After Stephanie's end of summer bomb explosion, the Burg will never be the same. Rating Language
Cluster Bombs in the Burg
Chapter One
I stared at the calendar on my kitchen counter. It is the end of August, Labor Day is in three days, the unofficial end of summer. It is also the end of Trenton's Bombshell Bounty Hunter and the rise of Wonder Woman. The transformation has been years in the making.
I was born into a shell called the Burg. Since the early 20th century, Chambersburg has been the Italian center of Trenton. Immigrants came for a new life, willing to work in the many factories, buy a home, and raise a family respectful of Italian traditions. It was not all Italian; many Eastern European families came and married within their ethnicity or intermarried with the Italians. I am a product of such an intermarriage. My maternal family was from Hungry, and my paternal was Italian. When coming through immigration, the paternal name Plumerii suddenly became Plum due to a tired immigration official.
Life in the Burg was 20th-century American with an Italian accent. Restaurants were Italian, and the grocery stores carried food from the old country. The bakery specializes in Italian cookies and pastries. Everyone attended the same Catholic Church. The older ones participated in the Latin/Italian mass, and English speakers attended the Latin/English second service.
The children were well-groomed and had exemplary manners. Girls wed young according to their paternal heritage, stayed home, bore children, and kept the house. Boys got a job in a factory, married, and produced the next generation for the Burg. Dinner was at 6 pm, with no exceptions.
By mid-century, the second and third-generation Italians had their own need to move on to greener pastures as the factories were closing. They first went to the suburbs of Hamilton Township, then later beyond. The boys went to college to find better jobs that took them far beyond the Burg. Girls began to question their expected role as homemakers and sought employment where post-high school education was necessary. Slowly, the threads that kept the Burg an Italian-Eastern European enclave began to unravel unless you were born to a mother so deeply Burg she believed nothing good existed beyond the community's boundaries. Such is the family I was born into. As a second half of the 20th-century baby, my eyesight quivered between life beyond the Burg and Trenton and remaining true to my birth. Early on, I knew I could never be a housewife like my mother. It did not help hearing how I failed my Burg duties and family expectations by failing to learn how to cook, sew, properly wash windows, and wax floors.
I went to college with plans to have a career elsewhere, anywhere, as long as it was not in Trenton. I caved to motherly pressure and married right out of college, quickly divorced, and found a job in Newark. My Burg ties were stretched but not severed. When the job disappeared, I returned to the Burg with full intentions of finding a new career and living a solitary life with no interest in marriage. But my mother had her own opinions.
I continued slogging around in the Burg, working as a bounty hunter, making only enough money to survive, not thrive. The constant admonishment to be a proper married Burg housewife and mother hung over me. For years, I wavered, but I finally found my backbone and will soon sever all ties to Chambersburg and Trenton.
I am tired of dodging garbage and fighting uncooperative skips. My apartment was all I could afford during the divorce, but my earnings never improved enough to rent something better. It is still a crappy dump.
My car karma continues. More cars are in car heaven; as always, none were my fault. The drunk driver ran a stop light, hitting a big SUV that slammed into my little Kia, causing it to roll over and die with its tires facing heaven. I received bruises and a broken collarbone. Of course, Joe Morelli, the Trenton police detective and once boyfriend arrived to pointedly tell me I needed to stop working and marry him. It was, as my childhood song verse went: same song, second verse, a little bit louder, and a little bit worse." The emergency workers stood back, rolling their eyes, having heard Joe's bilge before. I am surprised they haven't started flashing scorecards to judge his performance.
Announcer #1 exclaims, "The EMT judges grade the Italian Stallion's performance a 7.3 while the TPD comes in a 6.9, Howard, but the civilian judge seems impressed, scoring the performance an 8.9."
Announcer #2 replies, "Yes, Don, but look at the Rangeman contingent's score. They are unimpressed, showing a 1.7 mark."
The second car incident was when a crazed individual took a sledgehammer to my car because I took his parking spot at the grocery store. It wasn't a matter of two drivers vying for the same place. I was in the store when he pulled up, expecting "his" spot to be open. Unaware of the turmoil outside, it wasn't until Rangeman Ram walked in and told me my car karma continued. I've seen pictures of cars that have endured grapefruit-sized hail or gone through tornados. This was worse. The mentally troubled Burg resident smashed everything: windows, doors, hood, trunk, and roof support. The perp must have been a reincarnation of John Henry, The Steel Driving Man, to cause that much damage in a limited time. A Molotov cocktail sat to the side, unlighted. While the car escaped a fiery death, it was pre-compacted for the junkyard. Yes, Joe Morelli arrived to yell his opinions again.
The third incident that finalized my epiphany was Lula rummaging in her purse when her handgun went off. The bullet went through the front dash, across the engine, cutting an oil line, through the front of the car, and into my upper leg, nicking the femoral artery and lodging in the femur. Since it happened in the TPD parking lot, Lula jumped into my car's driver's seat and sped off. She didn't get far. The leaking oil ignited atop the manifold, starting a car fire. Lula plowed into a parked car six blocks from the parking lot. Both vehicles went up in flames.
Joe Morelli was quick on the scene again, ready with another incompetency song, but couldn't find me. Spectators told him the woman driver ran off and gave a description. Joe didn't listen. He knew what I looked like, and it is nothing like Lula. A perp-on-the-run call, giving my description, went across the TPD airways. All the while, I was rushing to Capital Regional on Brunswick.
When Officer Gaspick told Joe I was injured and on the way to the hospital, Joe rushed again to St. Francis without listening to the correct hospital. He was intent on arresting me for leaving the scene of an accident and informing the entire waiting area how I could avoid jail I married him.
Joe's rant was so disruptive it resulted in an arrest. Captain Garcia read him the riot act, "You just made a royal jackass out of yourself, Morelli. You are on suspension for two weeks and will report for anger management."
Lula was found and arrested for an unregistered handgun, assault, reckless endangerment, interfering with a police investigation, a stolen car, leaving the scene of an accident, and destruction of the second car.
Of course, the Trenton Times got the story wrong, never really explaining why my car was six blocks away while I was nearly bleeding to death in the hospital. If the Bombshell Bounty Hunter's car goes up in flames, it is front-page news, even if the story is a lie.
My initial car fire years ago might have been ignored, except the reporter recognized my name as the girl Joe Morelli wrote all over town when he forcefully took my virginity. The reporter thought it newsworthy to drag my name through the mud again. The jerk reporter started a car count when my second car hit a fiery end. Trenton and Burg residents had a new game: destroy my vehicles. I asked Ranger if I could sue The Trenton Times and the reporter. He said no.
The scene at Capital Regional Hospital led to my awakening. I needed blood. My blood type was in short supply, so the emergency doctors tried to get my family to donate. Except not one matched me. Fortunately, two Rangemen, Vince and Hal, had my type and volunteered to be donors.
When Grandma Edna visited, I told her of the problem. Lovingly, she patted my hand, "You need to do an ancestor search." What was she telling me or not telling me? With her guidance and Bobby's help, we set out to get DNA samples from my parents and sister. We couldn't get cheek swabs, so we relied on Grandma's devious nature to get hair samples with the tag at the end, toothbrushes, saliva samples from dinnerware, and used tissues.
The results were shocking. Frank Plum is not my or Valerie's father. Plus, Val and I have different fathers. When I showed the results to Grandma, she shook her head, "I've suspected for years."
Instead of taking Grandma to Stiva's for a viewing, we sat in a small restaurant far from the Burg as she explained her suspicions. "Your mother was looking for someone to marry who would support her, so she didn't have to work outside the home." This wasn't earth-shattering news. She'd been pushing the same agenda on me since high school. It's the Burg Way.
"She found a military vet with PTSD. He believed if he married a "nice Burg woman," he could recover. His friend and best man at their wedding used to stop by to check on Frank. Helen would get all flustered and attentive."
"He's Val's father?"
Nodding, she continued, "His name was Steven Michael Valentino. Helen and Frank were so excited about the baby that they named it after Frank's friend. Hence Valerie. Steve was a frequent visitor, seeing his namesake while Frank worked. When Helen was pregnant again, she "knew" it would be a boy according to Burg's myth on carrying position and wanted the name Stephen Michael since he continued to be such a good friend to Frank," Grandma uttered using her bony fingers to denote apostrophes around good.
"Did Dad have a performance problem?"
"In the years I've lived here, I have never heard them get frisky."
I didn't want to know about my parent's sex life except for the part about me. "Val and I are half-sisters, so Steve Valentino isn't my father."
Grandma looked out the front window of the car. "Steve Valentino died suddenly, ten months before you were born. Helen and Frank were devastated. I've been racking my brain to think who your father might be. All I can come up with turns my stomach to think about."
"What, Grandma?"
"Through high school, Helen had a crush on Tony Morelli and was distraught when he knocked up Angie Frutelli and married her."
"You think I'm a Morelli? My skin is too light."
"You've got the lighter Hungarian complexion and my and my mother's curls. I see nothing Morelli about you, thankfully."
Suddenly, my stomach dropped. If I am a Morelli, I've been intimate with my brother. It started when I was six and the Choo Choo molestation in his father's garage, through the Tasty Pastry rape, and into our relationship since I returned from Newark. My opinion of my mother was fracturing. I needed to know if it would crash to be forever unrepairable.
I avoided the Plum dinner table for weeks, not wanting another heaping serving of Mother-delivered disappointment. After all, I wasn't Steve's daughter. Dad never weighed in, and I was beginning to understand why. He was a paycheck to Mom. She cooked his meals and did his laundry. He was nothing to us, Val and me, except the person who lived in the house and provided a paycheck.
To get Joe's DNA, we needed a plan. I accepted a dinner invitation, knowing Mom would invite Joe. Grandma and I watched him eat, wondering what dinnerware would provide the best DNA sample. When Mom brought out the chocolate pudding for dessert, Grandma smiled. Joe licked both sides of his spoon. I quickly grabbed his empty bowl and spoon while I gathered mine and Mom's. Grandma took her and Dad's to the kitchen. We dropped my spoon and Joe's into separate evidence bags and put them on the back porch. Rangeman Bobby would rush from the alley, grab the bags, and take them to the lab.