Zenith Man by Jennifer Haigh

Published digitally by Amazon on December 19, 2019

Amazon commissioned five stories for a series it calls Inheritance. The stories are unconnected to each other except by the broad theme of family secrets. In a departure from its usual format, Tzer Island will review one story in the Inheritance series each day this week.

“Zenith Man” is a nice story about a couple who, married for 32 years, kept their mutual promises. The story begins when the husband, a TV repairman named Harold Pardee, calls 911 to report his wife’s death. The fact that Harold has a wife shocks the gossipy Appalachian town in which he lives. Other than Harold, only one person even knew his wife existed. “She passed through life like vapor through a keyhole.”

Some people interpret Harold’s matter-of-fact reaction to his wife’s death as indifference. A pinkish tint on the body’s teeth and gums convinces the medical examiner that she died of suffocation. Harold is charged with her murder and a recent law school grad, filling in as the local public defender, is appointed to represent him.

Barbara Jean (Barjean), we learn, married Harold in Texas at the age of 18. Before they met, Harold and Barjean were reclusive and largely friendless. Harold is a recluse by nature. Barjean had a medical condition that left her feeling ashamed. Both are odd and seemingly meant for each other. “For thirty-two years, each had been, for the other, the only person in the world.” Why would Harold kill her?

Barjean’s family thought Harold was strange because of his Catholic upbringing. Barjean’s family is Full Gospel but her father was not unhappy that someone was willing to marry her, even if her husband was of a different faith. They weren’t prepared for the couple’s decision to move to Pennsylvania and cut the family out of their lives. Like the police officers who track down Barjean’s family, the reader might wonder if Barjean’s separation from her family supplies a motive for her murder.

The story is more a character sketch of two people who live inside their own world than a murder mystery. Taken in that spirit, the story is a success. Jennifer Haigh creates Harold and Barjean in accumulating detail. They keep secrets from the outside world because that is how they make their lives work, even if secrecy infuriates the busybodies who give small towns a bad name. A reader might not want to know them if they were real people — a reader would have no chance to know them, because of the fence around their property and their guard dog — but Haigh makes it easy to understand them.

Even people we might not want to know, and who might not want to know us, have value. That value will always be recognized by someone. The story’s value lies in its illumination of that truth.

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