by Jane Langton
“That’s just want I want, a blank wall.”
“But look at it! Believe me, you’ll be sorry if you don’t break it up somehow.”
“I won’t be sorry. Don’t touch it.”
The contractor had been full of suggestions too. “How about I put a couple of windows on the north side? Thirty-five feet without a window is like a big blank. I mean, look at it. It’s nothing.”
“Nothing?” Annie laughed. “Well, fine. Nothing is just right.”
There came a week when the plasterers gathered up their buckets and drop cloths and went away. The backhoe shoveled dirt around the new foundation, the kid from the nursery seeded it, and the flossy garden designer directed the laying of the stone walk. At last Annie stood at her kitchen counter and paid off the contractor with a stroke of the pen.
She was alone. The furniture huddled in the middle of the floor.
No, she was not alone. A small child ran across the newly seeded lawn in front of the windows. A woman screamed, “Eddy, come back here.”
The woman was tomorrow’s new tenant, Roberta Gast. Annie went outside and said hello.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” said Roberta. Reaching for the boy, she jerked him back off the lawn. “This is Eddy. He’s eight years old. He’s been away at school, but he’ll be living at home from now on, going to a special school in Concord.”
One glance at Eddy made it plain what sort of special school it would be. His face was not like his father’s or his mother’s. It was as though he came from a different gene pool, that family of look-alike children born with Down’s syndrome.
“Glad to meet you, Eddy,” said Annie, smiling at him.
He looked back at her shyly, and said hello. His voice was thick, as though his tongue couldn’t wrap itself around the word.
“We came to measure the rooms,” said Roberta. “Come on, Eddy, dear, let’s go back to the car.”
Roberta’s husband, Bob, appeared at the front door of the old house, a slight man with a high balding forehead. As the metal tape measure in his hand rushed into its container it lashed up and cut his hand. He laughed and said good morning and sucked his finger.
Coming out of the house beside him was a pretty little girl. Roberta introduced her. “Annie, I don’t think you’ve met our daughter, Charlene.”
“The champion swimmer?” Annie grinned at Charlene.
“That’s right,” said her father proudly. “Charlene’s got a whole shelf of trophies and blue ribbons.”
“Well, congratulations, Charlene.”
Charlene ignored Annie. She stared at her brother and said, “I’m not going to babysit.”
“I know, dear,” said her mother. She tugged at Eddy. “Come on, Edward.”
The Cast family retreated, the boy Eddy trailing behind, looking back over his shoulder at Annie.
She waved to him, then went back inside and forgot him. At the kitchen counter she opened her new cupboards and made herself a sandwich.
Then Annie turned around and looked at her long blank wall.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1996 by Jane Langton
978-1-4532-4765-5
This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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