Smarty Pants Poet

by Linda Dennis

 

He had it all wrong. He said the old man was from New York, but he wasn’t. He was from Austin and owned a manor on Lake Travis. It was situated on the steep hillside that surrounded the lake. Few people knew about that.

 

The article in The New York Times is what led me to the poem on YouTube. Sitting in my New York hotel room and bristling slightly, I studied the poem again. The words were the writings of a Harvard freshman. I watched the screen as each line swished into view, stacking itself under the previous one:

 

There was an Old Man of New York

Who many considered a dork

There was an Old Man who was a wreck

And he put a fork in his very own neck

There was an Old Man of New York

Who pulled his own cork

And who too much liked pork

There was an Old Man of New York

Who murdered himself with a fork

But nobody cried

For that silly Old Man of New York

 

Oh! How stories get misconstrued! How tales go awry! All in the name of humor. My gut constricted. There was no neck, there was no wreck, and pork rarely touched his lips.

 

At the end of the clever slide show on YouTube, there was his picture. That was when I knew for sure that the ‘Smarty Pants Poet’, as I dubbed him, was talking about the Harvard educated English professor, Eric Jones. I knew him as Jonesy.

 

I read some of the comments that other people had written. Most cheered the writer on but one or two had the grace to tell him that his poem was in bad taste.

 

I threw the lid of my laptop shut. Standing, I walked over to the window. The black outline of the skyline greeted me as dawn announced itself. I wiped at my eyes because the beauty of the scene touched me as deeply as did my memory of Jonesy.

 

I turned away and crawled into bed.

 

 The shower helped a little to wash away my melancholy, as did the hustle and bustle of the New York sidewalks. The city was a good distraction.

 

Already having done some window shopping and then stopping in at the Strand Bookstore on Broadway, I leaned against a building and glanced at the map on my phone. As I did so, I could feel New York flying past me. I touched my purse, reassuring myself that the item was still there.

 

I hailed a cab. “Lattanzi’s on 46th,” I said as I situated myself in the backseat. It had only been five years ago. I remembered the place well. I remembered how Jonesy looked.

 

“Do you like Italian?” Jonesy had asked, grimacing as he loosened his tie. His auburn hair was spilling over his eyes, and he pushed it aside. When I said that I loved Italian, he took my hand and told me that he liked my dress.

 

It had been my first visit to New York, and I ran into Jonesy at the hotel where I was staying. He was attending a writer’s conference, and I was touring alone.

 

In the great scheme of things, I was nobody to Jonesy but somehow felt that I was everything. He didn’t hide the fact that he was going through a divorce. I told him of my husband who had died just a year before.

 

Jonesy’s cell phone rang while we were eating, and he glanced at it. He shook his head in irritation. “This guy is as persistent as DDT,” he said about a colleague of his.

 

“Isn’t DDT a poison of some kind that was made illegal?”

 

“It’s a synthetic pesticide,” he clarified. “But the unique thing about it is that it permeates the soil. Not just that it soaks into the soil, but it literally integrates itself with the cellular structure of the soil. Very scary stuff.”

 

“Hence it being outlawed.”

 

His deep brown eyes reflected the candlelight at the center of the table. “You should be outlawed, too. I’ll bet you’re kind of like DDT, yourself. In a good way.”

 

“Aw. I’ll bet you say that to all women.”

 

He sipped his wine then studied my face. “Hardly.”

 

The cab driver interrupted my thoughts. “We’re here,” he said when he realized that I hadn’t noticed.

 

I looked out the window and saw the sign, the street, the place where Jonesy and I had walked, where he had held my hand.

 

After I placed my order with the waitress, I asked her if I could speak to the owner.

 

“Sure,” she said. “Is there a problem? Did I do something wrong?”

 

“Not at all. He’s expecting me. Just tell him it’s Gracie.”

 

Gracie and Jonesy. I had always liked the rhythm of that.

 

Ours wasn’t exactly a whirlwind romance but we connected very quickly. Jonesy was pragmatic and cautious. I was very much the same way and knew in my heart that we were right for one another.

 

It was the phone call about a month after we met that changed everything.

 

“I think I’m going to give my marriage another shot,” Jonesy told me.

 

Something inside me gave way, cracked. “What’s this hold she has on you, Jonesy?”

 

“She’s talking about killing herself if I don’t come back. How can I live with that, Gracie? Huh? What if she means it?”

 

“Miss Gracie!”

 

I looked up. “Frank!”

 

Frank took a seat across from me. “So sad to hear of Mr. Jonesy,” he said in his thick Italian accent.

 

“Yes. It’s tragic.”

 

He reached across the table and touched my hand. “And how are you, my old friend?”

 

I let him know that I was getting by, and he nodded sadly. I turned and reached into my purse. Pulling out the object, I handed it to Frank.

 

“Ah, yes,” he said, examining it. His eyes misted just a little. “The 1908 silverplated pickle fork. Only two of them are known to have survived. Yours and—” He stopped himself. After a moment, he added, “The other one.”

 

It was a uniquely styled fork. The middle tong was straight, but the two outer ones were wavy at the tip and pointed outward. At the base of the fork were two flower patterns that looked like daisies. Frank had loved them and wanted Jonesy to make a deal with him. Instead, Jonesy gave me one of them and kept one for himself.

 

“No matter what,” Jonesy had said to me then, “we’ll always have tonight.”

 

I came out of my daze and focused on Frank again. I couldn’t keep the forks. Not something that had caused Jonesy’s death. “You can have them both, Frank. I think Jonesy would understand.”

 

“Are you sure? What did the police say?”

 

“The other fork is being held as evidence, of course. They’ll release it eventually. They’re suspicious of the suicide theory.”

 

Frank pointed out that people don’t typically commit suicide by stabbing themselves over and over again.

 

Later that day, I entered an attorney’s office. I was the only one there for the reading of the will.

 

“Jonesy’s wife won’t be here?” I took a seat at the conference table, thankful that she was absent.

 

“She wasn’t his wife,” the attorney, Carl, told me.

 

“What?”

 

“They divorced about five years ago. He told me this in confidence and said that I was only to tell you.”

 

“I don’t understand.” My palms went wet. I could feel myself getting lightheaded, my heart pounding.

 

“He went ahead with the divorce but did whatever he could to appease his ex-wife in whatever way he could,” Carl explained. “He was certain that someday she’d give up on the whole thing and find someone new. Then he’d be able to be with you.”

 

“Which never happened.”

 

“On the day he died, she had been at his house and took a liking to a silver fork of some kind and planned to auction it off. This set Jonesy off in a big way and he took it from her.”

 

The attorney proceeded to tell me of how an argument ensued. While Jonesy gripped the fork, his wife realized that there was more to it than he said. She deduced that it involved the woman he had met in New York. Grabbing his hand, she plunged the fork into his chest repeatedly.

 

“He survived for a time, and I was able to talk to him at the hospital,” Carl continued. “She claimed she found him that way.”

 

“We both know that Jonesy wouldn’t have taken his life,” I said. Carl gave me a sad look. “Okay. So, why am I here?”

 

Carl turned some papers toward me. “Because Jonesy left you everything.”

 

I stared at the papers, at Jonesy’s familiar signature. “But what about common law? Even if they were divorced, couldn’t she claim that?”

 

“They didn’t live together. Jonesy made sure of it.”

 

I momentarily turned my attention toward the activity outside the window. Looking back at Carl, I asked, “Why haven’t you gone to the police about what Jonesy told you in the hospital?”

 

“We have no proof, and he didn’t want her going to jail.” Carl fiddled with his pen and then said, “Jonesy loved you, Gracie. He wanted you to know that. He wanted to be with you.”

 

I glanced down at my folded hands. “That’s something to hold on to then.”

 

When I arrived in Texas, I drove to Jonesy’s home on the lake. I half suspected the entry gate remote would not work and was surprised when it did. I watched as the gate closed behind me as I drove up the stone driveway.

 

After wandering around the house, I stepped outside onto the stone deck. The steep hills that surrounded the area were just as striking as the lake itself.

 

How could this be mine? It was a large manor house, beautiful and elegant. Tears suddenly spilled from my eyes as I thought of Jonesy and how I’d never be able to share it with him.

 

I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. Should I keep it or sell it? Jonesy gave it to me for a reason, I knew.

 

A voice coming from behind startled me.

 

“Why did that bastard give you this house?”

 

I had never met her, but I knew who she was. “How did you get in here?”

 

She extended her hand which held a remote. I walked over to her quickly and slapped the bottom of her hand, causing the remote to fall onto the stone deck.

 

She backed slightly away, looking at me with hatred. “If you don’t give me this house and all his money, I’m going to kill myself!”

 

“Be my guest.”

 

In a show of anger, she stomped away toward her vehicle. When her car was out of the driveway, I picked up the remote and closed the gates.

 

It wasn’t long before I heard the sirens. That evening, sitting in the house that Jonesy gave to me, I saw his ex-wife’s picture on the news. She had driven off the cliff.

 

I turned the sound down on the television and stared at the floor. Jonesy had been right. She would’ve gone through with it, and he wouldn’t have been able to live with that.

 

I walked outside carrying a glass of wine and watched the fireflies flittering in the brush. The lake was inky and still. I wondered about my brief encounter with a man years ago that brought me to this place.

 

I lifted my glass toward the sky. “We’ll always have that night, Jonesy.”

 

The Smarty Pants Poet had it all wrong. Someone did cry.