Fay's Rebellion(Barry) Fay’s Rebellion
Short story by Barry Rachin


Eleven o’clock the doorbell chimed. The sun having gone down three hours earlier, the street was shrouded in darkness, the only familiar sounds still lingering were a raspy chorus of crickets interspersed with the rhythmic bass tones of bullfrogs that drifted up from the wetland marsh in back of the house. A sinewy woman with straight brown hair and angular body stood on the landing. An olive complexion was offset by hazel eyes; but for the humorless expression, she might have been modestly pretty. “I wasn’t quite sure, “ she said haltingly, “if this was your apartment.”
Ethan Whitfield gawked at the woman. “Do I know you?”
“Your sister’s 30th birthday party earlier this evening… I was situated at the rear table next to your Aunt Sophie and her third husband.” “When the party ended prematurely, I hunted down your brother and he gave me your address.”
Ethan groaned. “Then you witness everything.” Without waiting for an invitation the young woman stepped over the threshold and moved to the middle of the room. “I’m sorry if I offended you with my foulmouthed rant.”
Actually, he wasn’t the least bit sorry for what he had said or done, wrecking his sister’s lovely soirée. “And you are?”
“Fay… Fay Applebaum.”

The woman cocked her head to one side staring impassively at the quarter-sawn oak grandfather clock in the far corner of the room. Slouching into a Windsor chair, she folded her slender fingers on the sleek top of the dining room table. “Tell me about Shays’s Rebellion.” Her lips approximated a tepid smile. “Colonel Shays of the Revolutionary Army… that’s what you were discussing with the guests at your table before the festive evening turned to total shit.”
“You came here at this late hour so I could finish a story no one even remotely cared about?” Ethan placed the palms of both hands over his cheeks, the splayed fingertips covering the eyes and blew all the air out of his lungs. “It’s rather late.”
“Do you have work tomorrow?”
“No, I can sleep as long as I please.”
Fay Applebaum wiggled her meager buttocks firmly into the contoured seat of the hardwood chair. “I won’t stay a minute longer than it takes to tell me what you never got the opportunity to say earlier this evening.”

* * * * *

A smorgasbord of exotic hors d'oeuvres was splayed across a festive banquet table at Rebecca Whitfield’s thirtieth birthday party. Ethan reached for a smoky asparagus spear and wedge of brie cheese tautly wrapped with a slice of pinkish prosciutto. It was his third helping of the addictive treat. A cut glass bowl of chili con carne laced with bourbon, coffee, cinnamon and Mexican oregano for extra depth of flavor nestled alongside platters of Swedish meatballs, yellowfin tuna sushi and a teetering pile of doughy crab Rangoon patties. A spicy onion dip with chopped red onion, grated Parmesan cheese and parsley rounded out the medley of tantalizing offerings.
“The Supreme Court shot down the affirmative action bill,” Ted Bagley groused. The middle-aged college professor indignantly gazed about the table. Everyone seemed in agreement that the justices had done the wrong thing. Even if they disagreed, they wouldn’t be foolish enough to dispute the issue. Ted Bagley was a notorious blockhead with an autocratic air of certitude. The silky tongued professor had a knack for making others who challenged his erudite polemics, feel foolish and inconsequential.
Ted shifted in his chair. “Any thoughts on the matter, Ethan?”
Ethan, who was nimbly guiding a tortilla chip through the orangey chili concoction, glanced up. “I manage a department store… eight employees.” He spoke meekly, apologetically almost. “Among our staff are two Hispanics, a black man and Moslem girl who covers her head with a scarf. They’re loyal, hardworking, which is all that really matters. We all get along just fine.”
“Affirmative action doesn’t function the way it was originally intended…never did,” Ethan added, bolstering his point of view. “I don’t agree, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion.”

Ted’s eyes narrowed precipitously and his fleshy lips pressed together so that the pinkish skin blanched to dull gray. “The goal of affirmative action has always been to address past grievances while increasing equal opportunity.”
“Yes, but -”
“And provide,” Ted continued with dogged insistence, unwilling to allow Ethan to finish his train of thought, “employment or educational opportunities to minority groups or women. There was never intent to use simple quotas or outright discrimination against white males.”
“Discrimination cut both ways,” Ethan interjected. “When an honors student with a 5.0 grade average is bumped from consideration in favor of someone with inferior grades, that’s neither fair nor morally ethical.”
“Your logic is faulty.” Ted’s tone was becoming increasingly hyperbolic.
“Minorities don’t deserve fair treatment in the workplace?” The observation came from Mavis Cantrell, a young black woman with a gold hoop in her left nostril and her ebony hair done up in beaded cornrows. There was nothing encouraging in her frigid smile.
Ethan placed the tortilla back on his plate. “In a meritocracy skills, imagination and the ability to do competent work are more important than the color of one’s skin or ethnic background.”
“Sounds like Jim Crow… the classic Uncle Tom malarkey to my well-trained ear,” Mavis muttered just barely loud enough so everyone in the room could hear the caustic rebuttal then capped her pronouncement with a sanctimonious sneer. The festive atmosphere instantaneously dissipated, went up in a plume of noxious smoke and an icy gloom settled over the room.

Ethan stared at a glass of moscato he had been nursing during the meal. “A customer visits the hardware store… wants to build a backyard shed. He needs decent tools… not a puny tap hammer for tiny brads but a heavy-duty, framing hammer that can set a 16-penny, three-inch nail in two, sharp strokes.” He cleared his throat and took a sip of the sweet wine. “The salesman hands him an Estwing, 28-ounce, steel shank beauty. The longer handle provides increased striking power. The salesman knows this because of his knowledge of the building trade and reverence for the craft.”
“And how many of those loyal, hard-working employees earn anything more than minimum wage?” Ted Bagley blustered. A roar of solidarity rippled through the room. Ethan was badly outnumbered. The notion that he could muster sympathy through a soft-spoken appeal to common sense was badly mistaken.
“You manage a hardware store,” it was the black woman again, “where white management always has the upper hand, manipulating terms and conditions.”
Ethan’s eyes drifted the entire length of the tablecloth - so much delectable, mouth-watering food. There would be no more Swedish meatballs, fire-engine chili, sour cream and chive dip. He pushed his plate away and took a much deeper swig of the wine.
“Shays’s Rebellion…,” he addressed his remarks to no one in particular. “Back in colonial New England protesters marched on the Springfield Armory in an attempt to overthrow the Massachusetts government. They acted in response to brutally unfair taxes levied on the farmers, political corruption and cronyism. Daniel Shays led the insurrection.”
“When exactly did this occur?” an anonymous voice asked.
“Late seventeen hundreds… shortly after the Revolutionary War.” “Shays was the second of seven siblings, who spent his youth as a landless farmer. During the Revolutionary War he served as second lieutenant in the 5th Massachusetts Regiment, taking part in the Battle of Bunker Hill as well as the expedition against Ticonderoga. He participated in the storming of Stanley Point and fought at Saratoga.”
“What the hell,” Ted blustered, seamlessly shifting into his overbearing, professorial persona, “does all this historical trivia have to do with the topic at hand?”
“If you’ll just let me explain,” Ethan countered doggedly. “The American economy during the Revolutionary War was largely subsistence agriculture in the rural parts of New England, particularly in the hill towns of the central and western parts of the state where many of the residents had few assets beyond their land. They bartered with one another for goods and services. In lean times a farmer might gain goods on credit from local suppliers and pay back what he owed when times were better.”
“This is all bullshit!” An infuriated Mavis Cantrell rose from her chair and wagged a stubby index finger menacingly in Ethan’s face. “First you talk ragtime, rambling disconnectedly about hammers and 16-penney nails -”
“Jim Crow… Uncle Tom malarkey,” Ethan cut the black woman off in mid-sentence, spewing her own words back in her face. “Did you ever bother reading the goddamn book?” Having reached an emotional breaking point, he was shouting now and the woman, who was so smug and unflappable moments earlier, suddenly seemed out of her element.
Dead silence.
In the disjointed, obscene and semi-coherent rant that followed, Ethan dropped the F-bomb a half dozen times before collecting his personal belongings and leaving his sister’s thirtieth birthday party in total disarray.

* * * * *

The grandfather clock beside the fireplace struck the half hour. “Shays’s Rebellion…” Fay Applebaum intoned the term like a cryptic mantra. “The partygoers didn’t want to hear your story but I do.”
“Yes, where did I leave off?”
“Lieutenant Daniel Shays’s attack on the Springfield Armory.”

As Ethan explained it, many colonists lost their farms and possessions, when they couldn’t fulfill their debts and tax obligations. Veterans of the revolutionary war received little pay and had trouble collecting money owed them from the state of Massachusetts or Congress of the Confederation. “Most rural communities,” Ethan continued, “were levying brutally exorbitant taxes, far more than the population could bear, and tax collectors were obtaining judgments to seize property.”
“The elected officials,” Fay interjected, “were far worse than King George and his Red Coat brigades.”
“As the conflict unraveled, three thousand militiamen were recruited into what was essentially a private army to suppress the dissidents. Since most homeowners in the western regions were in total sympathy with the hard-pressed farmers, three thousand militiamen were drawn from the eastern part of Massachusetts.”
“A civil war pitting a well-heeled merchant class against the agrarian poor.”
“Exactly!” “When Shays’s forces were defeated, he fled to political sanctuary in northern Vermont.” “Four thousand insurrectionists signed confessions acknowledging participation in the rebellion in exchange for amnesty and on December 6, 1787, two ringleaders were hung.”
“What happened to Shays?”
“The poor slob lived a hand-to-mouth, monkish existence in a makeshift shack buried deep in the woods. Pardoned a year later in 1788, he never learned about the dropped charges. Eventually Shays returned from hiding and moved to New York where he died poor and in utter obscurity.”
Ethan shook his head bitterly. “Daniel Shays was a bona fide American hero, but nitwits like Ted Bagley could never acknowledge the fact. If Bagley lived in colonial times, the fat bastard would have enlisted in the Eastern militia and marched off to squelch the insurrection. The professor would have delighted to see Colonel Shays hung by the neck until dead.”
“Affirmative action,” Fay quipped sardonically, “didn’t exist in Colonel Shays’s time, which is something neither Ted Bagley nor Mavis Cantrell would have been interested to hear.”
“No, I shouldn’t think so,” Ethan agreed. The clock chimed the half hour with a solitary, dull bass tone. “I wanted to ask how they would have felt if the government taxed them into bankruptcy, stripping them of their comfy, middle class livelihood, but they wouldn’t stop interrupting me.”

A phone twittered in the kitchen and Ethan went off to answer it. “That was my sister,” he announced when he returned. “After my foul-mouthed meltdown earlier this evening she has disowned me. I’m no longer welcomed in her home.”
Fay mumbled a handful of garbled, unintelligible phrases.
“What was that?”
“Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di-v’ra…It’s the Jewish prayer for the dead,” Fay responded sardonically. “Best way to put estranged family members totally out to pasture”

Ethan ran a tongue over his parched lips. He had nothing to drink since the moscato four hours ago and his throat felt gravelly. “I’m gonna put the kettle on for tea. Would you like anything?”
“I’m not fussy… whatever you’re drinking.”
Ethan disappeared into the kitchen and emerged ten minutes later with a wicker tray. He placed a jar of raw honey in the middle of the table. Fay sweetened her drink and took a sip. “This is really unique!”
He stirred the golden liquid pensively. “There’s lemongrass, orange peel, spearmint and licorice.” Since the girl arrived, he had managed to recalibrate his emotions, get his nerves back under control. “How much honey did you take?”
“A teaspoon.”
“Oh, that’s not enough. You’ll need at least another to release all the flavors.”
Fay added a second spoonful of the amber sweetener. “Yes, that definitely makes a difference!”
Ethan studied the woman as she sipped her drink. “Now it’s your turn,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “Tell me about the enigmatic Fay Applebaum.”
Fay ran a taut index finger multiple times around the lip of her porcelain teacup without drinking. Finally, she pushed the cup away. “I’m a misanthrope. I don’t especially like people.”
“Why’s that?”
“Humans never get along. We are indisputably the defective species.” Her malleable features pulled at cross purposes, contorting her face in a dour expression. “Just look what happened at your sister’s birthday party.”

Somewhere in the darkened street a cat screeched in a high-pitched yowl and another feline quickly joined the infernal ruckus. “I hung around for a good half hour after you stormed out of the house and besides myself, nobody came to your defense.” “They claimed you intentionally provoked the commotion with Ted and Mavis... lost your temper and ruined the party.”
“Neither would let me make a simple point.”
“Cancel culture at its finest.” Fay rose, wandered to the window and stood peering into the muddy darkness. Ethan studied her bony shoulders. She had the ungainly quality of a twenty-something stuck in arrested development. Not that she wasn’t pretty in an off-beat, hardscrabble sort of way, but the inscrutable poker face was her aesthetic undoing.
“My parents attend the Episcopal church on Bryant Street,” Ethan said.
“The one with the stain glass windows near the train station?”
He nodded. “Mavis Cantrell visited the church a few years back to speak on critical race theory. She mentioned diversity, equity and inclusion ad nauseam, beating the congregation about the neck and shoulders with the shame every white person ought to feel with respect to racial inequality.”
“White guilt… it’s the new buzz word.” Fay observed. “And exactly how many black parishioners attend the church?”
“None.”
“Hispanics?”
Ethan crooked his head to one side staring at a spot where the far wall and ceiling converged. “One. A family of five… two girls and a chubby little boy.”
“Native-born Americans?”
“No, immigrants from the Dominican Republic.” Ethan swigged his tea then pushed the empty cup aside. “Half of the churchgoers could probably trace their roots back to the Mayflower.”
Fay cracked a devilish grin. “Not going to elicit much racial inclusion or equity from that bunch.”
“In the end,” Ethan continued, “the congregation bought a huge ‘Black Lives Matter’ banner, which they hung directly over the stain glass window, totally destroying the church’s aesthetics.”
“I’ve noticed the banner,” Fay said. “It’s ugly as hell.”
“And utterly meaningless in the context of how the parish functions.”
The silliness of it all!
Mavis Cantrell was travelling the church circuit, getting paid handsomely to spout her brittle dogma about racial inequity. No one quite understood what she was talking about but no matter. Truth was malleable, a slickly choreographed dance of fools. As long as you didn’t question the spurious assumptions, all was well in the world.

Fay brushed a wisp of chestnut colored hair from her lusterless eyes. “What happened earlier at the party wasn’t your fault,” she said, shifting gears. “You went off the emotional rails when they wouldn’t let you speak your mind. Ted and Mavis set a clever trap, an ambush.”
Ethan shrugged. He hadn’t quite thought of it in those terms, but what she was saying did make sense. “It’s already past midnight. I should let you get some rest.” She drifted toward the door but reaching the far end of the room hesitated. Lingering with a hand on the doorknob, after a while she returned to where Ethan was standing. Fay reached into a small purse and located a pencil. On a napkin she scribbled a scraggily array of small numbers. “If you’d like to pick up where we left off…” Pivoting on her heels, Fay Applebaum glided out the front door and was gone.

* * * * *

His brain still running on emotional overdrive, Ethan showered and went to bed. His sister’s milestone birthday party was a scorched-earth debacle that could not be put right in a thousand years. But meeting the unfathomable Fay Applebaum, who could recite the Jewish prayer for the dead in biblical Hebrew, was hundred-proof serendipity.
Humans never get along. We are indisputably the defective species.
Ethan discovered that self-evident truth back to middle school, but to hear someone else regurgitate the noxious truism was a bit unnerving. Fay Applebaum was a social outcast, oddity, societal ne’er-do-well and hard-core misanthrope. But what did you do with the Fay Applebaums of the world?
Disavow them and run for your life? Marry them?
With the obvious exception of Ethan’s newly-estranged sister and several distant relatives, there were half dozen eligible women at the thirtieth birthday party. Harboring far too much neuroticism, indecorous junk in the proverbial trunk, Ethan found none of them particularly appealing. Fay Applebaum - the only person who cared to learn about the Shays’s Rebellion - possessed possibilities. That was a judicious start.

* * * * *

Did you ever read the goddamn book?
Those were his final words to Mavis Cantrell before vacating the house. What exactly did the erudite Mavis Cantrell understand about Uncle Tom’s Cabin? Flicking on the lamp, he rose from the bed. Searching through a thick stack of Penguin paperbacks on the bookshelf, Ethan located a well-thumbed volume of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel. The spine of the book badly tattered, he had read through it twice, even scribbled notes highlighting paragraphs of personal significance.
In its day, Stowe’s novel was the best-selling book in the United States and second best-seller of the 19th century. It was credited with fueling the abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Civil War. In November of eighteen sixty-two, ten years after writing her seminal work, Stowe met the president. The war had just begun and Abraham Lincoln said, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.”

Majoring in early American literature during his college years, Ethan favored the nineteenth century, regional writers – Willa Catha, Frank Norris, Theodore Dreiser, Sarah Orne Jewett, Alice Brown, Ambrose Bierce - who chronicled the agrarian ideal and great American melting pot. Much to the shock of both parents, following college Ethan buried his degree in the bedroom closet beneath a pile of dusty photo albums and went to work at the hardware store.
In utter disgust, his father muttered, “Why the hell did you attend college? The education was meaningless, a frivolous waste of time and money.” Ethan replied that he had learned much in college, among other things, what not to do with the rest of his life. What he chose not to share with his parents was that, in recent years, universities and public schools had become a safe haven for the Ted Bagelys and Mavis Cantrells of the world. He wanted none of that!
Returning to bed, Ethan felt modestly better now, more like his old self. He would call Fay around midday and invite her out to dinner.

* * * * *

Eight o’clock the next morning before Ethan even finished shaving, his mother phoned. “You’re a disgrace!” she hissed. “Your grotesque buffoonery… it’s a wonder your sister didn’t suffer a nervous breakdown.”
Ethan knew his sister through and through. Most weeks she suffered little or no personal angst beyond damaging a toenail while giving herself a pedicure. When there was no substantive response, Mrs. Whitfield said, “You will call you sister after I finish with you and grovel.”
“Grovel?”
“You heard me right… beg forgiveness for wrecking such a cherished event.”
“What else?”
“You will admit full responsibility for your asinine behavior.”
“I did nothing wrong.”
“Not a single guest,” his mother remained unconvinced, “had a word to say in your defense.” “Mavis Cantrell was crying inconsolably.”
“Crocodile tears!” Ethan mused tacitly, “A tour-de-force, theatrical performance.”
Mavis Calhoun lacked sincere emotion. Always winning arguments through a witch’s brew of guile and intimidation, she bowled you over with her cocksure bravura. On the rare occasion when someone with a modicum of brains challenged her brittle-minded assumptions, the woman’s fragile ego imploded but only for a millisecond. Mavis would regroup and the obnoxious persona would be back in business.
“Ted Bagley hinted some nonsense about consulting a lawyer… suing you for liable or defamation of character.” Mrs. Whitfield cleared her throat with a series of raspy guttural coughs. “Ted’s a blowhard… all hot air and academic blather. I don’t expect -”
“I won’t apologize to him or anyone else.”
“You won’t what?” His mother seethed.
“Apologize to a single man, woman or child on planet earth.”
“Then you are a very petty little man.” She spit the words out like a curse. “A petty, petty, petty little man!”
“Goodbye, mother.” Ethan gently lowered the receiver back on its hook.
The morning witnessed a not-so-subtle change of plans. Ethan still had no intentions apologizing to his sister, Ted Bagley or Mavis Cantrell, but neither would he romantically pursue the willowy Fay Applebaum. Rather, the very petty, petty, petty little man would take a monkish vow of celibacy swearing off women altogether. They weren’t worth the bother.

* * * * *

Three weeks later, a lanky bronze-skinned man with wire-rimmed bifocals and a wispy goatee approached the main counter of the hardware store. “Need help with window.” He spoke in a high-pitched, singsong voice.
“What’s the problem?” Ethan emerged from behind the counter.
“Biswajit,” the man ejaculated in his nasally tone. Ethan gawked at him, trying to decipher his intent. “Biswajit… that is my name.” He stuck out his hand in an affable gesture. “Broke sunroom window and need glass… tools to repair.”
“Have you ever fixed a broken window?”
“No problem.” The man smiled radiantly displaying a row of pebbly teeth. “I watched video on YouTube. Just need glass… tools.”
They made their way to the rear of the store. “I assume you know the size of the glass.”
“Yes, of course.” Biswajit handed him a crumpled slip of paper with the dimensions.
“Where are you originally from?”
“Northern India… Punjab region bordering Kashmir and Pakistan.” He pushed the glasses up on the bridge of a beaky nose with a crooked index finger. “Here America three years now.” An infectious smile noticeably deepened. “I do bathroom toilet last month.”
“That’s quite an accomplishment.” Ethan was only just beginning to get a handle on the immigrant’s fractured English. “Was there any problem with the installation?”
“No, no, no. Was easy! Two bolts, wax seal, supply hose. I follow directions slow, slow.”
Ethan nodded. “There’s always a certain amount of trial and error when doing repairs for the first time.”
The man began to chuckle self-consciously. “Forgot to tighten two screws with rubber seal. Drip, drip, drip. Was big leak.”
“Which two?”
“Inside water tank. I find problem… tighten screws. No more leak.”
A peculiar thought occurred to Ethan. Biswajit from the Punjab region of Northern India bordering Kashmir and Pakistan possessed more American ingenuity than either Ted Bagley or Mavis Cantrell, neither of whom could ever mend a leaky toilet or replace a broken window. Neither possessed the common sense or manual skills to undertake such basic tasks. “Wait here a moment,” Ethan glanced up at Biswajit, “while I cut the glass, and then we can get you situated with a putty knife, caulk, metal glazing points and anything else you might need.”

The conversation was cut short by a clerk approaching from the front of the store. “Ethan, a customer needs to speak to you.”
“You can’t help?”
“She asked for you by name.”
Ethan scanned the length of the corridor, but there was no one to be seen. “Tell her to wait. I shouldn’t be more than a few minutes.”
When he finished with Biswajit, Ethan picked his way to the front of the store. Fay Applebaum was leaning against a display of late summer vegetable seeds. She wore a paisley blue blouse and tan shorts that showed her legs to good advantage. “A swarm of bees made a nest in my hemlock tree and I need to get rid of them.”
“It’s nice to see you again.” He guided her three aisles down. “What’s the nest look like.”
“It’s quite large… the size of a basketball.”
“Color?”
“Off white… grayish.”
Picking a can of insecticide off the metal shelf, Ethan said, “Paper wasps not honeybees... that’s what you got. They're dangerous… hazardous as hell.” She reached for the can, but he pulled his hand away. Give me your address. I’ll come by later this evening after the sun goes down and the insects have all returned to the nest.”
“What do I owe you for the spray?”
“A night on the town. I want to take you to dinner and then wherever else you’d like to go.”
The somber, pokerfaced expression dissolved in a translucent grin.

* * * * *

Friday Ethan pulled his metallic bronze Honda CRV into the driveway of a raised ranch in the Elmwood section of town. A dogwood tree was in full bloom, its pinkish petals carpeting the front lawn. “Is Fay home?”
“She’s been delayed at work.” A petite woman in her mid-forties held the door wide. “Shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
She ushered him into the kitchen, where a laundry basket and pile of freshly-washed clothes occupied the table. “I’m Dorothy Applebaum.” Ethan sat down and watched as the woman folded a plush, terrycloth towel in quarters before laying it on a tall pile. Mrs. Applebaum was a matronly version of her daughter, notwithstanding a smattering of crow’s feet and sagging jowls. “Only this morning my daughter mentioned a dinner date.” The woman coupled a pair of argyle socks with a deft flick of the wrists. “We had no idea she was seeing someone.”
Ethan let the observation slide without comment. She grabbed a skimpy, lace bra from the bottom of the basket and draped it over the back of an adjacent chair. He glanced out a window on the far wall. “No more problem with paper wasps?”
Mrs. Applebaum finished with the laundry, placing the empty basket on the floor. “So you’re the mystery man who stopped by Thursday night?”
“Guilty as charged!” Ethan confirmed with a flick of his chin. “If that door over by the hutch leads out to the backyard, I’d like to inspect my handiwork.”

In the rear of the house what remained of the wasps nest was in tatters, hanging at a cockeyed angle from the shaggy hemlock. Fay’s mother pointed at the beach ball sized nest. “It’s all crusted over.”
“The insecticide spray contains blanketing foam that traps and smothers the insects.”
Mrs. Applebaum drifted away to a small vegetable garden, where a profusion of delicate, pearl white blossoms were in full bloom. Reaching adroitly into the tangled mass of tender stems and tendrils, she snapped off a generous handful of succulent beans. “My daughter was singing your praises the other day.”
“Because of this?” Ethan gestured dismissively at the tree.
“She claims you’re quite the history buff. Told me all about Daniel Shays and his attack on the Springfield Armory.”
Ethan cringed, lowering his eyes in embarrassment. “At the party where I mentioned it,” he spoke haltingly, “the story didn’t go over so well.”
“She said nothing about the party.” Mrs. Applebaum handed him a half dozen juicy beans. They chewed the bitter-sweet vegetables leisurely until there were no more left then returned to the house.
Settled back in the living room, Mrs. Applebaum stepped closer, resting a hand lightly on Ethan’s forearm. “My daughter has always been something of a contrarian, rejecting popular opinion. I cautioned her more than once that she ought to be less critical and accept people on their own terms. Do you know what she said?”
“No, I can’t imagine.”
“She claimed that she was a misanthrope, a person who dislikes humankind.” Mrs. Applebaum tapped his arm a half dozen times, a soothing, reassuring gesture. “Which is why I am so pleased you’re here. Your presence disproves her unflattering remark.”
Ethan pursed his lips and, as if on cue, shook his head up and down, confirming the unquestionable validity of the mother’s newfound hopefulness. He also noted that, in the past five minutes he had experienced more physical and emotional intimacy with the senior Mrs. Applebaum than her misanthropic daughter.
“You haven’t been married?”
“No, never.”
“Fay… she was always so headstrong,” The woman observed, her brain randomly ricocheting off into uncharted territories. “I use to think of her as my ‘rebellious child’.” The woman smoothed the topmost towel on the pile with a slender palm. “Fay’s Rebellion… that’s what I called it, when she got into one of her unseemly moods.”
“Fay’s rebellion,” Ethan repeated, turning the phrase over in his mind a half dozen times. “I guess we’ll have to put an end to that.” A blue Toyota pulled into the driveway. Fay Applebaum killed the ignition and stepped from the car.

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