On my hundredth birthday (I didn’t
think I would get this far until I reached the later half of ninety-nine), if I
had ever thought much about it, I would have expected to be in a forgotten
corner of some rest home with drool forming little rivulets in my sparse gray
chest hairs.
Instead I’m in my car waiting at the
main entrance of the EastGate Cemetery, for a much belated
date with Ethel.
Ethel and I had planned to marry when
we finished high school. I had been promised a job with Haney’s Bank if I
finished within the top two of my class of nine.
Life was looking promising, until Dad
was hurt at the mill and I had to go to work to help out with the household
expenses.
I took a job
at the mill and was unable to complete high school. I promised Ethel that I
would do my very best and go to night school if necessary, to get a good job at
the bank. Ethel didn’t want to marry a mill-worker.
It took a
couple of years but I managed to get my diploma and Mr. Haney hired me as a
teller. I was elated. We could now get married.
Ethel had gone
off to college in Arlington, but we managed to see each other once a month when
she came home on a weekend.
I wanted to
tell her the good news in person and couldn’t wait until she came home, so I
asked dad for the car to go see her.
He tossed me
the keys and off I went, so full of myself and our good fortune.
I reached the
dormitory where Ethel was supposed to live and was told she had moved out a few
months prior. That’s funny, I thought.
She had never mentioned moving, to me.
An
acquaintance of hers gave me a strange look and directions to Ethel’s new
house.
I rang the
doorbell of a small, neat, white house. Ethel answered the door and the look in
her eyes told me what I had begun to suspect.
We had a long
talk. It seems she had met a man, Walter, fell in love and now they were
married. He was an up and coming attorney and she seemed happy. I was angry
because she didn’t bother to tell me about her marriage; instead she left me to
believe she still loved me.
But such are
people and I moved on with my life. I
later heard from Ethel’s younger brother, Sam, she had caught Walter cheating
on her, but there was little she could do about it. In those days a woman couldn’t just get a
divorce. How could she raise her children? The courts wouldn’t even let a single
woman raise her own children because they weren’t allowed to work in any
capacity that could support a family. Instead,
the children would be put with their dad, or be placed in an orphanage if no
other family member could take them. But
never the divorced or widowed woman, unless the dead husband left her very well
off.
So Ethel
stayed with Walter, but she made him pay in ways he never thought imaginable;
which he truly deserved.
I ran into her
at the five and dime several years after our meeting in
“
I stumbled
over my words, but finally managed to tell her she looked good, too.
Deciding to
have a soda and talk over old times, we chatted about the people we had known,
what they were doing and what the latest gossip on them was.
Somehow we
ended up at EastGate Cemetery standing over my
parents’ headstones and I was telling her how hard it had been on my mom when
dad had died and how mom had passed on several months later.
My aunt Molly
and Uncle Fred had come to live in the old house, but they were infirm and I
had been taking care of them with little time to socialize. I was now assistant
manager at Haney’s Bank and that took much of my free time.
One thing led
to another and the next thing I knew I was lying on the grass at the edge of
the cemetery; naked as the day I was born, and happier than I had been in years.
Ethel was beside me, only sunshine covering her smooth, silky skin.
She was
giggling. “I never had sex with anyone in a cemetery before.”
I was
convinced she loved me and had come back just to see me. I wanted her to stay
forever. She told me the time wasn’t right for her to leave Walter and would I
please wait for her.
Over the next
few years I came to accept the fact that I was never going to have her with me
on a permanent basis. She wanted the city life and I would never leave
Pineville. I was only a small part of the revenge she carried out against her
husband.
I finally met
up with Jane Fitz and was happily married to her for
38 years. We had no children. Don’t know why we couldn’t, but it doesn’t matter
now. Jane’s been gone these last twelve, lonely years.
I made
arrangements to meet Ethel one more time before marrying Jane. I wanted to tell
her before she heard it from someone else.
I was to meet
her at the cemetery but she never showed. I finally came to the full
realization that I mattered very little in her life.
The doctor has
informed me that my heart is finally giving out. That is why I am having these
pains in my chest and have such hard time breathing.
I found out three
months ago she was still alive, which surprised me. I got in touch with her and
asked her to meet me at the cemetery. I wanted to see her one more time before
I left this old body.
She agreed,
but didn’t sound too enthusiastic.
An old black
Beamer pulled up behind me. Ethel struggled to get out of the passenger side
door. She looked feeble, old and bitter.
A young woman,
looking much like Ethel had in her younger days, opened the driver’s side door.
“Here,
Grandma, let me help you.”
“I can do this
myself.” She snarled, and jerked her arm away.
The young
woman shrugged, lit a cigarette and leaned against the back of the car.
Ethel’s
creaky, old voice reminded me of the shed door hinges which needed oil. “What
do want
“Well, sort of
I guess. My heart is failing but I wanted to see you one more time before I
check out of this life. You look good, Ethel,” I lied.
“Well, you
look old, Stanley, old and stupid. I’ll never understand what I saw in you
those many years ago. You were cheap entertainment, I guess. You were a country
hick then and you’re a country hick now. I just had to look at you once more to
assure myself I never missed out on anything.
I’m satisfied I didn’t.”
She turned
away and tottered back towards the car.
“Ethel?” I
asked. “You’re not even going to say goodbye?”
She turned to
face me. “What for? You’re not worth the
trouble.”
That’s when I
shot her. The 38 slug hit her right between the eyes, leaving a small bullet
hole, folded among the wrinkles on her forehead.