Tea Cups & Tiger Claws
Page 37
After the initial terrified screams, complete silence blanketed the scene. The people on the verandah stood motionless and looked at Dorthea Railer and her unladylike predicament. Then Sarah yelled, “Call an ambulance! Someone call an ambulance! Is there a doctor here?”
“Uh…yes…up here. I’ll be right down.”
“Veronica!” yelled Sarah.
“I’m here,” said Veronica, running to her cousin, hugging her, and then saying, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to do so I turned on the lights. I thought if she saw everyone looking she’d stop.”
“You did the right thing,” said Sarah. Then, as she started to run back down to Mack, Sarah saw Ernest staring at her. He didn’t say a word and didn’t look like he had a word to say. He just stared with eternal sadness chiseled into his face. Then he dropped his gun and stumbled over to his mother. He fell to his knees and rocked back and forth over the dead, disfigured body. Soon, like a defective bellows, his pumping body produced a small shriek that grew into a loud, desperate wail. Flowing tears blended with the saliva that had ridden the winds of agony to all corners of his red, distorted face. The commingled fluids found a path around his gaping mouth and down his shuddering chin. From his hand fell a large marble. It bounced off a rock, rolled in the dirt, and came to a stop in a red puddle of his mother’s blood.
Suddenly he sat up straight, took the gun from his mother’s hand, and put the barrel into his mouth. He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger. Click. The revolver was empty. He collapsed onto her body.
Sarah ran down the hill to Mack.
Chapter 35
This account has now come full circle, back to where it started, with the good people of Prospect Park. Did their unpleasant encounter with corruption and murder cause them to change? When their little world started to wobble, did it give them cause to look past the illusion? Not really. Dorthea all but destroyed the family that epitomized everything they stood for and, in the end, it didn’t faze them. They stood on Sunny Slope Manor’s verandah, dressed in ball gowns and tuxedos, and witnessed the sordid climax from beginning to end. And then they went home to their hillside mansions, to their lives of privilege, and resumed their pretense of heaven on earth. And for the flatlanders, always eager to be part of that pretense, Dorthea’s murderous destruction caused shock and disbelief and a fair amount of tongue wagging, but it didn’t stop their gaze up the hill or their dreams about mountaintop palaces of their own.
No, the good people didn’t change…except, maybe, the ones who had been especially close to the fire….
~~~
The latest and hopefully last winter storm of the season had just blown through, and the little house down by the library felt like a refrigerator. Sarah lay under a pile of blankets where she indulged unkind thoughts about the wall heater. She also cast impatient glances at the lackadaisical alarm clock; Mack was coming home today, and she could hardly wait.
He’d proposed to her from his hospital bed. When he tried to apologize for the lack of moonlight and violin music and other romantic stuff, she claimed to have a fetish for gauze and antiseptic and said the whole thing couldn’t have been more romantic. Now she had a wedding to plan, and this time she actually looked forward to it.
The doorbell interrupted her thoughts. She crawled out of bed, wrapped herself in a blanket, and went to answer it.
“Hello cousin, what do you think?” said Veronica, as she opened her coat and twirled around on the front porch, fashion show style, to show off a bright white uniform with a red patch below the shoulder that said, “Dairy Queen…we treat you right.” Her little white cap had the Dairy Queen logo and said, “The cone with the curl on top.”
“I don’t have time to stay,” said Veronica, “I just wanted you to know that I got a job…I don’t know how long it’ll last…but I got a job.”
Sarah, still wrapped in a blanket, stretched out an arm, gave her cousin a hug, and said, “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Nobody in their right mind would fire Veronica Newfield. And what Dairy Queen manager doesn’t secretly want to have an employee who comes to work in a limousine?”
Veronica glanced over her shoulder at the limo and said, “I know. I didn’t have the heart to drive myself. Poor Mr. Theo waxes the car five times a day and waits to drive me somewhere. Do you know anyone who needs a chauffeur?”
“Sorry. Is that Ernest in there?”
“Yes,” said Veronica, sheepishly. “He wants to be my first customer…and I kind of like him, Sarah. He hates all the things that get me into trouble. He can’t stand snobs, doesn’t care about money, and thinks Vicks Forty-Four is a psychedelic drug—it’s like being friends with a boy scout.”
“Can I tell you something about Ernest?” asked Sarah.
“Ok.”
“He’s a prince.”
“Yeah, he kind of is, isn’t he?”
“More than you know,” said Sarah.
“Well, we are married…I guess,” said Veronica with a shrug and smile. Then she gave her cousin a hug and said goodbye.
Sarah closed the door, hitched up the blanket, and made a run for the bedroom. She ran past the ugly wormwood posts, the dreaded wall heater, the hodgepodge of religious wall hangings, and jumped back into bed. It felt good to be home.
The End
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