by Mark Zubro
That was another thing about Edgar. The world ran on his time, and be damned to the rest of you.
I suppose I would have been more sympathetic if his time was being used to perform emergency brain surgery on widows and orphans from war torn countries. If anyone had dared to put him remotely close to a position of power, he would be more likely to have started the war.
The sad reality was the family could be sitting in the SUV ready to leave for something, but Edgar might decide that moment was time to refold the towels in the linen closet. The rest waited until he was done with this easily postpone-able activity.
Azure and I entered, took seats. She carried a small purse in one hand and a glass of orange juice in the other. She held it up to me. “You want a mimosa?”
I declined.
She said, “Hell of a thing.”
“Murder is that.”
“Can you imagine? Murder! In this family! They won’t be able to hush this one up.”
“This one? There’ve been others?”
“This family hushes everything up. Everything. From simple stuff, like how old you are or who was pregnant before they were married, to political scandals. In the county and in the state for that matter.”
“Edgar had that kind of power?”
She gave a short laugh and looked toward the doorway that led back to the kitchen where the dim murmur of voices continued unabated.
She took a sip from her drink and leaned toward me. “I shouldn’t tell you this.”
“It’s okay if you don’t.”
“Edgar didn’t have that kind of power. His family does. Has and always will. Edgar was a screw up.” She looked toward the doorway again. I couldn’t imagine they could hear us, but I could imagine the paranoia the Grums could spread. She nodded toward the sliding glass door. “Let’s step outside.” Outside she put her purse and drink down on a glass-topped table.
From our vantage point we could see that the backyard contained a mini-skateboard park, a thirty-by-thirty flagstone patio, with the biggest damn outdoor grill set up I’d ever seen, and an in-ground pool currently covered in winter plastic.
She pulled out a cigarette and matches from the small purse and asked, “You mind?”
“Your lungs.”
She lit the cigarette and blew the smoke away from us. She added pollution to a cool early afternoon with bright blue skies. It was warm if you stood in the sun.
She asked, “Have they tried praying at you yet?”
“Not directly.”
“They’re just praying fools. Those people pray at the drop of a sin. They use prayer as a weapon. If you are not praying, you are somehow less than them.”
“They probably think Scott and I are beyond redemption.”
She said, “Well, the truth is, this whole family is screwed up.”
“I’ve noticed some oddities.”
“I married into it, like Veronica. I’ve always felt sorry for her. I’m a cousin-in-law. These folks are loony birds. My husband is sane. We have as little contact with the rest of them as possible. He got out. He moved to Milwaukee and opened a coffee shop near the U of W campus in Milwaukee.”
“Not a sane one among the others?”
“Just Veronica. She was a saint. Where she got that kind of patience, I’ll never know. All the Grum sisters and sisters-in-law hate each other. You should see them at big holiday events. Cat fights. Bitch fights. Punches and hair pulled and pushes into pools. It’s fun in a sick way, if you’re at a distance.” She took a puff on her cigarette. “And the summer reunion!”
“Reunion?”
“Every summer, the whole goddamn family gets together at some huge farm in northern Wisconsin. Veronica avoided the other in-laws. She’d only go if she knew I was going to be there. When we did attend, we hid in the woods or stood as far in the back away from them as we could.”
“I only saw them once all together at Edgar and Veronica’s wedding.”
“That was a hell of a scene.”
“Does Mrs. Grum ever smile?” I asked.“Tell a joke? Let her hair down? Not that she has to. She certainly does not have to conform her life to my standards, but she just looks so unhappy every time I’ve seen here. And I don’t think I’m the cause of that effect. What exactly is she waiting to approve of? Or is there nothing that would appease her? Does she ever laugh at a joke?”
“Mostly I’ve seen her reign in that Buddha-like silence. She doesn’t even cuddle or coo to that stupid dog. The poor thing might just as well be a stuffed creature as a breathing animal.”
“Why don’t any of them rebel or get out?”
“Too stupid? Too desperate?”
“Desperate for what?”
She took a slug or her mimosa. “Money? Inheritance? The family Trust is supposedly this convoluted thing that you only inherit if you suck up to mommy and daddy dearest on alternate Tuesdays in all the months that have an r in them.”
“It’s that nuts?”
“My husband tried to explain the Trust to me once. I got a headache, and he didn’t know all the real down and dirty details. I’m not sure who does. Except maybe Warner, their attorney. He makes my skin crawl. I’ve never seen anyone whose eyebrows stick out so far, not outside of the movies. He must have them waxed.”
“I only met him briefly. Veronica’s lawyer dealt with him.”
“Achtenberg? I know her. She’s good.”
By now I knew some of the details of the Trust but decided revealing them to her was not my choice to make.
“So Edgar was stuck.”
“I’m not sure he ever wanted to become unstuck, but he didn’t have a lot of choice. The man couldn’t hold a job.”
“But why did he have to work if he had all this family Trust money?”
“He was stupid? He was desperate? He was afraid they’d cut him off? That last is the most likely. I do know the longest he ever worked one place was seven months.”
“I thought he started as a clerk in the family law office.”
“Sort of. Depends on which version of the truth you want to believe.”
“Version?”
“Either he left because he was declaring his independence from the family.” She puffed on her cigarette. “Or he was an incompetent boob who couldn’t even manage such a low stress job. Or neither. Edgar and the truth were not good friends. Maybe he tried to get out, sort of.”
“How’s that?”
“He always had deals. Investment deals. Stupid deals. Million dollar stock for a penny or penny stocks for a million. Some stupid shit. Once he wanted my husband to put ten thousand dollars into some land/condo scam in Texas.”
“Your husband was going to say yes?”
“I had to put my foot down. Honestly! Why people couldn’t see his nonsense, I have no idea.”
“People always lost money?”
“I never heard of one that made money. Then there were rumors of pyramid schemes, like Bernie Madoff.”
“Did he do actual criminal things?”
She said, “I never saw proof, no. He just seemed like such a sleaze when it came to money, especially other people’s money.”
“Veronica didn’t see all this?”
“She’s your sister. What did she tell you?”
“Not much.”
“Maybe independence sort of depends on a pay check, doesn’t it?”
“Was he totally dependent on his family for money?”
“That I don’t know.”
“We found a ton of coupons among some things Veronica asked us to go through. He was that broke he needed to clip coupons?”
“He’d never starve with mommy and daddy around. What he needed to do for day to day basics, I’m not so sure.”
“It sounds like an awful life.”
“Depends on your perspective. Remember, besides money, the family has pull and power. He only has his current job because of the family’s influence.” With the toe of her shoe, she stubbed out her cigarette o
n the flagstones then continued, “At any rate, most recently he’d signed on to help with the Republican campaign to destroy democracy in Wisconsin. That recall campaign needed as many workers as they could get. The public hates all of the Grums.”
“Then how do they have so much power?”
“The Grums always believe that they can get anything they want and with all the money they’ve got, they aren’t far wrong. It’s never ‘we were wrong’, it’s ‘we didn’t get our message across’. Translation, we didn’t spend enough money on slick advertising geared to the rubes to get them to buy our snake oil. This time I think they were scared. Even with all that cash advantage over the opposition, they were working like mad.”
I’d seen the attempt to push idiot ideas concealed by false advertising in zillions of Republican campaigns. Never, ever tell the truth about how they were going to screw the American people. I had one friend of mine, a die-hard ideologue, who said that not telling the truth was an important part of their tactics. He claimed they knew people would never vote for them if they knew the truth: just wave the flag, hate the homosexuals, praise god, and pass the ammunition. Unfortunately, that still worked.
“What did he do for the campaign?”
She lit another cigarette, took a long pull on it, stared back toward the rest of the house, then leaned toward me. “That family was in charge of making sure there were enough votes to keep that loon Mary Mallon in office.”
“They have that kind of power?”
“Oh, yes, my dear, they do. You’ve heard the story?”
“About the election?”
“Oh, yeah. The Grums and their rich buddies had it settled. By hook, and if need be, most definitely by crook, they’d have enough votes. If it was close, the Democrat would for sure lose. Votes would be found. They’d wait until all the tallies were in from certain precincts in Milwaukee County, Madison, and any other Democratic stronghold. Then they’d release their final votes or find final votes.”
“How?”
“You remember Mayor Daley in Chicago in 1960?”
“Sure.”
“Same thing.”
I’d heard about the accusations for years and even read up on them somewhat, that Daley had stolen the election for Kennedy in Illinois in 1960. The story was Daley had released his last precincts after the final Republican precincts from downstate had been released. I’d also heard another version, that Daley had learned his lesson from those very same downstate repubs who’d done the same thing for years - wait for Chicago to report and then release their precincts with, amazingly enough, just enough votes to overcome Chicago’s advantage.
The truth about 1960? There was litigation for years. Repubs had a history of trying to delegitimize any Democrat and his or her win. No matter how wild the accusation, the argument back was always that the Democrats had always done the same thing, the usual false equivalency argument.
The key was the election had to be close. A landslide either way made these shenanigans moot, and the recall election couldn’t be closer. When I’d checked on the Internet this morning, accusations of chicanery, illegality, and deception on both sides flew back and forth.
She said, “Orders had gone out from the highest level. Win this one or else.”
“Who’s the “highest level”?”
“Not the Grums.”
“Not?”
“They’re local. Important if you consider Harrison County important. The Grums look down on everyone around here but usually the Grums know their place in the pecking order that is wealth in the Republican party and this country.”
“But the results I saw on the Internet an hour or so ago said the Democrat was ahead by ten votes.”
She tittered, patted my arm with one hand, took a puff on her cigarette, smiled, and said, “I’d say by about the middle of this afternoon, they’ll announce thousands of found votes.”
I feared she was right. “You know this for a fact?”
“I know this county. I know Republican politics in this state. If Governor Mallon doesn’t screw it up, they might pull it off. In a worldwide stupidity contest, I’m not sure which of them would win, Governor Mallon or Edgar. You know they dated?”
“Recently?”
“Edgar may have been many things, but a philanderer he was not. At least I never heard. This was years ago. When he was in college.”
“Isn’t she a lot older?”
“And he was a grossly fat pig. Your point?”
“They were in love?”
“She was certainly in love with the Grum money. With him?” She shrugged. “She broke up with him long ago. Eventually she married someone from a family even richer than the Grum’s, a first cousin of the Ducharmés. She won her first county-wide office not long after that unholy union. And now, poof, years later, the booby prize, Governor of Wisconsin. Or as we call it, doing the bidding of the rich.”
I’d heard of the Ducharmés. They were among the billionaire oligarchs determined to make sure laws were passed and tax breaks were given in local, state, and federal legislatures to make themselves and their cronies even more wealthy billionaire oligarchs.
“How does stealing the election involve Edgar?”
“He’s a screw up. You know how some people, especially an awkward teenager, can’t seem to walk across a room without tripping over their own feet?”
“Yeah.”
“Edgar turned awkward and inept into a lifestyle.”
I understood awkward and inept and had some sympathy for it. Unfortunately, I was not immune myself, although Scott was usually pretty indulgent of my gaffes. Plus, I taught teenagers, most of them the very definition of awkward.
“But how does him being awkward and inept lead to him screwing up stealing the election?”
“Idiotic, unfounded, mad rumors have been flying around this county. Everybody knows the election is rigged for the Grums. If there’s any hitch, it’ll be because of Edgar. Trust me. Soon they’ll report enough votes for the Governor to win.” She put out her cigarette and pulled out another one and lit it.
I’m glad I wasn’t her lungs. She continued. “All I know is what I heard through the family grapevine. He worked in that campaign. I heard he bragged that they’d win no matter what.” Another shrug. “If things go wrong, it has to be his fault. Even though he’s dead, it still could be. Although they’ll hide their cheating and any screw up.”
“The newspapers don’t investigate?”
“They either own the local papers or intimidate them.”
“How do you intimidate a newspaper?”
“Whoever has the most money wins. You know that.”
All too true. I asked, “What about reporters from Milwaukee, or nationwide?”
“They get here and all they see are cows grazing peacefully in the fields.”
“If it goes wrong, and it’s Edgar’s fault, doesn’t that mean they’d have had to give him something important to do?”
“Who knows? The family was nuts. Daddy just indulged him constantly.”
“You really think they’ll steal it?”
“Don’t you?” She took a gulp of her drink. “I have no proof and no direct knowledge, but you’ll see. Although, you do know there were problems for the campaign?”
I said, “We read that it was vicious and both sides spent tons of money.”
“They may have both spent money, but the Governor’s side had tons more of it to spend. A reporter who had infiltrated the campaign was found dead. There were rumors of suicide and/or murder.”
I said, “There’s a doubt it was suicide? The Grums are powerful enough to make a reporter disappear? They can cover up a murder or a suicide?”
“Paranoia runs deep on both sides. Maybe the reporter knew too much or someone thought he did, which is just as deadly. The Grum motto is, if necessary and possible, crush any threat.”
I said, “This whole thing sounds insane.”
She said, “Welcome to my world. A
nd remember, it’s not insane to them. It’s business as usual to them. And as for cover-ups, you’d think they’d want to find out who killed their own son.”
I asked, “Would they kill their own son because he screwed up stealing an election?”
She paused several moments to think, took a puff on her cigarette, took another drink, finally shook her head. “They are awful and vile, but I don’t think they’re that awful and vile. I don’t want to think they are that rotten.” She shuddered. “No, Edgar was a screw up, but murder?”
I found this tough to believe, too, even of desperate and despicable repubs. I looked out at the bright morning, listened to birds chirping, felt the soft wind on my face.
She continued, “Maybe he screwed up stealing it. Maybe he screwed up covering it up. Remember, the family doesn’t control the recall election. They’re doing bidding.”
“They’d do the bidding of someone who told them to kill their own son?”
She looked doubtful. “They’re hateful. Exactly how hateful I’ve never dared try to quantify. I don’t think they’d actually pull the trigger. Or order it pulled. But if someone behind them was threatened, that person certainly would.”
“Rumors through the family grapevine, not proof?”
“No, not proof. I can see. I can listen. I can speculate. It’s mostly crap in this family.” She blew out a lungful of smoke. “Hell, I don’t know. They’re so nuts and so desperate, who knows what they’re capable of. I’m here to support Veronica. I better get back.”
“Why’d you tell me all this?”
Instead of putting her cigarette out on the flagstones, as she had done before, she mashed it into the ashtray with short, sharp jabs for emphasis. She leaned close and spoke with an intensity I knew the Grums could inspire. “I hate this family. All of them. Except Veronica. That old witch, old lady Grum, tried to stop my marriage. To her nephew! A nephew! What business was it of hers? She is evil incarnate. Talk to anybody who knew them.”
“Anybody specific?”
“Not in the immediate family. On the periphery. Those who still have a grasp on reality.”
She stood up and walked to the door, turned back as she opened it. “Trust no one in this family. No one.”
“Including you?”
