The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (20 page)

I wasn’t ashamed of what I was doing and I know that must confuse you but I don’t know how else to explain. We had our bargain and it was the same bargain whores struck every night in their miserable rented rooms or unhappy wives made in return for being kept or tortured women made to protect who was dearest to them or to escape whatever trap held them or simply to survive. Cobb was lost in passion but that was okay he could buck and moan all he wanted to it was balanced by what I felt which was a protective instinct ten times stronger and harder and tougher than anything he could feel himself and was backed up by all the strength I gained from thinking of all those women who over the centuries had made the same bargain.

That’s what I thought about as Cobb hunched over me. As it turned out I only had to think about it for a minute and a half.

He rolled off me grunted flopped his arm over my thigh. He was snoring soon enough. I listened the way you listen to a clock ticking not particularly liking the sound but not particularly disliking it either it was just this harmless mechanical thing in the dark. But then much quicker than I expected the sound stopped and when the sound stopped I became very frightened.

He climbed into his uniform even faster than he’d taken it off. He saw me staring waved his hand in something that could have been see you later alligator or wham bam thank you ma’am or just as easily could have been drop dead. He didn’t step into the hall right away but leaned his head out and peered. The loaded shotgun was under the bed and if I had to I could quickly slide it out. I knew if I thought of Danny I couldn’t touch the trigger but thinking of Andy I knew I could.

I put my robe on and followed him downstairs. He walked from one room to the next sniffing like a bloodhound and didn’t care that I was following right behind. He went into the dining room but it was quiet and still. He went into the front parlor and turned the lights on then turned them back off. He walked down the hall in the moonlight then suddenly swerved left into the TV room and went right over to the set. He stood staring down at it then squatted and put the back of his hand flat against the screen.

Just that little gesture putting the back of his hand against the screen like a doctor checking a patient’s temperature and then with a little nod to himself he was gone.

I was a fool not to read that gesture better. So sure was I of things that I didn’t even bother waking Andy up before going to work though I suppose not wanting to face him had something to do with it too. I had punched in at the hospital and gone to my locker when I saw Wendy Poor the meanest of our aides talking to three other aides by the coffee machine.

“What a commotion!” she was telling them. “It was by the town hall and I could hardly squeeze past there are so many state troopers. There are these other guys in suits and sunglasses and they look like they mean business.”

“Drug raid,” one of the aides said knowingly.

“Drugs baloney. It’s a posse and leading them is this big nigger soldier driving a jeep.”

I walked as fast as I could to the stairs and by the time I got to the parking lot I was running. My heart shook so hard it blurred any thoughts that formed so I couldn’t come up with a plan all I could think about was getting to the house before they did. It was a ten-minute drive for me and twenty minutes for them which didn’t give me much time. I drove faster than was safe but then all of a sudden I noticed a yellow rectangle in my mirror that was going even faster honking its horn to pass.

It was the truck from the Wooden Shoe that dilapidated psychedelic truck that usually could only huff and puff along but now went so fast it was like they had poured LSD straight down its tank. And not just its tank. On the flat bed of the truck holding on for dear life were four or five girls dressed like can-can dancers waving with their free hands and blowing kisses even though there was no one along the road to watch. Music blared from the radio this pounding rock and roll. That was on back. Up front in the cab things were different. Three men sat with their shoulders pressed tight as bookends and they looked as grim and determined as the girls did gay. The driver honked again and where the road straightened out they went speeding past me downhill.

A party I decided an outing of some sort a merry jaunt and my mind jumped around so frantically it wasn’t capable of making any more sense of it than that. I decided if they could drive that fast then so could I so I shoved my foot down and went careening around the last curve before home. When I wrestled the wheel back I got my second big shock of the morning. The truck instead of racing past the house braked hard and turned in.

Andy stood outside on the grass looking startled and embarrassed and bashful and confused all at the same time. He had just his underwear on and when the girls sprang down from the truck and rushed over to him he covered up his groin with his hands.

The girls didn’t care about that. One was August and the other was the Dahlia girl I remembered from the night Lilac’s baby was born and another was Kit the Viking who had been so steady. They danced around him like he was a Maypole they were throwing flowers at and all Andy could do was stare at them in bewilderment because he just couldn’t get his mind around what was happening.

Granite jumped down from the cab with two of his henchmen one of who looked like General Custer in a cavalry outfit with a mustache and ringlets. He had a bugle he blew now as loud and triumphantly as he could. Granite knocked it away from him with one brutal swipe then marched over to me not in the mood to waste words.

“Get him in the truck.”

I was so surprised and frightened I must have froze because I could see his expression change to disappointment and contempt that I of all people could freeze. In the distance we could hear sirens now lots of sirens closing in fast.

He signaled one of his men to keep watch on the road then went over and pulled the girls off from Andy. “Get in the goddamn truck!” he yelled.

Andy still looked bewildered and instead of doing what Granite ordered he began backing up toward the house. He’s going to bolt I decided going to turn and run to the hiding place and if he does that he’s finished. The sirens really howled now we probably had no more than three or four minutes and it was only then when the pressure was greatest that my head finally cleared.

I grabbed Granite’s arm which was like grabbing hold of a nail. “Ask him politely,” I said.

Granite stared down at me. “What?”

“Ask him nice!”

He made a what the hell gesture went over to Andy put a brotherly arm around his shoulder and said something too low for me to hear. It must have been as polite a request as one man ever made to another because between one second and the next Andy without even a wave or last glance back was running over to the truck and the men were boosting him up on back and the girls were laughing and singing and waving their arms in excitement and delight. Granite climbed up to the cab and threw the gears into reverse and spun the truck around speeding off in the opposite direction from the sirens more on the shoulder than the concrete so stones flew up pebbles branches sticks like spray from a motorboat heading away from all the sirens all the confusion heading away to the hills away to the forest away to that brave foolish dream of a country where no one could find them or touch them or hurt them.

For just one second one terribly short second I felt like shouting in victory and triumph then a second later I felt sick from exhaustion and the little smear of loneliness left in my womb. I had four minutes before the posse arrived with their sirens and cruisers. I decided to wait for them inside the house and the room I ended up in was the TV room and what I ended up staring at was something I’d totally forgotten about after Andy came home which was that little peel of wallpaper I had discovered writing beneath then immediately pasted back up. And that’s where they found me and for the whole time they shouted bullied threatened I became just an empty headed gal with nothing on her mind but walls and wallpaper and prettying up her home.

They tore apart so much of the house it’s a wonder they didn’t rip off the wallpaper and save me the bother. When they finallyleft instead of trying to clean up their mess I started scraping and discovered the writing wasn’t just doodling but a woman’s story.

When I started reading all I was aware of was how different she was from me it was all so far back in time but soon I realized how similar we were to each other and how fifty years is nothing but a second a flick of the eyelashes a snap of the fingers a whisper.

I don’t have to tell you this about Beth because it’s how you must feel yourself. After I finished her story I worked in the sewing room until the walls were all bare. Seeing this running my hand along the smooth plaster I felt like a little girl who has a secret and will burst if she can’t tell it to somebody. Like that except it’s not an itchy spot in my tummy or a buzzing on my bottom or a tugging on my pigtails or however it feels to a girl. My heart will burst if I don’t tell my story to somebody and that doesn’t feel like a figure of speech but the simple truth and the feeling hurts even worse because there’s not a single living person I can tell.

Nurses at work always tease me about my pens about how I carry so many colors and why bother since all we ever write are memos to doctors or the charts on beds. Now that I had a wall to write on I was happy to have so many and I spread them out across the floor like they were paint brushes I could pick up or put down according to my mood. In a way I can’t explain the bare walls are DEMANDING I write on them so it isn’t just the secret in me bursting to get out but something outside me yanking just as hard.

Stripping the paper off reading Beth’s story has been good for me it’s helped get me through these first days after my sweet lovely foolish boy left but the part of me that will never heal is the part I need to write down. Everybody has a secret they can’t share but MUST share and it could be who you loved or who you hurt or lied to or cheated or envied or fucked or didn’t fuck or a secret shame or crime or failure or even a secret triumph no one knows about but you and all that goes on the wall or stays inside you and rots.

I’m telling you this in the last few seconds before I finish my writing and cover it up with wallpaper that might not be stripped off for another fifty years. First Beth then me now you. We are the sharers of secrets we are sisters we are the women who write on walls.

F
our

THE
writing slanted like a ramp toward the floor but didn’t quite touch. In the six-inch space left blank Dottie had inserted a photo, wedging its bottom edge into the molding that formed the border with the fractured maple of the floor. Vera reached down and gently tugged to see whether it would slide out without having to use her scraper, and when it did, brought it over to the kerosene lamp where she could study it closer.

It looked like an old-fashioned Polaroid, the kind that only took one minute to develop. Andy—it could only be Andy— stood on the back steps of the house with his arms outstretched, holding what appeared to be a pie fresh out of the oven, since he held it with a fuzzy white mitt. He was younger looking than she imagined and more handsome, with his blond hair in a crew cut that was long enough now it could have used combing. He wore khaki work pants and a white t-shirt, and it was this last that made the photo seem ancient. No logos in those days, no shaping, just that bleached, angel-like whiteness billowed out from his chest. His expression seemed a bit exasperated, as if his mom had badgered him into posing, but patient enough now that she was actually snapping it. The gentle shyness she had described was plain enough on his features—just the kind of boy Cassie had felt comfortable with back in high school. No brain, no jock, somewhat bashful, good with cars.

He wasn’t the only one in the picture. His mother had posed him on the steps, with the kitchen window to the left; on the glass Vera could make out the reflection of a woman who must be Dottie, captured in the act of taking the photo, an accidental self-portrait. Between the dullness of the reflection and what the years had done to the print, there wasn’t much visible, just a watery, lemon-colored shape distinct enough she could define it as feminine. There was a smeared half-circle that could have been her forehead and hair, a minute silver flash that could have been earrings—but at least she was looking at her, and it hit her even more powerfully than seeing Andy. Reading, she had pictured Dottie liking bright, extravagant colors. So yes—lemon made sense. It would have been her favorite summer dress.

There was no date stamped on the back, no identifying information. She brought it back to the wall, got down on her knees by the molding, made sure she tucked the edge back exactly the way she found it. Staring at it had given her an idea. She went out to the kitchen, turned on the ceiling light, propped open the door so its brightness could arc across the first twenty feet of backyard.

She had discovered the blueberry bushes on her very first walk around the house, but she hadn’t checked to see whether they still held any berries. Seeing the picture, she had immediately decided that this is what she must do—go out to the bushes Dottie had planted, the ones Andy had helped her pick for their pie, find a berry, just one berry, and hold it in her hand.

She pushed past the screen of briars to where the bushes grew thickest, forced her way into their middle, grabbed a high branch, followed it back to its woody core, then ran her hand back out again, flattening the leaves. They felt good against her skin, the oval texture with a hint of wax, but she found no berries on the first bush, none on the second, none on any of them, though she searched very hard. Did blueberry bushes have a life span? If they did, then theirs had long since expired.

Disappointed, she followed the widest beams of kitchen light around to the front, suffering the same wild restlessness she had experienced when she finished reading Beth. As before, she thought about getting in the car, but that seemed too drastic a response—she wanted space, not separation. Never in her life had she gone so long without driving. Between Jeannie stocking the house like a bunker and her absorption with the walls, it had been weeks now and she wasn’t even sure the car would start.