Howard Elman's Farewell

A Mother’s Will

A MOTHER’S WILL % howard returned to Re In Car Nation via Billy’s snowmobile. He had claimed it in part because he thought he might piss off Critter enough to smoke him out and in part because driving it pleased him. The next day it snowed again, another six inches. Two just-right storms in a row. From Priscilla Landry Howard acquired a New Hampshire snowmobile map and discovered he could drive the snowmobile all the way to Goffstown, New Hampshire. He also learned from Priscilla that the family general Store had been sold to, guess who, plc. It was a three-hour snowmobile jaunt through the woods with numerous road crossings (routes 63, 12, 9, 123, 137, 202, 47, 136, and 13) to Delphina’s place in Goffstown, and he was tired but happy when he arrived Sunday at noontime. Delphina rented an apartment from her eldest son Isaac, a successful businessman who lived in Massachusetts somewhere. The main feature of the neighborhood was the state women ’s prison down the road. He pulled in just as Delphina was getting back from church. She was dressed in her Sunday best. Howard didn’t like worship services very much, but he liked the way women looked when they went to church, all dressed up but no sexy stuff. It was the kind of look that gave him hope for the human species if not for the existence of a creator . Delphina used to have one of those va-va-voom profiles, but in recent years she’d lost some va and added a too much voom. Her face reminded him of an Irish setter’s, kind of dumb but friendly, no meanness . She gave Howard a look that he was familiar with these days from people who hadn’t seen him in quite a while. The look said, “My how Howard Elman has aged.” “Nice place,” Howard said. 223 “My son Isaac found it for me. ’Course he does charge me rent, but it’s reasonable.” “He did okay for himself in Fitchburg, or so I heard,” Howard said. “He does make a good living, little on the shady side, I hate to say, and he refuses to have anything to do with New Hampshire or his father.” “Protecting himself, I imagine,” Howard said. “Whatever happened to your sister, Soapy? Delphina laughed, “Mercy, don’t call her Soapy. She’ll have a conniption fit. She’s Shelia these days. After Birch eased LaChance out as Trust steward, he and Shelia moved out West to work for some ­ organic-this and organic-that outfit. She made me an auntie, twice over.” They went inside and, just as she had promised in her email, Del­ phina made him Sunday dinner. While Delphina futzed in the kitchen, Howard sniffed around in the parlor. The place was dominated by dolls. All kinds and they were everywhere. In frames on the walls. In arrangements on the floor. On shelves where other people put books and knickknacks. Sitting on chairs. And what’s this? A turned bowl of elm wood in the early stages of warping that held junky stuff—stubby pencils, cheapo reading glasses, couple spools of thread, lottery tickets, receipt for an umbrella, prescription for antidepressant, small statuette of St. Anthony, patron saint of lost objects. Howard hollered into the kitchen, “Present from Critter?” Delphina turned and looked through the door space between the two rooms at Howard holding the bowl. “Yes, how did you know?” “Just a lucky guess. He’s trying to get back into your good graces.” “Yes, kinda pathetic, in-nit?” Delphina said. Howard put the bowl back on the table beside the easy chair. Well, at least your elm tree has been put to good use. Yeah, some consolation. Whydoes“consolation”combobulatesoindubitablywith“constipation”? Like Dot McCurtin says, life’s surprises keep me bopping. Howard took off his boots and lay down on his back on the couch, sharing it with two dolls. He put on his reading glasses and looked at the Manchester Union Leader, holding the newspaper in his hands 224 outstretched, like you put in a storm window. A gun shop in Peterborough had been burglarized in the middle of the night. Police theorized that the thieves were professionals, because they had been able to disconnect the alarm system and took no money but only weapons, including a doozy-Uzi submachine gun. Looks like...