Jess Wells
Author

Contents of this Page:

"Whittaker's Ring"
"The Disappearing Andersons"
plus the full suite of short stories in an un-published volume.

“Whittaker’s Ring”
By Jess Wells

Deathbed promises have a surprising power, even to those who don’t believe in ghosts or the after-life and in Jason’s case, even to those who have a rather tenuous sense of responsibility in general. Jason didn’t even know the man he had made the promise to but he considered the pledge quite binding.

Perhaps it had been the circumstances. The first curve onto the Golden Gate Bridge forces the oncoming traffic to bend and the traffic from the other direction – separated just by day-glow cones – can continue straight or veer closer to the curve to go into the automated toll lane. The expensive car in front of Jason took the curve too fast, too steep and ran head-on over the cones and into an oncoming truck, the accident that more than a quarter of a million travelers imagine in frightening detail every day as they cross and re-cross the bridge.

The young man, whom Jason would learn was named Whittaker Scott, stumbled from his car and lay on the asphalt. Jason ran from his car and cradled the man’s head, panting and twisting, looking for help, trying not to look down at the blood and who knows what that might be protruding from his injured chest. Maybe it was the Art Deco arches of the bridge that framed the scene, maybe it was the beautiful but now crumpled car behind him but Whittaker Scott seemed a tremendously handsome man, even to Jason who had general disdain for the beautiful and privileged. Though it was matted with blood his hair was thick and blonde and the pain in his eyes was deep and real. Jason wished he wasn’t there, and then wished he hadn’t wished that. Worried about AIDs from the blood but felt himself noble for being involved, then admonished himself for giving himself kudos for doing the only decent thing.

Unexpectedly, the dying man reached into his trousers and plopped a ring box into Jason’s hand.

“See that she gets this,” he said softly, as if he were giving an envelope to the doorman. Jason asked whom but Whittaker mumbled and made bubbling sounds that made Jason want to gag. A crowd was gathering and then the paramedics arrived quickly because they were so close to the toll plaza though they took longer than Jason had hoped. See that she gets this.

The paramedics told Whittaker to hang on and Jason gripped the box with his own resolve. He would hang in there. Jason asked which hospital they were going to and ran back to his car.

Jason got the man’s name and address from the front desk, was relieved to hear that Whittaker was from San Francisco so that “she” would show up soon, and curled into a chair in the waiting room, waiting for the arrival of the girlfriend who was to be his fiancé, for the doting mother or the furious father, or someone to take the box and relieve him of his duty. He worried a bit about the melodrama of presenting the ring: would it brighten a terrifying day? Would it be a beacon of hope for the woman? Maybe he should give it to the father and let him present it, but no, what if the father didn’t approve of the girl? He had promised Whittaker, not anyone else. He would have to do the presentation himself and he hoped he looked ok and didn’t smell too badly because women hug you during times like this.

But the operations dragged on; Jason fell asleep in a chair and when he woke up, Whittaker had passed away and his body had been taken to a funeral home. Since he was a total stranger to the family, no one had woken him.

Jason drove to his apartment feeling like the stooge who misses the FedEx drop, the bone-head who comes to soccer without the ball. Before he lay down on his couch to get some truly decent sleep, he snapped open the lid of the box, which only made matters worse. It was an enormous ring. A venture capitalist’s ring. A three-months-salary in the six-figures ring, which means that he could easily be accused of theft. An underling programmer like him could never (and would never, he reminded himself) buy such a thing. And now he couldn’t slip it into a drawer and forget about it. ‘Oh well, I tried’, wouldn’t work here. At the same time, now that the guy was dead, it would be like throwing salt into a woman’s wound. You could have been a widow but you’re just the bereaved girlfriend. See how much he loved you, and now he’s gone. Christ. Women don’t hug you in situations like that. They crumple to the floor wailing, body parts start running and sagging and other women get involved rescuing them from you. He was the insult to the injury; he was about to kick a woman when she was down. And who knows who else would get involved: this was the kind of money that relatives fight over, fathers reclaim, mothers snatch back feigning sentimentality. Watch them tackle him and start rolling around on the grassy cemetery. He flopped onto the sofa in his clothes and slept.

The newspaper said the funeral was on Tuesday so Jason aired out his suit and kinda pressed his shirt, rubbed his good shoes on the bath towel before going out. His shoulder-length brown hair actually shone a bit and he had shaved carefully. He hoped to god that his green eyes would buy him something. Depending on the crowd, he cut a reasonable figure, though he worried that the down-payment-on-a-ranch-on-your-finger crowd might sneer. He’d keep his legs together and his hands clasped in front. A gentleman’s stance. A prep school stance. OK, a bouncer at the ball-park stance. Just deliver the box to the girlfriend and get out.

But much to Jason’s surprise, there were an astounding number of women at the funeral. All about Whittaker’s age, clearly not relatives. They stood three deep and six wide, all of them heartbroken in different ways. How could you judge? The one who wailed the most was a thick-waisted woman behind the mother. Jason counted 18 women in all. ‘You go, Whittaker,’ he thought, and then wondered how a man could have that many female friends. Were they ex-girlfriends? Had he taught pilates? He didn’t even know any women who had 18 women friends.

Jason thought the man next to the minister was probably the father. He hadn’t had time to study Whittaker’s face enough to really be sure of the family resemblance of the men who clustered around the minister. They didn’t look violent, he was relieved to see as he gripped the nest-egg rock in his pocket, so he went back to the question at hand: who was the girlfriend? Aunt seated and weeping behind a veil. Grandmother clutching her, perhaps unsure of reality. Here she is, young beauty standing next to the mother. Blonde. Was that the sister?

The girlfriend had to be the blonde beauty in the front. But as soon as Jason made the determination, he was disgusted. She was band-standing. Too upright, too aware of her duchess stance, the noble victim. Feigning grief. All eyes might not be on her but she held the crowd and she knew it. In a perfectly fitted black dress with the lace of her whatever underwear you called that, showing. What kind of woman lets her underwear show at your funeral?

Jason suddenly felt protective of Whittaker and he squeezed the box in his pocket. She didn’t deserve this ring. She didn’t deserve you, Whittaker. A trophy wife? Jason had violent objections to trophy wives. All gym fees and mani-pedi afternoons. He loathed those kinds of women. He couldn’t move toward her. He’d sell the ring and donate the money to charity before he’d give it to her. It was probably a conflict diamond anyway.

Jason thought about tossing the box into the ground with the coffin, or just leaving and reconsidering his options, when a woman on the edge of the group of gals, closest to the father, pivoted away from the casket and, covering her face, unknowingly fell into a wreath. It exposed her long legs, her shoulders coming up with the wreath around them like she was the prize filly at a race. And she was the prize filly, Jason thought. Not in the mani-pedi way. Her dress was a bit faded and ill-fitting, which appealed to him: one shouldn’t have funeral wear at the ready, should they? And now her hair was all tattered and she was uncomfortable with being helped by the men around her in the way that intelligent women who are clumsy never expect assistance. She either had no eyelashes or had cried off all her mascara because she looked a little like a newt. But Jason liked that. She’d look good in a sleeping bag which is not easy since the colder it gets the more you look like larvae. He studied her and smelled roasted marshmallows. What about that one, Jason asked Whittaker, stroking the velvet box as if it contained the spirit of his new friend, and he that realized that his pact with the dead now involved finding Whittaker a better girlfriend then the one Whittaker had picked out himself.

Keeping his eye on the filly, Jason mingled with the guests after the funeral. Now he was in a bigger predicament because he could easily saunter over to the bar and ask, ‘hey, which one’s the girlfriend’ but then he’d be faced with his obligation, his duty, instead of his new mission. Who knows, the filly might be the girlfriend. She was the most distraught. Didn’t look like him. Maybe the bimbos were the blonde sisters’ friends. He walked up to her as she stood gazing out the window and cupped her elbow.

“Could I get you something?” he said softly.

She stammered and gestured a little. “No. I’m fine. Thanks, though.”

“I’m Jason.”

“Zoey.” They shook hands.

Perfect name! Zoey. She’s zany. Maybe she’s zany and
brainy, my favorite, Jason thought, but forced himself to be somber.

She smiled weakly. “Are they olive green?” she said. “They’re almost lime green. Your eyes.”

“They’re…yeah. Kind of odd,” he said, feeling a heat rise up his pant leg. Oh crap. The heat message. Pant telepathy that told him that he wasn’t finding Whittaker a new girlfriend, he was chatting up a dead man’s woman at his funeral. How low can you go?
He’d go much further for the filly, he could tell.

“How’d you know Whit,” she asked.

“I was… at the accident.” Brought back to reality, to the loss of life, he looked at her and knew she was worthy of a ranch-down-payment ring, that he was playing where he shouldn’t, and yet knowing that he didn’t want to ask her the same and hurt her with the presentation of a diamond what-could-have-been at that moment. And he wanted her for himself, damn it. He’d admit it. Claim it. Even if she had been Whittaker’s girlfriend, she was free now, and he had no intention of stepping out of the way until he knew her better.

“You were the guy sleeping in the chair!”

“Yeah, I…” It hit him, cradling a man’s head just before he died. Hearing his last words.

She looped her arm in his and he felt her small breast pressed against his bicep. She steered him to the bar.

“Scotch?” she said.

It was his turn to stammer.

She got him a double and marched him through the big house to where Whit’s friends sat despondent and drunk on sofas. He braced himself for more beautiful people like the girlfriend, for regatta guys with flippant names but when he saw who they were and how upset they seemed he checked his assumptions. Dark haired, dark-eyed guy named Peter with eight beer bottles in front of him was puffy from crying and looked like he was seconds from picking a bar brawl. Pudgy guy named Brian who had clearly found his tie in the bottom of his laundry basket made you want to cry just looking at him. The only one who was holding back tears was Abigail, a young mother who didn’t want to disturb the sleeping baby in her arms.

“This is Jason. He took care of Whitty at the accident.”

The crowd sat up in appreciation. “Dude,” Brian said, “the guy in the chair.”

They told him stories. All but Zoey got sloshed, including the nursing mother. They had been college chums. Didn’t know Whittaker was from so much money. After college Whittaker started being reclaimed by the class demands of his family but the four friends clung to him, keeping his feet planted in reality, they said. He thanked them for it. He escaped to them. They took their role as touch-stones very seriously, his true circle of friends.

Zoey drove everyone home, and Jason accepted like intelligent men who pretend that they know to be nurtured. “Oh,” he said, “how will I get my car? Come for breakfast.” He was the last one dropped off so he leaned on the window and asked the question he didn’t want answered. “Did you love Whittaker?”

She looked at the steering wheel, then at him with those newt/larvae/marshmallow eyes. “We all loved Whitty,” she said tearfully and drove away.

They had breakfast. They met for lunch. They thought each other’s stories were funny. Zoey was a dog walker and Jason passed her “does my car stink” test. They talked, they text’d, they emailed. On the third date she wore a sweater zipped down to the top of her bra. And today she knew they’d have sex because she was gripping the mop, staring down at her kitchen floor, desperate to scrub it clean. Everything in her body had moved forward a half inch as if from centrifugal force. Her breasts were higher, her belly was tighter, she felt as if her cheekbones were puffed. Unfortunately, the other thing that had come to attention was her sense of foreboding. Sex wasn’t just communicating on a different level and all. It was crossing the divide but inevitably winding up in different places, as if there was a fork in the middle of the bridge and they each veered the wrong way. With all the focus on sex in the world couldn’t they teach the same thing to both genders? It wasn’t recreation. Well it was. But it was a covenant, too. Oh Christ, just mop the floor.

On the other side of town, Jason knew they were going to have sex tonight and knew he should pick up all the dirty clothes off his bedroom floor, change the sheets, stuff like that, but he leaned on the dresser talking to the ring in its box. It was an unusual moment of clarity for him today: he was in sex fog, a gonna-get-it stupor.

“She’s not yours, right?” he said to the stone and when it didn’t reply and he couldn’t draw a conclusion, he snapped the box shut and started throwing dirty clothes into the closet.

The sex was good. It was better the next night. In the light of the fridge they acknowledged that they were both into exclusive stuff, and after they hemmed and hawd and woke up in the morning, they still thought each other’s stories were funny. No skeleton’s fell out of the closet. Neither of them launched into vitriol about an ex-. Nobody revealed strange political leanings or hatred of their mother. And what Jason didn’t say but was relieved to believe, was that Zoey had never been Whitty’s girlfriend. He ignored the death-bed pledge for a bit: he’d come back to it, he promised. He wasn’t keeping the ring. He was just taking a break from the search.

The next month, the crowd that had been Whitty’s friends became Jason and Zoey’s friends and they smiled at them like ‘you’re such a cute couple’ which pleased Zoey but she knew it meant nothing more than that they were the same height, build and nose construction. She knew that similarity wasn’t the same as compatibility. But she put that out of her mind because no annoying habits had surfaced from Jason yet. He cuts his sandwiches in quarters and drove in stops and starts but those weren’t really harbingers of much, were they?

And then the week came when she started to hyperventilate because Zoey realized that she was in love. Now the centrifugal force worked in the opposite direction as if internal organs were heading toward the door, as if her spleen was taking a step backward, her uterus doing a duck-and-cover. Jason must have been feeling the same way because he had dusted. It was freaking him out. He had washed his tennis shoes.

Zoey came into the bedroom in her t-shirt and panties, cradling a cup of tea. Jason was in the shower, his second of the day. That’s when she saw the ring box on his dresser. It had been moved forward when he dusted the top of the furniture and the sight of it stopped her in her tracks. She set the tea cup on the side table and, knowing that she shouldn’t, she opened the box. She gasped, stepped backwards, and rushed for her pants on the other side of the bed.

By the time Jason came out of the shower, there was that unmistakable scent of a woman who has jumped to conclusions, and tightening his towel, he surveyed the room and spied the open ring box on the dresser. He knew he didn’t have time to get dressed, but pursued her through the house. Though less than fifteen seconds had transpired since she had seen the ring, Zoey bore the unmistaken look of a woman who has jetted down a path, branched off a wild labyrinth of ways, and developed a firestorm of words ready to explain the journey and the injustice of the destination. Jason knew the look, knew the speed of the journey, knew that no Hansel and Gretel expedition could trace it back and that the only thing to do was to jump into the crossroads before she went any further.

“I can explain.”

“I am not ready….”

“I am not…either,” he stammered. “It would be…absurd.” He rolled his eyes and she looked offended. “Not that it…couldn’t be. Well, it couldn’t be with that one but… This was supposed to be for someone else.”

“There was a someone else?”

“Noooo no, no” he sounded like castanet’s.

She flew off into a new direction. “You said you were just a programmer.”

“I am.” This was now a conversation about income?
They’re incredible, women. Their minds move like interstellar space gnats, zing zing left right. Like trying to collect drops of mercury. One false move they scatter again.

Zoey put her hands on her hips. Jason saw this as a good sign. Symbol of intransigence but at least she wasn’t zig-zagging. “You said you didn’t come from money.”

“I don’t.”

She looked at him and then, turning her head, Jason could see the engines in her brain starting to rev again.

“This was Whittaker’s ring…” he said.

“Whitty’s?” She was incredulous. Then she looked at him accusingly.

“Hey!” That was always a way to make them stop. Become offended. Declare something to be fighting territory. “On the bridge, just before he… was taken to the hospital, he told me, ‘See that she gets this.’ But he didn’t say who she was.”

“Eew, he was going to marry her? Uck.”

“Was it the blonde?”

“Yes,” Zoey said with disgust.

“I couldn’t do it. I took one look at her at the funeral…”

“Wasn’t that a disgusting display?” Zoey was enraged. “She didn’t even love him.”

“I didn’t mean to keep it… and I won’t, I just couldn’t give it to her. Did I do the right thing, do you think?”

She smiled. “Yes,” and Jason watched the mercury beads all burst out into a hundred directions again but this time it was all about how great he was so let her rip, he thought. Fill the labyrinth with that.

He put his hand on her shoulder and Zoey heard the ultimate male compliment: we’re on the same team.

“You know where the family gets their money?” Zoey asked. “Boob jobs. Breast implants.” Jason frowned. “They own part of the company makes them and Whitty’s dad is a plastic surgeon. Inserting carcinogenic substances into women all day.”

They went into the bedroom and looked at the ring as a tainted item. It had become a conflict diamond, regardless of its origin, and Zoey reiterated that the blonde, whose name was Ellery and who came from even more money than Whitty, was a poser and had ruined many an evening among the friends. The grief they felt at Whittaker’s death was a continuation of the sorrow they had expressed to each other since she arrived on the scene: that they would lose their friend to her and her ambitions. Their circle was being broken, and the ring proved it.

Jason was surprised at how relieved he felt. How vindicated.

But that night, despite good sex and Zoey in his arms, he couldn’t sleep.

But what to do with the ring now? They asked each other over breakfast. Zoey said that it called for a confab.

Brian was the most vocal, his flip-flops slapping against the floor, his canvas shorts rubbing between his thighs as he strode around Jason’s living room. “Hell no, we don’t give it to her!” He slapped Jason on the back and then teared up.

The circle of friends was revitalized, energized. They had a new way to protect Whitty.

Jason wanted to protest that it wasn’t like he had rescued puppies from a fire. This wasn’t an act of heroism. In fact, he was feeling badly about the whole thing. He had confused his politics and class anger with a pledge he had made to someone who was dying. “But he asked me to give it to her,” Jason said.

“She’ll just sell it,” said Peter.

“The question is,” said Abigail as she rocked her baby in her arms, “what would Whitty do?”

An appraisal of the ring came in at $30,000 and the clan emailed ideas back and forth, a dozen a day, increasingly vehement. Without discussing it or making any agreement about the check, they met at an expensive restaurant for lunch on Saturday and ordered a bottle of good wine. Jason didn’t have the heart to tell them, being a little further along in the activity of second-guessing a dead man, that it didn’t sound like they were really concerned with what Whittaker wanted; they were indulging themselves in what they would do if they had Whittaker’s money for a day. When the check came it took several different combinations of credit cards and three trips by the irritated waiter to get the thing paid.

“Well, I’ll tell you what Whitty would do,” grumbled Peter, as they reconvened in Brian’s apartment, “he would have picked up that check. I say we split the money and spend it how we want.”

“You can’t do that,” Abigail said. “It’s not ours.”

“Why not? We were his best friends,” Peter said. “If he’d had a will, don’t you think he would have left us something?”

Brian warmed to the idea as well. “Hey, remember when that check arrived from his aunt? Five grand and he sat on this couch and gave us each a thousand dollars. The money didn’t mean anything to him. And remember, Abigail, it paid your hospital bill. I fixed my car. He was so happy it helped us.”

Zoey was apprehensive. “But this isn’t that situation. We’re going against his wishes. Well, ok, we’re not giving the ring to that woman, so we’re going to go against his wishes, regardless.”

“Why can’t this be Whittaker’s bequeath to us?” Peter said. “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need, comrades.”

“How convenient to be a socialist at this moment, Peter,” Zoey grumbled.

“If we give the ring to his mother, you think she’ll give it to Ellery?” Abigail wondered.

The group agreed that she wouldn’t, that the mother would keep the ring or the money for herself, and she didn’t need it either.

They spent the evening in heated discussion, Zoey and Abigail lobbying for charity and Peter and Brian claiming that they should take the money and run. If a bag of money fell in front of your feet, the men said, would you spend it? If a wallet with a man’s name and address in it fell in front of a desperately poor man with desperately hungry children, was it morally appropriate for the man to spend the money on his kids? Were they playing Robin Hood or acting on their class anger? What if they spent Whittaker’s money on a tribute to Whittaker or a celebration of his life, or a scholarship fund or a big donation to a breast cancer fund? Were they turning bad money into good? Or were they just ripping off their friend?

The one thing they all agreed on was that Jason was hereby relieved of his deathbed pledge. There was no way the bimbo was getting the ring. But then what?

They couldn’t come to agreement right that moment, but decided that Jason and Zoey should sell the ring and then they’d reconsider.

“Wait a minute,” Jason said. “Why should it be me? I hardly knew him!”

“He gave it to you,” Brian said.

“’See that she gets it,’” Jason protested. He slapped the ring box in front of Abigail. “Here. She’s got it. End of my duty.”

“That’s a point,” Peter said, warming to the idea. “Abigail looks the most innocent of all of us.” The men in the group nodded but Zoey and Abigail rolled their eyes. Just because she was petite and blonde, she looked innocent, even though she had a baby at the breast. She looked dubiously at the group but then picked up the box with resolve. As long as it remained as a ring, it reminded them that Whitty was about to subject them to the bimbo.

The clan met at an outside café in Maiden Lane, up the street from Gumps, to give her moral support. And approve of her tactics, Zoey thought, as the group nodded over her choice of demure but expensive dress, her baby in finery. When she returned an hour later, she had been crying, and when she plopped down into the fifth chair at the table she burst into tears. She slapped the check onto the table.

“He looked at me…sadly that the marriage hadn’t happened,” she said.

“So it worked,” Brian said and Zoey shot him a glance as Abigail started to cry.

“He treated me like…. an abandoned woman,” Abigail said tearfully. “Which I am.”

Jason felt badly, watching her. If he had just done what he said he would do, she wouldn’t be carrying through with this ridiculous larceny. Carrying the burden of turning Whittaker’s folly into …what? The desire of a group to prove that he loved them? Honored them? Would have remembered them if he had thought about it?

“But he asked you to marry him and you said no,” Brian said.

“And like my child was a bastard, which he is. I felt like trash, Zoey.” Zoey touched her arm.

“That’s really old school stuff,” Peter said quietly. “People don’t see things that way anymore.”
Later that evening, Abigail despondently counted the money out on the coffee table and the discussion began again. Jason, looking at the conflicted expressions on their faces, he felt worse. Should they do something for themselves? Should they do something for Whitty? Something that they thought was important that Whittaker wouldn’t necessarily have thought of? Each had a different charity or plan, and the ones who thought it should be spent on tributes were appalled by the self-interest of the others. They were a ring of dogs around a single piece of meat. Zoey intervened to keep the argument from getting ugly.
Divide it up, and each can do as they see fit.

They left silently, one eye on where they were going and one eye pondering the envelope in their purse, their coat pocket.

The clan usually met for beers or coffee several times a week but now, since the appearance of Whittaker’s ring, it became a nearly nightly experience. They were glum and nearly silent. A couple of them would meet at the bar and after just a single beer would migrate to a third one’s house. Whenever they met the first topic after hello was ‘did ya do something with it’ and the answer was ‘no.’ They spoke about it in hushed tones, checking over their shoulder, with guilt, not celebration. They clung to each other like conspirators, a circle of thieves.

And then neither Jason nor Zoey heard from any of them for nearly a month.

Abigail finally broke the silence with an excited summons to a coffee shop in her neighborhood. When Brian, the last to arrive, sat down, Abigail pitched forward onto the edge of the couch. She didn’t have the baby with her and she looked incomplete but ebullient.

“That day with the ring just set me over the edge. So I just went to George and told him…forget this single mother thing. So… we’re using Whittaker’s money to finance the wedding.”

Zoey started squealing and Brian pounded the coffee table in glee.

“We’re leaving for Las Vegas and then on to Boston. Thanks to Whitty, my little one has a dad!”

Brian insisted on champagne and when he started to pour, Peter covered his glass with his hand. “I um… used Whit’s money. The inheritance… whatever. I checked into rehab. Took me a couple days and a couple more hangovers to decide, but that’s where I’ve been for the last three weeks.”

Brian lunged across the couch and hugged Peter,
Abigail ordered him a glass of sparkling cider and they fell into their familiar groove of celebration.

Brian cleared his throat. “You’ll have to come by Washington Square Park to see my tribute to Whitty. Bought a park bench, dedicated to him.”

The group was impressed that he had chosen a tribute to Whittaker instead of something for himself but as his story unfolded Zoey saw his plan. He spent most Sundays and early evenings sitting on the bench, striking up conversations with people who sat down. A whole circle of elderly gentlemen convened there with him on Sundays to tell stories. Brian had bought himself a permanent opening line and a club house.

Zoey set her glass down.

“Well, I have to admit that I’ve done something with my money, too.”

Jason was surprised. He hadn’t heard about it. In a way he was immediately disappointed. He had relied on her absolution and now he wanted her to join him in his guilt. In feeling that the deathbed pledge had gone unfulfilled. It had begun to pierce through his joy over being in love. It had disturbed his sleep and now it preoccupied him when he was behind the wheel or in elevators. What if this blonde had been a fine but misunderstood woman. He didn’t think she was but now he was tied to her, like when you insult a stranger because you’re in a bad mood and then carry an attachment to that stranger for years. He had failed Whittaker and insulted his woman.

“I’ve been going to a business advisor,” Zoey said a little sheepishly. “She’s encouraging me to expand to other neighborhoods…You know, take myself more seriously as an entrepreneur.”

“Yeah, like get deodorant for the truck?” Brian quipped.

“A new truck is top on the list,” Zoey laughed. “Or rather…another truck.”

All eyes turned to Jason but he stammered and threw up his hands. He hadn’t touched a dime. Hardly knew where he’d put the envelope, but it was like a house arrest anklet on him. He glanced over at Zoey and knew it was delaying his interest in a ring for her. Be sure she gets this, he heard in his mind.

“To Whittaker,” Jason said, raising his glass. And the clan toasted their friend.

***************************
Here's the title story...

Late in the afternoon on the last day of March, the Anderson’s house exploded. A faulty gas line met a pilot light that had been up too high, or so they said. That was the more sensible of the explanations that circulated Loon Lake within minutes of the fireball’s ascension into the silent, frozen sky.

The entire Anderson family had been gone at the time. Hank Anderson was in his small, paneled office attempting to sell insurance while his wife picked over the jumble sales. His children were in school, his daughter staring out the window, his son running up and down the gymnasium without ever being given the ball.

Everyone knew where the Andersons were: it was Loon Lake after all, and the expanse of the water gave all the residents the opportunity to know each other’s whereabouts without actually having to converse. An incident of this magnitude in a stand-still place like Loon Lake was certainly cause to pick up the phone, though. No sign of the house, the neighbors said hurriedly into their phones. Absolutely none. The retirees sitting on their heated, glassed-in porches and the anglers in their ice sheds had seen the enormous red-gold flame, and then had stared, awestruck, at the space that seemed to instantly fill in the area where the Anderson’s house had been. On second glance, they whispered into their receivers, it seemed as if there had never been a house there at all.

The Anderson house rained down on Loon Lake and the adjoining marshes. It fell in pieces of wood and pipe no larger than a fist. Enormous pieces of wall, furniture, boxes and glass jars, pummeled what the locals hoped was the last of the winter’s snow. Already the ground was visible around the base of the reeds. A brown collar of dirty snow circled the lake and a few ducks had emerged in the early afternoon, covering their feet with sloppy mud. The snow was nearly transparent, moments from becoming water, and it hung thick and clumsy on the branches and shrubs. It was seductive and dangerous with its hint of spring, old but not toothless snow.

Hank and Ruth Anderson were the first to reach the spot that had been their home. They got out of the car slowly, gripping the edges of their doors. Mrs. Anderson shrieked and threw her hands into the air, then covered her mouth and pressed as if something horrible might fly out.

A few of the lake residents drove to the house to see if they could help: poor man shouldn’t be left to figure it out all by himself, they thought, but they admitted to themselves that they were curious as hell. Mrs. Anderson paced around each visitor as they relayed as many details as they could muster. The walls that she had meticulously decorated were gone, and the piping and electrical inside them. The nearest piece of the roof that they could find was half-way across the lake, laying on the ice. There wasn’t a single piece of discernible furniture, no personal possessions or clothing. Hank and the men walked around the perimeter of what had been the house, peering into the stubs of walls, looking at the junction of wire and foundation. It was a complete loss. Mrs. Anderson turned her back on the house.

When the children came home, the daughter stumbled around wringing her long blonde hair, and the son joined the process of men who were on their fifteenth lap of the perimeter. Mrs. Anderson marshaled her children into their station wagon and admonished her son to leave the other car behind. After much prodding, Hank joined them and they rented a hotel room in the nearest town.

The late afternoon sun made the snow glow and the silence of a late winter day descended on the lake. The high school boys home from school immediately put on their knee-high rubber boots, packed extra mittens, pulled their dad’s plaid hunting hats over their ears, and began to scrounge through the marshland for bits of the Anderson’s lives.

Soon the phones were a-buzz again, as cracking voices relayed the find of financial papers scattered in bits over the meadow, and pieces of prescription drug bottles discovered near the turtle log. Mothers insisted on being told the stories that they heard in snatches from their kid’s conversations, and some men donned their own caps and went outside, ostensibly to find something that would help Hank. Soon the entire lake was in possession of an odd assortment of pieces of the Anderson’s lives that had floated into their yard, fallen on their wood pile, or lodged in the eaves of their houses.

That night, lying on the soft and damp mattress of the hotel, Hank was so stiff that his legs were twitching of their own accord. Ruth Anderson cried quietly to herself while she held her husband’s hand. They had moved to Loon Lake two years ago – a mere weekend in lake-time – and no-one had ever suspected that there had been a problem back in Detroit. No one in the family ever spoke about the month when she had been unable to get out of bed, unable to cook or clean or even speak to her children, when she lay staring at a ceiling fan that didn’t move, turning her head only slightly to see her husband’s face twisted up in confusion over her sudden surrender. She hadn’t surrendered at Loon Lake, not once. She had gotten out of bed every morning, she had made dinner every evening. She had turned berries into jam with the other women, attended bad theater productions and the fire department pancake breakfast, chatted with a few women she considered friends when she met them in the super market aisles. She had had lunch with these women nearly every month and even though they just talked about Opra and their gasping shock over tidbits from the news – never divulging infidelities or children gone bad – these had been social encounters. The picky little details of life hadn’t pinned her to the sheets this time. The zip-locks, the dust pans, coupons, and dirty socks – she had conquered them. She even had a couple of little porcelain figurines perched on the window-sill in front of her kitchen sink, evidence of her tolerance of the fussy, pesky, fragile smallness of her life. She barely even trembled anymore. Now she didn’t know whether to be relieved that everything had blown to bits, a condition she had expected and now didn’t have to fight against, or devastated that all her hard work at keeping the buttons buttoned and the snaps snapped would have to be done again. The battle made her roll back and forth like a log against the shoreline, while her children rustled nearby.

In the middle of the night, the Big Thaw descended on Loon Lake. Every year there was one particular night that ushered in Spring. The night-time temperature would hover at a mid-day level, and the ice on the lake would crack with a booming that woke the old folks. Bets would be placed on whether all the fishing sheds would get off the lake successfully, and how many beers would have been drunk by the one guy dumb enough to drive his pick-up out there to retrieve them. Tree branches bounced up after a winter of holding great volumes of snow, creeks suddenly came alive with run-off, and rocks and logs that had been held on the edge of the bank by the grip of ice, tumbled into the muddy shore. Nature was lively that night, and animals emerged in the morning, twitching and chattering.

The thaw only exacerbated the Anderson’s problems. Papers and scraps of clothing that had lain neat and still on the icy shelf of snow were now sodden and wrapped around the roots of cattails. Parts of Ruth’s sofa were now blocking the culvert near the old beaver damn and would pose a problem within a few days.

In the morning, the sheriff arrived at the site, followed by the highest-ranking official in the Bureau of Fish and Game who took a keen interest in pollution cases. Hank Anderson arrived alone just afterward. The Andersons would have to pick up all the debris, the officials explained, or have the insurance company take care of it, because it posed a threat to wildlife, it intruded on other people’s property, and was a health hazard. The two men extended their condolences to Hank and wished him luck in dealing with the insurance company, but they held firm. The debris would have to be cleared.

The Anderson family arrived the next day in new boots and hats, and began gathering their lives into plastic garbage bags. The insurance claim had been filed, but the company was woefully slow, especially in such a rural area, and the water damage that could be inflicted from just a few day’s impeded run-off could set the Andersons up for significant damages. Hank Anderson bent to the task as if danger were seconds away. It hadn’t mattered that he sold insurance, it hadn’t mattered that he had represented the company for years: a policy was a policy and the corporate officials made it clear that the higher the claim, the higher the premium in the future. Mrs. Anderson gathered bits of her belongings as if trying to pull a knit skirt down over her knees.

A lone, powder-blue Buick stopped yards away from the site. One of Ruth’s luncheon friends got out carefully, as if afraid that the ground contained explosives, straightened the nylon scarf on her head and the raincoat around her sweat pants, then pulled a casserole dish off the front seat. Betsy proffered her casserole reluctantly. Funerals, hospitalizations called for a covered dish, but this was beyond noodles and aluminum foil. This was black magic.

Ruth held the dish in her hand, turned slightly looking for a spoon, a microwave, a counter to set it on, then looked back at her luncheon friend as if she had presented her with a head on a platter. She took the dish and heaved it into the woods where it smashed to bits on a rock. Betsy backed away, holding her scarf in place, clambered into her car without taking wide eyes off Ruth, and backed down the driveway as fast as she could go.

Ruth’s daughter took her hand and cried.

After a few days, father and son could be seen hurriedly walking along the county road, bent over like old rag pickers, their hoods up, their clothing dirty and torn.

While they worked, the residents of Lon Lake pondered the little details of the Anderson’s lives that had been revealed. Who was it who took the prescription drugs? And didn’t that bottle say Valium? It had a ‘v’ on it, the old women whispered to each other over the phone. At every luncheon, every ball game, the subject ultimately came up: what bit of debris had fallen into your yard, and what did it say about the Andersons? It didn’t matter that Hank belonged to the Kiwanis and his wife had volunteered at the blood bank. Stories were created, and soon people stopped inviting the Andersons over because it was just too much fun to decipher their lives from the shards of their belongings. Why, one guy had found Hank and Ruth’s bank book and it was a sight. Of course most of the pages were gone and the snow had done a number on the writing, but you could sort of make it out. Who would have thought that the Andersons had so much money. Must have inherited it, the stories began. Maybe from parents in the East. And them now living in a hotel and wearing those old clothes. Stingy rich people got no pity. The stories continued, soon embellished with stock deals and mergers, property holdings, bond swindles. Some heard they were originally from Philadelphia, blue blood family, with madness and infidelity, a couple of abandoned children along the way. The Andersons that trod through the marshland picking up paper on the end of pointed sticks soon bore no resemblance to the wild-living, moneyed Andersons who had survived wars and immigration, amassed a fortune owning factories, birthing scores of children. Like the forest that had rushed into the spot where the Anderson’s home had been, the stories rushed in to the place where the actual lives of the Andersons had been. Their personalities were reinterpreted, their motives for incidences that were years old became suspect, their virtue questioned, their backgrounds swallowed up by the ephemeral Andersons, the concocted Andersons, the collective fabrication of a lake community suddenly given little bits of fodder for their imagination.

The months wore on and Ruth Anderson became an outcast at the lake. That casserole incident just goes to show that you don’t really know anyone, not really. Besides, why should they give charity to a woman who was slumming it? Hank Anderson’s business faltered as the stories continued about shady dealings. He began attracting rif-raf clientele. It took very little to ostracize the high-school Andersons. A few stories about the daughter’s virginity, backed up by scraps of what looked like lingerie and she was eating lunch alone over an algebra book. Girls hurried over the marshlands with love notes in their pockets for the dashing world-traveler Anderson boy, only to pass him unnoticed on the county road as he continued his stoop-shouldered quest for his scraps.

A check arrived from the insurance company but there would be no assistance in the clean-up. With business suddenly going bad, they would have to begin living on the insurance money if Hank didn’t so something fast. Ruth Anderson wouldn’t allow the family to build again on the same spot, believing that the lake had turned against them, and the family was secretly relieved that they wouldn’t have to live among people who were keeping tiny piles of their belongings in boxes on their coffee tables.

Spring was in full bloom at Loon Lake when the Andersons took one last look at their lot, pounded a For Sale sign into the wet peat, and drove to Traverse City to begin again. The lake residents hardly noticed. Bands of retired ladies, at that moment, were circling the lake in their new tennis shoes and sweat pants, breathlessly explaining how the Andersons were off to Panama, or was it Caracas? After all, one of them had a scrap of a travel brochure deep in the fleece of her pocket.

***