HOLLY NADLER

508-693-3880

(sunporch@vineyard.net)

In the Agatha Christie novels someone always gets around to observing, “De mortuis nisi nil bonum,” which means, as we all know, “Speak nothing but good of the dead.” This is always in response to a police inspector (or Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot) asking, “Why would anyone want to kill your Great-Aunt Beatrice?” The object of this query always starts with the “De mortuis” bit before launching into an all-out character assasination.

I was put in mind of this when on New Year’s Day I made a pledge to follow Miguel Ruiz’s first of his Four Agreements: Be Impeccable In Your Speech, which takes Agatha Christie’s warning about the dead and throws in the living too (God knows how you say that in Latin.)

Have I been impeccable? Well, I’m trying, but it reminds me of a story I’ve been dying to tell you from last summer which should have set me up on this straight and narrow path half a year ago. Here it is:

It was a quiet July morning in my bookstore. The only person in the shop was a young woman, dressed in a skirt and a white blouse with a scarf over her head. I’d been giving her plenty of psychic space to browse because she was clearly intent on finding just the right book, examining many, reading sample paragraphs from each, then moving on. Occasionally a similarly serious-looking young man — dark hair, black-rimmed glasses, buttoned-down shirt — popped in to touch base with her. She would show him a book, confer in whispers, then apparently ask for more time.

Another person wandered into the store, Gary, a close friend of Garrett and Hawkin next door who had recently opened the trendy fashion boutique, Jellyfish. Gary asked how business was doing. All of the other retailers on Circuit avenue were in accord about this: July was inching along with the speed of an overturned barrel of molasses. On the other hand, summer was summer: we were all destined to do semi-okay. Gary said something along the lines of, “It’s never gonna be like the Clinton days again.”

I thought of all the hoopla attending those summers, and said with a sigh, “Well, we wouldn’t want the Clinton days back, would we?”

Gary got a strange look on his face, and backed out the door like a man conducting a fire drill.

Meanwhile the young woman’s male friend returned. She handed him a book — some serious piece of modern fiction by a Japanese author. She split, and the guy paid. Who has boyfriends like that?

A few minutes later Gary returned. “You know who that was?” he asked me.

I shook my head.

“Chelsea Clinton,” he told me.

Cripes! How does this happen? How did I manage to say something disparaging about the Clintons, whom I like, and have the female scion of the dynasty standing behind me? I made a vow then and there to never, never, never again speak ill of anyone because the Universe had clearly sent me a message not to do that.

Well, who listens to the Universe?

Here’s another story I’ve been holding back, but it’s the best Christmas anecdote I’ve heard from the season at our backs: David Madeiros sat on his brother Donald’s porch on Christmas Day. Donald was standing. All of a sudden a hawk swooped down from the sky and landed on Donald’s head! David watched astonished as the hawk rested for a moment, then flapped its wings and took off again. As far as omens go, this seems like a good one. My prediction: Donald Madeiros is in for an important year.

At the Oak Bluffs School, the boys’ basketball team will have its first game on Tuesday, Jan. 15, against Edgartown, and the girls’ team will play Thursday, Jan. 17, also vs. Edgartown. Both games will take place in O.B., giving us the home advantage.