by Mary Daheim
We had reached Vida’s Buick in Ella Hinshaw’s guest parking slot. “Are you hinting at a romance?”
“Perhaps.” Vida’s gaze traveled around the bleak concrete walls and ceiling. “You don’t bribe a judge with a bouquet.”
Before I could head for my car, Vida insisted we return to the office where she intended to telephone Marsha’s aunt, Josephine Foster Iverson Bergstrom. Since I didn’t have any better ideas, I agreed to go along so that I could listen in on an extension.
Vida sat at her own desk while I used Leo’s phone. It took almost half an hour to track down Aunt Jo. There were several retirement and nursing homes in Port Angeles, not to mention another half-dozen in nearby Sequim.
At last, Vida got hold of the old girl who answered in a surprisingly strong voice. I was put off, however, by the fact that Aunt Jo didn’t seem to recognize Vida’s maiden or married names.
“I’m not from Alpine,” Aunt Jo said in an impatient voice. “Now what’s this about a newspaper piece? I don’t read any more, I’ve got that macular condition. My eyesight’s degenerating. It happens when you get to be eighty-one like I am. How old are you? You don’t sound like any spring chicken to me, Mrs. Bunkel.”
Maybe Aunt Jo’s hearing was degenerating, too. Not to mention her memory, if she didn’t know Vida.
Vida ignored the mistake. “Have you heard about Jack Froland’s death?”
“Jack Froland?” There was a lengthy silence. “Isn’t he a cousin or some such of Burt’s?”
“Yes,” Vida replied, looking at me and shaking her head. “Burt’s father, Per Iverson, and Jack’s mother, Karen Iverson, were brother and sister.”
“Per,” Aunt Jo repeated. “He was my father-in-law. He never got over Burt’s getting killed in North Africa. Grandpa Per died about the time the war ended. Poor old coot. Did you know Burt?”
“Slightly,” Vida said. “I was very young in those days, though I do recall how everyone praised his heroism.”
“You do?” Aunt Jo sounded surprised. “Funny, I don’t. Burt was kind of a scaredy-cat. I could never get him to take out the garbage after dark.”
Vida rolled her eyes before asking the next question. “Where were you living at the time Burt went into the service?”
“Everett,” Aunt Jo replied promptly. “Or was it Marysville? Maybe Mukilteo. What difference does it make? That was way back. I can hardly remember Burt.”
“What about your brother, George Foster?” Vida inquired, maintaining her patience. “Do you remember him?”
“ ’Course I remember George,” Aunt Jo snapped. “You think I’m senile?” Before Vida could respond, the old woman continued: “George was a year younger than me, and ten times dumber. He married a terrible woman. Never could stand her. Neither could Cap.”
Briefly, Vida looked puzzled. “Cap? Oh—your second husband, Cap Bergstrom.”
“You knew him?”
“Slightly.” Vida tapped a pencil on the edge of her desk. “Why couldn’t you stand your sister-in-law?”
“Mouthy,” Aunt Jo retorted. “Always on her high horse about something or other. She was one of those . . . what do call them? Radicals, I think. Plus,” the old lady went on, “she was a Jew.”
“Did her religion cause a problem?” Vida asked somewhat stiffly.
“Not for me,” Aunt Jo retorted. “I didn’t have much to do with her. Neither did Cap. I think she’s dead. So’s George. Now what was her name? Cap and I called her The Jew.”
I had to cough. I put my hand over the mouthpiece of Leo’s phone and turned away.
Vida had winced at Jo’s crudity. “I believe her name was Anna Klein.”
“Could be. Homely woman. Always going on about the working class. Like we didn’t know all about the working class? We were the working class.”
Vida had taken off her glasses and was rubbing at her eyes. For once, she didn’t make her accompanying moaning noise, though I could have sworn I heard her eyeballs squeak.
Apparently, the lull in the conversation confused Aunt Jo. “Hullo? Hullo?” she shouted into the phone. “You still there? Hullo?”
“Of course I’m still here,” Vida retorted. “Were Anna and George happy together?”
“How would I know?” Aunt Jo shot back. “I used to tell Cap, ‘How can my brother be happy married to a Jew?’ Cap would just shake his head.”
Vida cradled the receiver under her chin and held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “You’ve been very helpful, Mrs. Iver . . . I mean, Mrs. Bergstrom. You wouldn’t have your daughter’s phone number handy, would you?”
“Marjorie? ’Course I would. Just a minute . . . I should know it by heart, but I got one of them speedy dial things on this phone, and . . . Here it is. Her married name is Lathrop. They live close, over on Chambers Street.”
“How nice for you,” Vida said before politely ringing off. “Imbecile,” she muttered, already dialing what was presumably Marjorie Iverson Lathrop’s number. “Such a bigot. And absolutely dumb as a cedar stump.”
I clicked Leo’s phone back on as the call rang through to Port Angeles. On the fifth ring, a breathless voice answered.
“Marjorie?” Vida said at her most pleasant, then recited the same tale she’d told to Marjorie’s mother. “Dear Jo,” Vida went on, suggesting an intimacy that didn’t exist and never had, “is getting a bit forgetful. But aren’t we all?” Vida uttered the braying cackle that those of us who knew her recognized as both forced and false. I couldn’t help but wonder how gullible Marjorie Iverson Lathrop really was.
“Hold it,” Marjorie said. “Let me catch my breath. I was outside, picking plums. Why on earth would you be calling my mother about the Froland family? Who did you say had died?”
Vida scowled into the phone. “Your Uncle Jack. He passed on early this past week.”
“Uncle Jack?” Marjorie sounded puzzled. “Do you mean the guy who owns a restaurant in Alpine?”
“No,” Vida replied, “I do not. Jack Iverson is alive and well. I’m referring to Jack Froland. Didn’t you live in Alpine for a time, Marjorie?”
“Not as a kid,” Marjorie replied. “Mama and Papa moved to Marysville after they were married. I don’t really remember Papa. He was killed when I was still a baby. I’ve always thought of my stepdad as my real father.” She paused, perhaps mourning both men. “Then about twelve years ago, Bart—my husband—got transferred to Alpine to work in the Snoqualmie National Forest. My stepdad died a year later, and after awhile, we had to put Mama in a nursing home. Bad timing. Wouldn’t you know it, Bart got moved a year later to the Olympic National Forest in Port Angeles. He’s a Forest Service biologist. But Bart’s retiring the first of the year. Mama’s going to outlive us yet.”
Vida made a face at me. “She sounds very hearty, Marjorie. You should be grateful. But she certainly gives a poor impression of your family.”
Marjorie pounced. “What do you mean by that?”
“Oh,” Vida lamented, “I shouldn’t have said that. But she was quite unkind about some of the other family members, particularly on her side. You’d think she’d speak of them more kindly.”
If Vida had overdone her introduction to Marjorie, she was now hitting her stride.
“Who was she bashing this time?” Marjorie demanded. “Bart? She’s always mean about my husband.”
“No,” Vida responded, “I mean on her own side of the family. Uncle George and Aunt Anna, to be specific.”
“Oh, them.” Marjorie’s sigh was audible. “I suppose she was going on about Aunt Anna hyphenating her married name. It was unusual in those days, and Mama was scandalized. Of course Mama never could accept her brother marrying a Jew. I never understood that. Wouldn’t you think that a woman whose husband—my poor father—had been killed by the Nazis would be less prejudiced? And don’t get her off on the Blacks or the Asians or the Hispanics.”
“That’s a shame,” Vida declared. “I gather you didn’t feel so strongly abou
t Aunt Anna?”
“I hardly ever saw her,” Marjorie replied, “but she seemed like a decent woman. Opinionated, yes. She was always talking about politics, and when you’re a kid, you don’t pay much attention. I think Mama and Aunt Anna really got into it during those McCarthy hearings. They had a serious falling-out. Mama called Aunt Anna a Commie. Aunt Anna called Mama an ignorant nitwit. Or something like that. It was right after Uncle George and Aunt Anna got married. I don’t think they ever spoke again. Mama and Aunt Anna, I mean.”
“People should never argue over politics or religion,” Vida declared. “If they must express differing opinions, it’s far better to do so over personal flaws and bad behavior.”
I could imagine what chaos Runkel and Blatt family events had triggered. Bleeding egos for everyone, wounds that lasted a lifetime. The spark to light yet another family feud. To be fair, politics and religion often got just as personal, as in “. . . ignorant nitwit.” Unfortunately, it sounded as if Anna Foster-Klein had been right about Josephine Iverson Bergstrom.
“Speaking of families,” Vida said in a chatty tone, “I don’t suppose you ever met your cousin, Marsha Foster-Klein. She’s a judge, living here in Alpine.”
“A cousin?” Marjorie said.
“A first cousin,” Vida responded. “Uncle George and Aunt Anna’s daughter.”
Marjorie paused, apparently trying to remember. “Years ago, we went to a wedding. It wasn’t Marsha’s, it was one of the Foster-Klein boys. Gabe. Or Zeke. I don’t recall. Anyway, she was a bridesmaid. That must have been almost twentyfive years ago. Whichever of the boys it was, the wedding was in Monroe. Marsha was a bridesmaid. Yes, it’s coming back to me now,” Marjorie went on, speaking faster and with more confidence. “It was definitely Zeke who was the groom. Gabe was the best man. It was hard to tell them apart, because they both had beards and long hair. Hippies, you know. Their clothes were all those wild colors—psychedelic, was what they called them. That’s funny—I can’t remember the bride at all, except that she had her arm in a cast and a bird on her head. Not a real bird—a stuffed dove.”
“Ah!” Vida’s eyes lit up as she glanced my way. “I remember that wedding—it was the first one I wrote up for the Advocate . The bride had attended Alpine High. Now what was her name . . . ?”
“Ask Marsha,” Marjorie put in. “You say Marsha lives in Alpine now?”
Vida, apparently caught up in trying to recall the bride’s identity, didn’t answer right away. “What? Oh—yes, she’s been sitting on the bench for our regular judge who’s a bit gaga.”
“Excuse me,” Marjorie said, “but I’m going to be gaga, too, if I don’t pick the rest of those plums before they hit the ground. It’s starting to look like rain over here on the Peninsula. You can see the clouds moving down over Vancouver Island.”
“Oh, of course,” Vida said. “Thanks so much for all your help.”
“What help?” retorted Marjorie. “I don’t see how I contributed much to your article on the Frolands.”
“Connections,” Vida said glibly. “Families are all about connections. Isn’t it interesting?”
“I guess,” Marjorie said in a dubious voice. “Good luck.” She hung up.
“If only,” Vida grumbled as we left the newspaper office, “we could tie Josephine Foster Etcetera to the threatening letter to Marsha. Aunt Jo is precisely the kind of person who’d do such a silly thing.”
“We could try,” I said, noting that clouds from the north were descending on Alpine as well as the Olympic Peninsula.
Vida looked at me sharply. “What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “It’d get Marsha off our backs.”
“That would be dishonest,” Vida declared. “How could you?”
“Because,” I said in a fretful tone, “this Judge Marsha thing is a runaround. If she doesn’t know of any deep, dark secret in her past, there isn’t one. Or if there is, it’s so remote that it can’t possibly harm her chances for the judgeship. Marsha seems like a smart, practical woman. I’m surprised she hasn’t figured it out for herself.”
A logging rig rumbled down Front Street, a sure sign that the weather was changing. The fire danger had abated; rain was on its way. My short-sleeved T-shirt and cotton slacks seemed inadequate for what I guessed to be a temperature of fifty-five.
“This isn’t like you, Emma,” Vida said with a reproachful glint in her eyes. “You always search for truth.”
“I’ve found it,” I said. “We’re on a wild goose chase. I believe I made that statement at the onset.”
Vida heaved a big sigh. “Then you can deliver the news. But if I were you, I’d sleep on it.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “For that matter, I can wait until Monday to tell Marsha.”
Vida had opened her car door. She was about to speak again when she ducked quickly into the car. “Ed,” she gasped, and slammed the driver’s door shut.
Standing by Vida’s Buick, I was too late to escape. Ed Bronsky was already waving his pudgy arms at me. Vida zoomed away just as Ed came within speaking distance.
“Just the person I wanted to see,” Ed declared, huffing and puffing. “Do I have news or what?”
“What?” I said facetiously.
Ed didn’t catch the irony. “Just when things look grim, something good happens. You know the saying, “ ‘When one door closes, a window opens up.’ ”
The quote wasn’t accurate, but I didn’t bother to correct Ed. “As in . . . ?” I queried.
“As in,” Ed said, then stopped to get his breath. “As in you remember how my TV show got cancelled last year?”
“Ed’s TV show,” as he called it, was an animated cartoon based on his self-published autobiography. It hadn’t made it past four weeks of airtime. Ed and his family had turned into a bunch of pigs on the show, which was all too appropriate for the porcine Bronsky family. Even their dog, Carhop, was overweight. While the book had been titled Mr. Ed, the TV cartoon had been changed to Mr. Pig for obvious reasons. Ed’s character had been named Chester White, after a certain breed of pig.
“It’s been picked up by Japanese television,” Ed announced. “They’re going to rework it into an action show. Mr. Ed will become SuperPig. I’ll have special powers.”
Why not? “Gee,” I responded, “that’s great. Do you get to wear a cape?”
“I don’t know yet,” Ed said, very serious. Indeed, in the past few months since his show had been cancelled, he had reverted to his pessimistic, morose role as the ad manager I had known and only occasionally loved. “I’d like to insist on shorts, though,” he continued. “Pigs should wear pants on TV.”
I’d been edging my way toward the driver’s side of the Lexus. “Super heroes should always have a costume,” I agreed.
“Shirley’s not too happy about it,” Ed declared. “There’s no Mrs. SuperPig. She thinks that means I’ll have love interests.”
I found myself struggling to keep a straight face. “Couldn’t Shirley be one of them?”
Ed gave a weak shake of his head. “Who knows? It isn’t easy dealing with these Japanese TV people. Some of them don’t speak much English. Besides, you know what they say—they’re pretty inscrutable.”
I clicked my door open. “It’ll turn out just fine,” I asserted. “Let me know when it’s going to air so we can put something in the paper.”
Ed gave me a bleak look. “It won’t air in Alpine.”
“Why? Is it on pay-per-view?”
This time Ed’s shake of the head was more pronounced. “Like I said, it’s Japanese TV. It’s only going to air in Japan.”
“Oh.” I’d misunderstood. “But you’ll still get money, won’t you?”
“That’s not clear, either,” Ed replied. “Skip and Irv are sorting that out now,” he added, referring to his vanity publishers-cum-agents who were headquartered in Bellevue, east of Seattle.
Skip and Irv would want their own piece. “I’m sure you’ll get something out of this. W
hy so glum?”
Ed made a face and cracked his knuckles. “I’ve got no artistic control over this project. Sure, it’s exciting, especially when I thought for a while that Mr. Ed was dead. Besides, it screws up the sequel to my autobiography, Mr. Ed Goes Hollywood.”
Ed had threatened to write a sequel, but I hadn’t realized he’d actually started it. I resisted the temptation to ask why he hadn’t yet sought my editorial assistance. While composing the original Mr. Ed he’d practically camped out on my doorstep. After several rewrites, extensive editing, and proofing, Ed had failed to give me any credit in the book. But I wasn’t going to bring that up now for fear that he’d impose on me again.
I’d opened the car door; my rear end was pointed in the direction of the driver’s seat. “I’m sure this new situation will give the narrative an international flavor,” I said. Like sushi gone bad. “Got to run, Ed.”
My original intention had been to walk the single block to Parker’s Pharmacy and pick up the Paxil prescription. But Ed’s appearance had changed my plans. I decided to drive along Front Street and take a right on Third. I could park alongside the drugstore and nip in from around the corner.
But Ed thwarted me again. In my rearview mirror, I saw him walking toward my destination. Worse yet, as I passed him by, I spotted Mayor Baugh chatting with the Grocery Basket’s Jake O’Toole outside of Parker’s Pharmacy. Thus, I kept on going and headed home.
One message awaited me. It was Milo, brief and to the point as always.
“Got two T-bones. Should I come over around six?”
The sheriff had called from his home in the Icicle Creek Development. I rang his number, but got his answering machine. I didn’t leave a message, but dialed his cell phone instead.
“Dodge,” he said.
“You’re on for dinner,” I replied, hearing voices in the background. “I tried you at home, but you’d left for wherever you are now.”
“I’m in Everett,” Milo said. “I may be late. Let’s say six-thirty, six-forty-five.”
