Dillon Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Satoko Silverberg

  All right reserved.

  ISBN 978-1-54397-040-1 (PRINT BOOK)

  ISBN 978-1-54397-041-8 (e-BOOK)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Printed in the United States of America

  First printing, 2019

  Cover Illustration Copyright © 2019 by Karen Greenberg

  Book design and production by BookBaby

  7905 N. Crescent Blvd. Pennsauken, NJ 08110

  www.satokosilverberg.com

  Contents

  Texas County, Oklahoma 1960

  New York City, 2012

  A Gift

  Like a Lion

  About Dillon

  A Trip around the World in 180 Days

  Fall in New York

  Day versus Fanning

  Life of a Dog

  The Eve

  The Day of Judgment

  The Night in New York

  Angel

  Acknowledgement

  DILLON began some five years ago. And I chose to write at a Starbucks near my home. I’d wake up every morning early to take care of household chores before taking the short walk to the Starbucks, where as soon as the baristas opened their doors at 7 am, I’d set up shop at the same window seat. As you will know if you’ve ever been a loyal patron at a coffee house, the morning crowd will generally consist of the same members, customers and baristas alike, day in and day out. Naturally, we––the morning crowd at this particular Starbucks––bonded. As I fell in love with my characters, when I became too emotionally invested in the scenes that I was struggling to bring to life, and when I became teary-eyed, my friends there––my advocates––watched over and encouraged me. To the gentleman with the expensive customized bike, to the comic writer sisters, the banker, the friendly baristas, and many others––thank you for helping me see this through.

  When I finally was ready to publish, Amy Elizabeth Bishop and Brooks Becker helped me edit. Your professional suggestions were incredible. Thank you.

  Karen Greenberg—I knew I needed to work with you the moment I saw your portfolio. Your artwork perfectly captures how I imagine my characters to look in real life. You are a talented artist. Thank you for your cover design, which I will cherish.

  Jane Friedman––thank you for your invaluable advice on the writing life. Your site has become a bible to me.

  Shawn Mummert––thank you for developing my author site. I was never tech-savvy, but you held my hand all the way through.

  To Elliot Silverberg, thank you. Your beautiful use of language in writing inspires me. If only I could become one tenth of you as a writer…

  Finally, to my husband Kenny––the idea of DILLON came to me one day while I was giving you your usual morning shiatsu massage. Charming me in humor on the floor, you were acting like a small Chihuahua enjoying the touch of a human. By the time I left the house for work thirty minutes later that morning, I had formed an outline for the entire story. Since I began writing fiction, you’ve been both a supreme advocate of my aspirations to tell stories and a source of inspiration—this time in the form of a spirited canine, DILLON. Thank you.

  Chapter 1

  Texas County, Oklahoma 1960

  The throb of angry rain suddenly became gentle, forgiving the people. Then a merciful act of God: a patch of fresco blue revealed itself from an edgy crack of thick thunderclouds. Though she had never seen church paintings, this seraphic blue reminded Miriam of them. Maybe there are none here, she thought. The place where she lived was too outlying, too agrarian to have one religious icon. Miriam, although she had grown up all her life in this place of no significance other than for raising hogs, could appreciate this special blue. She imagined a dress of the blue, then pumps, a hat, and a matching basket bag. It all came naturally to her. Miriam had an instinct for fashion as she had dressed up her doll from a young age. Beautiful things in a girly style were her passion, although her family could not provide those sorts of luxuries. So she carried out this fascination with fashion wholeheartedly in her imagination.

  She stood at a small outdoor bus depot, a shabby wooden structure in the middle of nothing, where the only things apparent were brown mud roads and remnants of rickety wood platforms across the street that had been used only during the Halloween pumpkin sales. Miriam, a seventeen-year-old beauty, looked at the silhouette of faraway mountains. The outline of the mountain range seemed to possessively surround and trap the entire simplicity of this remote little pastoral town and the people living here, including Miriam. It knowingly severed the life inside from the rest of the world.

  Nature must be kindhearted but not poisonous, Miriam tried to convince herself. Yet to Miriam, its nothingness and vastness seemed intentionally dictatorial and hypocritically righteous. In the past when her uncle took her to Tulsa—the second-largest city in Oklahoma, almost 400 miles away—Miriam had seen white pavement markings. But she didn’t remember where the white markings on the road started, how far out from where she lived. Opportunity to find the answer had finally arrived. She was going to New York. Although New York had not been a reality, she was already in love with its snazziness, imagining herself shopping, strolling, and giggling with friends along a trendy street.

  It was half past six. He was already thirty minutes late. “He” was Henry, a twenty-year-old Adonis with a quarter of Indian blood. They were about to elope.

  Me and Henry . . . I can’t believe I’m actually doing this. We’ll be together forever, Miriam thought. Monumental as it was, Miriam was set in her path, devoid of hesitation and nostalgia. They were in love.

  By then, the last rays of sun before dusk added more humidity into the already clammy air. The windshield wipers on the sheriff’s car moved, clearing remaining water drizzling down from the roof. It drove by in front of the bus depot once, returned shortly after, and stopped in front of Miriam. A middle-aged female officer stepped out, leaving a young male officer in the driver’s seat.

  “Miss. Are you Miss Burke? Miss Miriam Burke?”

  Miriam immediately knew that their plan to elope was put on hold, at least for the time being.

  Must be Phoebe, she thought. Phoebe was her younger sister by fourteen months. She’s always jealous of me. She must have told Mom and Dad on me. I should never have said anything to her.

  “Miss, aren’t you one of the Burkes’ girls? Your parents are worried about you.”

  “I’m an adult.”

  “Not yet, hon, you’re still seventeen, remember. Now, come with me,” said the officer, extending her hand.

  Although their grand plan was interrupted, being escorted into a sheriff’s car seemed a worthwhile experience to Miriam.

  This upgrades my standing as a free-spirited individualist who meets the status of a future wife of Henry, she thought.

  Henry, a vegan since fourteen, had been fighting for some “issues.” She didn’t fully understand his “issues,” but his principle was, to Miriam, without any doubt, ethically correct all the way. Other than Miriam, however, people in the town saw him as an utter weirdo.

  The female officer sat next to Miriam in the back seat. The radio kept making a buzzing noise. The male officer in the driver’s seat picked up the receiver and spoke into it.

  “Ready to leave the location. Over.”

  The reception was bad, making the voice of the person on the other end nothing more than a static sound, perhaps due to the heavy rai
nstorm with lightning. As the car cruised around the town, approaching the newly built hog farm, Miriam noticed the street was unusually mobbed by people and the farm compound was closed off by several fire engines and police cars emitting flashing red lights. The commotion outside was something that the town had never seen. Miriam curiously looked back at the mayhem through the rear window.

  “Take a river route, Rob,” the female officer instructed her partner.

  She placed her hand on top of Miriam’s and said, “You’ll be all right.”

  Her hand was large and masculine, but warm and comforting to Miriam.

  Chapter 2

  New York City, 2012

  Having experienced this fifty-plus times made no difference to Miriam. New York the day after Christmas was so gray, gloomy, and melancholic that the glow of sunlight didn’t help. Even this beloved city, a cherished American jewel, couldn’t escape this day to unwind from its utmost peak of charm and energy once a year.

  Are they coming back from the glamour of the season’s celebrations or are they going through the motions? What a day to have a funeral. Did he have to go at this time of the year? Miriam thought, gazing along the avenue through the car window.

  “Mom. Mom? Are you all right?”

  Rose, Miriam’s forty-one-year-old daughter, touched her hand.

  Coming out of a daydream, Miriam looked at Rose.

  “Yes, of course. I was just thinking about something. Are we there yet?”

  The black four-door sedan stopped in front of a church on the Upper East Side. The hearse carrying Herbert Day, Miriam’s late husband, had arrived before family members.

  As Miriam exited the car, two young boys, ages nine and ten, and a younger girl and boy, along with a teenage girl, all well-dressed, stood still on the stairs in front of the church door. They were Miriam’s grandchildren. Miriam’s daughter-in-law, Jen, dutifully helped Miriam get out of the car.

  The funeral hadn’t been anything noteworthy until a lady in her late fifties sitting in the first row on the opposite side of the room from the Days exhibited an overblown show of sorrow. Holding a pink terrycloth handkerchief, Ms. Schmidt, Herbert’s last mistress, howled, almost choking herself. Her stout shoulders trembled up and down, and her bellow resonated throughout the cathedral. The brouhaha drew curious attention from the whispering guests. Her show of sorrow was in the realm of slapstick.

  “She’s got a nerve,” Jason, Rose’s older brother, who was wearing his customary black sunglasses, muttered.

  “Ben’s taking care of HER situation, right?” Rose responded.

  Miriam, without changing her stoic face or facing Jason, discreetly kicked the side of his shoe with a four-inch heel of her narrow black sling-back pump.

  Miriam Day, a widow, emitted an alluring aura. Her glamour was quiet and elegant. At sixty-nine, she still had an endless list of men who would gladly give their hearts to her. As she sat in the front row at the funeral of her late husband, her crossed Twiggy-like legs covered with a pair of black fishnets were tempting. Her light cashmere jacket was buttoned up close to her neck, enveloping her delicate shoulders. During this rather dull ceremony, she quietly fiddled with the strap of her shoulder bag. Her aura was nothing comparable to her physical size. Her features and mannerisms were naturally seductive.

  “I still don’t understand what Dad saw in her,” Jason whispered.

  “Please,” Miriam mumbled disapprovingly, facing straight forward.

  Sensing her disapproval, Jason repositioned himself and glanced at his mother.

  Later in the evening, Jason, Jen, Rose, and Rose’s husband, Matthew, gathered in the kitchen in Miriam’s Upper East Side duplex apartment. Ben, a long-time confidant and a lawyer of the family, was among them. They were still in their black funeral suits, digging into the plates of food served on the kitchen table. Maneuvering around the table was Carla, Miriam’s best friend and the family maid of thirty-plus years. Carla took care of these regular visitors while occasionally exchanging secret eye contact with Miriam, who sat right outside the kitchen in the living room. Miriam consciously excluded herself from the others. The conversation among the five adults in the kitchen sometimes became heated, but Miriam and Carla stayed outside the exchange, although they were far from oblivious to what was being said.

  “She had the audacity to sit right in the front seat and throw a show like that. I can’t believe it. Wasn’t it crazy, Mom?” Jason asked.

  “Ben, you’ve got some ideas to keep her away, I hope,” Matthew joined in.

  “Yes, true. We have to make sure she will never come after us in the future. Never, ” said Rose.

  “That’s right, Rose. To that end, I will draft a financial settlement by Tuesday and e-mail it to you, Miriam. OK? Miriam? I’ll cc to you guys, too. Read it over and sleep on it a couple of days and let me know what you think of it by Friday. I can revise the draft over the weekend, if necessary.” Ben continued chewing ice cubes from the glass. “Regarding her employment status, I have a college friend in Connecticut. He might be able to help us. He runs an accounting firm that is pretty successful. And last time I spoke to him, he was looking for a capable secretary, which Ms. Schmidt is. I can ask him if the position is still available. If it is, it’ll be a perfect situation for her and everybody involved.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Jason.

  “Yah, let her stay there for good,” Rose agreed.

  “He’ll probably arrange a nice and comfortable housing situation for her, too. The key is to make sure she is well enough provided for so that she won’t complain,” Ben added.

  “So, why don’t we meet on Wednesday again? No reason to wait until Friday,” Matthew chimed in. “The sooner the better. I don’t mind if you guys come to our place. Right, Rose?”

  “Sure, how about seven o’clock? Is that OK with you, Mom? How about you, Jason?”

  “Yup. Honey, why don’t we meet at my office at six thirty?” Jason suggested to Jen.

  “Regarding the settlement with Ms. Schmidt, I must tell you that the amount must be substantial enough. After all, she is someone Herbert cared for, however painful it might have been to you all, for the last twenty years.”

  Listening to Ben, Rose almost choked herself with a piece of rugalach she had been nibbling on.

  “Twenty years? I thought it was the last fourteen years, not twenty. I didn’t know Daddy and SHE had been going at each other that long. Not that it makes any difference anymore, but . . .”

  “Twenty years. Actually, twenty years and three months and seventeen days,” Miriam joined the conversation. “And before that was somebody else.”

  Everybody in the kitchen stopped and looked at Miriam.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Mom. Twenty or fourteen. What’s the difference? Really, I know it’s not the point. This is silly. I’m sorry.”

  “By the way, I was thinking about going on a cruise.” Miriam, turning to the crowd, changed the subject. “You know Herbert never liked going on long trips, for the reason we all now know. I always wanted to go on a cruise like my friends talked about. Exotic places in Europe and the Middle East and Africa. Can you imagine? I’d love to do that. Now that I’m free to go.”

  The children in the kitchen were impatient.

  “Tell her,” Rose mouthed to Jason.

  “Why me?” Jason mouthed back.

  Rose’s eyes were set on Jason in her typical commanding manner. Rolling his eyes, Jason knew he had no choice. It was the way his little sister always was.

  “Surrender is the story of my life,” he groused.

  “That sounds wonderful, Mom,” he started. “When would you like to do that? We can make an arrangement for you as soon as we settle this.”

  “I think it’s a terrific idea when the weather turns nice, which is . . . maybe sometime in spring.” Rose had to speak up now since
she didn’t trust Jason. She had to be in control; she was the boss.

  “Who cares about the weather in New York? I’ll be in Africa anyway.”

  “That’s true,” Jason agreed.

  Rose angrily looked at him.

  “You know what?” Miriam said. “I’m ready to leave as soon as possible. I can leave even tomorrow if I have to. I’ve got nothing to do here.”

  “Mom, Dad’s just passed. Don’t you want to spend some time together as a family? I feel lonely and lost. I can’t imagine how you can just get up and go to Africa by yourself at this time of sorrow. We should be together to help each other to go through it,” said Rose.

  Miriam glanced at her daughter mischievously and continued, “I’ve never seen you get so sentimental, Rosie. And to be honest, your helping me go through this time of sorrow is exactly what I do not need now.”

  Carla and Miriam exchanged knowing signals.

  “How about we all go on a cruise? The kids can join us, too. Grandma will have a blast,” Matthew said in his typical docile manner, trying to contribute to the discussion. “What do you think, honey?”

  Jason interjected, “I like that idea. That’s the best. Kids’ll love it. So, after they get off from school in June. Hey, Matthew, you’re a genius sometimes.”

  “Good, honey, you’re brilliant. With an advance booking, we should be able to get a great deal. You know what? Don’t you, Jen . . . didn’t you tell me once that you know the man . . . I think he is an Indian man who has a travel agency on Lexington?” Rose was quick.

  “Ah, yes. You mean Mr. Bandopadhyay. A very nice man. I’m sure he can put together a nice package for us,” Jen tactfully answered.

  “Right. Mr. Bando . . . whatever. You should definitely give him a call, Jen. Tomorrow first thing, please.”

  “Sure. I’ll do that tomorrow morning.”

  Carla cleared the kitchen table, rolling her eyes.