“Oh, I don’t know, Mother. Doesn’t everybody clean their venetian blinds with a Q-tip twice a day? Duh!”
Norma sighed. “Well, it’s your grandmother’s fault. If my room wasn’t just perfect, she would say, ‘Do you want people to think you were raised in a pigsty? Only common people live in a dirty home, Norma!’?”
Norma had read up on this need for perfection in a Psychology Today magazine. Her mother was clearly “shame-based,” and had passed it down to her.
She knew exactly where her behavior came from and how silly it was, but, on the other hand, if she didn’t clean those blinds, who would? She wasn’t drinking or taking drugs or robbing banks; she just had a thing for Clorox.
And at least she could laugh about it…sometimes….Well, once in a while…maybe. But really, she didn’t see a thing funny about a dirty house. Besides, cleaning gave her something to do. She didn’t understand why Linda and Macky made such a big deal out of it. Other people had hobbies; hers was cleaning. What’s so terrible about that? And why were there fingerprints all over her refrigerator door? As she was wiping the handle for the fourth time that day, it occurred to her she probably did need psychological help, but then, who didn’t? Everybody had their little quirks. Aunt Elner had pet worms. Of course, Macky had thought it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard. But Aunt Elner could do no wrong, as far as he was concerned. He just loved her to death. Every morning before he went to work, he stopped by her house and had coffee with her. What the two of them found to talk about was a mystery to Norma, but Aunt Elner was always calling the house night and day, wanting to talk to Macky. And she had no concept of time. Sometimes she would call as early as five-thirty A.M. wanting to ask him something or tell him some stupid joke she’d heard.
Just this morning when she had called at the crack of dawn, Macky had picked up the phone and said, “I don’t know, Aunt Elner. Why did the armadillo cross the road?” Then he laughed and hung up the phone. Of course, Macky could go right back to sleep but she was up for the entire day.
And she didn’t care why the armadillo crossed the road.
1974
Michael J. Vincent was in Chicago for a business meeting with the advertising company that handled his father-in-law’s dairy. He was going back to Elmwood Springs that afternoon, but before he left town, he had to buy the wife something. Tomorrow was their sixth wedding anniversary, and the old man would be watching him like a hawk.
Before he married Hanna Marie, he had assumed her father would build them a home of their own. But the old man had more or less blackmailed him into moving into the big house with them. “It will be yours someday, and her mother and I can spend what time we have left with our daughter.” So now Michael was just biding his time, playing the game, and waiting. Hanna Marie and the mother were easy. Pleasing the old man was getting harder and harder.
He walked into the store, brushed the snow off his shoulders, stopped by a jewelry counter, and motioned to a pretty salesgirl. “Hey, honey, come here. Pick something out from this group of stuff and wrap it up.”
The saleslady was confused. “But, sir, don’t you have a preference? Would you prefer rubies or emeralds or…?”
“It doesn’t matter; just pick something. I’ll come back and get it. Where are the cuff links?”
“Two counters over.”
It really didn’t matter what he bought the woman. She mostly stayed alone in her room all day, doing her charity work and fooling with those damn cats the Shimfissle woman had given her. She didn’t need anything. He was the one who needed things.
He and Hanna Marie had been born the same year. Her father had given her anything she wanted. He’d been raised across town on the south side of Chicago in a filthy one-bedroom tenement cold-water flat, the sixth of eight screaming and yelling brothers and sisters. The only thing he’d ever received from his father was a smack across the mouth and a kick out the door when he was fifteen. The day he left, he’d vowed two things: One, he’d never have kids, and two, he would never set foot in that apartment again, and he hadn’t. A few years earlier, he had driven by the back of the building, looked up at the gray, rickety wooden stairs, and wondered if any of the family was still alive. He hoped not. If they knew he had money, they’d try to get some of it, and that was not going to happen. He’d worked too hard for it.
He had started working at age thirteen, being a lookout for the guys running numbers, making pretty good money, but it wasn’t enough. It seemed to him that he had been born with his face pressed to windows, looking inside at how the other half lived. His one burning ambition had always been to get on the other side of one of those windows. And he was determined to do it any way he could. Lie, cheat, steal…or even marry a rich girl.
Michael didn’t like going back to Chicago. He’d had a bit of a sketchy history there. He’d gotten a job at an advertising agency and was doing well. So when the girl in the office had told him she was pregnant, it had irritated the hell out of him. Then she started making noises about marriage. She was just some secretary. He made a plan to meet her at a little restaurant close to where they worked so they could talk it over.
Two hours later, the girl was sitting alone, looking at a piece of paper with a name and address on it. The address was in a part of town she had never been, and the room was in the back of a discount luggage store. When the girl knocked on the door, a little fat man opened it to see a pretty young blonde standing there, shaking with fear over what was about to happen. She looked very much like the last girl that Sardino guy had sent.
That night around seven-thirty, Hershie Abrams was sweating. He’d been working hard for the last couple of hours. He finally dialed Sardino’s number and whispered in the phone, “It’s me….She didn’t make it.”
“What?”
“She’s dead. I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t stop it—”
“Who’s dead? Who are you talking about?”
“The girl…the girl you sent. She bled out. You’ve gotta come over and get her out of here.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about. I didn’t send you any girl.”
“The blond girl. She said you sent her.”
“I don’t know any blond girl.”
Now sweat was pouring down Abrams’s face. “You’ve gotta help me. The girl is dead.”
“Like I said, I don’t know any girl.”
“What am I gonna do?”
“I don’t know, Hershie. I guess you could always call the police,” he said. And then he hung up.
Hershie was stunned. He had dealt with a lot of cold-hearted bastards in his day, but this one was scary. Sardino had turned on him in a matter of seconds.
Anthony Sardino was sure there was no way he would be implicated in it, but he decided it was best if he moved on anyway. Stupid women. He decided not to fool with them anymore, unless it could do him some good.
1967