Mysteries
I think that I shall never know
Why I am thus, and why I am so.-- “A Fairly Sad Tale,” 1928
It is, as Dorothy Parker knew, the human condition to wonder at the many mysteries in every life. Ponder too hard and you will drive yourself crazy. In this issue, our writers struggle with the whys, wherefores and “what ifs” of existence, including the understandable desire to shrug your shoulders in the end and declare, “It’s a mystery!”
The Party Crashers
Word Count 1062
An hour after the couple’s arrival at our apartment, my husband and I were still trying to figure out who they were. The beautifully dressed man and woman greeted us warmly at the door, then moved into the living room, confidently mingling and engaging our guests in what appeared to be a series of scintillating conversations.
Now the man had positioned himself in the center of our gathering, tapping on his glass and clearing his throat as he prepared to give a toast.
Soul Mates
Word Count 926
I thought Frank was my soulmate. We were in our twenties, living in New Orleans. We lived all bohemian, hanging out in bars, dancing or drawing. We’d take our sketch pads to Molly’s, draw and drink Irish coffee. We were big fans of the Radiators band and went to hear them and dance at the Dream Palace every week. Breakfast before bed after a night out was another favorite tradition. We ate wee hour bacon and cheese omelets and ham and cheese quiche.
We scored amazing finds in thrift stores. A floor length black velvet dress and lacy blouses for me. Leather jackets, coats with tails or patches on the elbows for him.
I bought him a bottle of Crown Royal which came with a cute purple drawstring bag we could use to hold our charming wooden pipe. He called me Darlin’ and surprised me with pretty writing journals and buttons with funny sayings on them.
Hanging By A Thread
Word Count 671
There are mysteries in my life. Why did my parents ever get married? Was my mother born with syphilis? Why did my husband have an affair with a women who can’t even cook. Why can I cook? My mother couldn’t cook. Why am I such a good dancer? I can tear up any floor. Yet I can’t hit a tennis ball, a baseball, or a golf ball. I fall down more times than I care to recount—usually going upstairs, which is ridiculous. No matter how long I stare at my dog, I can’t imagine what’s going on in his brain. How can you think without words? These are all real and abiding mysteries. They baffle me, they confuse me, but they do not haunt me. Only one mystery haunts me.
Swimming with the Ceausescus
Word Count 951
From the start, the tour alarmed me. This was not the Romanian story I’d heard. My husband and I had just arrived at the Ceaușescu house in Bucharest and were still slipping plastic booties over our shoes to protect the inlaid teak floors while the guide, gesturing with freshly manicured nails, was going on about Ceaușescu as a great leader, a self-made man. Family people, she called Nicolae and his wife, Elena. Serving their country.
I tried to square this account with the Ceaușescu regime I had heard about: the disappeared people, the devastated economy, the untold sums sunk into grotesque vanity projects, the lies. Thirty-five years after the Ceaușescus were executed for their crimes against Romania, it appears that the battle over their image continues.
The Mystery Mass
Word Count 258
Reading the consent form for my CT-guided needle biopsy does nothing to soothe my nerves. Apparently, collecting a sample of the mass revealed by my last scan comes with risks. Like a collapsed lung. Like coughing up blood. This morning, I was only concerned about whether my uterine cancer escaped the surgeon’s blade and metastasized. Now this.
I sign the form, hoping my worries will drift away after the nurse administers the morphine. As a teen, I received morphine for an outpatient surgery to fix my poorly healed nose, fractured in a van crash the year before. The surgeon applied his little chisel and hammer to my face while I burbled, You’re a great doctor.
Family of Spies
Word Count 1377
In Catholic elementary school, we were taught that only God holds the secrets of the universe. Embracing the ultimate mystery, or at least professing to do so, was the key to getting an “A,” I figured. In fourth grade, I wrote a Christmas essay in the first-person voice of Baby Jesus. It was supremely presumptuous and not at all holy. I got an “A.”
Maybe this mystery thing could be finessed.
Mysteries at home were less easy to wrangle: Why was Dad so often unhappy and hard to deal with when he got back from work? What had I, or any of my five siblings, done to incite his wrath?
Dear Pussycat
Word Count 1105
My father died unexpectedly when I was very young which, obviously, changed my life. To put it bluntly, not only was I immediately rendered half an orphan, but my mother lost her mind. My father was 59 at the time of his death; she was widowed at 42. They’d been married seventeen years, the first ten spent living under his mother’s roof. They had to wait for her to die to get their own place, a sprawling four-bedroom apartment on a beach block in Atlantic City, at the time a glamorous vacation destination. My father, an attorney, represented a number of night clubs and music halls and a burlesque theater. He may have had a hand in booking some of the acts as he had a record label and a pile of credits from ASCAP for music and lyrics he’d composed for a long-forgotten crooner. Before I was born, he owned movie theaters. He had a fondness for muscle cars and at the time of his death — on an Easter weekend — was driving a candy apple red Dodge Dart which my mother sold straightaway because she didn’t drive or even possess a license.
Goodbye Goodbye Goodbye
Word Count 854
We slide into the pew, about three quarters of the way back. It’s beautifully decorated, this mid-town sanctuary, and we are early because we know there will be a crowd. Both my daughters worked for and admired this young woman, who was killed in a mid-town shooting that had claimed the headlines two days earlier. Our older daughter tutored her children and traveled with them; our younger daughter babysatfor them occasionally. This victim of a senseless shooting had been a star—gifted, accomplished, kind, present, interested in mentoring all the young women in her life.
The night before, our oldest daughter had asked me if her friend, her employer, had suffered. Such are the mysteries that trouble us with unexpected, horrific death. Why her?
Memory Lapse
Word Count 2058
One day, while on the phone with my older brother, I brought up our vacation in Mexico when I was 19, he was 26 and our other brother who went was 21.
He said, “I traveled to Mexico, but you didn’t come with me.”
I became angry and said.,“How can you forget I was there too? People don’t forget things like that.”
I’d had many years of counseling before I gained the courage to begin to confront him about our history. I was in search of healing. Like many who have experienced sexual abuse, I wanted apologies. If he wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence, how could I expect anything more? As if my trip to Mexico was all a dream, he was absolutely certain that I didn’t go.
The Tyranny of Stuff
Word Count 1178
“Well, this is depressing,” I muttered.
I was standing in an old, filthy, kitchen, in an advanced state of decay, like the rest of the house. There was a guy peering into a cabinet, skeptically.
“To say the least,” he agreed, then turned and walked away.
How could things get to this point? How could this happen?
I’m hot and cold about estate sales. Spying on the shape of other people’s lives appeals to me and there’s always the occasional treasure trove of, say, a table full of Lebanese Catholic statues, medals, and cards in Birmingham, Alabama. The houses are interesting to see, whether for the lux updates in the wealthy sections of town, or the decidedly not-updates, like that Bicentennial wallpapered bathroom.
The Lost Friend
Word Count 960
Vivienne was —and perhaps is— aquiline in beauty with a nimbus of graying dark curls. Her voice, musical. Generous to an unflagging degree. An intellectual. A computer tech from the early days of the industry, yet steadfastly cutting-edge. I’ve known her for thirty years. Now I can’t find her. Not a sign remains, no phone number that actually works. Not even an obituary. “Is she CIA?” queries a mutual friend. We laugh and feel sad at the mix of possibilities.
Flashes of her come and go in a medley of plays and film we’ve seen together, offset by glimpses of our coated shoulders bumping along with the crowd into elegant old theaters.
Highway 91 Revisited
Word Count 1061
In the 1980s a guy drove up and down I-91 along the Connecticut River dividing Vermont and New Hampshire to stalk and stab at least nine women. He left them scattered in the valley where I grew up. When did I first hear about the Connecticut Valley Serial Killer? When we heard Barb was missing? I babysat her little boy when I was fifteen; she was friends with my mom and sister. I don’t think the killer was part of the story when I learned Heidi was murdered, but I could be wrong about that. She was in my sophomore class, she used to bully me, but maybe we had moved by that time. Did mom read it to me from the Valley News and ask if I knew her?
Instructions For Dancing
Word Count 1633
The book of love is long and boring / No one can lift the damn thing / It's full of charts and facts and figures/ And instructions for dancing. Magnetic Fields
The red exit signs at the residential school for emotionally disturbed teens stayed lit up all night. The one above the bathroom used to hang down crooked from the time a kid jumped up and smacked it so hard he broke his hand. Exit signs like this look normal in an office building or dark hospital corridor. But hanging above the doors of the Georgian home the school occupied, they seemed out of place and foreboding, like yellow caution tape across a suburban driveway, or mean eyebrows on an otherwise perfectly nice face.
Escape North
Word Count 2243
The 1960s, the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement, was a hard time on all fronts. In 1962, right after he got his PhD and his first teaching job, my brilliant, mountain-hillbilly husband shot himself. He was 25. I was 22.
We’d moved to the Midwest from the South because Southern universities, even the famous ones, were still teaching tainted science, history, even philosophy and the arts. We felt so enlightened! My husband had a full scholarship to a Big Ten graduate school, and I’d been accepted as a junior transfer, though I had to retake all my basic courses. My husband said what we were learning now was “the truth.”
Then he was dead, and I was alone with our baby in a strange little town in Iowa.
Lucy in the Sky
Word Count 538
When I visited the Church of Santa Trinitá on a vacation to Florence, Italy, I looked forward to admiring the central altarpiece of the Virgin Mary with her newborn son by Domenico Ghirlandio. Ghirlandio was a 15th Century painter who had a marvelous eye for detail and liberally deployed gold leaf in his work, making his paintings feel full of light.
The display of holy cards at the front of the church included one for Ghirlandio, and, to my surprise, another for St. Lucy, the patron saint of the blind, my mother’s favorite. I bought both.
I don’t know exactly when my mother’s devotion to St. Lucy began but I believe it started in 1960, when she was 37 and a drunk driver t-boned the front passenger side of our car, giving my mother a whiplash neck injury. After treatment by a (terrible) chiropractor, she lost her eyesight for a couple of days.