Page 32 of The Bootlegger’s Bride

A frigid, dead-still night with temperatures dropping into the teens.

Hazel Marie Robinson Nowak, attired in her black cocktail dress, sat on the divan before the fireplace gazing into its flames.

On the coffee table before her rested a stack of library books, her lap desk, dried flowers in a porcelain vase, and a fifth of Four Roses bourbon.

She raised the cocktail glass grasped in her right hand to her lips and drank down more liquor as if by habit, not savoring it.

The fire mesmerized her, her mind a blank. Then a log popped, and she snapped out of it. Released from the flames, her dark reality returned full force, a bleakness that painted everything a monotone gray and stretched as far into the future as she could see.

She set down her drink and reached for the lap desk. She slid it open to retrieve stationery and a fountain pen. She squared the cream-colored pages before her and wrote:

My dearest Helen,

Never could we imagine how life might play out given its serendipity.

Now, however, I’ve realized that the seeming randomness is but a myth, cloaking mischievous Fate.

In my case after my day in the sun a pre-ordained rank of double-blank dominoes falling one after another like black tombstones, revealing God’s dark sense of humor.

Another dead Indian as they say when the bottle empties, another vacant vessel.

But no burial mound for this Cherokee princess.

Better a Viking funeral (a first for Long Lake, surely), to be consumed by flames (ashes to ashes, eh?) and leave no trace.

Alas, not likely.

I apologize for the somber tone this letter is taking.

I cannot help it. The bleakness speaks through me; I am its slave.

I cannot stem the futility and flatness of endeavors on my part and on my behalf to cure my malaise.

The psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, preachers, well-meaning friends, and even my own dear sister stand impotent against the dark wave in which I flounder.

You are a good soul, Sis, the finest. A.J.

too is a good boy, a brave lad, who will fare better with your care and love than mine.

My life has lost its bloom and atrophied into a desiccated and gnarled vine that strangles everyone it touches.

All of you will more likely flourish without my presence, without the pain and shame I spread, darkening the lives of my son, my sister, my silent parents.

And it now grows even darker. Can you picture my bringing another child into the world, the dubious spawn of yet another killer?

Would Cain (read A.J.) then slay his sibling, this unwanted and star-crossed second son?

The ironic hand of Fate again squaring things, settling scores, fostering satanic justice.

No, it is just too much. I must nip it in the bud (since I seem to be cultivating agricultural metaphors tonight).

Although I have been sliding downhill for some nine years now, my most precipitous and ultimate decline came when I began frequenting The Blue Note.

I thought it safer than drinking in St. Louis and having to decide each night which of the two bridges looming before me was the one I was driving on.

Conversely, at The Blue Note whenever I really got loaded Richard or Karl or one of the band (or an obliging customer) would drive me home.

And there were plenty of guys to dance with.

Richard didn’t care. Though I didn’t advertise it he knew I sometimes slept with one or another.

Nonetheless he never said anything about it.

I didn’t care that he didn’t care. A dark and cynical relationship all around.

(Don’t ask what I got out of it. Not sure I could answer.

“Convenience” doesn’t quite justify it.)

And keeping with the blackness theme, there looms the threat of blackmail.

Of course, I admit to profound ignorance when it comes to the ways of the world, particularly the criminal world where my dear departed husband traveled.

What do I know of bootleggers, stolen whiskey, hit men, loan sharks, and leg-breakers?

Nothing. Yet now I must answer threats germinated in that world poised to undermine the financial wellbeing of my son.

However, they are threats that I seemingly have the power to quell by the simple expedient of ceasing to exist.

As did my dear Janusz—cease to exist, that is—thanks in part to my na?ve interference.

When he wished to go to sea with Bogdan I couldn’t bear the thought of our separation, fragile little thing that I was (and have since proven to be).

So in effect—given the vagaries of the draft board and the long arm of Providence reaching across to slap my petulant little face—I sent my soul mate off to die in the mud of France while Bogdan sailed home hearty and healthy, all thanks to my shortsighted selfishness and hubris.

I just could not leave things well enough alone.

If there is a just God (I’ve already divined there is not a merciful One) I suspect, I will get it good and hard when we meet.

As to that meeting… Nothing so sinful as despair and suicide, I am told. Or so criminal either, at least in Illinois, where by statute it is considered murder. (I’ve checked.)

However, one desires that nothing would call into question A.J.’s windfall as my beneficiary nor stain his psyche further by his mother’s willful abandonment of him. So something seemingly unintentional to end my soul’s tenure hereabouts (meaning lush Planet Earth).

For example, a Buick colliding with a thick tree, a sturdy old maple perhaps.

(And another drunk driving charge, although this one posthumous and unpunishable, at least by the legal system.) Or, say, an inebriated stumble down the lake bank in the cold dark night, resulting in concussion, unconsciousness, and fatal hypothermia. Or something similar.

Since I long for a purportedly accidental exit I can hardly let you read these incriminating musings on my self-destruction, Sis, without your promise to burn the letter immediately upon reading.

And though I trust you implicitly in such matters of honor, I sense I should let you off the hook.

I can’t see my letter lightening your load in any way.

So I will destroy this missive first and myself second.

In the interim I shall fly these words to you telepathically.

Somewhere over the rainbow

Skies are blue…

But not here. I leave you for now and forever, dearest Helen. I doubt that you will see me in heaven.

Love,

Hazel

She drank down more bourbon, stood with effort in stockinged feet, and carried the three-page letter to the fireplace. There she fed the pages to the fire one by one, watching each flame, curl, shrivel, and blacken.

She found her black high heels beside the couch and slipped her feet into them. Next she moved to the hat tree by the back door and donned her burgundy overcoat with fox-fur collar. Then she poured herself another and stepped out into the cold, which she barely felt, moving toward the frozen lake.