Women Drinking Benedictine

by Sharon Dilworth

  “Don’t you think the police would have asked you how he was killed? They might be interested in how he died, you know.”

  “Oh, stop,” Siobhan said. “You act like it’s some big mystery, like there’ll be an investigation with magnifying glasses and police reports.”

  “If he’s dead there will be.”

  “It’s March.” I could hear her sigh. “Do you know that? It’s already March.” Randy was supposed to have been dead by Christmas so that Siobhan could begin the New Year a single woman. We didn’t talk about what she would do as a widow—how it would change her life or anything—but I liked my part in Siobhan’s plans. She’s the kind of person who can make anything exciting, even life in Munising.

  “Do you think they’re going to let you get away without even a mention of how Randy got himself killed on his bathroom floor?” I never could figure out how Siobhan thought she would get away with murdering Randy. It just didn’t make sense.

  “My God,” Siobhan swore. “I know just what will happen. I can see the whole scene in my mind. Burns and Anders will come screaming up the driveway in their patrol car with the siren blaring away. Then they’ll see Randy dead with his head smashed in and they’ll start carrying on and soon they’ll be crying and telling me what a good friend and fine man Randy was. The neighbors will start flocking out on the front lawn, staring at the house like they never saw one before, all of them asking stupid questions, and one of them, probably Mrs. Saxon, who doesn’t like me anyway, will knock on the door with a ridiculous plate of her dumb macaroons, and just when I turn my back, Burns will find the whiskey under the sink and in no more than fifteen minutes, my clean kitchen will be filled with nosy neighbors and everyone will be putting on a drunk so bad that maybe, just maybe, one of them will sober up by the end of the week, and by that time no one will remember how Randy died, but everyone will be too stupid to ask anyone else.”

  Kate’s my baby and she was crying while Siobhan was going on. I put her back in her high chair and fed her the rest of her breakfast—oatmeal and canned peaches. She eats it three times a day. When I try to feed her something else, she starts screaming. Nothing else keeps her quiet. I work during the day and Siobhan looks after her. She tells me Kate’s a fine eater. I don’t argue with her or say any different. I figure Kate’s getting her protein with Siobhan and her fruit and fiber with me. We get along best when she’s not crying, so I don’t force her to eat anything that makes her upset.

  “You watch out, Siobhan,” I warned her. “You might not be as smart as you think you are.”

  “This isn’t Detroit,” Siobhan said. “Women don’t go to jail in the Upper Peninsula.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting about Maureen Bogden?” I asked. Kate was busy playing with her reflection in the stainless steel part of the baby chair. Siobhan didn’t say anything, so I reminded her of the time Maureen Bogden caught hold of a rumor that her boyfriend was sleeping with the part-time waitress from the Dogpatch. No one had any proof of it, but as soon as Maureen heard the news, she marched herself into the Dogpatch and knocked the waitress in the jaw. The Munising police arrested Maureen right there in the bar, in front of the band and everything.

  There was a silence on the other line and I thought Siobhan must have been mulling over my warning about Maureen.

  “Siobhan, are you listening to me?” She didn’t answer, and all I could hear was silence coming over the line.

  “Siobhan?” I said louder. “What’s wrong? What is it?” Something bumped against the receiver on her end, then I heard her voice loud and clear.

  “Sorry,” she said. “I had to go to the bathroom.”

  Kate started crying, and I removed the silver tray to lift her out of the high chair. She stopped crying when I set her on the floor.

  “I had three cups of coffee,” Siobhan said. “I couldn’t wait.”

  “You should tell me when you’re leaving the phone,” I said. “I was saying something.”

  “I’m listening to you.” Siobhan started to snap a bit, but she caught herself before she yelled at me. She was careful to be nice to me, and I thought it was because she liked having me as her partner in crime. “I listen to everybody.”

  I finished the rest of Kate’s breakfast and then ran water in the empty dish. It would soak with the rest of the breakfast dishes.

  “Did Kate stop crying?” Siobhan said.

  “She’s fine,” I said. “She’ll be asleep in about a minute. Just about time for her to nap again.”

  “Why don’t you bring her over?” Siobhan said. “I’ll watch her and you can go down and pick up Randy.”

  “What’s this?” I asked. Siobhan usually gets me to go with her when she has to pick up Randy. After the bowling accident failed, the three of us went to the Brownstone Inn and played darts until two in the morning. Randy could play fine with his broken toes. He shot from his bar stool and scored higher than both me and Siobhan.

  “Please,” Siobhan begged. She dropped her voice and let the words drag out. “I can’t talk to Randy. Not just yet.”

  “Why don’t both of us go?” I said. “We can go together.”

  “I can’t do it,” she said. “How am I going to face him in Marquette with people looking at me? Those people are nurses and doctors. They’ll know something’s wrong.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Please do it for me?”

  She didn’t have to put it like that. It’s not like it’s any big deal to drive to Marquette. I go there all the time. Kate’s father is stationed in Marquette—up at K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base. I drive up once a month to get the support checks. Since we’re not married, I’m not allowed on base, but he drives out to meet me at the Roadhouse right where County Road 551 connects with 41. It feels good to get out of town and see some new faces. On Thursday nights the Roadhouse has what they call adult entertainment, and the place jumps. The girls aren’t as good-looking as I thought they’d be. Everyone stares when they first take off their tops, but after a couple of minutes there’s nothing to look at—nothing changes. Pretty soon everyone’s back playing pool or watching the TV, and the girls end up dancing in their corners by themselves.

  Siobhan must have been waiting by the window, because she came running down the front steps when I drove in. The yard and the house looked normal enough. I remember the time I went over there after the hunting incident. Randy and his buddies were heading out to Michigamme to shoot rabbit, and Siobhan emptied out all the kerosene in their cooking stoves. She pictured Randy starving to death out there in the woods. I was nervous about that one, but no one was even suspicious.

  “Go on back inside,” I said. “Kate’s buckled in her car seat. It’s going to take a couple of minutes.”

  “Let me do it.” Siobhan gave me a push with the side of her hip, and I stepped out of the way.

  “Is everything okay here?” I took another look around the property. “Did you put the rake and shovel back in the garage?”

  “She’s adorable,” Siobhan said. “You know I think she’s precious, don’t you?”

  “Remember, I’m going to be bringing Randy home in a couple of hours. I want to make sure he’s not going to suspect anything.”

  Siobhan lifted Kate out of the backseat. “We’re fine here. Just fine.” She held out her hand for Kate’s day bag of diapers and an oversized stuffed choo-choo train. The blue-and-white striped train is a present from Siobhan; Kate never plays with it at home, but at Siobhan’s she seems to love it. I find her in the middle of the living room floor pulling the train in circles and laughing when it tips over. She screams when I have to pack it away, but when we get home she won’t even look at it.

  I started to follow them into the house, but Siobhan turned around and told me that I should get going.

  “I thought the hospital wasn’t going to release him until noon,” I said. “There’s still an hour to get rid of.”

  “You don’t want to be late.” Siobhan had Kate
balanced on her hip, and the day bag was over her shoulder. She’s taller than I am and doesn’t look cluttered with all of Kate’s stuff. “The roads might be icy. That’s a bad stretch of highway there.”

  Siobhan was right about Highway 28 getting icy. There’s nothing but a few pine trees to block Lake Superior, and the wind comes straight across with the speed of all that open space. But the weather had been still that week—the same heavy gray sky hanging over us for days.

  Siobhan gets moody after the accidents, so I left without complaining about her rudeness.

  It was a Saturday, but the streets felt empty. Munising had been upset with a pack of strangers the past two weeks. A whole team of cameramen had come up from Detroit to film a Kawasaki snowmobile commercial. They brought fifteen snowmobiles and about that many Stuntmen. The guys rented out ten rooms at the Best Western and were bothering everybody in town. Two of them dressed up in a bear costume and walked into the Dogpatch trying to scare away the locals. I heard the bear outfit was part of the commercial they were filming. Supposedly a guy drives one of the snowmobiles into a cave. It comes tearing out the other end, but the guy’s gone and there’s a bear driving the machine. They’ve been hanging around town so long because they’re waiting for fresh snow. Someone asked them how long they plan to wait and they laughed and said, “How long does it take for the snow to come?” Someone should tell them we’ve had snow as late as May up here.

  I drove to the Dogpatch and checked out the cars in the parking lot. Denny Kennedy’s red-and-black LeMans was parked by the side of the building. He’s an old friend from high school and he sometimes picks up an odd shift at the Dogpatch. He and the owner have been drinking buddies for years.

  There wasn’t any sun that day, but it still took me a few minutes to get used to the yellow light. Denny was sitting behind the bar leaning forward on his elbows. He didn’t move a muscle when I walked in.

  “You hung over, Denny?” I pulled out one of the stools and sat in front of him.

  “Not too bad.” He held out his hand, palm down. I could barely see his shakes.

  Everybody says there’s no hope for Denny. His father was an alcoholic—only made it out of Munising to die in a dry-out clinic in Arizona. Denny’s the same way. He told me a person doesn’t know what a real drunk is until they’ve shit in their pants. I asked him how many times that had happened to him and he laughed. “No use counting,” he told me. “There aren’t no reason in the world to keep track of a thing like that.”

  There’s nothing wrong with the way Denny looks. Most of the girls in town have had a crush on him at one time or another. A few of us have even slept with him, but most nights he gets too drunk to be horny. I’d help him if he’d let me, but he doesn’t seem to need anybody.

  Denny reached over and grabbed two mugs from the cooler. “Drink a draft with me?” he asked. He didn’t have to move to reach the taps.

  “I’m going to Marquette,” I said.

  “Heading up to the base?”

  “Straight into town,” I said. “Randy’s got himself in another one of his accidents.”

  The beer was cold, but the glass tasted of dishwashing soap. They got an automatic glass washer for the Dogpatch, but the bartender forgot to empty out the peanut shells before they washed the ashtrays, and the machine broke a week after they bought it. Now they just rinse out the glasses in a sinkful of soapy water and let them dry on the bar.

  “It’s pretty hard to believe.” Denny finished the draft in a couple of swallows and picked mine up to refill it. I told him I wanted a bottle of Canadian Blue.

  “Sure is,” I said. “It’s hard to believe one man can be so clumsy.” Denny was smelt fishing with us the night Siobhan tried to poison Randy with grain alcohol. We had made a camp-fire up on the north shore waiting for the smelt to run, and Siobhan was mixing the cocktails. It was damp, the early spring winds were cold, and we had to drink a lot to keep warm. She made our drinks with Popov vodka, but Randy’s were lethal, pure alcohol she bought from some woman who brews her own.

  Halfway through the night, Siobhan started complaining about being bored, so Randy suggested that we go on home. She took both sets of keys and the guys were stuck out there. Siobhan pictured Randy dying of exposure, but fluke of all flukes, Denny stayed somewhat sober that night, and he remembered an old cabin one of his friends had out there. They broke in and spent the night protected from the wind. The doctor told Siobhan the alcohol actually saved Randy’s life.

  “I’m not talking about Randy,” Denny said.

  “Then what’s so hard to believe?” I had considered telling Denny about Siobhan and her plan to get rid of Randy. He’s someone who would understand about why she was doing it and about why I was helping her. But I never did. He’s not sober too often, and I didn’t want to get him in any trouble if she ever did manage to carry it off.

  “There were two women in here this morning,” Denny nodded to the dance floor. There was a table in front of the window and I could see a few dirty glasses and some bar napkins crumbled in the ashtray. “Two beautiful, beautiful women.”

  “What women?”

  “I don’t know who they were.” Denny grabbed the string of my purse and pulled it over to his side of the bar. He knows I don’t smoke, but he still rifles my purse for cigarettes every chance he gets. “You wouldn’t believe what they looked like,” Denny said. “Incredible. They didn’t look real. But I know they were. I could hear them talking and laughing like real people.”

  “What’d they look like? Martians?” I asked.

  “They looked like they walked off a page of a magazine. Makeup on and everything.”

  “You didn’t know them?” I asked. “And they came here alone?” The Dogpatch isn’t the kind of place that people who don’t know the area would come for a drink.

  “They were right there. Bigger than life. More beautiful than any life I’ve ever seen.” He pointed to the dirty table again, only this time I didn’t turn around.

  “God, they were beautiful.” Denny finished looking through my purse. I made sure my wallet and car keys were still there and then dropped it over the arm of the stool.

  “They didn’t have stomachs,” Denny said. “They were all flat here.” He leaned over the bar and put his hand on my stomach. I was wearing long underwear under my sweater, so I couldn’t feel his hand. I know I’m not fat, but I still had weight on from having Kate and I didn’t like Denny looking at me like I was heavy.

  “You could put your hand around their waists,” Denny said. “I swear to God, one hand would fit around their waists.”

  “Do you think they were from downstate?” I asked.

  Denny ignored my question. “Do you know what they ordered?”

  This time I looked over at the glasses. They weren’t beer mugs so I guessed Bloody Marys.

  “Benedictine.”

  “What?”

  “Benedictine.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s a drink.”

  “And those women wanted to drink it?” I kept looking at the table. There was no ice in the glasses. I could see straight through them to the dirty window and then the brick wall.

  With a great effort Denny got up and walked the length of the bar. His body tilted and he dragged his heavy right boot. Denny doesn’t have a heel on that foot and has to wear a support boot. The accident happened two springs ago during the Au Train canoe races. A bunch of people were drinking down by the finish line, and Denny was sitting on the hood of Bruce Pelke’s VW Bruce got in and started to pull away. He thought Denny would jump off, but Denny was too wasted to know that they were moving. He fell off the car, and his ankle got tangled in the front bumper. For a while they thought he was going to lose his whole foot. Now when he gets really loaded he’ll take off his socks and show how the ankle is sewn right to the arch of his foot. But when he’s got his clothes on you can’t really tell anything’s wrong except that he w
alks funny and sometimes stands way over to one side. The alcohol doesn’t help the way he looks; I think it makes it worse.

  Denny set the heavy bottle in front of me, but I didn’t really care about looking at it. I was making my plan of what I would say to Randy. It’s one of the reasons I like helping Siobhan with her attempts. It gives me something to concentrate on, something to worry about so I don’t go winter crazy. Denny pulled out the small cork, then put the bottle to my nose.

  “That’s different,” I pushed the bottle away. The smell didn’t burn like whiskey, and it wasn’t sweet like schnapps.

  “Want some?” Denny flipped down a shot glass and tapped it on the bar.

  “I’ve got to go. Randy’s out of the hospital at twelve.” It felt good to have a plan, to have something to do with the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon. I figured we’d end up back at the house and play euchre that night.

  Denny tilted the bottle and drank a sip. “Come on,” he said. “Be a beautiful woman and drink Benedictine with me.”

  “I don’t want to.” I got up and zipped my jacket. Denny took another sip from the bottle. He must have had his mouth open too wide, because some of the liquor dribbled out the sides and ran down his shirt.

  “I’m going to find those women,” Denny said.

  “Be careful, Denny,” I said.

  “Yep. That’s what I’m going to do. As soon as my shift ends, I’m going to go find those women.”

  I shook my head and Denny raised his voice.

  “Just you watch me,” he said. “The minute Bob comes walking in that door to take over, I’m out of here. I’m going to find those beautiful, beautiful women.”

  “You go right ahead,” I said. “And then you tell me what you’re going to do once you find them.”

  Denny set the bottle down and picked up the cap. He bit into the corkscrew and I thought he had gone back to his daydreaming. But just when I got to the door, he shouted, “I don’t have to worry about that right now. I’ve got to find them first.”

  The guys at the pool table looked at me, even though it was Denny who was shouting. I ignored them and gave Denny kind of a half-wave good-bye.