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.
Four
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 eno
ugh 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.
Other than walking back up to the deserted neighbor’s, there was only one place left to explore. Ever since she had arrived and particularly now that she no longer trusted the radio, the sound track to her days had come from the little trout stream across the road. It had sounded strong and percussive those first few nights, to the point she thought she could discern pebbles and stones clattering against each other in the current, but now that it hadn’t rained in so long it seemed more a soft neutral humming that suggested the play of molecules, not rocks.
It was mucky, the first few steps off the road, but then she came onto the hard gravel plain the stream had scoured through the swamp. The rocks were slippery with moss, she could easily break her ankle, and so she sat down on the first flat boulder she came to, pulled her sandals off, let her feet dangle in the water. Even on a moonless night the stream seemed to generate its own incandescence; finding her ankles, it covered them in frothy white. The current ran north toward Canada, and, like so many other things here, gave her the sense that the land was tipping away from America, going stubbornly off in its own direction.
She enjoyed that feeling. She enjoyed the cold velvet clutch of the water on her skin, the way the sensation was so intense and immediate and yet carried with it memories of wading barefoot when she was little on one of her family’s rare summer picnics. It made for two currents, two layers, and she couldn’t have said which was the more satisfying.
Did Cassie have memories like that? Not for the first time, she wondered about bringing her here once her sentence was over, to see whether quiet and solitude could help her take the first steps toward healing. There were complications, of course. How long it would take for her discharge to go through. Whether Jeannie and Tom would want to have the house for themselves. Whether, quite simply, she and Cassie could still find a way to talk to each other, repair all that had been torn. If she did come, then the first stop would have to be the stream. Cleansing, baptism, purification. Vera never believed in any of those notions, they were just empty words and Cassie would frown if she used them, yet it was exactly this that she needed. After a month in the stockade of Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to be plunged into an icy trout stream and, shivering from the shock of it, begin the long slow process of absolution.
For herself, she was beginning to understand how a person could fall in love with this forgotten corner of land, or, like Dottie, fight through to a grudging, tough-love kind of acceptance. Like a lot of hard places it was more beautiful at night. She had been here long enough that the stars had changed slightly their pattern, so Vega stood directly overhead now and the long stretch of Andromeda rose in the east. A pleasantly astringent smell, part marigold, part sage, wafted downward from the cloud of the Milky Way. Could stars cast off smells? If it was possible anywhere it would be here.
Tom claimed there were trout in the stream, though they must have been tiny ones, the water was so shallow. What would they make of her, if they watched through the foam? She stayed on her rock until the shivering spread upward from her toes; she had to rub them to get the circulation back to the point she could walk. The flinty gurgle of the stream drowned out the crickets, but back near the house their chirping took over, and much later, when she finally left off her fixed staring and let herself collapse back on the mattress, the strong tropical clatter of the sound cushioned her over into sleep.
Dottie wrote about the determination to protect her son that had come to her in the night. Beth’s decision to buy the book of poems had come to her suddenly on a winter’s morning. And now it was her turn—she woke up before dawn feeling an energy and purpose stronger than she had known in months. If anything, its suddenness made her suspicious, so for most of the morning she half-expected the determination to disappear. But it was the suddenness that disappeared. She realized that, without it ever becoming explicit, her purpose had formed the very first moment she had uncovered Beth’s writing and learned, in that instant, that walls would accept ink as readily as paper.
The dining room was the last room needing to be stripped. Since that first tour of inspection on the day she arrived she hadn’t stepped into it even once; now, dragging in the ladder and supplies, she realized it was by far the most attractive room in the house. This was largely due to the three tall windows with their transoms of stained glass—facing north, they still let in more light than the other rooms enjoyed, so it was the only place in the house that wasn’t shrouded in dust. Even the wallpaper, Dottie’s wedding cake pattern, the pink-veined white velvet, didn’t look quite as awful as it did in the hall. The flooring was in better shape, too—shiny enough to slide on if she wore slippers. There was a positive, accepting aura to this space, she didn’t know how else to put it, and it seemed to exist independently of anything in the room itself.
She started scraping by the door. The first strip was hardest because she half-expected to discover more words beneath the paper and it made her wary. Finding none, it became easier, though it still involved the same slow, painstaking work as before. Using the scraper like a knife to get the edge started, sliding it under the largest piece possible, prying, lifting, pulling— and then the whole process repeated again, clearing two or three inches at a time. One long strip shaped like a map of Chile she worked on for three hours. The air was drier in the room, it seemed to have petrified the paper, and she was carving out deep fjords and winding bays and whole estuaries before Chile came off.
Working this hard, it was impossible to
remember ever having worked on another task, to the point that teaching, housekeeping, waitressing in college all became memories from a distant life. When she took a break she looked down at her hands and they had become a scraper’s all right, there was no other way to describe them. Palms red and scratchy, veins cord-like on her wrists, the pads on her fingers puckered and cracked. No amount of massaging or stretching could soothe the tightness in her forearms—every tense molecule in her body seemed to have migrated there to hold a convention, party, whoop it up. And yet the odd thing was, when she looked down to examine it, the flesh on her arms, even after all that hard work and tenseness, seemed to have become noticeably looser in her time there, grainy the way wet sand is, slack, so it looked like it would look when she turned sixty.
She understood now that without Beth’s and Dottie’s stories leading her on she would never have had the stamina to do this. Even now, with only one room left to strip, she wouldn’t have been able to finish without this sudden surge of confidence and energy that had come to her in the night. Stripping the other rooms, she had been content just to get the top layers off and ignore the little flecks of paper underneath, but now she needed to clear these off too until the walls were perfect.
Or almost perfect. As bare as she made them, they still weren’t quite ready. Mixed in with the supplies was a package of sandpaper, and she used the finest to scrub away at the rough spots on the plaster, the grainy upsurges, the rice-sized bumps, until her finger could trace a line from the window to the door around to the windows again without hitting anything that wasn’t smooth. It was fussy of her, compulsive, anal—but she trusted the feeling, it was part of her confidence, this overwhelming sense of being ready at last.
The Writing on the Wall: A Novel Page 16