Mary, Mary, page 1
MARY, MARY
By B. W. Battin
A Macabre Ink Production
Macabre Ink is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2014 / B. W. Battin
Cover images from Shutterstock and iStockphoto
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Meet the Author
B. W. Battin grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico. After serving four years in the U.S. Coast Guard, he graduated from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. He became a reporter at KOAT-TV in Albuquerque, then moved on to TV stations in Shreveport, Louisiana; Rapid City, South Dakota; and Duluth, Minnesota, where he wrote his first published novel, Angel of the Night. After it was published, he became a full-time writer. One of his novels, Smithereens, was made into a TV movie for NBC. His novels and short stories have been translated into various languages, and he has ghost-written novels for other authors. He lives in Belen, New Mexico, with his wife Sandy, whom he describes as the love of his life. They met in Albuquerque while they were both in the news business.
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MARY, MARY
Prologue
Afraid to move, afraid that even shifting her weight might be taken as a sign of irreverence, the little girl stood in the cold night air with the other children, watching in silence.
Speaking in a language the little girl did not understand, Sister stood before the altar, her slender black-robed form illuminated by the candlelight and the glow from the crackling fire. She picked up a large silver cup, drank from it, then handed it to her assistant, who also raised it to his lips. Unlike Sister, who had no other name, her assistant was named Seymour, and the children addressed him as Brother Seymour.
The little girl knew that she and the three children who stood with her were special. Sister had told them so, had explained that the four of them had been chosen from all the children in the orphanage to do something very important. To the little girl’s right was a blond boy named John/Jack. On her left stood a red-haired, freckle-faced girl named Margaret/Peggy and a dark-haired boy named Carl/Charley. The little girl was uncertain what the important thing was that they were supposed to do. And, although she realized she should feel proud to be chosen for something special, she couldn’t help feeling frightened.
But then, almost everything about Sister made her afraid. The little girl recalled the last time she’d been in the punishment place and she shivered.
Picking up a sword from the altar, Sister made a quarter turn, pointed with it and spoke a strange word, then repeated the act three more times, making a complete circle. Then, despite the chilly night air, Sister allowed her robe to fall from her body and she stood naked before them. A frigid breeze stirred her long dark hair and the candles flickered.
“Tonight is Walpurgis Night,” she said, looking at the children. The little girl felt as though Sister’s eyes had found hers—hers alone—and had locked onto them.
“For the four of you, this is a very special day. You are preparing so that, on this date many years from now, you will be able to take the most important step of your lives.” As she spoke, Sister’s eyes seemed to glow the color of the flames. “Hail the master!” she shouted.
“Hail the master,” the children echoed.
Brother Seymour struck a gong.
Then, behind the little girl, the door to the orphanage opened, and there was a rustling of cloth as the children in the building joined the ceremony. Although the little girl was unable to see them, she knew they had quietly assembled behind her. She could feel their presence.
“Hail the master!” Sister shouted.
“Hail the master,” a chorus of young voices responded.
Again, Brother Seymour struck the gong.
Shifting her eyes to the right, the little girl could dimly make out the woods that surrounded the orphanage. Most of the snow was gone now, but none of the trees had leaves yet. Suddenly, it occurred to her that no one stood between her and the trees, that she could run, escape. Instantly, a pain shot through her stomach, and the little girl gasped, trying as hard as she could not to cry out.
Sister always knew when you had bad thoughts.
The little girl’s eyes found the slender naked form at the altar, and she thought: I won’t have bad thoughts again, Sister. I promise, I promise.
One
Mary Taylor was stacking boxes of patching plaster on the shelf when a customer came down the aisle, a lost look on his face.
“May I help you with something?” Mary asked.
“Uh, I need a pipe fitting,” the man said. He was a burly fellow in his thirties with a thick black beard.
“What kind of fitting?”
He looked at her skeptically, obviously uncertain about a woman helping him with anything as manly as plumbing. Finally, he said: “A union, three-quarter-inch.”
“Follow me,” Mary said, heading for the other side of the store.
Zel Home and Builders Supply’s modern store in suburban Boston sold almost everything anyone would ever need for construction or home improvement. The building was enormous, with aisle after aisle of tools and nails and fasteners, whole sections devoted to displays of bathtubs and sinks, kitchen cabinets and counters, doors and windows. Out back was the yard, in which you found huge stacks of lumber, cement, plasterboard, and other materials.
Mary led the man to an aisle with numerous metal bins of various sizes. She reached into one of them and grabbed a three-quarter-inch pipe union, which she handed to her bearded customer.
He eyed it doubtfully, frowning. “It looks bigger than the old one. You sure this is a three-quarter-inch?”
Mary nodded. “Did you measure the pipe?”
“Sure, I measured it.”
“How?” Mary asked.
Giving her a peculiar look, he dropped the union back into the bin. “With a ruler.”
“I mean, did you measure the inside diameter or the outside?”
He hesitated, looking very uncomfortable then said, “The outside. I just laid a ruler across the pipe, and it measured a little over three-quarters of an inch.”
“That’s your problem. Pipe size goes by the inside diameter. If you got a little over three-quarters of an inch by measuring the outside, then your pipe’s half-inch.” She reached into a bin and took out a smaller union.
“Yeah,” he said, studying it, “that looks about right.” Again he gave her an odd look, then he turned and walked away.
Behind her, Mary heard a soft chuckle. She turned; the sound had been made by Lynn O’Donnell.
“You ruined that poor fellow’s day,” Lynn said, grinning. “No woman’s supposed to know what a pipe union is.”
Mary shrugged. “What brings you back to this part of the store?” Lynn worked the checkout aisle and rarely left her cash register.
“Coffee break.”
“You already had one.”
“But Adkins was out during that one, so as far as he knows this is the first one of the afternoon.” She winked. Lynn was short and a little on the chubby side, with curly blonde hair. Mary was just the opposite: tall and thin with straight brown hair. At twenty-three, Mary was two years younger than Lynn.
The two women were good friends. In fact, had it not been for Lynn, Mary would probably still be single. It was one of those things that never should have worked out. Lynn had asked Mary over for dinner, and Lynn’s husband Bob had invited one of his friends. For Mary and Tom, it was practically love at first sight—they were married four months later. The O’Donnells, of course, now considered themselves unequaled as matchmakers.
“Oh, oh,” Lynn whispered. “Old jerko’s giving us the hairy eyeball.”
Following Lynn’s gaze, Mary saw Walter P. Adkins, the assistant manager. He was two aisles away from them, walking toward the front of the store. A slight man, he wore plastic-rimmed glasses and combed his thinning hair up from the sides in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his b aldness. He was giving the two women a stern look—what Lynn had referred to as the hairy eyeball.
Lynn smiled politely. Mary, who lacked her friend’s bravado, hurried back to the boxes she’d been stacking.
Mary had been working at Zel Home and Builders Supply about a year. It was a job in which she derived absolutely no benefit from her college education, but then there weren’t that many job openings for English majors. And in many ways, she found the work exciting. The company had trained her, teaching her about plumbing, tools, construction materials, and a whole wealth of other information about which she’d known absolutely nothing. To Mary, it was every bit as fascinating as studying Jane Austen or William Shakespeare. She simply loved learning, whatever the subject.
An orphan, she had been raised in the small town of Evans Ridge, Maine, by foster parents, although she really didn’t think of them as such. They were her mother and father, her family, the people who loved her and cared for her and helped her to get through college. That was what made a family, not biology. That her name had been Kensington and theirs Caldwell was unimportant. No family, she was sure, had ever been more warm or loving or wonderful than hers.
They had understood when, after graduating from college, Mary had decided to come to Boston. There was, after all, nothing to keep young adults in Evans Ridge; most of them left, seeking their opportunities—both economic and romantic—elsewhere. The Caldwells had driven her down, helped her find an apartment. She’d cried herself to sleep her first night alone in the city.
At times she wondered about her biological parents. Was she the daughter of a pregnant teenager, a rich man and his mistress, a pair of mass murderers from whom she was taken by the court? Mary knew absolutely nothing about her ancestry. She could be a descendant of Irish immigrants, Spanish conquerors, the czars of Russia.… Even her name held no clues, as it had been given to her at the orphanage and wasn’t really hers at all.
Her stomach tightened, and she immediately pushed all thoughts of the orphanage from her mind. The time she’d spent there was a blank, a part of her life about which she could remember almost nothing, and yet she was afraid of that place, afraid to even think about it. Shakily, she finished putting the boxes of patching plaster on the shelf, then took the empty carton to the trash bin behind the building.
Lynn, who worked the day shift, left at five. Mary stayed until nine, when the store closed. After the last customer had been rounded up and ushered out, Walter Adkins did the same with the employees, and then locked the door behind him, leaving the place in the hands of the janitors.
It was a nice spring evening—the temperature, though cool, no longer had the chilly bite of winter. As she walked through the unlit parking lot, Mary glanced back at the building. It was a simple structure with a flat roof and brick walls. To her left, she heard footsteps on the asphalt and peered into the darkness, trying to see who was there.
“Good night, Mary.”
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Adkins. I was wondering who was there. Have a nice evening.”
Finally, she reached her car, a green Plymouth Horizon. Once she had slipped behind the wheel and locked the door, she felt somewhat relieved. Employees had to leave their cars at the far end of the lot so customers could have the choice spaces, and the nightly walk through the shadowy parking area was always a bit unnerving. Come on, she told herself sternly, you’re not a little girl anymore, and there’s absolutely nothing’ in the dark to be afraid of. Yeah, she added nervously, except muggers and rapists and murderers.
Mary started the engine, and a moment later, she was on her way home.
As usual, the porch light was on, a reminder from Tom that she was loved, missed. His Toyota station wagon was at the curb, so she pulled into the driveway—two strips of concrete with grass between them—and followed it to the separate garage. She left the car in the driveway and, checking to make sure the doors were locked, dropped the keys into her purse and then headed for the front door.
The house was a small wooden home in a neighborhood of small wooden homes. Its principal distinguishing feature was its yellow color; most of the houses on the tree-lined block were white. Before she reached the front door, it opened and Tom stepped out. She took the two porch steps in a one-leap stride, collapsing into his arms.
“Gee,” he said, hugging her, “you must have had a bad day.”
“No more than usual. I just like flinging myself at you.”
“Come on,” he said, leading her inside. “Your dinner awaits.”
“You really don’t have to cook for me, you know.”
“I’ve got to cook for myself. All I do is keep yours warm. I’d wait and eat with you if I didn’t get so hungry.”
Tossing her purse on the couch, she reached around his neck, pulled his head to her, and kissed him. “You’re wonderful.”
He returned the kiss. “So are you. Now, how does meat loaf sound?”
“Terrific. I’m ravenous.” Releasing Tom, she collapsed on the couch. Across the room a sitcom played on the TV set.
Tom headed for the kitchen. An inch under six feet, dark-haired, and athletic-looking, he was what one of Mary’s high school girl friends would have referred to as a hunk. They’d been married for six months.
Like Mary, Tom was not from Massachusetts. He was, to use his words, a service brat. The son of an Air Force officer, he had lived all over the country. Before his father was transferred to Hanscom Air Force Base near Boston, Tom’s home had been in San Antonio, Texas, and in California before that, and South Dakota before that. When his family had moved from Boston, Tom, then a freshman at Boston University, had remained behind. He’d been in Boston ever since. His parents, whom Mary had never met, were living in Germany, but would be returning to Boston for a visit during the coming summer.
Nine years older than she, Tom had been divorced when Mary met him. In what he referred to as a friendly parting, his first wife, insisting that all she wanted was her freedom, had vanished from his life, leaving him everything except her clothes. Mary occasionally found reminders of her predecessor: hairpins that had once secured Anne’s blonde curls; a large, cloth-covered button from a feminine garment; a misplaced birth control pill.
As Tom told it, Anne had wanted more social life, more travel, and more things than he had been able or inclined to give her. Then when she found someone who appeared willing and capable of providing her with what she wanted, she had asked Tom for a divorce. Realizing the marriage was not only over but never should have been in the first place, Tom readily agreed.
In his words: She wanted a jet-setter, and I’m only the assistant manager of a sporting goods store.
“Five more minutes,” he called from the kitchen. “As soon as the broccoli’s ready.”
“Need some help?”
“Not unless you think it takes two people to lift broccoli out of the water and put it on a plate.”
“I guess you can handle it.”
The living room, decorated by Tom’s first wife, contained the same ornate, fragile-looking furniture as the rest of the house. Pseudo-Chippendale, Mary called it. It was the sort of stuff you came up with when you had high aspirations and a limited budget. Had Mary been the decorator, she would have chosen pieces of a different, more solid-looking style, doing without until she had enough money to get what she wanted. She’d already resolved to begin phasing out the existing furniture as soon as it began to show signs of wear—if she could convince Tom to spend the money. To him, decor was a matter of complete indifference.
“Here you go,” Tom said, setting a TV tray in front of her. On it was a plate with a large chunk of meat loaf, macaroni and cheese, and broccoli, everything steaming. He hurried back to the kitchen, returning a moment later with silverware and a glass of milk.
After taking a bite of the meat loaf, Mary said, “Delicious.”
It was, too. Whether preparing a simple meal like this or something elaborate, Tom was an excellent cook, far better than Mary knew she would ever be. But then Tom truly enjoyed cooking, and to Mary it was a chore, like mopping the floor. Because of their schedules—Tom’s workday started at nine, Mary’s at one in the afternoon—he cooked most of the dinners, she most of the breakfasts.
