by Anel Viz
Table of Contents
Title Page
What Other Authors Say About Anel Viz:
Copyright
Note from the Publisher
Dedication
Part I: The House
Ronnie
Baron
Reverend Jenkins
Evan Marker
Christian Worthy
Judge Harris Cole
Jessie
Part II: Brothers
Marc
Ed
Husbands
Liv
Li'l Eric
Jay
Cameron
Lovers
Magda Caille
Aunt Sadie
Timmo
The Blacknolls
Part III: On the Rocks
Big Eric
Harvey Anderson
Brindell, Worthy, Fripp & Thurston
Kate Ansel
Pastor Rich
Patty and Clara
Scott Ballard
Bill Enslik
Part IV: Priorities
Janice
Elliot Cannon
Sharon Stark
Fletcher MacGuire
Dennis
Alma
Epilogue: The Ronnie House
About the Author
Also by Anel Viz
Award Winning Titles
Reviews
What Other Authors Say About Anel Viz:
"I can tell everyone absolutely Anel Viz pays not the slightest attention to any 'rules' and certainly none to any advice from me. I can also tell you that he always makes it work. I've yet to read anything of his (and everything is entirely unique) that wasn't absolutely first-rate. When you are as good as he is, you don't need anyone telling you how to do it."
— Victor Banis
"[Anel Viz] is far more than a competent writer, and the more you read his work the more you recognize the wry, even ironic smile lurking behind the professionalism. It is a kind, if somewhat amused or even skeptical view of people who struggle through their lives."
— Nan Hawthorne
"[Anel Viz] has a way with words that I truly admire, digging them up for the correct meaning of his sentence, which can lead a writer deeply astray. But Anel knows when to stop, when the meaning is perfectly clear."
— Mykola Dementiuk
"[Anel Viz] writes about the psychological connections that draw beings together more than the physical and emotional connections. … As a result he is able to draw strong reactions to his work."
— Marie Bishop
"… although Mr. Viz is literary, [he] does not dwell on descriptions or slow the story down at all. He writes straight to the point, but the prose is flowing, and fun."
— Erika Pike
A Silver Publishing Book
Alma's Will
Copyright © 2013 by Anel Viz
E-book ISBN: 9781614959359
First E-book Publication: May 2013
Cover design by Reese Dante
Editor: Nina Smith
Logo copyright © 2012 by Silver Publishing
Licensed material is being used for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted in the licensed material is a model.
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All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
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This book is written in US English.
PUBLISHER
www.SPSilverPublishing.com
Note from the Publisher
Dear Reader,
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Dedication
In a world where few will think twice before casting the first stone,
are not we all more sinned against than sinning?
Part I: The House
Ronnie
A house where cats outnumber the humans, no matter how clean, has a distinctive smell. Alma Enslik lived alone with eight cats but, cats being cats, most of them paid her little attention, though they liked being in the same room with her. Powder acknowledged her existence by bringing her mice after he'd killed them and eaten the liver and kidneys. The others would rub up against her legs sometimes, but to pet them she had to take the initiative and pick them up. Only Ronnie, the black, came of her own accord to lie in her lap when she sat in the armchair by the sunny corner window.
Alma had never kept pets before her husband's death. Bill loathed animals, except, as he used to joke, on his dinner plate, and since he was a loner, she had never made close friends with her neighbors, though she stayed on cordial, "good morning" terms with them. So except for her cats, she lived alone.
Liv, her daughter, a working mother of three, lived in another state. She may as well have lived on another continent. She called every two or three weeks to check up on her and sent photos, but hadn't even come when her father was dying. Of course, Liv's twin girls were squalling babies then and would certainly have annoyed Bill no end. He never was fond of young children. Alma was, though, and she'd offered to take the kids when Liv and Eric went on one of their weeklong get-away vacations, but Livvie felt they would be too much for her and farmed them out elsewhere.
They hadn't been to see her in over two and a half years, the visit when Liv gave her an angry stare when she heard her call the black cat "Ronnie". Alma noticed, and pursed her lips and said, "Short for Veronica." What right did Livvie have to hold anything against him? Did she even remember him? She was only four years old when it happened. Her Ronnie. What would Jay and Baron say if they knew about him?
Jay and Baron—the boys in the house next to hers. How solicitous they were, always coming over to help when they saw her carrying bags of groceries into the house, mowing her lawn in summer, pruning the shrubbery in front, doing a few minor home repairs when needed. Such nice boys, Jay and Baron, sweet and considerate. She thought of them as boys, though Baron had to be over thirty and Jay just a few years younger.
Oh, she knew exactly what their relationship was. That's what you were supposed to call it now, a relationship. Times certainly had changed. To think how Bill would have heckled them when he was alive disgusted her. Back then, of course, she also believed homosexuality was evil. Funny she found it so easy now to overlook, although it still seemed unnatural and she avoided thinki
ng about what they must do together. What a start it gave her, the time she caught them kissing in their back yard, but she pretended not to notice. She worried about their openness, their daring. It made them so vulnerable. Even if people were no longer openly hostile, surely they didn't approve of it, did they?
She said something of the sort when they told her they'd booked a fifteen-day Caribbean cruise, how they should be careful and not too obvious. Jay said not to worry; a gay organization was sponsoring the cruise with only gay men on board. She'd never heard either of them say "gay" before, and she immediately pictured hundreds of naked men doing unimaginable things on a boat. The thought troubled her, and she said, "But you two will be together all the time, won't you?"
Jay gave her a peck on the cheek. "Shame on you, Miz Enslik! What could you be thinking?"
She blushed, and went back into the house. The implication of orgies on the open sea had turned her thoughts to Ronnie, in ways she didn't like to think of him. He was only fifteen when he left, and she hadn't heard from him since. Did he think she hated him too, that she hadn't suffered when Bill threw him out of the house? Was he angry that she hadn't spoken a word in protest, hadn't come to his defense? What could she have said to defend him? Bill was right to call it an abomination. She still considered it one, yet "abominations" no longer offended her as they once had.
She went to sit in her favorite corner chair, and the black cat jumped into her lap. Where was Ronnie now? He'd be about ten years older than Baron next door if he were alive. Such a sensitive boy, though, and so young. How could he have survived on the streets? "As a male whore," Bill had said, "which is what he is." That was nearly twenty-five years ago, just before the AIDS epidemic. Surely that had killed him, and he'd died years ago in an alley or some hospice. Alone, as she would die one day.
* * * *
Jay and Baron got back late Sunday night and didn't notice the mail that had piled up in Mrs. Enslik's box and the fliers lying on her front lawn until after work the next afternoon. They knocked, and no one answered. They asked around. None of the neighbors had seen her in nearly two weeks; no one by that name had checked into the hospital. They phoned the police and were there with them when they broke down the door.
Alma was sitting in the corner, dead—for over a week, the coroner said. A famished black cat, the one she called Ronnie, lay curled up in her lap. The others had survived by biting small chunks out of the legs they'd used to rub against. The black cat hissed and spit when Baron went to pick her up, and struggled till he got her home. Both boys felt that the least they could do for their neighbor was adopt her Ronnie.
Baron
"What was that all about, Liv? Where are we going?" Eric asked his wife when she'd hung up. She was already on the phone when he'd come home from work, and he had no idea whom she'd been speaking to. She seemed so calm, yet it had sounded serious: "Oh my God… No, I'll be all right. I just didn't expect… When did it happen? … That long ago… I see. … Yes, of course we'll come."
Livia Redding looked somewhat bewildered, as if she hadn't entirely processed whatever it was she'd been told. "There was a message on the machine for me to call," she explained. "A 478 number."
478 was the area code for Macon. "It was about Alma, wasn't it?" Eric said.
"Mama died, almost two weeks ago," she answered matter-of-factly. "The police found her body. The neighbors hadn't seen her in a few days, so they called them." It hadn't taken her long to find her bearings.
"I'm so sorry, Liv. What did she die of?"
"Natural causes, they say. Anyway, we'll have to go to Macon. Good thing it's June and we don't have to pull the children out of school. Who knows how long we'll be there."
"Not too long, I hope." Then he added, "School may be out, but we still have our jobs." He knew it rubbed Liv the wrong way that he "didn't like the South." According to her, that is. In fact, he didn't dislike it; he merely felt out of place there.
"A few days at most," Liv assured him. "We need to make arrangements for the funeral, and then there's her will."
"I suppose her wishes are in it. About the funeral, I mean."
"I assume so, but we'll have the funeral first anyway. They're anxious to bury her as soon as possible. I can understand why, her being dead over a week. The cemetery plot's already been bought—next to Daddy, you know—so what she wanted is pretty clear."
"I'll see about reserving a flight for tomorrow morning. And I think it'd be better if you broke it to the kids. You're sure you're all right, now?" he asked, reaching to pat her upper arm.
Liv smiled at him. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. Don't worry about me."
* * * *
They rented a car at the airport and stopped by the attorney's office for the house key. Marker was in court, so they got it from his secretary, who at the same time made an appointment for them to read the will three days later, the day after the funeral, as it turned out. From there they drove to the house. Liv had expected to see the lawn and garden untended and overgrown with weeds and the letter box full of junk mail, but everything looked just as it had when her mother was alive. No one would have suspected the house was empty.
The inside, however, was not fit to live in. Dust lay thick on the furniture and carpeting, and the air was rank with the smell of decay and cat urine.
Patty said, "It stinks in here, Mommy. Can't we go outside?"
"Okay, you and Clara wait for us in front with Li'l Eric, but stay close to the house and don't go anywhere. We won't be long." Then she said to her husband, "We can't stay here, at least not until I've cleaned up and aired the place out. We'd better find a hotel."
"I'll call the attorney to see about having someone at his office look into a room for us. Marker must not have realized what shape the house was in. Let's hope the phone's still connected."
It was. While Eric called, Liv went outside to stay with the children. They walked around the outside of the house. The lawns were neatly mowed. Large, round clusters of tiny, pale blue blossoms lay thick on the hydrangeas lined up along the front of the house, a bed of pink and white impatiens at their foot. In back, the bright yellow blooms and dark green leaves of the allamanda almost hid the fence, but the hedge of spiraea in front of them had lost many of its snow-white clusters, and the magnolia tree in the center of the yard was also approaching the end of its season, its flowers open wide and a scattering of petals on the grass below. She imagined them blanketing her mother's body as she lay peacefully in an open casket. Alma had put in a smaller vegetable garden this year; more than half the plot lay covered with straw. What she had planted, however, appeared well tended and was thriving.
How Mama loved her garden, Liv thought, and what care she lavished on it! She herself had no patience for yard work. They had a few shrubs in front of the house and some perennials along the fence in back, but most of the yard was a playground for the children—sandbox, swing set, climbing equipment, and the like.
A nice-looking colored man stepped out of the house next door and said, "You must be Alma's daughter."
"Yes. Liv."
"Baron. Baron Christ."
Liv could visualize how the name was spelled, though the man pronounced it with a short i. She couldn't imagine how her father would have felt living next door to a Negro. It must have unsettled her mother as well. But perhaps she'd gotten over those stale prejudices the family had had when she was little.
She held out her hand. "Pleased to meet you. These are my children—Patty, Clara, Li'l Eric."
The kids looked down and shuffled their feet, embarrassed. Then Eric arrived and said that Marker's secretary would be booking them a two-room suite in a hotel downtown. She introduced him to Baron.
"So you've come for the funeral," Baron said.
"Yes. So much to take care of—funeral home, service, having the grave dug, and all the rest. It's overwhelming."
"I'm sure her pastor will help you make the arrangements. You know what church she attended?"
Liv nodded. "I'm sure it's the same one we went to when I was little." Then, speaking to herself, she asked, "Where is Mama?"
"Still at the morgue," Eric said. In answer to his wife's "How do you know?" look, he explained, "I just heard it from the lawyer. They're waiting for your call to release the body."
Liv nodded absently and returned to her musings. "I'm amazed how good the garden looks," she said. "Everything so well cared for, the flowers watered. I thought it would have gone all to seed."
"My friend Jay and I have been taking care of the place," Baron said. "Alma loved her flowers. Such a nice lady! It seemed the least we could do. And I admit we have been picking her vegetables."
"Oh, but you're more than welcome to them!"
"We'd have cleaned up inside, but they wouldn't let us have a key."
"That's very kind of you," Eric said. "We appreciate it."
"Here, write down my number at least. You'll let me know when and where the funeral will be?"
Liv nodded. "I mean to arrange for it to take place as quickly as possible. My husband can't take more than a week off from work."