Mary Jo Robertiello, author of “Patty’s At It Again”, has published short stories in in the Level Best Books 2021 anthology, Justice for All, and Purple Wall Publishing, among others. The Lemrow Mystery, her novel about a posh and deadly New York City museum is published in English and Spanish.
*****
Patty was exhausted. She suffered in a sweet old lady way over Hank’s early death. A month before, she had pushed him off the roof. All his own fault, so rude.
She concentrated on cutting off braids for Elma’s birthday. Why? Because Patty’s long ago fourth grade classmate and sister to her future husband, had not invited Patty to a birthday party. Patty never forgot the shining pigtails of the invited. The girls swayed back and forth amidst whispers about the party. Whenever Patty walked by, they slammed shut their desks, hiding their birthday gifts.
Patty’s arthritic right hand came to life as she opened and closed the $22.48 nine-inch tailors shears she’d stolen from her sister-in-law at last year’s party.
Her best place for targets was sitting on an almost empty uptown bus behind a girl gabbing on her phone. Patty checked her compact mirror for any nosy parkers and kept the scissors hidden except for the cutting edges’ tips. The girl bent into her phone. Her ridiculously long brown ponytail drifted down her back. As the bus came to a stop, Patty sliced below the shoulder line, and slid the pigtail into her Channel 13 tote bag. The last thing Patty saw as she thanked the driver and stepped off the bus was the girl grabbing her shortened tail and screaming into her cell phone.
Patty was doing it for fun and for her mean sister’s-in-law boring birthday party. Patty was dexterous. She wove black, brown, red, blond braids. She ignored her husband’s whining about what his sister would think. Think, your sister?
They had to go to Elma’s who loved candy. On July 15th, Patty packaged a leftover Tiffany blue box with soft, sculpted braids. So pretty. So diverse. Was she the first artist to twist and mix difference hair shades? She covered up the braids with Mars bars. What a joke. After they arrived, she eyed Elma leaping to answer her doorbell and doing her phony modesty routine gushing over the kids and their parents as she offered them the Tiffany box candies. Patty watched hoping and not hoping Elma would figure out what the soft, multicolored lining was. Maybe she’d vomit the many Mars bars she’d devoured in front of the parents and kids
I’d be doing her a favor, needs to lose a good eighty pounds. She’s never appreciated me.
Patty took a sip of weak tea, her hands shaking slightly from her home medication of bourbon. “Elma, is this a new kind of tea?”
“Same old A & P English Breakfast.” Elma poured into Patty’s cup. “Here, dear, a little more.” When Elma’s back was turned, Patty dumped her tea into a nearby potted Aspidistra. Immediately, the dark green leaves wilted. Patty raised her shaking hand to her head, cloudy with dizziness.
*****
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