LILY MEISTERLINK OR HOW HARD IT IS TO LET THE PAST DIE

     “You had to see her, to observe her for a while, to appreciate the depth of her lunacy.  With her, first impressions were always wrong.  That’s because she had a way about her, an outward easiness and friendliness that made people like her when they first met her.  She had that ability to make people—other women, especially—take her side in things, to make partisans of them in her ‘cause.’  She liked always to number the ‘important’ women in town as her ‘sisters.’  Though if you talked to any of these sisters of hers, they would have been surprised to know they were intimate with her.  They would have told you that she was a fine person, true blue, and all that.  But ‘intimate’ they weren’t, and they’d have raised an eyebrow and gotten a shocked expression on their faces.  I know this, because I had happened on a number of occasions to have brought her up in conversation and made that very observation to some of these sisters of hers, and that’s what I got in response.  But it was different with men, especially single men, most especially older single men, those who were wary of women.  Other types were non-discriminating enough to be taken in by their first impressions.

     “But that’s neither here nor there.  I want you to see her, get an image of her fixed in your head, before I tell you more.  Her name was, and this is the truth, God makes things work out like this—God or some other power—Lily Meisterlink.  That’s the truth.   Contemplate that name, if you will.  While you’re doing it, let me fill in a few blanks.  Lily Meisterlink was fifty years old.  She thought she looked thirty, but she looked more like sixty.  She acted like she looked thirty.  And that was one of the things about her that made the more observant take that second look, you know what I mean? the look of sudden interest, like here, for once, is something worth observing?  She thought it was her feminine magnetism that aroused that look in men, the observant kind, the kind she was, of course, interested in.  That incongruity assailed you from the start.  At first it made you smile, but after you had known her for a while, the smile vanished.

     “Lily.  She was plump in all the wrong places.  Flat chested, big hipped, belly proud, and thick thighed.  That’s a picture.  She was blond, too—the dried alfalfa kind of blond, you know.  She could do nothing with that hair but flatten it on her head and put it in a bun, which she stuck all kinds of things into to make the back of her head interesting.  I hate to say it, you know.  But that was the more normal part of her head.  When you got round to the other side, you wanted to sort of scream for what you saw there.  Her face was oval once but had become puffy with age and fat, was pale and pinkish in the cheeks, and weird as weird.  What made it weird was the fact that she had these eyes that were much too small in proportion to the rest of her face, and what she did with these eyes, well, a makeup artist in Hollywood could never have dreamed it up.  She outlined them in black eyeliner!  Those sesame seeds!  No mascara to give her a sense of lashes, no other makeup on her face.  Just those small blacklined sesame seeds resting above those puffy, white, pink-blotched cheeks.  When you saw her for the first time, you couldn’t help but to stare.  She thought she was knocking you over.  She would come up to a stranger whose jaw was hanging and ‘get to know’ him—that is, she got intimate.  Lily Meisterlink.”

     “You make her out worse than she was, I gather.  But I know or see the picture you’re drawing.  She’s on in years and desperate and doing ridiculous things to find a companion.  Hers is not a new story.  What makes her different?”

     “Everyone is different.  Lily is more different than most.  For one thing she was a user.  She often took credit for Lucia’s accomplishments at work, and Lucia was always too good hearted to set the record straight.  For another, when you talked with her, she had a way of turning the conversation to the subject that most absorbed her, herself.  What makes her story worth telling?  That’s the question you’re asking?”

     “I guess it is.  From the way you speak of her, I can tell this is going to be as much your story as hers.  You didn’t like her, did you?  Maybe that’s what makes it worth telling.  You do tell stories! don’t you?”

     “What do you mean by that?”

     “I mean you’ve entertained us with your stories for years now.  A story is a story, not a report, and you have to make up things as you go along to keep us interested.  So how true is this story you’re going to tell about Lily Meisterlink?  Is that her real name, by the way?”

     “Real as real.  It’s real if I say it is.”

     “Ah, I see.  It’s all fiction, I see it now.”

     “You boob!  Asking the question ruins it all.  Lily is her real name.  Meisterlink is her real name.  That’s something you can check out, you know.”

     “It was the wrong thing to say, George,” Mary interjected.  “I apologize for Richard’s crassness.  We do like your stories, and Lily’s seems like it’s going to be a fine story.  We want to hear it.”

     “That’s because you’re a woman and can’t wait to find out how Lily ended up,” Richard said.

     “What does being a woman have to do with it?” Mary objected.

     “Women love to gossip, and that’s what this story about Lily is, after all.  Gossip about a woman’s doings.  You can’t rest until you’ve heard all about it.”

     “That’s not fair.  Are you saying that men don’t gossip?  Is that what you’re saying?  Because if that’s what you’re saying, Richard, I have to wonder about you.”

She said this looking at George. 

“Well, there’s gossip and there’s gossip.”

     “You mean there’re two kinds?  Men’s gossip and women’s gossip?  And men’s is better, I suppose?”

     “I didn’t say that.”

     “Well, what then?  What was the point of making the remark?”

     “I’d really like to get back to Lily,” George said.

     “Tell me that men’s gossip is better than women’s,” Mary said, ferociously.

     “That isn’t what I meant,” Richard said.

     “Well, tell us what you meant,” Mary said.

     “Stop, now, if you want to hear about Lily,” George pleaded.

     “I meant that men and women talk about different things, that’s all.  Why are you getting so bothered?”

     “Because it’s not true.  Simply that,” Mary said.

     “Are you going to argue now over what men and women gossip about!” George demanded.

     “We’re not arguing, just clearing the air,” Mary said.

     They gathered once a month to play bridge.  George and his wife Lucia, who had been silent during this little spat between Richard and Mary, played poorly, and usually tired of the game long before Richard and Mary did.  George would rescue themselves from the boredom by fixing drinks for everyone, whether they were at Richard’s and Mary’s house or their own, and begin to tell stories.  He had, seemingly, an endless acquaintance with life’s oddballs and misfits, dropouts and sufferers, and, embellishing their oddities and the zigs and zags their peculiar lives had taken, he told about their downfalls and torments.  In George’s stories about these people, life was a venture into the hidden where the unexpected ruled and where the only thing one could have confidence in was the mystery of the irrational.  He had a way of telling stories, too, that pleased his listeners—Richard and Mary had come to love their bridge games as much for George’s stories as for the win at the table.  

     “We were living in Illinois at the time,” George continued.  “That was some years ago, now.    I happened to remember all about Lily because I’ve just heard from a friend of mine from those days and he told me that Lily had passed away.  We reminisced for a while, and that’s why she comes back to me now so fresh and vivid.”

     “Good, good, George,” Mary said.  “See, Richard?   Lily’s gone and he’s reminiscing.”  She winked at George, like a conspirator among conspirators, and George smiled. 

     “Lily worked with Lucia in a non-profit senior citizens’ service, providing meals, visitations, transportation, that sort of thing.  Lucia was one of the main organizers and actually hired Lily.  From the start, I told her she had made a mistake.  But Lucia is a sweetheart and never sees the dark side of people and events. . . .”

     Lucia had stopped smiling at that.  Mary laughed and said George was right, and Lucia got up and pulled his hair, saying, “Is there a dark side to this?”  Whereupon George, freeing himself, got up to make more drinks, and said from the kitchen, “Lucia sees in time just enough to escape ruin.  It must be a survival thing.”

     “Lily wasn’t as bad as you’re making her out,” Lucia, raising her voice, replied.

     “But then there wouldn’t be a story,” Richard said.  “Lily has to be ‘BAD’ or there wouldn’t be anything to tell us about.  So, it’s all fiction!  It’s always all fiction.  Lucia’s given you away, George,” Richard said, continuing to bait George as he returned with four refilled glasses on a tray.

     “Every word I say about Lily really is a lie,” he said to Richard.  “Know why?”

     “Why?”

     “Because she was unfathomable, and everything I say about what she did and how she did it is only my interpretation of what I saw and heard.  She was such a loon that I can’t say anyone ever really understood her, even Lily herself.”

     “There, I think, you’re right,” Lucia said.  “I never understood her.  She was an eeeNIGGma.  But I liked her anyway.”

     George resisted replying to that.  He said, about Lily, “The story I’m going to tell begins when one of her  ‘sisters,’ the wife of a judge, promised Lily she would fix her up with one of her husband’s colleagues, another judge who had been divorced for some time and was about Lily’s age, lonely, and looking for a companion.  This woman’s name was Ann Gunderson, and she was herself a bit wacky.  In some ways Ann and Lily were sisters.  But Ann was innocent wacky, the kind of person who acted like she was everyone’s best friend, even if you had only just met her.  The second time I had met Ann, she actually hugged me.  Then she introduced me to half a dozen people as Lucia’s husband and her good friend George.  Ann was a hard-working volunteer, though, and really did know just about everyone there was to know in town.  Everyone was indebted to her in one way or another, and I guess this way of hers explains her interest in Lily.  Ann took in people like lost dogs.

     “So Ann had a dinner party and invited Lily and the judge and sat them next to each other.  Lily had the judge, a person one would expect to be expert in discerning people’s character, eating out of her pudgy little hand by the time they finished their soup.  Romance was blossoming.  Lily found out the judge liked to garden and suddenly became an expert in cucumbers and radishes.  Lucia and I sat across the table from them, and I had no choice but to eavesdrop.  Actually, I listened hard to Lily, fascinated by how she worked that poor man.  She was telling him that in California, organic gardeners knew how to raise cucumbers without warts on their skin, which made them easier to peel and allowed you to pack more into a pickle jar, and she wanted to tell him the secrets of this cultivation.  He was charmed!  Cucumbers without warts was something he just never had contemplated, and now, a whole new topic of life had opened up to him!  The judge was a little crazy too, or he knew how to humor a woman.  I won’t bother to tell you what she told him about radishes.  That’s a topic I’ll leave to your imaginations, except that she did make a claim about radishes and male virility that had me nearly spilling wine on my shirt.  But that’s Lily—her imagination tended to move in the paths of sympathetic magic.  Radishes—little red spheres with a white tendril like a thread protruding from their slightly elongated bottoms.  I won't tell you what she thought they resembled.”

     “George, George, the tone in which you say that suggests I was right about you’re not liking that woman,” Richard interrupted.  “Did she really say what you’re implying about radishes?  That’s rich, very rich.  How did the judge take it?  Did he go along with that?”  Richard was impatient and testy tonight, so George had to back up and tell about the judge.

     “The judge was very gentlemanly about it all.  He hit it off with Lily.  Did he believe what she said about radishes?  The man was a gardener, Richard!  But he was also lonely and depressed and Lily was a promise of something new.  What did he really think?  Who knows?  Who cares?  What happened is what matters.  What did happen?  The story tells, Richard, just listen.”

     So they settled into their chairs, sipped their drinks, and George continued.   

“Seeing the judge and Lily hitting it off so well, Ann was all aglow with her success.  She presided over dinner and conversation afterwards like some eighteenth-century salon matron in Paris.  She just beamed and scattered good will like rose petals at our feet all evening long.  

     “There was, however, a worm in Lily’s apple.  The judge’s name was McGrath, Boyd McGrath.  A man doesn’t end up divorced at his time of life for no reason.  Being a judge is hard on the nerves and conscience, if you think about it, what with having to deal everyday with people you have to punish, with people who should be punished but who escape their fates, and with innocent people who get caught up in incompetent practice of law, but whom you can’t save and keep your job at the same time.  Judge McGrath became a whopping alcoholic.  Always a gentleman, like I said before, he had the good sense and self control not to drink during the day or during those evenings when he had to engage in public business or socialize.  Otherwise he was usually plastered by ten in the evening.  Lucia and I knew him and his ex-wife before their divorce, and afterward, Lucia kept in touch with her.  Poor Boyd had a black time of it, what with his job, his drinking, and the divorce.  There was no respite.  Afterward, he had at least the peace of a quiet home to return to and get smashed in.  His life was about to get blacker still.  Like a surfer launching himself into the barrel of a wave, the judge stood up when the party was over and offered to take Lily home.

     “Well, the judge was in love again.  He began eating radishes in the courtroom, looking as distracted as a crow on a telephone pole that spies a piece of tin foil in the grass below.  The State’s Attorney and defense councils working his docket began to complain, and Judge Gunderson had to have a talk with him.”

     “No kidding?” Richard said, interrupting again.  “He fell for that story then?  What a guy!  That’s funny, George, really funny.  Was the judge really that simpleminded?  Or was he really that far gone over Lily?”

     “The problem with the judge,” George continued, “was his drinking, so whether he believed Lily or was grasping at straws, I’ll leave to you to decide.  I have my own opinion about that, but I’ll keep it to myself.  Anyway, his problem wasn’t going to change overnight, no matter how many radishes he ate.  But none of this bothered Lily.  She moved in on him.  I’d have given anything to have been a fly on their bedroom wall in those days! 

     “It wasn’t long, though, before Lily started coming to the Senior Citizens’ Center all hung over in the morning.  One day, she had to take meals out in the little Brink’s truck they converted into a catering vehicle, and she disappeared.  The police found her later in the day sleeping off a binge in the front seat of the truck, its front end hanging over the bank of the river, and its rear wheels dug in up to the hubcaps. 

     “Lily wasn’t going to lose her man, no matter what.  So if he was an alcoholic, why she’d become one too.  Her pale face got all blotched and rashy-looking and stayed that way, and those little eyes shrunk even further into her cheeks.  It wasn’t long before Ann Gunderson rounded up Lily’s ‘sisters’ to do something about this turn of events, about them--that is, the judge and Lily.  True female partisanship!  They set out to save Lily, never mind the judge, but she was unaware of needing saving, feeling like she had nested where she wanted to--right along side that slumbering crow.  Let those beware who planned to interfere!

     “The judge got up one morning and saw Lily, or, rather, he saw two Lilys, getting ready to leave before him, which was unusual, since he left at seven and she usually not till nine.  He stopped and stared, puzzled, wondering if he wasn’t dreaming or if he wasn’t still drunk.  But Lily had left the house, walking backward.  The Lilys had, that is.  This is what she did: the women tried to talk sense into her, Ann Gunderson especially.  This match-making had gone all awry, Ann said, her not realizing that the judge was so far gone into his cups.  Lily couldn’t go on this way showing up for work three sheets to the wind, cranking down the Main with headache and nausea, and getting lost in the streets of this little town.  People were not only talking, but the seniors were afraid of her, and that was the ultimate verdict on this relationship.  She had to leave Judge McGrath.  Now Lily--she was content with the judge, she admired him, and if she drank with him at night, that was no one’s business but theirs, she thought.  She had her grappling hooks dug in and drawing blood, and she regarded that metaphorical rope hanging like a limp tail off the judge’s backside as her life line.

     “Now the mystery of all this is the method Lily found to solve her problem.  She got up that morning hours before Boyd.  When she did her hair, she put the bun on the very top of her head and fastened to the back of her head a pair of those eye glasses one finds at amusement parks, you know the kind—they have a nose attached, eyes painted on the lenses, eyebrows fixed to the top rims of the glasses.  Then she wore a second pair on her face.  She had put a stuffed bra on her back and then slipped into a sweater with buttons and open collar on the front and back.  She wore a pair of slacks similarly constructed to be zipped and buttoned both on the front and back, along with a belt with two buckles, appropriately placed.  The only thing she lacked was shoes going both directions, and I guess she did because she couldn’t figure out how to make them.

     “This is what the bleary-eyed judge saw walking out of the house that morning.  He saw her coming and going from the bathroom, saw her front and back, sideways, and bending over.  He was alarmed, as anyone would be, wondering if he hadn’t been invaded by aliens who took over the likeness of Lily, but didn’t quite know how to do it.  When she left, he ran to the door, but because he was still in his underwear, he couldn’t follow her.  So he ran to the phone, called the police, and asked if they couldn’t send a prowler to check her out and see she was ok.

     “It being too early for the senior center, Lily went to the courthouse and walked right in on Judge Gunderson.  He looked up from his chamber desk and saw her wearing those glasses, and for a whole two minutes he didn’t know who she was.  But then Lily said, her voice sounding rational, ‘You tell your wife that I’m both coming and going, and that I know the difference, even if she don’t.’  Then she turned on her heels and flashed the other side at him, and he stood up in amazement, gasping, ‘What the hell!’ and fell right down again into his chair.  Lily extended her hand backward, as though to shake hands with the judge to say goodbye, but instead, she grabbed his nose, and he snorted and sputtered that she was cracked in the head!  But Lily just stomped out of the place.  This was the beginning of a very fine day in that sleepy little town.”

     “George, George, you really didn’t like that woman!  You know, you haven’t answered me about that.  You’ve let that remark pass several times, now.  You make poor Lily out to be ridiculous.  What do you think, Lucia?  Is he maligning Lily?”

     “I don’t talk about people or their foibles.  I’ve learned that getting along is more valuable than getting a laugh, and I let people be themselves without judgment from me about their characters.  But Lily is a special case.  She never did anything to George to make him dislike her so.  She did use me, though, ‘exploited’ is the word I think George would say.  Her ‘use’ of me is what gets George so riled, even after all these years.  So he is partial in the telling of her story.  But, Richard, so far he’s kept this story pretty tame.  There’s a lot more he could have said about Lily. . . .”

     “Economy,” George said.  “Only what’s relevant to tonight’s tale.”

     “But, but, what did she do to you, Lucia?  Tell us, yes, yes, before George goes on.  I want to understand that tone of George’s.  That would make for a better story, too.”

     “Well, a number of Lily’s ‘sisters’ were on our board,” Lucia began.  “As a non-profit we had to have a board of trustees—you know how that works, to get a charter and the tax status, we had to have people who assumed responsibility for our building, our fund raising, our vehicles, all that.  Well, I would call meetings of the staff once a week and plan our activities.  Lily always came to these, as she was supposed to.  But then she would tell her ‘sisters’ on the board what ‘she’ was planning for the week, and of course those women talked with the other board members.  So all the organizational work, the progress in extending our services, the efforts to improve our fleet and get meals out, everything, in fact, that I contributed to that center was credited to Lily, and after a while, people wondered why they needed me around.  The problem was that Lily really couldn’t have gotten the center through a single day left to herself.  But Lily often remarked that her influence on the board saved my job.  I used to think she was necessary to keep the board off my back.  But that was before I found that it was Lily riding me that was the problem.  George, now, he always disliked Lily.  But after we found out about her and the board, George detested her.  But so far, his story is pretty accurate, even to his ‘embellishments,’” she laughed.  “They haven’t been enough.  He’s holding back, I think, afraid to let his bile up too much or he’ll spoil Lily’s story.”

     “I see now.  Lily was one of those women who earned the name ‘bitch.’”

     “No, no, Richard,” George said.  “You’ve got it wrong, as usual.  Lily wasn’t a bitch.  That’s a different type altogether.  Lily wasn’t mean, selfish, grasping, violent, or any of those things.  She was screwed up.  What she did to Lucia maybe was bitchy, but I don’t think so.  Lily was weak, emotionally starved, and lonely.  But worse still, she was incompetent.  And she was delusional.  She was pretty pathetic, taken all at once.  I disliked her, true.  But I pitied her, too.  Things went from bad to worse for Lily.”

     Mary got up from the card table and made another round of drinks.  The others followed her into the kitchen.  They stood around for a few moments, sipping their drinks, swirling the gin over the lime slices and ice.  Then they went into the living room.  The others sat while George stood in the doorway, one hand holding the glass, the other in his pocket.

     “When Lily left Judge Gunderson’s, she went directly to his home to confront Ann.  That, I think, was a move she didn’t plan.  I’m not certain she had a plan.  I think she was in the grip of a fear that was too great for her to think rationally about.  She left Boyd on a mission to save her relationship with him, but what she did imperiled it the more.  Ann, remember, was at the heart of this whole affair, getting them together and then trying to separate them.  Well, she was sound asleep when Lily arrived.”

George had crossed the living room and sat beside Lucia on the couch.  “Lily tried to get into the house, but it was locked up tight.  She banged on the door and rang the bell, but Ann was upstairs with the windows and door to her bedroom closed and couldn’t have heard a thing even if she was awake.  A neighbor, however, heard Lily making a racket around the Gunderson home, looked out, and saw Lily in her crazy getup.  By that time, however, Lily was getting frustrated and frustrated people do stupid things.

“Ann’s bedroom windows look out over the back yard, so Lily had gone in the back and climbed up on a picnic table on the patio and started to sing.  In an eerie alto she quavered out some unmelodious notes in a paroxysm of screeching words she made up as she assumed the stereotypical tragic gestures of the opera.   Now, a policeman sent on the prowl after the call from Judge McGrath had spotted her turning up Foster Avenue, where the Gundersons lived.  He watched her antics out front from his car and quietly followed her to the back and took in this weird performance.  Seeing Lily up on that table in her getup, carrying on like a treeful of screech owls, he knew she was too much for him.  So he returned to his vehicle and called in backup.  Meanwhile, the neighbor had phoned Ann, who, still half asleep, peeked out her window and saw Lily down below.  Not knowing who it was, she threw open her window and shouted at the apparition to get off her table and go away or she’d call the police.

“At the mention of the police, Lily sobered up.  With considerably more effort than it took to get on it, Lily inched her way down off the table and headed for the bushes.  When the cop returned, Lily was gone.  She had made her way into the neighbor’s yard, crossed that into the yard next to it, and then headed for the street.  Before the backup arrived, Lily had made it to her car, sped up the block, turned, and was gone.

“I suppose one might argue that all this was a grand gesture made by a desperate woman out of love, and in this way find in the chinks and cracks of Lily’s madness a little light to help one sympathize with her.  I suppose one might argue that, except for what happened next.

“Remember, Lily didn’t have much of a plan.  She was in a turmoil over what she saw as a doublecross by her best friend and ‘sister’ Ann.  Her getup was intended, no doubt, to dramatize this double dealing.  The idea that Ann was calling the police outraged her, for she saw herself--I have to imagine that she did see herself--coming before the bench, where Boyd would have to pass judgment on her.  That all her doings might lead to this humiliation came upon her and sobered her up, but they led also to a grievance against Ann that wouldn’t settle.  Lily had gone murderously insane. 

“She made her way to the gas station on the highway where they had restrooms that could be entered from outside--the others, in town, all being convenience-store types that had inside restrooms.  Lily figured she couldn’t go home.  She mistakenly believed Ann had recognized her and called the police.  Ann hadn’t recognized her, though.  She didn’t know who it was screeching down there and was far from thinking it might be Lily.  She was, after all, a real innocent.  Nor did she call the police.  The only one up to that time who had called the police about Lily was Boyd, and that was because he wasn’t sure who or what had left the house.

“In the women’s restroom, Lily undid her hair, letting it hang straight like wild hay growing from her head, and did the best she could to disguise her getup, removing the stuffed bra from her back and letting the blouse hang over her jeans to cover her behind.  Looking only a little weird, she got back in her car, drove directly to the courthouse, and swapped her car for Boyd’s, her having keys for both cars, as did Boyd—they had gotten that close in the short time they lived together.

“Having changed her identity enough to roam town unmolested, she drove back to Ann’s and parked on the street a few houses down, where she thought she would be incognito.  Poor Lily.  She had parted company with reason.  As she sat there, her sense of slight and of doublecross grew until she had conceived a necessity to get even.  She could easily have gone to Ann’s and rang her doorbell.  But Lily assumed Ann knew it was her on the picnic table and thus had to devise a surreptitious entry into her house.  So, she opened the trunk of Boyd’s car, looking for a tool of some sort, and found his golf clubs.  She took one of these and went to the back of Ann’s house, where she used it to break open the screen door and break the glass on the inside door. 

“Ann was up and fixing herself breakfast, but she had a habit of leaving the radio on in the kitchen and the TV on in the living room, so she couldn’t hear Lily breaking in.  When Lily walked into the kitchen holding that golf club, looking as murderous and weird as a woman can, Ann looked at her expectantly for a whole two seconds before realizing she was in danger.  Her first impulse during those seconds was to ask if Lily needed help, but that impulse was suspended as she watched Lily approach.

“Lily came at her without a word, straight for her, wielding the golf club.  She struck at Ann’s head, missing her but hitting the refrigerator instead, leaving a massive dent.  Ann was all eyes and filled with adrenaline. She pushed Lily backward, causing her to lose balance, then raced upstairs, locked herself into her bedroom, grabbed her phone and called the police.  Meanwhile, Lily, realizing she had blown it and was now in real trouble, ran out of the house and back to Boyd’s car.  She threw the iron into the back seat where it got swallowed up by the bra, jumped behind the wheel, started her up, and sped off.  She was leaving town, heading as far as she could get with the gas she had—for she didn’t have any money, nor her purse, nor any ID, nor anything, not having anticipated such a turn of events.    

“Unfortunately, Boyd’s car had under a quarter of a tank of gas, and it was a guzzler.  Lily could get maybe fifty miles, not much more.  But she didn’t think of these things.  She got on the highway and ran, as mindlessly as any bankrobber in flight.  Leaving town behind, and everything in it she valued and loved, she calmed down enough to know that she could never go back.  It was while she was driving that she finally came to her senses.  But her tranquility didn’t last long, for she sputtered to the shoulder about an hour later, and it was only then that she began to asses her situation.  She had nothing but an extra bra and two pair of carnival eyeglasses with noses and eyebrows to her name, a set of golf clubs, and Boyd’s car empty of gas.  What to do? she thought as she sat there.  She realized that she couldn’t stay in the car, for they must definitely be looking for her.  So she abandoned the car and cut across the cornfield beside which she had rolled to a stop. 

“Eventually, she came out of the field.  There was a narrow dirt road, and she got on this, looked in both directions, could see nothing either way, and chose the right for no other reason than that she was right handed.  This was the wrong way for her to have turned.  After an hour’s winding walk, that turning led to a pasture which had about fifty cows in it and a stock dam.  Being thirsty and ignorant of these types of places, she decided to try to get a drink.  But the dam had another thing to do to her.  It had steep sides, being that it was mid summer and dry and was nearly empty.  The water at the bottom was muddy and smelly, and the cattle, as they came and went throughout the spring and summer, left deep hoof prints all round it that had hardened in the sun, and Lily naturally lost her footing and tumbled in.  She came up a different color—muddy brown from head to toe, and smelled like a manure pile.  She just cried and cried, slithered her way through the dried, cracked mud to the top of the dam, and stumbled to a copse of trees, where numerous cows were shading.  As she approached, the cows mooed and made a fuss, being chased from their shade, but they ambled away, leaving her the trees to rest among.  She sat down and leaned against a tree and fell fast asleep.

“Naturally, seeing as this strange woman didn’t make any threatening movements, the cows gradually came back to the shade, two of them lying down right next to Lily, sisters in the spirit, for they all smelled very much alike.  She woke from a dream she couldn’t remember, and as this kind of waking tends to confuse us at the best of times, you can imagine how it confused Lily under those trees.  She didn’t realize she was awake for the longest time, thinking that the smell which permeated the air was most unusual for a dream experience.  It was only when a cow standing near her stomped the ground and raised its tail that she came fully to, and as she did, what she saw was a heaping pile of fresh manure fall just in front of her. 

“She leapt up, creating a tremendous stir among the cows, the two lying down next to her hysterically bellowing as they scrambled up and trotted away, the others fleeing all chaotically.  ‘Heellpp,’ she began to shout, running this way and that, utterly confused as to which way to go, there being nothing in sight to help her make a decision.  ‘Heellpp,’ she shouted over and over, finally standing still, trying to figure out which direction she had come from.  It was late afternoon, and the sky was darkening, and the whole landscape was readying itself for rain.  Lightening began to drop from the low, scudding clouds, and a wind began to pick up.  Lily didn’t know what to do.  The cows had scattered, the trees were dangerous to go under, and she was totally alone.  Then the rains came.  It poured and poured, and she just stood there.  She was afraid to go near the stock dam for what had happened there before.  So she just sat in the cropped, sparse grass, stretched out on her side, and let the rain fall.  What else could she do?  That was how the farmer found her next morning.

“She was delirious.  He had loaded her onto the hay rick he was hauling to leave hay in the pasture for the cattle.  When he got her to the house, he unloaded her and set her down on the porch swing and dialed emergency, who sent police and an ambulance.  She was delirious still when they arrived, and since she had no identification, they didn’t at first connect her to the disturbances in the neighboring town.  It was only after she got to the hospital and the nurses began undressing her that they realized something was odd about her and made inquiries. 

“Well, poor Lily.  She recovered all right, but she could never come back to town.  She made several attempts to get back with the Judge, but he had had enough.  He might have valued a drinking companion and someone who was inclined to offer a good deal more, whether he could avail himself of it or not, but he felt he could find any number of these when and if the need pressed, which it did less and less.  It was the swing at Ann Gunderson that turned him against her, though I don’t think the Judge ever knew why Lily did it.  He went on with daily life much as it was before he hooked up with Lily, and in time he forgot her. 

“Ann got rid of the refrigerator, not wanting that reminder around every day.  And so before long she, too, returned to life as it was before Lily.  Only Lucia, so far as I know, ever made attempts to locate Lily and keep in touch with her.  That must have been a comfort to her, though she’d have to have had a dead conscience to have availed herself of it.  But she did, you know.  She called Lucia at first a couple of times a week.  After a while those calls became less frequent, and eventually they stopped.  Now my friend that I told you about a while ago told me he had heard she died in a condominium in Ft. Lauderdale, near the beach, her heart giving out, as she had become quite elderly.   The talk is that she lived with an elderly pensioner from up north, and that she survived him by only a few short months.  We know very little more about Lily’s life after we lost contact with her, that is, after Lucia did.”