Nancy Werking Poling is the author of While Earth Still Speaks, an environmental novel; Before It Was Legal: a black-white marriage (1945-1987), a work of non-fiction; and Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman, a short story collection. After her essay, “Leander’s Lies,” won the 2018 Alex Albright Creative Nonfiction Prize, she set about turning the narrative into a novel, scheduled to be published under the same title (Leander’s Lies) in late 2025. She lives in the North Carolina mountains.
Where’s Sparky?
by Nancy Werking Poling
Her Ford Falcon isn’t in the garage. That’s the first irregularity Richard notices. The second, that the house is eerily quiet. “I’m home,” he shouts, convinced despite evidence to the contrary that his wife could not possibly be away, this being the time he always comes home, the time when dinner is always waiting for him. He loosens his tie and enters the kitchen. No food on the stove. Not even plates on the table.
“Sparky,” he calls as if she’s playing hide-and-seek and dares him to find her. Silence. “Sparky!” he yells, insistently this time. Shoes landing emphatically on carpeted stairs, he makes his way up to their bedroom. As always, the bed’s made, the teal and avocado green bedspread picking up the colors of the shag carpeting, recently vacuumed. Her perfumes and powders form a neat row across the top of the chest of drawers.
Wednesday afternoon. Do the kids have school activities or go to work? Keeping track of everyone’s schedule—that’s Sparky’s job. He has enough on his mind, meeting sales quotas, and now dealing with losing the promotion to a jerk like Henderson.
He opens Ryan’s bedroom door, immediately closing it in disgust over the stench of sweat and layers of junk. He knocks on the door of Gail’s room, not out of sensitivity but because he once walked right in, and seeing her naked—with a woman’s breasts and all—so startled him that he could only stand there gaping. Later, fully clothed, she called him a pervert and told him never to enter her room again. Now, though, there’s no response to his knock, so he gingerly opens the door. Her room is no neater than Ryan’s, clothes strewn all over the place, record albums on every surface. Hair. What the hell is she doing with that hippie musical? And those disgusting posters plastered all over the wall: “Make love, not war,” “War is not healthy for children and other living things.”
His acidic stomach sends a burning sensation to his chest. He works hard so he can return at the end of the day to this peaceful dwelling, which at the moment does not feel like a shelter from the storm of his pressure-filled existence. His wife is supposed to welcome him with a warm meal, his kids greet him with affection. But she has prepared no meal, and it’s obvious, from checking their rooms, that his kids, even if they were here, are strangers.
He returns to his and Sparky’s bedroom. Trades his shoes for a pair of slippers, hangs up his suit jacket. It’s past six o’clock and he wants dinner.
Back in the kitchen he opens the refrigerator door, lifts the glass lid of a Corningware casserole dish. Good lord, tuna again? Mixed with one of those cream soups in a can. When they were dating, back twenty-some years ago, it never occurred to him to ask if she could cook. He takes the casserole out of the refrigerator, peers at it intently, as if expecting it to tell him what to do next. He begins to rehearse the speech he’ll deliver the minute she walks in the house, starting with If I’m going to work hard all day—and believe me, it’s no easy job I have—the least you can do is have dinner ready.
He mixes a martini and goes into the living room, turns on the TV to the Huntley-Brinkley Report, drops into his leather recliner, and lights a cigarette. Chet Huntley says Nixon has signed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act. Richard inhales deeply. He’ll outlive all those anti-smoking bastards. Chet and David say their regular goodnights.
Richard’s halfway out of the recliner, intending to change the channel. “We have breaking news,” and right there before his eyes police are handcuffing—why it’s Richard’s own two kids! The police are pushing them, along with a bunch of hippie types, into a paddy wagon. So Gail and Ryan are not at work, not involved in some after-school activity.
Seconds later the phone rings. Has to be Sparky. Well she has plenty of explaining to do: her absence and whatever’s going on with those two damn kids.
“Dad, uh, Ryan and I—”
“I just saw the news. What the hell gives you the—where’s your mother?”
“How should I know? Isn’t she home?”
“Does she approve of what you’re doing?”
“Are you going to come bail us out or not?”
“I should let the two of you rot in jail.”
But he doesn’t. Let them rot in jail, that is. At the police station he can only scowl as an officer escorts both kids into the waiting area. Gail offers her father a weak thanks; Ryan greets him with that arrogant look of his indicating he feels entitled to any largesse coming his way.
Richard asks the officer in charge whether by chance Sparky’s also been arrested. Not that she’s ever shown any interest in current affairs, but you never know about women. The officer doesn’t find her name on the list and suggests she may have gone for a drink with friends. This elicits a humph from Richard, who’s confident that Sparky’s small circle of friends is more likely to sit around doing macramé than going out for a drink. On the other hand, the notion of her participating in an anti-war demonstration is equally ridiculous.
“Don’t you realize you’re helping the Vietcong?” he grumbles on the drive home. “I swear to God if I ever again get a call to bail either of you out of jail, you’ll just have to sleep on a cement slab for a few nights…. And Ryan, get a haircut.”
The garage is still empty, the house quiet. Ryan immediately turns on the oven, takes a pizza out of the freezer, and removes the cellophane. “Give me a call when the timer goes off,” he tells his father, then takes the steps two at a time to his room, slamming the door behind him. Immediately raucous sounds—they call that music?—invade the house.
The casserole still rests on the counter where Richard left it. He can think of nothing to do but put it in the oven on the rack above the pizza.
*
As Vince Taylor stirs the roux for a Béchamel sauce, he burns with desire. A while ago he got off the phone with—sometimes he still stumbles over her name, having known her as Sparky all through high school. But she prefers Eleanor. One in ten dogs is called Sparky, she told him.
Ever since their twenty-fifth class reunion they’ve been in almost daily contact. When she stood ahead of him in the buffet line, wearing a black dress that clung to her body in all the right places, he confessed that in high school he had the hots for her. He wouldn’t have said it if her husband had been nearby, but Richard sat over at the bar talking with Hank Peterson. About business probably, since Hank owns the biggest Chevrolet dealership in the state.
“Where’s Helen?” Eleanor asked.
“We’re divorced. Eight years it’s been.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” Her intense brown eyes said she felt sad on his behalf. It’s one thing he loves about Eleanor: her empathy.
“No, we never should have married. Probably wouldn’t nowadays.” In high school everyone knew she was pregnant.
He and Spar—he and Eleanor flirted all the way to the front of the line, where he asked if she wanted a slice of beef au jus and she said yes, then her eyes flooded with tears as he put it on her plate. Because, she explained later, she was all the time taking care of everyone else’s needs and no one ever served her. They sat together, her saving a seat for Richard, though she later told Vince she prayed he’d keep talking with Hank Peterson. Which he did, clear up to the time cherries jubilee was served.
Someday, Vince thinks as he continues to stir the roux, he’ll cook for Eleanor. Even now, more than a year after the reunion, he feels the heat of her body against his as they danced. Richard, having spent so much time at the bar, wasn’t steady on his feet and didn’t seem to care that Vince was out there holding his wife close. Very close. By the end of the evening romance was blossoming like forsythia in April.
Reach out and touch someone, AT&T advertises. Eleanor lives nearly a hundred miles away, so several times a week they touch each other with their voices, her soft, velvety words crossing the state line to massage his lonely spirit. When he initiates the calls he makes sure to phone when Richard’s at work and her kids are at school. Once he called on a Saturday just to hear her voice. Luckily the kids were gone and Richard was outside mowing the yard. Adding its own kind of excitement, the risk of getting caught.
Sometimes she calls Vince. But not from home, since Richard makes it a practice, when he pays bills, to grill the initiator of every long-distance call on the list. Who did you call? What was the purpose? So she’s been saving quarters for pay phones. She knows college professors don’t make a lot of money and doesn’t want him to bear all the expense of their relationship. Something else he loves about her: her sensitivity to his limited resources.
For a while she called on a pay phone in a windowless corridor leading to the mall’s public restrooms. She entertained Vince with narratives about mothers heading to the ladies’ room, leading frantic children holding their crotches. Eventually the operator would break in and say, You have one minute remaining. He and Eleanor would say a hasty, painful goodbye.
About a month ago she found a pay phone outside a Shell station, only a five-minute drive from her home. The phone stands on a cement pedestal, away from the pumps, over by the air hose, she says. It has a long cord that allows her to sit in her car while talking. The best part, though, is that like getting lucky at a Las Vegas slot machine, whenever she inserts a quarter, a handful of coins spills out. When their conversations get interrupted by an automated voice saying You have one minute remaining, Vince hears the ping as she inserts more quarters. She always leaves with more change than she brought.
Vince pours the sauce over cauliflower, scatters grated Gruyère on top, and places the Pyrex bowl in the oven. A whole two hours have passed since they talked. Already he misses her terribly.
*
“Aren’t you gonna call the police or the hospital or somebody?” Gail asks as she stands in front of the TV, blocking Richard’s view of Bonanza. The way she smacks her gum annoys him.
“Let’s wait another hour or two. Maybe she went—I don’t know where the hell she could have gone. Get out of the way so I can see the TV. And turn up the volume, will you?”
Gail steps aside but doesn’t go over to turn up the volume. “You know, I don’t blame her,” she says. Richard’s eyes follow the panoramic view of the Ponderosa Ranch. “I don’t blame her,” Gail repeats.
“Don’t blame her for what?” Richard asks, still not taking his eyes off the TV.
“Leaving. She’s fed up, you know.”
Now she has his attention. “Who said she’s left? Fed up with who?”
“With you.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No, but I’ve got eyes.”
“Eyes that see what?”
“The way—I don’t know what you’d call it. Frustration, I guess.”
“Now what would your mother be frustrated over?”
“I don’t know. Life, I guess.” She makes a tiny bubble with her gum, pops it.
“Your mother is frustrated by life, huh? Exactly what part of life?”
“Oh, I’m thinking maybe she doesn’t like spending her time cooking and stuff.”
“Well, obviously, she is not spending her time cooking and stuff. Or my supper would have been waiting for me.”
*
Vince runs the dishcloth around the rim of his wine glass. Washes the remaining dishes and pans. Meticulously wipes the kitchen counter. Still thinking about Eleanor.
“We have to consummate our relationship,” he told her one afternoon, three months after the class reunion. Consummate—that’s the word he used. To call it sex would have cheapened it. They agreed to meet at Aberdeen Inn, along the interstate. Vince canceled appointments and asked his graduate assistant to teach the morning class.
Just being together and touching physically rather than metaphorically made them both happy. And later they could laugh about all that went wrong that day. A fire alarm forced them to decide whether or not to wrap sheets around their naked bodies and exit the building. They decided not to. Fortunately, it turned out to be a false alarm.
And then. When it was time to leave their romantic lair, Eleanor took her car keys from her purse, Vince reached into his pants pocket for his. Not finding them. Finally discovering them dangling from the ignition, his car doors locked. He urged her to leave.
Instead she went inside the motel office and asked the people at the front desk for a coat hanger. As if she knew what to do with it. Eventually the assistant manager, the guy cleaning the swimming pool, a maid with an Eastern European accent, and a salesman staying at the motel were all standing around the car, wanting to help but lacking the criminal skill required for the job. Not until a local mechanic came with his tool for such emergencies did Eleanor leave Vince’s side.
By now they’ve managed to meet at the Aberdeen Inn enough times that the staff know them. And after nearly a year of loving each other on the phone and in person, he’s almost talked her into divorcing Richard.
*
It’s 11:30 p.m. Not only has Sparky messed up Richard’s mealtime; now she’s interfering with his sleep. He needs to be rested tomorrow when Henderson starts the job, which should have been Richard’s, as section supervisor. Still stretched out in his recliner, he’s watching Johnny Carson.
Though tomorrow is a school day and it’s well past her bedtime, Gail sits on the sofa, legs tucked beneath her. All evening she’s been expressing concern for her mother, repeating over and over, “This is not like Mom. Something terrible has happened.”
They’re both laughing, though, at Carnac the Magnificent when the doorbell rings.
“There she is now,” Richard says. “Get the door. Must have lost her keys or something.”
Gail shuffles over to the front door and peers through the peek hole. Two police officers, visors forming shadows across their faces, stand there. When she opens the door, they immediately remove their caps, respectful like. Their faces are somber.
“This the Hefferven residence?”
“Dad,” Gail calls over to her father, who rises and walks to the door.
“May we come in?”
“Of course.” Richard motions for them to sit on the sofa. He assumes the officers’ presence is related to the kids having been arrested that day. “I’ve already given them a good talking to,” he says. “You won’t see my son and daughter ever again thinking they know more than the President of the United States.”
The older of the officers clears his throat. “Is Eleanor Hefferven your wife?”
“Yes.”
The officer runs his thumb up and down the visor of his hat. “Sir, we have bad news.”
Richard looks from one officer to the other. “Sparky?”
“This afternoon your wife was, uh, she was, she was involved in an accident of sorts.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, sir. We’re not quite sure how it happened, but she was strangled by a telephone cord.”
“Strangled?” Gail gasps. “You mean Mom’s—Mom’s dead?”
“That’s right, Miss.”
Richard shakes his head in disbelief. “A telephone cord? How… how…”
“Outside the Shell station over on Broad and Tenth. The owner says she often uses the pay phone there, sits in her car while she talks.”
“Strangled?” Richard asks.
“Yes, sir. Like I said, can’t tell what happened for sure. Looks like maybe she hung up the phone but somehow the cord was part way around her neck so when she put the car into gear—it’s a long cord, sir.”
Richard’s first thought is, Does this mean Sparky won’t ever have dinner ready for me again? His second, Why would she be using a pay phone when she could call from home?
Gail, though, is sobbing.
*
Five times in the past two days, Vince has tried to reach Eleanor but hung up when Richard, who’s supposed to be at work, answered the phone. If he’s taking vacation time, surely Eleanor can find an excuse to go to the mall or Shell station.
This time, though, Vince has a strategy. When Gail answers, he thinks for a second it’s Eleanor. Fortunately he realizes his near-mistake before he says anything incriminating.
“Hello, this is Bob Singletary in the drapery department at J.C. Penney calling for Mrs. Hefferven.”
Gail’s voice cracks. “Uh, she—she’s recently been—she recently died.”
“Died! Eleanor? Oh, God! How?” He wants to cry out in grief, abandon his disguise, confess his love. He gains control and manages to make his tone more businesslike. “Why just four or five days ago she was at the store. She asked for some estimates. How did this happen?”
“We’re not sure exactly. Nobody saw it. For some reason she was using the pay phone at a filling station. The police think—” Gail’s voice falters— “they think she accidentally put the car in gear when the cord—somehow it got wrapped around her neck, and she—she was strangled.” Gail sniffles.
For fear he’ll break down, Vince hurriedly says, “Well, uh, I’m very sorry,” and hangs up.
*
A strong floral scent greets mourners at the entrance of Wayland Funeral Home. To the right of the open casket, a hefty woman in a black dress plays “Nearer my God to Thee” on a Hammond organ. To the casket’s left the undertaker and his assistant stand, hands clasped in front of them. From the front row, Richard, seated with Gail on one side, Ryan on the other, watches as friends step up to the casket and shake their heads. Most then come over to the family to mumble, “We’re so sorry.” “She sure looks like herself.” “We were stunned to hear about the accident.”
A lone man comes from the back of the chapel and stands before Sparky’s dead body. “Oh, Eleanor,” he wails, “I’m so sorry.” He leans over… and kisses her. For a long time, it seems, he continues to stand before the casket, shoulders shaking as he cries.
Richard’s sure he’s seen the man somewhere before.
Copyright 2025 by Nancy Werking Poling