Novels That May Never Be Completed: Series 1

“You killed your husband?”  Merl was hardly awake when her sister called and blurted out the news.  She never particularly liked Bob, always so bossy and condescending, but she thought her sister Elsa would wait it out until he died of diabetes or something.  After all, there was a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow of dull grays.  “Do you need help getting rid of the evidence?”

Merl and her sister hadn’t always gotten along.  Merl supposed it was because there were two years separating them and they had always been too competitive.  Merl, being older and wiser, thought she had the advantage, but Elsa was prettier, more popular, and everything Merl knew she would never be, like a size 2 in her youth.  Still blood and water and all that.

“I’ve called an ambulance,” Elsa told her over the phone.

“Better than the police,” Merl agreed.  “But I assume he’ll be DOA.”

“What?”

“Dead on arrival,” Merl clarified.

“God I hope so.  Can you meet me at the hospital?”

“Which one?”

“County General.”

“Oh, that’s a good choice.  I’ve heard their doctors are incompetent.”

After putting down the phone, Merl had to decide quickly what to wear.  She chose her gray slacks and her pink cashmere twin set because dressing in black too soon might look suspicious, like she knew something and she really didn’t—yet.

The drive to County General this early in the morning was easy.  She didn’t even know why it was called County General.  That made it sound like a big city hospital, when really they were in total suburbia. But it was a teaching hospital for the city, so maybe that explained the nomenclature.  Parking in the emergency lot, Merl made her way through the self-propelled doors to find her sister sitting in the waiting area, all hunched over.  This called for a little bit of drama.  “I came as fast as I could!” Merl exclaimed for the benefit of a receptionist who really couldn’t have cared less.  The receptionist was waiting for seven o’clock in the morning, when she could leave.

Taking the plastic chair next to Elsa, Merl placed her arm around her sister’s shoulder and said, “My darling, my darling, what has befallen you?”

Elsa gave her a murderous look under her lashes.  “Weep or something,” Merl urged.

“He hasn’t been pronounced yet.  There’s still hope.”  And at that, Elsa gave this very wicked little grin.  Fortunately, she covered her mouth to do so.

“You’re sure he’s dead?” Merl asked in a whisper.

“I waited forty-five minutes,” Elsa returned the whisper.

“What happened?”

“Later.  I’m preparing myself.”

As if on cue, this young doctor with her hair pulled into a ponytail came through the sacred doors, through which only the anointed could pass, and saw the two of them, the only people in the waiting area at this hour.  She came up to them.  “Mrs. Brownstein?”

Elsa looked up hopefully.  What an actor, Merl thought.

“We did all we could.’

Hand went quickly to mouth, as Elsa asked, “Does—is he—“

“I’m afraid we couldn’t save him.  I’m so very sorry.”

Oh, the tears!  Good god, Merl thought.  Elsa had missed her calling.  And yet, the Hillside players were always looking for performers.

Elsa was saying nothing, so Merl thought she should ask something that she thought sounded appropriate.  “May we see him?”

Nodding, the doctor said, “Certainly.”  She led them through the sacred doors and there was Bob Brownstein, covered with a sheet, never having lost the weight that he should have around that big gut of his.  While Elsa cried her eyes out, Merl asked, “Does anyone know what we’re supposed to do now?”

At that Elsa said, “We’ll use Heaven’s Haven.  They always do a good job, and they’re connected to a very nice catering service.”

Too quick a recovery, Merl thought.  But the doctor had other things on her mind and wandered away, leaving them in “peace.”

It took a while for Merl to get the story of Bob’s death out of her sister.  Not that she pressed.  There was just too much to do with the funeral, the relatives, and Bob’s sister going through Elsa’s house looking for keepsakes Bob’s mother allegedly gave to Bob that should have gone to the sister.  “My mother-in-law had the worst taste.  I gave Karen what she wanted, after I took said crap to an antique dealer to make sure it was worthless.  Garage sale crapola,” Elsa assessed.

But there was finally a day when they were completely alone, so Merl asked, “Nu?”

Elsa took a deep sigh.  “You know what a slob Bob was, wet towels on the bathroom floor.  Never learned to hang up anything.  His underpants—don’t get me started.  So Karen’s grandson is having a bar mitzvah, and Bob says to me, ‘You should really lose ten pounds because you’re beginning to look like a chunk.’  I wear a size six.  I have cottage cheese for lunch every single day.  Meanwhile, do they even make pants that fit around that waist of his?  After he said that so casually, I stayed up that night thinking and thinking and thinking about all the slights I had endured from that man and all the socializing I had to do for his business, the people coming in and out of my house and me having to be gracious when I didn’t even like most of them.  And then he insults me when he’s made no effort to look like anything but a giant tub of butter pecan, his favorite.

“It just got to me, you know.  So I took the bread knife from the kitchen and went into the bedroom, grabbed hold of his pajamas tops, twisted them to wake him up; and when he did I held the knife as if I were going to stab him through the heart.  The aim was to threaten him that if he ever said anything like that to me again, I’d—

“But I didn’t really get to say anything because he saw the knife and he saw me and, well, he shat his pants and peed all over and had a heart attack.  I could have done something but I thought, when God hands you lemons—  So I waited.” 

“No jury in the world would convict you.  Especially if it was packed with women of a certain age.”

“Sometimes I feel I should confess to the children.
“Are you out of your fucking mind!” Merl shouted.  “This isn’t ‘Crime and Punishment,’ that you never read, by the way, despite your A paper on it.  Don’t know who wrote that for you.”

“Alex Rosen, when he had a crush on me, before he transitioned to monogamy; and I think he only did that because of his podcast and the need to be au currant.  I mean, he’s had three marriages.  That should have been enough to discover where his penis fit best.”