Another Dead Republican (2 page)

Edgar prattled and fumed about baseball then moved on to an idiot rant and tirade. It started with Edgar’s view on how to throw curveballs to .250 hitters.

Even more odd, Edgar wasn’t a particular fan of Scott’s team, but that didn’t matter to Edgar, and I learned from Veronica that he’d been a portly child, and except for one stint on the freshman football team in high school, had never even tried out for a sport.

Doesn’t mean you have to play a game to be an expert, but to elevate an opinion to expertise, just because the opinion is uttered, is best left to the talk show morons on Fox.

At the dinner in question, Edgar waved his arms spasmodically in the air bringing himself to a dramatic finish and asked, “Do you realize what you did wrong?”

Scott is incredibly patient with fans, and he has a low boiling point. I’ve rarely seen him angry or lose control. I wanted to leap up and throttle Edgar.

Veronica’s face had gone white. She looked as wives have looked for millennia who are powerless to stop their husbands who don’t know when to shut up. My mom tried to change the subject. Edgar’s voice overrode her, demanding, “Don’t you agree with me?”

Look up calm in the dictionary, they have a picture of Scott, intense but calm.

Scott caught Edgar’s eyes and held them.

“Well,” Edgar demanded. “Why aren’t you saying something? Why aren’t you reacting?”

Everyone seemed to have stopped eating. Even my mother with her usual quick diversions sat with mouth agape.

Into this abyss of silence, Scott’s deep voice rumbled. “I am.” And the silence resumed, and he held Edgar’s glare, and my husband’s eyes didn’t waver.

Edgar broke first. To be fair, many a fearsome batter in the Majors had broken long before he did. Edgar looked down and said, “I was just sayin’.” He looked up for an instant into Scott’s eyes, immediately looked away. “It’s just my opinion.”

I said, “Precisely.”

Scott smiled at me. We gave each other a quick kiss.

Edgar did not puke at this, worse luck.

Recovered, Mom rushed in to talk about window treatments, blinds, and drapes in my younger brother, Darryl’s, new home. Kind of a motif in our family. We can count on mom to try and switch topics if things get heated.

THREE

Wednesday 2:41 A.M.

Veronica was pretty out of control. Who could blame her? When she had calmed her tears, I asked, “Where are the kids?”

“Still asleep.”

Good as far as it went.

I asked, “What happened to Edgar?”

“He was shot.” Her voice reached an even higher ear-shattering decibel level. Again, I moved the phone away from my ear. “The police were just here. A couple of them are still sitting in a car outside the house. You were the first person I could think of to call. You must come. You must get here as quick as you can.”

“Of course,” I said. It happened to be the Tuesday, now, Wednesday morning, before spring break. I would have taken the day anyway. Family tragedy trumps everything.

She said, “I have to go with the police. To identify…” She gasped, finally resumed, “Azure Grum is here. You remember her from the wedding?” Azure had been Veronica’s ally all these years. “She’ll stay with the kids until I get back.”

I agreed to rush to Wisconsin to do what I could to help. I asked if she wanted me to call our parents. She begged me to. She had to handle the kids. She didn’t know what to tell them or what to do. I had no advice for times like this although I did suggest she at least wait until they awakened in the morning to break the news. Let them finish this night’s sleep in peace.

She gulped agreement.

Plus she had the police and the in-laws to deal with. Handling Edgar’s family was like inviting the tornado into the storm cellar with you.

I gave her the best reassurances I could then hung up, called and woke up mom and dad, and told them the news. They said they’d start out first thing in the morning.

I’d do anything to help my sister. Unexpected death at any age can be tough, at an early age, a horror.

“Do you want me to come with?” Scott asked.

“Yes, thanks.”

It was early April. He’d injured himself the first day of spring training. He’d had an operation on his shoulder the next week. Time would tell if he would ever pitch baseball in the Major Leagues again. He was into a six month rehabilitation stint.

We packed toothbrushes and clothes, grabbed my laptop, and were on the road in half an hour. I left a message on the school’s absentee-call-in machine saying I wouldn’t be in this Wednesday or Thursday. I had this Friday and all the next week off from school for spring break. You could use your sick days for funeral leave if the deceased was in the immediate family. Even if I’d had to take the days off without pay, I’d have done so without a moment’s hesitation.

FOUR

Wednesday 6:07 A.M.

My sister lived in the Pleasant Valley subdivision of Harrison County. We arrived at the gates of the subdivision while the last shreds of night held on. I held up my identification to the camera so the guard could examine it and waited out the ritual: the house called, entry approved. In a few moments the gates rolled open.

Each lot was at least three wooded acres. High hedges and security fences kept neighbors at a distance. They lived in a semi-Tudor style near-mansion, all beams and stucco outside, six bedrooms and eight baths inside.

In front of their house, Porsches, Cadillacs, Mercedes, and a few cop cars nestled on both sides of the street and up their driveway.

The cop outside the front door demanded Scott and I show identification.

From the foyer, we entered the living room. The house felt to me as if there were two distinct atmospheres.

In the living room the décor was all my sister; warm, homey. Dominating the room were two nine-foot sofas with chairs perpendicular to them, both upholstered in some trendy, chunky fabric, sort of like burlap that looked as if it had begun to mutate and self-propagate. Equally trendy textiles in shades of brown, orange, red, and yellow were draped on nearly every surface. Genuine Navaho blankets purchased in Rough Rock, Arizona, hung on the walls. Large pillows in autumnal shades that matched the couches were scattered about in tasteful arrays. A deep gold carpet had light brown flecks mixed in. I knew the warmth came from my sister’s sense of decoration.

Mordantly milling about amid this warmth were Edgar’s relatives, my sister’s in-laws. These people made the troll in the first Harry Potter movie look like a fashion model, making gray and doltish into a fashion statement, only bigger and uglier. Picture those creatures representing mucus in TV ads only bigger and you get the idea.

Although ugly might be too kind and too simple a word to use for their looks and demeanor. More cold emanated from them than from this past winter’s worst blizzard. The government could solve the climate change problem by placing Edgar’s relatives at strategic locations around the planet. Whatever other expression they might have, the cold that encased their personalities froze any ray of human kindness.

Their heft added dimension to their ogrish impression. They weren’t bad because they were fat, and the fat didn’t make them bad. They were evil and awful people who happened to all be overweight.

One odd, I hesitate to add, almost redeeming thing was Mrs. Grum most always appeared with a tiny lap dog clutched in her left arm. I never got that close, but at Edgar and Veronica’s wedding I’d seen an obsequious toady of theirs accidentally get too close to the creature-- the dog, not Mrs. Grum. The tiny little thing had yapped and snarled at the interloper. Mrs. Grum hadn’t taken the dog with her to the church that day. The dog was here now.

I thought her clutching on to the poor creature was kind of sad. What inadequacies or insecurities caused her to cling to the poor dog? Or was she just a neurotic twit? If clutching on to the dog gave her comfort and helped her with her grief over the death of her son, who was I to judge?

Each of the Grums was clad as if for an evening out at a posh country club. Then I remembered, they all must have been at the campaign headquarters, ready to be photographed in front of cameras. The Grums were a political power in Harrison County, which was at the epicenter of the current recall election, which I knew had taken place just that day. I hadn’t heard the results, but it was clear from the way the Grums were dressed that they had all come directly from election headquarters

One of their great-great grandparents had been at the formation of the Republican Party in Ripon, Wisconsin. The Grums had been up to their nipples in Harrison County politics for decades.

Edgar’s mother roosted in the center of the sofa that sat against the north wall. Veronica referred to her mother-in-law as the dragon lady. The morbidly obese woman ruled her family. She was the County Clerk of Harrison County and had been for years. She was also the social arbiter of the Women’s Leisure Club which she ran with an iron fist. It was founded during the American Civil War by women whose men had gone off to fight in the Wisconsin 4th Regiment Infantry.

The women had met continuously since then, sometimes doing good, and sometimes being the backwoods equivalent of Peyton Place. In more modern times, their definition of modern being that which began before or during the Hoover administration, they’d become the stratified social hierarchy of the county.

My sister described them as, “The Harridans of Harrison County.” Veronica avoided all contact with the women of the club.

The dragon lady’s husband, Charles Dudley Grum, was a combination of bombast and bully, Harold Hill and Lord Voldemort, a Yankee peddler mixed with evil incarnate. He sat on the sofa next to his wife. His girth matched hers inch for inch. At the moment, he wore black, horn-rimmed glasses over dark soulless eyes, a vile colored suit on his immense bulk, and garish maroon shoes on gargantuan feet.

Both radiated hatred, disapproval, and disgust. To be fair, I don’t think this was because Scott and I walked in. I’d rarely seen them have any other look on their faces.

The children matched the parental tonnage, their other two sons and their wives, plus various cousins, aunts, and uncles. Edgar being dead wouldn’t really have fit in. I’d met many of them at least once, that occasion being Edgar and Veronica’s wedding. I couldn’t remember all their names. Edgar was the youngest.

In the living room some stood or leaned against the walls. A few sat on the edge of chairs. For one of the rare times when I’d been in the Grum family’s presence, the younger son, Dewey, was not obnoxiously falling over everyone taking pictures.

I looked at them curiously. Not one of them touched another. Nobody reached out to comfort, hold hands. Maybe they didn’t do that kind of thing with strangers around. Maybe they weren’t a warm, huggy family. Nonetheless a son/brother had just died. I’d expect some kind of desire for human connection.

Mostly they looked sort of constipated.

You know the scene in westerns where a character walks into a bar and the piano music abruptly ceases and all conversation stops? That was what entering that room felt like.

At least they’d all assembled and rallied around at a moment of crisis.

Scott and I got cold stares.

No matter, I walked straight up to Edgar’s mother and father, held out my hand, and said, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

I more than disliked them, but I knew basic common courtesy.

The old woman touched my hand for a millionth of a second, the husband for less than that. Scott’s outstretched hand and murmured sympathy were met with stony silence. Perhaps they thought the mumbled thank you to me covered the both of us.

Much as I disliked them, they’d just lost their son. They were in the middle of a horror, and I needed to cut them a lot of slack. Was there a manual for proper grief behavior? No.

I needed to be less judgmental.

FIVE

Wednesday 6:12 A.M.

My sister entered the room. She wore an old sweatshirt over blue jeans. I remembered the shirt as one that her first boyfriend gave her in high school. It was too big for her then, was still too big.