A call from Judy...
I have some good news and some bad news, she says. I think I'll give you the bad news first because the good news is so good that when you hear it you'll forget about the bad news. All I hear is that there is bad news and my throat clamps up, as though I am being strangled. When I was in Umbria in November I left behind a post-dated check for Fausto to give to the mysterious MM in case he called back for the remainder of what he said I owed him. I later decided I did not want him to have the check, since his claim against me was unfair, so I told Fausto not to give it to him. Apparently I was too late; Fausto had already given him the check. Now he had tried to cash it and for some reason the bank would not honor it. Judy was afraid that I did not have enough money in the bank and I'd fall short of my mortgage payment. I assured her that the money was there but reiterated that I did not want this moocher to get paid. My heart began to race, a headache of major proportion was looming. Had something gone awry with my bank account? I had recently sent over $5000; how could it be empty? Had MM altered the amount on the check and taken everything?
Now for the good news. One of the neighbors - the gentleman who made a tremendous fuss because he claimed never to have been paid for yardwork that Carlo engaged him for; the same one who insisted I remove a small pile of rocks that had fallen into his garden twenty years ago - had been struck by a car and killed. I suppose Judy must have thought that this would bring me unbridled joy, this prospect of never having to bend again to the will of someone who saw me as an income stream and a way to improve the value of his property. Judy added that the man's wife had been unhappy living in the borgo so it was likely that she would be moving at some point (was she taking the mother and two brothers-in-law with her, I wondered?)
I thought about what it might be like to be a young woman sentenced to living in a place she dislikes with a feeble, aging mother-in-law and a yard full of junk. What are her prospects of marrying again (better than mine, probably)? It's also certainly possible that the entire family could move and be replaced by one even more troublesome. And how would any change really affect me since I'm only there a few weeks out of the year?
