The Twin Fortunes and Other Stories

By James I. McGovern

The thirteen stories in this collection concern people from a wide variety of backgrounds. As they struggle with the problems they meetphysical, emotional, or spiritualthey become conscious of past failures and missing necessities for their futures. While they have various degrees of success or failure, its the awareness of the reasons for ones fate that emerges as the central value. This knowledge of limitations, sometimes bolstered by compassion or will, empowers some of the characters but remains elusive for others.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 3, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469107455

James I. McGovern

James I. McGovern is originally from Connecticut but has lived primarily in the Midwest. He earned a graduate degree in literature and this disposed him to write as an avocation. After some success with articles and short stories, he published a number of novels, including Aura of Purgatory and Beyond the Failure Club. A previous group of shorter works was published as The Twin Fortunes and Other Stories. Having retired from government service and teaching, Mr. McGovern currently resides in northern Illinois.

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Copyright © 2003 by James I. McGovern.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to

any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

THE TWIN FORTUNES

A CRUSADER’S CURE

USED GOODS

CONTROLLING INTEREST

THE FIFTH MARTINI

MANDATE

THE STARS ARE CROSSES

COURTYARD WINDOWS

SECRET PERFORMER

THE BIRD AND THE COIN

DEFEAT OF BOOMBOX

HAVEN

THE ADJUSTER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

To Sue O.,

a sweet cousin,

and

to all intelligent people who

practice critical thinking and honesty,

as they are our hope for peace.

THE TWIN FORTUNES

The house had resisted being sold, as if it weren’t finished with me yet. It had failed a well and septic test on the very day of the closing. My return to my wife was thereby stymied, but I’d reacted quickly with the realtor’s help. The well had been disinfected and I was returning to flush the chlorine out of the water supply. On reaching the house, I turned on all the faucets to clear the system so it would pass the retest. All was going fine and I was about to shut things down when I noticed that the tap in the kitchen was showing a loss of pressure. Then the water stopped entirely.

A sense of urgency used to rise in me whenever something went wrong. I’ve learned, though, to put a check on it, telling myself there’s a simple explanation and solution. But as I stalked through the house and found all the faucets failing, not responding to my manipulation, I felt a growing desperation. The outside tap had also petered out. I checked the circuit breakers but all power was on, including that for the well pump. I waited awhile and tried the taps again. A few pathetic ounces, mere seepage, issued from each.

No! I shouted.

The house echoed it back at me, a puzzle box mocking with mimicry. I had been minutes from leaving it forever, and leaving town. Now this disaster, as if it were consciously tricking me, trapping me. This was panic, I saw, caused by my being alone. I had to call the others—Ron the well specialist, Marlene my realtor. And at once. I had to be freed from this and get on with my life.

After several tries, I reached Ron in his truck. He responded to my story with a hearty laugh.

Well, he said, if there’s no water, I guess I won’t stop by for the sample.

He was going to leave it at that, it seemed. I had to point out that he could inspect the system and try to get the water flowing, then take the test sample. He agreed to do it, but not until the next day, nine a.m. sharp.

Might just be a wire, he said. Don’t worry about it.

Marlene, I discovered, was going out of town, so I’d have to stay myself and deal with Ron. This meant camping in the empty house. The thought was irritating but, if it would solve the problem, I could stand it for a night or two. Meanwhile, I was hungry. I decided to visit a certain Chinese restaurant in the area. The food was better than average and I was attracted to one of the waitresses there.

It was the slow period between lunch and dinner when I arrived, with some retired men having a discussion in the smoking area. I was shown to a non-smoking table, where I sat alone amid sunlight and gold-painted dragons. The zodiac place mats made me smile, they were such a cliché. But that’s what made these places comforting for me, their predictability.

You will have the lunch special?

It was a different waitress, one who talked about her baby.

"Yes, with the moo goo gai pan." My favorite had been putting glasses away behind the bar. I watched her now crossing to the smoking area, straightening out checks with the retirees. She moved with a slight awkwardness, perhaps because she was tall and had grown up among smaller women, trying to match their movements. She wore her black hair in a ponytail, but with bangs trimmed in an arch over her forehead. This would have given her a girlish, naïve appearance except that she wore gold-rimmed glasses with rounded square lenses, projecting a sense of purpose, calculation. She was slim and seemed to be in her late twenties.

My food came and I ate. My appetite made it taste better than usual, but I was there for something more. I caught a glance through gold-rimmed glasses; we exchanged smiles. Later she stopped to check my tea.

What’s your name? I asked.

She hesitated only a second.

Mei-Mei. What yours?

Jacques.

She repeated it, somewhat explosively. Noting my reaction, she said it more softly.

I’ve noticed you here before, I said.

She smiled and rearranged sugar packets.

You like the food here? she asked.

Yes. Also the company.

She looked at the retirees, back at me, and gave a delicate laugh.

No, I meant—

But she was gone, hand to mouth in amusement, rushing along at her waitress pace. I finished my meal and paid her colleague, then saw them eating together as I left. They were having something from large bowls and ladled it carefully. The manager, an older woman, thanked me for my business. Behind her, Mei-Mei looked over but didn’t say anything.

Any satisfaction I felt was doomed, I knew, by my inevitable return to the house. I felt humiliated at the thought of camping that night without water, without plumbing. I sat that night in a short-legged lawn chair in the living room, a man without entertainment. In the long series of circumstances and decisions that had made up my life, one or more major mistakes must have been made. The chain of events led to this, futility and a void, rather than fulfillment. How had I missed my calling? Leaning forward in the lawn chair, beer bottle beside me, I searched the shadows for answers.

Several months before, at the job I’d just quit, I’d received confirmation of my failure. Seated at my computer, I discovered that some people were newly hired at a level higher than mine, though they were no better educated. I had thirty years’ experience and the new people were younger than me, some by decades. I logged off the computer, feeling hollow. Allowing for inflation and the updating of job titles, I was essentially at the same level at which I’d started. I knew I’d had ups and downs but I’d never realized that, at a certain point, stagnation added up to failure.

At home later, I’d examined the artifacts of family life. There were pictures, trophies, furniture acquired piece by piece. The toys and feeding bowls of a deceased dog lay packaged in grocery bags. Had this been compensation for my years of servitude, or was it another facet of my failure? With the goals of society accomplished—child raised, wife successful—I sifted through the remains as one would after a disaster. What, I wondered, could I salvage for myself? I thus decided to sell the house and attempt a reunion with my wife.

Ron and his helper were late in the morning, nine a.m. sharp turning into ten twenty-two sharp. They stormed through the property as I had, vainly searching for cause and solution. They decided to pull the well pump from the fixture to examine it, which would cost me hundreds of dollars. I was stunned but somehow not surprised. I still might be getting off easy, according to Ron.

It might be just a wire, he said. I got plenty of wiring with me. We fix it and pop the pump back in, no further cost to you!

I agreed, having no option. Pulling over the lawn chair, I watched them from the living room window. Ron’s heavy truck backed over the lawn, a derrick rising from the rear. Heavy cables were lowered into the well shaft fixture—an innocuous thing before this week, just something to avoid with the lawn mower. Ron and his helper ran tubes into the shaft, removing clay and loosening the pump. When the pump was finally raised, caked with clay, they seemed to examine it as it hung from the cable. Ron gestured for me to come out, so I joined them by the pendant pump.

The whole thing’s no good, Ron informed me, not just some wiring. We tested it with this gizmo here.

The helper held out a cylinder with some projections and a gauge. It could have been a bomb for all I knew.

Watch, we’ll do it again for you.

They touched the gizmo to a couple of wires extending from the pump. Nothing happened. When they touched it to a clean wire from the gizmo, however, an arc of current zapped between the points.

No current can get through there, Ron said, indicating the pump. It’s all busted and crammed with dirt inside.

Four and a half years, I said, we never had a problem with it.

"It’s old, the helper volunteered. You was lucky."

Looks like the original from when the house was built, confirmed Ron. Probably couldn’t take the shock from the bleach.

I studied the pump in the drizzle, feeling more than ever that I had to escape this house, knowing that at this moment it was impossible to sell.

I happen to have one this size in my truck, Ron offered, eyebrow raised. Brand-new, six hundred bucks, one-year warranty included.

I had to go along with him, I thought. They installed the new pump and let the well spout to clear the water. The helper caught some in a vial and came up to ask me the time, which he wrote on the vial’s label. The water looked clear and Ron assured me it would pass the lab tests.

It’s a good sample, no problem. But you gotta run faucets again to clear the grit. Run the outside one first. Three, four hours maybe.

But I was on my guard. I pretended to agree, but I’d run the water more gradually, minimize the risk of something else breaking down. I watched as Ron tried to install a new well cap. It didn’t fit right and he wasn’t able to modify it.

Got a bucket or something to put over it? he asked. I need a part from the shop to get the cap on.

I gave him a rough plastic wastebasket from the garage. He also wanted payment, total charges over eleven hundred dollars. I should have paid only part, since he still had things to finish, but my urge for finality was in charge. So Ron rumbled off with full payment in his pocket, while I was left with a wastebasket for a well cap, a promise of lab results, and grit to clear from my water supply. Ron did not return.

I tried to call him the next morning, Saturday, for an explanation. He didn’t answer his cell phone so I left a message at his answering service. The phone rang a short time later, but it was the secretary from my attorney’s office. She told me the closing had been reset for Thursday, but only if the closing agent had new test results on Monday. I gave her Ron’s assurance that all would be done timely, feeling false as I did so.

I ran the faucets for short periods, finding grit in most of the samples I took. It didn’t matter, I thought; I had until Thursday. I settled into the lawn chair and stared into strips of December sunshine. I was reminded of another winter, a time and place of great promise: the seminary trip with Father Francis. There, too, the sun was weak on the glazed snow covering the grounds. The stark winter trees were still, seeming to sense the importance of those solemn buildings where priests were being made. We passed a creek, unexpectedly murky.

Hey, said one boy to another, looks like you just had your monthly bath!

That’ll do! Father called back. Then to me, So what do you think, Jacques?

Well, Father, that thing about not reading newspapers or magazines. I don’t see why it’s necessary. I’m so used to them at home.

That’s just the first year. Your studies are quite heavy then—the philosophers, the Latin. You hardly notice it.

But that flaw in the picture remained. We had a simple lunch with the seminarians, saw their austere rooms, the timeless chapel. Despite the imperfection, this life seemed something that was part of me, that I was part of.

I want it, Father, I told him. Very much. Only maybe I should think a little longer, tell my mom and dad—

Of course, involve your parents. Let them know they can call me about it. I’ll be praying for you, Jacques.

His kind face that day, the quiet confidence, was the closest I ever got to living my dream. My mother saw me reading the brochures, looked worried, warned me of dangers that missionaries faced. My father said he’d considered the priesthood but decided he looked at girls too much. Other people agreed with him.

I was steered to a regular Catholic high school, a substitute for the seminary’s prep school, to think it over longer. A lot longer. All the way to this empty living room with weak sunlight filtering in, a wastebasket over the well shaft outside, a man failing to call. This was my vocation now, a thirty-year career mistake having ended.

I thought of Mei-Mei. Maybe I could decide that, too: I looked at girls too much.

I gave up on Ron around lunchtime and went to