She pulls her legs around and sits up. Runs a hand through her hair, stands and crosses to the bathroom. Uses the toilet, splashes water on her face, brushes her teeth. Outside, a child shrieks with laughter and Mimi winces. A headache hovers, and the bad feeling in her gut turns. She'd like to crawl back into bed, stay there for the rest of the day, but she can't do that.
No rest for the wicked, she tells herself, sneering at the reflection of a middle-aged stranger's face in her mirror—softened, bloated, blotched by nests of spider veins, crowned by a yellowing tangle of thinning bleached hair: When did this happen?
She can't go back to bed. She'll take a shower, get dressed, maybe stop for donuts on the way down to the shop, where Meena Krejci will be waiting with a pot of coffee and a pile of sorted clothes. Except, she remembers now that in an inebriated fit of generosity she gave Meena the day off, the week off, all the time she needs, to take care of her fat decrepit old fuck of a father, who is probably dying, and maybe he's even already kicked it, and hell if it's not about time.
Which means: Meena wasn't there to open up the shop again this morning. Which means: it's still closed. Half a day of business down the drain. Shit. Not that folks have been breaking the doors down, exactly, but still a sale's a sale and a buck's a buck, after all. Maybe she should offer a part time job to one of those high school kids who are always coming by to rummage through the old clothes, calling them "vintage" now instead of simple "second hand." Pay them cheap and give them discounts on the stuff to make up for it.
She goes into the kitchen, finds a fresh pack of cigarettes there on the table where she left them last night, makes a pot of coffee. She turns on the television set to keep her company while she waits for it to brew. Opens the back door and stands in the sunlight, peering across the street to see a couple of kids in the yard there running through a swaying sprinkler, naked and squealing like a pair of pink pigs.
On the TV a woman is breathlessly announcing Channel 2 Breaking News, but Mimi isn't listening to it, until she hears the name, Ralph Wendell. Whose car has been towed from the lake, where it was found this morning, about forty feet from shore.
Mimi has already dialed Meena's number. She listens to it ring four times, and then the machine picks up. Meena's voice is soft and shy and proper-sounding: "Hello, you've reached the Krejci residence. We can't come to the phone right now..."
Mimi hangs up. Maybe Meena took her father to the hospital then. That would be a relief for everyone, she thinks. But in that case, wouldn't Meena have called? Sure she would. Unless she's mad about what Mimi said about her dad, that he's a stubborn old bohunk, that he's going to die and she'd just better get used to it. Mimi feels her face fill with the heat of her shame. How could she continue to be so cruel? And wouldn't it be just like Meena to say nothing more about it, to keep her feelings to herself and pretend that everything was just fine, even when it wasn't?
The bad feeling in her stomach turns again.
On the television, the blue Galaxy, sheathed in mud, and a shuffling group of onlookers, gaping beyond a line of yellow tape. This is followed by a long shot of the Wendell house, with its closed door and banner and poster and the smattering of flyers on the trees. Someone is saying the words now: "Probable suicide."
After she's showered and dressed, Mimi tries phoning Meena again, but there still isn't any answer. On her way downtown to the White Elephant, she takes the long way around, out of Rompot and through the park, so that she can cruise past Meena's house on Otis Road, and on Vernon Boulevard she encounters a small traffic jam as the news vans and police cars and lookie-loos swarm the street outside the Wendell house.
Josef Krejci's black Jetta is not in the driveway at 2338 Otis Road. Mimi pulls in and stops. She sees the Sunday paper still out there on the front porch, and when she peers through the glass she'll see that there is mail piled up on the floor inside the foyer.
She rings the bell, a formality really, because it's obvious that there is no one home here. Listens to it echo through the empty rooms. Waits and rings again. She trudges up the driveway and bangs at the back door, peeks into the kitchen, but it's spotless and empty.
She uses her cell phone to call the hospitals. First St. Anne's and then Mother of Mercy, but neither has taken in a patient by the name of Josef Krejci, and: "Yes ma'am, I'm sure."
Now Mimi will find the back door key that Meena keeps hidden inside the fake plastic rock in the dirt beside the steps—In case of an emergency...—and now Mimi will let herself into the house where Josef Krejci lies dead.
August 2006
It ends on a Friday at the end of the August, when Josef Krejci's body is laid to rest between his parents and his wife in the Bohemie Cemetery behind St. Wenceslas Church, across the river from Wellington Heights. Many mourners show up for this: some to pay their respects, others out of a morbid curiosity. This is the man who lay dead in his house for four days. This is the one whose daughter has disappeared.
Four rectangular brass markers have been set flat upon the grass in a row near the fish pond, and his is the most succinct.
First, Josef Vaclav Krejci: 1907-2001.
Then his wife, Agnes Anna Krejci: 1912-1954. Dearest Departed Too Soon Gone.
Then his father, Tomas Milos Krejci: 1882-1910. Noble Father.
And finally his mother, Meena Ludmilla Krejci: 1890-1968 Beloved Matka Sorely Missed.
But there, beyond them all and closest to the pond, the daughter's plot is empty.
There are plenty of people who witnessed the old grocer's fatal fall outside the movie theater that night. They saw him hit his head on the pavement, and they saw that he was bleeding. They assumed that his companion would take him to the emergency room for treatment and then didn't think about it again. His injuries were consistent with what the medical examiner concluded was the ultimate cause of his sudden death: respiratory failure due to severe head trauma. For a man of his advanced age, this should come as no surprise. Something of a mercy, maybe.
But where is the daughter? She's not been seen again. A missing persons report was filed by her employer, and some people have suggested that the most likely answer is that Ms. Krejci, overcome by her fear and grief at the death of her father, has done away with herself. But if that's the case, then where is Josef Krejci's car? Others have suggested that she has been the victim of foul play. Still others like to think that she has simply run away. That she has assumed a new identity and bank account and credit cards and made her escape. Mimi Hanrahan, for one, has been heard to say that she fully expects to hear from Meena Krejci again some day. There will be a phone call, or a letter, or a post card. With palm trees on the front. Dear Mimi. Having a marvelous time. What took me so long? Wish you were here. Love, M.
Out of the blue, one day the call will come. One day she will come back.
At Ragnarok in the Colorado forest, Will Gidding prays.
"Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name..."
He prays for his lost sister, asks the Lord to send her back to him again, before it's too late.
"Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done..."
He knows she ran away to California, and he regrets that he ever had anything to do with bringing that other woman up here to stay, even for a few days.
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us..."
He guesses she's the one who lured Holly away.
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil..."
They were in such a big hurry to go that they left all their stuff behind. He hasn't called the police; what would be the point? Holly is an adult. She can do whatever she wants, including go to hell. Ungrateful bitch.
"For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory..."
Will Gidding sits outside on his porch, and he keeps one eye on the sky, the other on the road. He is waiting for what he knows is coming; he is certain that sooner or later it will be here. Sometimes he feels himself getting impatie
nt for it, even though he knows that he is not quite ready yet. The school bus is almost finished. Most of his supplies are here. He still has to install a solar panel. He still needs to put on the tires. He sniffs the air. He's looking for a sign. He's waiting for the end of the world.
"...forever and ever. Amen."
July 2007
In Los Angeles, California, there is a young woman who lives in a rented bungalow near the ocean. She waits tables in a diner on Venice Boulevard, and she goes to acting classes at night. Maybe someday she'll be discovered—she's pretty enough, and she does know something about the art of self-invention, it seems. On Saturdays she goes to the beach and lies in the sun all day, and on Sundays she shops for fresh flowers and vegetables at the Farmer's Market in Santa Monica. When questioned about her family, or where she's from, she becomes evasive, and the new friends that she's made here assume this to be because her past is somehow painful to her, so they kindly leave it alone. She tells them simply that she hasn't been this happy in a long, long time, and they have to agree, it's true, she does look stronger and healthier than she did when they first met her, months ago. She's eating well, her skin has cleared up, she's even put on some weight.
Recently she traded in her old black Jetta for a red convertible Bug. She has an authentic-looking birth certificate and a new California driver's license and a new Social Security card and a debit card and a credit card and over five thousand dollars in the bank.
Your name is Meena Krejci, and you have your whole life ahead of you now. You got away. You made it. You're on your own, and you are free.
It ends...
...in silence—in silence and illusion.
It ends somewhere deep in the forest, where these mauled and mangled remains have been dragged off and hidden away, half buried in a pawed over bed of pine needles, torn bark, and dried leaves.
Soon the animals will have picked the bones clean and they'll leave them where they lie, unknown and unnamed. Winter will come, and they'll be blanketed by snow—the shattered vase that was her skull, the open basket of her ribcage, abandoned pelvic cradle, spindle of spread legs. In the enduring sanctuary of the wilderness they will sink and settle, and this is how...
...it will end.
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Smithereens
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ABOUT SUSAN TAYLOR CHEHAK
Susan Taylor Chehak is a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and the author of several novels, including Smithereens, The Story of Annie D., and Harmony. Her most recent publications include a collection of stories, It's Not About the Dog, and a work of nonfiction, What Happened to Paula: The Anatomy of a True Crime. Susan has taught fiction writing in the low residency MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles, the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, the University of Southern California, and the Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. She grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, spent many years in Los Angeles, lives occasionally in Toronto, and at present calls Colorado her home.
Website: http://www.susantaylorchehak.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/stchehak
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stchehak
Blog: http://www.tumblr.com/blog/susantaylorchehak
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