Blood Red (2 page)

 

From the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
Archives

Opinion

September 10, 2015

Protect Our Precious Children

To the Editor:

When my husband and I relocated to the Hudson Valley after having been born and raised in Manhattan, we were looking for a safe, old-­fashioned small town where we could provide our treasured daughter with the wonderful childhood she deserves. We thought we had found it in Mundy's Landing.

Imagine our dismay when our Amanda came home from her first day of school yesterday and informed us that her fourth-­grade class would be making an “educational” field trip in December to the historical society. Aware that the society houses macabre relics connected to the infamous murders of 1916, I was outraged and immediately called her teacher to protest. Ms. Mundy seemed unperturbed and informed me that this year's social studies curriculum encompasses New York State history, which to her way of thinking entails taking advantage of the fact that some of the most colorful chapters unfolded here in the Hudson Valley. She added that the trip is a long-­standing tradition.

Just because something has always been done doesn't make it right! I invite fellow parents of our village to join me in taking a stand to protest this inappropriate local rite of passage. Aren't our children entitled to an anxiety-­free school experience without exposure to a disturbing tragedy under the guise of education?

Bari Hicks

Mundy Estates

 

Chapter 1

November 30, 2015

Mundy's Landing, New York

S
ix minutes.

That's exactly how long it takes to drive between the elementary school where Rowan Mundy teaches and the riverside home where she lives with her family.

The route meanders along the brick-­paved streets of The Heights, a sloping residential neighborhood. Its landmarks include her childhood home, the little white clapboard church where she was baptized and married, and Holy Angels Cemetery where her parents and father-­in-­law are buried alongside generations of local citizens. Among them: the trio of unidentified young girls whose murders during the village's sestercentennial celebration a century ago sealed Mundy's Landing's notoriety.

Most days, she drives on past all of those sites without taking note, her mind on whatever happened during the past few hours or on whatever needs to get done in the next few.

Once in a while, though, she allows herself to get caught up in nostalgia for long-­gone loved ones and places that will never be the same.

Today is one of those days. Christmas music plays on the car stereo, and the business district is decked out in wreaths and garlands that seem to have materialized overnight. She wistfully remembers cozy holidays when her parents were alive and her brothers and sister weren't scattered from East Coast to West.

Now her two oldest children are gone as well. Braden is a junior at Dartmouth; Katie a freshman at Cornell. Both were here for the long Thanksgiving weekend that just passed, but it was all too fleeting. They headed back yesterday in opposite directions.

“I hate this letting go thing,” she told Jake, wiping tears as they stood on the front porch watching taillights disappear.

“They'll be home on break for a whole month before you know it, and you'll be counting down the days until they go back to school in January.”

“No I won't.”

“Oh, right. I'm the one who does that.” Jake flashed his good-­natured grin and went back to eating a leftover turkey drumstick and watching the Giants win in overtime.

Passing the Mundy's Landing Historical Society, which occupies a grand turreted mansion facing the Village Common, Rowan is reminded of an unpleasant phone call she received this morning from the mother of one of her fourth-­grade students.

Bari Hicks moved to town from New York City over the summer, and has proven to be one of those ­people who always manages to find something to complain about. This week, she was calling to once again express her displeasure with the upcoming class field trip to see the Colonial Christmas exhibit.

The annual excursion has been a well-­loved school tradition since Rowan herself was in fourth grade. Back then, this turreted mansion was still a private residence and the historical society was housed in the basement of the local library.

“I just don't think a trip like this sounds appropriate for children this age,” Bari insisted back on curriculum night in September.
Appropriate
seems to be her favorite word. Rather,
inappropriate
. “My Amanda still isn't used to her new bedroom and she has enough problems falling asleep at night without being dragged through a gory chamber of horrors that's going to give her nightmares for years.”

Although Rowan immediately grasped what she was referring to, she couldn't resist feigning ignorance.

“Oh, you must have this mixed up with the high school's haunted hallway fund-­raiser, Mrs. Hicks. That's on Halloween, and I wouldn't dream of exposing my class to—­”

“No, I'm talking about the historical society. The
murders
.”

“Which murders?” That time, Rowan wasn't playing dumb. Mundy's Landing is famous for not one, but two notorious murder cases.

The first unfolded in the mid-­seventeenth century, when Jake's ancestors James and Elizabeth Mundy were executed on the gallows for butchering and cannibalizing their fellow colonists. Their only son, Jeremiah Mundy, and his offspring lived such exemplary lives that the town was later named in their honor.

Mundy's Landing itself wasn't quite so fortunate in terms of redemption and reputation. Precisely two and a half centuries after the hangings, the so-­called Sleeping Beauty murders marked one of the eeriest unsolved crime sprees in American history. The young female victims, whose identities were never known, were lain to rest beneath white granite markers simply etched with the year 1916 and the word
Angel
.

Those are the murders to which Bari Hicks was referring. “I heard the museum has bloody clothing on display, and the murder weapon, and a disembodied skull. Do you really think it's necessary to—­?”

“There's no skull,” Rowan quickly assured her, though she'd heard that rumor all her life, “and it isn't the actual murder weapon, it's just an antique razor blade someone's grandfather donated as an example, and the bloody clothing is only exhibited in the summer during . . .”

She couldn't quite bring herself to call the event Mundypalooza, the flippant popular term for the annual historical society–sponsored fund-­raiser that draws crime buffs, reporters, tourists, and plain old fruitcakes from all over the globe.

“. . . the convention,” she chose to say instead, and hastily added, “We're only visiting the Colonial Christmas exhibit on our field trip. I promise Amanda will love it. All the kids do.”

Bari aired her frustrations in a public letter to the
Mundy's Landing Tribune
, expecting to rally the villagers in protest. Today, Rowan convinced her to come along as a chaperone so that she can experience the long-­standing tradition firsthand—­and, ostensibly, protect her daughter from the evils of Mundy's Landing. It seemed like the easiest way to avoid additional Monday morning stress, but she regrets it already.

Now, winding toward home, she blinks against the glare of sinking autumn sun at every westbound curve. Lowering the visor doesn't help at all.

She worries about Mick.

In about ten minutes, her youngest son will be getting off the late bus after varsity basketball practice. Even if he's not plugged into his iPod—­despite her warnings about the dangers of walking or jogging along the road wearing headphones—­he'll have his head in the clouds as usual.

At this time of year, the angle of the late day sun is blinding. What if a car comes careening up the hill and doesn't see him until it's too late?

Long gone are Rowan's days of waiting in the minivan at the bus stop on Highland Road, a busy north-­south thoroughfare. Even on stormy afternoons—­there are plenty of those in Mundy's Landing—­Mick insists on walking home up Riverview Road, just as his older siblings did when they were in high school.

I'll walk Doofus
, she decides as she brakes at the curbside mailbox in front of their gabled Queen Anne Victorian perched on the bluff above the Hudson.

Doofus the aging basset hound was originally Rufus, but earned his current name when it became evident that he wasn't exactly the smartest canine in the world.

Rowan ordinarily lets him out into the yard when she gets home after a long day, but Doofus—­although increasingly lazy—­might welcome some exercise, and she can use it herself.

She bought a tasteless but slimming couscous salad for lunch today, courtesy of Wholesome & Hearty, the school district's new lunch program. But then someone left a plate of cookies in the teachers' break room after lunch and one of her students brought in birthday cupcakes. Plus there's still half an apple pie in the fridge at home, leftover from Thanksgiving dinner.

There was a time when Rowan could gobble anything she felt like eating and never gain an ounce. Those days, too, are long gone. According to her doctor, she needs to exercise nearly an hour a day at her age just to keep her weight the same. And the hair colorist who's been hiding her gray for a few years now recently told her that her natural red shade was making her “mature” skin look sallow, and that the long hair she'd had all her life was too “weighty.”

“I think you should try a short, youthful cut and go a few shades lighter, maybe a biscuit blond with honey highlights and caramel lowlights. What do you think?”

“I think biscuits and honey and caramel sound like something I'd want to eat right now if I didn't have to run ten miles to work off the extra calories,” Rowan said with a sigh of resignation.

She finally agreed to the new hairstyle right before Thanksgiving. It got mixed reviews at home. Jake and Katie liked it; Braden, who resents change of any sort, did not; Mick informed her that now her hair wouldn't clash with the bright orange hoodie—­emblazoned with a black tiger, Mundy's Landing High School mascot—­that she wore to all his home basketball games.

“I never minded clashing,” she said.

“I do. Can I dye my hair, too?”

“Nope. It's what makes you
you
.”

“Isn't it what made you
you
, too?”

Yes, and whenever she catches sight of her reflection, she feels as though she's dwelling in a stranger's body.

Back at work today, her colleagues complimented her, her students questioned her, and the janitor told her she looks hot—­which might be inappropriate, but as the forty-­seven-­year-­old mother of three nearly grown kids, she'll take it.

She gets out of the car, goes around to grab the mail out of the box, and finds that it's full of catalogs. No surprise on this first Monday of the official holiday shopping season. Given the stack of bills that are also in the box, plus the two college tuition payments coming due for next semester, the catalogs will go straight into the recycling bin.

Money has been tight lately, and Jake is worried about his job as a regional sales manager amid rumors that his company might be bought out.

Lead us not into temptation
, she thinks, tossing the heap of mail—­which also includes a red envelope addressed to the family in her older sister Noreen's perfect handwriting, and a small package addressed to her—­onto the passenger's seat.

As she pulls into the driveway and around back, she sees that there's garbage strewn by the back steps. The latch on top of the can snapped off when they overfilled it on Thanksgiving. Jake tried to pick up a new one the next day, but the strip malls on Colonial Highway were so jammed with Black Friday shoppers that he couldn't get near any of them.

As Rowan stoops to pick up a gnawed turkey carcass and wads of soggy paper towels discarded by woodland creatures, she tries to imagine Noreen doing the same.

Nope. It would never happen. Noreen, a busy Long Island attorney, runs her household—­her life—­without glitches.

As Rowan lets herself into the house and tosses the mail onto the cluttered counter in the butler's pantry, she marvels that her sister manages to send Christmas cards at all, let alone ahead of the masses. Yet somehow, she even hand-­addresses the envelopes, rather than use those typed labels you can so easily print out year after year.

Rowan knows without opening this year's card that it'll have a photo of the svelte and lovely Noreen, her handsome trauma surgeon husband, and their four gorgeous kids, all color-­coordinated in khaki and red or navy and white. Inside, there will be a handwritten note and the signature of each family member scrawled in red or green Sharpie.

Noreen has always managed to do so much and make it look so easy . . .

Which drives someone like me absolutely crazy. Which is why, when I was a kid, I didn't even bother to try to follow in her footsteps.

She's so caught up in the familiar combination of envy and longing for her sister that she doesn't think twice about the package that came for her. She tosses it aside with the rest of the mail and takes her medication—­the first thing she does every morning, and again every afternoon when she walks in the door.

It wasn't until Mick was diagnosed with ADHD back in elementary school that Rowan learned that it was hereditary.

With this disability, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree
, the doctor told her, leading her to recognize similar symptoms in herself.

It was as if a puzzle piece she hadn't even realized was missing had suddenly dropped into place to complete a long-­frustrating jigsaw.

If only someone—­her parents, her teachers, her doctors—­had figured it out when she was Mick's age. Now she understands why she spent so much of her childhood in trouble—­academically, behaviorally—­and why she so often felt restlessly uncomfortable in her own skin, even as an adult.

Things aren't perfect now—­far from it—­but at least she's more in control of her life, with better focus and the ability to quell her impulsive tendencies. Most of the time, anyway.

After swallowing the pill, she walks the dog down to the bus stop and returns with a grumbling Mick.

“Where's all the turkey?” he asks, poking his stubbly auburn head—­exactly the same shade as her own—­into the fridge.

“I tossed it last night.”

“What? Why?”

“Because it was old, Mick. You can't eat leftovers after a few days.”

“You didn't toss the pie.” He pulls out the dish.

“Pie isn't poultry. That's still good.”

She watches her son put the whole thing into the microwave and punch the quick start button, then open the freezer.

So much for Rowan's dessert plans. Oh well. She can't afford to indulge, and Mick can. Half a pie smothered in Vanilla Bean Häagen-­Dazs is nothing more than a light afternoon snack for a famished, lanky sixteen-­year-­old athlete who begins every morning with a three-­mile run.

The stack of mail still sits on the granite counter in the butler's pantry by the back door, along with her tote bag and the usual household clutter plus additional clutter accumulated over Thanksgiving: clean platters that need to go back to the dining room, a bread basket filled with cloth napkins that have to be washed, bottles of open and unopened Beaujolais . . .