some dim concert hall, bent over the keyboard of a grand piano while the gentry in the gallery leaned forward in their massed and breathless silence, hanging upon the movements of those fingers poised to work their prestidigitation upon the sacred keys, those same fingers that cradled a walnut stock and squeezed the trigger on God knew how many targets, had instead curled tight and black in the heart of a conflagration and were reduced to dust.
Don was uncertain if this was the reason Michelle had had a strained relationship with her relatives, most of whom, obviously, were passed on to the Great Beyond. In any event, they’d almost never visited, seldom called, just sent the occasional handwritten letter done in script so cramped and esoteric, it proved unfathomable to Don’s weak eyes.
Michelle, as per her custom from the first date onward, kept mum, except to say her relatives were odd ducks , and better off in Maine and New Hampshire. According to Michelle’s admittedly vague accounts of her genealogical origins, the sprawling family tree sank its roots in the Balkans, and to a minor degree, Eastern Germany and obscure territories along the Pyrenees. Researching that tree had become yet another of her all-consuming passions and appeared as if it might keep her occupied until the Reaper came to collect his due.
Numerous photographs of the Mock clan decorated the parlor; more were scattered about the house on the landing and in various alcoves—the formal kind where the men stood rigid as wooden posts in top hats and coattails, and the women sat primly in dresses with bustles that made their rumps resemble cabooses; everybody posed and shot against featureless backdrops. An austere and decidedly unfriendly lot, judging by their sallow, joyless faces.
Don’s own family were Midwesterners, lapsed Catholics, mainly. His younger brothers were long-retired attorneys. His elder brothers, now dead and gone for several years, or so the rumors had it, were odd ducks who’d gone the route of iconoclasts and professional dilettantes; however most of the family worked in law offices, museums and private schools. Lots and lots of curators and English professors in the Miller line. He joked that family reunions resembled conventions of J.R.R. Tolkien fanatics; everybody wore tweed, smoked a pipe and smelled of chalk dust.
The most interesting of the lot were benevolently eccentric and this disappointed him. All of the truly remarkable persons, persons of zest and vibrancy had died, like his parents and war-hero grandfather, or vanished, like his elder siblings, consumed by time and life unceasing. Maybe that was one’s reward for coloring outside the lines. His attraction to eccentricity, while being somewhat of a fuddy-duddy in his own affairs, was likely the secret to sixty years of marriage with Michelle. She was precisely loony enough to keep his heart racing.
Cold hands fell upon his shoulders and he spilled coffee onto his robe. Michelle kissed the top of his head where the remnants of his hair held the line. “Whoops. Better trim that hair in your ears, yeah?” She tweaked his lobe to accentuate her point. “I’m going to get dressed. Put more coffee on, will you? And peel some potatoes. There’s a dear.”
“Ack!” Don wiped at the widening stain. “For the love of Pete, don’t sneak around like that! This isn’t the jungle, y’know!” He called after her shadow as it floated up the staircase.
4.
Saturday was also Don’s day to walk the dog around the tree farm on the other side of Misty Villa. He dressed in sweats and a windbreaker and pocketed a can of pepper spray as a precautionary measure. The packs of roaming neighborhood dogs were unpredictable and vicious, thus a circuit of Schneider’s Tree Farm was as potentially fraught with peril as stuffing ham sandwiches into his backpack for a hike across the Serengeti. Don knew this because he had seen them cruising the byways and the unfenced
Don was uncertain if this was the reason Michelle had had a strained relationship with her relatives, most of whom, obviously, were passed on to the Great Beyond. In any event, they’d almost never visited, seldom called, just sent the occasional handwritten letter done in script so cramped and esoteric, it proved unfathomable to Don’s weak eyes.
Michelle, as per her custom from the first date onward, kept mum, except to say her relatives were odd ducks , and better off in Maine and New Hampshire. According to Michelle’s admittedly vague accounts of her genealogical origins, the sprawling family tree sank its roots in the Balkans, and to a minor degree, Eastern Germany and obscure territories along the Pyrenees. Researching that tree had become yet another of her all-consuming passions and appeared as if it might keep her occupied until the Reaper came to collect his due.
Numerous photographs of the Mock clan decorated the parlor; more were scattered about the house on the landing and in various alcoves—the formal kind where the men stood rigid as wooden posts in top hats and coattails, and the women sat primly in dresses with bustles that made their rumps resemble cabooses; everybody posed and shot against featureless backdrops. An austere and decidedly unfriendly lot, judging by their sallow, joyless faces.
Don’s own family were Midwesterners, lapsed Catholics, mainly. His younger brothers were long-retired attorneys. His elder brothers, now dead and gone for several years, or so the rumors had it, were odd ducks who’d gone the route of iconoclasts and professional dilettantes; however most of the family worked in law offices, museums and private schools. Lots and lots of curators and English professors in the Miller line. He joked that family reunions resembled conventions of J.R.R. Tolkien fanatics; everybody wore tweed, smoked a pipe and smelled of chalk dust.
The most interesting of the lot were benevolently eccentric and this disappointed him. All of the truly remarkable persons, persons of zest and vibrancy had died, like his parents and war-hero grandfather, or vanished, like his elder siblings, consumed by time and life unceasing. Maybe that was one’s reward for coloring outside the lines. His attraction to eccentricity, while being somewhat of a fuddy-duddy in his own affairs, was likely the secret to sixty years of marriage with Michelle. She was precisely loony enough to keep his heart racing.
Cold hands fell upon his shoulders and he spilled coffee onto his robe. Michelle kissed the top of his head where the remnants of his hair held the line. “Whoops. Better trim that hair in your ears, yeah?” She tweaked his lobe to accentuate her point. “I’m going to get dressed. Put more coffee on, will you? And peel some potatoes. There’s a dear.”
“Ack!” Don wiped at the widening stain. “For the love of Pete, don’t sneak around like that! This isn’t the jungle, y’know!” He called after her shadow as it floated up the staircase.
4.
Saturday was also Don’s day to walk the dog around the tree farm on the other side of Misty Villa. He dressed in sweats and a windbreaker and pocketed a can of pepper spray as a precautionary measure. The packs of roaming neighborhood dogs were unpredictable and vicious, thus a circuit of Schneider’s Tree Farm was as potentially fraught with peril as stuffing ham sandwiches into his backpack for a hike across the Serengeti. Don knew this because he had seen them cruising the byways and the unfenced
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