Going Out in Style

by Gloria Dank

  “Miss Pinsky—”

  “Call me Aunt Etta. Everyone does.”

  “Aunt Etta, can you remember the words she used? Can you tell me what she said, exactly?”

  Etta screwed up her face into a tight knot and closed her eyes. “I’m not sure … it was something like, ‘The coat is so beautiful. And there’s something else … something else it brought to mind that I should tell you.’ Then she said something about that detective not being as smart as he made himself out to be. She was still all fussed up over his asking whether she had left by the back door. She had her pride, Mrs. MacGregor did.”

  “He asked her how she left the house?”

  “Yes, and naturally she was all insulted. That was the way she was. So she said something about him not being so smart, and that if he knew what she knew …”

  “So she knew something because she left by the front door,” said Bernard. “Is it possible—do you think she saw who was hiding in the hallway?”

  Etta pondered this, then shook her head. “That wasn’t the impression I got. I don’t think she was talking about a person. It seemed to me she was talking about something, not someone … as if there was something she saw or knew about that the detective had overlooked. She loved knowing things that other people didn’t,” she added tartly. “And when I tried to get her to tell me about it, she just shut her mouth and wouldn’t say anything except that it didn’t make any sense. She would have figured it out eventually and maybe told me, but unfortunately she didn’t get to live that long.”

  “It didn’t make any sense,” muttered Bernard.

  “Yes. I told her that nothing she said ever made much sense. More tea, either of you?”

  “No, thanks,” said Snooky. Bernard did not reply. His eyes were curiously blank.

  “Bernard’s gone into one of his comas,” said Snooky. “Embarrassing, I always find it. He doesn’t seem to mind. Of course, he’s never very social at the best of times.”

  “I was just thinking hard,” Bernard said. “Naturally you wouldn’t recognize what that looked like, Snooky. Thank you very much, Aunt Etta. You’ve been very helpful.”

  She gave him a shrewd glance. “Thinking you’ll get to it quicker than the police, are you? I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “No … no, I suppose not.”

  She and Snooky chatted for a while. Bernard had lapsed into another one of his reveries, staring out the window with a glazed look in his eyes.

  “Narcolepsy,” Snooky said. “Sad, isn’t it? If you don’t mind, Aunt Etta, I’ll just drag him out by his feet to the car, and we’ll be on our way.”

  They said good-bye to Aunt Etta, who accompanied them to the front entrance of the apartment house and watched them as they left.

  “Letter for you,” said Maya.

  Snooky looked up apprehensively. “It’s not another one from Deirdre, is it?”

  “Guess again, Snooks. This one is from William.”

  “Take it away and burn it, please.”

  Maya held it out wordlessly. Snooky ripped the envelope open and, after steeling himself with a large gulp of coffee, read through the letter with a stony expression on his face. Then he picked up the newspaper and went back to doing the crossword puzzle.

  Maya said, “A bad one this time, Snooks?”

  “Not too bad.”

  “Mind if I read it?”

  “Help yourself.”

  Maya picked up the letter. It was typed on William’s word processor, on thick cream-colored stationery with the initials WSR across the top in a dark blue diamond design. Maya could not remember the last time she had received a letter actually handwritten by William himself. Except for short notes to members of his own family, William went straight to his word processor. The only time she had ever seen him use his gold fountain pen was to punch out the numbers on his pocket calculator.

  Dear Snooky (the letter began),

  How are you? Emily and I and the children are well. We had a great time in Honolulu last month. I hope you are enjoying your visit at Maya’s. Please remember that her home is not your home. But I did not write to hector you, as you have accused me of doing in the past. I have been thinking lately about your inheritance. I suppose it will come as no surprise to you that I feel very strongly that you should put at least some of it aside as an investment. I don’t know where you are keeping your money these days, probably stuffed into a burlap bag and hidden under your mattress, but I feel I can help you maximize your returns. Treasury bills are a secure way to invest your money; also, I know of some tax-free bonds that you might be interested in. Give Maya and Bernard my love, and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

  Your loving brother,

  William

  Underneath, Emily had scribbled,

  P.S. Snooky, you should listen to your brother, he worries about you all the time, and he only wants what’s best.

  “It’s pathetic,” Maya said. “Simply pathetic. They never stop trying, do they?”

  “What I can’t understand is, why does he always sign it ‘Your brother’? Does he think I don’t know who he is by now?”

  “Where is your money, by the way, Snooks?”

  “Oh, you know, Maya. Here and there. Here and there.” He waved a hand in the air. “I get interest checks from time to time, from around the country. It doesn’t bother me. I get by.”

  Maya regarded him fondly. Snooky indeed did get by. When he was not encroaching on someone else’s hospitality, he would rent a house for himself. He would stay in one place for a while, then move on when the impulse struck.

  “No stability,” William would say in funereal tones. “No security. Not like you and me, Maya. Not like you and me.”

  “Snooky doesn’t value security, William. He likes change.”

  William would make a forlorn mooing sound. “Change! Change? Who honestly likes change? Nobody! A lonely old age, that’s what he’s building for himself. Mark my words, Maya. A poverty-stricken old age.”

  “William, honestly. Snooky is only twenty-five years old.”

  “A poverty-stricken old age,” her older brother would say with relish. “I only hope I’m here to see it, Maya. I just pray I’m here to see it.”

  Now Maya said worriedly, “I hate to tell you this, Snooks, but I think that William has a point. Maybe you should invest some of your money with him. No matter what else you can say about him, he’s a good businessman. You could at least consider it.”

  “I have considered it, Maya. I’ve been considering it while I’ve been trying to think what fourteen down, a wealthy person, nine letters, ends in S, could be. And I’ve decided to nip this whole idea in the bud. Do you mind if I call William from here?”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  Snooky went to the kitchen phone and dialed rapidly. “Hello? Hello, who is this? Anna?” Anna was William’s six-year-old daughter. “Hello, Anna, how are you? This is your Uncle Snooky calling. Can I speak to your daddy, please? What? No, Anna … what? Anna, I don’t want to talk to your doll first. Anna … listen to me, you little … oh, all right. All right.” In a resigned tone he said, “Hello, dolly. What? That’s not her name? Well, what’s her name? Emily? You can’t name her Emily, honey, that’s your mommy’s name. What? You know? All right. Hello, Emily. How are you today? Now, can I speak to your daddy, please, Anna? Good. Good. Yes, I’ll talk to your doll while you go find him. Hello, dolly, how’s the stock market these days?” Snooky covered the mouthpiece and said in a hoarse whisper, “She has a doll named Emily. Isn’t that a little strange? Does that seem Freudian to you? Do you think she sticks pins in it or something? Hello?” he said into the phone. “William? Snooky here. Yes. Yes, an adorable little minx, yes. Listen, William, down to business. I got your letter.” Pause. “Treasury bills? Maybe. What do I mean, maybe? Well, to tell you the truth, William, I have something—well, something a little awkward to tell you. Maybe you’d better sit down. You’re not going to like it much. You see, Wil
liam—I hope this doesn’t upset you, I really do—well, you see, I’ve already spent all the money you gave me. Yes. That’s right. All of my inheritance. I’m afraid so. Oh, about a year ago. That’s right, it only lasted about two or three years. I want to tell you how truly sorry I am, William. I know what a disappointment it is to you, with your business sense and all. It was a lot of fun while it lasted, though. So you see, I’m afraid your investment advice is a little … well, it’s a little too late for that. Thanks anyway. How’s Emily? And Buster?” Buster was William’s ten-year-old son. “Good. Good. Fine. Talk to you soon. Okay. I will. They say hello, too. Bye.”

  Maya had listened to all this curiously, sipping her coffee. Snooky came back to the dining room table and sat down. He picked up the paper and murmured.

  “Wealthy person, nine letters … hmmmmm …”

  “Snooks?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “William? Oh, he took it fine. He knew I was just putting him on. One thing I have to say about William, I’ve never been able to put one over on him.”

  “He got the message, though?”

  “Uh-huh. I think he’ll back off for a while. Is there any more coffee, Maya?”

  As she handed him the coffee pot, Snooky exclaimed in triumph, “Moneybags,” and filled it in neatly.

  Jessie Lowell, as she did every year, was helping out with the local rummage sale. This was a big event in Ridgewood; a hall was rented in the center of town, near the art gallery, and for two weeks ahead of time people came by and donated old, used objects and clothing. All the proceeds went to charity. Jessie had volunteered for ten years running and was, by now, one of the leading lights of the Ridgewood Rummage Sale. During the weeks of preparation, her personality changed completely. Ordinarily so shy, hesitant, and unsure of herself, she changed overnight into a dominating shrew, bossing around her underlings and fussily rearranging the sale items. Every year Gretchen regarded this change in her friend with bemusement. Jessie even became more authoritative at home, instructing Gretchen how to make proper broiled chicken (“I always baste it first, and rub it with butter, not margarine, Gretch”), and eating far more than her fair share. She even complained about how untidy the house was, and went around straightening things and mumbling to herself. This year Gretchen had decided to simply stay out of Jessie’s way until the whole thing was over.

  Now Jessie was fussing over one of the tables, making sure that everything was arranged to her own satisfaction, if not that of the teenage girl who was in charge of the table.

  “Now, now, Henrietta,” she was saying, “this pair of pants doesn’t go here, it should go over here, next to this pretty sweater; you see what a nice combination that makes?”

  Henrietta, a pale blonde girl with a willowy figure and a decided squint, was polishing her nails. She looked bored and nodded.

  “And this nice wool skirt, what a lovely English heather that is, should go over here, next to this silk blouse that Mrs. Rivera donated. Don’t you agree, Henrietta?”

  “Sure, why not,” said Henrietta. She held up one hand and blew on her fingernails vigorously.

  “Be careful of that nail polish, dear, you’re going to spill it all over the clothes.” Jessie picked up the bottle of polish and surveyed it critically. “You know, Henrietta dear, you really shouldn’t wear such a bright red. It looks positively slutty, it really does.”

  This was the kind of remark that Jessie would normally never dream of making. Henrietta merely shrugged.

  “Anyway, dear, I’ll be off now. Don’t you rearrange anything, I think it’s perfect now. Bye-bye!”

  Henrietta waved limply with the other hand. Jessie bustled off, saying to herself,

  “I don’t know what the young are coming to … what a color, positively slutty, my mother would have called it … anyway, where is that lovely piece of crockery that Mr. Henderson, bless his soul, brought in yesterday …?”

  She pushed her mousy brown hair off her forehead and wedged her ample figure in between two tables. “Hello, Lisa,” she said to the other teenage girl who had volunteered to help. “Where’s that piece of crockery Mr. Henderson gave us?”

  Lisa, a neurotic-looking girl with dark hair, glasses and a worried expression, pointed. “It’s over there, Miss Lowell.”

  “Ah, yes, that’s right. What else have we gotten so far today?”

  Lisa, with an expression of triumph, produced a neatly labeled, alphabetized list. “Angora sweater,” she read out loud. “Cotton sweater (red), piece of crockery, wooden doll, painted elephant (porcelain), three hats, one letter opener (silver), one mohair sweater, a set of napkins, four pairs of pants, and one rabbit.”

  “A rabbit?”

  “A wooden rabbit. Over there.”

  Jessie’s eyes followed her finger to a large, grotesquely carved white rabbit with pink ears, pink nose and painted black whiskers. One of its ears was shorter than the other and its face was lopsided, giving it a disturbed and pathetic look. “Good Lord, who gave us that?”

  “Mr. Valpasso.”

  Jessie nodded. Ernest Valpasso labored under the delusion that he was an expert woodcarver. Fortunately it was only his hobby, and most of his time was taken up with his work as an accountant in a local law firm. At Christmastime a barrage of oddly shaped wooden objects would emerge from his workshop, to be distributed among his relatives and friends. This one must have been left over; or perhaps, thought Jessie cynically, it had been returned.

  She took the list and looked it over. “Very nice work, Lisa. Very nice indeed.”

  Lisa smiled grimly. “Thank you, Miss Lowell.”

  Who was Lisa performing for, Jessie wondered idly as she handed the list back. She looked down with compassion on the girl’s tight, unhappy face. Her parents? Her teachers? Oh, well, there was no way of knowing. Jessie was old enough to have had Lisa in day care, ten years ago, when she first came to Ridgewood, and it had been the same then. Lisa had started making lists as soon as she learned to write.

  “Where’s Albert?” Jessie said now.

  Lisa looked alarmed. This was an item not on her agenda. “Albert?”

  “Albert Whitaker. He was supposed to be here by now.”

  “Oh. He’s over there, Miss Lowell.”

  Jessie turned. Albert and Gretchen, both of whom had been (as in previous years) coerced into helping her with the sale, were lounging about shamelessly and actually talking, just talking, instead of arranging their respective tables. Albert had a coffee cup in his hand, from the big silver percolator which squatted (immense in its own dignity) in the middle of the room, and it looked like some of the coffee was spilling out onto the clothes—!

  “Albert!” she shrilled, and hurried off to deal with this new evidence of everyone else’s incompetence.

  Snooky and Maya were upstairs, burrowing in Bernard’s closet for clothes to give to the sale.

  Maya looked pensively at the mess. “You start in that corner, Snooks, and I’ll start over here. If you haven’t seen Bernard wearing it recently, put it in the box.”

  “How do I know he doesn’t want it any more?”

  “Snooky, come on. Bernard has only two or three outfits that he’ll wear. You know how he is. Most of this stuff just sits in here year after year.”

  Snooky unearthed a blue-and-yellow tie. “What’s wrong with this?”

  “His Aunt Thelma gave it to him. It has bad associations. She used to visit him when he was little and frighten him by doing her Humpty Dumpty impersonation.”

  “There’s a scary thought. How about this one?”

  “Snooky, take a look at it. Bernard’s grandmother gave it to him. She has no taste whatsoever.”

  “Oh. How about this one?”

  “It’s yours if you want it, Snooks.” The tie in question sported red squares on a pale pink background. Snooky knotted it around his neck.

  “Nothing wrong with it,” he said. “Nothing at all.”
>
  Bernard came into the room and looked impassively at his brother-in-law. “It suits you, Snooky. It really does.”

  “Thank you, Bernard. Hey, how about this one?”

  Once Snooky was finished scavenging, he and Maya put everything into a box, along with some of Maya’s old clothes, and drove over to the rented hall. When they came in, things were in chaos. Boxes were piled up in one corner and people were standing around looking lost. It was the day before the big sale, and everyone was bringing in last-minute donations. Lisa had worked herself into a frenzy, and was frantically making out list after list, her eyes clouded with tears. Susan and George were arguing over why Susan had put six of George’s shirts, ones which he insisted had hardly been worn, in an “old clothing” box. “Because, George,” Susan was saying in an aggrieved tone, “all your clothing looks like it should be either thrown away or given away. Hello, Snooky. Listen, I have something awful to tell you. Jessie was asking for more volunteers, and I opened my mouth and your name came out. I feel terrible about it now. Do you mind?”

  Snooky smiled. “No, not at all.”

  By the end of the evening, nearly all the boxes had been unpacked and their contents laid out neatly on the eight large tables arranged around the room in a rough circle. Jessie was checking the latest of Lisa’s lists with satisfaction, the one with the names of the volunteers. “Susan,” she murmured, putting a large black X next to the name. “George. Albert. Gretchen. Snooky. Henrietta. Lisa. And me.” She nodded. “That should do it.” She put down the list and stood in the middle of the room, her hands on her hips, rotating slowly, surveying her domain with a critical eye. Oh, yes, she thought, yes, yes, it’s going to go very well … I can feel it … very well indeed … we have such nice things this year—

  “Jessie,” called Gretchen, “Jessie, come over here. We don’t know where this stuff should go.”

  Jessie bustled off, inflated with her own self-importance.

  Half an hour later a final batch of boxes came in, along with a flurry of apologies and excuses from the owners (“The whole thing just slipped my mind, I don’t know how it happened. I’m so sorry, Jessie. I know how you feel about getting things in ahead of time”). Jessie waved them away with a magisterial gesture and deigned to unpack the boxes herself. She knelt down next to the boxes with undisguised enthusiasm, her untidy brown hair falling into her face, muttering to herself, “Oh, my, look at this … that’s quite nice, isn’t it? We’ll get a good price for that—oh, my goodness, what’s this thing?… People are so peculiar, aren’t they?… I wonder what they used that for.…”