The Road Through the Wall (13 page)

She had a big head, big like a movie close-up, because her mouth and eyes and nose were all big, and her hair fell down straightly around her face, and the hair itself was almost orange. She seemed to be small and thin, otherwise, and Tod was not so much confused by her when he came close, and she spoke to him with her large mouth, and her voice was pleasant. “I'm looking for Art,” he said. “Artie Roberts.”

She jerked her head at the Roberts house in back of her. “You mean one of
them
?” she asked. “They've all gone out.”

“Where did they go?” Whenever Tod had saved a little money from his allowance he would ask Pat Byrne or Art Roberts to go to the movies or down for a soda with him, his treat; that way, although they never asked him in return, he had at least their society for a while, and sometimes even overt friendly gestures from them. However, if Art and Pat were together, there was no use in Tod's asking either or both of them to go with him; he could have afforded, today, to take them both to the movies, but he could not bear being the lonely third, the butt of their laughter while he paid for their tickets.

“
He's
not home,” the girl said, and after a minute Tod realized that she meant Mr. Roberts. “The boys have both gone out somewhere to play, and
she
went to the store. Would I be sitting out here,” she demanded suddenly of the vacant air beside her, “if
she
was around? No, I would not. I would be inside working my ass off while I had to listen to her troubles.” She looked fiercely at Tod and continued, “Do you know what happened to her fat little hand this morning? She burned it on the stove, that's what she did. It nearly ruined the rest of her life. So now she stands over me while
I
burn my damfool arms off and all the time she's talking about how there's so much work she just can't do it all herself and she's unhappy with her husband and I'm to be very careful about not offending him. Me
offend
him!”

It became somehow clear to Tod that this last sentiment was admirable to the girl, and he smiled reassuringly. “Of course not,” he said feebly.

“I saw him down at school one night,” the girl said. “One night he came down when his lousy son was in that lousy play they had.
I
saw him.” She stopped meaningfully.

Her hair is dyed, Tod thought, appalled. Emphatically dyed. It was positively black close to her head, and then it became suddenly, dreadfully orange. Dyed. He wanted to touch it.

“Who are you?” the girl said suddenly.

Trying to remember, Tod could only think about her hair.

“You're Jim Donald's kid brother,” she decided. “
I
know Jim.”

“Why do you dye your hair?” Tod asked unexpectedly. He would never have asked if she had not identified him with Jim.

She frowned at him, bringing her big eyebrows together over her big eyes, and twisting her big mouth with contempt. “It's not dyed,” she said. “That's a hell of a thing to say. It's natural.” She touched it affectionately and then stood up suddenly.

Tod felt an arm around his shoulders, an unfamiliar, possessive arm. It was tight and did not belong around him, and he turned around to find Mrs. Roberts's head above him, her arm determinedly around him.

“Did you finish the dishes, Hester?” Mrs. Roberts asked icily. “Is the living-room dusted? If I neglected to give you enough work to keep you occupied—” Mrs. Roberts's fury took her breath away, and she stopped.

Hester said meekly, “I didn't quite finish. I came outside for a minute.”

“This little boy,” Mrs. Roberts said, “is the son of one of my friends. He is not one of your charges. I introduced you to my sons this morning.”

“Yes, Mrs. Roberts,” Hester said. She turned and went back into the house, and Mrs. Roberts took her arm away from Tod and followed, without speaking to him.

Tod moved back across the street disconsolately. He could still feel the taut pressure of Mrs. Roberts's arm across his shoulders; it was the first time Mrs. Roberts had ever put her arm around him.

•   •   •

“Back at last, are you?” Mrs. Mack said. She held the door open wider and her dog Lady trotted in with a guilty sideways look at her; Lady was big and slow-moving, and his usually clean brown fur was, tonight, streaked and daubed with mud, the white spot at his throat almost hidden. “Back at last,” Mrs. Mack said. “Well, sit down, then, I've kept your dinner.”

The dog, still guilty, leaped as unostentatiously as possible into a chair by the table, and Mrs. Mack went on, as she put the plates down, “Nothing's got cold, because I kept it warming for you, but if it's dried out you've got yourself to blame.” She looked severely down at the dog for a minute, and the dog, not touching the food, only looked back at her until Mrs. Mack smiled involuntarily and said, “Well, then, I'm not angry. Go, eat your dinner.” She patted the dog on the head, and the dog, with signs of infinite relief, licked her hand, wagged his tail, and began to eat greedily from the plate. When the dog put a paw on the table Mrs. Mack slapped the paw and said, “Will you never remember?” and the dog took the paw down again hastily.

Although no one had been inside Mrs. Mack's house in the years since her husband's death, the two rooms in which she and the dog lived were kept clean and swept. The grey little house, so rotten and tottering outside, held, inside, a faded set of overstuffed chairs and sofa, a polished wood-burning stove, and, in the bedroom where Mrs. Mack and Lady slept, an old-fashioned mahogany bedroom set, with a glass of fresh dandelions in front of Mr. Mack's picture on the dresser. Lady sat in a plain kitchen chair at the table, and while he ate his dinner Mrs. Mack resumed work on the crocheted rag rug of astronomic proportions which was to go on the bedroom floor.

“Look,” Mrs. Mack said to Lady, “not far to go now.” She spread the rag rug over her lap on to the floor, and Lady regarded it with interest.

“It
is
pretty,” Mrs. Mack said, as though agreeing with the dog's opinion. “I'll be glad when it's finished and we have a warm floor.”

“Are you finished?” Mrs. Mack asked the dog, leaning over to look at the plate. “Aren't you going to have your tomato? I picked it only this afternoon.” When the dog made no move, Mrs. Mack said, “Well, then, if you won't there's no making you,” and she rose and carried the plate over to a low shelf where her dishpan stood, next to the small cabinet in which were the flowered dishes she and Lady used. She poured hot water into the dishpan from the kettle on the stove, and washed and dried the dog's plate while she said, conversationally, “I don't know as there's any use, really, in growing tomatoes if you won't learn to like them. They don't please me enough to eat them all alone, and even one tomato plant brings more than I can eat in a summer.” The dog slipped down from his chair to move to one of the upholstered chairs, where he curled up comfortably, watching Mrs. Mack while she worked. “I suppose there's no use asking you where you've been?” Mrs. Mack said. She looked anxiously at the dog, but the dog turned his face away from her, and she said, “Well, when you're ready you'll tell me. I won't be angry, I promise you.”

When the dish was washed and put away—all Mrs. Mack's movements were slow and cautious, and it took her almost a minute to set the plate down correctly, so that it would not jar its fellows—Mrs. Mack picked up the kerosene lamp from the dinner table and brought it over to set it on a small table next to the sofa. The weak light from the lamp could be seen only dimly from the Desmond house or the Byrne house, on either side of Mrs. Mack's house, because, although Mrs. Mack's windows were neatly curtained on the inside, they were covered with newspaper outside. Mrs. Mack turned the lamp up a little higher, and settled down with a sigh in the corner of the sofa. “It's a nice quiet night,” she said. “No wind.” Then she sighed again, and said, “Well.”

She took a book from the table where the lamp stood, and said, “I want to go to bed soon, so we'll have an early lesson tonight.” She opened the book to the place where the bookmark lay, and, running her finger down the page as she read, she began, “‘Therefore is judgment far from us, neither doth justice overtake us; we wait for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness. We grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes: we stumble at noonday as in the night; we are in desolate places as dead men. We roar all like bears, and mourn sore like doves: we look for judgment, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far off from us.' That means,” she said to the watching dog, letting the book lie open in her lap, “that means, let me see. Obscurity, that's when it gets dark. Desolate, that means there's nothing there. You see,” she went on eagerly to the dog, “we are all evil blind people. Salvation means some way out. You see,” she said again, “the Lord is watching us all the time, and watching for every thing we do that is bad, because the Lord won't stand for anything that's bad.” With the book still open on her lap she fell into brooding thought, her fingers moving slowly up and down the edge of the book's cover. The dog waited patiently for a little while and then dropped his head on his paws and closed his eyes.

•   •   •

Marguerite Desmond was tired by the end of an ordinary day, and she was shy and formal with guests at the best of times. Tonight, more than ever before, she felt that her husband was imposing on her, living happily far away in his distant softly colored world, while his wife labored and sometimes cried unnoticed. Tonight, with an appreciative smile on her face for Mrs. Montez, Mrs. Desmond was thinking darkly of her husband, who stood by the piano, his face rich with moving emotion while his hands moved softly in time to Mr. Montez' playing. Mr. Montez at least spoke English; he even spoke English through his piano playing, but he was blind. Mrs. Montez could see, but she spoke only Spanish, which neither Mr. nor Mrs. Desmond understood.

When Mr. Desmond looked around to his wife with poignant emotion on his face, Mrs. Desmond managed a slight smile, which she turned to include Mrs. Montez, who sat unattractively in a great chair and smiled steadily back.

Mr. Desmond had invited them in from San Francisco, without introducing them first to his wife, because he obviously felt that a man who could play the piano and was blind did not need an introduction anywhere but carried his calling card in his hands and his value in his face. Johnny, who had been pressed into service for the evening, sat on the other side of the piano with his hands folded in his lap. Mrs. Desmond sat at the other end of the living-room with Mrs. Montez, smiling brightly occasionally, and now and then nodding enthusiastically. Mrs. Montez smiled back, nodded, and watched her husband helplessly as though soon, somehow, he would turn to her and explain, in a language she could understand, the meaning of the evening, the long trip out on the bus, this polite blank woman who sat with her.

Johnny moved suddenly with a sigh, and Mrs. Desmond and Mrs. Montez smiled again at one another. Then Mrs. Montez, still smiling, gestured at Johnny and looked inquiringly.

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Desmond said, and nodded more forcefully.

Mrs. Montez nodded back, complacently. Then, as though she had only just thought of it, she pointed to herself, her ample bosom, and held up three fingers.

Mrs. Desmond put her head on one side and looked extravagantly surprised. “Three?” she said, holding up three fingers, and Mrs. Montez nodded.

Mrs. Desmond pointed to herself and held up two fingers, and Mrs. Montez, nodding, held out her hand, palm down, in three step gestures, each one lower than the last.

Mrs. Desmond pointed at Johnny and then held out her hand, very low, and Mrs. Montez laughed and then so did Mrs. Desmond. Mrs. Desmond waved toward the back of the house and said, very distinctly, “Caroline.”

“Caroline,” Mrs. Montez said, making it sound different. She held out her hand to indicate the smallest of her three steps, and then, watching to see if Mrs. Desmond was following, put her hand on her stomach and made a face of great pain.

“So did I,” Mrs. Desmond said. “Thirty hours, really, and the doctor said—” She stopped, and made her gesture for Caroline and a painful face such as Mrs. Montez has made. “Terrible,” she said. Mrs. Montez nodded, made her largest step gesture, put her hand on her stomach, smiled pleasantly, and then spread her hands in surprise.

Mrs. Desmond looked incredulous, and Mrs. Montez shrugged, made her second largest step gesture, another pleased expression and then surprise. Then she made her smallest step gesture, put her hand on her stomach again, and looked agonized.

Mrs. Desmond said, “Sometimes it just happens that way,” and when Mrs. Montez frowned, Mrs. Desmond shrugged and spread her hands. “I'm never going to have any more,” Mrs. Desmond said. Then she put her hand on her stomach, shook her head violently, and made a pushing-away gesture. Mrs. Montez laughed again, and nodded, repeating Mrs. Desmond's steps as emphatically.

Mr. Montez was still playing the piano; he played very softly, with large movements of his hands, a great deal of going up and down the keyboard. He had, as far as Mrs. Desmond could see, an expression of rapture on his face. Mr. Desmond looked just the same. Mr. Montez was thin and ethereal, and Mrs. Desmond realized suddenly that his playing was very inferior. Johnny caught her eye across the room and winked, and Mr. Desmond looked around at his wife with a confused blend of two emotions, his eyes sharp with annoyance, his mouth still trembling with fervor over Mr. Montez.

Mrs. Desmond, looking around to see Mrs. Montez, saw that she was still laughing. “You know,” Mrs. Desmond said without thinking, “sometimes it
does
get a little on my nerves.”

Mrs. Montez answered her quickly in Spanish, words that sounded in agreement, and Mrs. Desmond said quickly, “Of course, I think the
world
of my husband,” and Mrs. Montez nodded, and said something again in Spanish, and Mrs. Desmond smiled reluctantly, and said, “I suppose they all have their faults, but sometimes it
does
really seem . . .”