by D Keith Mano
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forest preserve). I got on the Deegan, then I headed west, across
the George Washington Bridge, toward Route 80 and the Delaware Water Gap. But it was rush hour, a tractor trailer had stalled atop the Alexander Hamilton ramp, and it took me 75 minutes
just to reach the G.W. By that time I could barely sit—I rose
up/overthe steering wheel like some jock bringing a loser home.
I was frantic.
But at least I didn’t have to worry about Kay. She had gone
shopping in Manhattan, the baby-sitter said.
Music seemed absurd under the circumstances. Talk shows
were inane. Anyhow—there is nothing more conducive to morbid thought than a car ride—I pestered my reasoning, I came to intemperate conclusions. I thought these were excessive, the
result of a heated sensibility, but they were not excessive. They
were, if anything, underdrawn.
For a while I pretended the trip might turn out to be a positive
development. I ’d be alone with Ethel in an isolated setting. I
wouldn’t have to consider Kay and the children. And, given
Pearl’s insights, I could demand an audit of all accounts. I now
knew that Ethel had had access to Big Marty’s. Colavecchia and
Daniels were unaware of that. It was obstruction of justice on
her part. We all had cause enough to be angry with Ethel. But,
no, I wasn’t yet ready to accuse her of murder. My mind could
not sustain that premise. She was a nursing mother, for God’s
sake.
Still, as Route 80 was pulled beneath me, I recognized that
Ethel had had not only access but opportunity as well. She was
at The Car on the night Bubbles died. She had inspected the
women’s locker room. Ethel could easily have placed strychnine
where Bubbles—an inveterate pill eater—might have found it.
Or laced her drink. And as for Berry—Berry told Mr. and Mrs.
Ottomanelli that her boss had called at 4:30 a.m. Ostensibly she
meant me. But Ethel was Berry’s ultimate employer. If Ethel
had called . . . well, if she had exercised her authority or adduced some persuasive reason, Berry would certainly have come down to The Car. In fact, I realized, only Ethel (or I) could’ve
drawn Berry from bed at that hour. And I hadn’t called Berry.
These were mere exercises in abstract logic, provocative as
they may have been. It was in the area of motive that a blackness—it was almost a fainting spell—hooded me. We were talking about the three women with whom I had been most
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associated—at least in Pearl's mind. And Pearl was Ethel’s eye
at The Car. As the miles clicked off, I came to understand (just
in a prefigurative way) that Bubbles and Tanya and Berry had
been killed because of me. I had been blaming myself all along—
the-Priest-whose-sins-are-visited-on-everyone—but that blame
had been a kind of self-indulgent melodrama. Now I thought—
My God, I did. It’s coming true. I am the motive behind those
deaths.
For just then, while crossing the Delaware, I fingered my
mustache. And, dully, knew. I was Tony for Ethel. I was Tony
for her children. I remembered how Ethel, standing at poolside,
had flashed her private parts. There was a hideous sexuality at
play—Tony, in my person, had been unfaithful to Ethel with
Bubbles and Ihnya and, oh, poor, decapitated Berry. Berry, who
had presumed to wear a G-string that said BOSS LADY in the
boss lady’s bar.
I am my brother’s keeper, I thought. I ’ve kept Tony alive. But
only in Ethel's mind. For, by that time, if not long before, I had
conceded the fact: my brother was dead.
Predictably, as darkness came down, I got lost over and over
again. My concentration was permeable, frail. Part of me, I
guess, hoped never to reach a destination. I was somewhat familiar with Route 209 north of Stroudsburg. As a teenager, I had gone white-water rafting on the Delaware several times. It’s
a lamentable highway. The speed-limit varies and, because it is
often both curved and populous, good time cannot be made. In
my impatience, I decided to drive the hypotenuse of a highway
right triangle. I turned off 209, onto Route 739, heading to
Lord’s Valley and Route 84. It was a miscalculation.
Deer threw themselves at me. I killed, I think, a possum. The
pavement was narrow and banked for self-destruction. Then I
caught up to a lazy, obstreperous thunderstorm. Rain turned my
windshield to melting glycerin. Hail fell. It’s a sign, I said aloud.
A sign to slow down. And, finally, I had to pull over. I put my
seat belt on then: I had been driving without it. A challenge to
all the forces aimed my way.
Cahoga wasn’t, strictly speaking, a place. It was more idea
than location—a general theory that included whole square miles
of isolated bam and lakeside cabin. There was a sign that said
WELCOME TO CAHOGA on both sides. As though Cahoga
existed only in the thickness of the sign’s metal. But Cahoga
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was everywhere, too: Cahoga Lake and East Cahoga Road and
Cahoga Real Estate and Cahoga Plumbing Supply—but no Cahoga people. House lights shone—high on hills, behind barking dogs. At last, by pure chance, I hit West Copper Lake Drive.
And rode for 20 minutes in the wrong direction on it.
By that time, I now realize, I had half circled Copper Lake.
I didn’t know it, but West Copper Lake Drive was about to
become East Copper Lake Drive very near Ethel’s house. Instead, uncertain and impulsive, I made a tight U-turn, then headed back the way I had come. As a result I circumscribed
the lake, just about. And when West Copper became East, it
was at number 3 4 8 .1 still had almost ten miles to cover.
And, of course, I passed right by 16 East. The mailbox had
an I and an L and parts of an S and an N painted on it. Not
much else. There was no number at all. So, when I came to 14
East, I had to make yet another U-turn on Copper Lake Drive.
Ethel’s house was at the end of a long, pot-holed dirt lane. There
were no lights on. I had missed her: if, in fact, she had been
there that day at all.
My hips were locked in the sharp residue of tension. I could
scarcely stand upright. The night was soft, moist: it smelled of
the earth they keep baitworms in. I could hear a laryngitic frog—
presumably Copper Lake lay just behind Ethel’s place. I felt
foolish: her absence seemed to refute my case. There was—at
the far comer of the headlight beam—a swing set, a red slide
and a sandbox. These homely items had a stabilizing effect on
me. I thought that I ’d been wrong: and I was glad of it.
Still, I went up to the house. It was a glorified A-frame, done
in ersatz Swiss Chalet. A wide redwood sun deck circled the
place—one comer held an unfilled jacuzzi. Ethel fed birds, I
saw: that by itself seemed to exonerate her. There was a rocking
horse on the deck. And a hammock on a metal frame: Tbny had
read Sports Illustrated in it, I was sure. I knocked on the glass
front door. It didn’t concern the frog: he continued to quack. I
; wiped my face. Then I walked back to my car.
Reluctant to start driving back at once, I sat on the ticking,
warm car hood. It was breezy: pine branches shushed me. The
headlights picked out a half cord of wood. Split logs lay on either
side of a big stump. And I saw, then, on my mind’s screen, Tony
chopping. Ethel chopping. With, yes, an axe. Hairs on the back
of my neck rose. I slid off the hood. There, to my right, lay a
balled-up piece of pink Kleenex tissue. I bent down. It was dry.
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D. Keith Mano
The driveway held puddles, grass had wet my sneakers. But the
Kleenex was dry. Someone had been there since the thunderstorm. I had just missed Ethel.
I picked up a stone. Without announcing an intention to myself, I walked quickly back to the sun deck and up its short staircase. Yes, I had a sense of foreboding. Most of all, though,
I had simply come too far that day—too far to leave without
doing something. I took the stone and, in two precise chops, I
shattered the window nearest the front door lock. I reached in
behind the knob. I stopped.
A smell like the stench of Satan’s feces came from inside
Ethel’s house.
I backed to the porch rail. It was Rita all over again. The stink
of death, the stink of human corruption. In that huge, gamy
odor I could smell a perverse sensuality: as if, even at the end,
those who had died were marking their territory the way male
animals do. With a heady musk that rushed from that broken
window out, onto breezes, and across all Pennsylvania.
I staggered to the Lincoln. I had the BOSTON SUCKS
T-shirt in my trunk. Over this I poured a can of St. Pauli
Girl. Then I tied the whole sopping m uck across my nose—
I applied it like a poultice—and went back to the house.
There was a short entry way behind the door—coat racks and
a closet, an umbrella stand. Immediately after that I came to the
big A-frame room. Moonlight shone down through banked windows in the cathedral ceiling. It picked out an ominous shadow.
I stayed at the doorway, gagging even through the beer. I had
come quickly to the smell’s lair. It was here. My hand felt a
light switch.
Tony was black.
He sat nude on a barstool, staring up. His rotten flesh was
dark purplish gray. In places it shone with the juice of decomposition. In places Tony was already mummified. His lips had drawn back to express a stupid Peter Sellers grin. But the eyes
were gone.
A young girl stood on the bar in front of him. A rope was
slung under her armpits: Ethel had hoisted the body from a
bedroom loft railing above. Her name, we were told later, was
Leslie Torres: a 17-year-old Hispanic hitchhiking from Scranton
to New York. What she was doing here with Tony and Rita—
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when Ethel interrupted them—I haven’t the heart to speculate
about. She, Leslie, wore only a pink G-string. Her flesh was the
color of Tony’s. And it was fragile. My movement there disturbed its equilibrium. With a sloshing sound, Leslie fell. The rope had parted her decaying joints. She collapsed across Tony’s
knees, then slumped onto the floor. A large rodent ran from
behind the bar with something between its teeth.
In my will I ’ve asked to be cremated.
Tony was my brother, but I couldn’t bless him. I flipped the
ceiling light off, and I ran. I ran out of the house, down the
steps, past my car, almost to Copper Lake Drive. I would’ve
screamed, but I was afraid to let corruption enter my mouth.
Finally, I threw the BOSTON SUCKS T-shirt into the underbrush and hunkered down. I was not particularly sane at that moment. I gagged a couple of times—but I had eaten little and
could only hawk mucus up. It was the damned tableau that
horrified me—not murder itself, nor decomposition—but the
scurrilous theatricality of it all. Ethel’s passion, which I might
have sympathized with in some degree, was absorbed and negated by her gross exhibitionism. To kill in anger is one thing.
To humiliate the dead is perverse beyond perversity.
I went to the Lincoln. My hands weren’t shaking. The engine
started easily. I fastened my seatbelt. I spread the map out. It
was nearing midnight. These things I accomplished with stunning calm. I knew, for instance, that it wasn’t time yet to call the police. They would only detain me: I had to get home. I
backed my Lincoln down/along the dirt lane. Everything had
become clear in my mind. All my reflexes were on call. I came
to Copper Lake Drive. I listened for traffic. Then, with a grace-
fill twist of the wheel, I backed out.
Into a three-foot ditch.
It broke then, my scrupulous calm. I yelled. I hit the car’s
ceiling with my sore fists. I even tried to pray—but my mind
was quicksilver, here and there, around and behind. I had a
fierce urge to urinate—but, when I zipped down, my groin was
in such spasm, it was so hard, that the release burned and sputtered. I held to the car fender and teased composure back into my nerves. I was close to prostration. And my left rear wheel
was hopelessly involved with the ditch.
If I live to be 100—if I experience war and famine and pes-
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tilence—still I will not endure three hours more dismaying than
the next three hours were. It was Monday night, and these were
weekend homes. On either side of me, for several miles, I had
seen no glimmer of habitation. I was isolated and without recourse. Ethel had no telephone and, in any case, I would never have reentered that house. So I chose to wait, engine running
on a quarter tank of gas, lights beamed toward the road. But
only one car came—a Jaguar convertible—and that roared past
before I could flag it down. After a while I just stood, arms
crossed, in the middle of Copper Lake Drive. I was prepared to
throw myself in front of any vehicle that might drive by.
Tony was dead. Neither he nor I had had much luck with our
sexuality. Somehow that unhappy word, fornication, settled in
my mind. I had run away from fornication to the priesthood.
And, in time, fornication had driven me, panting, away from
holy orders again. Tony had found sex to be lethal. We got away
with very little, we Wilsons. In the 17th century, I knew, each
orgasm was imagined to be a little death: men shortened their
life spans, used up vital essence, whenever seed spilled out.
Death into life, life into death. A paradox to construct the universe on. And here, now, fifty yards away, the ripe scent of my poor, lecherous brother crept out over the woods.
And, of course, I knew it wasn’t over. Kay had yet to die:
there would be symmetry in that. Ethel, if anyone, had a symm etrical m ind. I couldn’t— couldn’t, couldn’t—rem em ber whether I had told the babysitter where I was going. If I had,
and if the babysitter had relayed that information to Ethel, then
Ethel would realize her secret was out. (Perhaps, in fact, Ethel
had wanted me to discover Tony and Rita—who could appreciate
better than I the symbolic weight of that tableau?) But the
baby-sitter was stupid, I thought, and negligent. On that negligence Kay’s life
depended.
Finally, as if it were the figment of my longing, a tow truck
came. But the driver was out on call and late for an accident in
Cahoga. No matter how I cajoled him (I said that my wife was
giving birth in New York and offered a $50 bonus tip) the man
was adamant. I would have to wait my turn. He radioed into the
night, but the only other truck was thirty miles west on Route
84. He left. And didn’t return until 47 minutes later.
I got back on the road just after 3 a.m . From Stroudsburg to
New York, with one stop for gas, I drove 85-90 mph. No patrol
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249
car pulled me over. I thought that strange, but fitting. This was,
after all, a family affair. I would see to its conclusion personally:
I owed my four nieces that much at least. Never once—though
she had killed my brother—was I angry at Ethel. Her actions
had certified her madness. And who can find fault with the mad?
It was 4:38 when I hit the George Washington Bridge, 4:47
when I crossed the Triboro. I had no clear strategy in mind. It
was too early, anyhow, to wake the household up. I thought
maybe I would offer Ethel a ride in the morning—then confront
her, comfort her, absolve her before I drove to the precinct house.
Something of that sort. Most of all, I didn’t want my nieces to
see their mother cuffed and taken away. Nor did I want them to
know who had killed their father.
I parked outside Bert’s. Tiredness hung from my face like a
caul. I smelled of putrefaction. There was an all-night bodega
on the comer. I bought a Coke and leaned back against the wall
to suck some caffeine up. A man said, “ You using the phone?”
And—because his voice was gruff and dismissive—I said,
“ Yes.” I made a call—that call-o u t of spite. I rang up my own
Phone-Mate. Ethel often left messages on it.
There were three audition requests, a quote for our new bar
stools and—I dropped my Coke can when I heard it—Kay’s blithe
voice: “ Where’ve you been all night? For some reason Ethel
wants the three of us t’meet at The Car after hours. So I ’ll see
you around 4:30 ayem. Maybe I should dance for Ethel—what
