The Road Through the Wall (20 page)

“Don't know what to do with myself,” Mr. Roberts said.

“Um-hm,” Mrs. Roberts said into her book. Mr. Roberts frowned down at her, changed his mind about the highball, and went out to the kitchen; but then he thought again of Mrs. Roberts and changed his mind back. He went quickly down the hall, said at the front door, “Going out for a walk,” and had closed the door by the time Mrs. Roberts looked up, surprised.

Outside on the porch he breathed deeply of the night air, so gentle, so tender in its touch, and then the thought of Mrs. Roberts leaning forward in her chair to look out of the window drove him down the steps and along the sidewalk. By the time he reached the Desmond house he was carrying on a conversation in his mind with an imaginary companion. “Just living on the same, day after day,” he was saying with infinite weariness, “a man gets tired of it all. What's it
worth
?”

He shook his head sadly, and his imaginary companion, touching his arm lightly, big eyes turned up to him worshipfully, said, “But
you—you're
more important than that, really you are.”

“Perhaps I am, little girl,” Mr. Roberts told her pityingly, “but perhaps you only think so,
now
.”

Turning his head to look down on her, he tripped over the curb and nearly fell into Cortez Road. Recovering himself, he looked quickly back over his shoulder to see if anyone had been watching from the Desmond house. “Think I was drunk,” he muttered, and crossed the road hurriedly. He stopped by the piles of bricks and looked at them; they were almost blue in the moonlight. The heavy machinery used for obscure purposes by the workmen at the wall—something Mr. Roberts recognized as a tractor, another thing he thought might be a cement mixer—stood, silent and sleeping, like everything else on the block. In a few hours this spot would again be the busiest in the neighborhood, enveloped in noise and dust and the swift conversation of men who knew what they were doing. Now, the machinery and the wall and even the bricks were unco-operative and still, as though recognizing that Mr. Roberts was unauthorized to call them into activity. Irritated anew to find that nothing moved, Mr. Roberts was about to start back across Cortez Road when the sound of quick footsteps held him. Someone was coming up from the highway, along his side of Cortez, and Mr. Roberts lingered by the pile of bricks, trying not to seem too obviously watching.

After a minute or so he recognized young Mrs. Martin, mother of George and Hallie; at the same minute she saw him, but did not appear to recognize him, since her footsteps slowed and she slanted her path toward the street, as though intending to cross. Mr. Roberts hurried down to meet her, saying, as he went, although softly, “Good evening, Mrs. Martin. You out for a walk, too?”

“Who is it?” Mrs. Martin said, but she hesitated in her walk.

“Roberts,” Mr. Roberts said. “Mike Roberts.” By this time he had reached her, and she stared at him for a minute and then smiled.

“Of course,” she said. “I didn't recognize you, Mr. Roberts.” She started to walk again, and Mr. Roberts walked along beside her.

“You out for a walk, too?” he asked again.

“I'm just coming home from work,” she said, and laughed. She wore her hair long and fastened back at the nape of her neck; although her face was inclined to be rabbitty, like Hallie's, with a sharp nose and pulled-back chin, in the moonlight she looked soft and fragile, her black sports coat more expensive, her legs longer. “I always get home this time,” she said. “You just out walking?”

“Couldn't stay indoors, night like this,” Mr. Roberts said. For a minute it crossed his mind that Mrs. Roberts might have finished her book, might be standing, even, on the front porch looking for him, and he said, almost harshly, “I thought for a minute I scared you, standing there like that.”

“You did,” she admitted. “I never expect to see anyone up around here when I come home.” She waved at the Merriams' house, across the street, dark and brooding under its overhigh roof. Next to it the Martin house was dark except for one light on the porch. “That's for me,” Mrs. Martin said unnecessarily. She paused on the sidewalk across the street from the Martin house. “Well, good night,” she said.

Mr. Roberts cleared his throat. “Stay out for a while,” he said. “Night like this.”

Mrs. Martin put her head on one side and considered. “I shouldn't,” she said, and laughed again.

Mr. Roberts took her arm, and they began to walk lingeringly down the sidewalk again.

“Such a beautiful night,” Mrs. Martin said, as though starting the conversation on a new basis.

“Beautiful night,” Mr. Roberts said. He squeezed her arm gently, looking down at her. “Nice night,” he said.

Mrs. Martin looked up at him, her eyebrows raised. “It certainly is,” she said, and laughed.

Mr. Roberts squeezed her arm again, a little harder, and said, “Sure glad I met you. Needed someone to talk to.”

“I'm glad I met
you
, too,” Mrs. Martin said. “Too nice a night to go in.” They stopped by the pile of bricks, and Mrs. Martin said, “I wonder if they'll ever get this thing finished.”

“Sure,” Mr. Roberts said. He waved knowingly at the machine he thought was a tractor. “Won't take them long now,” he said.

“I certainly wish they'd finish it,” Mrs. Martin said. They began to walk again up toward the Martin house.

“Doesn't take them long once they get started,” Mr. Roberts said.

“The wall's been here so long,” Mrs. Martin said. “I suppose it was built long before any of the homes around here.”

Mr. Roberts squeezed her arm again. “Guess it was,” he said.

Mrs. Martin stopped again, across the street from the Martin house. “Well,” she said.

“You don't want to go in,” Mr. Roberts said. “Stay out awhile longer.”

Mrs. Martin laughed again. “I really shouldn't,” she said.

They began to walk again. “Beautiful night,” Mr. Roberts said.

“Have you lived here long, Mr. Roberts?” Mrs. Martin said.

“Quite a while,” Mr. Roberts said.

“I know I've seen you sometimes out in front of your house. And Mrs. Roberts.” She dropped her voice to an affectionate, longing tone. “I know you've got two pretty nice boys,” she said.

“You know my boys?” Mr. Roberts sounded surprised.

“They play with my George sometimes,” Mrs. Martin said.

“Yes?” Mr. Roberts said. They were back beside the pile of bricks, and Mr. Roberts kicked aimlessly at the top brick. It fell and rolled down to the ground. “All this stuff,” Mr. Roberts said. He let go of Mrs. Martin's arm, and leaned over to pick up the brick and put it back. “All this junk,” he said. He moved casually around the pile of bricks and past it to where the break in the wall ended and the wall was clear of rubbish.

From the inside of the wall Mr. Roberts said softly, “Not so bad in here,” and Mrs. Martin, after one quick look over her shoulder at the Martin house, gathered her skirt tightly against her legs and edged around the pile of bricks to join him.

•   •   •

Frederica Terrel sat at a round table in the room where Mrs. Williams had at one time sat night after night in the darkness, the room which was now the Terrels' “big room.” It was in this room—Frederica had found that with such an arrangement it was necessary to use and furnish only four rooms in a house—that the Terrels mainly occupied themselves; it was inadequately furnished even so, with the table, four straight kitchen chairs, a wicker couch and two matching rockers, and a rug which was actually an excellent affair of some value belonging to Mrs. Terrel; there were occasional pieces of this sort scattered among the Terrel furniture, pieces such as the great translucent blue bowl Frederica kept fruit in, and some of the tiny lovely jewels mixed in with the rhinestones kept in a shoebox on Frederica's closet shelf. The other three rooms Frederica used were the kitchen, where she kept the food; the bedroom where Mrs. Terrel slept; and the bedroom which Frederica and Beverley shared. In the big room, while Frederica worked at the round table, Beverley sat in one of the wicker chairs, rocking and crooning over a book which she was coloring with crayon.

Frederica was rereading an advertisement she had clipped from a magazine the Williamses had left behind in the garage. “Art Fotos,” it began. “Six alluring fotos for only a dollar,” and as she studied it Frederica chewed her finger and frowned. The art fotos lay beside her; they had come in a determinedly plain wrapper, and Frederica had them spread out on the table while she considered them. The one nearest her hand was a sepia print of a young lady lying in a field of leaves; her face was in shadow but her naked body lay most chastely in the sunlight. “I don't know,” Frederica said as she took it up, and Beverley paused in her song to say, “Don't know what?”

“Look at this,” Frederica said, holding it out at arm's length. “I just don't know about it.”

Beverley put her head on one side and said tentatively, “Is it Mommy?”

“Don't be silly.” Frederica put the picture back on the table and fell to considering it from that angle. “I wanted
some
thing to go on the walls, it looks so bare here. But I thought they would be pictures of trees and dogs and things.”

Beverley looked around the room as though she had never seen it before, and Frederica held up another picture and said, “What do you think of this?” This one was a similar print of a young lady lying, in the same professional nudity, on the edge of a swimming pool. Beverley looked at it and shook her head.

“The other one looked like Mommy,” she said.

Frederica took up the first picture and regarded it again. “I'll put this in Mommy's room, then,” she decided.

“In the bathroom,” Beverly said. “One in the bathroom.”

Frederica giggled. “Silly,” she said. “
No
one puts pictures in bathrooms. One in Mommy's room and one in our room and the rest in here.”

“Can I have one?” Beverley asked pleadingly. “Just to color?”

Frederica looked at her sister affectionately. “I suppose you can,” she said. “If you promise.”

“Promise?” Beverley said innocently.

Frederica got up and went over to stand in front of her sister. “I'm going in the kitchen to hunt for thumbtacks,” she said. “I won't be gone more than a minute. Now
promise
.” She put one finger under Beverley's chin and turned Beverley's face up. “Promise,” she said again.

Beverley grinned and said, “Promise.”

“Then you can have this one.” Frederica selected a young lady leaning against a marble pillar and gave it to Beverley. “Color it all over, but stay inside the lines.”

Beverley nodded, intent on the picture, and Frederica went to the doorway and stopped to say once more over her shoulder, “Remember now, you
promised
.”

“Anyway I don't have any money at all,” Beverley said, and began to rock and croon again as her sister left the room.

•   •   •

In the quiet late evening, the sun long gone and the stars shining correctly outside the window, Miss Fielding rocked slowly back and forth in her chair. She was inclined to be cold in her hands and feet these evenings of late summer, and so she had lighted the little oil stove which sat cleanly in the corner of the room, and the slight red glow from the holes in the sides and top of the stove, combined with the soft light from the lamp on the table beside Miss Fielding, made the little room seem homely and snug. When Mr. Donald knocked on the door Miss Fielding got up and walked over with her short old woman's steps to open the door and smile and say, “Come in, it's nice and warm.”

When he was sitting down on the other side of the table, in a pleasant colorless old chair with a lace antimacassar on the back, Miss Fielding said, “Will you have a cup of tea?” and Mr. Donald said, as he always did, “No, thank you. Just thought I'd step in for a few minutes.”

It was probable that everyone on Pepper Street knew that Miss Fielding and Mr. Donald were, oddly, friends, but it is certain that no one was particularly interested in it. Both Miss Fielding and Mr. Donald were so exactly the sort of people who want to hide, that the neighborhood was only thankful to have them hiding together, instead of intruding their modesty on busier people. Every so often one or another of the Pepper Street inhabitants, glancing out of a window in the late evening, or a child coming home later than usual, would notice Mr. Donald walking toward Miss Fielding's little house, and possibly even, see him, a half-hour or so later, coming back home, the lights in Miss Fielding's house out behind him, his own house completely incurious about his absence.

Miss Fielding and Mr. Donald were obviously two of a kind. When they sat in Miss Fielding's little room Miss Fielding sat with her hands on the arms of her rocking chair, rocking back and forth, as though she were alone; Mr. Donald sat back in the old-fashioned chair with his head against the antimacassar, his eyes closed as though he were asleep. When they talked it was because both of them were given to talking to themselves.

Tonight Miss Fielding said almost immediately, in her gentle careful voice, “I don't call those Terrel girls really highbred.” The subject had been troubling her since Frederica had spoiled her pot of tea, and there was almost a harsh tone in her voice. “Those girls are not of the best breeding. I don't know the mother.”

“I haven't seen them,” Mr. Donald said. He sighed deeply.

“Not of the very best,” Miss Fielding went on. “I can't say that they are the best-bred girls around here.”

“There seem to be a lot of new people all the time,” Mr. Donald said. “First the Williams people and then these.”

“Take Harriet Merriam, for instance,” Miss Fielding went on. “Or Virginia Donald. Even Mary Byrne, I can't say I hold religion against anybody. Take any of them.”