Collected Short Stories: Volume IV
Page 22
“So what happened to the marketing executive?” Harry pressed.
“We need to talk. Privately.”
“What?”
“Meet me at the Haywood Recreation Field around six?”
“Not a good idea,” Harry cautioned. Roads were blocked, power lines down. The weather bureau had warned of a freak ice storm from earlier in the week. Many schools canceled class anticipating the worse, and Governor Carcieri put a snow emergency into effect around noon before the first flakes even hit the ground. Any cars left stranded on the streets of downtown Providence would be towed at the owner’s expense. Harry, who taught English literature at the community college, put the free time to good use correcting exams.
“Regarding the weather - ”
Click. Sylvia hung up before Harry could mount a coherent protest.
By five o’clock, driving conditions were downright miserable with freezing rain and blustery wind gusts topping out at fifty miles an hour. Nobody visited the Haywood athletic field during the winter months, certainly not after dark in hellish, bone-chilling weather like this. Straight-jacketed in rush-hour traffic, Harry didn’t arrive until six-thirty. What little light seeped through the charcoal clouds was dissipating altogether. Another ten minutes and the field would be shrouded in total darkness.
Sylvia’s brown Subaru was the only other vehicle in the empty parking lot. Harry hurried over to the safe haven of the passenger side compartment, but his future sister-in-law lurched out of the car, pulling a wool cap over her stringy brown hair. “Let’s walk.”
Pale and emaciated with a jagged, ice pick of a nose, her cheeks were permanently stained by chronic roseola. According to Bernice, her thirty-five year old sister hadn’t been out on a date since college, and the Abernathys were fatalistically resigned to the likelihood their first-born might never find a soul mate.
“In this weather?” Harry made no effort to mask his irritation. By way of response, Sylvia struck out in the direction of the corkscrew slide two hundred feet away at the far end of a soggy soccer field. The sleet, which switched over to snow an hour earlier had reverted back to icy sludge.
“Cold feet,” Sylvia threw the words out like a malignant curse. “You asked what happened to my sister’s first marriage. The groom got cold feet. More like frostbite bordering on gangrene. Cancelled the engagement a week before the wedding… no explanation. No nothing.”
Sylvia kept trudging with her head down and boots kicking up a slurry of slippery wetness. “You’re the second Mr. Right,” Sylvia confided sardonically, picking up the thread of her previous remark. “So why do you think the first chump pulled the plug?”
Harry wasn’t sure if the question was rhetorical.
He didn’t especially like subtle mind games or the insinuating, ever-so-slightly baiting tone of her voice. Sylvia halted alongside the soccer goal. The netting was frosted over with an inch-thick glaze.
“A guy’s engaged to the world’s hottest babe, a horny firecracker, and suffers a premature case of buyer’s remorse. What caused the romantic change of heart?” The momentary nastiness had fallen away and Sylvia seemed utterly placid. Again, Harry didn’t know what to say.
“My sister’s a sadistic bitch.” Sylvia spoke so softly that Harry had to lean forward, cocking his head to one side to absorb what she was saying. “Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life.”
The Haywood Athletic field was pitch black. Even the toddler swings twenty feet away were totally obscured by the endless barrage of scudding, wind-driven sleet, wrapping Sylvia’s ominous words in a phantasmagoric swirl of unreality, a waking nightmare. “Why are you saying this?”
“We grew up together in the same house. Day in, day out for thirty-two years. I know what she’s capable of.”
“You hate your sister,” Harry blurted accusingly.
“Yes, that’s true enough,” Sylvia shot back. “It’s impossible to love someone you pathologically detest. Certain emotions are mutually exclusive.”
Harry was fighting a debilitating lethargy that threatened to engulf his mind. His muddled impressions were coming in a surreal slow motion. Whether it was the late winter storm or Sylvia’s harsh, unwavering pronouncements, he couldn’t get a handle on much of anything. "I suppose you warned the Wal-Mart executive off… put the screws to that marriage, too.”
“Nothing of the sort!” Sylvia replied earnestly. “The guy was a schmuck, an ignoramus. They deserved each other.” “I never had even the slightest intention of discouraging that grotesque farce of a marriage.”
“So what happened?”
“Good question,” Sylvia replied noncommittally.
Suddenly Harry was in no great hurry to retreat to the cozy comfort of his Jeep Grand Cherokee. “I’m marrying your sister on Saturday.”
“Four days from today,” Sylvia confirmed.
The main function hall at the Braintree Sheraton Tara had been reserved eight months in advance. Father Flynn—the jovial cleric was present at Harry’s confirmation—was officiating at the marriage ceremony. The flowers, caterer, ice sculptures and honeymoon suite in Acapulco were all paid for in advance!
Sylvia suddenly lurched forward and kissed Harry, a sloppy, beak-nosed peck on the cheek. “I really like you, Harry. You’re a bit gullible but a swell guy.” “I felt obligated … I felt ...” Bursting into tears, Harry’s future sister-in-law left the butchered sentence dangling in the frigid gloom. Spinning clumsily about, she hurried back to her car.
*****
A minute passed. Harry heard an engine fire up and watched the dim trail of headlights sluicing through the storm toward the main highway. Slogging back in the direction of the parking lot, his legs felt ridiculously unmanageable. In an unbroken line from the thighs straight down to the ankles, his pants were frozen solid, slathered in a quarter-inch slab of ice. Harry picked his way back to the car. Easing into the driver’s side, he flicked the heater on full blast, and then loosening his belt, dropped his pants down around the ankles.
I’m half-naked and alone at the Haywood Athletic Field in the middle of a raging blizzard. I’m sitting here like some predatory pervert at a children’s playground waiting for my boxer shorts to dry.
When the temperature in the car topped out at ninety degrees, Harry turned the heater down one notch. His underwear was toasty warm, almost dry. The cotton slacks had thawed depositing a puddle that resembled a toddler’s wading pool on the floorboard of the car.
Marry my sister and she’ll ruin your life.
If half of what Sylvia Abernathy said was true, Harry’s life was about to take on the trappings of a Greek tragedy. He switched the windshield wipers on and watched as the twin blades labored to clear the mess. He lifted his pants off the floor and, one leg at a time, rung the excess water from the cloth. Then he spread the pants across the passenger seat, directing the heater vents at the crotch. Yes, everything was back under control.
*****
A queer incident early on in their relationship upset Harry enough to raise doubts.
In late January the temperatures spiked from the frigid single digits into the balmy upper fifties. It proved nothing more than a freakish mid-winter thaw that lasted a sum total of three days before temperatures plunged back into an arctic, deep freeze with wind chills registering below zero! One sunny afternoon during the ridiculously warm weather, Harry spied a crimson ladybug, no larger than a pea, scurrying across the oak living room floor. “An omen of things to come!” Hurrying off to the bathroom, he snatched a Kleenex from the carton. Returning to the room, the bug was among the missing. “Where’s our little friend?”
“Oh, that silly bug?” From her left foot, Bernice removed a snazzy leopard mesh pump. The gooey remains of the ladybug were smeared across the sole of the shoe. She waved the elegant leather up under Harry’s nose. “Would you be so kind?” He dabbed the remnants of the insect with the Kleenex, wadding its crushed carcass in the soft tissue coffin.
“We’re studying O’Henry’s Gift of the Magi in my creative writing class,” Harry said in an offhand manner.
“That’s swell.” Bernice was thumbing through a copy of Cosmo. Outside of fashion magazines and chick lit, she wasn’t much of a reader.
“It’s about these dirt-poor newlyweds. The husband wants to buy his wife—”
“Don’t you think this fragrance is just hideous?” Bernice peeled a swath of paper from the inside cover of the magazine and held it under Harry’s nose. The odor was cloyingly sweet with a hint of rum and some exotic citrus oil. “It’s called Princess from the Vera Wang collection.”
Harry stared at a picture of the perfume bottle which was heart shaped with a lavender tint. The golden cap had been cleverly fashioned into an elegant crown. Princess. Crown. What a great marketing ploy! “Anyway,” Harry pressed on, “like I was saying, the husband, who worships his new wife, wants to purchase this expensive comb …”
While Harry recounted the story, Bernice continued to sniff several complimentary perfume samples. “So what do you think?” Harry asked when the story was done.
“Yeah, that was swell. Nice sentiments.”
“Did you even hear a word I said?”
Bernice fixed him with a malevolent expression. “Some guy pawns his stupid watch; the wife bobs her hair. What’s the big deal?”
The ladybug incident coupled with Bernice's callous response to The Gift of the Magi unhinged him, tormented Harry for weeks. Bernice understood perfectly well that Harry meant to put the ladybug out in the back yard but smashed it anyway. Not that Harry Sylvester was about to break off his marriage over an innocuous incident involving a luckless insect. But what if the brutalized bug was a not-so-veiled metaphor?
Was it possible that Harry had fallen in love with an abstraction, an idealized, mental construct? What if everything Sylvia said was true and his fiancée was the antichrist, the despotic wife from hell? So much ephemeral fluff?
Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life. Sylvia’s chilling pronouncement pummeled his brain like a perverse mantra. Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life. Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life. Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life. Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your life. Marry Bernice and she’ll ruin your…
Harry glanced at his watch. He had been sitting in his underwear for half an hour. The windshield having glazed over with a thick coat of ice, Harry ran the wipers a second time to clear the glass. He touched his pants. From the waistband down to the knees the cloth was relatively dry now but the lower portion was still quite wet. Gingerly, Harry pulled his pants up over his hips. He flicked the high beams on and put the car in gear. As he pulled up to the stop sign at the entrance to Haywood Field, a queer thought assailed him: all Greek tragedies ultimately end in disaster. Someone dies or goes insane, has their eyes gouged out or is cursed to eternal damnation. Not good. Not good at all!
*****
The next day around two in the afternoon, Harry called the Saint Marks Church rectory. Father Flynn answered the phone. “This is Harry Sylvester.”
“We have a date with destiny later this week,” the priest quipped.
“Sunday,” Harry replied. “I was wondering if I could speak with you about a personal matter.”
“I’m free after supper.” Father Flynn, a somewhat disheveled looking middle age man was notorious for his impassioned homilies—the concept of original sin was alive and well at Saint Marks—and, when he drank a tad too much Johnny Walker Red, an occasional off-colored joke. But even Father Flynn drew the line when it came to social propriety. Perhaps this man of the cloth would talk Harry back down off the marital ledge, lay bare the errors in Sylvia Abernathy’s scathing indictment. “ Something wrong?” the priest added.
“I’m not sure,” Harry mumbled. A tightness in his chest constricted his breathing and his voice wobbled as he added, “I’ll drop by around seven.” His hand shaking, he hung up the phone.
Surprise. Surprise. So this was what an anxiety attack felt like.
Harry was overwhelmed with panicky despair tinged with self-loathing. What to say to the amiable Father Flynn? Bernice is a self-aggrandizing bitch. She murdered a harmless lady bug, one of God’s most perfect creations, with a five hundred dollar designer knock-off. For these and a host of other reasons, I’ve had a change of heart and don’t want to get married anymore.
At quarter to seven, Harry pulled the metallic blue Jeep into the parking lot of the church rectory. Father Flynn was waiting in the doorway with his coat on. Squat with wide hips and a massive chest, his ruddy complexion was offset by a tangle of bushy eyebrows. “CCD class tonight,” he said by way of explanation. Harry followed him across the lawn to the front door of the church.
“This weekend,” the priest patted him heartily on the back, “you get a pair of golden rings. One for your finger, the other for your nose.” The priest chuckled at his clever repartee. Downstairs in the church hall a group of adolescents were reciting the rosary under the direction of an older, dour-faced woman. “So what’s on your mind?”
This was not good. Harry would have greatly preferred to unburden himself in the privacy of Father Flynn’s office. Even a stuffy confessional would have been preferable to a classroom full of pimply-faced, hormonal adolescents. “My future wife’s sister came to see me the other night.” With the children reciting the Hail Mary in a monotonous drone, he told the priest what Sylvia had said.
All the while, Father Flynn listened attentively, bushy eyebrows scrunched together and a wistful smile coloring his thin lips. “Sylvia Abernathy,... she’s the older, unmarried daughter. The girl with the deformed nose and ...” He waved a hand fitfully in front of his face.”
“Awful skin condition,” Harry finished the sentence for him.
Suddenly and without warning, the priest wrapped his arms around Harry in a fierce bear hug. The other children, who had just finished their final prayer and were putting on coats, stared at them with curious expressions. “I am so happy you shared these concerns with me.”
Father Flynn reminded one of the boys that he would be serving as altar bearer at the nine-thirty Mass, then spoke briefly with the faith teacher before turning his attention back to Harry. “Sylvia’s obviously an embittered old maid,… a prissy malcontent intent on wrecking havoc and destroying her sister’s sacred day. How terribly sad!”
“She never struck me as a malcontent.”
“She abhors her sister,” the priest countered. “You admitted as much a moment ago.”
“Yes, that’s true.” Harry felt his argument faltering. “But what if—”
“What if? What if? What if?” The priest bellowed. “The world’s full of neurotic naysayers and halfwits paralyzed by indecision.” Father Flynn smiled ecstatically, raising his arms in a magnanimous gesture.
Harry nodded meekly. He had been on the verge of confiding Sylvia’s parting pronouncement - Marry my sister and she’ll ruin your life! But Father Flynn’s effusive bear hug stymied that revelation. The church basement was empty now. The priest rubbed his wide jaw and drifted back in the direction of the entryway, flicking off the fluorescent overhead lights as he went. “You want bone fide saints, read the Bible and come to church on Sundays,” he added with a hint of impatience. “Every human has mortal frailties. Learn to live with minor imperfections. It’s a small price to pay for the
joys of marriage and family.”
Harry had seen the priest assume the misty-eyed, otherworldly mantle during homilies or when he addressed parishioners at special occasions. His eyes clouded over with awe and veneration. His voice became tremulous, raising in pitch several decibels. He was, in effect, preaching to the choir.
“Bernice is a beautiful young woman… kind-hearted and compassionate. A deep thinker and humble, self-effacing soul. Count your blessings that she chose you to share her life with.” Father Flynn ended his monologue with a rapturous smile and self-affirming wag of his grizzled head. Grabbing Harry playfully by the elbow, he steered him back toward the rectory. “Mrs. Baxter picked up some Ghirardelli’s white chocolate cocoa mix. It’s really quite wonderful.”
*****
They were sitting in the priest’s cramped office, the walls finished in knotty pine with a picture of the red-robed bishop prominently displayed near the window. The housekeeper entered with a tray of steamy chocolate and a small plate of sugar cookies. “A personal vignette,” Father Flynn flung the words at Harry along with a theatrical flourish. “In the late sixties, I was stationed at a Catholic mission in the South Pacific not far from Papeete, where we use to hear colorful stories about the ‘nature men’.”
“Nature men?” Harry blew on the frothy chocolate and sipped. He had come to see the priest to explore the possibility that his impending marriage to Bernice Abernathy was a colossal mistake. He wasn’t terribly interested in expatriate beachcombers or social riffraff.
“A band of Europeans plus a handful of Americans had gone off to live on an isolated beach.”