The mysterious house on the corner stirred my imagination each time we drove by it in our Chevy Bel Air. Cedars and tall elm trees surrounded it, enveloping it in darkness, literally and figuratively. The ornate fence served to keep the house’s secrets inside more than the world out.
In my early years, it seemed empty. I asked if anyone lived there. I was told it was once a town judge’s house, but he was now deceased. He had one daughter named Mallie. Town rumors said she had gone off to Washington, D.C. to be a fancy private secretary. No one knew whom she worked for. Town legend held that it was some posh job in the government. Mallie was a single woman who had escaped the tiny town’s confines—something to be idolized and envied.
One day when I was working in my grandfather’s grocery store, a character from an early 1940s movie came in. This woman was unlike anyone in town. She wore a 1940s straight-skirted suit, a black hat with a small veil perched among the rolls of her bleached blonde updo. She was the most exotic woman I had ever seen. Mallie was probably in her sixties but still wore bright red lipstick. Heavily mascaraed eyelashes framed vivid green eyes. Seamed stocking led down to black leather heels. A pouch-type purse with a cloth strap hung from her bent arm. This autobiographical tale Mallie provided ignited my writer's life later on.
She came to the counter and ordered two packs of cigarettes, her voice deep and smoky. When she opened her purse to pay, she had a change purse with a clasp across the top. Mallie paid for the cigarettes with some bills. Then, just as she had entered, she sashayed out. I didn’t know who she was then, but a few days later while riding my bike, I saw her walking home from the store. She entered the mysterious house.
The prodigal daughter had returned.
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