Chapter 13
Mrs. Heartbreak pulled her car into the driveway and shut the engine off. She was satisfied with the sale of her folk art to Vintage Cargo—she and John might have gravy for their bread this winter—but her mood was far from happy. She had just learned that her mother, Mrs. Hermione Rustingnuts of Dry Tortuga, Indiana, would be entering the federal Witness Protection Program as part of a plea bargain that permitted her to escape hard time in exchange for testifying against corn speculators charged with rigging fructose prices. Exactly when Mother Rustingnuts would go incognito wasn’t yet known, but it would be soon.
Mrs. Heartbreak would miss her mother, but she wasn’t surprised by the turn of events. Her mother had always led a complicated life, one that bore close resemblance to a checkerboard and, since Mrs. Rustingnuts is so old, it is probable that she is the original source for the phrase ‘a checkered past.’ She, Mrs. Heartbreak, supposed that she should be grateful that Mom’s penalty was Witness Protection instead of prison.
How odd, she thought, that she should be the “normal” child among three sisters, As a girl, and as a young women, and long before she had become the Fabulous Mrs. Heartbreak she was, as her near-normal father opined, ‘hell on wheels’ and ‘quite a handful.’ But she possessed, alone among her sisters and her mother, a self-regulating gyrocompass that had located the North Star sometime during early adulthood; consequently she had steered a straight course ever since.
I am tempted to go forward with the interesting stories that represent each of Mrs. Heartbreak’s sisters. But those stories, and these arresting women, including Mother Rustingnuts, are not germane to this book, and they are not listed among the Seven Problems we agreed not to solve at the beginning of this novel; and so, I will not add them to the list now. Each day, as we know, has trouble enough of its own.
Why I have bothered to bring the matter of Mother Rustingnuts’ situation up at all is that John is depending on the state of Mrs. Heartbreak’s mood to regulate her decision regarding his and Dr. Sloan’s request that they might borrow her White Chevy Van. For a while, all was well; she had a fat check in her pocket. Now, things look bleak: will money trump the familial ties that bind?
Of course it will! As the engine of her car tinked and cooled, she adjusted her mood to fit the reality of winter gravy. Yes, Mom might have trouble adjusting to life in Boise, or in Red Hook, New Jersey, but she always lands on her feet. It was just a matter of time before she cornered the numbers racket in whatever town the Feds decided to locate her and was back in business. Now, if only she could get John to Fly Right.
Getting John to fly right was her only occupation now that she had retired from superintending Heartbreak’s Pretty Good Books & Really Dreadful Coffee. She brought to this task a skills set that ought to have been sufficient; Mrs. Heartbreak was a fine linear thinker and would have made a competent engineer or airline pilot, especially if straight lines were required to execute a design or movement from A to B.
Sadly, John is not a linear thinker but rather, has leased space to a mind so disorganized that it more closely resembles a city dump than a source of cognition. God only knows (exactly!) what goes on inside that messy jumble sale.
Last night for example, Mrs. Heartbreak had commented, casually—over one of her gourmet dinners—that our technology driven financial sector was in danger of imminent collapse. Money and the records of same would vanish!
“We’re over due, John,” she exclaimed, “for getting high-jacked by Wall Street sharpies or thrown into chaos by terrorists. They’ll crash our networks and drain our bank accounts. We’ll be eating grass before you know it!”
John nodded.
Mrs. Heartbreak occasionally dipped into Chaos Theory. Her dips were only occasional, however, and almost always involved the loss of money and an ensuing grass diet. Beyond that, her world was orderly and she expected it to behave predictably. When it did not, and when John did not, she tended to view these episodes as the result of moral failure rather than accident and insisted on making lists and checking them twice.
Not surprisingly, Mrs. Heartbreak was both feared and respected by public officials, neighbors, vendors, customer service workers, heads of major corporations, the President of the United States, and on two occasions, God Almighty who did not, of course, fear her, but who had walked away with a fair degree of respect. John, needless to say, toed the line.
It helped that Mrs. Heartbreak was exceedingly beautiful and now, as a woman of a certain age, invested with a fair degree of domestic wisdom. It was doubtful that God, or the President, or even John, would put up with the same insistency from a plain woman, or one who was organically dim.
And so it is, finally, that we have reached the point in our story where John will ask Mrs. Heartbreak for the loan of her White Chevy Van. You have waited patiently for this moment to arrive, and you deserve to have the reward of my (finally) getting on with it.
But first, a history of the Chevrolet Motor Corporation.
Just kidding.
“Dear,” John greeted Mrs. Heartbreak, as she came through the gate and into the backyard. He had quickly gotten Sharon off the phone and was about to pop the question (ha ha!) when he observed the frown on her attractive face. Hmmn, he thought. Perhaps this was not the right time.
“Are you okay? You look a bit frazzled.”
“No, I’m fine. Just a bit of bother with Mother.”
John nodded. He knew better than to ask.
“Things went well at Vintage Cargo, I assume then,” John stated. “May I also assume gravy for our winter bread?”
“You may indeed. And perhaps the odd spud or two.”
“My!”
“Yes, it was a good trip,” she replied. And then, “By the way, there was a scruffy man standing in the church garden when I drove past. He was wearing dirty Bermuda shorts and a ‘Jesus is coming! Look Busy!’ T shirt. Awfully tacky, John!”
“It’s Mr. Fiacre, a visitor. I’ve given him permission to live in the garden shed. Down on his luck at the moment. On his uppers, so to speak. Broke.”
“Does Robert know?” She was referring to Robert West, the man responsible for the church’s upkeep, as well as for the maintenance of the church’s outbuildings and yard. “Robert will certainly not approve of that execrable T shirt.”
“I haven’t spoken to Robert yet,” John said, somewhat defensively. “I’m sure he’ll approve; he has a soft heart, and Fiacre has agreed to work in the garden and help keep the yard tidy.”
“Well, please tell Mr. Fiacre to improve his appearance. I detest scruffy men. If the two of you are seen together people will think the First Christian Church is hosting a Hobo Convention.”
Mrs. Heartbreak moved toward the house, away from John and his impending request. He took note, in an entirely salacious way, of the sway of her hips, and the loveliness of her figure. Admittedly, John’s observation of these attributes might be viewed as sexual content and, consequently and seemingly a violation of the NO SVSL rules. However, the Heartbreaks have a license and are therefore permitted the occasional lapse. But I digress…
“My dear,” John began, tentatively. “Dr. Sloan and I require the loan of your van. We need to go to Wall Eye, on a matter of some importance.”
“Importance? What?”
John hesitated, but decided in for a penny, in for a pound. “We go on a Mission from God. Our task is to save Normal Christianity.”
Mrs. Heartbreak rolled her eyes. “Sometimes I just don’t understand you, John. It was a simple question.”
Then, “Tell Sharon hello for me. And tell her, please, to keep you out of trouble.” She went into the house, closing the door behind with more force than seemed required. Jane Russell, the Jack Russell Terrier, looked up at John, inquiringly.
“Yes,” John said. “That was a near miss.”
