TO END ALL WEEPING
By Robert LorenziAuthorHouse
Copyright © 2011 Robert Lorenzi
All right reserved.ISBN: 978-1-4634-0108-5Contents
To End All Weeping............................1Address Unknown...............................47Damage........................................55Ennui or The Porch Potato.....................61Hatred........................................71Where's Chipper?..............................79Kristi, the Barmaid...........................95Burnt Toast...................................101
Chapter One
TO END ALL WEEPING Here the weeping puts an end to weeping. - Dante, translated by Mark Musa
The Storm of the Century January 6, 1998
He was encased in ice.
On his 70th birthday, Danny Donati awoke in the midst of an ice storm. It had been sleeting in Maine for three days, and it still hadn't stopped. Yesterday seemed the worst.
The electricity had gone off while he slept.
Shivering, wrapped in his blanket, Danny stumbled to the kitchen. He automatically flicked the light switch.
"Stupid ass," he mumbled. "You know, idiot," he said aloud to himself, "when there's no electricity, the light switch doesn't work." Often sarcastic with himself, Danny was alone long enough to scold himself for his stupidities.
He grabbed a log and shoved it into the wood-burning stove. When the ice storm had begun, Danny hauled logs into his cottage.
His cottage on Damariscotta Lake in Lincoln County, Maine, was on the far end, literally ten feet from the water. The window at that end of the cottage gave him a view of the main part of the 13-mile lake. Today there was an accretion of ice that blocked the view.
This cabin on a Maine lake was an idyllic setting in the spring, summer and fall -especially the fall. However, the winters were long, dark, cold and often stormy. But Danny had never experienced the severity of a storm such as this one. Large accumulations of snow were not unusual. It seemed once it snowed, the snow never went away until spring.
"I have everything I need," Danny often reminded himself, and he mumbled that to himself now. He always kept a massive supply of canned food, spring water, and logs for the stove. And books - he had enough books to satisfy his voracious reading, he estimated, for six years. He felt secure in his independence, like Thoreau in his cabin at Walden Pond.
After his wife Bea died five years ago, Danny abruptly resigned his professorship at a community college in New Jersey and ran away from his past life to Maine to exile himself.
Bea's suffering from ovarian cancer almost killed Danny, too. His love for Bea was unending. The stress of her suffering and death caused him angina pain that led to open-heart surgery - triple bypass.
"You would have had a heart attack," the cardiologist had told him.
Danny ran away from something else: his only son's drug addiction. Bea's dying words: "I'm free. I'm sorry to leave you with Billy."
Billy had become a heroin addict at 17. Bea and Danny became codependent resulting in their finances bordering on bankruptcy. But Danny was always able to pick up extra teaching work to make ends meet though they were forced to sell their house.
After Bea's death, Danny lost all of his energy.
"I'm through with you, Billy." He withdrew all of his savings and with half, opened a savings account for Billy. By himself, Danny could lead a Spartan life on Damariscotta Lake.
"I have everything I need," he reminded himself. Danny, living this isolated life, often talked to himself. "I have the logs."
He noticed the electric kitchen clock had stopped at 2:48. Though he knew his cabinets were filled with canned goods, he opened each to satisfy his security.
"I even have a couple bottles of wine," he reminded himself. He tried the phone but it was dead.
He slipped on a sweater and trousers and rummaged through a kitchen drawer to find batteries for his radio.
"It's estimated that 75% of the state is without power. This ice storm of `98 has crippled most of the state with electric lines and telephone lines down.
"The storm has been raging since Saturday with the worst accumulation yesterday of almost an inch and a quarter of frozen rain."
The commentator went on about emergency crews, aid shelters, and warnings to stay indoors.
"I'm glad I have everything I need in this place," Danny repeated.
The cottage had been one big room when Danny bought it 12 years ago, but Danny added partitions to create a kitchen and two bedrooms. He and Bea came to Maine every summer since they purchased the place. Some summers, Billy and one of his girlfriends showed up. And on two occasions, Danny's sister Gerri and her husband visited. They were happy days except when Billy had to find heroin - when he became agitated and angry. Billy never stayed long.
Bea and Danny always found their own happiness in each other. Before the "Billy problem," Danny had once told Bea, "It's scary. We've been so happy and had such good luck, it frightens me."
Bea laughed. "We'll just have to live with all this joy."
The unhappiness in their lives had been Bea's three miscarriages. Bea had Billy when she was 40. She devoted her life to raising him. Billy was a wonderful child - good-humored, lively, intelligent.
Danny and Bea never knew what went wrong. "God didn't want us to have this child," Danny told Bea. "He warned us three times."
"There has never been as severe a natural disaster as this," Danny heard the reporter say.
"Indeed, people are calling it the storm of the century."
Conversations with Bea
His love for Bea was undying - so much so that five years after her death, he still spoke to her - and amazingly she responded - if not in words, in thoughts. He still knew what Bea was thinking.
Danny had met Bea after he completed his Bachelor's degree. After knowing each other for one year, they married. Even though she had gone to work immediately after high school, she was a voracious reader. She enjoyed reading classical literature, but also had knowledge of American literature - Dan and Bea had much in common.
Beatrice Porter, born in 1932 in Paterson, New Jersey, blonde, blue-eyed, often referred to Danny as her "dark Italian Gothic villain who kidnapped her." Danny, also from Paterson, born of immigrants, referred to Bea as his "American," rolling the `R' and accenting the last syllable to give it the Italian pronunciation.
Danny was a friend of Bea's cousin. They met at a party given by Bea's cousin. Soon they realized that they were in love.
And they still are.
After heating his instant coffee on the wood stove, Danny sat in his rocker for his morning conversation with Bea. He never started his day any other way.
"You should see the weather here, Bea. Unbelievable. Not snow. Freezing rain. The cottage is a cake of ice. Worst storm ever. I can't see out the window to see the lake. But I have everything I need.
"Billy, wherever he is, is not in Maine, so he's not out in this storm."
There was a long hesitation as Danny thought of Billy, hoping he was with friends and not living on the street. He hadn't heard from Billy in over a year.
"I tried, Bea. I gave him enough money to survive for a year. I paid his apartment a year in advance. But I had to leave. If I didn't, I would probably be dead by now.
"Remember how naive we were in the beginning?...
