The Woman in the Wall

by Patrice Kindl

  I stared at him open-mouthed.

  "Which means," he went on, "that I'm about to become Andrea's brother too. And if you think my chances with Andrea are hopeless now, picture the setup after our parents get married. Ask your stepsister out for a date and the cops'll throw you in the slammer for a thousand years. Seriously," he said dejectedly, "it's probably a felony or something."

  This fate, I realized, would befall F no matter which of us he honored with his attentions. "Oh, dear," I said.

  "No kidding," he agreed.

  "But wait a minute," I said. "If you're F, and you're Frank Albright's son, then he can't marry my mother and we can't become brother and sister. He's—"

  Just then we both heard it, a scuffling, bumping sound. The sound of yet another intruder climbing up from the basement, in through my front entrance.

  All the world, it seemed, had chosen this afternoon to drop in on me unannounced and uninvited.

  Twelve

  "Ow, ow! Oof!" this person said. "Oh, this is impossible!"

  It was Kirsty. I couldn't see her at first because F was blocking the way into the room.

  "Move, Francis," said her voice. "Is she here? Is Anna in here? Anna, are you dead?"

  Francis! So that was F's real name.

  "I can't move," he objected. "I'm wedged in here like a sardine."

  "There's a lot more room further in," I said. "Your name is Francis?"

  "Hey, there is more room further in. Why didn't you tell me before? I've been dying. Well, yes," he admitted, "my name is Francis. I'm Francis Chester Albright the Fourth. My dad is Francis Chester Albright the Third. And if he had a spark of decency, he'd let me call myself Frank too, but no, he says it confuses people."

  "I think F is better," I said.

  "Almost anything would be," he said sadly.

  "Anna!" said Kirsty. She had now managed to squirm inside my secret room and crouched on the floor, staring at me. "Anna, you're alive! And you're so—so huge!"

  F (for so I intend to continue calling him) gave a bark of laughter. I looked at him warningly and he whispered, "Sorry! But jeeze, Kirsty! You finally find your long-lost sister, and the first thing you do is ask her if she's dead. Then you turn around and accuse her of turning into a porker. And anyway, she isn't huge at all. She's tiny."

  Kirsty shook her head. "You wouldn't think so if you knew what she used to look like," she said. She looked me over some more. "And you've changed, other ways, too."

  "I've grown up," I said proudly. "So have you, Kirsty."

  "Yes," she agreed, "but it's not just that. I can see you now."

  "You can?" I said, not sure whether to be pleased or sorry.

  "Well, sure she can," F said. "Did you think you were invisible or something?"

  "Um," I said, and looked at Kirsty. She shrugged helplessly. "Not exactly," I mumbled.

  "So this is where you've been all these years, Anna?" Kirsty said, looking around. "In this tiny, tiny room? How can you stand it?"

  "Oh, there's much more than this," I said.

  "Where are we, anyway?" she asked, puzzled.

  "I know," F said. "I figured it out. We're in the coat closet under the stairs."

  "Don't be stupid, Francis," Kirsty said. "Look around you. Where are the coats? And don't you think that in seven years we'd have noticed Anna lurking in the coat closet?"

  "The coats are over here, I think," F said, crawling over to the big end of the room. "Behind a partition. See? I can almost stand up."

  "I'm telling you, Francis, you can see all the way to the back of the coat closet and it's empty."

  While they argued, it suddenly occurred to me that for the first time in my life I was playing hostess in my own home.

  "Oh!" I cried, jumping as though I'd been bitten.

  They both turned to stare at me.

  "What's the matter, Anna?" Kirsty asked.

  "I'm so sorry!" I said. "I haven't offered you anything to eat or drink."

  Kirsty laughed and said, "Oh, Anna, it's so good to see you again," which seemed like an odd thing to say in response to my remark.

  "Sounds like a good idea to me," F said. "Unless, of course, you normally eat sawdust and cobwebs or something. I'm pretty broad-minded about food, but there are limits. And don't offer Kirsty any roast mouse," he said with a wicked grin, "or she'll take a hatchet to you."

  "I would n—" Kirsty began.

  "I told you, there are no mice here," I said, annoyed.

  Kirsty turned and stared at me. "Anna," she said in a wondering tone, "do you know what you just did?"

  I shrank back a little. She went on staring at me, eyes wide with astonishment. My hands flew instinctively to my hair and face. Was my head dusty? Or was there a giant pimple blooming on my nose? If so, was that what F kept laughing about?

  "N-no," I said nervously.

  "You interrupted me. I was talking, but you wanted to say something, so you rode right over me."

  I blushed deeply. Tears began to well up in my eyes. Seeing Kirsty for the first time in three years, and meeting F for the first time ever, I did so want everything to go well. And now I'd been rude and offended Kirsty. F would be completely disgusted with me.

  "I'm sorry," I whispered.

  "No, no!" Kirsty shook her head so vigorously that her hair flew around her face. "That's great, Anna, really!"

  "It is?"

  "Sure," F said. "If you didn't interrupt Kirsty now and then you'd never get a word in edgewise. Good Lord, A, between Kirsty and Andrea, no wonder you retreated into the woodwork. The two of them never shut up."

  Kirsty looked stricken. "Oh, do you think so? You mean Anna moved into the walls because of us?" She looked so like my tender-hearted little sister as she spoke that I reached out a hand toward her, but did not quite possess the courage to touch her knee.

  "No, Kirsty," I said. "It's me, not you. It's the way I am, and there's nothing to be done about it. You know that."

  "I do not know that," she responded with some spirit. "You've already done something about it. You've changed, Anna, you really have. I'm so relieved. I've been horribly worried, but now I think things may be okay after all."

  "What do you mean," I asked apprehensively, "'Things may be okay after all'?"

  "How about some of that food we were promised?" F interrupted. "I'm starving."

  "Oh, of course," I said, blushing. "I'm so sorry. If you'll follow me—"

  I was longing to show off my kingdom. If only they could see everything I'd done, they'd be so impressed. At least, I hoped they would be impressed. How wonderful it would be to have F admire me!

  But F was clearly too large to move through my passages. He couldn't even begin to negotiate the section underneath the window seat in the dining room.

  "I suppose you'd better stay here, F," I said regretfully. "Maybe Kirsty—?" Kirsty was definitely smaller than F, but I doubted that even Kirsty would be able to manage. My front hall was by far the largest passageway, and both F and Kirsty had had a struggle getting through.

  With a jolt of cold fear, I realized that I was not so very much smaller than Kirsty these days. If I continued to grow...

  "Anna, if you're expecting me to crawl through any more laundry chutes, you can just forget it. Sorry, but I think I'm developing an acute case of hydrophobia."

  "You are?" I said, puzzled.

  F clapped a hand over his mouth to suppress a snort of laughter. "Watch it, A! Your sister's got rabies. C/‹‹5trophobia, you idiot, claustrophobia!"

  "Whatever," Kirsty said indifferently. "Anyway, I can't wiggle through slits in the walls. You may not have noticed, but," she leaned over to whisper in my ear, "I'm getting a figure."

  I laughed nervously. "So am I," I whispered back.

  "Oh, don't start in with that female stuff," F groaned. "Whispering and giggling and falling all over each other."

  I looked at Kirsty and she giggled. I giggled too, experimentally. It felt nice, like soda fizzing insid
e of you. Female stuff, I thought happily. Kirsty and I were being women together, doing female stuff.

  Kirsty beamed at me. "Anna," she said, "I can't believe you're actually here. D'you know, after I told Francis about you, I suddenly got this horrible feeling that you were just a story I'd made up as a little kid. I felt so dumb, like I'd admitted to believing in the Tooth Fairy or something."

  This gave me rather a chill. That was exactly what I was afraid might have happened, that my family had ceased believing in my existence.

  "Ladies," F said plaintively, "wasn't something said about food, like an hour ago? I'm a growing boy."

  "Of course," I said quickly. "I'll go see what I can find. Um, excuse me, F, but I have to open that trap door that's right underneath you."

  "Oh! Sorry." There was an awkward moment as they both tried to squeeze themselves into the small end of the room.

  "How'd you get this damn chair in here, anyway?" F grumbled.

  "Francis, ow!" Kirsty cried, "You've got your elbow in my eye!"

  Finally they crawled out into the passage, where they could at least stand up, and waited as I opened the trap door.

  "Where's that go?" F asked curiously, trying to peer down the hole from his position in the doorway to my secret room.

  "No fair, I can't see anything!" came Kirsty's plaintive voice from without. We were being awfully noisy, I thought anxiously.

  "It looks like a humongous heating duct," F said suspiciously.

  "It is a heating duct," I said proudly. "But it isn't really hooked up to the furnace. It just looks like it. It goes under the side hall through the basement and comes up in the dining room. Then I have a passageway in the dining room through the window seat and the china closets on either side of the window. You have to crawl a bit, of course," I said brightly, trying to ignore the looks of incredulity on their faces, "but I don't mind a bit!"

  "Oh, good," Kirsty said blankly.

  "How do you carry the food?" asked F, whose mind certainly did seem to run on those lines.

  "On a little cart," I answered. "I hold it with my teeth."

  "Your teeth! How—how interesting." Neither of them seemed to know what to say after that, so I waved a jaunty farewell and tried to vanish gracefully down the hole. This was much more difficult than you might think, since it was necessary to go head first, to be sure of seeing where you were going. So naturally, the last they saw of me was my—well, you know.

  In the kitchen I poured milk into three cups and cut up some brownies. When I returned with this little snack, Kirsty and F were quarrelling fiercely, apparently about me.

  "You don't know anything about Anna," Kirsty said angrily, as I crawled out of the heating duct. "So why don't you just butt out, Francis?"

  "Well, if she's going to be my sister too—" F broke off when I handed him a brownie. "Oh, sorry, A, I didn't see you there. Kirsty," he commanded, shifting slightly so that he faced me, "tell her."

  I looked at the two of them and my heart turned over.

  "Kirsty? What is it?" I whispered.

  Kirsty looked wretched. "Oh, Anna," she said, and the kindly childish tears welled up in her eyes. "Mom came to my room half an hour ago and asked me if I would mind having Mr. Albright for a stepfather and moving to Chicago."

  Chicago!

  "And when I said, 'What about Anna,' Mom got absolutely furious with me and said not to be so silly, and then Andrea came in and told me to grow up, for crying out loud, and then they both left the room talking about apartments on Lakeshore Drive. His father is stinking rich," she said, jerking her chin accusingly at F.

  I reeled in shock and dismay. Or rather, I started to reel and then remembered in time that impulsive movements had their price. My whole body ached from my latest displays of emotion, and I had no desire to repeat the experience.

  "Now, listen, A, I've been thinking. This shyness thing," F said through a mouthful of brownie, "I'll bet we can beat it."

  "Don't be stupid, Francis," Kirsty objected. "You can't expect Anna to go from this" she gestured at my secret room, "to a condominium overlooking Lake Michigan in a few weeks. No, be quiet Francis, and listen. All she has to do is let Mom and Andrea know that she's still alive and that she really exists. Then we can all stay here in Bitter Creek, which would be the best thing for everybody."

  "What you mean is that you don't want to go to Chicago," F said.

  "Nobody does, except for your father," Kirsty retorted. "And Andrea," she added fair-mindedly. "But she doesn't count because she's going away to college next year."

  "Well, my father does want to go, and if he can't go he'll expect a good reason why not."

  "Anna is a good reason," Kirsty said uneasily.

  "Oh, unhuh, sure. What do you think his reaction would be if your mother said, 'Oh, yes, Frank. I forgot to mention that I have another daughter who lives inside the walls of this house and never comes out, so to avoid upsetting her you'll have to forget about Chicago, turn down the partnership deal, and we'll stay here in Bitter Creek for the rest of our lives'?"

  Kirsty looked worried.

  "I mean, my dad is a pretty nice guy, but be reasonable, Kirsty. If they're getting married, he's going to be Anna's stepfather. Bare minimum, he's going to insist on meeting her."

  I winced.

  "And when he does meet her, do you actually think he'll be willing to just let things go on the way they have?"

  The answer to this was so obviously no that neither of us spoke for a moment. "She could always hide from him," Kirsty said at last in a tentative voice.

  This sounded like an excellent idea. I looked hopefully at F.

  F shook his head solemnly. "That won't work with my dad. I've heard him say lots of times that there's something fishy about the way this house is laid out. He'll figure it out, and then he'll find her." He turned to me. "A, listen to me. That could be bad, having my father come after you and dig you out of the walls. It would be much better if you didn't try to hide from him. He's awful stubborn."

  I nodded a little, to show I understood. I could not move or speak for terror.

  "Anyway," Kirsty said, "I don't think it's going to be so easy for you to hide anymore, Anna. You're just so much more—obvious—than you used to be." Kirsty turned to F. "So what are we going to do?"

  F didn't answer immediately; he just looked at me. So she turned and looked at me too. The pressure of their two gazes gave me back the power of movement. I stealthily shifted position, trying to escape. To my dismay, their eyes followed me. So it was true; they could see me perfectly well.

  "I'm afraid there's no other way," F said. "You're going to have to come out of the wall, A."

  Thirteen

  "A party," F said. "A Halloween party."

  "A party," Kirsty said scornfully. "That is the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. Shy people absolutely hate parties."

  It was two days later, and Kirsty and F were still squabbling over the details of my introduction into society. My terror slowly died down as I realized that nothing was going to happen to me immediately; that at least for the moment my only role was to listen to the debate raging around me and serve juice and cookies.

  In any case, I had another card up my sleeve. I knew something, something that would completely derail any plans that Mother and Mr. Albright might have. It seemed a little odd, actually, that no one but I had noticed that a very definite impediment to the marriage existed. However, I felt reasonably secure, and in the meantime I was enjoying the novel experience of being fussed over by F and Kirsty.

  "Listen," F said, "I've been doing some research on this..."

  Kirsty groaned. F had gone to the public library and checked out a big stack of books about shyness (amazing! I never knew that such a body of literature existed) and now spoke a language largely incomprehensible to us, using terms like "agoraphobia" and "fear hierarchies," and debating the value of "flooding therapy" over "systematic desensitization."

  I thought that th
is scholarship was very impressive and settled down contentedly with my sewing to listen and admire. Kirsty, on the other hand, seemed annoyed by F's cleverness. I suspect she rather resented the fact that she couldn't make heads or tails of what he was talking about.

  "C'mon, Kirsty, listen. I mean it. We don't have time for all that gradual one-day-at-a-time stuff." F gestured vigorously with both arms as if he would create a brave new spirit for me out of thin air and his own will. His zeal received a bit of a check when he inadvertently banged his right hand on the underside of a stair tread. "Ow! That hurt." He broke off to suck his knuckles. "We'll just have to push her off the dock," he continued cheerfully, "and see if she can swim." His eyes brightened, and he actually rubbed his hands gleefully at the thought.

  I gasped for air, feeling the metaphorical waters already closing over my head. I pictured a crowd standing on the shore, a sea of staring, critical faces watching me as I sank for the third time.

  "And what if she can't swim?" Kirsty demanded.

  I looked anxiously at F. I also wanted to know the answer to that question.

  F looked impatient. "If she can't, she can't. We'll be right there," he said, turning kindly toward me. "Nobody's going to eat you, you know. It's just gonna be an uncomfortable hour or two."

  I felt a little faint. An hour or two!

  "There's nothing to worry about, A. I'll protect you."

  F reached out and patted my arm.

  I stared down at my arm, at the place where his hand had touched my skin, thinking to see a small charred spot where flesh had met flesh. My panic was gone, swallowed up in wonder. F had touched me, and I had not burst into flames or shattered like glass or sunk through the floor like a stone into a well. I rubbed the place on my skin gently. It didn't even hurt. How long, I wondered, had it been since anyone had touched me?

  "Pay attention, A," F said. "This is the good part."

  I sat up obediently and tried to give my mind to what he was saying. It was nice to know that there was going to be a good part.

  "This," F continued triumphantly, "is where my plan is so brilliant. Don't you see? It'll be a Halloween party. A costume party."