The Grass is Always Greener and other stories Read online

  The Grass is Always Greener

  and other stories

  by Sandra Balzo

  The Grass is Always Greener

  Thou shalt love they neighbor . . . or not

  Winner of the Robert L. Fish Award

  Winner of the Macavity Award

  Anthony nominee

  Originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (3/03)

  Viscery

  Where abduction meets obsession

  Winner of the Derringer Award

  Macavity nominee

  Originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (12/04)

  My Best Friend's Funeral

  Joe Cardigan plants people--he's the funeral planner

  MIA

  Payback's a bitch

  Other books by Sandra Balzo

  Maggy Thorsen Mysteries

  -Wisconsin Coffeehouse-

  UNCOMMON GROUNDS**

  GROUNDS FOR MURDER**

  BEAN THERE, DONE THAT**

  BREWED, CRUDE AND TATTOOED**

  FROM THE GROUNDS UP**

  A CUP OF JO**

  TRIPLE SHOT

  Main Street Murders

  -High Country Mysteries-

  RUNNING ON EMPTY

  DEAD ENDS

  HEAVEN'S FIRE**

  -Romantic Suspense-

  **Available for Kindle

  The Grass is Always Greener

  by Sandra Balzo

  Presumably our neighbor had a first name--one that could be used in polite company--but I had never heard it from my father.

  "Bastard Beaumont's out to pave the world. One square inch of asphalt at a time."

  Dad was a big believer in green space. He and my mother had built their lannon stone ranch when it was the only house on a lonely stretch of county road fifteen miles west of the city. That was long before their highly anticipated first child, Joan, died in infancy; long before I finally came along, dragging my feet some ten years later; and long before my mother--apparently finding motherhood, once achieved, less than it was cracked up to be—had walked out.

  It was also long, long before urban sprawl, complete with the offending asphalt driveways and cookie-cutter houses, had turned my father into what he had always abhorred: A suburbanite. With neighbors.

  "Too bad they didn't all come along a few years earlier," he'd say. "Maybe your mother would have stayed. She would have fit right in with that Bastard Beaumont and his loony wife and dog."

  We were looking out the screen door of my father's house at Looney Beaumont, who was talking to her husband. Looney was straddling her pink Schwinn bike--a twenty-incher with a rusty bell and white wicker basket. When she rode, her knees would pump up and down around her ears and her yellow Tweety Bird raincoat, worn every day rain or shine, would flap in the wind. It was a hot wind today, as it had been for weeks on end.

  I glanced over at my father. "Dad, did you start calling her ‘Looney' because of the Tweety Bird raincoat?" I'd always suspected my father was more clever than he let on.

  "The what?" He didn't look up, too intent on playing peek-a-boo with my son Jack, whom he held. After being thoroughly shaken by the idea of becoming a grandfather when my daughter was born, he had finally warmed up to the idea and now doted over his newest grandchild.

  I said, "You know--the Tweety Bird raincoat she wears. Tweety Bird is a Looney Tune cartoon. Like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote."

  "I call her loony cuz she's nuts. And ain't no one like the Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote, remember that."

  I'd gotten the same answer every time I'd asked the question over the years. The Road Runner, like the Three Stooges, had always been sacrosanct in our household.

  "Never mind," I said, and watched Looney mount her bike and pedal furiously away. I gave an involuntary shiver: The Wicked Witch of the East meets Holly Hobbie. I said as much to my dad.

  "Holly who?" he asked.

  "Never mind," I said, again.

  He eyed me suspiciously. "You ain't giving this big boy no dolls, I hope."

  I wondered where a hot pink teddy-bear would fall on my dad's he-man toy criterion. Teddy was a boy, allright, but if Teddy was PINK, whoaaa....

  I changed the subject. "What's Beaumont doing out there?" I pointed toward where the heavy-set man was hunkered down at the edge of his driveway with a bucket and what looked like a big putty knife. The Beaumont's dog, a loopy Irish Setter, was sniffing at her master's rear end.

  "Told ya. He's out to asphalt the whole goddamn neighborhood. That driveway there? That used to be a full foot narrower."

  I stared across the street. "What?"

  Dad handed me Jack and moved to the screen door. "Don't be backward. Look-it out there. When the drive was put in, it was right even with his garage, remember? Over the years he's moved a whole foot closer to the Minor's lot line, inch by inch."

  "He's expanding his driveway with a bucket of asphalt and a putty knife?" I couldn't believe it, even of Beaumont. "His drive has to be forty feet long. Why not just bring in a load of asphalt?"

  "Damned if I know," grumbled my father, pushing open the screen door. "Cheap bastard is nuts."

  Dad let the door slap closed behind him. "Course if I was married to Looney, I'd probably be nuts, too." My father at his charitable best. He said, "I gotta go move that sprinkler."

  I followed him out, carrying Jack. "Dad, you know there's a ban on sprinkling. We're in a drought."

  "Hey! Get off my lawn, you mentally deficient chow hound!" Thankfully, he was yelling at the dog, not our neighbor. The setter, having tired of Bastard Beaumont's butt, was now sniffing over on our side of the street.

  My father winged a rock at her, missing on purpose, or so I hoped. The setter took off, its master raised his head a half-inch to glare at us and then went back to work.

  "It ain't the first drought we've had," Dad continued, "and won't be the last. And they sure as hell can't tell me I can't use my own well water to water my own grass. You want this lawn to look like his?" My father was talking extra loud to make sure Beaumont heard him.

  "What's that brown stripe?" I asked, keeping my own voice down. Speculation about the Beaumonts' eccentricities had become one of our favorite topics since they had moved in. And their lawn did look odd: mostly yellow from the lack of rain, but with a brown stripe running directly from the house to the street.

  "Drainage tile buried under there," Dad muttered, cranking on the broken spigot to turn off the water, so he could move the sprinkler. "It's made of concrete and the roots of the grass on top of it can't go deep enough to suck up water when it's this dry. That part of the lawn dies first, then the rest. I noticed that right off, that's why I make sure I keep ours watered. Beaumont's on city water, though, so gets to watch his grass die." He chuckled.

  "But I thought you couldn't use your old well? That it didn't pass inspection."

  Having moved the oscillating sprinkler to precisely where he wanted it in the middle of the lawn, he bent down to turn the water back on. "Stupid idiots. Town didn't care about the 'water quality' when we were drinking the stuff. Now that they put in city water and forced me to connect, now that all I use the well water for is watering, now they want me to test it every two years. Is that the damnedest thing you ever heard?"

  I had to admit I didn't see the logic myself, but I did understand that the water table under the whole county was down, with private wells contributing to that, too.

  As I opened my mouth to explain, a squad car pulled up in front. Beaumont looked up from his work, picked up the bucket and putty knife and hot-footed it up his driveway. The dog four-footed it right up after hi
m.

  The timing wasn't lost on my father. "That loony wife of yours call the cops on me, Beaumont? Huh? Huh?" He was shaking his fist, a lot like Wile E. Coyote, come to think of it, when the Road Runner made his escape. For the record, Beaumont did not Beep-Beep. He threw my father the finger.

  The police officer walked up the drive toward us, ignoring what passed for a neighborly exchange here. "Sir, I thought we had this all straightened out the last time I was here." She looked from my sullen father to me, apparently hoping I would provide the voice of reason.

  I could tell Dad was doing a slow burn, his face turning even redder under the summer sun. I knew from experience that I was not going to be able to sway him, so I took the officer aside. "I'm sorry, but my father is set in his ways. He's watered this grass every day of every summer since he's lived here, and that's nearly forty years."

  The officer--Schneider, her nametag said--shook her head. "His grass won't die. It will go brown and dormant, like everyone else's. Take a look around."

  I did, shifting Jack, who was getting naptime ornery. Using the vernacular of the crayons and storybooks I now shared space with, my father's acre lot looked like an island of lush Crayola "Forest Green" amidst a sea of "Maize."

  "I'm sorry," Schneider said, "but I'm going to have to ticket him again. And if he keeps this up, the town's going to act."

  "You're going to arrest him? For sprinkling?" My voice rose against my will and my father turned.

  Schneider looked uncomfortable. "They're talking about capping his well."

  My father walked over to us. "You touch my well, lady, and you'll have me to answer to. Now get your ass off my property and don't come back."

  "Dad, you can't talk to a police officer like that."

  "Police officer--hell." His face was so red I thought his head was going to blow off like the top of an overheated thermometer in the cartoons he so loved.

  "Sir, I don't want to argue." The officer took a step toward him.

  My dad was not one to back off. He moved forward instead and shoved Officer Schneider. To her credit, she kept her cool and stepped back, her hand instinctively moving to her belt.

  I set Jack down gently and took my father by the shoulder. "Dad, a lawn isn't worth all this."

  "You don't know, you-- Hey! You get the hell of my grass!" The Beaumont dog was back on our side, getting ready to pee on Dad‘s lush lawn. He pulled away from me and started after her, then stopped short and grabbed at his head. "Jesus, my head hurts."

  I sat him down on the green grass next to his grandson. Officer Schneider already was calling for the paramedics.

  *****

  On the way to the hospital, I stopped home to drop off Jack. By the time I got to the emergency room, my father was already in bed and kicking up a fuss. "I'm fine. It was just the heat--maybe a little heat stroke. And that lady cop made me mad. It was all her fault."

  He was looking to me for agreement. I side-stepped, not wanting to upset him further. "We need to have you checked out, Dad, and make sure you're okay."

  "They're not keeping me here," he said, shaking his left index finger at me.

  The little gray-haired nurse who was taking down his information, noticed the awkward gesture. "Are you left-handed?" she asked.

  "Hell, no--what does that matter?" He thundered at her.

  She ignored his rudeness. "Then shake your right index finger at us."

  "You want to see a finger, I'll show you a finger. Now let me out of here."

  The nurse put the chart down on the bed. "Fine. Give me the bird, but do it with your right hand."

  Dad's face was bright red again.

  "Please," I said, "don't upset him, he--"

  She raised one eyebrow at me, and I stopped. "Uhh, Dad, can you raise your right arm?"

  "Course I can. Just sure as hell not going to do it for some bitch nurse."

  She gave him a look that sent chills down my spine. "Fine," she said, "then let's get a nice big male nurse."

  "No goddamn man-nurse is going to touch me!" My dad yelled at the top of his lungs, and threw off his covers.

  I couldn't believe it, the man had gone off the deep end. "Dad, let them help you."

  "The hell I will." With that he slid off the bed and onto the floor.

  *****

  It was a stroke the doctors said--the regular kind, not heat stroke. When I finally left that night to go home, I promised my dad two things:

  That he would go home to his house soon, and that I would keep his lawn watered. I was destined to fail him on both counts.

  By the next morning my father had lost all use of his right arm and leg. The right side of his face was paralyzed, too, and his speech was nearly unintelligible. The doctor explained that there is always swelling in the brain after a stroke. It was too early to tell now just how much damage had been done, and how permanent that damage might be. My dad was a fighter, he said, and fighters did well. As long as they were fighting to get better.

  My father would need extensive physical therapy. He would not be going home soon--three to six months, at best. At worst, I didn't want to think about.

  *****

  There are advantages and disadvantages to being an only child. You never have to share anything, but that goes for burdens as well as rewards. Now I found myself alone, performing an exhausting balancing act between my work, my family, and my dad.

  Dad had taken care of me all those years after my mother had left, and I could do no less for him now. I tried to visit him every day in the rehab facility, either on the way to or from work. I wondered sometimes why I bothered, though. My father was getting more and more irascible every day, though I told myself it was the depression that the doctors said often follows a stroke. Having realized that he would not be going home anytime soon, Dad had all but given up on both physical and speech therapy.

  I thought his mind was still okay, but it was hard to tell since he couldn't write or speak clearly. In fact, the few words I could understand were his telling me to go water his "goddamn lawn." The "goddamn" part, I could make out very clearly, as could everyone else on that floor.

  ******

  With all I had to do, there was no way I was going to water a lawn my father would not see at least until spring. I have to admit I also was smarting from the fact that the lawn apparently was all the old man cared about anymore. Let it rot. Or dry out, in this case.

  And it did. Every time I stopped by the house to pick up the mail, the grass was a little browner, a little more dried up, a little more like my dad himself.

  As I stood at the screen door once more, reflecting on the irony of that, Bastard Beaumont came out with his pail of black goop and putty knife. "Out to pave the world," according to my father, and I finally got the pun. Like I said, I had always suspected my father was shrewder than he let on.

  Just then, Looney Beaumont coasted down the driveway on her pink bike and jangled the bell as she turned out of their driveway. I wondered how everything could be so peculiarly the same, but so different.

  Even now, nearly a month after my dad's stroke, his grass was still greener than the neighbors', though that rapidly was becoming a matter of degrees. The section under the trees was "Yellow-Green," the rest of the grass more "Green-Yellow." Small circles of "Forest Green" dotted the lawn where the Beaumont's dog was now freely "watering" the grass. My father would turn over in his grave--if he had one.

  Then there were the two patches of "Goldenrod" verging on "Raw Umber." One of them was small--about a foot by two feet--the other, two by six. Set side-by-side and in the dead center of my father's lawn. A big one and a little one.

  It reminded me of the story of Goldilocks and The Three Bears we had been reading at home. Only here, in my father's unnatural yard, there were only two: The mama bear and the baby bear.

  And somehow, I knew nothing was just right.

  *****

  I dug up my father's pristine front lawn in the summer heat that afternoon.
Bastard Beaumont kept watch on me from across the street.

  I almost stopped digging when I hit the lannon stone, thinking the shallowly buried stone explained the dead grass. But when the Irish Setter jumped into the shallow hole to sniff, I pried up the corner of one of the large flat stones. There I found the tiny bones of a baby.

  This time, when Bastard Beaumont called the police, I thanked him.

  ******

  My mother and my baby sister's bodies had been weighted down with flat stones left over from the building of the house. I'm not sure why—maybe he thought all the watering would cause them to float up somehow.

  He refused to answer questions, preferring to stay hidden behind the symptoms of his stroke, as he had kept those shallow graves hidden beneath the green grass all those years.

  Personally, I suspect he killed my sister simply for being born. Or perhaps she had died of natural causes, and he didn't think she merited a costly burial.

  My mother, I fear, was expendable after having fulfilled her destiny of bearing a male child.

  Me.

  My father never had much use for women.

  -The End-

  VISCERY

  by Sandra Balzo

  The dream was in living color, and she was gorgeous: Blonde, blue-eyed and young -- maybe 20 to my 33. And svelte, 110 pounds against my 175.

  She also was tall, though since we were horizontal it was hard to be certain about that. The top of her head came up to my nose, putting her about five inches shorter than my 6'1", assuming we were lined up toe-to-toe. Which we no longer were, since she was slipping slowly down my torso, her blonde hair leaving my face to brush my neck, then my chest, then my belly, then --

  I woke up startled, not sure what had awakened me so abruptly, but ready to wreak vengeance on whatever it was that had, whether human or mechanical.

  That's when I realized I'd been drugged.

  I lay still for a moment, trying hard to concentrate on the white ceiling fan above me. My vision was blurry, and my limbs felt heavy, weighted down. I tried to shift position and realized it was the covers of the bed that were pinning me. The blanket and sheet were pulled up to my neck and tucked in snug on each side, like I'd slipped into the bed unseen as it was being made.