Laughing Not to Cry uses humor to tell the story of a fifty-three-year-old teacher whose husband pillaged her family’s flower business, vanished with their life savings, and did it all legally. She struggles to build a new life with her senile father, the Colonel. She prevails against enemies who try to push her out of her job and off her farm, while she rebuilds her family’s flower business against all odds. In the process, Dorothy, the trusting wife and victim, becomes a stronger, sassier, wiser version of herself. Her husband returns and tries to ruin her again but this time he confronts a woman to be reckoned with who beats him at his own game.

LAUGHING NOT TO CRY

By Mona Figure

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2010 Mona Figure
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4502-2438-3

Chapter One

RIVERVIEW, CONNECTICUT

After her husband vanished with their life savings, Dorothy Brainerd Rutherford diddled away eight years trying to keep body and soul together. She thought that the bad times were behind her, but on the day of her mother's funeral fourteen months ago, Dorothy found that the bad times had just begun. Her house was not the haven she once knew. Its walls had grown closer since Carla died.

The sun was low in the sky when Dorothy set off on the dirt road toward the river. Her bulky, moth-eaten jacket had outlived her grandfather and still smelled faintly of his Prince Edward pipe tobacco. The wind swirled dead leaves around her, unraveled strands of her graying hair, and made her eyes water. Walking gave her the peace and solitude she no longer found at home. Her whole body rejoiced to be alone and out of doors. The tightness in her neck and shoulders loosened up somewhat.

She had last hiked to the river with Maggie over two years ago. It seemed much longer. Dorothy couldn't recall the details, only the feelings, all sensation and excitement, for it was Maggie's way to infuse vitality into everything she did and to make the most mundane occasion fun by being there. But she lived in France, out of reach, out of touch, a world away from Dorothy and her troubles. She took in a deep breath and told herself she could handle them; everything was going to be okay.

She paused for a moment to view the dilapidated tobacco sheds, the abandoned greenhouses, and the wide expanse of fields between them-all that remained of what her grandparents had left her. Dorothy seldom thought of them now or questioned why events had turned out the way they had, denying her the bright future her grandparents had planned for her. It seemed that a lifetime ago, she'd had pretty much everything-a new car every year, new outfits every season, money in the bank, a life populated with friends. She didn't miss the affluent life, but beneath the surface, she longed for an undefinable something. Not love. That was a distant, forgotten thing.

The road narrowed into a footpath overgrown with cockleburs that clawed at her ankles and stuck to her jeans. The path took her into a meadow, over a fallen stone fence, through a thin forest of new growth birch, across the Amtrak railroad tracks, and into a clearing under towering maples. The woods smelled of rotting leaves and dying autumn, like the musty smell of her house.

She heard the river before it came into view. On an outcropping of granite, she surveyed Riverview Falls, its roar a whimper now with the dam gone and the river running helter-skelter over broken concrete. This place was her childhood sanctuary. A lichen-covered oak lay twisted and rotting on the ground, its gnarled roots pointing to the river. She remembered it upright and leaning over the water, a long rope hanging from it. She could almost hear Maggie's wild laugh as she snatched the rope and bounded through the air, blonde hair wet and stringy, lunging as far as she could before letting go and plunging into the river. One day Dorothy cartwheeled off the rope and hit a log that had been floating by. The impact knocked her out. She came to half-drowned, with Maggie pulling her by her ponytail out of the river and dragging her to shore. Her scalp was sore for a week afterward.

Back at the clearing under the maples, Dorothy kicked at leaves and dirt, trying to find the pit where they had cooked shad over an open fire. Finally her foot found what she was looking for-stones the size of ostrich eggs, blackened on one side.

Dorothy was lost in reverie, when out of nowhere a tall, a white blur flashed across the woods in front of her. She knew instantly that it was her father running toward Earl Vining's farm in his baseball cap and nothing else. Carmella was in pursuit, big breasts flying and chin in the air. Dorothy rushed to intercept them in the meadow, but they ran past her, and her father disappeared in the thicket. Canada geese paddling in the rushes took flight, and mallards burst out of their early evening roosts, shrieking and flapping. Gasping, Carmella slowed to a walk.

Dorothy caught up with her. "What happened?"

Carmella replied between gasps. "He bolted out of the shower. I couldn't stop him. Old man Vining's going to be furious. It's the second time this month."

"Go back to the house and call Judd. Tell him the Colonel's loose again." With that Dorothy launched herself in his direction. Without missing a step, she yelled over her shoulder, "Call Earl Vining too and warn him."

Within minutes a shot rang out. Sparks flew from a power line near the railroad trestle and illuminated the late afternoon sky. Two more shots followed, and a flock of crows rose in jittery flight. Earl was a dairy farmer, not a hunter. He couldn't hit a cow with his shotgun pressed against its rump, but the shots gave Dorothy pause. One of these days Earl was going to hurt someone with that gun.

It was dark when Dorothy limped home. The damp air rising from the river went right through her grandfather's jacket and into her bones. She felt as though she had been hit by a train in Hartford and dragged all the way to Springfield. She trudged up the steps to the mudroom, kicked off her muddy shoes, and collapsed in a chair at the kitchen table.

Carmella appeared in a skimpy pink robe, her thick black hair twisted in a knot on top of her head. "You didn't find him?"

Dorothy shook her head and glanced at the clock over the kitchen sink. It was six thirty. Worries about her father were her constant companions. So far she had coped, but his frequent flights threatened to overwhelm her.

"No need to worry. He always shows up eventually." Carmella leaned across the table close to Dorothy and spoke in a confidential tone. "Don't mind my saying so, but you'd best put him away."

Though in no mood for Carmella's advice, Dorothy nodded politely. Live-in caregivers were more temperamental than movie stars and harder to find than honest politicians.

"Why don't you put him in the Veterans' Home? He's a war hero. They got to take him."

Dorothy slumped lower in her chair. "I'm beat. Let's talk tomorrow."

Carmella ignored the hint. "With the Colonel gone, you could find yourself a man and get married again. You got a few wrinkles, but you aren't that old. If you gained weight and dyed your hair, you wouldn't be bad-looking."

Dorothy closed her eyes and wished she were in a coma. "Did Judd call?

"No, but Earl Vining did. He says the Colonel's crazy and you got to put him away. He says if you don't, he will. He'll blow his ass off next time he's loose."

The words might have come from Vining, but Dorothy knew they expressed Carmella's sentiments. Dorothy thought of things she'd better not say. The phone rang and she hurried to answer. It was Judd.

"We found him in a culvert under the railroad tracks-cold, hungry, and dirty as a ditch digger. We showered and fed him and dressed him in jail fatigues."

Dorothy exhaled loudly, the great crush of worry lifted. "Thanks." She said it so often lately that she thought it sounded insincere. "I'll be right over to pick him up."

"No need to. I'll take him home at the end of my shift."

Carmella slipped out of the kitchen while Dorothy talked to Judd. She went back to the mudroom, hung her jacket on a peg, shook the twigs out of her hair, took the cockleburs off her jeans, and brushed the caked dirt off her shoes.

Dorothy returned to the kitchen to find Carmella in street clothes with her coat over her arm and a suitcase by her skinny legs. Her jersey top revealed her unfettered breasts and prominent nipples.

"I'm leaving," Carmella said.

A knot formed in Dorothy's throat. "Tonight? Why?"

"The Colonel's always at me-grabbing my tits and groping my private parts."

Dorothy groaned, thinking of the quiz she had planned to give her Advanced Placement English class the next day. Now she would have to stay home with the Colonel and ask a colleague to cover for her again. The routine was getting old.

Carmella scratched an address on the back of an envelope and gave it to Dorothy. "Send my check here." As she spoke, the doorbell rang. "That's my cab. Sorry it didn't work out."

Dorothy followed her to the front door. "Too bad you couldn't stay longer than three months," she said, wanting to make a point.

Carmella gave Dorothy a long look. "I raised five kids with a no-good husband. They were a vacation in Florida compared to the Colonel."

She was halfway down the front porch steps when Dorothy called out, "Carmella."

"What?"

"You really ought to wear a bra."

Chapter Two

ALL WET

Wind pounded the clapboards and rattled the shutters, and rain poured over the eaves and gutters and seeped under the windows. Dorothy went from room to room with a towel, sopping water from the sills, moving double-quickly, determined to arrive at school on time, storm or no storm. Her attendance record embarrassed her-late six times and absent four since the start of the school term-more absences in a single term than in her entire previous thirty years of teaching.

She ran to the mudroom, struggled into her galoshes, and grabbed her blue vinyl raincoat, praying that the storm would leave the roof intact. A bolt of lightning lit up the fields and struck the maple tree outside the kitchen window. With a thunderous crack, a large branch broke and fell so close to the house that Dorothy ducked.

She rapped several times on the Colonel's door. The key turned in the lock, and Sarah appeared, her wrinkled face thrust forward over her dowager's hump.

"Will you check the attic for leaks? I don't have time," Dorothy said.

"That's four flights, two up and two down." Sarah rubbed her hip. "Weather's bad for my rheumatism."

"I wouldn't ask, but I'm late. Take something to catch the leaks. There are some old pots and pans in the cellar on the shelves behind the furnace."

"That's two more flights, one down and one up." Sarah looked with disdain about the antiquated house. "I don't want to be stuck in the attic or cellar if the lights go out."

"Forget it. And don't bother with the breakfast dishes either." Dorothy knew the old crone wouldn't do them anyway. From the doorway she saw the Colonel toweling off after his shower. He ignored her wave.

"Don't let him out of your sight," Dorothy whispered. "If you have to leave his room, be sure to lock the door."

"No need to keep telling me. That's what I'm paid for." Sarah backed into the room, locked the door, and said, loudly enough for Dorothy to hear, "Don't get paid to find leaks and wash dishes. Get paid to take care of the Colonel."

Dorothy went to the hat tree to get the big black umbrella the undertaker left behind after Carla's funeral and glanced at the hat tree mirror. The gaunt, disheveled figure who gazed back looked like a bag lady in a blue raincoat, nothing like the mental image she had of herself in her long-term memory. She marched into the parlor, pulled the fringed orange coverlet off the sofa, and draped it over the hat tree mirror so she wouldn't have to be reminded, every time she passed it, that her father looked younger than she did.

She pushed her rump against the mudroom door and thrust her umbrella into the storm. Immediately the umbrella blew inside out and went hurtling end over end into the fields. She ran to the barn, holding her briefcase with one hand and her hat with the other. For a change, her 1990 Plymouth coupe started without an argument.

Her unpaved driveway was treacherous on days like this. She knew she should steer around the potholes, but she was late and took her chances driving straight down the road, her car thumping and lurching over the potholes. Her front tires finally hit a deep hole and slowly sank in. She gunned the engine and turned the wheel this way and that, the car pitching forward and then rolling back but going nowhere. She shook the wheel and cursed, thinking of her students snickering when she arrived late and breathless.

She tightened her raincoat about her, stepped out of the car, and felt cold mud oozing over her galoshes into her shoes. Head lowered, she began the one-mile trek to Riverview High. On nicer days she enjoyed the walk to school. Today the bare oaks and sycamores, black against the gray sky, looked menacing, their low branches reaching for her like arthritic fingers.

Within minutes Bill Bates's new black Lexus pulled up alongside her. Gladys was driving.

"Get in," he shouted.

Dorothy would have preferred not to. Bates was a sweetheart, but his wife was something else. But how could Dorothy refuse? She climbed into the back seat behind Bates, dripping water over the car's pristine interior.

Gladys looked over her shoulder and frowned at Dorothy's galoshes. Her bleached blonde hair was in curlers under a transparent kerchief. No matter how hard she tried, Gladys couldn't conceal her fifty-plus years. Her beady eyes, thin lips, and lantern jaw warned anyone who came close not to.

Bill Bates smiled a lot. Tall, lanky, and nearsighted, he lacked the decorum of a high school principal, which endeared him to students and faculty alike. His suit, tie, and polished wingtip shoes looked silly on him. Dorothy guessed he wore them to humor Gladys. Everyone called him Bates, but his wife called him William.

"Car trouble?" he asked.

"It's in a ditch in my driveway."

"I'll call road service." He reached for his cell phone.

"I hear the Colonel's giving you problems," Gladys said.

"He's no problem at all," Dorothy lied, "just old." In the rearview mirror, she saw Bates glare at his wife and debated whether to shut up or to say something innocuous. "How are the kids?"

"They're all fine, thank you." Gladys's tone said the conversation was over.

Bates unbuckled his seat belt and turned to face Dorothy. "Pete is in grad school at Trinity, Kevin graduates from UConn in June, and Gail is expecting."

"Dorothy's not interested in our family," Gladys said. "Turn around and buckle your seat belt."

He turned around but didn't buckle up.

"William tells me you're a nominee for the Connecticut Teacher of the Year Award," Gladys said. "Congratulations."

"Thanks. I don't deserve it."

Bates turned to face Dorothy again. "Nonsense, you're the best educator we have."

"That's why he puts up with your no-shows and tardies." Gladys covered the putdown with a little laugh.

Dorothy took a deep breath and remained silent.

Bates put his finger to his lips. "I finally got through to road service. Turn around, Gladys, they want us to wait by the car."

She made an abrupt U-turn, throwing him against the dash. They exchanged venomous looks. Dorothy felt the heat of his anger from the back seat. When they approached her farm, Dorothy thanked them and started to get out of the car.

He stopped her. "We'll wait with you."

"Road service takes hours on days like this," Gladys said.

"She's right, Bates. I'll be okay." Dorothy opened the car door, and he shut it.

"We're staying with you." He aimed his remark at Gladys.

"I have things to do, and so do you." Gladys pointed to a roadside stand on Dorothy's property. "She can wait in there."

"Thanks." Dorothy jumped out, relieved to be in the storm again.

Bates grabbed his coat and jumped out after her.

"What are you doing? You'll ruin your new shoes," Gladys yelled above the downpour.

"Go back!" Dorothy nudged him toward the car.

Bates slammed the door and waved Gladys off. His shiny black wingtips sank in muck to the shoelaces.

Gladys gunned the motor, spinning her tires and splattering mud over them.

He watched her car disappear down the highway. "The bitch."

"You should have stayed with her. She'll think we're having an affair."

"If I had half the affairs she accuses me of, I'd be in seventh heaven."

The roadside stand was a flimsy shack with a "Pumpkins for Sale" sign nailed to the front of it. Its tin roof leaked, and its open awning window was like a wind tunnel. Stiff with cold, Dorothy couldn't keep her teeth from chattering.

"You look like a cadaver. Let's wait at the house." Bates left a note for the tow truck on Dorothy's car then led her past the vacant flower shop and greenhouses and up the hill to the house.

"Do you still grow flowers?"

"Not for eight years. Nick and I raise a few acres of pumpkins and ornamental corn for Halloween."

"Coco's son?"

She nodded. "He majored in horticulture at UConn. It satisfies his yen for farming and helps pay the taxes on his place and mine."

(Continues...)

Excerpted from LAUGHING NOT TO CRYby Mona Figure Copyright © 2010 by Mona Figure. Excerpted by permission.
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