  "I like the crazy ones," Wilbur insisted. Over the past year, as her personal life caromed further and further out of control, Kirsten's impromptu stories had become equally offbeat and bizarre.

  "Penrod and Sarah Smithers lived all by themselves. Totally, completely and utterly alone. And that’s the way they liked it. Penrod was twelve years old; Sarah turned eight on June 6th. It was a smallish but very pleasant birthday party. Just Penrod, Sarah and their pygmy goat.

  "What was the goat's name?" Wilbur demanded.

  "Lambchop."

  Exactly a year, three months and twelve days earlier, their parents decided to vacation in Africa. The Smithers wanted to climb Mount Kilimanjaro in northeast Tanzania and shoot a few elephants, crocodiles and water buffalo. It never occurred to them that certain African animals might be endangered or that Penrod and Sarah were ‘endangered’ in a different sort of way.

  “There are exactly thirty-five TV dinners in the freezer,” Mrs. Smithers counseled as she piled the luggage into the trunk of the Volvo. The Smithers always bought Volvos. They were very safe and reliable autos and, when it came to family transportation, you didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. “The TV dinners should last a while, and we put some extra money in the dresser drawer under your father’s silk underwear. But that’s only for emergencies.”

  Mr. Smithers wagged a finger under his son’s nose. “Don’t squander the money.”

  “If you get sick and tired of TV dinners and want a pepperoni pizza,” Mrs. Smithers added, “that’s perfectly OK.”

  The parents were only suppose to be gone a week. How many water buffalo can a person shoot? And how many dumb snow-covered mountains can you climb before the stupendous, African safari vacation becomes boring with a capitol B?

  "What's a Papist, Auntie Kirsten?" Wilbur blurted.

  Kirsten stared at the child in disbelief. "Why do you ask?"

  Rolling over on his stomach momentarily, he punched the pillow, propping it up against the headboard. "My daddy calls you the Papist,… the goody two-shoes Papist, so I was wondering…"

  Kirsten felt her cheeks flush. She knew her brother-in-law had no use for religion - not that he held any sophisticated, teleological convictions similar to Dr. Wong's - but this was too much!. "A Papist is a Catholic, but it's not a particularly nice term." "Do you attend church on Sundays?"

  "Can't"

  "Why not?"

  "Interferes with soccer practice." The boy wiggled his rump under the covers. "You can continue with the story now."

  Well, a week passed and then a month. The folks sent post postcards and tons of colorful pictures. One showed Mr. Smithers sitting on top of an elephant. The elephant was lying on its side with its mouth open and a big red tongue hanging out. Its eyes were open but the lumpy beast didn’t seem to be focusing on anything in particular.

  “That’s one saaaad looking elephant,” Sarah said, drawing out the vowel for dramatic effect. “Do you think it’s just sleeping?”

  Penrod studied the picture for the longest time. He stared at the huge gun his father slung over his shoulder and the crisscrossed cartridge belts full of hollow-point bullets draped around his neck. “Sleeping,” Sarah's brother confirmed. “Definitely taking a mid-morning snooze.”

  In another picture the parents were standing at the top of a mountain looking down through hazy clouds - yes, the clouds were below them - at a huge African plain.

  Well, the Smithers were having such great fun they simply forgot to come home. They sent pictures and flowery postcards but that was pretty much it. But Penrod and Sarah didn’t mind. They grew comfortable in their parentless solitude. They looked after each other, which is what brothers and sisters are supposed to do.

  When one of the super-duper, nosey neighbors said something like, “Haven’t seen your folks around lately,” Sarah would reply, “Oh they're very busy people.” The children never lied. That would be wrong. They omitted a few minor details but never ever told a lie.

  Now you might think that a couple of children abandoned by their selfish, good-for-nothing parents would be scared to death, but not Penrod and Sarah Smithers. Heck no! From the day their parents waltz out the door on their glorious African safari, Penrod had a plan. “I’ll cook and you clean," he told his sister. “We’ll be just fine. Who needs parents anyway? They just boss you around and act more irresponsible than a bunch of dopey kids.”

  “We’ll be just fine,” Penrod repeated with a confident wave of his hand. “This is the beginning of an awesome, stupendous, splendiferous adventure.”

  “Splennndiferous,” Sarah repeated in a soon-to-be-fourth-grade, singsongy voice.

  A gurgling snore cut the narrative short. Wilbur was sound asleep. Kirsten shut the light off, drifted into the kitchen and fixed herself a cup of coffee. An hour later she recognize the purr o
f her sister's Honda CRV as the car crawled up the driveway.

  "How was Willy?" Alice slipped off her high heels.

  "He's never any problem." Kirsten was trying to decide whether to confront her sister with her husband’s crassness. "Do you know any atheists?"

  . "No, why do you ask?" She teased a pearl drop earrings from a fleshy lobe then withdrew its mate

  "There's a well-respected doctor over at the hospital who doesn't believe in God."

  "I'm not surprised," Alice countered. "Modern life has become too hectic. Organized religion’s optional,... a luxury."

  "Not for us goody two-shoes Papists," Kirsten muttered.

  "Excuse me?" Alice loosened the buttons on her cuffs. "I didn't catch that last remark.

  * * * * *

  The following week, Kirsten swung by the Braintree Rehabilitation Center. "I'm looking for a patient…Dorothy Edwards."

  "Second floor, room twenty-eight," the receptionist replied.

  Kirsten rode the elevator up one flight and found the white-haired woman sitting by herself in the solarium. She greeted Kirsten warmly but looked haggard. "There's been a change of plans." She pulled the hospital-issue bathrobe up around her wrinkled throat. "I'm transferring to Briarcrest Nursing Home next Tuesday."

  Kirsten felt her brain grow numb. "But I thought - "

  "My son, Brandon feels it's for the best."

  The fight had gone out of her. The vibrant woman, who attended college and raised three children after her husband died, had been reduced to disposable chattel. "What do you want, Dorothy?"

  "I'm an old woman."

  On the table lay a pair of bifocal glasses and pile of sheet music – Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony, third cello. Kirsten scanned a blur of sixteenth notes that cascaded to the middle of the topmost page before petering out in a slackening of tempo and key change. "Your son bullied you into changing your mind, didn't he?"

  "My best years are behind me." Her voice cracked but, through an effort of will the widow maintained a semblance of composure. "It's time to move on."

  My best years are behind me. It's time to move on. Mrs. Edwards was talking a cryptic, Morse code. Her son, Brandon, in all likelihood, had gotten himself into a financial mess and needed to sell off his mother's estate in order to set his own pathetic house in order. No matter that Mrs. Edwards lived out her final years sharing a cramped, sardine-can-of-a-room with mental defectives who talked gibberish and crapped the bed every five minutes! Brandon required financial liquidity. He didn't have a pot to piss in. His mother's property represented a disposable asset.

  Around midday, Kirsten slipped out of her office and visited the hospital chapel. The room smelled faintly of incense. Except for a handful of votive candles and a solitary row of track lighting near the front, the room was dark and utterly still. She prayed to the Holy Mother asking her to watch over Mrs. Edwards - to make sure that the elderly woman got a reasonably spacious room with a scenic view plus a roommate equally alert and pleasant. Then she prayed to the Sacred Heart of Jesus that He help her make sense of the ludicrous farce that was her personal life. For good measure, Kirsten followed the petitions with a dozen Hail Marys. Slouching down in the pew, she closed her eyes and finished her prayers.

  As she was rising to her feet, the door opened, and Father McNulty shuffled into the prayer chapel. "Miss Hazelton," the priest greeted her with an unctuous smile, "what brings a young professional here so early in the day?"

  "Do you remember Mrs. Edwards?"

  "The older woman with the broken hip."

  "Her son is putting her into a nursing home." Her tone was leaden.

  The priest removed his glasses and rubbed the side of his thin nose. The rosacea was particular bad today, the cheeks streaked with dark purple."Yes, well, at her age,…" the priest began philosophically but never bothered to finish the thought.

  "At her age what?" When there was no immediate response, Kirsten rose from the pew, lunged forward and stuck her head up under the priest's mottled chin. "You're an insipid dolt, Father McNulty." The man staggered backwards. "Has a disgruntled parishioner ever told you such a thing or do you assume that, as God's divine emissary, everything you say or do is above reproach?"

  If he was taken aback by the outburst, it didn’t take the priest long to regain his composure. "This is the house of the Lord. Leave the chapel and don't return until you have properly atoned for this disgraceful behavior!"

  "Yes, I'll leave," She retreated several steps, "but that changes nothing. You're still an insufferable blockhead."

  * * * * *

  "I ran into Father McNulty.” Dr. Wong tracked down a despondent Kirsten Hazelton in the lobby drying her puffy eyes. “He said you became irrational, foulmouthed,… emotionally unhinged." The doctor shared the observation with a flippant smile, implying that he didn't put much credence in the priest's account. "By his reckoning, you belong on a locked ward over at the IMH." The Institute of Mental Health was where the most incorrigible mental defectives were warehoused once less drastic resources had been exhausted.

  "We had a difference of opinion," Kirsten sputtered, "and I told the crusty old fart things no one else ever had the nerve to say."

  "Apparently that didn’t go over very well."

  Kirsten grinned weakly. She was grateful Dr. Wong hadn't demand specifics. The soft-spoken physician had done his best to safeguard Mrs. Edward's dignity and would have been devastated to learn the truth about the son's treachery.

  "What are your plans for the holiday?" Dr. Wong asked.

  "Not much. I'm just staying home."

  "An emotionally unhinged coworker with nowhere to go on Thanksgiving." Pulling a pen from his pocket, he scribbled an address on a slip of paper. "We live over by the Brandenberg Community Center… seventy-five Aspen Drive. It's a slate blue colonial with white shutters."

  "I can't impose -"

  "Show up around noon. I'll tell my wife to set another plate at the table." Dr. Wong hurried off down the corridor.

  The next day, Kirsten did her makeup and pulled her hair back in a tight bun which she fixed with an ivory pick. She opted for low heels and a lavender dress that showed her figure to best advantage without being in the least bit provocative. Arriving at the Wong's house, she was ushered into the vestibule by a chubby woman a year or two younger than herself. "So there you are!" Dr. Wong rushed over and, with uncharacteristic enthusiasm, wrapped her in a bear hug. "Here, let me introduce you to my family, and I must warn you from the outset, I'm feeling quite outnumbered."

  Any reservations she might have experienced were blown away by the combination of savory aromas and festive faces. "Outnumbered in what way?"

  My wife's family is originally from Nanjing Province on the Yangtze River in southern China."

  "Which means nothing to me."

  "For centuries, foreign missionaries spread their religions through the coastal routes. A recent census suggested four million Chinese Catholics, but the true figure is much closer to fourteen." The man gestured at the oriental women gathered together in the next room putting the final, decorative touches on the table. "Four daughters and a wife - all devout Catholics."

  Mrs. Wong, a short round woman, looked up and smiled slyly. "Even my son has gone over to the enemy camp, attending Mass over at Saint Andrews!" He led the way into the main dining room as a tall, well-built man in his mid thirties came down the stairs from the upper level. "Joshua, let me introduce you to Miss Hazelton, the discharge planner at our hospital."

  "We'll be eating in a moment," Mrs. Wong announced.

  "Perfect timing!" The doctor led Kirsten to a seat alongside his son. "Did I mention that Joshua, like his illustrious father, is an osteopath over at Beth Israel?" He shook his head up and down energetically, as though in answer to his own question. "Well, at any rate, he can bring you up to speed on that." The man retreated to the far end of the room.

  Joshua leaned forward. "I've been dying to meet you."

/>   "How's that?"

  "My father's always rather close-lipped… hardly ever has anything much to say about the people he works with, but he's been singing your praises all morning." He raised a bottle of Chablis. "Would you like some?"

  Kirsten raised her empty glass. "Yes, I don't mind if I do."

  At the far end of the table the elder Dr. Wong had just cracked a joke and was laughing his fool head off.

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  Loveliest Girl

  Among the Old Orchard Beach cognoscenti, Cassie Moffat was considered the town slut. Whether her lurid reputation was justified wasn't really open for debate. Huey Spencer, the craggy-faced old fart who ran the air-brushed T-shirt concession, bragged that he bedded Cassie only a week after the young girl's arrival on the pier boardwalk. A short distance away, Freddy Smithers, who sold fruit coolattas - banana, coconut, mango and blueberry - never confirmed one way or the other that he slept with Cassie, but when the girl's name was mentioned, Freddy sniggered and made obscene gestures that left little to the imagination. Even the Guatemalan who spoke English as a second language and manned the henna tattoo booth claimed bragging rights, finessing Cassie into the sack after sketching a multi-colored cartoon devil brandishing a pitchfork on her derriere. So when the trashy girl with the impertinent smile showed up at the Scenic View Inn unannounced at one in the morning, Reese Donaldson knew perfectly well what to expect.

  "Hey, Reese, let me in!" After the third knock Cassie hollered, "I see light under the door so I know you're there." Reese took a deep breath and eased the door open. "Hi, Cassie."

  She brushed past him. "What is this… a freakin' broom closet?"

  "An old storage room," he corrected, "converted into an efficiency apartment."

  "Not very efficient," she chuckled at her own humor and promptly flopped down on the bed. She was wearing dungaree mini-shorts and a skimpy halter that resembled a maroon tube sock with the toe section cut away. The chubby girl was passably cute in a vulgar sort of way with a round face, dark eyes and hair. She possessed a pretty, kissable mouth, and most times her lower jaw hung slightly ajar showcasing a set of strong teeth. Even in repose the girl's fluid features settled quite naturally in an impudent grin – a slack-mouthed, in-your-face smirk that implied 'I'm not going anywhere soon so get used to it'. The cheeky nerve of her got under your skin but not necessarily in a bad way.