Carry On

By Patrick Moran

The fourteen pieces herein are those sundry writings I have created sandwiched between some forty years of writing novels, penning assessment reports, editing the works of other authors, and trying in general to live as fully and as wisely as possible. Carry On is a collection of fourteen pieces of miscellaneous writings I have created over some forty years. All the works are fanciful, some more than others, and all were written with an eye toward helping me put the world into an understandable perspective. One of my favorite authors is Nobel Laureate Orham Pamuk. When asked once why he writes, he said it is because he needs to construct alternate worlds in order to understand this one. It is the same for me, even though at times it also seems like an affliction, particularly when I am lost in the labyrinth of a novel, wherein understanding comes only after much ado, time, and butting my head against walls have passed in a twilight realm of obfuscation and bewilderment. Be that as it may, it is my sincere hope that these short works of fiction and epistemological conjecture will entertain and perhaps encourage new perspectives in those who read them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781678071431

Book preview

me

Preface

Carry On is a collection of fourteen pieces of miscellaneous writings I have created over the past forty years. They were sandwiched haphazardly between the penning of thirteen novels; teaching living skills to deaf and blind youngsters; writing assessment reports for disabled adults; editing, compiling and ghostwriting the works of other authors; mastering a winery webpage; building a house from the ground up; overseeing the finances of our family’s resorts in Palm Springs and Santa Catalina Island; and raising a child, all while trying to live as wisely and as lovingly as possible with Marsha, my lifelong companion and editor par excellence.

Only one short story, Mrs. Mergatroyd’s Chimney, was ever published. At the time, the publisher heralded it as one of America’s best new short stories.

A few other stories have been submitted to various magazines over the years, but none were accepted for publication by the gatekeepers of literary preferences. I do not fault the reviewers, recognizing, as I still do, that my stories were never written for a specific genre or an audience that might actually care to shell out its hard-earned cash for my idiosyncratic ramblings, which in fact is how most of the pieces were received. To wit: Thank you for your submission, Mr. Moran. We admire aspects of your story, but we must inform you that we do not at present see a viable way to market your work...etc., etc.

With the advent of online publishing through companies such as Lulu, however, and with access to the global marketplace afforded by Amazon and other online bookstores, I am finally able to put these short works out into the world as I intended them to be read. My wish at this point in my life is to share them on the chance that some readers may gain a bit of insight into themselves and perhaps a greater appreciation and love for the world we share.

Patrick Moran

2021

Carry On

‘And finally...’ Maurice Fitzpatrick intoned, pausing from his reading of the will to dab at the spittle that had gathered into grey yeast balls in the corners of his mouth, ‘...now that my estate has been divided among you as I have wished, there is one more possession I would like to leave to whomsoever shall claim it...’

The lawyer paused again and looked up over his reading glasses to the old leather purse that sat unobtrusively next to the inkwell, now ornamental, that had once belonged to his father. He let his focus dwell on the bag for a moment. It’s an ugly thing, and not really a purse at all, he thought, as he scanned its familiar scuffed contours. It was simply two slabs of tanned skin sewn into a shallow, oblong pouch whose flaps were fastened by a curious little ivory button on which the awkward figure of some sort of obese bird was embossed. The shoulder strap had always seemed completely nonfunctional to him; it was far too thin and frayed and must surely have cut into anyone trying to carry something heavy. It was indeed an ugly bag, and now after all these years, there it sat taking up space on his otherwise tidy desk. And yet as he prodded the underside of his outward disdain for Fanny’s old bag, there was also a grudging acknowledgment deep within his consciousness that, like the distorted objects in the surrealistic paintings his mother had once been so fond of (and which he had despised), it somehow created its own special place for itself on his desk; one, he admitted, that existed outside of his own experience, just as his mother and her world of art and literature had existed apart from his world.

As the image of his mother faded, Maurice Fitzpatrick’s gaze gradually drifted until it converged upon the gathering of bereaved assembled in a tight knot before him. Just like sheep, he thought, with professional disapproval; huddling close and trying to keep the cold breath of death away. He fought an urge to tell them to spread themselves apart, but one among them whimpered and his own hand trembled, and he realized his duty was not only to expedite the reading of the will for his client, now deceased, but also to shepherd this frightened flock through the darkness the death of Fanny Kinder had created.

There were five people gathered in his oak-paneled chamber. In the first row was the author’s literary agent Donald O’Sullivan, who had garnered ten percent of the writer’s considerable royalties for a good fifty years. Next to him was Fanny Kinder’s newly divorced daughter Margaret, whose swollen tear-shot eyes matched the color of Donald O’Sullivan’s pendulous Irish nose. Seated behind Margaret and dressed all in black except for a shocking-pink tie held in place by an equally shocking pea-green clasp, was the author’s colleague Perry Jack, who went by the nom de plume of Jawbone L’Amore. He was a heavy-set, fussy, outgoing man, with eyes that shone mischievously. A thin crop of short white hair was combed down over a brow that reflected a curious flamboyancy mixed with devotion. It was a combination that had made him one of Fanny’s favorites.

At Jawbone’s elbow Mandy Topolos, the author’s long-time live-in aide, leaned forward and wept while bracing herself on her knees, in an attempt to not let one centimeter of her body touch Jawbone L’Amore. Hillary Ramshorn, next to Mandy Topolos, was a red, owlish, plum of a woman. She sat erect and seemingly neckless in a shapeless grey dress and stared without emotion from behind thick glasses.

Maurice Fitzpatrick himself, though seventy-seven, was a trim, well-kept man with liquid unclouded blue-grey eyes and a face made noteworthy by exceptionally clear pliant skin like that of a youth. His hair, too, though receding and grey at the temples, still held fast to its natural auburn tint and contained such body that most people, even old friends and colleagues, thought he wore a toupee. This combined to make him look years younger than he actually was, and except for the inevitable loosening of his lips at their corners and the fastidious manner in which he comported himself, he could have passed for half his age.

It’s odd, Maurice Fitzpatrick thought as he changed the angle of the quill in its holder and let his eyes rest momentarily on Mrs. Ramshorn’s robust bosom, how one’s outward appearance often offered not a single clue as to how the inner realities are suffered. For of those assembled there, in his professional estimation at least, only Hillary Ramshorn, whose every physical notation read untiring ambition, had declined to enter into the unseemly bickering that always preceded the reading of the will. She will bear watching, he reminded himself, as he placed the will to one side and opened the last item, an overseas Par Avion envelope.

He had been given strict instructions by the deceased, who had perished unexpectedly in a freak accident while en route to France, not to open the letter until the will had been read and the entire estate—which totaled nearly six million dollars in liquid assets and an unknown amount of royalties from future sales of books and various rights—was delineated.

He had executed, with Mr. O’Sullivan’s help, much of the legal matters of Fanny Kinder’s literary career for over forty years, and had inevitably become intertwined with the cozy but unwieldy circle of family and intimates, or Boarding school Jackbobs, whose presence the woman seemed to require as much as the gin-vermouth-Campari Negronis she drank from dawn till well past dusk. And Maurice Fitzpatrick knew he should have expected a surprise. He heaved a little sigh as he recalled the adventurous, sometimes irascible volatility of his client’s imagination, and it was thus with both misgivings and a curious sense of impending adventure that he drew the delicate folds of blue paper from the overseas envelope and began to read.

‘On the desk before you—I hope—is the tote-bag I have kept with me throughout my entire career. I have entrusted it to my good friend Mr. Fitzpatrick for the time being, but it is my wish that it now go to one of you gathered here. However, in the event that none among you shall claim it, I hereby state that it is my wish—no, it is my deepest plea—that Mr. Fitzpatrick destroy it forthwith. Otherwise, I shall never be rid of it.’

Hats off to Her Highness, Mandy Topolos, who had drawn herself erect, drawled in a flatly sarcastic, slightly inebriated tone. Melodramatic to the end. This is as good as it gets.

No thanks to you, Jawbone L’Amore retorted sharply, and his tenor voice seemed to mimic the faint whine of sirens flirting through the blinds from somewhere outside the building. You with your disrespect and drinking her liquor. You cost her a fortune.

Oh? And who was it that borrowed ten thousand for his failed publishing house, with never any expectation of paying it back?

Well, Jawbone L’Amore raised his brow haughtily, look who’s calling the kettle black!

Mr. L’Amore! If you please! Mr. Fitzpatrick intruded. He was appalled at such an untoward display of hostility. And there was now a sour taste spreading through his mouth, for he sensed that his friend and client had laid a trap, although it was not yet clear to him who was the intended victim. He only hoped it wasn’t him. But in having extricated her from many awkward situations through the years, he knew how duplicitous and also how dazzling her truculent plottings could be. He had to admit too, as his gaze dwelled for a moment on the scuffed, rather nondescript bag, that he would never have anticipated something like Fanny’s purse to be the trigger for one of her renowned Chaos Chasers; wherein, like a Queen Bee she stirred those around her into a swarm of drone-like confusion, thereby assuring that control of the conversation and any subsequent attentions belonged to her alone.

All in all, Maurice Fitzpatrick didn’t like the direction the hearing was taking. Not one bit, in fact. Yet, as he began reading again he felt exhilarated.

"‘Perhaps, since all of you here have expressed such profound interest in my well-being these last few years when I was simply incapable of being the clever, intelligent, stimulating person you had always known, an explanation is due.

‘You see, in the past several months, I have found that I can no longer turn away from the truth. I have, in fact, confronted it, and I now know, beyond all certainty, that this little bag before you is solely responsible for my success as a writer...’"

Mr. Fitzpatrick blinked in disbelief at the page and re-read it, making sure he had spoken the hastily scrawled words correctly. But there could be no doubt that even in the confused antic of her arthritic hand the meaning was clear. He stared in bewilderment at the scruffy bag, as did the rest of the mourning listeners, who shifted silently in their seats at the curious admission from the Dear Departed Fanny Kinder, their paragon, their friend, their sometime tormentor.

I can hear Mother laughing at us now, Margaret mumbled, in a voice too large for the small red blossom that was her mouth.

Anybody got a Negroni? Jawbone L’Amore quipped. I think I’m going to need one before this is over.

Why wasn’t I told of this envelope before now? Or of the purse? snapped Donald O’Sullivan, whose peevish suspicions suddenly eroded his outward decorum.

Maurice Fitzpatrick looked coldly at his old colleague. Like many of those too long in the trade, O’Sullivan now distrusted creativity far more than he admired it, or even the money it produced, and consequently, after fifty years as a literary agent, his first impulse was to distrust everything he didn’t already know and everybody he hadn’t already met.

It was her wish, Donald. That’s all I can tell you. I know no more than you do about this. Besides, you know as well as I do how vivid her imagination could be.

If you call lying through her teeth imagination, sneered Mandy Topolos, and a chilly silence greeted her astute observation. Embarrassed and in a rush to fill the vacuum, she continued, Oh, you can all deny it if you want to, but each of us has been hurt to the core by her lies. This purse thing is just one more game. She can’t stand the idea of giving up her control over us. Us... she paused, the people who loved her the most.

For crying out loud! Get a grip on yourself, Mandy! The poor woman is dead. She can’t hurt you anymore, cried Jawbone L’Amore, and he dramatically crossed his arms over his chest as Mandy’s sobs filled the room.

No, you’re wrong, Perry, she wept. It’s just another one of her Chaos Chasers. She’s still here. I can feel her.

What nonsense! What whacko idiocy! Donald O’Sullivan exclaimed. You were in the seat next to her when it happened. You saw her die. Look, I’m sorry I said anything...can’t we simply get on with the reading? I’ve a flight to JFK tonight, he scowled. God spare me any more clients who move to California. But at the mention of a flight to New York—which was where, over Pittsburgh, Fanny Kinder had met her untimely death, when her plane suddenly lost altitude and she suffered a massive heart attack—Donald O’Sullivan lowered his eyes and a benign silence descended over the gathering.

Yes, yes, I too believe we should expedite things—there are several more pages—so, if you don’t mind, Donald, I’ll proceed.

Well, I just want you all, and especially you, Margaret, to know that I loved Fanny...she just hurt me so, Mandy whispered. And she fell into quiet mournful weeping, as Margaret turned and rested a hand atop hers.

In a moment Mr. Fitzpatrick resumed reading the letter. "‘As I mentioned, it is up to you to determine who shall have the purse. However, before you make up your minds, and in order to assure that your decisions will be made without regret, I will tell you what little I know of the bag’s history.

‘My first memory of it, which I remember as vividly as when I bore you, Margaret, is how it came to me when I returned home to help care for Father shortly before he died. I was nineteen then. Mother had died three years earlier, and I had gone to Los Angeles with a friend the previous year for a job with the Times. I had worked on Father’s paper, The San Gabriel Valley News, when I was younger, but the Times, like Father, soon discovered that I was incapable of reporting anything without first embellishing it with my own inventions. Thus my job with them lasted only two weeks.

‘It may seem funny now, but Father wouldn’t let me write for him either. It’s like you’re reporting from a barrel that’s just gone over Niagara Falls, he used to say. And he was right. I couldn’t write about even the most banal church pot-luck without putting some of my own spices into it. But there was nothing I wanted more at that time than to be a newspaper reporter. It was in my blood, as they say, and I simply had to do it.

‘I know now I wanted to write mainly to prove to Father that I was worthy of our family name, a name associated with newspapers as far back as the early 1800s. However, one day soon after I returned home, I was at the News office on an errand for Father—who was at home with the nurse we had hired for him—when a dark brooding man came into the city room and asked for me. I recognized him immediately. He was an old family acquaintance, a Turkish carpet vendor named Amil, who had been a visitor in our house many times when I was young girl. He had been in love with our cook Nina, and for some reason both he and Cooky had been banished. He was a little greyer, but he really hadn’t changed much, and he carried a greasy paper bag under his arm. He greeted me warmly, calling me Frenchy as he had when I was a girl of eight. And when I asked where he had been for eleven years, he explained, vaguely I thought, for him—for he was always telling us girls grand and evil stories of the Hapsburg and Ottoman devils—that he had gone back to Europe to purchase carpets for his family’s business.

‘Amil asked me about Father and Mother and my sister Stevie, all the while twisting his moustache into sharp points. And I dared not ask him of Nina, being quite the Young Lady then, although I was dying with girlish curiosity.

‘I told him about Mother, and that Father was not well, that he was, in fact, approaching death. Amil shook his head sadly at the news, like a cow chewing rank cud, and there was a sudden darkness, almost frightening in its depth, that passed between his deep, brown eyes and mine. I know now it was not sadness at Mother’s passing and Father’s illness; rather, it was a profound sorrow for missed opportunities, as one sometimes tries to glimpse and hold a happy scene from a life speeding grimly past.

‘It was then that Amil brought out the purse you see before you. It was no different then than it is now.

‘ This is for you then, he said. I will not bother your father when he has such an important journey before him."

‘ Oh, no, I can’t take it," I cried. And I really did not want the bag, which looked very much like a possum’s pouch to me. I found it hideously ugly...and, besides, it smelled like Amil and had a sort of acrid but at once sweet odor, like iron-singed wet hair.

‘ No, you do not understand, Amil persisted, in the urgent but unhurried manner I suddenly and fondly recalled from the times when he pushed Nina and Stevie and me in the oak swing that hung from the fig tree out back. This bag belongs to you...it always has. You must take it."’

‘What do you mean?" I inquired, but timidly now; for although Amil was perhaps eighty years old, there was the unmistakable dissonance of a threat in his reedy voice.

"‘It was after hours by then, and I remember looking around the usually bustling city room...at the desks, the dusty typewriters, with crumpled paper everywhere, ink stains, swivel-chairs tilting like swans this way and that, and it looked suddenly vastly different to me. It was as if I stood outside the building looking through the masonry walls into it, and I saw the whole place, myself included, suffused in a bright, faintly rose-colored light. It was a wonderful feeling. I felt like a bird soaring on wings of ideas, or a dancer whose feet skimmed the floor effortlessly like a prima ballerina’s. When I turned back to Amil, he had already gone, leaving the bag behind on the desk.

‘As I mentioned, it was early February, and a coating of snow had fallen in the mountains that day. I decided to walk the ten blocks home. The whole way there I watched the snow turn first gold then crimson then deep-violet against the rounded contour of Mt. Baldy, and I suddenly felt lightheaded, as if the light was not being reflected from the sun, to the mountains and back to me, but instead through me to the mountains and out across the infinite emptiness of space to the sun, as if I was the one creating the scene out of a perfect vacuum before me. And it was at that precise moment that I composed the first delicious paragraph of Twilight in Pantheon," my very first published story, as you all well know.

‘It was nearly dark when I finally made it home, and Father was resting in the parlor when I arrived. I had the bag tucked securely under my arm and already it had simply become mine." I had even forgotten about Amil, but as soon as Father saw the brown shape, unexceptional as it is and even partially hidden beneath the sleeve of my sweater, his cheeks, gaunt and yellow from his faltering liver, turned white as the noonday snow.

‘ The Turkish devil be damned! he whispered hoarsely, and there was so much rage and so much grief in his voice that I could scarcely breathe. Yet despite this fury, he made no move to take the bag from me, nor to talk me into giving it away. In fact, he never even mentioned it, as if he knew it would be somehow futile. And no matter how hard I coaxed Father, I could make him say no more. The next day he sank resolutely—or so it seemed—into a coma and within a week he was gone.’"

Maurice Fitzpatrick stopped to wipe at the nagging little grey balls with his handkerchief. He tried to think of ways he could put off reading the rest of the rather macabre note, but he knew he had to finish.

This bag sounds like something Fanny would have wanted Cybil to have, Hillary Topolos ventured off-handedly, speaking up for the first time.

Hearing the name of Fanny Kinder’s arch rival startled Jawbone L’Amore, however, and he chided her derisively. Cybil! Fanny hated Cybil, dear. She would just as soon give that bitch her place in the grave.

Because she knew Cybil was a far better writer, explained Hillary, who had spent many of the past months taping Fanny for a planned biography. Besides, I think I knew Fanny better in those last days than any of you ever did.

Wait a minute, Hillary, she was my mother! Don’t you think I knew her too?

I’m just saying she confided many things to me this past year. Things she never told anyone.

What about all that Hemlock Society literature she sent for? Did she tell you she was planning her own death? She told me. She had me read it to her, Mandy Topolos boasted.

Oh, yes, dear, that does indeed prove that you among us were closest to our friend after all. But did you ever stop to think that perhaps it was you and your incessant bickering that drove her to suicide? Jawbone L’Amore mocked.

I don’t think she committed suicide, Hillary Ramshorn offered quickly, but, yes, I did sense that she knew death was near.

Jawbone L’Amore stifled a flicker of envy for the intimacy that Hillary had undeniably shared with Fanny before her death. Indeed it was a closeness that had excluded him as well as the others from the innermost circle of Fanny’s familiar Jackbobs. But he suppressed the sudden anger that flared in him and instead flicked his hand as if to ward off a fly. Whatever, dear. All I know is that I deserve that bag a thousand times more than Cybil Whitehead!

Mr. Fitzpatrick, having now discreetly rolled the byproduct of his nervous discomfort into the creases of his handkerchief, cleared his throat. He wanted to hear nothing more of Fanny possibly having committed