Collected Short Stories: Volume V

by Barry Rachin

  “Already did,” Sonny replied. After every snow storm, the boy had cleared away Naomi’s driveway. He even went back the following day to dig out the rock-hard slabs of frozen ice left behind by the municipal plows and street sanders.

  “Well that’s good.” Mr. Gossage went back outside.

  Sonny didn’t go over right away. He waited until the weekend. Friday night after supper he put on his khaki Docker slacks and a plaid sport shirt. He combed his hair and dabbed some English leather cologne on his neck but thought better of it and washed the sharp scent away as best he could. Then he plodded through the packed snow down to the Shamir house.

  “Did you get my card?” She invited him into the house. He was hoping for a welcoming hug, but the woman didn’t seem in a particularly playful mood. Ruthy, who was hunkered down in the den with a coloring book and fistful of crayons looked up momentarily before settling back down.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Sonny shook his head. A half-empty bottle of wine and a glass rested on the kitchen table. Ruthy wandered into the kitchen. She grabbed a banana, tore the peel away and retreated back to the den. “When I’m in Israel,” Naomi spoke softly, “I wish that I was here, and when I’m home again, I miss the Holy Land.” She poured herself a drink filling the glass almost to the rim. Lifting the wine to her lips, she hesitated and placed it back on the table.

  A weak glow as though from an infant’s nightlight was flickering on the Formica counter next to the toaster. Sonny went to take a better look. The light sputtered dimly from a thick tumbler filled with milky white wax. The wick had burned down three-quarters of the way to the bottom. A piece of paper with Hebrew lettering was glued to the outside. “It’s a yahrzeit candle,” Naomi said by way of explanation. “Jews light a candle on the anniversary of a family member’s death. My mother died a year ago today.” Again she picked up the glass, sloshed the pale liquid in an undulating motion then set it down without drinking. “I was here in Massachusetts a thousand miles away when she passed.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sonny didn’t know what else to say. The Israeli woman was even more beautiful than he remembered, if that was humanly possible. All his smutty and indecent fantasies fell away in an instant. He wanted to hold and comfort her, to say something profoundly grownup, brilliant and resolute in order to blunt her sorrow.

  You got my postcard?” He nodded. “The Al-Aqsa Mosque is very close to the Jewish quarter, so after I said a prayer at the Wailing Wall for my mother I went to an Arab kiosk and bought the card. I thought to myself, ‘Sonny will like this one, for sure.’” She rose abruptly, tossed the wine in the sink and put the bottle away. “Like I said, when I’m here I’m homesick for my family in Israel, but when I’m there visiting I can’t wait to return home.”

  Sonny thought a moment. “Which is home – here or there?”

  Naomi smiled sadly. “Both. In the spring I shall apply for American citizenship. It won’t make the pain go away, but it’s a step in the right direction.”

  Mrs. Shamir, a self-professed non-believer, recited a prayer for her departed mother at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. Was it a logical inconsistency or just another example of Sonny’s all-encompassing ignorance? In the den Ruthy was singing along with the silly tune that opened Malcolm in the Middle.

  You’re not the boss of me now.

  You’re not the boss of me now.

  You’re not the boss of me now,

  and you’re not so big.

  Life is unfair….

  “Just in case you came home early, I shoveled out your driveway every week,” Sonny said, “and threw traction gravel on the flagstone walkway and back stairs.” Mr. Gossage had bought a sixty pound bag at the beginning of the winter. Sonny filled a pail and hauled it down to the Shamir residence each time after cleaning the walkways. The heavier crushed stone was a better choice over playground sand or rock salt, which could discolor or damage the mortar in the brickwork.

  The dark-skinned woman was puttering at the sink and he didn’t think she heard him. “I’m tired,” Naomi announce. “I’m going to bed now.”

  Saturday night Mrs. Shamir had a dinner engagement. Sonny arrived a half hour early. Naomi was dressed rather conservatively in a dark blue dress that looked like something more appropriate for Vision World than a romantic soirée. “Mr. Klezmer is treasurer of the brotherhood at Temple Agudas Achim. Tonight is the board members’ installation dinner-dance.”

  “But I thought you weren’t religious?”

  Naomi grinned devilishly. “That’s our dirty little secret.” She was fumbling with an earring; the backing kept coming loose. Rushing back into the bedroom, she slammed the door. Sonny drifted into the kitchen and cracked the refrigerator open. Removing a small dish covered with cellophane, he placed it on the counter.

  The doorbell rang. Mr. Klezmer was a stocky man with dark-framed glasses and gentle, almost feminine features. He wore a shapeless brown suit and wing-tipped shoes. Despite a boyish charm, he suffered from a bad case of male pattern baldness. In a few short years, Sonny mused, the few remaining tufts of frizzy brown hair would be ancient history and the middle-aged man would look positively prehistoric. “Mrs. Shamir is still getting ready. I’m the babysitter.”

  He led the way into the living room just as Naomi cracked the bedroom door open and gestured to Sonny with a crooked finger. “I found a run in my nylons,” she whispered pettishly. “I’ll just be a minute longer, if you could keep Sheldon occupied.”

  He went back into the living room, where the man was studying an oil painting of an Arab village with stucco, sand-colored houses and a cedar forest fading into a mountainous background. “A humanitarian crisis exists in the Gaza Strip,” Sonny blurted the words out all in a jumbled heap, “and many of the residents lack safe drinking water.”

  Sheldon stared at the young boy through thick glasses and ran a hand over his balding head. “I didn’t realize you were Jewish.”

  “Actually, I’m Catholic,” Sonny stammered. “Last month National Geographic featured an article on Gaza, although I can’t say as I understood the half of it.”

  As Sonny explained it, the journalist who wrote the report flew over the region in a small, single-engine plane. On the Jewish side were verdant fields, farms, flower gardens and even luxurious swimming pools filled to overflowing. But less than a mile away in Gaza, the water—what little existed—was foul-smelling, polluted and undrinkable. The Israelis, who controlled the pumping stations rationed water to the Palestinians while refusing to allow them to build modern purification facilities. Many of the Arab children were malnourished and sickened with diseases spread by putrid water.

  When Sonny finished talking, Sheldon observed, “Something that has enormous value in useage, might be taken for granted simply because it’s plentiful.”

  “Like water,” Sonny ventured.

  “Smart boy!” Mr. Klezmer winked playfully. “When you think about it, nothing is more useful than water, but its cost is negligible. A diamond, on the other hand, has few if any practical applications outside of fashion or as a sharpening agent, and yet we pay a small fortune for a single gem.”

  “I don’t see how any of this applies to the situation in Gaza.”

  Mr. Klezmer cracked a dreamy, introverted smile. “The value of water depends inversely on the thirst of the person and availability. Suppose a Palestinian is dying with thirst and there is fresh water available but beyond his reach, the Arab will give everything for that water, even a sack full of precious diamonds.”

  “Where did you learn all this?”

  “I studied finance in college,” Sheldon replied. “It’s all part of eighteenth century economic theory.” The congenial demeanor faded away and his expression turned bitterly grim. “The Israeli government’s policy toward the Arabs is inhumane; it’s why Gaza is little better than an open-air prison with security checkpoints and Jewish soldiers as wardens.”

  Mr. Klezmer looked Sonny full in the
face. “Water tainted with raw sewage is symptomatic of a deeper moral malaise.”

  “Then what’s the solution?”

  Sheldon smiled in his silly boyish manner and was just about to reply, but the bedroom door burst opened and Naomi rushed from the room.

  “So what have you men been gossiping about?”

  “The shortage of clean drinking water for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” Sheldon replied. “It appears your babysitter has been brushing up on the subject.”

  Naomi’s eyes brightened as she turned to Sonny. “Since when did you become an expert on Middle Eastern diplomacy?”

  When they were gone, Sonny brought Ruthy into the kitchen where they sat together silently devouring the hummus. The plate licked clean, they went back to the den and curled up on the couch together watching the latest episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Patrick and SpongeBob were capturing baby jellyfish in butterfly nets, but then a grownup jellyfish interrupted their fun electrocuting them with high-voltage shocks. Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! Zap! It reminded Sonny of the cautionary tale Mr. Klezmer told him before Naomi emerged in her new hosiery.

  Mr. Solomon, the chisel-faced Jew, was a tank commander in Tzahal, the Israeli Defense Force. Sonny could picture the reptilian oaf single-handedly shutting every spigot in the Arab households of Gaza. No more water, clean or otherwise, for you rotten Palestinian bastards! Yes, poker-faced Mr. Solomon definitely seemed the type.

  Sonny had made a joke of it. Mr. Solomon – his first name was “Ariyah’, which meant lion in Hebrew - was hummus minus all the rapturous herbs and spices – no tahini, no garlic, no fresh lemon, no jalapeño pepper. No nothing. On the other hand, Mr. Klezmer, despite a receding hairline and myopic eyes, was just the person to ease Mrs. Shamir’s heartache in a year’s time when Sonny was far away at college, and she had to light yet another funny little candle in the thick glass tumbler.

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  Leaky Pipes

  Bartholomew Schroeder watched the girl approach from the entrance to the hotel dining room. In her late teens, she was about the same age as his youngest granddaughter. “My name,” she stumbled over the words, which sounded stilted and rehearsed, “is Holly Heatherton, and my family came over Monday on the same ferry from Woods Hole.”

  “Yes, I remember -”

  “No, don’t speak!” She waved a hand distractedly and, for a brief moment, Bart thought the girl might do something outlandish. He once watched a woman dancing with her husband at a wedding. The woman was quite drunk. The husband said something disagreeable and the woman pulled her slinky black evening dress up over her head, revealing a dainty white camisole and a pair of control-top nylons. Not that he thought Holly Heatherton was inclined to make a similar scene, but the girl was noticeably agitated, distraught.

  “I dreamed about you last night.” The girl moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue and slid down into the vacant chair opposite the older man. A thin girl with chestnut colored hair that hung limply down almost to the small of her back, there was an austere refinement to the pale face. A patrician’s daughter? An ax murderer?

  “In the dream you were surfcasting off the breakwater.” She pointed out the window toward the Oak Bluffs Bay.

  “I don’t fish,” he replied. “Not salt water or fresh.”

  “I was walking near the shore searching for sea glass,” she conveniently ignored the remark, “and, when I passed by, you whispered, ‘I’ve a message for you.’”

  Mr. Schroeder blinked and stared at his breakfast - eggs scrambled with flaked salmon, chives and a tart, Monterey jack cheese - which was growing cold. The waitress approached and asked the girl if she needed a menu.

  “No, that looks scrumptious.” She pointed at Mr. Schroeder’s plate. “Could you also bring me a coffee and small orange juice?”

  “Listen here!” Mr. Schroeder objected. “Your parents will be coming down to eat any minute now, and when they see you sitting here -”

  “They already know,” Holly interrupted.

  “Know what?” Bart Schroeder could feel any semblance of normality slipping away.

  “I told them about my mysterious dream, and that I intended to speak with you.”

  The elderly man cleared his throat but could think of nothing to say. Finally, he took a sip of tepid coffee and glanced out the bay window. A trawler with a winch at the stern and woven net was sputtering out toward open water. “My name is Bartholomew Schroeder. I’m a plumber by trade and recently retired. I spent the last forty years installing boilers and commercial air conditioning units. I possess no supernatural powers... don’t commune with the dead or much of anyone else if I can help it. I’m a misanthrope.”

  That the girl was emotionally disturbed was fairly obvious. Even a blue collar, working stiff with no college education could sense her distress. The waitress returned with her drinks. “Why me?” Bart asked.

  Holly shrugged. Since breaking the ice, she seemed less agitated. More to the point, all of the willowy young girl’s anxiety had been conveniently transferred over to Bartholomew Schroeder. “I had a feeling about you from when we boarded the ferry back in Falmouth.”

  “A feeling?”

  “You came to the island unaccompanied. Each day I see you roam the beach alone, and in the late afternoon, you sit over by the landing staring out to sea like a true believer, a mystic.”

  “I believe in central heating and keeping cool during the dog days of August.”

  That his wife of forty years died a year ago to the day, he wouldn’t tell her. Three days earlier, Bart drove across the Bourne Bridge to Falmouth, parked his car and took the shuttle to Woods Hole. He was a man on the run from memories, loneliness and profound grief. The mourning process had continued unabated through the previous year. Bart Schroeder had come to the island of Martha’s Vineyard to find solace; instead he got Holly Heatherton, a mentally unbalanced, first year piano major at the New England Conservatory of Music.

  During her freshman year at college, something had gone haywire. Reclusive by nature, Holly made few friends. A psychiatrist prescribed Adapin for anxiety, but then she got depressed. Really depressed. The young girl didn’t bother to complete the semester, taking a medical leave of absence. "I'm not totally whacked out." There was a subtle loosening, a relaxation in her tone. "It’s not like I’m going to swill a bottle of sleeping pills or rat poison.” She grinned sheepishly. “I just prefer being alone more than with people." She ran an index finger around the rim of her coffee cup.

  The waitress brought the girl’s eggs. "Do you have many friends?" Mr. Schroeder asked.

  The girl flicked a strand of dark hair away from her hazel eyes. "No, not particularly."

  "On occasion, you must meet someone pleasant or interesting?"

  Holly placed a sliver of salmon on her tongue and washed it down with a swig of coffee. She slathered her toast with jelly from a small crock. "Yes, of course, but most people ..." She seemed to lose interest in the topic. "Does that make me crazy?"

  Mr. Schroeder smiled. Her candor was a bit unnerving. "No, certainly not." He glanced distractedly at his plate. The cheese had congeals, stuck to the flaked salmon like mortar on chimney brick. Not a very appetizing sight. “You said something about a dream?”

  Holly’s eyes brightened and she leaned forward across the table. “As I approached, you put your fishing rod aside and said, ‘Holly Heatherton, I have a message for you.’” She stared intently at the older man as though this latest tidbit of information might jog his flawed memory.

  “A message,” he repeated dully. Gurus and wise men brought messages. So did hucksters, charlatans and flimflam artists, when the price was right. Lawyers, politicians and priests favored portentous pronouncements. Bartholomew Schroeder had nothing to tell the petite, dark-haired girl. The waitress arrived with the bill. “My treat.”

  As they were leaving the dining hall Bart said, “Let me think about it and I’ll get back to you, Holly.”
>
  Should he have used her first name? Mr. Schroeder climbed slowly to the second floor landing, lumbered into his room and locked the door behind him. For good measure he threw the security bolt.

  *****

  In December two years earlier, Penelope Schroeder suffered a massive stroke. “Your wife requires round-the-clock, custodial; care,” the hospital social worker spoke in a no-nonsense, officious tone.

  “Custodial,” Bart muttered. He usually associated the word with janitors and maintenance workers.

  “We’re talking parenteral feeding tubes, nasal oxygen, a Foley catheter to manage incontinence, infusion therapy and a host of other neurological and skilled nursing services.” The woman removed her glasses and gently massaged the bridge of her nose. She wasn’t soliciting Bart’s opinion; she only wanted a signature on the hospital paperwork.

  The following day, the brain-damaged woman was shipped via ambulance to Shady Pines Rehabilitation Center. The two-story building offered independent living on the first floor and, for people in failing health, a fully-accredited, acute-care rehabilitation center upstairs. Strange thing was, the residents on both floors looked pretty much alike. They hobbled about on canes and aluminum walkers. Some arrived in wheelchairs; more than a handful lugged oxygen about in portable canisters.

  “Hey, mister.” An elderly woman in a motorized wheel chair was beckoning to Bart Schroeder, who had just arrived to visit his wife. The woman was gussied up in a floral pantsuit. The outfit was impeccably tailored with a matching scarf knotted at the neck. She wore a collection of gold bracelets and her nails were brightly enameled.

  Bart approached and bent down. “The waiters served an absolutely mouthwatering cherry cobbler al a mode for lunch.” The woman’s eyes sparkled. “A la mode… it’s a French expression. It means - ”