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Authors: Marlys Millhiser

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SHOWER AND a shampoo, clean clothes to put on afterward. Kenny Cowper-Cooper even had a hair dryer and presented Charlie with a latté adorned with nutmeg sprinkles when she came out of the bathroom. Thank God he had his shirt on. Good thing her mother and Uncle Elmo were here, too. Charlie's main weakness with guy anatomy was the well-formed male back. Forget the buns. Just the back of the back.
“And I have for you,” the barkeep announced, “an egg-delight hot dish that will warm your innards.” His face was half-shadowed by beard because Charlie's shower had used up the rest of the hot water before the power lines failed and the water he was heating had to make coffee. “And hot rolls from the freezer and, Elmo, real live bacon.”
The hot dish was one of those baked scrambled-egg-potato concoctions, with onions and garlic and cheese and more little veggie bits, that you cut in squares. Kenny had a gas stove to cook on and a wood stove to heat with, and even an old hand-crank coffee grinder from the museum.
The snow had stopped coming down and now blew into drifts instead to further entrap Charlie with the curse of Myrtle and maybe her own. She sure hoped the Sinclair carried feminine supplies as well as videos.
Kenny's nest reminded Charlie of several lofts she'd visited in the Village when she lived in Manhattan. The walls were exposed brick with old-fashioned radiators under the windows and metal pole supports where once there had been a
load-bearing wall dividing rooms. All it lacked was the noise of a busy street outside, the elevator, the buzzer, and the security cameras.
Uncle Elmo went downstairs to smoke. Edwina insisted on cleaning up the kitchen. Kenny brought out the photo album they'd begun to look through at the museum before Charlie's nonexistent skills as a crime-scene investigator had been called up to the Oaks.
“You never did tell us what your dream was about except for the dead baby with blood on it,” Kenny said as he opened the album on the coffee table.
“I was in the fruit cellar with a candle like poor Myrtle. Great-aunt Abigail opened the door and threw the bloody thing down on me.” And, like a typical male, you disappeared. Every time she shows up, you're outta there.
Edwina came over from her side of the kitchen bookcases. “That woman used to give me nightmares, too. And my mother. And now my daughter. Tell you one thing, we'll never bring Libby here unless that old witch is dead. Maybe not even then.”
“Libby's your granddaughter, I assume.”
And of course Edwina had to show him a picture or two from her billfold.
Kenny's whistle went dry.
“Stay away from my daughter, Squirt,” Charlie told him.
“Yes, ma'am. You got any pictures of Charlie when she was a baby?”
“Why would she have a picture of me as a baby when she's got a gorgeous babe for a granddaughter?”
“That's all you know about me, smartass.” And Edwina pulled a small black-and-white photo in a protective plastic casing from somewhere deep in her wallet.
Kenny studied the photo and then turned a batch of thick pages in the album, turned them forward and back a few times. Finally he laid the coated photo down on a page. In Edwina's photo, a totally bald baby with enormous dark eyes
appeared to float in the folded arms resting on a lap of someone mostly out of the frame.
But on the page, the identical baby—in an identical one-piece terrycloth version of a jumpsuit, with feet and snaps up the front—stared at Charlie from Marlys Dittberner's lap. Marlys wore a tight, sleeveless top, her pale hair disappearing down her back, straight-cut bangs covering her forehead—reminding Charlie of old pictures of the young Mary of Peter, Paul, and Mary fame. Even by this time, Marlys was too old to be showing upper arms gone loose-fleshed and wrinkly.
“I'm beginning to think there's more to the curse of Myrtle than living too long.” The barkeep author turned back some pages to a baby looking much like the one that was supposed to be Charlie, but wearing a white dress with eyelets and booties on her feet, fat little legs showing beneath her skirt, the same big eyes staring up at Charlie—Libby's eyes. Marlys carried more weight here and wore her hair in a bun. She had thick shoulder pads and dark lipstick.
“You believe in curses?”
“I believe in people believing in curses. I believe in frantic mothers trying to keep their daughters straight in a world that approves of boys being boys so they can learn to be men. Frantic mothers pointing out what happened to the legendary Myrtle down through the generations. Because the tiny town of Myrtle had some large and unique problems, or at least thought it did, and had to lay the blame somewhere. If you consider yourself moral and upright but shit keeps happening—you have to find the devil causing it. Without alluding to it, of course.”
“So what was Marlys Dittberner's role in all this?” Charlie asked.
“I don't think I know,” Edwina said. She was sitting on the back of a couch, dishtowel still in hand. “But my mother sent me that picture of a baby available for adoption. Your father already had two nearly grown children by his first marriage
and wasn't anxious for another. But he finally agreed to adoption.”
Kenny had once overheard someone down in the bar pointing out to his elders the color of his eyes as part of the curse, obliquely of course, and he remembered it but hadn't understood it until years later in Florida. He'd confronted his mother and she'd slapped his face and then fallen into his arms crying instead of answering his question. “Seems my little sister was pregnant—she was fifteen. My mother thought by getting us out of Myrtle, she'd escaped the curse. I think the book I'm researching now and intend to write next began that day. That's while I was still at Florida State and had never published a thing. This is the sucker I was born to write.”
“So dark-eyed folks are cursed to live too long or get pregnant as teens. Great Witch Abigail said those with black eyes should not spawn, and I'm a perfect example of why. But you will not get pregnant, Kenny.”
“I didn't understand it until I came back here—what? nine, ten months ago—and filtered through some of the innuendo and the unspoken. We, Charlie, are cursed with being oversexed.”
Tell me about it, Charlie thought.
“Tell me about it,” Edwina said aloud.
 “Mom—”
“Charlie, the entire community, tiny though it is, follows your career avidly. Because you have our eyes and you had a child out of wedlock. I didn't know about you, or don't remember if I did, until I moved back here to take over the family pool hall and found out they even knew about my sister's abortion. There are grandparents here who will not let their granddaughters visit them in Myrtle. Helen and Buz have two dark-eyed beauties in Lincoln, Nebraska, that they go visit but never invite. The whole thing is the power of myth, of legend, of things like curses, even in down-to-earth places like Myrtle, or maybe especially in places like this because of the guilt brought on by unrealistic expectations of what morality
can accomplish. Farming communities know a lot about animal and plant nature, too. Sometimes it's hard to sync with God's plan according to the Puritans.”
“You still haven't told me about Marlys.”
He turned back some of the album's pages and there was “the house.” It had been ornate and grand—obvious even in sepia—and nearly as big as Harvey Rochester's house, but older. The porch had curlicues everywhere. And the front lawn then had a semicircular drive where a little girl with what appeared to be white hair posed in a pony cart and held the pony's reins and looked directly at the camera. The caption read MARLYS STAUDT AT THE HOUSE.
“That's Marlys Dittberner? She was a Staudt before she was married? How old is she? I thought the home place was where the Staudts started.”
“Wealthy farming families often had a house in town for the older generations to retire to so the next could do the farming. It's hard to find dates for things—her generation was born at home and women who didn't work weren't kept track of except in family bibles.”
“She worked,” Edwina pointed out. “She was running Dittberner's when I was a girl, and she was an old lady then, I swear.”
“I haven't been able to find any records on her or bibles either,” Kenny said, “but by what I have tracked down going on around her, she's got to be something over a hundred and five or six anyway.”
“But she's still up and walking.” Charlie leaned over the album.
“And the smartest person with no brain I've met this side of Capitol Hill,” Kenny said.
“Del thinks she's my great-grandmother.”
The unmistakable growls of Mr. Rochester registered below and ascended the stairs to Kenny's loft. He appeared without coat or hat but from mid-thigh down, he was coated with snow. He stood surveying them all, a grinning Uncle
Elmo behind him, and emoted, “Barkeep, sir. I am in need. Desperate need.”
Charlie had the fleeting thought that if she tried to tell anyone at Congdon and Morse, Inc., on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, about Harvey Rochester—or anybody in this room, or in this tiny town, or in Gentle Oaks, or the Myrtle Cemetery even—she'd be laughed right out of the office.
“Tell me, Kenneth, that you can brew some of your demon coffee, with perhaps a dollop of brandy in it and spare a dry piece of toast for a poor and weary pilgrim in this infested place.”
While the teakettle heated over the gas flame and more of the casserole and rolls were rewarmed and after the noise of the hand-crank coffee grinder, Harvey Rochester explained that dear Elsina Miller, beloved administrator of Gentle Oaks, had, against all odds, walked through the storm to Harvey's house and demanded shelter and food last night.
“I left her with cornflakes, preaching to a dozen Mexicans in a language they only barely understand and from a culture that reveres one woman only—the Virgin Mary, who in any language our Elsina is not. Well—she's likely a virgin.” He paused for a moment at that thought, studying it, then blinked it away. “But Teresa and Miguel are there to keep them all in line. I, by God, had to escape.”
“Why not to the Oaks?” Charlie asked.
“Listen to me, my child. I spent the night before at that bedlam for ancient psychopaths in the full of the moon. They were still howling last night pretty good, too. Then the power goes off. Then our resident gravedigger, plowman, and upholder of law and order is careening about the town in the humvee of dump trucks like a loose lunatic—I literally had to run for cover twice on the way here and he didn't even see me. I shouted profanities and he didn't hear. Let us hope he runs out of gas before he kills someone.” He gentled down when coffee and the casserole on a tray appeared before him, with rewarmed dinner rolls, jam, and butter. “For you, sir,
there is a place in heaven, I vow,” he told his host.
“Edwina, why did you lie to me all these years about where I came from?”
“I didn't want you coming back here to find out about this place and the supposed curse. So I said I got you in Boulder.”
“You are a scientist. You don't believe in curses.”
“No, but like Kenny, I believe in the power of guilt and the uses to which it can be put. The traps it can lay. But this time, I didn't have the strength to face Myrtle alone.”
“Mom, did your mother have these eyes? You said she was pregnant when she married.”
“Yeah, she did,” Elmo answered instead. “Edwina, do you realize that we are the only people in this room who don't have the Myrtle eyes?”
Not for the first time, but even more urgently now, Charlie was wondering what her own black-eyed daughter was up to while the cat was away.
“
S
O WHY WAS I born in Marlys Dittberner's house? And why did she end up with the Staudt house in town instead of the guys in the family in this agrarian, male chauvinist, Taliban society?”
“You work in Hollywood and call this a chauvinist society?” Kenny brought her another cup of coffee—not a latté, just tasty and rich.
So she peed all day. So she'd get some Depends. Probably carried them at the Sinclair station.
A knocking sounded from somewhere below, “Uh, Kenny? It's Ben.”
“Come on up, Ben. Saved you some breakfast and there's coffee in the pot.”
Kenny presented the watchman with a steaming cup, a glass of orange juice, and returned to the gas stove to cook some more bacon.
“I didn't get bacon,” Harvey complained.
“You're already the fat cat in town. Ben's our token homeless person.” No wonder their host had made a whole casserole. It was fast disappearing.
“What do you mean, homeless? He gets a free bed in the back room of the Sinclair and his washing done by the mayor,” Mr. Rochester pointed out.
“It's not free. I'm the town watchman.”
“Doing what? Never mind.”
“It's on the books,” Kenny said over the bacon sizzle.
“Myrtle's got books?” Harvey Rochester stared at Ben and Elmo, who simply shrugged.
“Ben breakfasts at the Schoolhouse Café during the week, but it's probably not open today because of the snow, and he lunches here at noon, has his dinner in the kitchen at The Station in the evening while they're getting it ready for the Oaks. All part of his pay for being watchman, huh, Ben?”
Determined not to let them deter her with rural fables this time, Charlie insisted, “So why doesn't anybody answer my questions?”
“Because you ask too many at once and we forget what they are,” Elmo said.
“Okay, so why was I born in Marlys Dittberner's house?”
“She was in the habit of taking in runaway girls. They usually run away in them days because they found themselves in the family way. Back then, a girl in that condition and without a husband tended to disappear. ‘Whatever happened to pretty little Alice?' ‘Oh, she went off to Ohio to live with her Aunt Helga, who's sick and needs someone around to help out.' And that's the last you'd ever hear of pretty little Alice. Just disappeared. Nobody wanted to talk about it.”
“Like Myrtle.” Charlie stood at a front window. She could see where Del had plowed a lane on Main Street.
“Most of them did go off to live with faraway relatives, have the baby, and some family would adopt it and the girl would be sent out to work until she could find a husband or earn her living. But I always wondered if some of 'em didn't end up getting whupped to death in the barn one night by a angry daddy and get buried on the farm. Nobody but the family would know any different—they'd just disappear. It was a terrible sin to get with child without a husband, brought down such shame on a family, and shotgun weddings weren't so common as some would have you believe. Things was different then.”
“But some would go to Marlys' house and she'd take care of them and adopt the babies out? Why did she do that?”
Even through wind-swirled snow, Charlie could see the trench line in the vacant lot across the street where the cave-in had all but filled. Looked like it was heading for the pool hall.
“That was true everywhere, not just in Myrtle or Floyd County or Iowa, Charlie.” Mr. Rochester moved back away from the stove, fed and finally warmed. But he accepted another cup of coffee with a soothing dollop of brandy.
“Girls in my school days were still disappearing,” Edwina said. “Guess I never thought much about it. But the whispers were if she moved and her family stayed, she was going to have a baby. She was soon forgotten. Once ruined, forever ruined then. How old is Marlys Dittberner, Harvey? You must have records on her at Gentle Oaks.”
“Actually, damn few for someone who lived here all her life. And those records don't tie down how long that life was. She's outlived all her children and I've never talked to anyone with a mind left who knew her as a child. She was always a grown woman to all of them I questioned, and birth records were mostly stored in family Bibles then because no doctor attended and people pretended the messy birthing process was a joyous, antiseptic surprise from God. I can tell you though, having been given entrance to one of her dead children's records and memorabilia, that she was not originally a Dittberner but married an Auchmoody before that. So she married at least twice. What's that sound? Either it's Charlie's confounded cellular phone or our barkeep has taken in a feline.”
Charlie was momentarily so soothed and warm and sheltered from this hostile environment that she didn't know where to look for her purse. No problem. Old cool Kenny handed her cell to her. He was getting as irritating as her mother but had the good sense not to touch her hand with his when the phone was exchanged.
It was a desperate Larry Mann. Her secretary and good friend and favorite date. First problem—the weather blonde on CNN had assured the nation that all residents of Minnesota
and Northern Iowa were buried under tons of snow with power and communications out, and there must be hundreds if not thousands dead or in dire danger of being so because even National Guard helicopters could not get to them. “Charlie, I can't believe I'm talking to you. You're right in the middle of it. Are you freezing and hungry and thermally perishing? We're frantic here.”
“Jesus, what's happened there? Is Libby in danger of—”
“No, we're frantic about you. It's mildly balmy here. Hilsten is threatening to parachute from a chopper or something to save you. Except no one's sure where you are. You went to Minneapolis and then to a Mason City? Where did you fly from there? Tell me quick before we lose contact again. Hurry.”
“Settle down. I'm fed, warm, and sheltered as is the rest of Myrtle, Iowa, and even its one homeless person. We drove here from the Mason City airport. And please tell Mitch to stay in L.A.. He's one problem I don't need now.” Charlie had inadvertently saved the superstar's life twice and he was heaven-bent on returning the favor. “Edwina and I are safe and sound, and I'll get home as soon as the weather and roads clear. Larry, give me a quick rundown on the state of the office while we've got contact.”
“Shirley Birkett is freaking in Tampa. Said she'd quit and wanted to change her mind. Quit what? The agency?”
“No. She's got some screwy notion that writing novels is a job and not just work she's lucky to get. Let her stew till I get back.”
“The Duesenburg contracts arrived this morning.”
“How do they look?”
“They look like you're going to cross out three pages and consult the lawyers before the author signs. Oh, and Monroe's interview on
Celebrities Tonight
airs tonight. Have they ever done a writer before?”
“Norman Mailer I think I remember was on in the early days. Tape it for me, will you? Talked to Libby?”
“She's cool and made it to school today. Maggie and Mrs. Beesom had her for dinner last night and she's dining at the Esterhazies' tonight, so rest easy for a while on that one. She doesn't watch the news so she's not as worried about you as the rest of us. I'll leave a message on Ed Esterhazie's voice mail that you're okay and not to stir her up. Take care, boss.”
“Who is this wonderful Larry person? You're positively misty-eyed,” Harvey Rochester said just as Charlie decided to check her voice mail. “My jealousy consumeth all.”
“One of my best friends.”
“Her secretary,” Edwina said. “He's drop-dead gorgeous.”
“You have a secretary?” Ben the homeless person squinted in disbelief. He had long lashes and almost no eyebrows. He never took off his knitted cap, so you didn't know if he had hair.
“You got a man for a secretary?” Uncle Elmo raised his eyebrows. They were about an inch thick and stuck out in all directions.
There were three frantic messages from Mitch Hilsten that Charlie ignored. How do you tell a superstar to get a life?
“Your secretary is drop-dead gorgeous and he's just a friend?” Kenny didn't sound convinced.
“He's gay,” Edwina explained. “That's what she loves about him.”
“Three hundred thousand dollars! Congratulations, Charlie Greene, this is John Stone of United Pacific Bank and Trust of Southern California and you have been approved for a line of credit twice that amount! UPB and T of SC looks forward to doing business with you. Your personalized checks will be mailed to you immediately. You have twenty-four hours to call me at—”
“Jesus, now I'm getting telemarketers on my cellular.”
“Never say that word around Elsina,” Rochester intoned.
“Telemarketer?”
“Jesus.”
“You love your secretary because he's gay?”
“Makes him safe,” Edwina told Kenny.
“You wouldn't understand,” Charlie told Kenny.
“What makes you think I'm not gay?” Kenny asked Charlie.
“Somehow, I just know. Positively.”
“Positively?”
“Is it getting too hot in here, or is it just me?” Ben unbuttoned his shirt.
“Now stop that,” said Edwina Greene, who'd had to give up hormone replacement therapy because of breast cancer.
“I think you need to quit feeding that stove,” Uncle Elmo advised. “You mean gay as in joyful or gay as in—”
“Charlie Greene, I have a buyer for your condominium. Offer's the greatest. List with me soonest and discover the deal of a lifetime!”
“Charlie Greene, are you interested in exotic places, scenes, sex? Young, innocent prepubescent children innocently await your desire and tutoring. Nice, obedient—”
“Jesus.”
“Don't say that word around—”
“I know.” What I don't know is how these horrible people could get my cell number. I'm going to have to filter everything here, too. “Is there no place safe from telemarketing?”
“Gentle Oaks,” Harvey answered. “We don't let them have phones at all. Insurance companies are always trying to sell them policies that will pay if they fall down. At horrific fees. They are feeble people who fall down all the time. Even those in wheelchairs decide to stand for no reason—they've forgotten they can't, you see. But they're in a twenty-four-hour nursing environment. What more could a policy do but send them to a nursing home where the government pays for it anyway? After all their money is used up, of course. And once it is, what reason do their bereft heirs have to pay for anything? We live in a strange world. I hate to be too insistent, but you don't suppose we could use your wonderful cellular device to converse with the coroner of Floyd County, do you?
I'm at your mercy, lady, and in deep dung up at Gentle Oaks, upon which an entire town and a good portion of Floyd County depend for a meager living.”
“You need a new scriptwriter, Harvey.”
But “twas not erelong” in Harvey language before Charlie was torn from the warm, erotic world of Viagra's to the hellhole of Gentle Oaks in Marshal Delwood's humvee of a snowplow.

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