Rise of the Cleveburn Biddies: Chapter 1
Vi
Brennen stood inside the screen door of the little cottage by the lake, peering
out occasionally to see if the car was coming. Sometimes she’d look at the
phone on the kitchen wall, her stomach in freefall, and consider calling her
sister, Toots, to say that she’d changed her mind. Doing so would ease the
anxiety, of course; it would also mean that she would be facing the winter here
alone. Really alone, now that Charlie was gone. And while the opaque
white cloud of the unknown was scary and nerve-wracking, the dark gray cloud of
loneliness that had settled over the cottage was suffocating. And certain.
So she didn’t move from the door, and
continued watching the road, and worried. She picked at a loose thread on the
sleeve of her blue sweatshirt with the embroidered flowers, trying not to think
about the cozy Christmas that Charlie had given it to her. She bent down and
thumbed out the scuff on the side of her black flats, ignoring the warm wood
flooring they’d installed together.
She
could hear Charlie chiding her: Stop fussing!
But
fussing was Vi’s way. And in Vi’s home, her way was the way, which was
another thing to worry about altogether now that she was moving in with her
younger sister. It wasn’t going to be a permanent move – just for the winter,
because the winters down by Lake Erie were particularly harsh -- far harsher
than in the city, though the city got the brunt of the press. Even for a few
months, though, Vi knew there would be personality clashes and she knew enough
to accept that the house rules would prevail. Her stomach clenched a bit at the
thought.
After
another peek at the quiet road, Vi took another “last tour” stroll around the
cottage as if to load up on memories enough to sustain her. Charlie had built
the little house atop an old concrete pad left over from an old garage that had
blown down during one bitter winter. They had lived in a roomy duplex for
almost forty years, in a pleasant village several miles away, raising their son
Francis and staying busy with PTA, church and civic clubs. They were content in
their little home. But one night while they sat out in their tiny patch of yard
-- hunting for the stars obscured by the murky ambient light of the nearby city,
surrounded by the neighbors’ lit windows, the air vibrating with the low din
and hum of radios and the steady hiss of passing cars, and children shrieking
in distant yards -- she casually mentioned that she’d always wanted a yard of
her own: with a garden, and a little peace and quiet so she could hear the
frogs in the summer and the soft impact of snowflakes on quiet winter days – a desire
to recapture memories of her childhood, growing up on the farm.
What
for Vi had been a casual reverie, Charlie took as a challenge. Within a week,
he’d found the vacant lot down here by the beach and set to work on getting the
permits and materials. He’d lured a few old friends down to help him with the
bigger stuff, with promises of endless summer picnics and fishing trips on the
lake (a small outboard boat would follow the next summer). At Vi’s prodding,
Francis came down for a day to help Charlie with the work, but he hit his thumb
with the hammer so many times, and whined so much, that Charlie sent him to get
lunch for the others working on the house. Afterwards Charlie gently relieved
him of any expectation to participate, which Francis, characteristically, took
with great relief and not one smidge of shame. We created the monster,
Charlie would sometimes say with an exasperated laugh. We have to live with
it.
After the framing and finishing, the
cottage became Vi’s project. With paint and carpeting and cupboards, a full
year was consumed by trips to the hardware store and long evenings rolling
paint and grouting.
The
result was simple, but solid – an eat-in kitchen so brightly done up in lemon
yellow that Charlie joked that he puckered whenever he walked in; a soothing
blue bathroom with a tub she lost so many hours in; two bedrooms; and a living
room with a fireplace that never worked right and filled the house with smoke
every time they used it (which was exactly once a year, in the fall, at
Charlie’s insistence that he’d fixed the problem). A buildout off the kitchen
that they’d planned to be a garage for the car had become a lounge with a bar,
a pool table and a refrigerator with a keg and working tap. Charlie knew that
moving out here to the beach would mean it would be harder to get their friends
from town to come down regularly, so he made it very enticing. And it worked,
with their weekends being filled with barbecues and card games from Easter to
Thanksgiving, and maybe Christmas and New Years if the weather was right.
Memories filled the little space so thickly that it was hard for Vi to move
from room to room as she checked each window lock again, checked the closet
with the furnace again, checked the water taps again to make sure the water was
still off (She’d had Charlie’s friend Ed come down the day before to winterize
the house, emptying the water lines, checking the thermostat and inspecting the
roof for issues).
She
reminded herself that it was temporary, that she’d be back in the
spring, but that was of little comfort: these memories were just going to fade
into the cold stillness of the empty cottage she would return to.
The sharp honk of a car horn nudged
her out of her daydream, and she opened her eyes, finding them wet with tears.
She was surprised, as if shocked awake, to find herself in the bedroom closet
clutching Charlie’s favorite red and black plaid shirt. She dried her eyes on
the sleeve, then turned to go. She stopped, snapped the shirt off the hanger,
bunched it up and shoved it in her purse, and left the room quickly.
At the door, she waved out to the
driver and gathered four blue suitcases onto the porch. The driver quickly got
out and ran to take the suitcases. “Hi Violet,” he said, and she snapped her
head up surprised at his familiarity. He saw her puzzled look. “I’m Trevor
West, Tootsie’s friend.”
Vi nodded and said “Oh,” a little
taken aback. “I thought she was sending an Uber.”
Trevor grabbed the two heaviest
suitcases in each hand. “Oh, yes, that’s me.” She watched him carry the bags
carefully to the car and put them in the trunk. He was tall and had to stoop
way down to push the bags into the trunk. He returned for the third bag and
extended his hand, which she took shyly. “Nice to meet you, Violet.”
“Everyone calls me Vi,” she said,
turning to shut the door. She locked the deadbolt with a key and put the key in
her purse. She turned back to Trevor. He was young, not even thirty, with thick
arms but a little paunch in the belly under a blue Buffalo Bills tee shirt. The
sun was in his eyes now, and he brushed one hand over a crown of short black twist
locs and adjusted the silver-framed eyeglasses with the other.
“It’s
been hot in the city,” he said, bending to take the bag. “But out here it’s
positively
steamy.”
Vi
followed him to the car. He secured the bag and slammed the trunk lid and was
surprised to find her in the back seat. “Vi, you’re welcome to ride up front.
It’s not a taxi.”
Vi waved to him. “I don’t mind,” she
said, but now she felt foolish, even though he said “as you wish” in a very
friendly tone suggestive of a chauffeur. Trevor backed the car out of the
driveway and slowly pulled away from the cottage, as if to allow Vi a last
moment to look back. But Vi kept her eyes forward. Into the future, she
thought.
An electronic voice from somewhere
was telling Trevor how to get back to the main road, and he was dutifully
following each direction. Once they’d gotten to the highway, he relaxed his
hands on the wheel. Vi waited for him to start talking but remained quiet.
Finally, she cleared her throat. “Trevor, you said?”
“Yes ma’am,” Trevor said, looking up
cheerfully into the rearview. He looked relieved that she was talking to him.
“Trevor West.”
“How do you know Iris?” She watched
Trevor’s eyes furrow.
“Iris?” He paused for a second,
wondering if he’d picked up the wrong woman.
“My sister,” Vi clarified. “Everyone
calls her Tootsie.” She saw his forehead relax and his eyes smile with
recognition.
“Toots! Of course,” he said with
relief. “I don’t think I ever knew her real name. Isn’t that odd?”
Vi laughed. “Oh, there’s a lot odd
about Toots,” she joked. “I never liked that nickname, though. Tootsie.
Sounds like a stripper’s name.”
Trevor laughed hard and loud at the
comment, and the car rumbled as it veered a bit onto the shoulder.
Vi laughed too. “I shouldn’t
complain,” she said. “I’m the one who gave her the name. I don’t remember, but
I was told that when I was four, I’d seen some old movie on TV where someone
kept saying ‘hiya, toots,’ and so whenever I’d see my baby
sister, I’d kiss her on the forehead and say ‘hiya, toots,’
which, of course, everyone found hilarious.”
Trevor grinned. “It’s adorable, is
what it is.” He laughed a little more, trailing off into silence as the car
headed down the lake shore road. He watched the scenery with interest as they
passed closed gas stations and crumbling old motels, vestiges of a time before
the Thruway carried people right past these little rest stops. The quest for hurry-up,
with destination the only goal, and with journey-be-damned, the
little once-charming places were now fading away, lost to the ages. He imagined
how grand it must have been in its heyday. “Do you have a nickname?” he
asked.
“First-borns don’t get nicknames,”
she said. “First-borns create panic. The best I got was ‘Vi.’ That’s
adorable, isn’t it?”
“I’ll call you Violet if you
prefer.”
Vi laughed. “It’s funny,” she said,
“I would have preferred Violet when I was young. ‘Vi’ sounded like an old
woman’s name. Now here I am – I’ve grown into it!”
Trevor waved a finger. “Now, now,”
he said, “You can’t spell vibrant without ‘Vi!’”
They both giggled at that, and she
thanked him. “You charmer,” she said playfully. Then she muttered: “Better than
‘Tootsie.’”
“Siblings,” Trevor said with a shake
of his head. “I’ve known Toots for years and years. Most of my life, when I
think about it.”
“You must be older than you look,”
Vi said with surprise.
“No, I grew up one street over, on
Lancaster Avenue. My dad was friends with Toots and her husband.”
“Your father knew Sam?”
“Very well.” Trevor said. He paused
for a minute, cautious. “My dad is Kirkland West, I don’t know –”
“Oh, my goodness,” Vi said, breath
escaping fast through the words. “Your dad was the police officer who found
Sam.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Trevor said. “Dad was
only two years on the job at the time. Toots was already cooking down at the
Camelot – Dad says it was a pretty nice place back in the day. Kind of divey,
now.”
“I’m
not surprised,” Vi said with an opinionated tone. “I’m sure I wouldn’t know,
anyway.”
Coming
into more populated areas, Trevor braked frequently for lights and traffic.
“Anyway, being a young single guy, he’d eat most of his meals down at the
Camelot. Sam would stop in to see Toots after work and Sam and dad would spend
hours talking. They were good friends.”
Vi had a lot of thoughts on the
matter of Kirkland West, and the police, and the entire handling of Sam
Gibson’s murder; a lot of those thoughts wanted to come out, and she tried hard
to keep them all in because she really had no idea how to get them out without
it sounding all wrong, and angry. “I guess I’m surprised to hear that,” she
managed. Her throat grew dry. “I guess I’m surprised that you’re her friend.”
She waved at the air as if to clear away her words and looked out the window.
She could see gulls rise and fall, and the lake was in view, wide and blue out
to the horizon. “I mean, I assume she doesn’t have much to do with your dad
anymore.”
She looked up in the mirror. Trevor
wasn’t looking at her, but his eyes didn’t suggest surprise or anger.
“My dad has always disagreed with
how the department handled the case,” he said evenly. “The press ran away with
some circumstantial conclusions –”
“Which were given to them by the
police, who didn’t do a whole lot to correct them.” Vi crossed her arms and
looked unwaveringly at Trevor’s eyes in the mirror.
“Yes,” Trevor sighed. “Yes. But that
wasn’t my dad. He was just a beat cop out on patrol. Basically, a rookie.”
“Yes, he was. Then.” Her tone
grew prickly. “But he didn’t stay a patrolman, did he?”
Trevor nodded in understanding. No,
Kirkland West had climbed up the ranks, retiring after heading the Buffalo
Homicide Squad for seven years. Trevor drove on in silence, past parks and
beaches, into the slowly receding remains of the old Bethlehem Steel plants.
“Vi, I understand the frustration. But I promise you that it haunts my dad
every single day. It’s an open case, there’s always hope. But that trail has
gone ice cold. Forty-some years.”
Vi relaxed her posture. “I’m sorry,”
she said. “I don’t mean to harangue you about your father. I just think about
Toots. So many years with no answers, her husband’s reputation dragged through
the mud. I just don’t know where she ever got the strength to deal with all of
it.”
“You’ve been through quite a bit
lately too, I’ve heard.”
Comments
Post a Comment