Collected Short Stories: Volume V

by Barry Rachin

  “Hello, Glenn,” a woman’s voice cut through the noisy din.

  He had been so engrossed observing patrons streaming into the restaurant, Glenn never noticed the slim woman approaching diagonally from the bar. Helene Fischer was standing on the far side of the table clutching a small beaded purse. Her thin fingers resting on the back of a red oak chair, the blonde woman with the sallow complexion wore a sedate blue skirt and no jewelry. Glenn patted the chair next to him, and she slid down into the seat. Senior editor of the Brandenburg High School newspaper, Helene possessed a sensible, moderately pretty face. A decade earlier, her shy intelligence and wry humor had the teenage boy thinking about her away from class.

  “Are those new glasses?” As soon as the words left his mouth, Glenn realized the sheer idiocy of the remark.

  “Yes, they are.” She didn’t seem to mind. With an index finger, she adjusted the stylish black frames up on the bridge of her slender nose. Helene reached for a warm roll. “Do you still paint?”

  The room was filling up now and the wait staff was passing out the Caesar salad. “Yes, but you won’t find a Glenn Stottlemeyer original at any of the prestigious galleries on Newbury Street.” Closer to the dance floor, a three-piece jazz trio with a female vocalist was fine-tuning the sound equipment. Testing one, two, three. Testing one, two, three.

  Helene sliced a roll lengthwise, spreading butter on the lower half. “I’m with a publishing firm off Tremont Street in downtown Boston, so I’m still up to my ears in printed matter.”

  Several couples, who already seemed well acquainted, drifted over and seated themselves at the table. Glenn didn’t recognize any of the faces and, even after introductions, could only just barely recall one of the women, a matronly brunette with wide hips, who sang in the glee club. Fifteen minutes into the event and, with the exception of Helene Fischer, the Brandenburg High School reunion was beginning to feel surrealistically unpleasant. “I ran into Jerry Yeager in the parking lot,” Glenn blurted.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “Married with five kids!”

  If there had been a ‘Least Likely to Succeed’ category in the Brandenburg High School yearbook, Jerry Yeager would have won the title running away. A perennial C and D student, the shabbily-dressed youth with the chipped tooth missed as many days out of school as he attended, seldom ran a comb through his hair or polished his ratty shoes.

  With sloth-like amiability, the teen, whose fingernails were habitually caked with dirt, wished everyone only the best. Directly out of high school, Jerry got a job with the department of public works, plowing and sanding roads in the winter, filling pot holes and landscaping through the summer months. Ten years ago, the marginal nebbish on the fast track to nowhere was the butt of endless jokes. But, grubby fingernails and broken teeth taken aside, the ne’er do well enjoyed a passable life.

  Helene blinked behind the dark-framed glasses. Her malleable features, momentarily frozen in a blank expression, melted in a wispy smile. “Caleb Garth.”

  Glenn swiveled a quarter turn at the waist. “Excuse me?”

  “At the publishing house we just bought the rights to print a limited edition of George Elliot’s Middlemarch.”

  “Never heard of it,” Glenn replied.

  “It’s the Victorian author’s tour de force, her literary masterpiece... a thousand pages of dazzling prose.” Helene raised a wineglass to her thin lips and sipped at the pink liquid. “Every character you ever met in life somehow reemerges in the pages.” “There’s a middle-aged farmer,” Helene continued, “by the name of Caleb Garth in Middlemarch who reminds me of Jerry.”

  George Elliot—now Glenn remembered. In junior English the class read Silas Marner. He vaguely remembered something about a miserly linen weaver who was robbed of all his gold. “Jerry reminds you of the fictional character… how so?”

  “Caleb has a litter of children. He’s hardworking, honest, pleasant as hell and, despite the best of intentions, never gets ahead in life.”

  “So far so good.”

  “Caleb loves his wife dearly and, despite his meager circumstances, is perfectly content. Nobody owes him a living. Life is good.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Glenn held a hand up in mock protest. “You just described Jerry Yeager to a T.”

  The door opened and a stunning, dark-haired woman in a strapless blue evening gown floated into the room. “There’s Andrea Molina,” Helene noted. “Swell necklace, don’t you think?”

  Decked out in a braided gold necklace that hung to her ample cleavage, Andrea swept through the function hall with an aloof, vixen’s swagger. A pair of glittering earrings matched the stunning chain; stiletto heels showed her sleek calves and tight rump to best advantage. Andrea passed right by their table without the faintest recognition, choosing a chair at a table near the salad bar. Almost immediately a crowd of long-time friends and admirers convened on the spot. Andrea draped a lace shawl over the back of a chair. Her bare arms and shoulders exuded an erotic charm that could be felt halfway across the room.

  Several girls that Helene worked with on the school newspaper suddenly materialized and dragged her away. Glenn felt uncomfortable sitting alone at the table. He reached for the gin but thought better of it and went outside, where the sun had already gone down. A thin sliver of gritty light still lingered over the placid water. Ducks were floating close to shore – a couple of smallish buffleheads, speckled mallards, a solitary Mandarin with orangey plumage and zebra-like patchwork dappling the chest. Further down the shore was a collection of ringed teal, slightly larger and more imposing than the other birds along with a dirty brown, speckled woodcock. Sad to say, he felt more comfortable among the waterfowl than his former classmates in the restaurant.

  * * * * *

  Somewhere in Glenn Stottlemeyer’s freshman year at Brandenburg High, the troubling notion that he wouldn’t survive much beyond his teenage years began to eat away at the adolescent’s confidence. Life was too complicated and unmanageable. He wasn’t lazy. On the contrary, Glenn was reasonably intelligent, honest and conscientious.

  But was that enough?

  Did one require an extra measure of ubermensch cunning that a boy, who spent his days reproducing still-life watercolors couldn’t possibly lay hold of? Jerry Yeager had found his earthy niche early on. One look at Andrea Molina and you knew she had the world at her sensuous fingertips. Helene Fischer was preparing a limited edition of George Elliot’s Middlemarch for publication.

  Glen was wallowing in existential ennui, a spiritual limbo resembling purgatory. After finishing his education degree, he spent a year in the classroom. Teaching elementary and middle school students the basics of color and design left him mildly disoriented. What had seemed so gratifying in college proved stultifying drudgery.

  The craft show circuit proved an endless grind of travelling from show to show, sometimes not even earning enough profit to cover expenses and vendor fees. Now he was teaching privately through the local arts collaborative. Several of his older students showed real promise.

  Not that it made a difference.

  They progressed from week to week and renewed for the next session when the final class ended. Between the collaborative and the meager income he earned at juried art shows he eked out a modest living. Things were better lately, but still he was just drifting, marking time.

  Jerry Yeager had a solid job with the DPW and a nuclear family exploding exponentially by the year. Andrea Molina was solidifying her position as the most desirable (and obnoxious) twenty-something on the planet. Helene Fischer held a management position at one of the more prestigious publishing firms in downtown Boston. Like a barnacle-encrusted ship with a broken rudder and tattered mainsail, Glenn was drifting aimlessly. Drifting. Drifting. Drifting.

  Through the window Glenn noticed the waitresses lugging the main course out to the tables and went back in. “I thought you deserted us,” Helene said in a chiding tone tinged with mock indignation. “Made
it an early night.”

  Glenn prodded his stuffed chicken with the tings of a fork. “Andrea Molina,” He lowered his voice, speaking haltingly into the linen tablecloth. “Who is Andrea Molina?”

  “What’s that?” Helene stared at him curiously trying to decipher his intent.

  Glen sliced his baked potato lengthwise, laid a pat of butter in the warm center and watched the golden wad melt across the bottom. “In your thousand-page masterpiece,” he spoke deliberately now, “is there a character that resembles Andrea Molina?”

  Helene considered the question briefly. “Rosamond Vincy. She is the perfect prototype.”

  “And what sort of person is Rosamond?”

  Helene leaned back tilting her head to one side. The pale, flawless skin and thin lips were held in bold relief by her dark glasses with the thick lenses. “Rosamond is an utterly selfish, narcissistic twit who views everyone in the English small town where she lives as socially inept - no matter that she has no special talents of her own or that her debt-ridden parents are hopelessly middle class.”

  A wan smile colored her features. Helene leaned closer, her lips no more than a few inches from his face. “An egotistical snob and social climber, Rosamond marries a doctor, a dedicated medical researcher, but the marriage proves disastrous.” Helene paused to let him digest the facts. “When her despairing husband drops dead, she promptly remarries a wealthy businessman twice her age, who pampers Rosamond for the rest of her supercilious life.” Helene pursed her lips and smiled wickedly. “Don’t you just love Victorian tales with happy endings?”

  Toward the end of the meal as coffee was being served, Glenn tapped Helene gently on the wrist. “Did your Victorian authoress find a place for two improbable characters like us in her fictional masterpiece?”

  Helene responded with a good-natured laugh. “Why don’t you read the book and draw your own conclusions?”

  “A thousand pages?”

  “More or less.” Helene was poised to say something else, but the chairwoman of the reunion committee approached the dais, tapped the microphone several times and began addressing the high school alumni. For the remainder of the evening there was no more mention of nineteenth-century English literature.

  * * * * *

  The second week in August, Glenn displayed his watercolors at the Mansfield Art Show. The two-day affair was held on the grassy town common. He erected a ten-by-ten, cloth canopy under a huge maple tree the night before and arrived around eight the following morning to set out his paintings. Foot traffic was only moderate but plenty of serious shoppers were scattered among the casual onlookers, hagglers, horse traders and WalMart crowd.

  ‘WalMart crowd’ was a term that Glenn had coined to describe a low-brow shopper who illogically assumed that every hand-made work of art viewed at a juried craft fair could be had for pennies-on-the-dollar at the bargain outlets. They drifted past the booths with indignant haughtiness and seldom bought anything more expensive than a pastry and cup of coffee from the food vendors.

  “This is rather nice.” A young black woman was admiring a medium-size watercolor done in earth tones. “That’s the Grist Mill Restaurant in Seekonk. We had our high school reunion there last month. I went back the next week and painted the paddlewheel with the ducks and lake in the foreground.” The woman smiled and took a step closer, studying the upper portion of the sky. “I used a graded wash,” Glenn explained, “to push the lighter tones further away from the horizon.”

  The woman nodded appreciatively. “I don’t know much about painting technique.”

  Glenn pointed toward the top of the picture where the lighter blue tones had faded away to nothing. “The pigment is applied to a sloping surface in slightly overlapping, horizontal bands from the top down. Once complete, the wash is left to dry and even itself out.” He dropped his hand down to the lower left near the shoreline. “Over here burnt sienna was dropped in while the paper was still very wet to create the suggestion of a bush. I let the Prussian blue and alizarin dry before wetting the paint again and lifting the pigment off to produce the hard-edged lines defining the mill and adjoining structure.”

  “How much?”

  “One-twenty-five,” Glenn replied.

  She reached for her purse. “Do you take credit cards?”

  A spitting light rain erupted late in the day, but Glenn had already sold five paintings before two p.m. and was a bit giddy with both the brisk business and fact that bright sunshine was forecast for Sunday. Even if he sold half as many pieces the following day, the show would be a huge success. He moved his paintings to the center of the canopy away from the slanting rain, positioning a plastic tarpaulin over several favorite offerings.

  The public had gone home, but craft vendors were obliged to stay straight through until four before packing up. Glenn poured himself a cup of coffee from a thermos and reached for a paperback squirreled away behind his cash box. He opened the absurdly thick book and settled in for the next hour.

  * * * * *

  Three weeks later, the agency receptionist buzzed Helene Fischer on the intercom. “A young man is asking to see you.”

  She scanned her appointment book and desk calendar. “No one’s scheduled until late this afternoon. What’s the mystery man’s affiliation?”

  “The fellow says he met you at a high school reunion… a Glenn Stottlemeyer.”

  “Yes, send him back.”

  A minute later Glenn was hovering in the doorway. “I know you’re busy so I won’t waste your time.” She was staring at him with that signature, deadpan expression that invariably dissolved into a feathery-soft smile, an utterly disarming expression that left her lovelier by the second. “The Elliot book – is it in print yet?”

  Helene slid a rather plump volume finished in wine-colored, faux leather across the desk. Glenn ran a hand lightly over the ridge where the stiff cover was joined to the spine by a linen mull. Opening the book at random he studied the prose. “The print is rather large.”

  Helene shook her head. “No, not really. It’s standard eleven-point Garamond.”

  “By comparison,” he pulled a paperback out from under his arm and handed it to her, “I nearly went blind reading this fly poop.”

  Helene studied the tight script. “Dear God, that is tiny!”

  “Within the first hundred pages, I located your alter ego.” Glenn spoke in a rambling unhurried tone. “Dorothea Brookes, with her straw colored hair and peaches-and-cream complexion, was a dead ringer for the publishing house editor who sat at my left elbow throughout the Brandenburg High School reunion.”

  “Dorothea Brooke’s life paralleled mine,” Helene added, “in that both our early marriages failed miserably and for similar reasons.”

  “And Will Ladislaw, the struggling artist, was a good match for the teenage neurotic, Glen Stottlemeyer.” His face flushed with embarrassment. “I don’t know that I’m quite the cosmopolitan humanist of my fictional alter ego, but still the resemblance is unnerving, don’t you think?” There was no reply. Glenn glanced across the room at a teetering pile of unsolicited manuscripts that rose almost as high as his belt buckle. “Will Ladislaw and Dorothea Brookes were kindred spirits and best friends, but the reader has to wade through the better part of a thousand pages to discover what happens to them.”

  Helene nodded, flicking a strand of straw-colored hair out of her eyes. “The star-crossed lovers never even kiss until page seven hundred and fifty- three.”

  “It’s the ending of Middlemarch,” Glenn deflected the conversation elsewhere, “I came here to discuss.”

  “Denouement,” Helene interjected in a whispery soft voice. “The outcome, solution, unraveling or clarification of a plot in a story.”

  “Is it a matter of fiction mirroring reality,” Glenn pressed, “or the other way around?”

  “Do you have any plans this weekend?” Helene ignored the question.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m not doing anyt
hing, and I thought we might spend some time together.”

  “Yes, I’d really like that.” Glenn’s heart was racing and his voice cracked when he spoke again. “But you didn’t answer my question.”

  She came out from behind the desk and placed a hand on his chest, a natural, unaffected gesture. Leaning forward she kissed him on the lips. “On the contrary, I just did.”

  back to Table of Contents

  Lyuba

  The maintenance worker was patiently waiting for the widow, Lyuba Russova, as she passed through the lobby of the Meadow Lanes housing complex. "The visiting nurse needs you in Mr. Grushko's apartment."

  Lyuba pulled up short. For the past five years, the stocky man with the watery blue eyes never once looked her full in the face. Even now he was fiddling with his calloused hands. "The blonde with the beaky nose?"

  Mitchell nodded. Of the forty-eight apartments at Meadow Lane, thirty-nine were occupied by Russian immigrants. Eight years earlier, Lyuba arrived in America from the Altai region close by the Mongolian border. She rode the elevator up to the fourth floor and knocked on a door at the end of the corridor. Mr. Grushko was sitting in a straight back chair. The emaciated six-footer wore a blank, impassive expression as the nurse bent over a blood pressure cuff. When she was finished, the woman turned to Lyuba. "Has Fyodor been taking his heart medication?"

  Lyuba turned to the old man and interpreted the nurse's question. "Da. Da."

  "Any bleeding from the rectum?"

  The man balked at the question. "Maybe just a little." Lyuba replied.

  The nurse scribbled furiously on a pad. "His stools... are they firm or loose?"

  Stools were three-legged chairs. Mr. Grushko had a cheap kitchen set that he picked up at the Salvation Army and a camel-colored Naugahyde recliner. "I don't understand the question."

  "Bodily wastes… feces. I'm trying to determine if the bleeding is from stomach ulcers or hemorrhoids."

  Lyuba told Mr. Grushko what the nurse needed to know. The man stiffly erect with his mottled hands resting in his lap. Like tenacious, late-summer weeds, several strands of white hair, curled from either nostril. "Last time she wanted to know about my testicles, now my anus. Why does the woman always ask embarrassing questions?"