The Heritage Paper

by Derek Ciccone

  Suddenly the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Something was wrong. She twisted the door handle—surprised to find it unlocked—and burst into the room.

  Maggie was nowhere in sight.

  Veronica performed a quick reconnaissance, her focus settling on an art easel in the center of the room. Maggie was a talented artist—better than Veronica ever was, even though she was no slouch with the brush. It seemed like a different lifetime when Veronica was the fresh-faced art history major at NYU, back before Carsten Peterson swallowed up her life. But now Carsten was dead, and she needed to find the old Veronica.

  She checked Maggie’s latest masterpiece, which was as angry as her taste in music. A mother cradling a bloodied child as bombs burst around them. Was it concerning the loss of her father, the looming war, or maybe both?

  Veronica snapped back to reality. She couldn’t believe with her daughter “missing,” she’d slipped into a momentary daze. As a single mother she had to think for the three of them, but sometimes wondered if she could even care for herself.

  She noticed the cracked window—the same one she caught Maggie sneaking out once before, by shimmying down the gutter. She ran to it and felt immediate relief when she spotted her daughter. But what was she doing? Maggie, wearing her typical ponytail and Kingston for President T-shirt, was digging a hole in the backyard with a rusted shovel.

  “What the …”

  Veronica bounded down the stairs and through the kitchen. “Jamie, leave the cat alone.”

  “Mom, I was just …”

  Yeah right.

  Veronica put on her down coat and stepped out into the chilly November air. She then headed toward the likely confrontation that would spoil the morning. “Maggie, what are you doing?”

  “I’m almost done,” she said, without looking up.

  “What did I tell you about burying bodies in the backyard?” she asked, forcing a disarming smile.

  “Jamie’s class will be so excited that he’s bringing his comedian mother for Career Day.”

  The twenty hours of labor, the late night feedings, the trips to the emergency room for the asthma attacks … for this?

  “Now that I’ve humored you, maybe you can tell me why you’re digging up the backyard?”

  Maggie let out an angst-filled sigh. “It’s part of the Heritage Paper project. We have to bury a time-capsule that can’t be dug up for thirty years. Oma and I put it together.”

  “My Bon Jovi shirt isn’t in there, is it?” Veronica asked. She checked her watch—they were getting late.

  “That shirt is a dark family secret that should remain buried.”

  Veronica tried to keep a straight face, but couldn’t hold it. Neither could Maggie, who began to laugh at her own wittiness. It was one of those rare moments that made all the negotiations and mental gymnastics worth it. There hadn’t been a lot of laughs since Carsten died, but then again, there wasn’t a whole lot of sunshine at the end of his life either.

  Veronica took off her coat and draped it over Maggie’s shoulders. “Your brother and I will be inside eating breakfast when you finish.”

  “Thanks, Mom.”

  A cease-fire. Things were looking up for Veronica, but she knew with two kids it could start going the other way at any moment.

  Chapter 3

  Veronica returned inside, again catching Jamie in the act. “What did you do to your sister’s cereal?”

  “Nothing—why would I do such a thing to Maggie? She’s my role model.”

  “Then you eat it.”

  Jamie squirmed.

  “Go ahead—as a reward for being such a good little boy.”

  “Thank you for the offer, Mom, but I’m not that hungry.”

  “I didn’t think so,” she said and tossed the contaminated cereal into the sink and rinsed the bowl.

  She tried not to look at him, but how could she help it? He looked cute-as-a-button adorable in his mini police uniform, his normally floppy hair slicked to the side. He had inherited her blond, blue-eyed features. Carsten had the dark, Slavic look of his Jewish grandmother, which he passed on to Maggie. Veronica hoped he hadn’t passed on the cheating to either of them.

  A loud knock rapped on the front door. Before she could respond, Eddie Peterson rushed into the house. This was the way Eddie always entered, which Veronica didn’t mind because Eddie was family, and since Carsten died, he had graduated to “godsend.”

  Today was no different. He was filling in for Career Day. She still couldn’t believe the school scheduled Career Day (3rd grade) and Heritage Paper (6th grade) on the same day. Veronica complained about it to Principal Sweetney, but all she got in return was a lecture that focused on the many angry phone calls she’d received after Jamie pulled his latest stunt.

  Jamie ran to give his uncle a hug. Eddie was Carsten’s half brother, and both were raised by their grandmother, Ellen, after their mother died.

  Eddie featured a bald shave on top—he claimed it was his preferred style and he could grow it back whenever he wanted, but Veronica doubted it—and a gut that was synonymous with his retro “bringing back the doughnuts” approach to law enforcement. He was NYPD, normally undercover in plain clothes, but for Career Day he was decked out in the full uniform.

  He kissed Veronica on the cheek and scraped her with his stubble. “I like your shirt,” he said, referring to her fraying concert shirt that had survived since her teenage years. Back when her life goal was to follow the band across the country. She still wasn’t sure when exactly she became a thirty-seven-year-old paranoid mother.

  “Thanks—I didn’t know you were a Def Leppard fan.”

  “I’m not. I like the way it hugs your boobs,” he said with a laugh.

  Jamie joined the laughter, which received a glare from Veronica, instantly quieting him.

  “It’s surprising that a charmer like yourself has never been married,” Veronica said as she made a return trip to the kitchen.

  Eddie followed her, making a pit-stop at the refrigerator and removed a slice of last night’s dinner.

  “Isn’t it a little early for pizza?” she asked as she poured a round of orange juice.

  “I just finished my shift. My hours are a little off.”

  “You’re a little off.”

  Jamie laughed, which reminded her. She subtly nudged Eddie to have the talk she’d wanted him to have with her son. She did her best, but sometimes a boy needed a strong male figure to deliver the news. The topic was the reason she had to meet with his principal this morning.

  Jamie could always sense a potential ambush, and was already plotting his retreat. “Can I go see the police car, Uncle Eddie?”

  “Not until you tell me what happened in school.”

  Jamie shrugged. “It was just a misunderstanding.”

  “I don’t know who you think you’re messing with, kid. I get gang members to flip on drug kingpins, so I ain’t afraid of no suburban mama’s boy.”

  Jamie smiled like it was a game. Before Veronica had kids she was convinced it was all about “nurture”—children were a blank canvas to be molded. But the more Maggie and Jamie had begun to resemble her and Carsten, specifically the traits that she’d gone out of her way to shield them from, she was starting to re-think it.

  “Since you seem to have a bad case of amnesia,” Eddie continued with the interrogation, “let me review the facts of the case. You, Jamie Peterson, nephew of esteemed NYPD Lieutenant Edward Peterson, assaulted your classmate, Fife Logan, by putting ex-lax in his food and making him crap all over himself in front of the class.”

  Jamie looked astonished by the accusation. He stood with palms up and an open-mouthed look of disbelief.

  “What do you have to say for yourself, young man?”

  “I say it was your idea, Uncle Eddie, so I don’t know why I’m the one who’s getting in trouble.”

  Eddie was immediately hit with Veronica’s glare, and he tried to plead his case, “C’mon—I didn’t think t
he kid would really do it. And besides, this Fife Logan character was picking on him, and if you don’t stand up to a bully, you’ll end up getting bullied for the rest of your life.”

  She wasn’t impressed.

  “And what kind of name is Fife Logan? His parents must have known he’d get his ass kicked when they gave him that name.”

  “If you wanna keep digging yourself a deeper hole, I know where to get a shovel.”

  Eddie owned the same ability to veer from oncoming trouble as Jamie did, and turned the tables. “So I heard someone had a hot date last night.”

  She squirmed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Do I need to give you the kingpin lecture?”

  “Jamie, why don’t you go help your sister,” she instructed.

  He didn’t budge.

  “Jamie, if you want to go to Career Day I suggest you go help your sister,” her voice raised.

  “Your wish is my command, Mom.”

  Yeah right.

  When Jamie left, Veronica hesitantly asked, “Do you have a problem with it?”

  Eddie shook his head. “My brother has been dead over a year. I think it’s time to start boinking again.”

  “Have I mentioned I’m surprised a woman hasn’t locked you up?”

  “But that doesn’t mean I don’t get to be the overprotective brother-in-law. So where’d you meet this guy?”

  “It’s bad enough I live next door to my mother. I really don’t need this.”

  “You know I’ve gotten drug kingpins to …”

  “Fine—I met him at one of my classes at Pace.”

  “Class? Like a student—how old is he?” Eddie asked, smirking.

  “Age is all relative.”

  “That means he must be real young. Let’s put it this way, could he legally drink or did you have to order him a Shirley Temple?”

  “He’s twenty three … are you happy?”

  Eddie began choking on his pizza. Veronica was pretty sure he did it for effect, but if he really needed a Heimlich he wasn’t getting it from her. He miraculously survived long enough to say, “Maggie’s mom has got it going on. You could be his mother!”

  “If I had him when I was fourteen. Are you finished?”

  “I work in the South Bronx. By fourteen, most chicks already have two kids in prison. So where did you and Sparky go on your date?”

  Veronica didn’t waste her breath with another in a long line of PC-scoldings; he was a lost cause. “It was just a date. There was a film festival at the Jacob Burns Center and then we had dinner at that Japanese place, Hanada. No boinking.”

  “Very disappointing,” Eddie said, seemingly losing interest. “So where’s Maggie?”

  “She’s out in the backyard burying a time-capsule for her Heritage Paper that she put together with Ellen.”

  Eddie jumped off his seat. “This I gotta see.”

  Chapter 4

  Veronica watched as Eddie came up behind Maggie, and shouted, “Freeze, Maggot—you’re under arrest for being late to school!”

  Maggie turned, and a big smile came over her face. She tossed the final shovelful of dirt onto her time-capsule and ran to Eddie. The kids were always so affectionate with him. Maybe because in so many ways he was still a child himself. She even let him call her Maggot—nobody else got away with that.

  “Did you see the pictures I sent you?” Eddie asked.

  “Yeah—they were great. Blood spattered everywhere!”

  Veronica cringed, not liking where this was going.

  Maggie pulled out her phone—the one Ellen bought for her last Christmas, despite Veronica’s insistence that she was too young—and they studied the images that Eddie had sent her. He turned to Veronica. “Couple of dead drug dealers we found in a loft apartment last night.”

  Most parents worried about their kids text messaging too much with their friends—her kids got dead bodies. No wonder she was constantly meeting with their principal. “You sent my children pictures of dead people?”

  “Not people—drug dealers. Best anti-drug commercial going. You should thank me.”

  Eddie’s focus changed back to the time-capsule, and he began peppering Maggie with questions about it.

  She swelled with pride as she went on a tangent about the contents. Eddie tried to get a sneak peak, but Maggie warned him that it couldn’t be opened for thirty years. This made him all the more eager to see inside, but Maggie didn’t relent. She did give him a rundown of the contents—family photos, copy of the Heritage Paper, family tree, and a memoir of Ellen’s life that they wrote together, expanding beyond the scope of the Heritage Paper. A record of her life that according to Maggie, Ellen hoped to pass down to future generations of the Peterson family.

  Eddie began laughing. “Memoir? Only Oma could be narcissistic enough to think that anyone would want to read the story of her life. Who wants to read about some whiny housewife from New York?”

  “She had a very interesting life,” Maggie contended. “I think you’d be surprised.”

  It was almost two different lives, Veronica thought. As a young girl, Ellen had survived a concentration camp in Nazi Germany. Then when the war ended, she came to America, where she married a policeman named Harold Peterson. They had one child named Harry Jr., but when he and his wife died tragically, Ellen took in her grandchildren, Carsten and Eddie, and raised them. Maybe it wasn’t worthy of a movie, but she would have to agree with Maggie, it was in interesting life.

  But the Ellen that Veronica had known since she began dating Carsten was more along the lines of Eddie’s description. She was a curmudgeonly woman, who was constantly complaining, and morbidly pessimistic. The only time she seemed happy was when she was around Eddie and Carsten. And in turn, they would do anything for her. Veronica suspected her downward cycle this past year was connected to Carsten’s death, even if the doctors were convinced it was part of her natural decline.

  “I’m giving a presentation on her life today, but everyone seems to be too busy to attend. So I guess you’ll never get to find out,” Maggie said.

  The words might have been directed at Eddie, but Veronica knew the attitude was meant for her. “Mags, I’m going to try to make it. As soon as I get done with Jamie’s principal,” she said.

  “Whatever.”

  Chapter 5

  The final battle of the morning would be to get Maggie to change her outfit. Politically based shirts were banned in school, and one trip to the principal’s office a week was Veronica’s limit. After a brief but spirited fight, Maggie relented, and returned in a simple head-to-toe black ensemble of sweater and jeans, perhaps mourning life in general.

  Veronica threw a professional suit jacket over her concert shirt that she wore with stylish jeans and heeled boots. She had maintained enough Manhattan style to pull it off, but she still hadn’t got used to her new, short, blonde-bob hairstyle—a sharp departure from shoulder length style she’d worn since college. She figured if Jon Bon Jovi could cut off his hair, then so could Veronica Peterson.

  But that change didn’t compare to moving back to Pleasantville. And while it was culture shock for everyone, Veronica was convinced that she’d made the right decision. It gave the kids a bigger yard to play in and the schools were quality. And of course, finances played a big role. Like a lot of thirty-something couples, she and Carsten hadn’t prepared for death. Carsten made good money as an executive at Sterling Publishing, but it was ‘own a Saab and take an exotic vacation once a year’ money, not ‘manage a hedge fund and own a villa in Italy’ type. So she quickly found out that raising two kids on the Upper East Side of Manhattan without a steady income caused their savings to hemorrhage.

  And if those weren’t reasons enough, there was no shortage of built-in babysitting. Which reminded Veronica—her Uncle Phil had been feverishly campaigning to fill-in for Career Day, but Jamie ruled his pharmaceutical sales career as “too boring.” So they needed to get out of here before he realized
that he’d been bumped by Eddie.

  Veronica rounded up Maggie and Jamie, and headed off for school in their oversized Chevy Tahoe. Eddie had loose ends to tie-up concerning his dead drug dealer, and would meet Jamie at school. Mr. Charisma campaigned to ride in the “cool cop car,” but was turned down. While Eddie was the infantile jokester around Veronica and the kids, he was obsessively professional when it came to his police work. It was always interesting for Veronica to see that side of him.

  She drove through their secluded neighborhood, known as Usonia. It was named for the modernist, open-style homes made famous by Frank Lloyd Wright—typically small, single story dwellings made of environmentally sustainable materials. They were green before it became trendy.

  Veronica’s family had bought up many of the hillside homes off Bear Ridge Road back when they were built in 1948. This included the L-shaped Usonian that Veronica and the children now lived in, which was wrapped around a garden terrace at the rear of her mother’s house. Uncle Phil and Aunt Val lived two houses down from them.

  They maneuvered through winding hills until they arrived at the busy Bedford Drive, which was the “main drag” in town. Veronica flipped on her play-list of 1980s power ballads.

  Maggie was not a fan—probably not angry enough. “Mom, can we put the news on about tomorrow’s election?”

  Maggie had carried on her father’s passion for politics, and sounded eerily like him when she debated complex topics that should be beyond kids her age.

  The election was contentious, to say the least. And at the heart of it was a potential conflict brewing in the Middle East. If war broke out, many experts predicted that it would last for over a decade, which caused Veronica to have horrible nightmares about her children coming in contact with roadside bombs ten years from now. So she was voting for Theodore Baer, who opposed US involvement.