by F. E. Arliss
That was the thing you see - Carlton may have been self-centered, but he’d been a lovely husband - well, most of the time. Except for when he lied or cheated, then, of course, he was a cad. The other eighty percent of the time, life with Carlton had been really very, very nice.
Ok, so he often sent flowers to Zhara when other people were coming to their home so he’d have an audience for his generosity. Still, they were very nice flowers. And, she’d enjoyed them.
Whatever it took to make Zhara happy, as long as it didn’t interfere with his own life, was fait accompli! Which, really, makes for a very nice life. People often commented that they had such a wonderful marriage and Zhara supposed they had, if one discounted the lying. The lying wasn’t regular, only about once every seven years or so. So the other years were often positively giddy, laced with travel and parties.
It seemed that at some level Zhara had bought in to her mother’s dippy ideas about supporting your husband. She’d traveled the world with him, braved sandstorms, terrorists and religious police; wrangled household help, scoped out the best markets, thrown enviably fabulous dinner parties; and carried on through terror threats as if she’d been molded especially to serve in the role of Carlton’s wife. She’d been absolutely stellar!
So, while many women whined and sniffled and stayed hidden in their homes afraid to brave the threat of harm on the outside, Zhara had gone horseback riding in the desert, shopped in the souks of middle eastern bazaars and traveled inveterately across Africa. She’d dined with dictators and walked serenely in front of men armed with machine guns. None of it had phased her - after all - what would Carlton do without her?
If that wasn’t her inane mother’s prattle about a woman’s place, Zhara didn’t know what was! Looking back now and realizing she’d been just the very thing she despised, made Zhara sad. She was so disappointed with herself she just couldn’t buck up and shrug it all off. She’d been a dunderhead too. She was more like her mother than she wanted to admit.
Zhara had kicked Carlton, resulting in his death. And, she missed him. Pathetic! Didn’t it just figure that the daughter of an insanely twisted victim of incest would marry a self-centered, egomaniacal ass. Really, it all made sense. She’d never had any decent guidance on what to look for in a man - her mother’s criteria had pretty much consisted of said man having the “correct equipment” or a lot of money, end of story.
Carlton had been a world-class sympathizer. He’d really known how to listen and insert just the right amount of feedback to make a girl feel heard and understood, whether he really had understood might be suspect now, knowing what she did. But at the time, it had been lovely and all Zhara had needed to feel she’d made a fabulous choice. After all, Zhara’s role in the family had been to be pretty and to make everyone else feel better. The fact that no one ever asked her how she was, had simply been the proper nature of things, or so she’d been taught. When someone really did ask about how she was, it was as if she’d been handed the greatest thing in the universe.
As for the good looks thing...well, as any faithful Methodist knows, being pretty is a sin. Vanity is a sin. If you’re pretty, you really shouldn’t acknowledge it and at the very least you should downplay it. Her grandmother had been forever after Zhara to cut off her long hair. Aunts and Uncles simply changed the subject if someone mentioned Zhara’s inordinate amount of good looks.
Sharon Stone had once given an interview where she talked about how many people were belittling to her because of her beauty. Her words were, “Different people have different gifts. If one of those gifts is beauty, then let them BE beautiful. Stop trying to shame them into denying it.” Zhara had never heard anything so accurate as that description of how her family treated her beauty.
Her mother had tried to use her beauty to catch men. The extended family had always tried to shame her into denying it. Well screw that. Zhara was going to start owning her beauty and taking care of it. It was hers and it would leave her soon enough.
So here Zhara was in middle age, unsure about what to do next. Right after the accident - ok, yes, she was calling it an accident from now on out - she’d known exactly what to do. Now that she’d achieved all that, she didn’t have a clue about what to do next.
All she knew now, was that she had to get out of The Netherlands, Dutch title or not, before she started throwing dog shit at the owners who should have picked it up.
Zhara packed her bags and flew back to the U.S. Truly, there was no place like home, Dutch title or not, Zhara was still American. Sometimes she detested the loudness and poor table manners of Americans - oh, and their appalling dress sense. On the other hand, they were a known quantity and familiarity, while breeding contempt, could also be very comforting.
Having not pondered long or hard about where to set up a home, Zhara stayed in the Mason and Rook Hotel in Washington D.C. until she purchased a lovely house on Calder Road out in nearby McLean in Northern Virginia. The mediterranean-style home had seven bedrooms, six baths, a pool and was set in a secluded wood. The pale yellow house with it’s white columns and black wrought-iron trim was far too large for her and therefore, had plenty of space for the one thing Zhara had decided made life so much more bearable - staff.
She and Carlton had staff in every foriegn country they’d ever lived in and they had made her life so much easier. The problem would be finding just the right person or persons, to make her life better. Staff could either make your life or break your life, depending upon their dispositions.
Rather than go about the issue the old-fashioned way, Zhara promptly called Household Staffing a company in McLean, Virginia, and told them precisely what she wanted. It hadn’t taken long - well, at least to get the first applicants interviewed. That had been an unmitigated disaster. They would have been right up Carlton’s alley, but Zhara didn’t want some starch-assed twenty-something telling her how to manage her household.
She wanted Adela, the maid she’d had in Mexico City, who’d known exactly what to do and say, in any situation. The house had been immaculate, the sheets changed as if by magic and her dog-hair infested boiled-wool sweater picked clean of stray strands from her then pet, a mutt-pug mix that could charm anyone with one look from black eyes set in a wrinkled face.
Since Adela was not to be had, she’d have to find the next best thing. On the advice of one of the more diligent members of the staff at the Mason and Rook Hotel, Zhara got the number for the Wellington Agency in New York City and called them. Informing them that she wasn’t afraid to sponsor an immigrant from another country, brought about a long silence, as most of their upscale clientele asked for a more caucasian type of domestic. She was quickly referred to another agency. A call to that number, in a local Northern Virginia area code, turned out to be a rather unsavory looking establishment in a strip mall in the nearby town of Herndon, Virginia.
The sign said it was a law firm specializing in immigration law. All Zhara could think was that had to be a tough job at this point in time. Inside, a rather harried-looking secretary took her information and then made her wait a few moments until a young bronze-skinned young man came and collected her. Ushering her into his office he said hesitantly, “I’m Enrique Chavez, the attorney here. So, you were referred by Emanual at the Wellington Agency. Is that correct?”
“Yes, it is,” Zhara said politely, then added, “And I’m getting tired of being passed around. Why is this so hard? I just want a couple that can clean house, cook, chauffeur, garden and keep everything in order. That’s never been hard in other countries. Why can’t I find that here?”
Enrique grimaced, shrugged his shoulders in that ubiquitous latin way and said, “Because people don’t want immigrants in this country and people in this country that aren’t immigrants, don’t want to do this type of work.”
Zhara couldn’t argue with that, and told him so. After that it was very easy. Enrique assured her that what he was doing and how he was going about it was all legal. No one would be here
without papers and she’d have to sponsor them. Since Zhara was familiar with the concept of sponsorship, she knew she might have to go somewhere for a few months, then return with the staff members. She was willing to do that.
Within days Enrique had set up airline tickets and papers for her to travel to Bolivia, the poorest country in South America. Doing so made sense. It saved someone from a life of inveterate poverty and at the same time made her gleeful at thumbing her nose at the current narrow-minded politician in power. She placed an order for a housekeeper/cook and a handyman/driver/butler combination.
Zhara didn’t know if that would be possible, but she didn’t know why not. It had been possible in most of the countries she’d lived in and if the Wellington Agency was as good as they were supposed to be, they could darn well find her that staff combo.
When she arrived in Sucre, the capital city of Bolivia, she wasn’t shocked at its poverty or put off by the poor infrastructure. She’d lived in places like this before. Americans had no idea how good they had it. Her apartment was in a lovely old Colonial-style building near the main plaza. Zhara spent the next three months practicing her Spanish as she strolled the plaza at dusk making friends and generally being her usual out-going charming self.
Each day she set some sort of goal to investigate. She visited historic churches, hiked to archeological sites, viewed the famous dinosaur remains, shopped the indigenous markets, traveled into the mountains to trek, tried all the local foods and generally had a wonderful time. By the time she left, she was well-known by most of the locals.
Within days of arriving she’d had Beatriz and Basilio Colque appear on her doorstep, the finest duo of domestic greatness she’d ever encountered. Enrique had sent them, they informed her, and she opened the door wide, welcoming them in. It was the beginning of the best thing that ever happened to all three of them. At the end of the three months they all flew home to McLean, Virginia together.
Beatriz was Basilio’s mother and came to about five foot two inches of sternly kind, maternal domestic greatness. She cooked, cleaned and managed Zhara’s wardrobe with all the finesse of a house elf on steroids. Most importantly, Zhara didn’t even know she was there unless she suddenly needed Beatriz. Then the woman would materialize out of thin air as though she’d read her mistress’s mind.
Basilio was a wonder. He hadn’t had an American driver’s license, but that was soon put to order with the permits he’d obtained through Enrique’s agency. He could garden, fix things and do all the heavy lifting - which could be quite important by the time Zhara had packed for a trip.
There was no need for Lady Zhara to know that the home they’d left in Sucre had no running water and no refrigeration other than a cool cellar under the stone floor of the basement level apartment. Beatriz and Basilio had worked themselves into exhaustion everyday for Beatriz’s brother-in-law at an upholstery shop in one of the back alleys of downtown Sucre.
When Basilio had seen the ad for workers to immigrate to the U.S. and read the very exacting requirements, he’d rushed home to tell his mother. They matched perfectly. Basilio had learned English early on, as his uncle was sure it was the one way for the family business to get ahead. Basilio had given his mother lessons in the evenings, but they’d both kept that fact hidden from his uncle. Uncle Rolando wanted to keep Beatriz and Basilio poor and docile in the dark cellar apartment, ready to wait on him and his wife at a moment’s notice.
So far, most people Beatriz had ever met were out for themselves. Although she’d found there was no difference in the self-serving between rich self-serving and poor self-serving. You’d think the more one had, the more they’d want to give to others. That did not seem to be the case as far as the Colques could see.
Beatriz really couldn’t fault Lady Zhara’s opinion that all people were crap, except for the fact that Lady Zhara herself, seemed to be kind. It was the one flaw with the lady’s statement. She, herself, wasn’t crap.
She’d been badly hurt, Beatriz could see. Well, she and Basilio were here now. They’d take better care of the lady than the ones who should have before now.
In tweaking the establishment’s nose and sponsoring immigrants, Lady Zhara had found for herself what she’d never been able to inherit, marry, or find before - undying appreciation and loyalty. Some people would rail against this and go on and on about the capitalist agenda. Zhara knew that as long as each party was getting something out of it that they needed and that bettered their lives - capitalism had nothing to do with it.
Chapter Seven
BFE Nowhere
Unless you’ve lived in a tiny town you will be unaware of the seething, roiling ill-will that often snakes beneath these bucolic settings like a hidden volcano waiting to erupt.
Because these towns are so tiny, everyone knows everything and there is nothing else to do but mind other people’s business. Comparison and envy run rife through the hearts of the town’s inhabitants and breed all sorts of jealousy, rage and - in some cases - murderous intent.
That murderous intent occasionally erupts without warning and in this instance, unfortunately for the perpetrator, it happened while Lady Zhara Six was in town.
She had to be forced to come, of course, as there was nothing Lady Zhara detested more than tiny towns. Gawd forsaken wildernesses without so much as one decent restaurant - oh, yes, they always “thought” they had a decent restaurant - it never was. Once, one of the miscreant locals had assured Lady Zhara that they had the “best restaurant in the world” in their town. It turned out to be a Buffalo Wild Wings franchise.
If she could have, Zhara would have had the buffoon arrested for fraud. Come to think of it, she probably could have - as small towns will do almost anything for the sake of a good size donation to the Mayor’s political campaign or the pool restoration fund - if they even have a swimming pool to restore.
People almost always thought they knew what tiny towns were like. In Zhara’s experience, most people had no clue - because, frankly, hardly anyone was really from a tiny town. They were tiny for a reason. She, however, having been born, bred and raised in a tiny town, had no illusions about the size, shape and general flavor of these miserable enclaves of total uncouthness.
Most harbored an assortment of people too damaged to be anywhere else. She’d often had discussions with friends about why there were so many pedophiles in isolated areas. Scientists tried to say the theory wasn’t true, but Zhara knew there was truth to it. It was the same reason there were so many pedophiles in religious orders. Pedophiles were attracted to a restricted pool of victims. It was like fishing in a barrel. In religious orders a whole lot of young, innocent victims were delivered up by trusting parents who hadn’t a clue. Then when the pedophile had victimized most of his contained victim group, the church moved them on. It was genius.
The same thing happened with tiny towns. People always bought in to the idea that tiny towns were safe. While most people don’t get murdered or mugged in tiny towns, a whole other type of crime flourishes right under the noses of their smugly superior residents - rape, incest, and sexual abuses of all kinds - oh, and drugs that lull the victims into compliance.
Tiny towns trust their authority figures with an absolute zeal you just don’t get in other places. This is why the inhabitants tiny towns come in three groups. The first are the benefiters - those in power, or those who make money off the other groups - the trapped and the oblivious.
The oblivious are those who trustingly deliver their children up as sacrifice. They’re the hard workers and band-wagon buying middle-class that don’t see what’s happening around them and don’t want to know. In many ways they are just as complicit in the crime as the benefiters because they studiously avoid anything that could cast a cloud of suspicion over their perfect rural bliss. They frequently hear things that are suspicious, but they turn away from the truth so they don’t have to see. As the saying goes, “ignorance is bliss”. In the case of the tiny town oblivious, they choose igno
rance, often purposefully. Whether that is a conscious or unconscious choice is the only unknown variable.
The trapped are those that are left behind. Because one thing is always true in a tiny town - those with a will and a way, leave - unless, of course, they are a benefiter or an oblivious.
At some level, the trapped know they are. This sense of being trapped usually leads to the life-long hobby of being proud of their redneck roots. That hick-town pride came from somewhere. In Zhara’s view, it came from being one of the one’s dealt the unfortunate hand of having to remain - whether that was due to being too fearful to leave; having no money to leave; or not having the where-with-all to leave - all wrought the same thing - redneck pride. Redneck pride lead to the perfect cover for abuses of all kinds - their lovely little redneck town would never have a dark and seamy underside. Never, ever.
That sort of mindset was like catnip to sexual perpetrators. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. No one wanted to believe it, so no one did. Even if people reported it, nothing happened. The ministers got moved on. The teachers found new jobs one tiny town away and the whole thing started anew. It was a tiny town phenomenon.
