Lamented
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

A child’s life in school is a continuous round of simple commands: stand up, sit down, go out, come in, open the book, close the book, stop talking, start reading, don’t run, spell the word, solve the problem, go to recess, come in from recess, go to lunch, come back from lunch, don’t cheat on quizzes, write legibly, don’t stand up in the swing, don’t wear your hat in the house, don’t tell lies, don’t spread disease germs, use the bathroom when you’re supposed to and don’t wet your pants.

Recess was over and all the children came back into the room quietly and took their seats. Looking out over the ten-year-old faces, Miss Snow saw that one piece of the mosaic was missing. On the outer row of desks, next to the wall, third seat from the front, the space ordinarily occupied by Ella Ruffin was without a face and without a body.

“Does anybody know where Ella Ruffin is?” Miss Snow asked.

No answer.

“Did anybody see Ella?”

“She was sitting out on the playground when the bell rang,” Kay Hood said.

“Why was she doing that?”

“I don’t know, Miss Snow.”

“All right, everybody open your social studies books to page thirty-eight and begin reading the chapter on Peru. I’m going outside for a minute and see if anything has happened to Ella.”

She was sitting all alone at the corner of the playground, a tiny, frail child in a vast expanse of asphalt.

“Didn’t you hear the bell?” Miss Snow said.

“I heard it,” Ella said.

“What’s the matter? You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, I’m not sick.”

“Well, come back inside, then. We’re just starting social studies.”

“I can’t get up,” Ella said.

“Why not? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m not hurt. It’s worse than that.”

“Ella, I haven’t got all day! What is the matter with you?”

“I wet my pants.”

“Oh, Ella! Why didn’t you go to the restroom when everybody else went?”

“I didn’t have to go then.”

“Do you want me to bring you some paper towels?”

“No.”

“You can’t sit there all day. Come on inside and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

“I’m not getting up.”

“Why not?”

“After I peed in my pants, I did the other. You know. I pooted in my pants. It was an accident. I sneezed and it just happened.”

“You go on home, then, and get yourself cleaned up. You’re excused for the rest of the day.”

“I can’t go home. There’s nobody there. The door’s locked and I don’t have a key.”

“Do you want me to call your mother?”

“She’s in Atlantic City.”

“What about your father?”

“He’s been drunk for three days.”

“Don’t you have an older sister?”

“She’s in the hospital with vaginal bleeding.”

“I’ll go get the school nurse and she’ll bring a big towel to tie around your waist and she’ll take you back to her office and get you cleaned up.”

“No, I’m not getting up. I’m too embarrassed.”

“Ella, there’s no reason to be embarrassed. It was an accident. Everybody has accidents.”

“How many people have you known of that’ve peed in their pants at school and then pooted on top of it?”

“All right. We all have embarrassing moments. We’ll get it straightened out.”

“People will laugh at me when they see what I did.”

“No, they won’t. Nobody will even know.”

“They already know. They were talking about it.”

“Who was?”

“Certain people.”

“You can’t sit there. It’s going to rain. Just look at the sky. If you can’t go home now, you’re going to have to come inside. Come on in now and we’ll get you cleaned up.”

“I think I’d just rather sit here for a while.”

“Ella, I’m responsible for you and I can’t just let you sit out here by yourself during school hours.”

“I’ll be all right. When school’s over, I’ll go home just like I always do. If you would be so kind as to have somebody bring me my coat, that’s all I ask. It’s yellow. It’s hanging in the cloak room next to the fire extinguisher.”

“Well, all right. I guess I can do that. But if it starts to rain, you come back inside, do you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“If nothing else, go to the girls’ restroom on the first floor and wait it out. Nobody will see you.”

“I will.”

Miss Snow went back upstairs to her classroom and put Ella Ruffin out of her mind for the time being. In a half-hour or so, the sky turned dark and the wind blew briskly from the southwest. The rain began lightly at first and then came down in torrents. The windows had to be closed and the lights turned on.

When Miss Snow’s eyes were once again drawn to Ella Ruffin’s empty desk, she remembered something she was supposed to do. What was it? Oh, yes. She was going to have somebody take Ella’s coat down to her, the yellow one hanging in the cloak room next to the fire extinguisher, but she somehow forgot. Poor Ella. A little girl outside in a rainstorm without a coat. She’d probably end up with a terrible cold, at the very least.

A lightning strike that shook the building to its foundations caused the lights to go out. Miss Snow knew that nobody was going to learn anything as long as the storm kept up, so she told everybody they could close their books and sit quiet as mice and not make any kind of disturbance. A few of the children were nervous and worried about the storm, but most of them were excited and couldn’t sit still. They hoped that school would be called off for the rest of the day and they would be released into the wild like a bunch of captive birds.

The children jabbered among themselves and Miss Snow let them do as they pleased as long as they didn’t make too much noise. The other fourth grade class across the hall was not making a sound; likewise the fifth grade classes down the hall.

Miss Snow stood up from her desk and went to the window, hoping to see some sign that the storm was dissipating, but there was no indication at all that their old school building and everybody in it was going to be saved from annihilation by lightning and thunder. From her third-floor perch, she could see the playground, but not clearly.

Water had collected at one side of the gently sloping playground, as it always did during a heavy rain. Gravity forced the water into a trough where it ran off into storm drains.

She was going to turn away from the window and go back to her desk when she saw something that arrested her attention. In the rushing water that had collected and was running off, she thought she saw a small, shabby, blonde girl in a plaid dress, face down, arms out, being carried along in the torrent. She couldn’t be sure of what she saw and when she strained to get a better view she decided that what she had seen was a clump of old newspaper.

When the rain let up a little and the sky became lighter, the lights still hadn’t come back on, so the principal, Mr. Murtaugh, sent word to all the classes that school was suspended for the day and everybody could go home or could go to the devil if that’s what they wanted.

Miss Snow dismissed her class and they left, eagerly, in a happy, holiday mood. She herself was relieved that another day was over, another week, and for two days and nights she wouldn’t have to give school a single thought.

In the night she woke up thinking about poor little Ella Ruffin. She hoped she had made her way home in the storm and hadn’t caught a cold. She probably should have insisted that Ella come inside, not matter how embarrassed she was. And maybe she should have called for help when she thought (or imagined) that she saw Ella’s body floating in the runoff water during the storm, but she didn’t, and in those situations it’s best not to think about it anymore. She was sure it all worked out for the best.

Monday morning was a new day. The sun was shining and the air cool and fresh. As teachers and students alike arrived at school, they all heard the sad news.

Ella Ruffin had been found dead in the river, several miles away from the school. Nobody knew how she came to be there. Police were not ruling out the possibility that she had been abducted by a madman, sexually molested and killed, and her body dumped into the river.

The police came to the school and asked Miss Snow a myriad of questions. Did the little girl leave school before she was supposed to? What was she wearing? Did Miss Snow notice anybody suspicious-looking near the school that day? What kind of family did the little girl have?

Miss Snow told them all she knew. Ella lived outside of town on a farm, or what used to be a farm. The family was poor and there were many children, who often came to school dirty and poorly clothed. Ella usually kept to herself and didn’t mix much with the other children. She wore ragged clothes and always seemed sad and underfed. You couldn’t look at her without feeling sorry.

When all their questions had been satisfied, the police left and Miss Snow took a deep breath and hoped she wouldn’t have to speak to them again. The whole thing was too distasteful to even talk about.

The class took up a collection for a floral tribute for Ella. The entire fourth grade class attended the funeral, including Miss Snow. Ella wore a white dress with a white ribbon in her hair and a spray of white flowers in her hands. Since the family was without funds, an anonymous benefactor from town paid all expenses.

On a certain day a few days later, Miss Snow arrived at school early, before anybody else was there. She had some work to do that she wanted to get done before her students arrived.

She turned on the lights and opened some of the windows to air out the room and then she sat down at her desk and started working. A slight stir in the room caused her to look up and when she did she saw Ella Ruffin sitting at her usual desk on the outside aisle, third row from the front.

The apparition seemed so real that she spoke to it.

“Ella,” she said, “what are you doing there?”

But, of course, there was no answer. Ella just kept working, kept writing, and Miss Snow knew from the way she looked that she wasn’t really there, or, anyway, not in any physical sense. She wore the white dress and the white ribbon in her hair. She was altogether clean, something she had never been in life, and, not only clean, but glowing with a kind of radiance.

“Ella, how are you?” Miss Snow spoke again. “I was very worried about you.”

Ella did not look up or acknowledge Miss Snow in any way. She continued to write and in a little while she became dim and disappeared as if she had never been there at all.

When Miss Snow’s students arrived, she had everybody pitch in and clean out Ella’s desk, throw away any old papers, and turn in her textbooks. Then they took some cleanser and wet paper towels and gave the desk and its seat a good cleaning from top to bottom. When they were finished the desk gleamed. She then pushed it out into the hallway for the janitor to pick up and put in the storeroom for when a spare desk was needed.

The next time Miss Snow saw Ella, she was floating up near the ceiling, as if floating was the most natural thing in the world for her to do. She floated on her stomach and when Miss Snow became aware that she was there, she turned over and floated on her back and made her way out of the room that way.

Finally Miss Snow believed that Ella was taunting her in a way and she wanted it to stop. One afternoon after everybody had gone home and Miss Snow was still at her desk, she looked up and there saw Ella standing a few feet away looking at her.

“Did you want something, Ella?” she asked. “Can I do something for you? I think you need to go on to wherever you’re supposed to be and not hang around here anymore. It’s not healthy for you or for me.”

Ella made no reply.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” Miss Snow said, “but, really, considering the circumstances of your miserable life, don’t you think you’re better off where you are now? I know it’s not your fault, but your mother and father ought to be ashamed of themselves for having more children than they could reasonably take care of.”

Still no reply.

“I’m going to go home now, Ella, and I want you to know that this is the last time we’ll be seeing each other. I won’t see you again, Ella. Do you understand what I’m saying? You’re going to have to quit haunting me or whatever it is you’re doing because it’s not helping either of us.”

Ella smiled blandly and faded into the air, as if she had never been there at all.

It was Thursday before Easter. School was closed for Good Friday, so Miss Snow was going out of town for a couple of days, up to the small town where her parents and her retarded sister lived. She went home and packed her suitcase and collected her mail and set out in her car, glad for the chance to get away for a while.

After she had driven for an hour or so, it began to rain; a light rain at first and then a pounding, punishing rain. She turned on her wipers and headlights and cringed when the lightning ripped the sky. She turned on the radio and found some soothing jazz music to calm her nerves.

It was an old country road, curvy and hilly. She had to watch every second because it was fully dark now and the road was unpredictable: a hilltop curve followed by a precipitous drop as if you were skating off the side of a mountain, followed by a curve in the other direction and then a climb up a steep hill with woods on both sides.

Once when the lightning flashed, Miss Snow realized she wasn’t alone in the car. In the passenger seat beside her was Ella Ruffin. When Miss Snow became aware of her presence, she realized that Ella had her head turned slightly and was listening to the music on the radio.

“Don’t you like this music, Ella?” Miss Snow said. “Do you want me to find another station?”

While she was turning the knob on the radio, she came to a low place in the road where water was flowing across. It was so dark she couldn’t so how far the water went and she had no way of knowing how deep it was, but she was tired and impatient and couldn’t stand the thought of anything holding her up. She drove into the water, hoping against hope that it wasn’t too deep to drive through, and when she had driven a hundred feet or so, the water drowned out the engine. She tried to restart it, but it showed no signs of life.

“What do I do now, Ella?” she said.

But when she turned to her right in the dark she saw that Ella was no longer there.

Believing she had no other choice, she opened the car door and when she did the cold water rushed in and covered her feet. Shivering, she stepped out into water up to her knees. When she was leaning back into the car to get her purse and some papers, a wall of water she never saw came out of the darkness and overtook her and knocked her down. She struggled the best she could, flailing arms and legs, but the water carried her away and she was dead in a matter of minutes. Her body was found three days later a couple of miles away, bloated and unrecognizable.

Miss Snow’s fourth grade class took up a collection to buy her a floral tribute to go alongside her closed casket. The entire fourth grade class attended her funeral, accompanied by their newly hired teacher, a fat woman named Mrs. Ruby Valentine, who was nothing like—looked nothing like—the late and lamented Miss Snow.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

I Am Skippy Wellington
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

I had fifteen minutes before bus time, so I sat down on one of the ratty seats with part of the stuffing coming out. It was Friday night of a difficult week and I felt terrible. My toothache was killing me, I felt a cold coming on, and I had heartburn from the spicy goulash I had for dinner. I took another pain pill for my tooth and was beginning to feel sleepy when somebody sat down beside me. I turned my head and saw it was Skippy Wellington.

“How are you, Dickie?” she said.

I was surprised, not only that she would speak to me, but that she knew my name.

“Just wonderful,” I said, sounding more cheerful than I felt.

“I’m Skippy Wellington,” she said.

“Yes, I know.”

“Isn’t it funny that we should both be at the bus station at the same time?”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“I hate the bus station, so it’s good to have somebody to talk to while I wait.”

“Yes, the bus station is, uh, ugly.”

“How do you like college so far?”

“It’s all right.”

“You’re in your first year?”

“Second.”

“I’ll bet you’re finding college much different from high school, aren’t you?”

“Well, I have to study more.”

“What’s your major?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“I guess you can decide that later on, when you’re farther along.”

“That’s the plan.”

“As for me,” Skippy said, “I have a double major. English and drama. I want to be an actress and if that doesn’t work out, I guess I’ll teach English. I was in one Drama Guild production in the fall. Now I’m studying another part in another play, to be staged in the spring. If you’ve ever carried the lead in a play, you know how much work it is.”

“No, I haven’t ever done that,” I said, realizing how stupid I sounded.

“And, you know, I don’t like the roommate I have now. Her name is Rocky. Isn’t that absurd? A girl named Rocky! If I can make it through another week without strangling her, it’ll be a miracle!

“Why don’t you ask to move to a different room?”

“I have, but there isn’t a vacant room for me to move to now. I’ll have to wait until somebody drops out.”

“I was lucky to get an end room,” I said. “No roommate.”

“Yes, that was lucky. Where do you room?”

“Prentiss Hall.”

“Well, isn’t that a coincidence? That’s where my boyfriend rooms. You must know him. His name is Peter Piper.”

“Yes, I know him. He’s on my floor. I mean, we both room on the same floor.”

“Isn’t Peter something? He’s just the all-American boy, isn’t he?”

“The truth is, I don’t know him all that well. We don’t move in the same circles.”

She laughed. “You are funny, you know that?”

“No, I didn’t realize it until now.”

“He’s very good-looking, don’t you think, with his blond good looks?”

“I haven’t ever thought about it.”

“Hah-hah-hah! Oh, Dickie! Come on, now! You can admit to me that you find Peter attractive. I won’t think you’re gay.”

“Well, I guess the casual observer might find him attractive.”

“The casual observer! Hah-hah-hah! You are original!”

“Is that my bus? I think I just heard my bus! I don’t want to miss it!”

“No, it isn’t your bus yet, Dickie. Do you talk much to Peter? You know, man to man?”

“I hardly talk to him at all. A couple times in the TV lounge is all. He offered me a cigarette one time, but I didn’t take it because I don’t smoke.”

“You never heard him talk about girls or dates he’s been out on or anything like that?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“You see, I’m terribly in love with him. We’ve discussed getting married when we’re both finished with school, but I’m not too sure about him. I know a lot of people find him as terribly attractive as I do. When he tells me he’s in love with me and wants to spend his whole life with me, I’m not sure how seriously I can take him. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think I do.”

“You’re never heard him say anything about a girl named Doris? She’s a biology major.”

“No, I don’t know her.”

“I’ve heard that Doris calls him up all the time, and she makes sure she’s in the places where she knows he’ll be. She is so forward! She’s such a swine and will do anything, I’m sure, to take him away from me! I’m terribly jealous. Oh, this is all too much! You probably think I’m just being silly, don’t you?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“I’d like to strangle Doris.”

“I won’t tell anybody.”

“If we wait two or three years before we get married, I’m afraid I’ll lose him. I won’t be able to hold onto him that long with so many different girls after him.”

“That’s a tough one.”

“But if I go ahead and marry him now, I can kiss my acting career goodbye. You see, he doesn’t approve. He thinks women should be traditional like his mother and not be interested in bettering themselves. He thinks I’m just being silly when I say I want to be an actress. He doesn’t take me seriously as a person. Do you take me seriously as a person?”

“Sure.”

“I’m terribly serious about my acting. After I’ve acted on the stage for a few years—and I mean the real stage and not college productions—I plan to go to Hollywood. I think I have what it takes to make it big. People have told me I have talent; I know I have talent. I also have the drive and the ambition, which are just as important as talent.”

“Do you have your bags packed? That’s important, too.”

“Hah-hah-hah! Since you and Peter room on the same floor, I was wondering if you’d be willing to help me out.”

“Help you out how?”

“Well, it’s kind of a delicate situation. Keep your eyes and ears open and see if you see or hear anything.”

“Like what?”

“Well, boys love to talk about their conquests and things. They love to brag.”

“Peter would never brag to me.”

“I know, but you room on the same floor with him. You’re bound to see and hear things. Not only from Peter but from somebody else.”

“Are you saying you want me to spy on Peter for you?”

“Oh, no! Nothing like that! I just thought that if you do happen to come by any knowledge that you think might be of any interest to me you wouldn’t mind passing it along.”

“Oh, I don’t know…”

“I’d be willing to pay you!”

“Oh, no! I couldn’t take…”

“I know this is asking a lot, but you’re such a sweet and sensitive boy that I was certain I’d be able to talk to you about just anything.”

“This is not really what…”

My phone number is in the student directory. Skippy Wellington. Call me any time, on any subject. It doesn’t have to be only about Peter. I knew the moment I started talking to you that you and I are simpatico. If you’re ever having trouble finding a date, I know dozens of girls who would be thrilled to death to go out with you!”

“Finding a date has never been my problem.”

“Hah-hah-hah! You are so funny!”

“Here’s my bus,” I said. “I have to go.”

I stood up and she stood up beside me.

“Have a wonderful weekend!” she said.

She surprised me by putting her arms around me and kissing me on the lips. Her lips tasted like wax. I didn’t especially like it, but I can’t say I disliked it, either.

The bus wasn’t crowded; there were plenty of empty seats. I took a seat close to the back on the left side. I had a three-hour ride ahead of me and I hoped to spend most of it sleeping.

My conversation with Skippy Wellington had reinvigorated me; I felt better now. I was sure she was flirting with me. Nobody ever said to me the kind of things she said, about how I was sweet and kind and any girl would be lucky to know me. I considered Peter Piper an arrogant jerk, and I was sure Skippy could do better than him. What if she found she preferred me over him? What is she just gave him the go-by and told me she wanted to be with me instead of him? It’s true I wasn’t as good looking as he was, but I had other things that he didn’t have. I had depth and sensitivity and maturity. I used good English and I bathed regularly.

The bus hit a bump in the highway and jolted me out of my reverie. When I looked out the window, I couldn’t see anything. We might have run over a person or a grizzly bear, for all I knew. This stretch of highway was hilly and curvy and worse in the dark. As we rounded the curves and slowed for the hills, I always wondered if we were going to make it or not.

And then it started to rain, at first a little bit and then a lot. Soon the rain was pounding the windows mercilessly. The tires hissed, as if holding on to the highway for dear life. I had felt better, but now I felt worse again. My stomach was churning. I’d try to sit still and not think about anything and, if I was lucky, I’d go to sleep and not wake up again until we reached our destination.

I did drift off to sleep, but it didn’t last long. The bus hit an icy patch and veered off the highway on a curve, first the front tires and then the rest of the bus. Some of the passengers near the front of the bus screamed.

The driver struggled to get control, but it was no use. From where I sat, I could see he was losing the battle. The bus tipped over; we rolled down an embankment. It was while we were rolling that I lost consciousness.

I might have been dead because I didn’t know anything after that. I wasn’t aware when they lifted me out of the wreckage of the bus and took me away.

I woke up in a strange place. I was in a high bed. I thought I was back at school, but I didn’t recognize anything. My mother was standing over me, looking down at me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked her.

“You were in an accident.”

“What kind of an accident?”

“The bus you were in rolled down a hill and crashed.”

“Is Skippy here, too?”

“Who is Skippy? Is he a friend of yours from school? You’ve been babbling about Skippy the whole time.”

“What whole time?”

“You’ve been out.”

“Out where?”

“Unconscious. You know.”

“Am I going to die?’

“The doctor says you’ll be all right, but it’s going to take some time. You have a fractured jaw bone, a broken collar bone, and your right arm is broken in two places.”

“I need to get back to school. I need to see Skippy.”

“And besides all that, you have a brain concussion. I think you can forget about Skippy for a while.”

“I’m afraid Skippy might be hurt.”

“You don’t need to worry about anything now except your own self. You’re going to have a long road to recovery.”

“Skippy. Skippy. I need to see my Skippy.”

“Don’t you worry about your Skippy. I’m sure he’s all right, or we would have heard.”

I groaned and turned my head on the pillow to keep from having to see my mother’s face. I saw a nurse with red hair and a clock on the wall with a blank face, and then I fell back into a deep sleep.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

A Prayer for the Dying
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

A Prayer for the Dying is a novel by American writer Stewart O’Nan. I met Stewart O’Nan at a book-signing event several years ago, when he was promoting his nonfiction book, The Circus Fire.

A Prayer for the Dying is set in the fictitious town of Friendship, Wisconsin. The time is about 1870. The principal character is a young man, age about thirty, named Jacob Hansen. He is a Civil War veteran and the town’s undertaker. Besides being the undertaker, he is also the sheriff and a minister. He is a good man and a just man. He has a wife, Marta, and an infant daughter, Amelia.

When a diphtheria epidemic strikes the town, Jacob Hansen is tested in a way he never believed possible. The disease spreads day to day. People in town begin dying in alarming numbers. An old man at the church tolls the church bell whenever another person dies, so the church bell is a constant accompaniment to everything that happens.

The people who don’t have the disease want to go to a safer place but aren’t allowed to leave because the town is under quarantine. This situation brings out a lot of ugly emotions in people. They just might kill anybody who won’t let them leave.

When Jacob’s baby daughter, Amelia, gets the disease, she soon dies. Since Jacob is the undertaker, he prepares her body for burial and buries her in his yard. He belives, for some reason, that he needs to keep her death a secret. When Jacob’s wife contracts the diease and dies within a few days, he embalms her body and keeps her in the house with him, pretending she is still alive.

Every day the disease gets worse and more people die. Could things be any worse? The answer is yes. An out-of-control forest fire threatens to consume the town. Several small towns have already been destroyed by the fire.

As a lawman and man of God, Jacob Hansen is torn between his duty to the sick people in the town who have the disease and the well people who want to escape. His own life has already been torn asunder. If he survives the ordeal and doesn’t get the disease, what does he have left to live for? His family is dead. The fire is going to destroy the town. He might as well lay down and die. Or, he can take action and try to help the few uninfected citizens of the town make their escape.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp  

Each Dark Door
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Mrs. Jasper owned a three-story apartment building downtown that her father owned before her. Every month on the first day of the month she visited the building and collected the rents due her. Most of the renters paid their rent on time, but always there was somebody who didn’t have the money and would hide when she knocked or would confront her with a sad story about being sick and not being able to work or having a sick baby who needed medicine. More often than not, they were the ones who spent all their money on drink, lost it in an impromptu poker game, or never had any to begin with, because, well, things hadn’t been going so well lately.

A first of the month came when Mrs. Jasper was laid up in bed with her gallbladder and wasn’t able to leave the house. Instead of worrying herself sick about collecting the rents on time, she sent her granddaughter Virginia to do it for her. Virginia was sixteen and it was her first time to collect the rents.

Armed with the money pouch (held firmly against her body with her hand through the strap), Virginia started with the first door on the left on the first floor and worked her way down the left side, and when she was finished on the left she moved over to the right.

The hallway was musty-smelling and dark at all hours and was in no way pleasing or inviting. There were twelve closed doors with each door seeming to hold the possibility of menace. Some of these people are trash, grandma said, but if they pay their rent on time I can tolerate them as long as they don’t carry diseases or have bugs. If anybody gives you any guff or is rude, you be sure and write down their names. They might find an eviction notice in their mailboxes one fine day.

Some didn’t answer their doors, as grandma had said, but were obviously there because Virginia could hear them moving around inside. Most of them were forthcoming, though, with their rent money. They invited her inside with a smile while they counted out the right amount or while they sat at the table and wrote out their check. They offered her things to eat and drink, including a vodka cocktail, which she politely declined.

At an apartment on the third floor, a blonde woman wearing a red-and-yellow kimono answered the door. She invited Virginia inside and asked her to sit down while she and her roommate, a dark-haired woman wearing men’s pajamas, got the rent together.

“We’ll have to pay you in small bills,” the blonde woman said. Her name was Lou-Anne and her roommate’s name was Clarisse.

“That’s all right,” Virginia said.

“We’ll need a receipt,” Clarisse said. “We don’t want anybody saying we didn’t pay up on time.”

They counted out the money and when they handed it to Virginia she put it in the canvas money pouch and wrote it down in the pay book and gave them a receipt.

“Would you like a cup of coffee or something?” Lou-Anne asked Virginia after the transaction was completed.

“I’d like a drink of water.”

“Well, come on into the kitchen.”

On the table were remnants of breakfast, even though it was past lunch time. Lou-Anne motioned for Virginia to sit at the table while she got a glass and filled it with water.

“The first of the month sure comes around fast,” Lou-Anne said. “Just when you’re thinking your rent is all paid up, here it is the first of the month again and you have to fork over more dough.”

“Yeah, ain’t life a bitch, though,” Clarisse said. “A bitch from beginning to end.”

“Life’s a bitch, so I became one!” Lou-Anne said, laughing and wiping her nose with her knuckles.

Virginia didn’t get the joke, but she tried to smile.

“When you knocked on the door, we were just finishing breakfast. If you had knocked a half-hour earlier, we wouldn’t have heard you because we were asleep.”

“Tell her the rest,” Clarisse said, “or she’ll think we sleep this late all the time because we’re lazy.”

“We work nights,” Lou-Anne said. “We don’t get off until two or three in the morning and sometimes later than that, so that’s why we sleep so late.”

“What kind of work do you do?”

“We’re hostesses at the Crescendo Club.”

“What does a hostess do?”

“We get all dolled up and dance and drink and pretend we’re having a good time. We cozy up to the men without dates and get them to stay longer and spend their money on drinks.”

“Sometimes we go to their hotel rooms with them,” Clarisse said, “if they’re not too repulsive.”

“You shouldn’t be telling her that!” Lou-Anne said. “She’s just an innocent young girl!”

“She has to learn some time, doesn’t she?”

“It’s all right,” Virginia said. “I’ve read Peyton Place. I know all about that stuff.”

“Your mother let you read a book like that?”

“She didn’t know I read it.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Tenth grade?”

“Eleventh.”

“Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No. I’ve never even been out on a date.”

“So, you don’t know anything about men, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, don’t rush things.” Lou-Anne said. “You don’t want to end up like us.”

“And why is an innocent young girl like you collecting rent in a roach paradise like this?”

“I’m doing it for my grandma. She’s sick. She’s going to have her gallbladder out.”

“That old water buffalo that owns the building is your grandma?”

“That’s right.”

“You don’t look a thing like her!”

“She’s seventy-eight.”

“I’ll bet you have brothers and sisters, don’t you?”

“I have one brother. He goes to veterinarian school.”

“Is he good-looking?”

“No.”

“You’re not supposed to ask a girl a question like that about her own brother,” Clarisse said.

“Well, I had a brother and I always thought he was very good-looking,” Lou-Anne said.

“That’s because you’re twisted. Your whole family is twisted.”

“What about your mother and father?”

“What about them?”

“What do they do?”

“My father’s an accountant, I think, and my mother’s a housewife.”

“Does your pa go out drinking at night and slap your ma around when he comes home?”

“No, he mostly sleeps in the chair.”

“Is your ma pretty? Does she have lots of pretty clothes?”

“No, she’s tired all the time.”

“What do you want to be when you get through with school?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think about it. I always thought I’d like to be a writer, but I’ll probably end up being a housewife like my mother.”

“What’s your favorite subject in school?”

“I don’t know. English, I guess.”

“You don’t like math, do you?”

“How did you know?”

“You’re the artistic type, I can tell.”

“I guess so.”

“You have awfully pale skin,” Lou-Anne said. “Have you ever thought about wearing a little lipstick?”

“My mother doesn’t let me wear makeup.”

“Would you like to try a little lipstick and see how it looks? Your mother doesn’t have to know.”

“I guess so.”

She went into the bedroom and came back with a tube of lipstick and a little mirror. She titled Virginia’s head back and slathered the pinkish stuff on her mouth. When she was finished, she had her blot her lips with a Kleenex and take a look at herself in the mirror.

“See? Doesn’t that make a difference?”

“It makes me look like somebody else,” Virginia said.

“That tube is practically new. You can have it. I have a whole drawer full.”

“Thank you.”

Clarisse pulled Virginia’s hair to the back of her head. “Your hair is so lifeless,” she said. “You could use a good cut and some curl.”

“My mother cuts my hair.”

“What does she use? A steak knife?”

She twisted and pinned the hair so that it stayed up, exposing Virginia’s ears that stuck out too far

“What do you think?” she asked, holding the mirror up so Virginia could see herself.

“I think it makes me look like a boy,” Virginia said doubtfully.

“She looks like a regular debutante!” Lou-Anne said.

“You know, I have a daughter just a little younger than you,” Clarisse said, “but I haven’t seen her since she was seven. I have a son, too. He’s nine.”

“You’re not going to start bawling about them kids again, are you?” Lou-Anne said.

“No, I’ll save it for later.”

“Everybody’s always going on about kids! Why don’t people just have stop having them and then they won’t have to worry about them so much?”

“Well, if people stopped having kids, that’d be the end of the world!”

“No, it wouldn’t! The world would go on simply fine without people in it. There’d be lots of happy animals.”

“Can you imagine being the last person on earth to die? There’d be nobody to come to your funeral.”

Virginia stood up. “Well, thank you for the glass of water and the lipstick and everything and the advice about my hair, but I think I’d better be going now. Grandma will be wondering what happened to me.”

“So soon?” Clarisse said. “We don’t very often have company.”

“Wait a minute,” Lou-Anne said. She slipped a bracelet off her own wrist and put it on Virginia’s. It was a band of alternating red and yellow stones, like something out of an Egyptian tomb.

“Oh, it’s beautiful!” Virginia said.

“Wear it to remind yourself to come back and see us again real soon. Next time we’ll have a real party!”

When Virginia left Lou-Anne and Clarisse’s apartment, she walked down the three flights of stairs to the street, smelling the various smells of the building along the way, some good but mostly bad. She held the money pouch, much fatter than when she started, pressed tightly against her body the way grandma showed her, so nobody would come up behind her and grab it out of her hand. It would finish grandma off if anything happened to it. It would have to pay all the bills for the month.

The weather was fine and the park was close at hand. She decided to stop for a while before going on home. Grandma wouldn’t mind waiting a little longer for her money.

She sat on a bench in the sun, placing the money pouch firmly against her left hip where she could feel it without seeing it. She breathed deeply. The fresh air smelled good, of freshly cut grass and water from the fountain. Since it was Saturday, there were lots of people about: children playing games, men walking dogs, mothers airing their babies. In a little while a young man came along and sat down on the bench beside her.

“Hi there!” he said with a smile. He was older than she was, the kind of boy her mother would warn her to stay away from. “I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”

She was thinking about getting up and walking away when he surprised her by offering her a cigarette. Without thinking, she accepted and waited for him to light it. She had never smoked before and was a little flattered that he would offer her one as though she were an adult instead of a child. For the first time in her life, she felt sophisticated and grown up. She could more than hold her own against any man in the park.

“Do you come to the park often?” he asked.

“You’re full of questions,” she said. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to ask strangers questions?”

“I didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

She smiled, liking him better than before. “It’s all right,” she said. “I don’t really mind.”

“My name’s Boyd Pitkin,” he said.

“Your name doesn’t really interest me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Rita Hayworth.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“I think so.”

“Are those diamonds you’re wearing?” he asked, pointing at the red-and-yellow bracelet Lou-Anne had given her.

“No, silly! Diamonds are clear and sparkly, like little pieces of ice.”

“Well, how would I know? I’m not an expert on diamonds.”

“Well, now you know.”

“Would you like to go someplace else?”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Someplace where we can be alone.”

“Why would I want to be alone with you?”

“Can you give me one good reason why not?”

“How do I know you’re not a murderer?”

“Do I really look like a murderer?”

She turned and looked at him closely. He needed a shave, but he looked clean and healthy. He wasn’t exactly handsome but his brown eyes were appealing and he had good teeth.

“Murderers don’t always look like murderers,” she said.

“I’ve got my car parked just over the hill,” he said. “Would you like to go for a drive?”

“I don’t believe you’ve got a car.”

He took keys out of his pocket and jingled them close to her face. “I’ll take you wherever you say.”

“No, thanks. I shouldn’t be talking to a strange man in the park. I have to go home now.”

“Well, it was lovely meeting you, Rita. Maybe we’ll meet again at some time in the distant future.”

“I doubt it,” she said with a saucy flip of her head to let him know she didn’t care one way or the other.

She was nearly home when she realized she didn’t have the money pouch. She ran breathlessly back to the park but, of course, the man she had been talking to was gone. Could the pouch have fallen to the ground? She fell to her knees and patted the ground all around the bench, moving all the loose leaves and dead grass out of the way, but the pouch was irrevocably gone and it was her fault! How could she go home and tell grandma how stupid and careless she had been? It would put her in her grave.

She looked around for someone who might help her, but there was no one. She had the idea that if she saw a policeman and told him what happened, he might chase that man through the park, tackle him, and get the pouch back for her, all the while beating him with his club. She knew that wasn’t going to happen, though. Things like that don’t happen, except maybe in the movies.

Not knowing what else to do, she sat down, leaned forward with her nose touching her knees, and wailed like a wild animal. A dog and a couple of old ladies looked at her questioningly and then looked away.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

I Had a Bone
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

August had to look away as his father moved Mrs. Bone around the dance floor, weaving in and out among the other fools like a couple of mechanical dolls. His father, looking like an undertaker in his conservative blue suit, clutched Mrs. Bone to him as if he thought she might try to get away.

Something about them as a pair was all out of proportion. He was six inches taller than she was, but she was much wider. She wore a dress that exposed far too much of her body for a woman her age; her bare arms were massively flabby and white. The heels of her shoes were so high she walked like a tightrope walker.

When they returned from dancing, father pulled Mrs. Bone’s chair out for her and she turned and gave him a sweet smile before she sat down. He could be quite the gentleman when he wanted to be.

“Oh, my, that was fun, wasn’t it!” Mrs. Bone said. “We need to do that more often!” She picked up her martini and gulped it down.

“Not as young as I once was,” father said, breathing heavily and straightening his tie.

Mrs. Bone took a cigarette out of her bag; father lit it for her dutifully. “Would you like to dance with me, August?” she asked.

“I don’t know how,” he said.

“I can show you. It’s easy.”

“No, thank you.”

“You need to learn sometime.”

“I wouldn’t push it if I were you,” father said. “August is not exactly the dancing type.”

“Oh, I see!” Mrs. Bone said, looking confused.

“While you were dancing I was wondering something, Mrs. Bone,” August said.

“Yes?” Mrs. Bone said brightly, obviously pleased that August was interested enough to address her directly and ask a question.

“Where is your husband? Where is Mr. Bone? Did he die?”

“August!” father said. “That’s enough!”

“What did I say?”

“That’s not a question you need to be asking.”

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Bone said. “Of course he’s curious. I’m not a widow, August. Mr. Bone and I were divorced five years ago.”

“Don’t most divorced women go back to the name they had before they were married?”

“Some do, I suppose. I didn’t because I have three children. They naturally kept their father’s name and it would have been confusing for me to have a different name.”

“Oh. Well, where are they now? Your children, I mean.”

“They’re staying with their aunt this evening.”

“That’s enough questions, August!” father said.

“No, it’s all right,” Mrs. Bone said equably. “We’re just getting acquainted.”

“Are they boys or girls?”

“I have three lovely daughters.”

She’s running true to form, August thought. So typical, so conventional, right on down the line. After being in her company for ten minutes, you know everything there is to know about her.

“My youngest, Bitsy, is eight. Then Charlaine is eleven. Evie, my eldest, is fourteen, the same age as you.”

“I’m fifteen,” August said.

“Oh, yes, you recently had a birthday, didn’t you?”

Mrs. Bone was on her fourth martini and, while August didn’t know much about drinking, he knew it was starting to affect her behavior. She had a silly grin on her face; he found himself thinking that if somebody were to slap her across the mouth, really hard, the grin would still be there.

“They’re lovely children,” father said. Only August heard the insincerity in his voice.

“I’m so proud of them,” Mrs. Bone said. “And I can’t wait for you to meet them, August. I’ve told them all about you.”

“Why did you do that?”

“Well, they’ve met your father and they’re naturally curious about you.”

“That’s funny, because I’m not the least bit curious about them.”

Father gave him a warning look and Mrs. Bone laughed merrily. Father was going to reprimand August for his tactlessness, but just then the waiter arrived with their dinner on a big tray.

Before they ate, father ordered a bottle of the “best” champagne. He and Mrs. Bone drank it like water, on top of the martinis they had already had.

While August ate his fried chicken and au gratin potatoes, he stole little glances at Mrs. Bone. She ate her lobster thermidor like a starving lumberjack, butter sauce dripping down her chin. For several minutes she said nothing as she stuffed the food into her mouth.

“Oh, this is such a lovely place!” she gushed. “I’m so glad we came!”

“The food is certainly good,” father said.

After he finished his steak, father and Mrs. Bone danced again. When they returned to the table after their dance, father was pale and sweating.

“I’m going outside to get some fresh air,” he said.

“Do you want me to come with you, honey?” Mrs. Bone asked.

“No, you stay here and keep August company.”

After father left, Mrs. Bone turned to August and smiled. She was drunk and her lipstick was smeared almost up to her nose from her dinner. “So, August,” she said, “tell me about yourself. What do you like to do when you’re not in school?”

“Well, in addition to trying to resurrect the dead, I like deep-sea diving and competitive knife-throwing.”

“Oh, you sly boots!” she said. “I know you’re joshing me! Your father told me all about your over-active imagination.”

“Do you know my mother committed suicide?”

“Yes, I believe your father mentioned that fact.”

“She was emotionally disturbed.”

“That’s so sad.”

“I was in the sixth grade. I found her when I came home from school. She was hanging from a rafter in the garage. It was Halloween so when I first saw her I thought she was a Halloween decoration. I called for an ambulance but of course it was too late. She had been dead for hours.”

“That must have been so difficult for you. Not only losing your mother that way, but for you to be the one to find her.”

“Yes, it was difficult. I’ve been a difficult boy ever since, and when I’m grown up I’ll be a difficult man.”

“I’m so sorry for you.”

“Oh, don’t be. I’m fine.”

“I wonder if I should go check on your father. He was awfully pale.”

“Oh, no, he’s fine, I’m sure. He’ll find somebody out there to have a smoke with and forget about us for ten or fifteen minutes.”

“I think your father needs a woman in his life,” Mrs. Bone said. “A man without a woman is just a boat adrift at sea.”

“Did you know he’s a homosexual?”

“What?”

“Are you not aware that my father is a homosexual?”

“Why, no! He hasn’t mentioned anything like that to me.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think it’s why my mother killed herself. He preferred man love to her love.”

“This is not just another figment of your imagination, is it?”

“Are you implying I’d make something like that up?”

“I’m not implying anything, but I’d like to find out for myself if it’s true or not.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“Would he tell me if I did?”

“Probably not. He’d say he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Well, if it’s true, it’s a dirty trick to play on me.”

“I don’t think he looks at it that way.”

“I might thank you later for telling me,” Mrs. Bone said, “or I might not.”

When father came back to the table, he was ashen and seemed barely able to stand on his feet. “Too much to drink,” he said. “I’m not feeling well. I need to go home and lie down.”

Mrs. Bone stood up. “Do you need to see a doctor?” she asked.

“No, I’ll be fine as soon as I get home.”

Father paid the check and they went outside to the car. Mrs. Bone offered to drive home, but father said he could make it. He drove to Mrs. Bone’s dark house and parked the car out front and turned off the engine.

“You don’t have to walk me to my door,” Mrs. Bone said.

“I will, anyway. There might be some evildoers lurking in the bushes.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

August sat in the back seat and waited while father escorted Mrs. Bone to the door. He was only gone for a couple of minutes and when he came back he said nothing.

When they got home, August went into his room and changed into his pajamas and got into bed and started reading. He could hear father retching in the bathroom until he went to sleep.

In the morning August was sitting in the kitchen eating toast and corn flakes when father came down from upstairs wearing only his bathrobe. He set about making himself some coffee.

“Do you feel all right now?” August asked.

“I think so. I got all the liquor purged from my system. If I had thought, I would have known that six martinis topped off with large quantities of champagne would make me sick.”

“Glad you’re feeling better.”

“What did you think of Ida?”

“Who?”

“Mrs. Bone.”

“Her name is Ida Bone?”

“That’s right.”

“Ida Bone. I had a bone.”

“What did you think of her?”

“I didn’t like her.”

“Why not?”

“Her perfume smells like the stuff they use at school to clean vomit up off the floor.”

“That’s not a good enough reason for not liking her.”

“Well, I think she’s a phony. She tries to look younger than she is and she gives me the creeps. She looks like a pig in drag.”

“What did you say to her last night in the restaurant while I was away from the table?”

“Nothing. Small talk. She asked me what I like to do in my spare time.”

“You weren’t rude to her?”

“Of course not.”

“When I dropped her off at her house last night she acted funny. She seemed to want to get away from me. She slammed the door in my face and didn’t even say good night.”

“I think you can cross her off the list and go on to the next one.”

“There is no ‘next one’. I think I’m done with trying to find a substitute for your mother.”

“Fine by me,” August said. He looked at his father to see if he was going to say more, but he just sighed and sat down wearily at the table.

“I’m going to be gone until Monday night,” father said.

“Where are you going?”

“To the lake with Tom and Brett. They asked me, so I figured ‘why not’.”

“Brett is the one with the black beard?”

“Yeah.”

“You like him?”

“Yeah, I like him.”

“Do you like him a lot?”

“What are you saying, August?”

“Nothing.”

“Will you be all right here by yourself?”

“Sure, I love having the house to myself.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. I have to read a book for English and write a report.”

“That doesn’t sound like much fun.”

“I’ll manage to work in some fun.”

When father went upstairs to get ready to leave at noon, August felt a sense of accomplishment, of a job well done. He had played the situation with Mrs. Bone like a virtuoso. He was sure now that father would never want to see her again, and he would have bet all his money, if he had any, that Mrs. Bone was finished with father. He turned on the TV and lay down on the couch. A movie that he wanted to see was just starting. He’d watch it through to the end, and, after that, the possibilities for enjoyment were limitless.

Copyright 2023 by Allen Kopp

 

I Want People to See Us Together
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~ 

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

Gilbert “Gil” Kreutzer was forty-eight years old. He thought he still looked young until he looked in the mirror and saw the gray pallor of his skin, the dark circles around his eyes and a hairline that receded more with every passing year. Young was not the word for the way he looked. Ghoulish was more like it. Better to stay away from mirrors.

It was now thirty years since high school. He lived in the same house and thought the same thoughts as he did then. He slept in the same bed, with the same mattress and box springs, and wore the same clothes and shoes. The bathroom was the same and the kitchen. The pictures on the wall in his room were the same, as were the dresser and chest of drawers. The closet door, badly in need of painting, still had the same crack. The carpet, still the same ugly green, had the same unidentifiable stains. When he chose to be honest with himself, he saw that his life was badly in need of change, of forward movement.

His father had died, his sister and his brother. He was the last male heir in a line that went back to the stone age. When he died, without issue, the line was finished. He sensed the disapproval of all the male progenitors, including the two that he knew, and it put a smile on his face. He welcomed extinction.

His mother was over eighty, still much the same as when he was a small child. The skin sagged more, the shoulders drooped, the hair silvered, but she was still as indomitable as ever. She would live to be a hundred at least. She might be the first woman in history to not die at all.

Night after night he sat and watched TV with her in the darkened living room. She liked the westerns and the love stories, the game shows and the musical variety. Anything light and wholesome, life-affirming. She didn’t like movies—they were mostly too long for her—or anything with smart-mouthed children, sexual innuendo or off-color jokes. Dancing was all right, as long as it was the wholesome kind, like the dancing cowboys in Oklahoma.

Whenever Gil suggested watching a program that interested him, something other than the usual fare, she agreed, but when he saw after a few minutes that she was bored and unhappy, he turned back to what he knew she would like. He could have gone on to bed or gone into another room and read a book, but she didn’t like watching TV by herself. What’s the use of having a family, she would say, if I have to sit here all by myself in the dark?

She had given up driving, so he had to take her wherever she wanted to go, whether it was to the cemetery to visit the graves of loved ones or to the beauty parlor to get her hair re-crimped and re-tinted. He usually waited in the car at the beauty parlor, no matter how long it took, no matter how hot or cold the weather. He absolutely refused to wait inside and have all the ladies looking at him, thinking what a mama’s boy he was.

His mother was at the age where a lot of her friends and distant relatives were dying. Trips to funeral homes or to various unfamiliar churches became commonplace. He sat through services honoring people he never saw or heard of before. These affairs were always accompanied by introductions and hand-shaking with people whose hands he would have preferred not to touch.

On Saturday morning, he did the grocery shopping, but his mother always accompanied him to make sure he got the most for his money. Don’t get that one, she’d say. Get this one. It’s twenty-nine cents less. If he wanted to buy a cake with white fluffy icing, she told him the sugar would make him jittery and would only add to his waistline. When you get older, she said, you gain weight easier and you can no longer eat the way you used to.

“Of course, mother,” he’d say. “I know you’re right. You’re always right.”

On Sunday, there was always church. He preferred to just drive her there and go back and pick her up an hour-and-a-half later, but she wouldn’t allow it. “I want you to go with me,” she’d say. “I don’t want to sit there by myself. Church is for families. I want people to see us together.”

So, he’d get up on Sunday morning, dress in either of his outdated suits, put on a dress shirt that was frayed at the collar and a clip-on tie that was thirty years old, and suffer through a long service that meant little to him. He tried to feel elevated or enlightened by what he heard and saw in church, but for him it just wasn’t there.

And then, when the service was concluded, he stood by and wore a tight smile as his mother greeted her old-lady friends. This is my wonderful son, she’d say. He’s the light of my life.

She thought she knew him so well, but there was, by necessity, a part of himself that he kept hidden.

It started in high school. There was a boy named Evan Alexander. He was one year older than Gil but seemed much older. He talked of improbable sexual experiences he had had with married women. Not only that, he openly experimented with drinking and drugs and didn’t seem to worry about the consequences. He was so handsome, so daring and different that Gil felt important, for the first time in his life, just having Evan as a friend.

One weekend Evan’s parents were out of town and Evan had the house to himself. He called Gil and asked if he’d like to come over. Gil couldn’t get there fast enough, telling his mother he was going to an impromptu boy-girl party. She didn’t approve, but she didn’t try to keep him from going.

Evan was drinking beer and smoking pot. Gil accepted a beer, but he was reluctant to smoke pot. Evan seemed like an expert. He showed Gil how to draw the smoke into his lungs. Gil choked and Evan laughed. Gil hated smoking pot but he pretended to like it because he didn’t want Evan to stop being his friend.

After two more beers, Gil’s inhibitions began to melt away. They went into Evan’s bedroom and closed the door. They smoked another joint and Evan took his pornography collection out of the closet and showed it to Gil. Gil had never seen pornography before. He was embarrassed, but not to the point where he wanted to leave.

Evan asked Gil if he had ever thought about doing the things shown in the pictures. Gil had heard about boys doing things with each other, but he never expected to be offered the opportunity to do them himself. He ended up staying the whole night.

When he got home in the morning, his mother was distraught because he had been gone all night and hadn’t bothered to phone. She was just on the point of calling the hospitals, she said. He told her an improbable story about having to stay the night with a friend who was sick and afraid to be alone. She knew he was lying. She barely spoke to him for two weeks and turned her back on him whenever he came into the room.

He went to Evan’s house several more times when Evan’s parents were away. He thought about Evan all the time. When the phone rang, his heart skipped a beat. He was grateful to Evan above all things for letting him discover his own true nature. He knew now what had been bothering him through all his growing-up years. When people found out the kind of person he was, they would call him names and think ill of him, but he didn’t care. His mother, if she knew, would go to bed and die. He didn’t care about that, either.

Then graduation came and Evan was finished with high school. He landed a job in California and went away, vowing never to return. Gil didn’t want to believe that he would never see Evan again. He wrote chatty, confiding letters, even going so far as suggest that he himself come to California so the two of them could continue their friendship, but Evan wasn’t receptive to the idea.

There were others after Evan, all of them easily forgotten. None of them meant to Gil what Evan had meant. In his mid-twenties, Gil decided from that moment on that he would live the life of a celibate. He didn’t want to go through life looking for another Evan and never finding him.

All the dull years went by and Gil found himself getting perilously to fifty. He didn’t want to be fifty any more than he had wanted to be forty. He had nothing to show for all the years he had lived. He had to do something, he believed, or his life was over.

He bought himself a computer and taught himself how to use it. It would help relieve the tedium of television and of being alone all the time with his mother. She didn’t approve of his having a computer because it kept him occupied in another room away from her, but she managed to keep her complaining on the subject to a minimum. After a while, he joined, anonymously, an online club for like-minded men. His mother never went near the computer, so he felt safe in indulging in these, for him, secret activities.

He began corresponding with a man in Russia named, appropriately, Sergei. Sergei told Gil all about his life in Russia. He was thirty-six years old and had never married. His mother and father were dead. He had learned English as a child in a private school run by English nuns. He lived in a house with two older brothers and one sister. He was lonely and still hoped to find the one person on earth who was right for him. The picture he sent showed a smiling, handsome, dark-haired, young man standing in front of a falling-down house.

Gil located the one picture of himself that he thought was flattering and sent it to Sergei. As soon as Sergei saw the picture, he said, he felt an instant connection.

Gil told Sergei the truth about himself, no matter how distasteful. He didn’t want any secrets between them. All his family was dead and he had always lived alone with his mother, who would probably never die. He told him his true age and that he only had a high school education. He read books and liked foreign films but he didn’t consider himself very smart. And, yes, he also hoped to find the one person in life who would make his heart sing.

Sergei wanted to come to America and become a citizen. He was proud to know a man like Gil, he said; it made him want to make his home in America that much more. Gil wrote that if he wanted it badly enough, he would make it happen.

Gil and Sergei corresponded for several months. Gil looked forward to Sergei’s messages. If a day passed without a message from Sergei, he felt downhearted and irritable; he had to restrain himself to keep from snapping at his mother whenever she asked him pointless questions.

Then Sergei sent a message saying he had lost his job in the car manufacturing plant where he worked. His brothers told him he couldn’t go on living in the house with them unless he paid his share of the rent and paid for the food he ate. It’s a cruel world, he said. I wish I was dead.

The time was perfect for him to come to America. It was the one thing he had always wanted to do. He believed it was his destiny. There was just one thing standing in his way. He didn’t have enough money for the plane fare to cross the vast ocean; he needed about twenty-two hundred dollars. If Gil could lend him that much money, Sergei would come to him and they would be together. Of course, he would pay back the money just as soon as he could. He heard that good-paying jobs were easy to come by in America, that everything was better in America.

Gil had three thousand dollars in the bank, all the money he had in the world. If he sent twenty-two hundred to Sergei, he would have eight hundred left. It would be enough for them to go away together. They would both get jobs.

They’d go out West somewhere. They would drive day and night, eating in roadside diners and spending the night in small, out-of-the-way motels. Sergei would be seeing America for the first time. It would be the best time that either one of them ever had. He’d send his mother a postcard to let her know he was fine but was never coming back. She’d be hurt at first but would come to accept that it as the natural order of things for an almost-fifty-year-old son to leave his mother.

He went to the bank and transferred twenty-two hundred dollars to the place in Russia that Sergei had designated. He felt a thrill when the woman at the bank told him the transaction went through successfully.

He went right home right away, his heart singing, and sent Sergei a message telling him the money was on its way. Please let me know when you have it, he said, and on what day you plan to come. I will pick you up at the airport. Even though I feel we already know each other so well, I can’t wait for the moment when we finally meet in person.

At the supper table Gil’s mother complained of a pain in her back. She was afraid she had kidney stones. She was going to go to bed right after supper. Gil was uncharacteristically happy and smiled at everything she said. She didn’t notice anything different about him.

After his mother went to bed, Gil began putting things in his battered old suitcase. Just the necessary items: clean socks and underwear, two new toothbrushes and toothpaste. Of course, if Sergei needed anything, he’d be more than welcome to use what was Gil’s. Better not to take too much, though. Travel light.

The next day he didn’t hear from Sergei or the day after that. On the third day, he sent Sergei another message asking him if he received the money. By nightfall he was dismayed but not alarmed that Sergei didn’t write back.

On the fifth day he was worried that something might have happened to Sergei. Maybe he was sick or hurt and there was nobody to let him know. He tried to be patient but it wasn’t easy. He expected things to happen quickly after he sent the money. What could be causing the delay?

After one week, he awoke with the bitter realization of what had happened to his twenty-two hundred dollars. Sergei didn’t exist. The whole thing had been a ploy to steal money from him, and he fell into the trap like a know-nothing fool. There were, of course, people who made their living that way, swindling money out of unsuspecting Americans. Once they have your money you never hear from them again.

For several days, he stayed in his room with the door locked. He turned the computer off and wouldn’t turn it back on. He didn’t bathe or brush his teeth. He knew his mother was mad at him and he didn’t want to be in the same room with her; he didn’t want to hear the claptrap coming from her TV. Late at night after she had gone to bed, he crept into the kitchen without turning on any lights and got himself a sandwich or a piece of fruit. He felt like nothing—less than nothing. He felt like a ghost.

He began vomiting blood. He was dying, he knew, and he didn’t much care. He was amused by the thought of his mother having a yard sale after he was dead to sell his clothes, books and all his possessions. Nobody would want anything that had ever belonged to him. He didn’t want it himself. It was all worthless junk.

He had a disturbing dream in which he shared the same casket with the rotting corpse of his father, dead fifteen years. He screamed and clawed at the sides and ceiling of the casket for somebody to come and let him out, but he knew it was no use. Nobody would hear him and if they did they wouldn’t care.

After he made up his mind to kill himself, he began to feel better. He got out of bed, took a shower and put on clean clothes. He left the house at seven in the morning, before his mother was even out of bed. Realizing he was hungry for the first time in days, he stopped at a pancake house and ate a huge, calorie-laden breakfast.

He drove all over town, to the places he knew as a child. The school where he had attended grade school was still there and didn’t look much different; the same swings, sliding board and merry-go-round, the same blacktop and chain-link fence. He drove to the house his family had lived in up until his fifteenth year, when they were all still alive, and stopped and parked on the street and just looked at the house until an old woman walking a dog began giving him the evil eye.

He spent some time in the park, sitting on a quiet bench in the sun. He regretted all over the loss of his money and how guilelessly he had parted with it. There had always been people like him in the world on which others—Sergei, if such a person even existed—had profited. But the good thing was that he had learned his lesson. He would never be a victim again. Of anyone.

In the attic was a network of cross beams and also old ropes hanging down, left over from the previous owners. It would be so easy for him to put one of the ropes around his neck and jump off a chair into the oblivion that he desired. His mother would be the one to find him, of course, but it would take her a while because she never had any reason to go to the attic. The smell of his rotting body would probably be the thing that would give him away.

There were many ways that a person might commit suicide. Jumping from a tall building? No, too gruesome and too public. Gunshot to the head? No, too bloody, and what if you don’t die right away? Pills? How many and what kind? Getting into a bathtub full of water and slashing the wrists? Well, that’s a possibility but it would hurt terribly. He wanted something clean, painless and aesthetic.

He had read in the newspaper about the son of a successful novelist who bought a length of rubber hose from a hardware store and drove far out into the country away from his home and connected the rubber hose from the exhaust pipe into the car’s interior through an almost-closed window. Breathing in the car’s exhaust through the rubber hose killed the novelist’s son, and it must have been quick, too.

On his way home, Gil stopped and bought a thirty-foot length of rubber hose. When he went to pay for it, the old man running the store asked him what he intended to use it for, but he said he was buying it for somebody else and didn’t know its intended use.

With the rubber hose in the trunk of his car where his mother would never see it, ready to be used whenever he wanted it, he felt calm and almost happy. He wasn’t just going to let the years roll over him anymore and not fight back. He had a plan and he was going to put that plan into action. He had even thought of where he would go to do it, a forgotten place far out of town on a country road, on a river, where they used to go on picnics when he was little. People went there long ago, but nobody went there now.

Now that he had decided on the place, he had only to decide on the day and time.

When he got home after being gone all day, the house was quiet and dark. His mother was in her room with the door closed. When he went into his own bedroom, he noticed right away that something was different. The computer was turned on; he hadn’t had it on for about ten days. The chair of his desk was pulled out and his papers were rifled.

He was putting things back in order when his mother appeared in the doorway. Her hair was disheveled and her pale face tear-stained.

“I want you out of this house,” she said.

“What?”

“I said I want you to get out of my house.”

“Is something wrong?”

“I know what you are and I know what you’ve been doing behind my back.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not the only one who can use a computer, you know.”

“You’ve been spying on me?”

“You’re a filthy abomination.”

“You had no right to spy on me.”

“I have every right to know what’s going on in my house.”

“I believe it’s my house, too,” he said.

“I’m glad your father is dead. It would have broken his heart to know what his son had become.”

“I’m not going to fight with you, mother.”

She went toward him with her fists doubled up. She was going to strike him in the face but instead broke down in wailing sobs. “How could you do such a thing to your mother?”

“Whatever I did, mother, it was none of your business, and it had nothing to do with you.”

“I want you out of this house. Tonight!”

“I’m not going anywhere, mother!” he shouted as she turned and went back to her bedroom and slammed the door.

His hands were shaking and his mouth dry. He hated ugly scenes. He was reminded of the terrible fights she used to have with his mild-mannered father. He always believed that his father went to his grave before his time because of her.

Not knowing what else to do, wanting to get his thoughts in order and wanting to be out of the house, he drove to a seedy bar on the other side of the park, sat at the bar and drank three beers in quick succession. The noise in the bar, the smoke and the music were somehow comforting to him.

He went back home at nine o’clock, expecting that she might have the door barred to him in some way, but he let himself in with his key and saw to his relief that nothing had changed. No lights were on. She was still in her room with the door closed.

He locked himself in his room and went to bed as if nothing had happened. He slept soundly and awoke to the sunlight streaming in and the birds singing. He put his bathrobe on over his pajamas and went into the kitchen and cooked bacon, eggs and French toast, enough for two.

By nine o’clock, his mother still wasn’t up. He didn’t hear her moving around in her room; he didn’t hear the toilet flush. He went to the door of her room and knocked gently.

“Mother, I’ve cooked breakfast!” he said.

Finding the door unlocked, he opened it and went in. The room was dark and smelled faintly of something foul. She was lying on the floor at the foot of the bed.

At first he thought she was dead but when he saw her still breathing, he laid her out flat, put a pillow under her head and covered her with her favorite yellow blanket. He went into the kitchen and called an ambulance.

He followed the ambulance to the hospital in his car and sat in a room of chairs until the middle of the afternoon before a doctor came out to tell him what was wrong.

“She’s had a massive stroke,” the doctor said. “It’s bad.”

“Will she recover?” Gil asked.

“I don’t think so. I don’t think she’ll last more than a few days.”

She died three days later. The funeral was well-attended by all the sobbing old ladies, bosom friends of his mother, that Gil had met, either at church or at the funerals of others. They all expressed their tearful condolences; a couple of them kissed him on the cheek. Some of them had spinster daughters or granddaughters they wanted him to meet.

The money from the sale of the house and all its furnishings, combined with Gil’s mother’s estate, brought him enough money to live comfortably without having to work for a paycheck ever again. He donated his clothes, shoes, coats, hats, suits, socks, underwear—even his pajamas—to charity and bought everything new. Out with the old. In with the new.

He bought an extravagant red car with a powerful engine his mother would have hated. He also bought an expensive set of suitcases and filled them with books, childhood mementoes, pictures and other things from the house he wanted to keep.

He loaded the suitcases into the back of his car, all his past life fit snugly between the front and back seats. From inside his car, he gave one last, lingering look at the tidy brick house where he had lived all his life.

As he inserted his key into the ignition, a shadow under the maple tree in the front yard caught his attention. It was his mother standing there, looking at him with her everlasting disapproval. She clutched her chest with both hands and went down on one knee and looked at him imploringly. He waved at her cheerily and accelerated the car a little faster than was necessary.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp

Trust
~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp ~

The novel Trust by Hernan Diaz is made up of four parts. The best part is the first part, the part called Bonds. It is reminiscent of the writing of Henry James and Edith Wharton. It’s a novel about a wealthy and powerful financier named Benjamin Rask and his ailing wife. It is supposedly a fictional account of the life of a man named Andrew Bevel, written by a writer named Harold Vanner. (You understand, don’t you, that none of these people are real people but are fictional constructs?)

The second part of the book is My Life and is supposedly written by the real Andrew Bevel. It’s supposed to “set the record straight” after the novel Bonds was released and became fairly popular. It isn’t nearly as interesting or as much fun to read as Bonds.

It isn’t until the third part of Trust that we learn how the four parts are interconnected. The third part is A Memoir, Remembered, supposedly written by a woman named Ida Partenza (again, a fictional construct created of Hernan Diaz). Ida Partenza is about twenty-one. She lives with her father, a radical Socialist, in the Bronx. When she applies for a secretarial job at a financial firm in Manhattan, she catches the eye of the wealthy financier Andrew Bevel. He likes her answers on tests she’s given, and he chooses her to write his story, to set the record straight about his life after the novel Bonds, which he believes to be all scurrilous lies. The new job is more than Ida expected and the pay is good. She hopes her new employer doesn’t find out that her father is a radical.

Andrew Bevel particularly wants Ida Partenza to clear up misconceptions about his late wife, who has died of cancer. In the book Bonds, you see, his wife was portrayed as a mental a patient who died from radical treatment in a sanitorium in Switzerland. Andrew Bevel doesn’t like that his wife, who was a socialite and a philanthropist, is portrayed as a mental patient.

Ida Partenza spends many hours with Andrew Bevel talking about his life. (And, no, there is no hint of a romance between them; he’s in his early sixties.) Ida discovers that, in her talks with Andrew Bevel, he marginalizes and misrepresents his late wife. He seems to want to prevent the world from knowing what his wife was really like. Exactly what is he trying to hide?

A Memoir, Remembered is the longest of the four parts of Trust. There’s so much back and forth between Ida Partenza and Andrew Bevel, and it goes on for so long that we end up not caring one way or the other. The better Ida Partenza comes to know Andrew Bevel, the more she fears and mistrusts him and realizes that he’s doing his late wife a disservice. Ho-hum.

The fourth and last “book” of the novel is called Futures, and it’s supposedly written by Mildred Bevel herself, the ailing wife of Andrew Bevel and is told in her first-person voice. It’s mercifully short and doesn’t add much to what has gone before. It’s mostly details about Mildred’s illness and her strange relationship with her odd husband. What fun.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp     

She Can Bake a Cherry Pie
~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp ~

(This short story has been published in The Literary Hatchet.)

It was spring and company was coming for dinner. Joyce prepared all the food herself. She thought it important to show her domestic side on this particular occasion since the company was Stan Witter, a friend of her brother’s and a most eligible bachelor.

Joyce was twenty-three and unmarried. All her old friends from high school were already married and had drifted away. She was the only one left behind. She had set a goal for herself to be married by twenty-five and have a home of her own. It was a goal that didn’t seem impossible of fulfillment, especially if things went well with Stan.

Stan was twenty-four, what Joyce considered the perfect age. He lived in a twelve-room, two-story brick house in town that came to him after his grandmother died, and he lived there alone. He must naturally want a wife to live in the house with him. Joyce supposed he was rich by most standards without having to work for what he had, but she didn’t care so much about money and wasn’t interested in him for that.

She knew him slightly in high school. He was a grade ahead of her, so she hardly ever had a chance to speak to him. He always stood out from the crowd, though. He was coolly handsome, with his dark hair, pale skin and green eyes. He didn’t bother himself with all the silly goings-on in high school, such as dating and girlfriends. He was quiet and shy, and any time Joyce saw him he was usually alone, reading a book or looking at the sky or seemingly thinking about things that other people never bothered to think about.

She had managed to mostly put Stan Witter out of her mind until he and her brother, Curt, became best friends and Curt began mentioning Stan in conversation at the dinner table. They went to a football game together and a swim meet and then there were overnight trips to the lake or the city. Stan liked museums and plays and concerts. She didn’t understand why he would like Curt and would want to spend time with him—they were so different—but she figured there must be a side to Curt that she had never seen. Maybe Curt could come to like those things too.

Joyce left the hot kitchen—the ham was still in the oven and everything else was ready. All she had to do with change her clothes and comb her hair and put on a little makeup. She sat down in front of the mirror and regarded her reflection with hopelessness.

The thing about her that she believed held her back was her eyes. They didn’t work in concert. The left eye was all right, but the right eye moved about uncontrollably in its socket. Those who knew her hardly noticed the aberrant movement of the eyes, but to anybody else she looked slightly crazed or demonic. A boy at church said she was evil. She knew, or felt, that people were always looking at her and for that reason kept her eyes downcast.

When Stan arrived for dinner at the appointed hour and Joyce saw he was wearing a jacket and tie, she was glad she had taken the extra effort with her own appearance.

“Why so dressed up, cowboy?” Curt asked. “We’re strictly informal here!”

Mother greeted Stan effusively, taking his hand in both of hers. “I’m so glad that you and my son have become good friends,” she said. “I haven’t always approved of some of his friends in the past.”

“Mother!” Curt said. “I’m sure Stan doesn’t want to hear that! I know I don’t!”

Joyce passed around a tray containing little glasses of wine and after the wine had been drunk, it was time for dinner. Stan and Curt took their places at the table in the dining room and Joyce and mother brought the food in from the kitchen.

“This certainly looks wonderful!” Stan said.

“I hope you like ham,” Joyce said, speaking for the first time since he arrived.

“Of course I like ham.”

“I’m starved,” Curt said. “I haven’t eaten all day.”

“Whose fault is that but your own?” mother said.

After everybody had their plates filled, mother insisted on a little of word of grace: “Bless us, oh Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord.”

“A-men!” Curt said.

“I hope you don’t mind the prayer,” mother said.

“Of course not,” Stan said.

“Some people are funny about those things.”

“Not me.”

“He’s a regular all-American guy!” Curt said.

“How do you like living way out here?” Stan asked. “Outside of town, I mean.”

“It’s quiet,” Curt said.

“It gets a little lonely sometime,” mother said, “especially since my husband died two years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Stan said.

“On that cheerful note,” Curt said, “pass me some more of those sweet potatoes.”

During a lull in the conversation, Joyce cleared her throat and said, “When Curt mentioned that you were coming for dinner, I remembered that I had known you in high school.”

“That’s right!” Stan said. “I remember now.”

“All these years have passed.”

“Not so many. Seems like yesterday.”

“You graduated a year before I did, I believe.”

“Yeah, I guess I did.”

When Joyce saw that Stan was looking at her, she looked down and began rearranging the rolls on the plate. “Would anybody like anything else?” she asked.

“How about some dessert?” Curt said.

She went into the kitchen to get the cherry pie and when she came back, mother said, “We wouldn’t have had this lovely dinner if it hadn’t been for Joyce. She did the whole thing on her own.”

“She did?” Stan said, smiling. “Well, everything is just perfect. It couldn’t have been better.”

Joyce flushed with pleasure at the compliment and in the next moment she was afraid that Stan would notice her eyes and run screaming from the house.

After dinner, Joyce and mother began clearing the table, while Curt took Stan down to the barn to show him the horse he had bought. He paid less for it than it was worth, he said, and hoped to sell it at a profit.

“I think it went well, don’t you?” mother said while they were washing the dishes.

“I guess so,” Joyce said.

“I think he likes you.”

“Who does?”

“Stan.”

“What makes you think that?”

“The way he looked at you.”

“He looked at you the same way.”

“I think the next step is he’ll call you and ask you out on a date and if that goes well, we’ll have him out to dinner again, maybe a barbecue. Then the two of you can go on a picnic somewhere. Picnics are a good chance for young lovers to get better acquainted.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, mother.”

She couldn’t help feeling hopeful, though. Having him to dinner was a good way to remind him, without being too obvious about it, that the two of them had been in high school together. Mother was right, though. The next move, if there was one, was up to him.

Mother was putting the clean dishes away and Joyce was stowing the leftovers in the refrigerator when the phone rang. It was the man calling about the horse that Curt hoped to sell.

Joyce volunteered to run down to the barn to get him. It would give her another chance to spend a minute or two in Stan’s presence before he went home.

She crossed the back yard, trying to keep from stepping in the mud. At the point where the back yard ended, the barn was about five hundred yards farther on.

As she approached the barn and was for the moment blinded by the sun, she didn’t see either Curt or Stan. She crossed the threshold of the barn and, in the dimness, saw the whiteness of Stan’s shirt.

He had removed his jacket. His pants were down around his ankles. He was leaning into Curt pushed up against the wall and the two of them were kissing passionately. Curt was alternately clutching Stan’s shoulders and the back of his head and unbuttoning his shirt.

In one instant it all became clear. It had really been clear all along but she refused to see it. There had been so many signs: Curt’s indifference toward girls, his obvious adulation of Stan, the trips together, Curt’s overnight stays at Stan’s house in town.

She wanted to get away before they saw her. She turned and began running back toward the house.

In the back yard was a sycamore tree with a huge horizontal limb about five feet off the ground. She had been dodging the limb her whole life. Not seeing anything—only wanting to get away—she struck her forehead on the limb, knocking her out cold.

The next thing she knew she was lying on her back in the mud and mother was kneeling beside her, delivering little slaps to her cheeks.

“What happened, dear?” mother asked. “Are you all right?”

“I must have hit my head,” Joyce said.

“Can you get up off the ground?”

Mother helped her into the house to a chair in the kitchen.

“You have a big welt on your forehead, dear. It’s going to swell something terrible, I know. I’m going to call the doctor.”

“No, I’m all right,” Joyce said.

“Do you feel dizzy or anything?”

“My head hurts.”

“Well, let me at least wash the wound. That’s all I can do now. I think you do need to see the doctor, though.”

“No, I’m all right,” Joyce said. “I’m going to lie down for a little while until the pain in my head stops.”

“Do you want me to help you into your room?”

“No.”

“Isn’t there anything I can do?”

“You can leave me alone for once and stop your fussing! I said I’m all right!”

She stayed in her room for two hours and when she came out, mother was anxiously waiting to know how she was.

“I feel like I’ve been hit in the head with a sledgehammer,” she said.

“Stan was sorry he missed you,” mother said. “He wanted me to tell you how much he enjoyed your dinner. He said your cherry pie was the best he ever ate.”

“I don’t care what Stan thinks.”

“What?”

“Where’s Curt?”

“He left with Stan. They were going to see a movie in town. They’re spending the night together at Stan’s house.”

“Of course,” Joyce said. “How could I have been so stupid?”

Mother wasn’t hearing what Joyce was saying, though. She was looking closely at her face. She took her by the arm and led her into the kitchen where the light was stronger.

“Look at me,” mother said.

“Why?”

“Just look at me.”

She sat Joyce down in the chair and took her by the chin and tilted her head, first one way and then the other.

“I never thought it possible!” mother said.

“What?”

She gave Joyce the hand mirror and told her to take a good look at herself.

“Ugh!” Joyce said. “I’ve always wanted a lump right in the middle of my forehead. I wonder how long it’ll take to go away.”

“Not that,” mother said. “Look at your eyes.”

“What about my eyes?”

For the first time since she was eight years old, her right eye and her left eye worked in concert. She stood up and took a few steps, looking at her eyes in the mirror. She danced from the table to the refrigerator and over to the sink.

“My eyes are normal!” she said. “As normal as yours! As normal as Curt’s! As normal as anybody’s!”

“It’s a miracle,” mother said. “It was the blow to the head that did it.”

“I’d call and tell somebody if there was somebody to call.”

“The next time Stan comes for dinner,” mother said, “you won’t be self-conscious about looking him in the face.”

She continued to look at herself in the mirror. She wanted to surround herself with mirrors. Even the mention of Stan’s name wasn’t able to detract from the happiness she felt.

Copyright © 2023 by Allen Kopp