Miss Comstock’s Paragraph
A short story
by
John William Tuohy
Catherine
Comstock spent one hour looking for the letter. Then spying the crumpled letter
in her delicate but wrinkled hand she asked herself aloud, “How did that get there?” and then undertook
another search for eyeglasses which sat on the top of her head. And such was the way that Catherine
Comstock, sole child of the illustrious Admiral
Johnson Comstock of the Maryland Comstocks, lived out her days in the recent
past years.
A
half hour later she had located the glasses and then the doorbell rang.
“I am exhausted,” she said as she sprawled
out across the day sofa where she waited for the day maid to answer the bell. After a third ring she remembered she no
longer employed a day maid and scurried through six rooms, half of the rooms on
the first floor of her home, to answer the door, calling out “Un momento, por
favor” even though she didn’t actually speak Spanish. However, some decades before she had read
Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, and the works
impressed her, so in a salute to the writer’s efforts she sometimes shouted out
things in Spanish, whether she understood the meaning or not.
Opening the extremely large, tall and heavy
front door she found a postman holding a piece of paper.
“Registered letter” he said.
“No young man” she answered “I have no registered
letter for you. If I did I would have
mailed it to you.”
“No Ma’am” he answered politely “I have a
registered letter for you.”
“Why?” she asked pointedly.
“Why what?” he responded.
Taking a breath and releasing it with a deep
sigh to show her disdain for his slowness she said, “Why would you have a
registered letter for me? I don’t even know you.”
“I’m with….” He said before she interrupted
him.
“You didn’t have to write it down did you?”
she asked. “And go through all the
trouble of registering the letter. You
simply could have come here and told me what you want. Now, what do you want?”
“I’m with the post office, Miss” he explained.
“Someone has sent you a registered letter and you need to please sign for it so
I can give it to you,” and he handed her the letter, the receipt and a pen and
pointed for the line she was to sign on.
She took the contraptions but before signing
asked, “And who gave this to you to bring here?”
“I don’t know Ma’am,” he replied.
Staring at him solemnly, she wagged a
finger and lectured, “You should not be so trusting, young fellow.”
“Yes Ma’am” he said for he was a kind and a
polite mailman.
“Always” she continued “know from whom you
are accepting things. What if there were illegal narcotics in this envelope and
the police stopped you and found the illegal narcotics and arrested you?”
“Yes Ma’am” he agreed. “You’re right. I
don’t know what I was thinking.”
Content that she had protected the working
classes from themselves she nodded and signed the envelope. He took the receipt
and checked the appropriate boxes for her and when he looked up again he saw
the one dollar bill in the lady’s hand.
“I can’t take that Ma’am,” he said with a
weak smile.
“Nonsense” she said and pushed the sole
bill into his hand. “Use it to buy a suit so you can get a job,” and then she
closed the massive door. She paused and tried to recall what she was doing
before this distraction pillaged her day.
Ah,
yes, the letter from the editor.
She
was looking for the letter from the editor before that terribly confused man
arrived at her door. Twenty minutes
later she found the letter where she had left it, on the desk in the library.
Placing the certified letter down on the
desk and picking up a month old letter from the editor, she conducted a light
search for her glasses, again, and finding them on her head, again, she read
the letter aloud.
Dear Miss Comstock:
We have
received the envelope from you marked “The Life and Times of Admiral Johnson
Comstock As told by his daughter. Chapter One.” The envelope was empty. Perhaps you could
resend.
Kind regards.
Jackson Beauregard, Publisher
Sentential Publishing Company, New York New
York
She carefully refolded the letter and placed
it back into its clean white envelope and took a second letter from the desk,
opened it and read it aloud.
Dear Miss Comstock:
We have received another envelope from you
marked “The Life and Times of Admiral Johnson Comstock. As told by his
daughter. Chapter One.” This envelope was also empty. When we suggested that
you resend, we meant perhaps you could send another envelope with the actual
chapter within the envelope.
Kind regards.
Jackson Beauregard, Publisher
Sentential Publishing Company, New York New
York
“Why is that poor man looking for things in
empty envelopes?” she asked herself aloud. “Perhaps I should telephone him.”
And so she did. She dialed. The phone rang.
A man answered.
“Hello?” asked the man’s voice.
“Yes,” she said “I need to speak with Mister
Beauregard.”
“Is this Catherine?” the man asked.
“Oh good heavens,” she said somewhat annoyed.
“I don’t know who you are and why should I guess? Catherine Comstock here. Is Mister Beauregard available to speak on
the telephone?
“Miss Comstock, this is Jackson
Beauregard,” said Jackson Beauregard. “I’m so….”
“Well you should have just said that from
the beginning,” she said.
“Well I just want to say how pleased….” he
began.
“I don’t have time for Tom Foolery, Mister
Beauregard. I am not a New Yorker you know,” she said. “My Father the Admiral always
said, Chicago has no hills. It’s completely flat.”
There was a very long pause on the phone.
“Well anyway,” Jackson Beauregard said “I
was about to give you a call myself.”
“On the telephone?” Catherine asked. And
there was another silence.
“Miss Comstock” he said in a very business-like
fashion “as you know, our firm has paid you a very large advance for the
biography you promised to write on your father’s life. Your attorney, Mister
Willoughby, assured us the books would be completed.”
“That’s correct” she said. “Good for you.”
“But that was several years ago,” he
continued “And now that Mister Willoughby….”
“Mister Willoughby has died?” she asked.
“Yes” he said.
“Well why didn’t he tell me?” she asked.
“I don’t know” he answered.
“Some people” she sighed “are so
unreliable. As my father use to say “Catherine, I don’t like new York.”
Here was a long silence on the phone.
“Miss Comstock,” Beauregard asked “is there
someone else?”
“Someone else what?” she asked in return.
“Well someone else we could speak to” he
asked.
“My goodness gracious, there must be
millions of people you could speak to,” she answered.
“I meant” he said “Is there someone else we could speak to
regarding the manuscript, a new attorney, a relative of some sort? Someone who
handles your finances?”
“Well there is Miss Florence,” Catherine
replied. “She’s here twice a week although I have forgotten which weeks those
are.”
“And she is your accountant? Financial advisor?”
he asked.
“No, no, no dear. She cleans the house,”
Catherine replied. “She has a grandson. His name is Tupac. He’s doing ten years
in Maryland, some sort of Doctorial work I would think. Should you have a bill
to be paid, send it here and I will see to it that Miss Florence looks it over.”
“She handles your finances?” he asked.
“Oh yes” Catherine said sweetly. “Miss Florence has worked since she was 16
years old. Isn’t that wonderful Catherine?”
“This is Jackson Beauregard, Miss Comstock.”
“Oh, the poor fellow with empty envelopes,”
she answered. “I’ve been meaning to call you. You have sent me some letters
regarding the biography I plan to write on my father. I finished the first
chapter you know.”
“That’s delightful, Miss Comstock” said
Beauregard. “I’m glad to hear it.”
“My father was a great man. He believed in
us, in our greatness as a people. And he believed in freedom, for everyone,
everywhere because he held the individual, each child of God, as a sacred
thing. And he spent his life defending that principle.”
“That he did, Miss Comstock, that he did,”
said Jackson Beauregard. “We owe him much.”
“Now, young man” Catherine said, “what is it
that you have called me about?”
There was a pause and then Jackson
Beauregard, who was a good man, a decent man said, “I guess I just wanted to
say hello.”
“Oh” said Catherine with surprise, “well
hello to you as well.”
