Marybelle? The Lake Martinez Widow

Jeffery Wiederkher
A collector of records, stories, sins, whisky and words. A hopeless romantic who daydreams too much and writes not enough.

It was 1990 something. A widow living alone in a doublewide-trailer on Lake Martinez had just died. My uncle had purchased the trailer and because he knew that I liked vintage furniture, I was given the opportunity to take a few things before they remodeled the place. My favorite item was an old (1960’s I believe) Hewlett-Packard record player console. On the console shelf there was a collection of crooner LP’s: Eydie Gormé, Julie London, Sinatra and the like. Although not the normal genre for a heavy metal and punk skewed teen, crooners held a special place in my heart. Growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and crooners were definitely their jam. So, while I didn’t ever scrawl Louie Prima’s name onto my Pee-Chee folder, I was happy to add the Lake Martinez widow’s record console and collection to mine.
It’s funny, I hadn’t thought of her, or her home in a long time. It wasn’t until I decided to write this very post for Cherry-Rose … when I was reflecting back on how I acquired the Eydie Gormé and Julie London records that influenced Cherry-Rose. Perhaps she was some sort of unconscious seed for this story. Reverse engineering the birth of the story makes me want to say yes; although, the true inspiration for Marybelle was born much closer to home.
Either way, I hope the widow wasn’t lonely. As I write this, I can see her like Marybelle, listening to her records on the long lonely nights before she learned to shape her daughters.
The trailer was on an isolated plot of land far from the village, so deep in the desert it was part of the desert … I wonder what she would have wished for, had someone taught her how to call the Blue Fairy.