The Car at the Curb
Rona Huntington, one of the richest women in Savannah, was well into her eighties, but for a woman her age, she was in remarkably good health. The only ailments from which she suffered were a touch of arthritis in her hands and a mild case of insomnia. Yet like many elderly people, Rona had grown increasingly cranky over the years. By the time she crossed over from her fifties to her sixties, she had developed a pronounced aversion for her fellow man. In fact, the only people the cantankerous old lady ever allowed into her Drayton Street mansion were Joe Moran, a local man who performed odd jobs around the house, and his wife, Trixie, who did the cooking and cleaning.
To the people of Savannah, Mrs. Huntington was a colorful character: a wealthy curmudgeon who was often the object of pranks played by mischievous teenagers. Rona hadn't always been a social pariah, though, nor had she always been rich. She acquired her substantial fortune by marrying into the prestigious Huntington family. On her wedding day, the beautiful and vivacious young bride not only became a respectable lady of Southern society, but she also took her first step toward becoming a lonely, bitter old woman.
"Those damned kids were at it again," Rona grumbled to Trixie when she arrived for work one morning.
"What did they do this time?" the housekeeper asked, humoring her employer.
"They kept me awake until all hours of the night, racing up and down the street in their hotrods, tooting their horns, blasting their music and squealing their tires."
"Why don't you call the police again?"
"What good will that do? Archie Matlaw won't stop them. He's nothing but an overgrown teenager with a badge, a grown man playing cop."
"How do you want your eggs cooked?" Trixie asked, changing the subject.
"What a stupid question! I want them the same way I've eaten them for the past sixty-odd years: sunny side up."
The housekeeper and cook set the table and then disappeared into the kitchen, eager to escape the old woman's surliness.
Later, after she finished eating her breakfast, Rona picked up the novel she'd been reading and walked out to the back porch where she sat in an Adirondack chair, facing the ocean. She read only a few pages when the peace and quiet was shattered by the sound of a lawn mower.
"Why does Joe always insist on cutting the grass when I'm trying to read? Honestly! I don't know why I keep that damned man around the house. I ought to fire him. Even when he was young he was useless most of the time."
No matter how dissatisfied she became with Joe Moran's work, however, Rona would never discharge either him or his wife, for they had been her friends before she got married when she didn't have a dime to her name.
Hoping to drown out the droning sound of the lawn mower, Rona went into the living room and turned on her radio. She tried to tune in to her favorite classical music station, but all she got was static. Eventually, she came across an oldies channel that was playing Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel." She hadn't heard that song since she was a teenager working as a car hop at a drive-in hamburger and hot dog grill. It was about the same time she'd last seen Michael O'Leary.
The old woman closed her eyes as the song brought on a flood of memories. It had been more than fifty years, and it was now hard to picture Michael's face. She could recall that he had black hair and deep blue eyes, but she couldn't remember the length of his nose or the shape of his mouth. Still, in all those years, she never met a more handsome man or one she loved as dearly.
With Elvis claiming he was so lonely he could die, the song came to an end.
"That was Elvis the Pelvis Presley singing his number one hit, 'Heartbreak Hotel,' and I'm Cal Copeland here with you on WOLZ, where classic rock lives in Savannah."
Rona trembled. Although WOAR had resumed broadcasting after a nine-year hiatus, deejay Cal Copeland had been dead since 2002.
* * *
For the remainder of that morning, there was no peace to be had at the grand house overlooking Oglethorpe Square. When Joe finished mowing the grass, he cut the edges of the lawn with the weed whacker and then trimmed the hedges with the gas-powered trimmer. Despite the annoying, monotonous noise of the power tools, Rona made no attempt to turn the radio on again.
Promptly at noon, the house fell silent, except for the sounds Trixie made cooking. At 12:15, the housekeeper announced that lunch was ready. Joe and his wife always ate in the kitchen while the mistress of the house took her meals alone in the formal dining room. That day, however, Rona sat down at the kitchen table with her servants. Joe and Trixie exchanged a questioning look.
Halfway through the noonday meal, Rona addressed her handyman, "When you're done with the lawn, I want you to take my radio into town and have it repaired."
"Why? Is it broken?" he asked.
"Don't be a moron! I'd hardly expect you to take it to the repair shop if it wasn't."
Joe put his head down. Although he took no offense at Rona's hostility, it embarrassed him when his employer insulted him in front of his wife.
No one spoke for the remainder of the meal, and afterward, Rona left the room without an apology or even so much as a civil word to her old friend. When the housekeeper left to clean up the mess, the old woman went into the living room, sat down in her recliner, picked up the remote control and aimed it at the seventy-inch Sony high-definition television, a recent addition to the house, as was the home theater console.
My old man would probably turn over in his grave if he knew I bought a TV set made in Japan, she thought.
Her father had been a Marine during World War II and was wounded at Iwo Jima. Until the day he died he never owned a single product manufactured by the Japanese or the Germans nor would he allow his daughter to buy one while she was living under his roof. Rona acceded to his wishes when she was young, but once she married she lived by her own rules.
Mrs. Huntington pushed the power button on the remote, and on came an old black-and-white show, Gunsmoke. Rona looked at her watch. It was time for her favorite soap, Hearts and Heroes. She changed the channel, but again the station was playing an old program, This is Your Life. She pressed the channel-up button a third time and got American Bandstand. What happened to the Weather Channel? CNN? HGTV? Lifetime Movie Network?
What a day I'm having! the old woman thought with disgust.
First, there had been that odd incident with the radio and now the television stations were all screwed up. She turned off the TV, got up from her recliner and lay down on the couch. Maybe after a nap, she'd feel better.
She was just beginning to doze off when she was rudely awakened by the sound of the vacuum cleaner in the hallway. Trixie, the old woman decided, was nearly as infuriating as her husband. In a fit of anger, Rona got up from the couch and went outside, slamming the door behind her. She headed toward the gazebo, which was as far away from the house as she could get and still remain on her own property. The only sounds there came from the waves breaking on the beach and the gulls crying overhead. With no book or magazine to read, Rona sat and watched a sailboat on the horizon.
Suddenly, the old woman could hear, from behind the high hedge wall that surrounded her property, two teenagers' voices.
"Want to go to the sock hop on Saturday?" a male voice asked.
Sock hop? Rona hadn't heard that expression in years.
"No," a female voice answered. "My sister and I are going to the drive-in to see the new James Dean movie."
Rona caught her breath. James Dean had died in a car accident in 1955, and the old drive-in theater had been nothing more than a giant flea market for the past twenty years.
As the voices drew nearer, the old woman tensed. The two teenagers who walked past her looked like cast members from a high school production of Grease. The boy sported a leather jacket and a pompadour, while the girl was dressed in a sweater and a poodle skirt and had her hair pulled back in a ponytail.
* * *
Rona ate very little at dinner that evening and remained quiet throughout the meal. She didn't even question Joe Moran about the broken radio. Too many disturbing things had happened that day, and they left her emotionally drained.
The radio broadcast, the TV shows and the two teenagers—what did all these anachronisms mean? She could think of only two possible explanations: either someone was trying to drive her insane or she was already crazy. If the former was the case, who would gain from her losing her mind? With no heirs, Rona's fortune was to be divided between several charities. Surely the Humane Society, the Make a Wish Foundation and St. Jude's wouldn't resort to such tactics, not even for several million dollars each.
"That means I must be losing my mind. I'm seeing and hearing things that can't possibly be there."
Another possibility occurred to her. What if someone was trying to drive her crazy—not motivated by greed but by animosity? Still, even if a person did want to mess with her mind, how would he or she get into the house to sabotage her radio and television? Only two people besides Rona herself knew how to get past the state-of-the-art security system: Joe and Trixie Moran. Could either one or both of them be harboring resentment for some wrong she had unknowingly committed? Surely, it would have to have been something terrible to evoke such cruel retribution.
Rona closed her eyes and fought against the memories she had tried to suppress for half a century. Michael O'Leary had been Joe's best friend. The two were once closer than most brothers. Did Joe blame her for Michael's death? It was not only possible; it was quite probable. After all, hadn't Rona always blamed herself?
* * *
The old woman turned on her side and looked at the clock on the night table. It was nearly midnight. She'd gone to bed just after nine but wasn't able to fall asleep. All of a sudden, she heard a car racing down Drayton Street.
"Damned kids! They're at it again."
She rolled onto her stomach and squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to fall asleep. One car remained outside, however. Rona could hear its engine idling in front of her house. She reached for her glasses, put them on and went to her bedroom window in time to see the taillights of the car as it drove away.
A chill crept down her spine. There was something familiar about the shape of those lights, something disturbing, something ....
"Stop it!" she told herself firmly. "It's just those same teenagers who have been racing down this road all summer."
Yet despite her forced bravado, Rona was frightened.
The following morning she appeared at breakfast in her bathrobe and slippers, with her hair uncombed and her face unwashed. Trixie noticed her employer's uncharacteristic disarray but said nothing. As on the previous day, the old woman sat at the kitchen table rather than in the dining room.
When Joe walked into the kitchen, he asked, "Are you feeling all right, Mrs. Huntington?"
Years ago he and Trixie had called her Rona, but that was before she married Chadwick W. Huntington and rose to her current position of eminence.
"I'm just tired. That's all," the old woman replied.
"Was it those kids again?" Trixie inquired.
"What kids?" her husband asked.
"Teenagers drag racing up and down the street."
"I saw a car out there last night as I was leaving," Joe informed them. "It was a beauty, a bright red 1953 Chevy convertible. It looked just like ...."
Rona dropped her coffee cup. It smashed on the floor, and Trixie quickly bent to clean up the mess.
Joe changed the subject.
"I took your radio to be fixed, but the repairman couldn't find anything wrong with it."
Rona turned and stared at him, her eyes blazing with suspicion.
"Of course, you know how some of those electronic gadgets are," he continued. "They don't work one minute, and the next they do. I had a TV once that seemed to only work when it was at the repair shop."
The old woman wanted to scream at the handyman, to tell him she knew what he was up to, to threaten him with legal action if he didn't stop. But what if she was wrong? Rona had to hold her tongue. She couldn't openly accuse Joe until she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was responsible for the bizarre events.
* * *
The following day Rona was unsure how to spend her time. She didn't want to listen to the radio or watch television, nor did she want to go out to the gazebo and read because she was afraid she would experience another unexplainable connection with the past. Instead, she got a jigsaw puzzle from the top of the hall closet and took it into the dining room.
As she separated the pieces into two piles—border pieces and non-border pieces—she remembered her early childhood when the country had been in the grip of the Depression. Rona had few toys to play with, and sometimes she would read the same book many times over or do the same puzzle again and again, even if pieces were missing. It wasn't until her father began working with the WPA that the young girl owned her first doll and not until after the Second World War that she got a bicycle.
No wonder my father was always so bitter, she thought.
First, there had been the Depression and then the war. He grew old before his time because he never had the opportunity to enjoy himself.
Michael's family had been so different from hers. The O'Learys didn't have money either, but that didn't diminish the love and laughter that filled the walls of their overcrowded house. Michael O'Leary. Why couldn't she stop thinking about him lately?
"He's been in his grave for more than half a century," she moaned, trying to banish him from her mind.
But her mind wouldn't let go. When she was a young woman in her late teens, she fell hopelessly in love with the handsome Irishman. Michael had loved her, too, but their romance was as doomed as that of Romeo and Juliet; for the affluent Chadwick Huntington had his heart set on marrying the beautiful Rona Vincent. Preferring a well-to-do son-in-law to a penniless one, Rona's father refused to allow her to see the man she truly loved. Ever the obedient daughter, Rona ended her relationship with Michael and married Chadwick.
"Oh, what could it possibly matter now?" she cried. "I made my decision, and I've abided by it all these years."
Although she never really loved her husband, the marriage hadn't been without its advantages. Chadwick had been a kind, generous man who provided not only for his wife but also for her entire family. Not once in all the years they were together did she regret her decision to marry him. Despite what the foolish romantics proclaimed, love was not the most important thing in life—or so Rona managed to convince herself.
* * *
It was almost dinnertime when the old woman put the last piece in her jigsaw puzzle. Trixie walked into the room and set a place at the opposite end of the dining table.
"What's for dinner tonight?" Rona inquired.
"Spaghetti and meatballs," the housekeeper replied.
"I hope you didn't put too much garlic in the sauce. It doesn't agree with me."
"No. There's hardly any garlic in it at all."
The old woman looked at her servant. It was hard to imagine white-haired Trixie as the freckle-faced redhead she once was.
"We used to be such good friends, you and I," the old woman said to herself, not realizing she had spoken aloud.
Trixie raised her eyebrows in surprise.
"That was a long time ago," the servant said.
"That was when Michael O'Leary was still alive."
A heavy silence descended on the room. The housekeeper quietly turned and went back to the kitchen. What had possessed Rona to speak of Michael to Trixie? Even if the two women had been close once, the old woman never discussed Michael's death—his suicide—with anyone.
* * *
That night Rona took a nighttime cold capsule before going to bed, hoping it would help her sleep through the night, but she was awakened shortly after midnight.
"What was that sound?"
Her eyes flew open, and her heart pounded in her chest. She got out of bed and raced to the window. Parked at the side of the street, near the end of her property, was a red '53 Chevy convertible. It was too dark for her to see the driver, but there was no mistaking the vehicle: it was either Michael O'Leary's or one identical to it. The old woman screamed and turned away from the window. Moments later she heard the sound of the car driving away.
Rona didn't return to her bed that night. Instead, she cowered in the corner, trembling with fright. She was still crouched there, wide awake, the following morning when the housekeeper arrived.
"Trixie!" Rona screamed when she heard the back door open.
"What is it, Mrs. Huntington?" the housekeeper asked when she opened the bedroom door and found her employer sitting on the floor in the corner of the room. "Are you all right?"
Rona shook her head but couldn't speak. Instead, she put her hands over her face and wept.
"What is it?"
"I was so scared," the old woman finally managed to utter.
"Did someone try to break in? Do you want me to call the police?"
"No, it wasn't a burglar. It was ... it was ...."
"What?"
"It was Michael O'Leary," Rona sobbed.
Trixie's face paled.
"That's not possible. He died more than fifty years ago."
"Don't you think I know that? But I saw his car out in front of the house last night."
"It must have been a similar car."
"No, damn it! I know what his car looked like. Night after night I used to watch for it from my bedroom window. Even after my father forbade me to see Michael, I ...."
The memory shocked her. She had forgotten all about those secret rendezvous.
"I didn't want to break up with him," the old woman said, suddenly remembering those stolen moments. "I disobeyed my father. Why didn't I remember that until now?"
"Because sometimes we choose to forget our more unpleasant memories."
"I loved Michael. I would never have wanted to forget the time we shared together."
Trixie shook her head. She had no desire to dredge up the past.
"I'd best go start breakfast now," the housekeeper said as she turned and walked out of her employer's room.
"Breakfast!" Rona grumbled to herself. "Who cares about breakfast at a time like this?"
Despite her previous hysterics, she soon calmed down sufficiently to stand up and get dressed. Perhaps it was the light of day that chased her fears away or maybe it was the scent of brewing coffee, which stirred the old woman's hunger.
Rona's lack of sleep soured her mood more than usual. When she sat down at the dining room table, she complained about everything.
"These eggs are undercooked. The coffee is too strong. The bacon isn't crisp enough. The toast is cold."
Finally, Trixie had enough. Without a word, she walked to the hall closet, took out her jacket and put it on.
"Where do you think you're going?" Rona demanded to know.
"Home. I'm tired of taking your abuse. Joe and I have got enough money to get by. I don't need this job anymore."
Rona was stunned. How dare the woman speak to her like that!
"Come back here this instant!" she shouted, but the housekeeper kept walking.
Rona finished her breakfast—unpalatable though it was. She didn't bother clearing the table or cleaning the kitchen. She was sure Trixie would soon come to her senses and return.
The empty house made Rona feel uneasy. It was much too quiet. She almost wished Joe was there mowing the lawn or using some other noisy power tool.
"I need some music," she declared and turned on the radio.
"That was the Coasters here on WOLZ where classic rock lives in Savannah. I'm Cal Copeland, and it's time for our newsbreak."
When the newscaster mentioned President Dwight Eisenhower, Rona abruptly turned off the radio. The ensuing silence seemed even more pervasive.
"Maybe I can get a talk show on the TV."
But when she turned on her Sony, she couldn't find Live with Regis and Kelly or The View. Instead, she tuned in to Howdy Doody, Queen for a Day and The Secret Storm.
"No! This can't be happening."
Rona turned off the television and went into the kitchen. The Savannah Tribune was on the counter where Trixie had left it. Like the radio and television broadcasts, the front page of the Tribune was from another era. The lead story announced that Marilyn Monroe had married playwright Arthur Miller. Rona looked at the date at the top of the page: June 30, 1956.
The newspaper fell from her hands. It was a date Rona had never been able to forget, a date when her world had nearly ended. It was the day Michael O'Leary killed himself.
It then occurred to her that the newspaper was the first tangible piece of evidence she had that someone was attempting to drive her crazy. Instinctively, the old woman rushed to the phone. She had no idea what the police could do in such a situation, but she would call them nonetheless.
Rona put the receiver to her ear and reached out her hand to the phone's keypad. But before she could press 911, she heard talking over the line. Two teenage girls were arguing over who was the best-looking boy in their history class. It had been so long since she'd had a party line that Rona forgot how inconvenient one could be. In a world where nearly every man, woman and child carried their own cell phones, were there even any party lines in existence anymore?
She was about to hang up the phone when she heard one of the girls ask the other, "Did you hear what happened to Michael O'Leary?"
"No, what?" the other replied.
Rona felt the hair on her neck rise.
"He's dead. They found him in his car over on lover's lane. I heard he ...."
Rona slammed the receiver down on its cradle. She didn't want to be reminded of the details surrounding Michael's suicide.
All of a sudden, the radio came back on of its own accord.
"Now the WOLZ news update. A twenty-five-year-old Savannah man was found dead in the vicinity of Montgomery Street. Michael O'Leary's body was in the driver's seat of his 1953 Chevy ...."
Unable to turn the radio off, Rona pulled the plug out of the wall. But the television then came on and continued the story.
"The young man's body was discovered on a site that has become a popular lover's lane ...."
Like the radio, the Sony didn't respond to Rona's efforts to control it. Not even pulling the plug did any good. The TV newscaster and his radio counterpart spoke in unison.
"... by local schoolboy Buster Van Meter, who was searching the area for ...."
Rona screamed and hurled her radio at the seventy-inch screen. At last, she was able to silence them both.
Shaking, the old woman returned to the kitchen and picked up The Savannah Tribune where she'd dropped it. A glance at the headline caused Rona to collapse in a heap on the floor: LOCAL MAN FOUND MURDERED AT LOVER'S LANE.
The false memories she had so carefully constructed fifty years earlier came crashing down, and the true events of the evening of June 30, 1956, broke through the debris.
Rona Vincent sat beside the bedroom window of the old clapboard house on Turner Boulevard, watching for Michael O'Leary's car. When it finally came down the street, it slowed in front of her house. She waited ten minutes and then left by the front door, telling her mother she was going to Trixie's house. Once outside, Rona ran to the next street where Michael was waiting for her. She got into the car, and he drove off in the direction of Montgomery Street.
The couple had been parked at the lover's lane for less than a quarter of an hour when they heard another car pull up behind them. The door opened, and the driver got out. Suddenly, the passenger door of Michael's Chevy was wrenched open.
"Daddy!" Rona exclaimed, taken completely by surprise.
"I told you I didn't want you seeing this good-for-nothing Irishman," the irate father shouted as he reached inside the car and roughly grabbed his daughter by the arm.
"But I love him, Daddy. I don't love Chad Huntington."
"Stop talking nonsense, girl. And you," he turned his attention to Michael, "stay the hell away from my kid. You hear me?"
"We're both over twenty-one. You can't stop us from seeing each other," Rona cried, bravely defying her father.
Not accustomed to having his edicts questioned, Jack Vincent backhanded his daughter across the face. Her lip burst open and started to bleed. Michael jumped out of the car and charged after the older man.
Jack Vincent pushed his daughter aside. He had anticipated trouble and came prepared to do battle. When Rona saw her father reach inside his jacket pocket and take out his pistol, she tried to grab his arm, but she was too late. The last thing she saw before she passed out was Michael's handsome face being blown away."
* * *
The morning passed, and the afternoon soon followed. Rona lay on the kitchen floor, curled in a fetal position, her eyes staring straight ahead in a near catatonic state. Evening came and shadows invaded the house, but she didn't make any attempt to get up or even to turn on the lights.
The grandfather's clock in the foyer struck nine ... ten ... eleven. Rona lay on the floor, desperately trying to make sense of the past fifty-odd years. How many other memories were nothing but mere façades that hid darker, harsher truths?
How had she ever forgiven her father after he killed the man she loved and then escaped retribution by making it look as though Michael had committed suicide? She supposed that technically she hadn't forgiven him. Rather, she blocked the truth out of her conscious memory. But then, unforgivably, she had gone on with her life. She married Chadwick Huntington and moved into his Congress Lane home and then later into the great house on Drayton Street. In the ensuing years, she left behind her humble roots and treated former friends with condescension, even going so far as to hire them as household servants.
And Chadwick? What did she ever give him in return for those years of love he had given her? She never once tried to love him back, never even showed him the slightest affection.
"Damn you, Daddy!" she swore, at last stirring from her stupor. "You managed with a single bullet to destroy all our lives."
As the grandfather clock began tolling the midnight hour, Rona heard the sound of a car pulling up to the curb in front of her house. Her pulse quickened. The driver tooted the horn, and her heart pounded in her chest. Suddenly, there was a knock on the door. Like a person in a trance, the old woman rose and walked to the foyer. She stopped momentarily, her hand inches from the doorknob. The knocking was repeated.
Rona opened the door and saw Michael O'Leary standing on the doorstep looking as handsome as he had the evening they attended the senior prom.
"It's time to go," he said and gently held his hand out toward Rona.
"Michael!" the old woman cried, her eyes glistening with tears. "I'd just about forgotten what you looked like."
As Rona Huntington stepped out onto the stoop, the years that separated them faded away. It was a young girl of twenty-two years who walked to the curb and got into the passenger side of the red 1953 Chevy convertible.
Michael O'Leary turned toward her and smiled as the two of them rode off together, never to be parted again.
Back in the Fifties Salem spent at lot of time at drive-in restaurants (and anywhere else he could get something to eat).
