GLOSS<www.glosszine.org> |
Issue #1 Winter 2002The Second Violaby John Dufresne Ennis Murphy married two women with the same first name and the same ashy blonde hair. In 1972 he married Viola Packard and divorced her in 1974. In 1975, he married Viola Sweet. Twenty-five years later he divorced the second Viola and remarried the first. When Ennis left the second wife for the woman he had left for her, Viola refused to be civil or cordial or reasonable. She felt betrayed by the children who drove up from Manhattan to attend their father’s wedding. Ennis was, according to all reports, according to his chatty phone messages, blissfully happy and “centered for the first time in my life.” He resigned as provost at the university. He practiced yoga, threw pots, was growing his gray hair long and tying it back in a ponytail. Viola Sweet Murphy took out a road atlas and read the names of towns and rivers and mountain ranges trying to divine a place that would take her in, that would give her what she needed–love and respect, romance and a future. She left New England for eastern Montana where the great distances would surely bring people together, where the absence of neighbors would drive lonesomeness away. She sold the house for less than it was worth. She’s just now driving into Broadus. She thinks the Powder River isn’t much of a river at all. A mile wide and an inch deep. This is the town at the end of the road. No one, they say, comes to Broadus by mistake. ©2002 John Dufresne
|