Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 40, No. 6, June, 1995

“No, I’m fine, Mother. Just fine. How are you, Uncle Willis? Are you fine, too?”

“Yes, Didi. I’m fine.” And so he was.

So — which of the remaining eight? They all looked alike. She took them out and even shook them, could see no sediment that looked unnatural. How about if she carried all of them away somehow (in what to where?) and claimed that they’d been stolen? Come now, DiDi, be sensible. Undecided, she pondered and puzzled and watched, half-hoping (damn you, Uncle Willis) and half-fearful (damn you, dreadful DiDi).

It was during the eighth jar that it happened. (Total agony as he chewed his way through the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh), the dinner table was the scene, but what was the date? Think hard, think hard, it was in autumn, after Halloween, she thought, how about November... sometime in early November, she called out a date, and a scene came to life.

Mother looked nervous, DiDi thought. Strange, Mother was always so calm. Partly because Mother wasn’t prone to wild imaginings as DiDi was but also because she was a naturally accept-things-as-they-are person. What did she have to be nervous about?

“I have an announcement to make, Willis,” she said suddenly, causing Uncle Willis to pause forkful in mid-air to say, “Yeah?”

“Didi, I should have told you first, but to tell the truth it’s all seemed so unreal, I couldn’t believe it myself. I’m going to get married. On Monday. To Ronald Brent. You know, Didi, that nice man at the supermarket. The one in charge of the fruits and vegetables. With the dark hair. You know the one.”

“Is that so.” Uncle Willis put his forkful of gravied potato in his mouth and chewed.

“The fat one?” DiDi asked. “That’s getting bald?”

Mother looked hurt, and DiDi apologized. “I’m sorry, he’s just a little — plump, Mom. And just a little bald. Actually he’s very nice looking. When did you two — become friends?”

Mother blushed. “Oh, it’s been a long time coming. He always had a kind word when I came marketing, and he’d save some extra nice tomatoes when my plants had stopped producing, and then he began to walk along with me and we’d talk a little, you know, just pleasant conversation and I found that he’s never married because he took care of his mother, who recently passed away, poor thing, she had cancer, it was a slow and painful death and I felt so sorry for Ronald. He looked drawn and thin, yes, he did, Didi, too thin, so I made a casserole for him and, well, one thing led to another and he’d take me out for a soda or an ice cream on his break and...” She smiled, and she looked suddenly as young as one of DiDi’s friends. “Yesterday he proposed, and today...” she held out her hand, “he gave me a ring.”

“Congratulations,” said Uncle Willis, cutting into his chicken-fried steak.

“But I thought...” DiDi stopped, bit her lip.

“Oh.” Mother blushed again. “You mean — Willis and I...” Suddenly flashing fire, she looked at Uncle Willis. “I guess you could say your Uncle Willis changed his preference.”

“Your mother and I called the other thing off awhile back,” said Uncle Willis between bites. “Figured it might not work out. Pass me the peas, will you, Didi?”

Oh my God, thought DiDi. Oh my God. It worked. I really did come between them. But surely he didn’t think, he couldn’t think... “Where will we live, Mother? Here?”

“Oh no. Ronald has a very nice little house. Over on Market Street. You’ll like it, I’m sure.”

Watching Uncle Willis, DiDi said, “If you say so.” He didn’t even look up, sopped a piece of bread into his gravy.

On the day they moved away... that date she thought she did remember, well, maybe not exactly, but near enough... if she told the Betamax what to do, would it do it? Would it show DiDi stealing down to the basement, picking up the hammer that was kept on a bench, smashing Uncle Willis’s pickles, watching the pickles flop like dead fish onto the dirt floor, watching the juice soak into the soil?

She closed her eyes and saw without benefit of telecommunications. “Didi? Are you ready? Where are you, Didi?” Mother’s voice from upstairs.

A swift ascent of the steps. “Here, Mother. I’m ready. I’m ready now.”

At the front door Mother looking backward, “It’s been a haven,” saying to Ronald, “I do feel bad about Willis. No one to look after him now. I do hope he’ll be all right.”

“He’ll be all right, Mother,” DiDi, coming between them, had assured her. “Don’t worry, he’ll be all right.”

And he had been. Obviously. For years. Until his recent demise. What had Uncle Willis died of, anyway? Old age? He couldn’t have been that old. Cancer? Stroke? Heart attack? She realized she didn’t know the cause of her benefactor’s death. Natural causes, she supposed that’s what it came down to. Natural causes.

But not from poisoned pickles. Whatever the cause, not that.

For God’s sake, that was years ago. If her doctored pickles had caused trouble, that would have happened ages ago...