Serendipity Green

by Rob Levandoski

  “Me, too,” says Victoria.

  “Karen hates it,” says D. William Aitchbone.

  “Tiny Toes!”

  “Hello, Vicki? Donald Grinspoon.”

  “Well, what a nice surprise! How are you, Donald?”

  “Oh I’m fine, Vicki. Just fine. How’s everything at the day care center these days?”

  “Just fine.”

  “That’s good. Say, Vicki—”

  “Yes, Donald.”

  “I’m calling about Bill Aitchbone.”

  “Oh?”

  “I wouldn’t want him to know I called.”

  “I understand.”

  “He’s like a son to me, Vicki.”

  “He’s very fond of you.”

  “Yes, and he’s very fond of you, Vicki. I guess that’s why I called. I’m afraid Bill may be a little too fond of you.”

  “What are you saying, Donald?”

  “I’m not really sure. It’s just that I’m an old man, been around for a long time. Too long maybe. And I sense things, Vicki. I sense that our Bill is attracted to you. Not just physically, either. He talks all the time about how simpatico your political instincts are with his.”

  “Donald, I’d never—”

  “Oh, I know that, Vicki. I know that.”

  “I hope so.”

  “Believe me, I do. But this is a rough time for Bill. His law practice. Council. County Republicans. Squaw Days. All that library board crap with those EDIT people.”

  “Oh, Donald. Bill’s a happily married man. He’d never—”

  “Karen’s one helluva woman, Vicki. Good mother. Good wife. But she knows less about politics than the Man in the Moon. And I know Bill’s taken you under his wing the same I way I took him under mine. And you’re one helluva good-looking woman and—”

  “Well, Donald, thank you.”

  “You’re also a smart woman. You know how easily men can confuse one thing with another. And with things between Bill and Karen not being what they should—”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “That’s too bad.”

  “I guess what I’m saying is this, Vicki, that if Bill suddenly gets a little too friendly, makes a fool out of himself, well—”

  “I understand.”

  “You’re a smart woman, Vicki.”

  “Hello, Bill?”

  “Donald.”

  “Just finished talking with Vicki.”

  “And?”

  “Hook, line and sinker.”

  “Thanks, Donald.”

  15

  Howie Dornick goes to work thirty minutes early, not because there is still much to clean up after Squaw Days, not because the privatization vote is keeping him on his toes, but because he has a Jack Russell terrier named Matisse to let out for a noontime piss, lest his two-story frame on South Mill takes on the same aroma as Katherine Hardihood’s two-bedroom ranch on Oak Street.

  He begins his day scrubbing the gazebo clean of spilled soda, splotches of ice cream, cigarette butts and gobs of foul ground meat that plopped from sloppy joes and chili dogs. He works slow, putting off as long as he can the ritual hosing of the village hall parking lot, site of both the pie-eating and tobacco-spitting contests. But the morning rolls by and the inevitable must be faced. He is unrolling a hundred feet of red hose when he spots D. William Aitchbone waving and walking in his direction.

  “Howie!” D. William Aitchbone sings out. “Got a minute?”

  In case the council president pulls a gun, Howie Dornick readies his hands on the nozzle. “Bill.”

  D. William Aitchbone surveys the gelatinous lumps of blueberry and tobacco and just has to shake his head. “They can really make a mess, can’t they,” he says, the they, of course, meaning the people of low self-esteem who swallowed the pies and spat the tobacco. Now he grabs the lapels of his suitcoat and wiggles his fingers. “If I wasn’t dressed up I’d give you a hand.”

  Howie Dornick hears himself say “Thanks.”

  D. William Aitchbone puts a well-practiced smile on his face. “Look, Howie, I know I’ve really put you through the grinder the last few months. That privatization thing. Blowing my lid over the color you painted your house.” His well-practiced smile slowly contorts into a well-practiced pout of contrition. “I owe you an ‘I’m-sorry,’ Howie. A big one.”

  “No need,” Howie Dornick hears himself say.

  “Don’t get me wrong, the village may very well have to privatize some services a year or two down the line. God knows there’s still a lot of support for it on council. Vicki Bonobo for one. She’s gung ho about it. Thank God she came down with the flu just before the vote. God was looking out for both of us that day.”

  “Both of us?”

  “Yessireebob. Both of us. You know me, Howie. Always looking at the bottom line. Frankly, when I put that privatization plan together, I wasn’t thinking of the human equation. What a kick in the balls it would be to you personally. Middle-aged. No real skills. Not that well-liked. All that illegitimate son of Artie Brown stuff.”

  “I think I could find another job,” Howie Dornick hears himself say.

  “Oh, I’m not saying you couldn’t. Sure you could, Howie boy.”

  Howie Dornick really wants to twist that nozzle now. He can pretend it was an accident, he thinks.

  “So, I can’t blame you for slapping that crappy green paint on your house.” D. William Aitchbone says. “I had it coming. Touché!”

  The hundred-foot red hose suddenly ejaculates on the front of D. William Aitchbone’s well-creased pants. “Oops,” says Howie, taking his time twisting the nozzle off.

  Unbeknownst to D. William Aitchbone, he has jumped back into a plop of blueberry pie, speckling the back of his well-creased pants. “Now someday soon I hope you’ll put about six coats of white over that green. But no more pressure, Howie. You do what you think is best for you.”

  Howie Dornick is surprised when he hears himself answer, “Oh, I will.” He can tell by the weak unpracticed smile on D. William Aitchbone’s face that he, too is surprised.

  “So, the bottom line is this, Howie: No privatization without advance warning. No pressure on repainting your house. Your looking at the new, more-humane Bill Aitchbone.”

  Howie Dornick wants to let the nozzle slip again, just to see how new the new Bill Aitchbone really is. But he doesn’t. He knows exactly how new he is.

  The subject of their conversation suddenly changes: “Say, Howie, did I tell you I sold my Uncle Andy’s farm? Oh, I made some good money, I’ll tell you.” D. William Aitchbone now whips the air with his erect index finger, to signal that his ever-alert brain has just stumbled on a very good idea. “Here’s something you might like. You know, there’s a little family cemetery on the farm.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Oh yeah. Some of the graves go way back to the early eighteen hundreds. Anyway, under my deal with the developer, I’ve got to move those graves. To the village cemetery. Sweet Jesus, Howie, I don’t know why they won’t leave those poor souls rest in peace. But you know how developers are, they want a house on every square inch. Anyway, I was thinking, why don’t I hire you to move the graves?”

  “Uhhhhhh—”

  “I can give you, what, fifty buck a grave? Hell, Howie, seventy-five. And these are old graves, Howie. No rotting flesh or anything. Just some dirty old bones.”

  Howie Dornick wonders if the hose in his hands could be tied into a noose—for himself. “Uhhhhhh—”

  “Once the land gets annexed into the village, you’d have to do it anyway, for no extra money.”

  “I’d have to do that? Move graves from private property?”

  “Well, you wouldn’t have to. Except that if that privatization thing comes up again, say in the spring, and Vicki Bonobo and others on council start asking which village employees are team players and which aren’t, well, council president or not, I’m just one vote. So, hell, Howie, you migh
t as well let me pay you for it. I’m sure the village would even look the other way if you used the village backhoe. I know I would.”

  “Uhhhhhh—”

  D. William Aitchbone offers a final “Think it over, Howie” and retreats to the village hall, pantlegs soaked and splattered, but creases still as sharp as ever. Howie twists the nozzle and starts herding the blueberry and tobacco plops toward the storm sewer drain. He must finish by noon and then rush home to walk Matisse, whose master is on his way to New York City, with a piece of green clapboard.

  “Hey, Bill!”

  D. William Aitchbone, having just been told by village secretary Molly Kellogg that he’s got blueberry pie filling stuck to his pants, continues on into the men’s room.

  Mayor Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne follows him in. “I think you should see this,” he says, extending a folded letter.

  D. William Aitchbone lets the letter hang in the Democratic mayor’s hand while he wets a paper towel and goes to work on his pants. The damage is beyond the help of a paper towel. He’ll have to stop at home and change his suit before driving into New Waterbury for his court appointments. He snowballs the paper towel into the waste can and takes the letter.

  “It’s from some Indian in Cleveland,” Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne tells him.

  And so D. William Aitchbone reads the letter:

  Dear Mayor Sadlebyrne,

  This Squaw Days thing of yours is an insult to all Indian peoples. No Indian woman clubbed to death by white men would ever appear above a pile of burning stumps to bless the whites for raping sacred Indian lands with their axes and plows and greed.

  You whites have humiliated our Indian women for the last time. We will not let you do to Pogawedka what you have done to Pocahontas and Sacajawea. Squaw Days must go!

  Sincerely,

  Ernest Not Irish

  President, Cleveland’s Real Indians.

  D. William Aitchbone hands the letter back. “They’re the bunch who don’t like Chief Wahoo, right?”

  “That’s them. I think this Not Irish guy was at this year’s festival. Delores Poltruski sold two big cookies and a Coke to some Indian-looking guy carrying and I’M A REAL INDIAN sign.”

  “Maybe if we invited them to dance next year—one of those rain-dance deals—they wouldn’t cause any trouble for us.”

  Woodrow Wilson Sadlebyrne’s eyes close. His head slowly swings back and forth. “Invite them to dance? You Republicans never cease to amaze me.”

  His political heritage insulted, D. William Aitchbone pushes past his foe and throws the men’s room door wide. “Next election, Woody boy, you’re going to be amazed right back into the cable TV business.”

  Sadlebyrne follows him out, yelling. “We’re going to be attacked by Indians and all you’re concerned about is the next election?”

  “Sweet Jesus, Woody, Tuttwyler isn’t Fort Apache. We’re not going to be attacked by Indians.”

  “They’ll picket.”

  “They? Five or six fools with pigtails shuffling around in a circle? Woody! Take a reality pill!”

  When Dr. Pirooz Aram comes into his office, demitasse of espresso in his huge hands, he notices that his patient is sitting differently than during previous visits. She is no longer stiff-spined. No longer are her knees clenched like a bulldog’s teeth. “Katherine Hardihood, how are you today?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Just good? On such a perfect day?” Dr. Aram takes a final sip and puts the tiny cup on the silver tray on the corner of his desk. He slumps into his own chair. “The last time you were here you had just baked a rhubarb pie for some gentleman.”

  “Howie Dornick.”

  “Yes, Howie Dornick. Did this Howie Dornick like the pie?”

  “We had sex.”

  “Ah! That is wonderful!”

  “We have sex all the time.”

  Dr. Aram ponders this development, wondering what kind of man this Howie Dornick must be to copulate with such an unappetizing woman on a regular basis. “Are you able to enjoy it, Katherine?”

  “You are asking whether my uncle is in bed with us?”

  Dr. Pirooz Aram rubs his chocolate eyes and laughs as only a wise Persian can. “I ask a cloudy question and I get a clear question in return. How am I supposed to treat you, Katherine, if you are more honest than me?”

  Katherine Hardihood laughs as only a librarian can. “Sometimes I think about my uncle before we do it, and sometimes after, but never during. I guess I get totally enmeshed in the moment.”

  “Enmeshed in the moment? Very nice. You are a poet. Now tell me, Katherine, do you love this Howie Dornick?”

  “He’s growing on me.”

  Dr. Aram now listens in amazement as she tells him about Howie’s pitiful life: about his illegitimate birth; about his famous war-hero father; how Tuttwyler both shuns and protects him; about his unpainted two-story frame on South Mill; how a ruthless lawyer named D. William Aitchbone conspired to get that eyesore-of-a-house painted before Squaw Days; how this D. William Aitchbone had manipulated her, sending her to that unpainted house with a rhubarb pie; how Howie Dornick drove all the way to Wooster to buy paint, and for some mystifying reason came back with a car-load of ungodly colors and mixed them together into an ungodly concoction of ungodly green, and slathered his clapboards with it.

  Dr. Pirooz Aram, of course, has heard about this house before, from Hugh Harbinger. But he is a proud and conscientious psychiatrist and cannot betray the confidence of another patient. “So, this Howie Dornick of yours is both brave and cowardly at the same time? He buckles but he doesn’t buckle?”

  “I guess that’s right.”

  “And this is why he is growing on you, Katherine?”

  “I suppose.” She tells him now about the strange man from Parma who showed up for breakfast, a strange man with a small dog who thought the ungodly green paint on Howie Dornick’s house was both fabulous and serendipitous.

  Dr. Aram’s lips freeze between a frown and a grin. “It sounds like this man from Parma should see a psychiatrist.”

  “We’re all a little crazy, I suppose.”

  “Not a little crazy, Katherine,” Dr. Pirooz Aram says, leap-frogging disciplines, psychiatry to philosophy. “A lot crazy. Our specie is genetically insane.”

  “That’s a bit rough, isn’t it?”

  “Rough but true,” he says “When trouble comes, mules kick and rabbits run. Turtles grow shells. And they think they are surviving! But our human ancestors with their big monkey brains could see from Day One that all the kicking and running and shell-growing in the world would not spare them from the predator called death, from rotting like a forgotten pistachio nut. Unlike the mule or the rabbit or the turtle, our ancestors knew they were doomed. Knew that like the pistachio they were prone to rotting. Knew they were mortal, Katherine, mortal! And knowing this terrible secret, they understandably went insane, en masse, and passed along their collective insanity from generation to generation, eventually inventing the rewards of heaven and the punishments of hell, inventing countries and nationalities and politics and professional sports franchises, filling silos full of corn and wheat and canning beans and peaches, inventing lifejackets and fire alarms and lucky rabbit’s feet, as if somehow all these things are going to save us. Rotting pistachios, that’s what we are.” Dr. Aram has enjoyed listening to himself, but now that he has run out of breath, he is quite embarrassed. “Of course, I don’t talk to my other patients like this. But you, Katherine, you are so perceptive, and such a poet. So I make a fool out of myself.”

  But apparently she does not think he has made a fool of himself. She picks up where he leaves off. “And so we demand that the illegitimate sons of war heroes keep their houses painted. For the sake of our own false immortality.”

  Dr. Pirooz Aram walks across the room on his knees, taking Katherine Hardihood’s librarian’s hands in his huge Persian hands, as if he were holding a pair of fragile espresso cups. “Whether you can admit it o
r not, you are in love with this Howie Dornick. He has awakened and transformed you. And you have awakened and transformed him. This serendipity green you tell me about is the color of your love for each other. It is a powerful color, Katherine, a powerful color.”

  Katherine feels the heat from his hands moving up her forearms like mercury up a thermometer. She withdraws her hands and pats his cool balding head. “Now who is the poet?”

  Still on his knees, Dr. Pirooz Aram begins to dance. “Yes, I am a poet. In fact, sometimes I think I am the reincarnated soul of Jalaluddin Rumi, the great Persian poet. Do you know of him, Katherine?”

  “His poems are very popular today.”

  “Very popular today? You are such an American! Yes, Rumi is very popular in America today. In the same way that Russian Matruska dolls are popular in America today. We Persians knew of Rumi’s greatness when America was nothing but the name olive-picking Italians gave their third sons.” As he continues to dance, he recalls one of the Rumi poems he read as a youth in Tehran: “I remember this one poem about a chickpea who tries and tries to leap over the rim of a boiling pot of water. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ the chickpea asks the cook. And the cook just knocks the chickpea back with his ladle. ‘Do not try to jump out,’ says the cook. ‘You think I’m torturing you. But I’m giving you a favor. So you can mix with spices and rice and be the loving vitality of a human being.’” Dr. Pirooz Aram pulls his patient from her chair and wraps his arms around her bony back. “Neither you nor Howie must be afraid of this serendipity green. It is giving you a favor. Allowing you to mix with spices and rice. Mix, Katherine! Mix and mix and mix!”

  Katherine Hardihood is not taken aback by any of Dr. Pirooz Aram’s peculiarities, not the dancing, not the poem about the leaping chickpea, not even his rant about rotting pistachios and the genetic insanity of monkey-brained humans. These peculiarities are exactly why she continues to visit him several times a year; these and the prescription for antidepressants, which, since Reagan’s first term, have kept her from ripping the last chapters out of the library’s mystery novels. Her session ends and on the way out she writes the secretary a check and makes a appointment for February. She drives home to Tuttwyler.