Neal Pollack

“Rose Vzral,” he said, sighing and looking sad. “Only fourteen years old. If I believed in such things, I would think that family had a curse on it.” I wanted to ask him if he believed in curses later when Rose’s sister Ella died that fall. Stomach problems as well.

A month before the wedding, I had lunch with Ginny and Mary. A few years previous I would have expected Mary to be drawn and bitter at any wedding news, spinster-to-be that she was, but she actually seemed haughty, although perhaps she kept tossing her head to show off the new earrings she was wearing.

“Those are beautiful, Mary,” Ginny obliged.

“Aren’t they?” she breathed. “They were a gift from my employer.”

“Billik?” I said. “He makes that much money off fortune-telling?”

“The man has a gift,” she said. “He helps people, and they reward him in return.”

“Really? How so?”

“You remember how Martin Vzral was going to suffer from a competitor

”

“Yes, but He’'s dead now.”

“That’s beside the point. That family has made its own problems. The mother is a fool. She'’s holding onto that house of theirs. She would be better off to sell it to Herman. She can’t rattle around in there like the crazy old bat she is. It’s too bad, what happened to her family, but for goodness’ sake.”

“You’re trying to drive the Vzrals out of their home?” said Ginny. “What does Billik have to do with it?”

“I just keep records of finances,” Mary said. “The Vzrals owe everything they have to Herman. If it wasn'’t for him, they’d all be dead, or worse.”

“Or worse, such as what?”

Mary just raised her eyebrows mysteriously and said she had to go. “I’m keeping house for him while he travels.”

Although it rarely starts snowing in earnest until January or February here, God granted us a beautiful coating of snow for the wedding. The ceremony was lovely and we were giddy with the prospect of the future. Before we returned to my house for dinner and gifts and music, we had to pay Father Vincent his honorarium. As we were meeting with him and about to invite him over to the house, one of the Sisters rushed in and whispered in his ear. He frowned.

“What is it, Father?” asked Edward.

He crossed himself. “Poor Mrs. Vzral,” he said.

Though I said a small prayer for her and the family, I soon forgot about it, until Mary, who seemed rather stoic throughout the wedding and the party, excused herself early, saying that she had to meet with her employer, who had come back to town.

“Mary, it’s my wedding day,” I said.

“I don’t want to upset him,” she said unapologetically, and slid out.

A few weeks later, Edward and I moved to St. Louis so he could set up his law firm with his friends from school. I tried staying at home for some time but got bored quickly, so Edward let me come work for the firm as a typewriter.

I received some good news from Ginny. She’d been rescued from contemplation of the convent when her shy admirer George from down the block finally proposed to her.

“No more excitement for me,” she joked in her letter. “Except right now. The whole neighborhood is buzzing. Everyone is suspicious of Mary’s friend.”

“I’m not surprised that everyone is suspicious of him,” I wrote back. “He’'s a very strange person. What does everyone suspect him of?”

I received a telegram from Ginny before I even sent my letter.

“VZRALS MURDERED,” was all it said.

She filled me in via letters. Based on some neighborhood suspicion, Mrs. Vzral had been dug up and poison was found in her stomach, and how we did not guess that to begin with, I’m ashamed to even speculate. Billik was picked up a few days later.

Ginny sent me clippings from the newspapers. The city seemed more enthralled than horrified. Reporters kept comparing Billik to a previous murderer, Holmes, who was executed while we were still children.

I felt relieved that the strange man was behind bars, but I felt sorry for my cousin, that this man who she so admired, who didn'’t even seem to reciprocate, was now so disgraced.

“It’s not true,” she wrote to me.

I stopped paying attention to neighborhood gossip for a while after that, until in June ’08, when I received a telegram from my mother saying that my uncle, Mary’s father, had finally passed away. It was difficult to feel sorrowful, as nobody had ever really known him other than as an invalid that Mary was forced to tend to her whole life. I wondered if she felt relief or complete despondency.

I came home for the funeral. Ginny was starting to get big with her first baby and it was good to see her. Mary seemed rather unemotional at the funeral. Afterwards, I embraced her and said, “What are you going to do now?”

“I’m free,” she whispered.

I smiled. “So what are you going to do with your newfound freedom? Go to school? Move? Get married?”

“I’m selling the house,” she said, “But I’m moving to a smaller apartment in the city.”

“I don’t blame you,” I said. “You’ve been in that house all your life. It’s a shame that your father didn'’t leave you more to get a little house for yourself.”