Rating: ★★★★☆ Tags: Mystery Detective, General, Fiction

AMY ELLIOTT DUNNE
OCTOBER 16, 2010
– Diary entry –
H
appy anniversary to me! One full month as a Missouri
resident, and I am on my way to becoming a good
midwesterner. Yep, I have gone cold turkey off all things
East Coast and I have earned my thirty-day chip (here it
would be a potato chip). I am taking notes, I am honoring
traditions. I am the Margaret Mead of the goddamn
Mississip.
Let’s see, what’s new? Nick and I are currently
embroiled in what I have taken to calling (to myself ) the
Cuckoo Clock Conundrum. My parents’ cherished heirloom
looks ridiculous in the new house. But then all our New York
stuff does. Our dignified elephant of a chesterfield with its
matching baby ottoman sits in the living room looking
stunned, as if it got sleep-darted in its natural environment
and woke up in this strange new captivity, surrounded by
faux-posh carpet and synthetic wood and unveined walls. I
do miss our old place – all the bumps and ridges and
hairline fractures left by the decades. (Pause for attitude
adjustment.) But new is nice, too! Just different. The clock
would disagree. The cuckoo is also having a tough time
adjusting to its new space: The little bird lurches out

---

drunkenly at ten minutes after the hour; seventeen minutes
before; forty-one past. It emits a dying wail – coo-crrrrww –
that every time brings Bleecker trotting in from some
hideaway, eyes wild, all business, his tail a bottle-brush as
he tilts his head toward the feathers and mewls.
‘Wow, your parents must really hate me,’ Nick says
whenever we’re both in earshot of the noise, though he’s
smart enough not to recommend ridding ourselves of the
thing just yet. I actually want to trash it too. I am the one (the
jobless) at home all day, just waiting for its squawk, a tense
moviegoer steeling myself for the next outburst from the
crazy patron behind me – both relieved (there it is!) and
angry (there it is!) each time it comes.
Much to-do was made over the clock at the
housewarming (
oh, look at that, an antique clock!
), which
Mama Maureen Dunne insisted on. Actually, not insisted
on; Mama Mo does not insist. She simply makes things a
reality by assuming they are such: From the first morning
after the move, when she appeared on our doorstep with a
welcome-home egg scramble and a family pack of toilet
paper (which didn’t speak well for the egg scramble), she’d
spoken of the housewarming as if it were a fact. 
So when
do you want to do your housewarming? Have you thought
about who I should invite to the housewarming? Do you
want a housewarming or something fun, like a stock-the-
bar party? But a traditional housewarming is always nice
.
And then suddenly there was a date, and the date was
today, and Dunne family and friends were shaking off the
October 
drizzle 
from 
umbrellas 
and 
carefully,
conscientiously wiping their feet on the floor mat Maureen
had brought for us this morning. The rug says: 
All Are

---

Friends Who Enter Here
. It is from Costco. I have learned
about bulk shopping in my four weeks as a Mississippi
River resident. Republicans go to Sam’s Club, Democrats
go to Costco. But everyone buys bulk because – unlike
Manhattanites – they all have space to store twenty-four jars
of sweet pickles. And – unlike Manhattanites – they all have
uses for twenty-four jars of sweet pickles. (No gathering is
complete without a lazy Susan full of pickles and Spanish
olives right from the jar. And a salt lick.)
I set the scene: It is one of those big-smelling days,
when people bring the outdoors in with them, the scent of
rain on their sleeves, in their hair. The older women –
Maureen’s friends – present varying food items in plastic,
dishwasher-safe containers they will later ask to be
returned. And ask and ask. I know, now, that I am supposed
to wash out the containers and drop each of them back by
their proper homes – a Ziploc carpool – but when I first
came here, I was unaware of the protocol. I dutifully
recycled all the plastic containers, and so I had to go buy all
new ones. Maureen’s best friend, Vicky, immediately
noticed her container was brand-new, store-bought, an
imposter, and when I explained my confusion, she widened
her eyes in amazement: