Last night I took a closer look at my finances and prospects, and they’re worse than I thought. And as if that wasn’t enough to throw a man into a fit of depression, that thick-skulled Maria Lorenzo up and quit on me this morning. Came in and said her and her husband decided she couldn’t work for me anymore, no other reason, and then she walked out again with her nose in the air like she’d been smelling turds. Goddamn Indians, they’re all shiftless and worthless. Doesn’t really matter much, her quitting, I suppose; sooner or later I’d’ve had to let her go, because I’ll need even the little I was paying her for my own expenses. But now I’ll have to start cleaning the cabins myself, unless I can find another Indian who’ll work for less than minimum wage on a short-term basis, and the other downside is that I won’t have that big fat ass of Maria’s to watch anymore.
One more season. I figure that’s as long as I can hang on, that’s all the time I’ve got left on Lake Pomo. This time next year, if there’s not some radical change — and I don’t see how there can be — I’ll have to put the resort up for sale and move to San Carlos and depend on Ella to support me and hope like hell she doesn’t decide to marry some jerk who’ll throw me out on my tail. Just the thought of it puts me in a funk.
Like they say nowadays, life sucks. Some people, and it don’t matter how decent and hardworking they are, are just born to end up with the short end of the stick.
Lori Banner
Before he left, John Faith came to see me at the Pomo County Domestic Abuse Center, where I’m staying now. He said how sorry he was about what’d happened to me and I said how sorry I was about what’d happened to him. He said he was glad the district attorney had decided not to press charges against me and I said I was glad the D.A. had decided to drop all the charges against him. It sounds funny and not very sincere when I put it like that, but it wasn’t that way at all. We both meant every word we said. We wished each other well, and hugged each other, and then he was gone and I knew I’d never see him again, and it made me sad. But that’s the way it has to be. I knew it, and so did John.
I wish I’d met him a long time ago. There might’ve been something between us, something good. I’m sorry I didn’t and there wasn’t and it can’t ever be. Sorry about Earle, too — that I ever met him, and married him, and put up with his abuse, and killed him. But I can’t keep on being sorry about everything, and I won’t. I have to put the past behind me and start over fresh. That’s what my counselor says. She says my life didn’t end the night Earle’s did. She says if I want it to be, my life is just beginning.
She’s right. It won’t be easy, but I’ve made up my mind and I’ll stick to it. When I leave here I won’t be going back to the Northlake Cafe and I won’t be living in Pomo any longer. I’ll be returning to school in Santa Rosa, reentering the training program. I’m finally going to do what I always wanted to do, and this time I won’t let anything or anybody stop me.
I’m going to be a nurse.
Lori Banner, R.N. The best R.N. any hospital ever had.
Zenna Wilson
Howard left me.
Walked out, moved out, and he isn’t coming back.
When I came home Sunday evening, bursting with news of Chief Novak’s shocking confession, simply bursting with it, Howard was in our bedroom packing his suitcases. I said, “For heaven’s sake, you’re not going on another of your trips already, on a Sunday night?”
He looked me right in the eye. “No, Zenna,” he said. “I’m leaving you.”
“Leaving me?”
“I can’t spend another night in this house with you, not even for Stephanie’s sake. I’m moving out for good.”
“Howard, have you taken leave of your senses?”
“Come to them, is more like it. I’ll see a lawyer right away, have him start divorce proceedings. But you don’t need to worry. You can have the house, as much support for Stephanie as I can afford... just about anything you want. All I want is out.”
I must have gawked at him with my mouth open like a half-wit. I was utterly speechless.
He kept right on packing. And then, oh my Lord, then he said, “You might as well know the whole truth, Zenna. It’s not just you, this empty marriage of ours... maybe I could’ve gone on, at least for a while, if that’s all it was. But there’s somebody else. I’ve been seeing someone else.”
“Another woman!” I spat the words at him.
“Her name is Irene. She lives in Redding—”
“I don’t want to hear about your dirty whore!”
“She’s not a whore. She’s a widow with two small children—”
I clapped my hands over my ears. “I don’t want to hear it, I don’t care who she is, oh my God, how can you do this to me? How can you do this to Stephanie, your own child?”
“I’ve already talked to Stephanie. I think she understands.”
“Understands? She’s nine years old! What did you tell her?”
“The truth.”
“What truth? That you’ve been fornicating with a whore?”
“My reasons for leaving. All of them. She understands that most of the fault is mine, and she forgives me. Or will, in time.”
“Most of the fault is yours?”
“That’s right. Part of it is yours.”
“How dare you! Mine?”
“I’m sorry, but that’s also the truth. Believe it or not.”
“You’re the one who’ll be sorry, Howard Wilson. You’re the one who’ll be sorry. Cheating, fornicating with God knows how many—”
“Only Irene. And we love each other.”
“—and you have the gall to blame me...” I had to choke out the rest of the words. “Damn you, damn your lying, cheating soul to the fires of Hell!”
“Good-bye, Zenna,” he said, and he was gone.
That was three days ago and I still don’t understand how he could do such a terrible thing to his wife and daughter. To me. I’ve been a good wife, a good mother, I’ve made a strong Christian home, I never so much as looked at another man or lusted after one in my heart in sixteen years of marriage. Cooked his meals, washed his dirty clothes, cleaned his house, let him have my body whenever he wanted it even though I can no longer conceive. What more could a man ask of a woman, a marriage, a home? How could he do this to me after sixteen years? How could he humiliate me this way?
Well, he won’t get away with it. I’ll make him pay. As merciful God is my witness, when I get through with him he won’t have a dime left to give to his Redding harlot and her two little bastards!
George Petrie
Ramon a made me tell her everything. All of it, every detail. Then she made me write it all down and sign it and she took the papers and Christ knows what she did with them. And then she let me go ahead and put the money back in the vault. She’ll help me raise the $7,000 to cover the shortage, too; she’s already planning ways, in case the Indian Head Bay property doesn’t sell in time. We’re going to be much closer from now on, she said. A tight-knit unit, the way a husband and wife should be. Just Ramona and me. Together from now on.