Mad Mabel: A Novel

"Elsie!" he calls out. "Did you see that they've got long-handled hedge trimmers on special at Aldi this week? Not a bad price."

"Is that right?" I say. No need to point out that Peter doesn't have a hedge, nor does he have so much as a plant in his entire courtyard. Typical Greek, he paved the thing to within an inch of its life the moment he moved in.

"Is that bloody dog still barking?" he says.

"Hasn't stopped all day."

 

Peter is instantly up in arms. "We should call the council," he says. Peter loves being up in arms. So do I, truth be told. It's a magnificent feeling. Superior-like.

Peter disappears inside his house. Once he's gone I notice Persephone is observing me closely. "You smile whenever Peter's around."

"What? Nonsense."

"You do."

I'm about to protest further, but there's no point, the child has moved on. She climbs into the chair opposite, right onto Daphne's lap. Daphne beams. Unlike me, she's always had a soft spot for children.

"Right then," Persephone says, her pencil poised over a clipboard. "Why don't we nip this in the butt?"

I take a slow, deep breath and let it out with otherworldly patience. "The bud."

She ignores me. "How old are you, Elsie?"

"How old do you think I am?"

She takes a moment to assess me. "I'd say...167."

"At least," Daphne adds.

I give them both the stink eye. "I'm eighty-one."

"Eighty-one." Persephone is skeptical, but she writes it down. It feels unethical to dislike a child this much. "Now. Tell me something interesting. About the olden days."

She gazes up at me as if expecting tales of riding dinosaurs and etching our ABCs into stone, Fred Flintstonestyle.

"Such as?" I ask.

She thinks for a moment. "Something gory."

I find myself wondering if it might have been Persephone who put that article under my door. "Such as...?"

"Emma's grandpa went to war and got shot in the leg!"

 

Persephone seems delighted about this, even forming a little gun using her thumb and forefinger and aiming it at her thigh. Daphne joins in, firing her own set of finger guns.

"Is that right?"

"Oh yes...there was blood and guts everywhere."

"Guts? In his leg?"

"'Everywhere'," she says. "Oh! And Teddy's yiayia didn't even have TV when she was little!" She frowns, considering this a moment. "She must have watched her phone."

"Or her iPad?" Daphne offers.

It occurs to me that Persephone has been thrust into my life by virtue of some sort of karmic force. As you know, I haven't been a perfect citizen. And yet, I would be hard-pressed to find a hardened criminal of the worst variety who was deserving of this kind of torture.

"You know who you should interview?" I said, in a moment of genius. "Ishaan!"

Ishaan, who is ninety-three, is my nemesis. He has lived next door for twenty-five years. He lived with Old Jim until five years ago when Jim died. Mates, Jim and Old Ishaan used to say whenever their living arrangements came up. We're' 'mates' 'from university days. As if I cared what Old Ishaan and Jim got up to. After Jim died, some bright spark decided to give Ishaan a demonic Chihuahua to keep him company. Ishaan has aged a lot since Old Jim died. The only time I see him these days is when he shuffles outside in his brown terry cloth robe to retrieve his vitamin deliveries. (Ishaan has never met a vitamin he didn't like. He is forever ordering them on iHerb. Fine by me, it is a free country after all. If he wants to give his last remaining dollars to charlatans for the privilege of turning his piss yellow, I wish him well.)

 

"He's dead," Persephone says.

Daphne and I exchange a look. "I beg your pardon?"