And Then They Were Doomed

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  Zoe didn’t know if this Aunt Susan was dead or alive and didn’t care. Zoe enrolled at Wayne State, studying English literature, and was doing very well by the time the last envelope arrived. Since Zoe was at school that day, Evelyn answered the door to the mailman.

  She took the letter and held it close to her heart all day. When Zoe got home, Evelyn cried and told her that her mother, Anas, was dead. The notice came from her sister, Susan.

  “But not another word. I’d always thought when Anas died, Susan and I would be friends again. But not a word. Not another word.”

  She went into her room and rarely came out.

  Zoe was eighteen by then. She worked at the hardware store on weekends. She had her schoolwork. She wasn’t the same frightened girl she’d been throughout all the other arrivals of black-edged envelopes.

  That night she went into Evelyn’s room and pulled a chair to the side of the bed. She refused to leave until Evelyn told her about the letters: who those people were and why they wanted to hurt her.

  It didn’t happen that first time. Zoe sat there talking and talking until Evelyn pretended to be asleep. But pretend sleep didn’t stop Zoe from asking. Nor did clenched eyelids. Nor a short hunger strike after that.

  Every spare minute she had, Zoe sat in the musty and darkened room and asked over and over, “Who sends those letters, Mama? Why do they make you so sad?”

  One day, after the visiting nurse left, shaking her head sadly at Zoe, Evelyn called from her room, “Zoe? Zoe? I have to talk to you.”

  And Zoe went back into the room, pulled the unpainted wooden chair to her mother’s bedside, climbed up, and listened as her mother told her about her years-long shame—that she’d run off with Alfred Zola, but never married him. So, he wasn’t really Zoe’s father—not legally. And her name wasn’t Zola—not legally.

  It was Jokela. Which Zoe didn’t like at all.

  At first, Evelyn told her, she’d gone back home when Zoe was just a baby, because she was abandoned with no place to go. Her mother, Anas, hadn’t wanted her to stay, but Susan, with a baby of her own, named Mary, begged to keep Evelyn and Zoe Zola with them. Anas muttered again and again, when they were in the same room, that corruption could be caught, just like other sins.

  Anas kept Susan from having anything to do with Evelyn and didn’t want the little cousins to grow up together. Contamination was the word Evelyn said she remembered.

  The rest of the family took a vote and agreed Evelyn’s sin had tainted all of them, and now there was her little dwarf. They would have to go. Then came talk in their church, some parishioners even wondering if any of the family should be allowed to attend Sunday mornings. And there were people asking in very low voices if Susan’s daughter, Mary, might be an outcast too, because of the stain of sin around Evelyn and the little girl with a fuzzy head of blonde curls and big, round, staring blue eyes that made some people uncomfortable.

  Evelyn had to leave Cheboygan and return to Detroit. It was an excommunication. They cut her off until all Evelyn ever heard from them were the death notices—letting Evelyn know that one more of the family was gone. One more she would never hear from nor see again because of her loose ways. One more who could never forgive her.

  That evening Evelyn pulled a stack of the letters, wrapped in a black cloth, from the bottom drawer of her dresser and told Zoe these were the dead people.

  “What they do is awful.” Zoe handed the letters back to Evelyn. “Why don’t they just leave us alone?”

  Evelyn smiled and put her hand out to touch Zoe’s cheek. “They missed out on knowing you, didn’t they? My mother lost. My father lost. My sister, Susan, lost. Now her daughter, Mary.”

  “Let ’em burn in hell, Mom.”

  “One good thing did come from what happened between me and Alfred. His mother, Rosalie Zola, was kind for a while. She wrote us letters at the beginning. That was nice.”

  Evelyn, exhausted, closed her eyes and fell back against the pillow, the cloth-covered letters next to her.

  “Are any of them alive?” Zoe demanded. “Will we keep getting these things?”

  “It’ll never end. There are cousins and second cousins. People we don’t even know might come after us. You have to be careful. You are the last one they have to punish.”

  “I won’t be careful, Mom. I’m not afraid of them.”

  Evelyn took Zoe’s hand and held it. She closed her eyes for the last time.

  * * *

  After the funeral, with only Zoe and the funeral director there as he read out scripture about the end of days, Zoe came home and took the covered stack of envelopes out of her mother’s dresser, along with a box of yellowed photographs of people she didn’t know.

  From the back of each envelope, she made a list of the addresses and the few names she could decipher, then went to a local print shop and spent a lot of money on the thickest card stock and best white envelopes she could find. There were eighteen cards and eighteen envelopes trimmed in black, printed to alert people that Evelyn Jokela Zola had left this world and was with her Lord and Savior in Heaven, to the eternal unhappiness of all those who loved her.

  Zoe brought the box of death notices home and addressed them, one by one.

  She did her best at calligraphy. She wrote her name and address on the back and mailed them off. As she stuck them, one by one, through the slot at the post office, she wondered if any of the people would write her back.

  She wondered if any of these people ever loved Evelyn.

  There wasn’t even one answer to her funeral notice.

  When Zoe moved from the house on Beaubien Street to a room in a house near Wayne State, she took the box of black-trimmed envelopes with her but threw the box of photographs in the garbage bin.

  A few years later an official letter from a Detroit law firm came, announcing that Rosalie Zola, Zoe’s unofficial grandmother, was dead, and Zoe was the beneficiary of a house in the small Northern Michigan town of Bear Falls. When she drove up there, not expecting much because the house had been a rental for years—that’s what she found: nothing much. A little house with white peeling paint and a weed-filled yard. Inside, the walls hadn’t been painted in years, and the kitchen floor was covered with cracked and torn linoleum. There wasn’t a stick of furniture left in the place. Even necessary things were gone—window shades and the toilet tissue holder from the bathroom.

  The realtor who handled the transfer of the house to her name said he thought a bunch of people came from somewhere and carried off everything that moved, but it was like hearing about ghosts. It was almost funny—that the other side of the family punished her too. They stripped their grandmother’s house so Zoe couldn’t have anything. Not a single thing—except the walls.

  * * *

  The day Zoe moved in, a woman from the house next door saw her as she struggled from her car with a load of sheets and towels. The woman waved. A pretty smile and solid body, like a woman who faced her years directly, in jeans and a sweatshirt that read “Garden or Die” on the front. The neighbor walked over to greet Zoe. She’d heard a relative of the last owner was moving into the house and welcomed her to Bear Falls.

  Zoe Zola made her first real friend, other than Malcolm, whom she never forgot.

  The woman, Dora Weston, had looked down into Zoe’s wary face and smiled. She told Zoe she’d lived in Bear Falls since her girls, Lisa and Jenny, were small. She asked if Zoe needed anything and invited her in for a cup of coffee, and they began to talk about the garden Zoe could plant. It wasn’t until much later, when they were good friends, that she mentioned the frenzy of wild-looking relatives who’d come to cart off furniture and everything else they could move from Zoe’s house. She’d seen one carry a toilet out to an SUV. And—she was sure of it—even the screens from the windows went into the back of one of the cars.

  Later that day, when Zoe was alone again, she walked through her house of completely empty rooms. In the kitchen there was a black square on the fl
oor where a refrigerator had stood; a greasy black square where there’d been a stove; and bare pipes next to the stove, where a sink had been.

  She opened and closed every cupboard, feeling lucky that they’d left the few that were there. She pulled each drawer open. Empty, but dirty. One drawer stuck. When she peered along the side of the drawer, she could see something was blocking it from closing. Inch by inch, she pulled out the paper wedged there. When she looked at the photograph in her hand, Evelyn smiled up at her. A very young Evelyn, in a pretty dress, holding a large round hat in her hands.

  On the back was written in blue ink:

  “Nobody loved her.”

  Chapter 4

  She sat in her wonderfully redone house into the evening, until the kitchen grew very dark. She watched the envelope until she couldn’t think anymore. She finally went to bed.

  That night Evelyn Zola sat in a rocker close to Zoe’s bed. She sat lightly, as though she might float away.

  The rocker was behind Zoe’s eyelids.

  She didn’t want to open her eyes and have Evelyn disappear.

  If she could only find a way …

  Eyes still closed, Zoe felt along the side of her hip, for Fida, who leaned up to lick Zoe’s hand and then fall back to sleep. A woman had to take her love where she could get it.

  “Mom,” she whispered, letting Evelyn know she got the message, and she was feeling now what Evelyn must have felt all those years: despair, something like hatred, fear, and a deep chunk of shame.

  Evelyn rocked and looked off into space—or out of a window that wasn’t there. It was the absent look women got when there was no place left to go.

  Zoe squeezed her eyes tighter. This was grief—yes. But something else.

  An invitation from shadowy people. They must know she was a writer. Maybe knew she was writing about Agatha Christie. They knew where she lived. Maybe they’d read her books or followed her career. They had a plan in place. Not to kill. They wouldn’t kill so easily. Better to torture.

  Some kind of contest then. Her against all of them—all those Jokelas and whatever else they were called. A kind of vendetta handed down—she was the last.

  Zoe covered her eyes hard with the heels of her hands then opened them. Evelyn was gone.

  Chapter 5

  The next morning the backdoor opened and Dora Weston stuck her head in—tri-color blonde hair mussed and stuck through with twigs from cutting lilacs. Dora’s appearance made Fida bark, as usual, and growl a couple of times the way she always did, then lick Dora’s hand, a ritual Fida had come up with by herself.

  “Thought you’d be working hard, not sitting here in your pajamas. Do you know what time it is?” Dora complained, sensing something very wrong in Zoe’s house.

  She pointed to the metal, moon-shaped clock high up on Zoe’s kitchen wall. The clock said nine.

  Dora set a film-covered dish that smelled like cinnamon rolls on the counter, then pulled out a chair at the table and sat down, sighing, and shaking her head. She looked at the envelope, propped against the poison flag, but her mind was on other things.

  “Got good news. Lisa’s in the Upper Peninsula, doing a documentary. Guess there’s a group of Finnish people who live up there, away from everything. They decided—sounds like mostly women—to stay after the copper mines closed, kept their life—the way it was in Finland. That’s what Lisa said. I’m hoping she’ll come stay awhile when she’s done. I miss her. My eldest child.”

  “I’d love to see her too. Lisa’s fun.”

  Dora nodded, then thought hard. “There’s something else. I just can’t help coming out with it. I’m so unhappy.”

  Zoe saw her kind face wrinkle. Dora was usually happy. She served as Bear Falls’ unofficial librarian, choosing to bring books to her neighbors through the Little Library boxes in front of her house: one for children, one for adults. She said the books made her happy, and so did talking about books with all the new readers in town.

  “You can choose to be happy, you know,” Zoe said. Dora said the same thing every time Zoe showed the least sign of depression.

  But Dora wasn’t happy now. “Can’t hold it in. I’ve got to tell somebody. I’m bursting.”

  Zoe waited.

  “A man from Troy Enterprises was with Tony last night. They were talking a deal to sell Little Library boxes on their website—millions of followers. Worldwide! Can you imagine? Tony’s excited. He already told Jenny to quit her job at the law firm and work with him.”

  She pulled in a deep breath. “I think he’s hoping they can get married finally. But …” She rolled her eyes. “Jenny’s saying she’s not ready. Though when she will be, God only knows. Now she’s mad at me because last night I got tired of listening to all her ‘poor me, poor me,’ mealy-mouthed business about how she wasn’t ready, how she’s finally got a job she likes. I told her—came right out and told her—she can’t keep pulling poor Tony around in circles. She’s got to decide—one way or the other. Marry the poor man—he loves her very much—or set him free.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have—” Dora stopped herself.

  “Had to get out of there this morning. Hate to face Jenny again. Usually I keep my thoughts to myself.”

  She glanced at Zoe, her pale eyes red-rimmed. “I don’t know what to do or say anymore. She’s going to wait too long. I’m afraid for her. She could end up alone for the rest of her—”

  “You’re describing me, and I’m happy just the way I am.” Zoe didn’t want to hurt her friend but there were times when words got too loud to keep silent.

  Dora shook her head. “But Jenny’s not you. Ten years from now she’ll be wailing how she should have married Tony. She’ll be unhappy all over again, just like she was when she divorced that phony Chicago creep and—”

  “He ran away with another woman. That hurt for sure.”

  Embarrassed, biting at her lower lip, Dora said, “It’s just that I’m her mother. I know her better than—”

  “Maybe you should back off. Give her some thinking time. Of course, she’s gun-shy. A bad divorce can do that.”

  Dora sighed. “So much all at once. I don’t know what to worry about first. Did you hear what’s happening to Little Libraries across the country? Just when so many people here in town are donating books and taking books they want to read. One after another, they stop by to tell me how grateful they are to have a library in Bear Falls—no matter what the size.”

  Zoe shook her head. “No, I haven’t heard, but I can’t imagine anybody not appreciating—”

  “I just read an article in The Atlantic. It could ruin everything.”

  Zoe, unable to bring her brain around from her own trouble and Jenny’s trouble, said nothing.

  “Guess what the government wants to do?”

  Zoe waited.

  “They want to shut down Little Libraries. Can you imagine? Leawood City, Kansas. A nine-year-old boy put up a Little Free Library, and two of his neighbors didn’t like it. They went to the city council, called it an ‘illegal detached structure,’ and told the boy he’d be fined if he didn’t remove it. Then, Los Angeles; then, Shreveport, Louisiana. They’re making criminals of us. People are refusing to take down the library boxes. Fighting back. And I will, too, if anybody tries something here in Bear Falls. Can you imagine? For spreading literacy and neighborliness, they’re turning us into criminals!”

  “Have you talked to Keith Robbins? He’s the city manager, he’ll know if anybody’s been complaining.”

  Zoe didn’t have her heart in Dora’s problem, but Dora was the kind of woman everybody wanted to help, no matter the misery in their own life at the moment—like an unwanted letter.

  Zoe got up to brew tea to go with the cinnamon rolls Dora’d brought. Behind her back, while she stood on her stool, putting a kettle of water on the stove, she heard Dora say, “What’s this letter, Zoe? Haven’t seen one of these in years.”

  * * *

  By the time Jenny walked in,
they were quietly sipping tea and biting at cinnamon rolls, heads almost touching as they stared at the black-rimmed envelope together.

  “What’s going on?” Jenny hoped it wasn’t more drama. The pot of tea on the counter and the cinnamon rolls looked good. Jenny’d missed breakfast, hoping not to run into her mother first thing in the morning after their argument.

  She opened the dishwasher to take out a clean cup. She looked the rolls over, going for the one with the most swirled chocolate and cinnamon, then joined the two women staring at the envelope propped in front of them.

  “What’s that?” Jenny motioned toward the odd envelope. Nobody answered.

  She chewed and drank. If they stayed quiet, all the better.

  If Dora brought up last night, she planned to say she was happy for Tony. Money to supplement his police pension. A real business going for him. Everything happening was a good thing.

  He was coming over later with papers to sign. She would be a partner. He’d planned it all along.

  Jenny didn’t look forward to seeing him, for the sadness she was giving him, for the sadness she was feeling. For the misery she was creating—though she couldn’t help herself.

  She stared at the envelope along with the other two. A daughter should be able to tell her own mother how she felt. She loved that she was making her own money again, not living off her ex-husband, Ronald Korman. She loved having real things to think about and new friends to think about them with.

  Tony kept talking about getting married, right down to the flowers in the church. “Fall,” he’d say. “Mums, don’t you think?”

  Then he talked—again and again—about the new company he would put in both their names. He talked about her handling the business end and him handling the design and manufacturing. He kept talking.

  Not once did he stop to ask what she wanted.

  Jenny bit into her roll, then brushed crumbs from the corners of her mouth.

  “You hear Lisa’s in the U.P.?” she finally asked Zoe, who nodded. “I’d love to go see her.”

  No one spoke.