THE WIDDER MULDOON

LOVE IS BLIND BUT THE NEIGHBORS AREN'T.

     It was the summer of Woodstock.  Of free sex and 'Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds'.  It was the summer he buried Big Mike Muldoon.

     He was vaguely aware of an unarticulated restlesness.  Approaching his 29th birthday he found himself stuck in a cultural backwater. He had acheived all his goals early in life and now found himself the proprieter of a small storefront mortuary in an even smaller neighborhood.  It was generating enough business to feed his family, but not his ambitions.

     His marriage was degenerating into a loveless union of convenience, held together by the children and financial needs.  His wife, whom he privately thought of as 'Our Lady of Perpetual resentment', was angry and unhappy with herself and as a result, insecure to the point of paranoia.  She repeatedly accused him of infidelity when he had been faithful, at least physically, for their entire marriage.  He did not know how to help her.

     Big Mike Muldoon was a foreman in the rock quarry owned by his Uncle until the day the summer before when a huge chunk of limestone being loaded onto a flatcar broke loose, pinning Mike against the side of the hoist engine.

     After he was freed and rushed to the hospital in Capitol City, he underwent emergency surgery followed by weeks of physical therapy.  In the end Big Mike was paralyzed and would never walk again.  His wife Sarah, tended him for a year but his health slowly declined until he died in midsummer.

     Since they were both the same age and moved in the same social circles he was familiar with both Mike and Sarah.  He was called on to attend to the funeral of Mike as he had been at the passing of Sarah's father four years before. 

     It was the afternoon of visitation.  Everyone had departed except Sarah.  She stopped at the door on the way out and engaged the Undertaker in a frank conversation.  She had had a year to accept the fact that she was goinng to lose her husband and to even mourn his passing.  She indicated to him that she had not experienced the intimacy of a man for a long time.  That she missed and even needed it and that she was ready and would even welcome it.

    Sarah Muldoon was zaftig.  Short, pleasingly plump.  Buxom with black hair and Irish good looks.  He had no idea of how vulnerable he had become.  He was not used to being propositioned and was usually obtuse when it happened.  Here was this desirable earth mother throwing herself at him with her dead husband lying in a casket in the next room.  The absolute absurdity of the situation did not strike him.  He had been accused of this very thing for so many years that he thought "What the Hell, why not take it".

     A few days later he visited Sarah in her railroad flat above Greenberg's Delicatessen.  

     He left an hour later, leaving Sarah in a better frame of mind than when he arrived.

     Walking back to his own home, he experienced a sense of shame and guilt over his actions.  Facing his family, he realized he had betrayed a sacred trust.  Once a person has crossed that line it is easier to cross it again and again. 

True Story.  The names and place names have been changed to protect the guilty.