Burning Love

9:34 p.m. — A caller on Sparrow Lane said neighbors were burning something in their fireplace that smelled strong.

“Okay okay, just quit talking about him. You never liked him anyway,” I said, cutting her short. If she stopped talking, I’d be able to stop listening, and that would cancel out the truth of her words. Right? Wrong.

After crying big messy tears, giving myself a snotty clogged nose, hideously swollen eyes, and a sore throat, (on the fourth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me: red blotchy skin, big messy tears, two swollen eyes, and a ragged and scratchy soar throat), Shelly helped me come up with a really good reason why he was acting that way: Because he was a total jerk.

I tried to tell myself that I’d feel better when it stopped hurting, so why not enjoy the pain while it lasted? I wanted to skip all that and go with the “what would have happened with Ben had I lost twenty pounds/went brunette/wore a Victoria’s Secret Very Sexy Lace Extreme Balconet Bra” because maybe it wasn’t over. Why bother working myself up into a legitimate broken heart when I was secretly waiting for Ben to come to his senses and miss me?

But after three weeks, I knew he was just not that into me, so I burned everything related to him. That stupid stuffed dog, (the fake Beenie Baby one) got chucked into the fireplace. Then I ripped up all the cards and sprinkled them over the flames. I put that pair of underwear- the ones I wore that first time- in there but they didn’t burn very good. The single red rose, (the one I thought was so romantic but I now see as Ben being cheap) crackled. The pillowcase didn’t catch though.

I wished I could burn all the lies he told me: I’m getting a divorce.  I love you, I need you, I can’t live without you. This has never happened before. Must’ve been a wrong number. She’s just a friend! I’ll call you–soon. You’ll find someone better.

 

Their Unexpected Life

9:47 a.m.– An officer assisted the owner of a cockatoo stuck in a tree on Marble Road

They’d had a good chuckle over the bird’s great escape, but when Rose hung up the phone, she still felt guilty. Calling from Ireland was expensive, surely. Rose couldn’t understand why he wanted to return, not after she and Patrick had worked so hard to immigrate to America. But Caleb had always been a funny child altogether. Maybe because the child almost didn’t get born. Over the years, Rose had often thought of the day when she told Patrick of her decision.

It had been more than forty years since she had heard his weary steps on the porch that day and made no move to greet him. Rose closed her eyes, remembering every detail.

 

From the sitting room window, Rose could see the top of his hat, bobbing slightly as he wiped his feet.
“What did the doctor say?” he asked when he found her, alone with the day’s fading light. She opened her mouth to speak but the boiling scream of the teakettle demanded first attention. Patrick followed her through to the kitchen, quiet for a change, and planted himself at the sink. His presence, there in her kitchen amongst the hastily rinsed milk bottles and greased skillet, felt too intimate, too close.
Her stiff spine and tightened lips betrayed her casual tone. “He just confirmed what I already knew,” she said.
“You’ve told the girls?” Patrick asked. Yes, she had. Tracy’s scornful words had burned.
“Mother! You can’t be preggers. I’m getting married.” The very idea of child and grandchild possibly born within months of each other—a year at most— infuriated Tracy. “How could you be so careless?” she’d railed, her darkly lipsticked mouth twisting downward. Where did she get her mean streak, Rose had wondered. Surely not from her father. And certainly not from me. Their younger daughter Sharon’s reaction was to be expected. She calculated thoughtfully, weighing the possibilities: childminding duties interfering with her recently granted right to date, minus the potential for hourly earnings in minding money equaled the total impact on her life. Sharon’s shrug wasn’t one of indifference, it signaled the conclusion that she’d suffer only minor disruption, and with the money earned, Sharon would break even. Rose related most to Paula’s blankly confused face. Paula was old enough to understand pregnancy, but unlike Tracy, was too young to voice an opinion.

Rose didn’t need twenty years of marriage to know that tonight, as with all the previous nights, Patrick would eat his ground meat stew with the same neutral intensity she found comforting. He neither relished nor loathed anything he ate at dinner. Dr. Halleran’s news, or any other news for that matter, wouldn’t affect his appetite. Rose used her thumbnail to trace patterns in the worn oilcloth, watching her husband mechanically sop the gravy with a thin slice of white bread. Not until after the girls had been excused and the plates cleared did she try to speak.
“Patrick, I…Love, you know that… It’s just…” The reasons, never presenting themselves as a swirling mass in her head but instead a carefully regimented logic evaporated when she tried to explain to Patrick. I’m too old. We can’t afford another baby. Paula’s already twelve. She’ll be out of the house before this one’s off to school. Her reasons sounded shoddy and flimsy when forced into words.
“I suppose you’ll want to go across,” Patrick said finally.
“Dun Laoghaire to Holyhead,” Rose agreed.
“So you’ve decided? You only just saw Doctor Halleran this afternoon, but you’ve already decided.” Yes, Rose had decided. Weeks ago, when she’d first felt the familiar symptoms. We can’t have another baby, she’d told herself, long before shocking Patrick with her decision.

In the morning, Rose walked to the corner to telephone the ferryport, reserving her passage for the following week. She’d take the 212 bus to Dublin and get to Dublin Swift early enough for her 9:05 departure. Then she’d somehow find the Holyhead station—it shouldn’t be difficult—and board the earliest train into London. Her medical examination wasn’t until the following morning. Tracy could mind the girls and put on dinner for a day or two. “I’m off to Wales” would be all Rose would need to tell Tracy. Her oldest would know, and know enough to keep quiet about it. It’s all planned, Rose thought with a wave of apprehension she called morning sick.
But like her unexpected pregnancy, life couldn’t always be planned. On Thursday, Paula complained of a sore throat and had to be kept in bed for nearly a week. Rose once again telephoned the ferryport, this time rescheduling her passage for Monday. But the clinic hadn’t room for her on Tuesday, she’d need to arrive on the following Thursday, one week later. Once home, Rose checked her diary and saw that Thursday next was the weekend of her Women’s Institute Lusk Community Arts Fête—impossible to turn up missing. She’d need to call ferryport again and rebook. Now, though, Patrick would be home soon and she’d not started dinner. Tomorrow would be soon enough, she decided wearily.

For Rose, tomorrow never quite came. The days turned to night, darkness fell but each time dawn lit the morning sky, a new crisis came with it. Sharon returned home from school with a mongrel and insisted she be allowed to keep it, which started an argument with Tracy, who hated dogs. Patrick sided with Tracy (“He’ll be another mouth to feed, isn’t that so Rose?”), but then little Paula became so upset, the entire family searched for two days until the mutt was found and brought home again. And then Patrick’s back went out, not like the last time, but Rose needed to tend to him. When she did manage to get out to use the telephone, Siobhan from the Women’s Institute hovered near enough to listen, so Rose pretended to be phoning her sister.
It’s always something, Rose thought as each meal set on the dinner table for her waiting family signaled the end of another plan-free day.
Eventually, it was too late to go via Dublin Swift to Holyhead and take the train into London, and in the end, baby Caleb was born.

Candy

9:37 p.m. — A caller said a woman driving on Oak Woods Way stopped, got out and danced and then got back in the car and drove away.

“You’d like Candy,” Jack said.

I agreed and smiled while I patted my stomach. Then Jack laughed, saying I’d misunderstood. Candy was a great gal, he said. A real spitfire. He used words like fascinating and intriguing and even called her charming. That it was her never occurred to me.

I hadn’t seen Candy Mason in ten years; we knew her as Candace back then. Candace Mason had somehow convinced my brother Mike to walk down the aisle, and then she walked out on him and Wickerton four years later. But not before she’d run up twenty-two grand on his credit cards and left Mike with the bills. Some of us were relieved to see the back of her. And none of us expected to see her anywhere near Townsville again.

I did some investigating. I’m no Columbo, but when I heard it was Candy Mason in town, I smelled trouble. Turns out, Candy Mason had been in and out of hot water. She’d been arrested for grand theft auto when she stole some boyfriend’s car. She’d been caught drunk driving, too, smashing up another borrowed car.

Maybe it was none of my business, but I kept digging. I got Lewis from the Chronicle to pull some strings.

Candy had left quite a trail over these last ten years. Defaulted on loans. Broken leases and skipped owing thousands. Suckered a couple of folks into starting a business with her, then did a runner with the start-up funds. Got married and then divorced some schmoe in Folger City. Left him with a pile of debt, too. Candy had a fraud case pending, but she’d run off.

I saw her walking down Main one night, looking like a million. I’m not one to follow women’s fashions, but I recognize moneyed goods when I see them. And then Candy Mason got right into white Mercedes. A Mercedes Benz in Townsville! Donna Perkins would be on her knees.

I followed her. Don’t know what-all she was doing, dancing like that in the middle of Oak Woods. But I smelled trouble.

Squawking, Stupid Birds

10:03 p.m. — A group of people walked out on a $41.43 bill at Jerry & Bert’s Restaurant on Main Street but left a $10 bill on the table.

I don’t want to marry her. I don’t know why her damn parents had to come to town. I am not going to marry Brandy. I don’t care what she says. Yeah, maybe I’m sorry about the Jerry & Bert’s bill, but I told Brandy over and over that I didn’t have any money. She expected me to pick up the tab for her sneering, sour faced dad. Like I want to have to listen to him explain lawnmower manufacturing for the rest of my life? Brandy is just like her mother, nonstop chattering. Both of them kept going on and on about nothing. Birds. That’s what it was like. Sitting with a couple of squawking, stupid birds.

I don’t think anyone saw us leave. No one will recognize Brandy’s parents. And after tonight, they won’t need to drive up to Townsville again. No way. After tonight, I’m telling Brandy it’s over. Finished. I won’t marry her. Maybe when I get paid I might pay back the thirty bucks. Maybe not, though. Someone should’ve paid me for sitting there with her parents.

Good Boy!

8:37 p.m. — A man from Fairweather Lane reported an expensive watch was stolen.

“God is punishing you,” he declared.

Jen blew her nose. “I have a cold. I don’t think God cares about something so trivial.”
“No, I’m right. God is punishing you because you’ve done something wrong. He’s warning me. You’re hiding something,” Marco insisted. He knew he was right. Jen was sneaky. But Marco was much smarter. The cold medicine just about soothed her to sleep, but Marco didn’t appreciate Jen ignoring him like that.
“Maybe that’s what happened to my watch. You probably gave it to some other man.”
“Oh Marco, stop it. I didn’t take your watch. I’m sick. Just let me sleep,” Jen begged.
“You don’t love me,” Marco accused before storming from the bedroom. He would teach her a lesson. “The time you took drugs and passed out,” would become Marco’s memory of Jen’s cold. For years afterward, Marco would consider Jen’s cold to be just one of the many flagrant abuses she’d inflicted upon him. He’d never forgive. He’d never let her forget.

Marco wasn born in White Falls and christened by his parents, a housewife and an electrician, Mark Martin. His parents’ union was short-lived, and Marco remained unusually close to his mother. “I was always a good boy,” Marco often enjoyed saying. “My mother loved me.” But Mark Martin wasn’t very interesting; few but his mother could see his exceptional talents, qualities bestowed upon him by his mother’s very own genes.

During a trip to Cancun, Mexico at age twenty, Mark’s high school Spanish classes proved to be a pivotal inspiration. Mark Martin reinvented himself, returning as Marco Martinez del la Cordoba.

Once Mark decided he was supposed to be Marco Martinez del la Cordoba (had there not been some cruel twist of events that forced his mother from Argentina to White Falls) his devotion to this untruth was unwavering. “My mother was the daughter of the Argentine royal family,” he’d explain. Marco’s fabricated past was made even more believable by a knowledge of Argentine history. He’d regale others with his monologues on Jesuit ruins of San Ignacio, and Juan de Garay, and stories about Roque Saenz Peña. Marco’s eyes would gleam when his new friends started humming “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” because he knew he’d won again.

As Marco moved from state to state, job to job, woman to woman, his grounds for relocating became as ingrained (and as plausible) as the rest of his burgeoning fictitious life. His reincarnation was much easier to pull off once he arrived in Townsville.

Marco liked to tell people he’d once gone to Harvard and after he decided it was a waste of his time, he dropped out. (In truth, a brief visit to Cambridge was as close as he’d ever been to the university.) Sometimes he’d add that Harvard frequently invited him to lecture on any number of topics. Marco innately understood his own worth.

Marco’s only military experience was a high school stint in the junior ROTC, but his tales of flying in a B-1B Lancer were believable, especially when he sported that intimidating “buzz cut.” Though Marco himself had no official power, he believed he had a special bond with the military and police, which gave him a profound sense of authority-by-proxy.

To Marco Martinez del la Cordoba, buying a James Taylor CD was equal to being close friends with the musician. Using Microsoft products meant that he knew Bill Gates. Marco’s friendships were established in minutes; his list of former secretaries and servants and colleagues and agents and top executives was long. Few noticed that he often spoke of them, but never to them.

“I never lie!” he’d repeatedly assert. The dragons he created were necessary to showcase his slaying skills. “See? I’m a good boy,” he’d say. And someone had stolen his watch!

Marco professed to be an expert on so many esoteric subjects, most people were keen to believe him—it was easier than verifying his claims. Marco arrogantly assumed that no one was stupid enough to question him. If they dared, the character assassination Marco meted out was vicious and brutal; many decided to tell themselves he was simply too appealing to doubt.

Because most jobs were beneath him, steady employment remained elusive. He was meant to be a teacher. An artist. A restaurateur. A philosopher. A writer. Marco’s grandiose future plans still hadn’t come to fruition yet, so Jen’s job was to keep the bills paid and offer unwavering encouragement and support, even if she secretly questioned his artistic abilities.

“We must keep our posture,” Marco would proclaim as he spent Jen’s paycheck on more art supplies, expensive cheeses, the best cuts of meat, his brandy. He became Townsville’s resident connoisseur– on everything. Marco’s exceptional and impressive talents meant one thing: he deserved the best.

Marco did, in fact, have one very special talent: He had mastered the art of self-deception. Marco never stopped lying, because in his mind, nothing he ever said, thought, imagined or fantasized was actually a lie. He never considered telling the police that he’d found his watch. Perfect Marco couldn’t imagine misplacing it; he firmly believed the thief had simply returned it. Marco Martinez del la Cordoba was, as he always said, a good boy.

Call Forwarding

6:10 a.m. — A Mill Flat Road caller said he found a man and a woman sleeping naked in his living room.

Hello? Yes, I’ll hold.

Hi Carol, it’s Donna Perkins. Fine, thanks. Did you hear about Calvin Meadows? It turns out he came home early-

Calvin Meadows. No, that’s Kevin Markham. No, Kevin Markham lives on Marble Road. Calvin is over on Mill Flat. Yes, I’m sure. Calvin. He does something with computers. No, I don’t know. Kevin Markham works with Bud Aldones. No, I haven’t seen Kevin lately. Bud’s fine. We saw him down at Jerry & Bert’s last weekend, getting his usual flapjack stack with bacon and eggs.
But listen! It turns out that Calvin Meadows came home early from some kind of a business trip out of town-

I don’t know where he went. Why, I assume it was a business trip. He wouldn’t take a vacation without Tina. His wife. Tina Porter. Class of 1982 I believe. I wouldn’t know, she doesn’t come to Pot Luck. Blonde. No, not natural. Sharon does her hair and highlights it every six weeks. Beige-blonde, about shoulder length. We should probably call it dirty blonde after what happened. It seems that Calvin came home and-

They live on Mill Flat Road. It’s the white one with the green trim. No, the other one. With the magnolia tree. No, on the left as you’re heading to Wickerton. I agree– the Christmas decor is a bit much. Well, that’s Tacky Tina. Trampy Tina should be her new name.
Anyway, as I was saying. It seems Calvin came home from a business trip a day early-

I guess he flew in. Well, obviously Tina didn’t meet him at the airport. I don’t know if he rented a car and drove home. I imagine he could have driven himself to the airport and back. Tina probably wishes she drove, because when Calvin came home that morning-

Around 6:30. No, I said morning. Well, it’s only a few hours drive from there, so he could have left the night before. Okay, at four in the morning. I have no idea why he’d leave in the middle of the night. Maybe he suspected something was up because he walked in and-

What? No, I can’t hold. Call me when you’re free. I need to tell Patty and Barb about this- it’s big big news! I’m calling Marianne, too. I’ll see you at the Good and Gracious Neighbor Koffee Klatch tomorrow.

Bye.

Heavy Days of Light –

11:27 a.m. Townsville — A woman on the 100 block Main Street reported several kids at the Townsville Sooper Mart spit on her and made rude remarks about her weight.

Gwen was out of Chips Ahoy Double Chocolate Fudge cookies. Normally, this wouldn’t constitute an emergency, but today’s installment of Days of Light was going to be particularly important. Today, Joan was supposed to learn that she had lost her position in Steele Corporation. And Joe was going to be furious with Carl after learning that he gave flowers to Marianne. Sondra would realize that it was Jane who told Mark the truth about her encounter with Lance and is going to confront her, feigning forgiveness, but Sondra will quickly see through her manipulations. Beatrice will arrange for Colin to kiss her to prove that he can be romantic.

Gwen bought mint chocolate chip ice cream, a bag of Lays, three Hershey bars, a loaf of bread and a bottle of Coke.

I Don’t But I Do –

10:47 p.m.— A man on the 20200 block of Rose Avenue said a young girl was sitting outside her home and that the man could hear screaming between a man and woman in the house.

They’re at it again. Always yelling, always fighting. I hate him. I wish he’d go. Mom said maybe she’d kick him out, but that’s a lie. He’s still here. He’s still drinking. And Mom’s still arguing with him. I hate her. No I don’t, but I do.

The Cow –

2:45 p.m. — A man on Main Street said another man was entering businesses and removing the caller’s business cards and taking down business advertising signs.
Damn him! That sumbitch is at it again! How am I supposed to make a living if he goes around removing my cards and signs? Sumbitch still can’t get over the thing with the cow.

 6:26 p.m. — A main on east Sparrow Lane reported shots fired and a skunk chasing chickens.

Lost Donny –

12:03 a.m.— A caller on the 300 block of Fairfeather Lane said a woman was swearing and throwing things at the caller’s apartment building.
Is he in there? Yeah? Bring him down you hear me? I know my good for nothing husband is in there! Donny! Get your ass out here. Now!