bread. “I’m going to take Mother a snack. She’s been
shortchanged today.”
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Mary Daheim
Upon entering the toolshed, Judith expected a testy
greeting. Instead, Gertrude was writing on a ruled
tablet as fast as her arthritic fingers would permit. She
barely looked up when her daughter arrived.
“I have a bologna sandwich with apple slices and
some hot chocolate,” Judith said as the old lady scribbled away.
Gertrude still didn’t look up from the tablet. “Put
’em there,” she said, nodding at the cluttered card
table.
Judith moved a bag of Tootsie Rolls and a copy of
TV Guide to make room for the small plastic tray.
“What are you doing? Writing a letter?”
“Nope,” Gertrude replied. She added a few more
words to the tablet, then finished with an awkward
flourish and finally looked up. “I’m writing my life
story. For the moving pictures.”
“You’re . . . what?” Judith gasped.
“You heard me,” Gertrude snapped. “That writer
fella, Wade or Dade or Cade, told me that everybody’s
life is a story. So I told him some things that had happened to me over the years and he said I should write
it all down. So I am.” She gave Judith a smug look.
Judith was puzzled. Her mother had led a seemingly
ordinary life. “What exactly are you writing?”
Gertrude shrugged her hunched shoulders. “My life.
Fleeing Germany in my youth. Starting a revolution in
primary school. Drinking bathtub gin and dancing the
black bottom. Eloping with your father.”
“You were a baby when you came to this country,”
Judith pointed out. “I don’t recall you ever mentioned
fleeing much of anything.”
“We fled,” Gertrude insisted. “We were fleeing
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183
Grossmutter Hoffman. Your great-granny on that side
of the family was a real terror. She drove your grandfather crazy, and how she treated your grandmother—
her daughter-in-law—is hardly fit to print.”
Vaguely, Judith remembered scattered anecdotes
about the autocratic old girl and her savage tongue.
“Well . . . okay. But I never heard the part about the
primary-school revolution.”
“I’ve been ashamed,” Gertrude admitted. “But this
Wade or Dade or whoever told me to let it all come out.
I was in third grade, and those girls at St. Walburga’s
grade school never flushed the toilets. It disgusted me.
So I told my friends—Agnes and Rosemarie and Maria
Regina—to stop using the bathroom and piddle on the
playground. Protesting, you know, just like all those
goofy people in the sixties and seventies who didn’t
know half the time what they were protesting against.
Or for. Silly, if you ask me, burning brassieres and
smoking funny stuff. What kind of a revolution was
that?”
As she often did, Gertrude seemed to be getting derailed. “What about the bathroom protest?”
The old lady looked blank. “What bathroom? What
protest?”
“At St. Walburga’s,” Judith said patiently.
“Oh.” Gertrude gave a nod. “Well, we all got into
trouble, and the principal, Sister Ursula, sent for our
parents. We were suspended for two days, but by the
time we got back, those toilets were flushed, believe
me. In fact, the school’s water bill went up so much
they had to raise tuition three dollars a month.”
“You were ashamed to talk about this?” Judith
asked.
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Mary Daheim
“That’s right,” Gertrude said. “Nice little girls didn’t
piddle in public. In those days, nice little girls didn’t
even admit they piddled at all. But I feel good about it
now. We won a victory for hygiene.”
“You did indeed,” Judith declared, patting her
mother’s arm. “That was very brave.”
“I hope that writer fella will like it,” Gertrude said,
preening a bit. “He told me he could use a good script
about now. I guess he’s in some kind of a pickle.”
“Like what?” Judith asked.
Gertrude frowned. “I don’t rightly know, except it
had something to do with an ax.”
“An ax?” Judith looked puzzled. “Or . . . acts?”
Gertrude waved a hand. “No, it was an ax. A
hatchet—that’s what he said. Some kind of a job he
was supposed to do with a hatchet. Maybe he’s got a
part-time job as a logger. What kind of money do
scriptwriters get? I’d like to charge him at least fifty
dollars for my story.”
“At least,” Judith said vaguely. “Did Dade say anything else about this hatchet job?”
Gertrude shook her head. “Not that I remember. He
seemed kind of off his feed, though.”
There was no point in pressing her mother for details. If Gertrude remembered something later, fine.
Besides, Dade Costello’s moodiness seemed to be an
integral part of his personality.
Or so Judith was thinking when she smelled smoke.
“Mother,” she said, sniffing the air, “did you put
something on your hot plate?”
“Like what?” Gertrude retorted. “You think I could
roast a turkey on that thing? I can hardly boil an egg on
it.”
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185
Nor did Gertrude ever try, preferring to have her
daughter wait on her. Still, Judith went out to the tiny
kitchen, with its sink, small fridge, microwave oven, and
hot plate. Nothing looked amiss, nor could Judith smell
anything burning. She went back into the living room.
“It must be coming from outside,” she remarked,
and headed for the door.
Gertrude didn’t respond or look up. She was writing
again, her white head bent over the card table.
The smell got stronger as Judith stepped outside and
closed the toolshed door behind her. The rain had
stopped, but fog was settling in over the rooftops. She
could barely make out either of Hillside Manor’s chimneys. Perhaps Joe had started a fire to ward off the increasingly gloomy October afternoon.
Then she noticed the barbecue. It sat as it had all
summer on the small patio by the statue of St. Francis
and the birds. Like the kitchen cupboard door, the barbecue had been another source of Judith’s prodding.
Joe should have taken it into the garage at least two
weeks earlier when the weather had made a definite
transition into autumn.
Instead, it remained, and smoke was coming out
from under the lid. Judith went to the patio and opened
the barbecue. A sudden burst of smoke and flame made
her step back and cough.
Reaching out with a long wood-and-steel meat fork
that was lying nearby, she stirred whatever was burning. Peering with smoke-stung eyes, she saw that it
was mostly paper. Quite a bit of paper, and attached to
a plastic binding, most of which had melted.
Judith was no expert, but she thought th
at what was
left might be a movie script.
TWELVE
JOE HADN’T YET detached the garden hoses or covered the faucets for the winter. Judith turned on the
hose by the back porch and gently aimed it at the
barbecue. The stack of paper hissed and sizzled, but
didn’t go out. When she increased the pressure, the
smoke finally died down and the heat faded away.
Standing over the barbecue, Judith stirred the ashes
with a meat fork.
“I don’t think I’ll ask what you’re doing,” Renie
called from the back porch, “but I thought you’d ordered food from a caterer.”
Startled, Judith turned toward her cousin. “Somebody burned something in here. I’m trying to figure
out what it was.”
“Wienie Wizards?” Renie inquired, coming down
the walk to the patio.
“Nothing so edible,” Judith said. “It looks like a
script.”
“It does for a fact,” Renie agreed, picking up a
pair of steel tongs. “It’s pretty well fried.” She
flipped through the ashes until she got to the last
few pages, which were only charred. “If I touch
them, they may burst into flame again, but it looks
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187
like a script all right. See—it’s mostly dialogue on this
top page with some directions in between.”
“Can you see what any of it says?” Judith asked,
shivering slightly as the fog began to drift among the
trees and shrubs.
“Not really,” Renie admitted, after putting on her
much marred and thoroughly smudged reading
glasses. Judith could never figure out how her cousin
could see anything through the abused lenses. “Wait—
here are a couple of lines I can make out: Benjamin:
You have never had cause to be . . . I think the last
word is afraid. The next line is dialogue by someone
named Tz’u-hsi, who replies, It is not strange to be a
concubine, though I am called wife. Yet I am more than
a stranger, I am a . . . The rest of the page is too burned
to read.”
“A Chinese name,” Judith murmured. “Ellie’s role
in the script written by her mother, All the Way to
Utah?”
“Maybe,” Renie allowed. “So who’d burn the
script? And why?”
Judith started to stir the ashes again, thought better
of it, and replaced the lid to the barbecue. Heading
back into the house, she paused with her hand on the
doorknob. “It was in Dirk and Ben’s room,” she said.
“Room Four. The script was all marked up. There were
even some obscenities, as if whoever was reading it
didn’t like it much.”
“But which of the two actors?” Renie asked. “Ben
or Dirk?”
“Ben, of course,” Judith said. “He’s supposed to
costar, remember? Besides,” she added, “I read a clipping, also in Room Four, about how Dirk had lost the
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Mary Daheim
lead in another Zepf movie because he and Bruno got
into a fistfight at Marina Del Rey in L.A. I assume
Dirk was permanently scratched from Bruno’s A-list.”
“Very interesting,” Renie remarked. “So Ben gets to
be a leading man instead of a villain because Dirk
played smash-mouth with Bruno.”
“I suppose so,” Judith responded as the cousins
went inside. “I guess nice guys do finish first.”
“That’s not the saying,” Renie corrected. “It’s the
other way around.”
“You’re right,” Judith said. “With everything that’s
happened in the last couple of days, my mind’s a muddle.”
The cousins had barely reached the kitchen when an
insistent tap sounded at the back door. It was Arlene
Rankers, looking desperate.
“What’s wrong?” Judith asked, hastening to meet
her friend and neighbor.
“What’s wrong?” Arlene threw up her hands.
“That’s what I came to find out. Who got hauled off by
the medics?”
Judith realized that the Rankerses wouldn’t know of
the events that had occurred at Hillside Manor since
they left for home the previous night. “Have a seat,”
she said, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table. “I’ll
fill you in.”
Which Judith did, though she was careful to omit
specific details. Her good-hearted neighbor was famous for spreading the news over what was called Arlene’s Broadcasting System, or merely ABS. Judith felt
there was no need to make the situation any worse than
it already was.
“Goodness!” Arlene gasped when Judith had finally
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189
finished. “You certainly get more trouble than you deserve. What can Carl and I do to help?”
Judith was about to reply that she was beyond help,
but changed her mind. “Keep an eye on who comes
and goes around here.” That was easy; the Rankerses’
kitchen windows overlooked Hillside Manor and the
cul-de-sac. At the sink and the dinette table, Arlene had
long ago established her personal observation deck.
“Fine,” Arlene responded, “but can’t you do that
yourself?”
“Not really,” Judith said. “There’s too much going
on. This is a big house. I can’t keep track of everybody’s movements.”
Arlene was uncharacteristically silent. She was staring at the table, arms slack at her sides, forehead
creased in concentration. When she finally spoke, it
was as if she were in a trance.
“Seven-fifty A.M., Joe leaves through the back door in
his red MG. Eight-fourteen, the writer goes out the
French doors and disappears around the west side of the
house. Nine-oh-six, the red-headed youngish man leans
out the second-story window by the stairs and looks
every which way through something like a small camera. Nine-twenty-two, Joe returns with two white bakery
bags, two pink boxes, and a Moonbeam’s bag, probably
filled with hot coffee. Nine-thirty-one, writer comes
back and sits in lawn swing on front porch. Nine-forty,
black Lincoln Town Car pulls into cul-de-sac. Writer
jumps over porch rail and runs down driveway toward
garage. Nine-forty-one, well-dressed man wearing sunglasses goes to front door and is let in.” Arlene, wearing
a bright smile, looked up. “How am I doing?”
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Mary Daheim
“Wow!” Judith gasped in admiration. “So that’s how
you do it?”
Arlene looked blank. “Do what?”
“You know . . .” Judith faltered, never one to accuse
Arlene of snooping. “Keep track of things. Help Carl
run the Neighborhood Watch. Stay on top of events on
the block. You must file everything like a computer.”
“No,” Arlene asserted. “Not at all. Now that I’ve
said it out loud, I can barely remember anything.”
Judith didn’t quite believe her, but wouldn’t argue.
Any dispute with her neighbor brought grief in the
for
m of Arlene’s reversals and self-contradictions.
“That’s very helpful,” she said. “After Vito—the man
with the sunglasses—arrived, what happened next?”
Arlene’s smile faded. “There is no next. Carl and I
left for ten o’clock Mass at SOTS, went to coffee and
doughnuts in the school hall, and stopped at Falstaff’s
on the way back. We didn’t get home until almost one.
I didn’t notice anything or anybody until you showed
up shortly before one-thirty.”
“What about,” Renie inquired, “since Judith got
back?”
But Arlene shook her head in a regretful manner. “I
got caught up in dinner preparations. Most of our darling children are coming over tonight. Except for seeing you and Bill arrive, I didn’t notice anyone else until
the medics arrived.”
“Nothing in the backyard?” Judith asked.
Arlene’s eyes narrowed. “The backyard?” She automatically swerved around to look in that direction,
though she couldn’t see anything from her position at
the table. “No. What on earth did I miss?” She seemed
genuinely aggrieved.
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“It may have happened while you were on the sidewalk with the other neighbors,” Judith said in a comforting voice. Quickly, she explained about finding the
burned script in the barbecue. She had just finished
when Joe came into the kitchen.
“They’re adjourning to the living room,” he announced. “I gather they may all be going out to dinner
in a private room at Capri’s.”
Capri’s, on the very edge of Heraldsgate Hill, was
one of the city’s oldest and most distinguished eateries.
“I didn’t think they were open on Sundays,” Judith
said.
“Apparently they are for this bunch,” Joe responded
with a wave for Arlene, who was heading to the back
door.
“But what about all the food I ordered?” Judith
wailed. “It’ll go to waste and I’ll get stuck paying for it.”
Arlene went into reverse in more ways than one.
“Send it over to our house. I can use it to feed those
wretched kids of ours. They eat like cannibals.”
“Cannibals?” Renie echoed.
“You know what I mean,” Arlene said peevishly.
“They eat like your children.”
“Oh.” Renie nodded. “Now I get it.”
Arlene hurried out of the house.
Judith was on her feet, gripping Joe’s shoulders.
“Well? What did they say in this latest meeting?”
“Spin-doctor stuff, mostly,” Joe replied. “Morris