Chapter 5 – Riddle Games Needing Patience and Attention
“Thank you so much, Mrs. Queen, for the tomato soup and cookies these last few nights,” Lacy Hollenkamp smiled for a quick second before she allowed her face to slip back into her practiced grimace. “I really can’t put the pain I’m feeling into words. Who would’ve guessed a separated shoulder could be so painful? Can you believe my misfortune, Mrs. Queen?”
Mrs. Queen had not hummed for more than a week. She felt proud of the accomplishment, especially when she thought of the hardships that had struck her community during that window of time. Jim Hodap’s home, only three doors down from Mrs. Queen’s address, burned to the ground after a lightning strike. Randy Richards, a man only in his middle forties, collapsed due to cardiac arrest, a surprising emergency given Mr. Richard’s diligent exercise and slim physique. Pamela Overbay’s daughter fled to Las Vegas to marry a man thirty years her senior. The Witherspoon’s beloved cat went missing, and the Rutherford’s pet dog lost a leg after being bit by a venomous snake. A power surge knocked out the Frekers’ phone lines for several days, and the Beumonts’ oldest son Gabe broke his nose upon catching a wicked one-hopper in the face at the start of a high school baseball game.
Lacy Hollenkamp’s separated shoulder resulted from the week’s strangest catastrophe. A pair of high school boys raced their four-wheel drive trucks through town during their off-campus lunch, and they rumbled their vehicles right outside of Mrs. Queen’s parlor window a moment before one of the driver’s lost control. With a squeal of brakes and burning tires, the pickup jumped into Lacy’s front yard, slamming into that woman’s home in a terrible cloud of brick and plaster. The truck tore into the bedroom, and the collision knocked the chandelier above the dining room table onto Lacy, who was in the middle of enjoying a box of microwaveable lasagna. That impact separated Lacy’s shoulder and forced her to sleep upon her couch, while half of her home was open to the elements until a construction crew could repair the damage delivered by an adolescent male.
Lacy kept repeating the story to Mrs. Queen, as if she was desperate to hear the return of her neighbor’s hum.
“And would you believe, Mrs. Queen, that now my insurance company’s dragging its feet? They’re making me jump through all kinds of hoops, as if I have to prove to them that it’s not at all my fault that an idiot boy with too much horsepower and testosterone smashed his truck into my home. Do they really believe I should’ve been prepared for such a disaster? It’s terrible. They’re doing all they can to see that I pay for repair out of my own pocket, as if I’m not going to go broke once all my doctor bills for my busted shoulder arrive in my mailbox.”
“I’m so sorry for you, Lacy. I really am,” and Mrs. Queen still defied her hum. “There’s probably just a lot of paperwork for everybody. I’m sure it’s not easy for the insurance company to compensate you when the police are still trying to figure out how to write up the incident.”
Lacy snorted. “I don’t think you’d call it an incident if it happened to your home.”
The idea that she might have possibly offended her neighbor Lacy had not too long ago been enough to send Mrs. Queen into a fit of humming. Yet Mrs. Queen didn’t as much as tremble as Lacy twisted her face into the sourest flavor of a smile that neighbor could shape.
Mrs. Queen decided she would not wait for another of Lacy’s complaints. “Well, I’m sure you’ll start feeling better once the pain reliever has a little time to get to work. Just call if you need any more cookies.”
“I just hope you care enough to answer your phone.”
Mrs. Queen simply shrugged aside that parting barb as she walked out of her neighbor’s home. Maven would’ve been proud of how she ignored Lacy’s camouflaged pleas for pity. She realized how right Maven had been, realized that she could not feel responsible for everyone’s difficulty, realized that she could not share in everyone’s misery. It was not her fault that Lacy wished to grumble and moan no matter the kindness Mrs. Queen had already shown her.
Where would she be without Maven? Mrs. Queen thought herself very lucky to have a son who reminded her to eat a good diet and to follow her prescriptions. She couldn’t remember a week when there had been more screaming sirens and twirling lights. She had never seen so many police cars and fire trucks roaring down her street. How would her nerves have survived such a time if Maven had not put her back on the path to stability? How badly would she be shaking? How weak would she be without properly eating? How uncontrollably would she be humming?
Mrs. Queen paused in the street and frowned at the view of her property. “My garden looks even worse from across the road. I hope there’s not something wrong with the water.”
Even when her humming was most debilitating, Mrs. Queen’s skills with dirt and seed had never failed her. Before her humming had made her a recluse, nearby gardeners would often ask Mrs. Queen for her tricks for growing such large tomato plants and zucchinis. There was a time when Mrs. Queen’s yard bloomed in the most colorful of roses, gardenias and sunflowers. The town’s weekly coupon book once even asked Mrs. Queen to compose a column of gardening advice. Even when Mrs. Queen’s hum was severe, the woman’s yard had always been a model for what care might pull from the soil.
Mrs. Queen paused at her front door to inspect her flowers. “I’ve never seen my tulips wither so fast. It’s as if they fight frost in the morning and severe heat come afternoon. None of it makes any sense to me at all.”
Only a short time ago, Mrs. Queen might have lost sleep over the suffering of her plants. Their hardship might have pinned her into her rocking chair, where she would have swayed and hummed until the new sun. Yet Mrs. Queen felt so much more confident. There was likely some small problem, some minor issue concerning the fertilizer or the soil that needed a bit of attention, certainly nothing that Mrs. Queen couldn’t fix. Mrs. Queen decided the plants could wait until the weekend, and so she entered her home without dwelling on the problems hiding in her flowerbeds.
The fuse to the kitchen popped for the fourth time that week when Mrs. Queen powered the electric kettle for tea. Mrs. Queen again resolved the problem without the faintest hum escaping her lips, and she felt proud of her new ability to navigate the basement and reset the proper switch in the electrical box. She found that the pork steak she had bravely brought back from the grocery store had spoiled in the refrigerator, but with quick thinking, Mrs. Queen prepared a satisfying dish of shepherd’s pie from the contents of a half-dozen bags of frozen vegetables. When the toilet refused to stop running, Mrs. Queen scavenged a few tools from her husband’s old belongings in the basement, and she tweaked with the water cabinet’s parts until that toilet ran more efficiently than ever before. Every frustration imparted Mrs. Queen with strength. She came to view every problem as a riddle game that needed only a little patience and attention to solve.
Mrs. Queen even found the courage to power on her television. The remote control was no longer such an enigma of buttons and sub-menus. She paused on the forecast channel and whistled at the blotches of orange and red flashing on the radar, warning her that severe thunderstorms and cyclones swirled towards her community. But Mrs. Queen reminded herself that all would be well. Her basement would provide shelter.
She pushed her courage further and watched an entire hour of the news. She learned that the West was ramping up sanctions against the East, that the East was conducting snap, military drills along the entire border, that the West was flying reconnaissance flights over the pole, and that the East was withdrawing from all arms control treaties. Mrs. Queen sighed, but she did not hum. As Maven would remind me, she needed to have more faith and let go of the things she had no ability to control. She needed to remember that life was too short and precious to squander about matters that would eventually find resolution.
Mrs. Queen slept more soundly that night than she had for years. She didn’t stir when the first of the storms arrived with lightning and thunder, no did she wake when the t
ornado siren wailed outside her window. She had fretted over everything for too long, and the toll of such worry was severe. Her body might have been in jeopardy, but for that night, Mrs. Queen’s nightmares finally shifted into fresh, replenishing dreams.
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