Face on the Wall

by Jane Langton

  There was no Sacred Heart hanging on the walls of this room; in fact, the pictures—Homer turned his head from one to another—were quite extraordinary. He moved to look at one of them more closely, but Small was unrolling a map, spreading it out on a table, holding down the corners with a lamp, a couple of ashtrays, and a paperweight.

  “What exactly are you looking for? The lots will not be available until the—uh—effectuation of the agreement with the developer. This is the plot plan of my—I mean our land.”

  Homer pounced on Small’s slip of the tongue. At once he asked a nosy question. “You live here alone?”

  “Yes,” said Small, then, quickly, “No.” His soft eyes blinked. “My wife’s away.”

  “I see.” Homer wanted to explore the house and find the room in which Bluebeard stored the bodies of his murdered wives—hadn’t he been widowed several times? But Small was pointing to the map, running his finger around the pink area of Meadowlark Estates, spreading a proud hand over the broad rectangle of Songsparrow. “Ninety-nine acres, sixty-five lots accepted by the planning board.”

  “How much per lot?”

  “Well, of course, that depends on the lot in question. Some are more desirable than others.”

  “But the average price might be—?”

  “Oh, say, two hundred and fifty, three hundred.”

  “You mean three hundred thousand? Three hundred thousand dollars for a lot?”

  “Yes, I’d say that was about average.” Small had a way of looking around the room as he talked, frowning at the backs of chairs and the glass knobs of doors.

  Homer trailed his finger over the map and stopped at the lot farthest from the highway. “How much is this one?”

  “Oh, well, that’s a very choice lot, looking out over the pond. I’d say four hundred for that one.”

  “Might I see it?”

  Small looked surprised. “Well, I guess so. I don’t see why not.”

  The landscape of Songsparrow Estates was a monoculture of burdock. This year’s growth was green and flowering, last year’s bristled with burrs, which caught in the fabric of Homer’s coat. Small evergreens emerged from the burdock, just visible above the prickly surface. “You planted those?” said Homer, pointing to a cluster of infant white pines.

  “My wife—” began Small, then stopped and said feebly, “That’s right.”

  “Ouch,” said Homer, tripping over a lump of brick. He rubbed his shin and looked down at a low structure almost hidden by burdock.

  “Feeding platform,” explained Small. “This used to be a pig farm.”

  “Ah,” said Homer, the light dawning. “Of course.” He gazed around, imagining the landscape teeming with pigs. “How many did they have?”

  There was a pause, as if Small were weighing the question, considering his answer carefully. “Oh, thousands, I think. They were long gone when my wife—when we came into possession of the property.”

  “Was the other place here then?” asked Homer inquisitively. “Meadowlark Estates?”

  Again there was a wary pause. Then Small said, “No, Meadowlark is only about five years old.”

  “So, when your wife—when you got hold of this place, the whole area around here was rural Aren’t you sorry to see what’s happened to it?”

  “Sorry! Oh, no!” Small looked shocked. “Property values, they’ve gone way up.” Instantly regretting this remark, he looked sidelong at Homer and took it back. “That is, the land is worth a little more. Individual parcels have more value.”

  “You’re still classed as agricultural, is that right? So your town taxes are way down? Even though the pigs aren’t here anymore?”

  Small turned his flashing glasses on Homer. “Of course we’re agricultural.” He waved at the trees springing up through the burdock. “It’s a tree farm. And I’m negotiating with a riding stable to pasture horses.”

  “Oh, do horses eat burdock?” said Homer innocently.

  Small ignored the question. He turned away and waved an arm. “This is the parcel you were talking about, from here to that line of trees.”

  “Ah, yes, with a view of the pond.” Beyond the trees the sky opened up and the rusty towers of the sand-and-gravel company loomed beyond a chain-link fence. Homer went to the fence and looked down into the pit below. At the bottom there was a muddy pond between two huge heaps of gravel.

  “Of course this operation is being closed down,” explained Small, hurrying up beside him. Impulsively, as though it had just occurred to him, he said, “I’m going to dam it up. It will be, you know, like a lake.”

  Homer had had enough of Frederick Small and his grandiose plans for upmarket real estate. “Well, thank you, Mr. Small,” he said, turning away. “Goodbye. I’ll tell my wife all about it.” Then Homer took his leave, hurrying back along the Pig Road ahead of Small.

  As he got into his car the crow rose again from the ugly little cadaver on the rutted drive beside Small’s house, and Homer remembered a story about twelve princes who had been transformed into ravens. Was this crow one of the brothers? Where was its sister, the princess, who was destined to restore it to its princely human form?

  It was dark as Homer made the turn onto Route 2 on the way home. High in the sky to the west, he recognized a familiar star. ARCTURUS SPEAKING—INHABITANTS OF EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS ARE KINDLY REQUESTED TO TAKE NOTE.

  Homer, to whom celestial objects often addressed remarks, was glad to see Arcturus again. Its appearance in the sky meant that spring was here.

  He had been oppressed all afternoon by the tawdry aura of Southtown. In the presence of Arcturus his depression dissipated and blew away.

  Chapter 20

  When Minnie Peck arrived with the colossal sculpture she called Millennial Woman, Annie was beginning to work on the third division of her wall. It was more wonderful every day, the wall, with its wild juxtapositions and crazy clots of unity.

  She had forgotten all about Minnie Peck. But suddenly there she was, rolling up in a Rent-a-Truck. Bouncing out of the front seat, she hailed Flimnap O’Dougherty, who was doing something to a bush. Two heavyset Rent-a-Guys began undoing the ropes securing a large cloth-covered object in the back of the truck.

  “Where do you want it?” said one of the guys, getting a grip on one end, looking over his shoulder at Minnie.

  “Wait a sec.” Minnie raced back and forth in Annie’s front yard, looking around. “Not here—not here—what about here No, that won’t do. Ah, wait a minute, let’s try it over here. Yes, this looks good. It was destined to be here from the beginning of time.”

  It was smack in front of Annie’s new south windows. Flimnap pocketed his clippers, ambled across the grass, and tapped on the glass door.

  “No,” said Annie, coming outside, taking in everything—Minnie, the two guys, the giant cloth-covered object sailing forward in their arms, clanking and rattling. “Stop! Minnie, I don’t want it. Take it back.”

  “No, wait,” cried Minnie. “You’ve got to see it in place.” She twitched at the cloth wrapping and it fell away.

  The metal woman was twelve feet tall. She was entirely made of hubcaps. The concept was good, but the execution was faulty. Millennial Woman was a mess. Her iron armature was a tangle of welded blobs. Her hubcaps dangled on short lengths of rusty wire.

  “Please, Minnie, I don’t want anything on the grass. Nothing at all. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to take it away.”

  Minnie laughed merrily. “No, no, you just need to get used to it. It has to settle in. You’ll see. Later on we’ll decide on a price, but not now. No obligation, honest.” She scuttled away.

  The Rent-a-Guys exchanged looks and glanced at Annie. Her mouth was open, but she was speechless. They shrugged, stumped off after Minnie, helped her into the truck, and disappeared.

  Flimnap laughed. “Don’t worry. I’ll drag it over there, behind the compost heap. Maybe the woodchucks will appreciate it.” He reached up and grabbed Millennial Woman under her iron arms.
“Nothing to it. Come on, girl.”

  Annie watched him move backward in the direction of the wilderness, where orange peels and grass clippings were rotting into compost, and piles of pruned-off water sprouts lay in a twiggy mass. She told herself the truth, that the presence of Flimnap O’Dougherty was the overwhelming fact of her life.

  It wasn’t that he was bossy. No one could be more self-effacing. It was as though he exuded a vapor she couldn’t help inhaling, some sort of airy potion that filled the inner spaces of her house, a delicate secretion that stuck to chairs and tables and clung to Annie’s nose and hair. Once again she played with the fancy that he was an emanation of her painted wall, while she, Annie, went back and forth between her playful images and the grubby facts of the real world—her overdue bills, her parking ticket, her occasional indulgence in booze. Annie winced, remembering last week’s embarrassing dinner in honor of a big important librarian, when she had drunk too much wine. When they had asked her for a few words, she had sprung up and talked too fast and giggled too much at her own jokes and sat down suddenly, nearly falling off her chair.

  Of course Flimnap too had to navigate among the lumpy facts of commonplace life. He managed it very well, better than Annie. He could fix anything, make anything, do anything. And yet the Hitchcock chair he had repaired for Annie, gluing the rungs fast in their holes, now had a Flimnappian air. She liked to sit in it, as though his influence might flow up and saturate her soul.

  Their relation as employer and employee had changed. Flimnap had begun to make up his own tasks, deciding for himself what needed to be done. Were they friends now, equals, partners? More than friends? Perhaps Flimnap didn’t really like her at all. She was eager to know what he thought of her, but there was some sort of gap between them. Something was wrong. Flimnap was like a puzzle with a missing piece. And in his case the piece was crucial. Without it the rest of the linked pieces didn’t hang together.

  So things were on hold. Annie had become shy about looking at Flimnap directly. His light eyes seemed focused on things far away. Like her wall, he was a story without an end, like the enfolded tales of The Arabian Nights, told by Scheherazade to the heartless sultan. If Scheherazade were ever to complete the last of her stories, if her imagination ever faltered, she would lose her head. What was Flimnap’s last chapter? Who was waiting for him with a headsman’s ax?

  Praise be to God … whose purposes concerning me are as yet hid in darkness.

  The Thousand and One Nights

  Chapter 21

  The Gasts were having a party. All their friends came. Annie was invited, Flimnap wasn’t.

  They had put up a fence between the two front yards. Annie walked through the gate and joined the party. It was a lovely April afternoon, as warm as a day in June, and everyone had drifted outside. Charlene carried around a tray of snacks. Some of her friends from school helped with the trays, and then they all gathered in Charlene’s room, and admired her princess doll and her swimming trophies and giggled and bounced on her bed.

  A teenage babysitter had been provided for Eddy, but just when the talk and laughter were at their height, he appeared in the middle of the party, gaping up at the guests and clutching the front of his pants, which were wet. The teenager was indoors, helping herself to a glass of wine.

  Roberta grasped Eddy by the collar, found the babysitter, hissed at her, and removed the two of them to the upper regions.

  The party wound down and the guests departed. Annie went home, feeling sorry for Eddy. But as soon as she walked into her part of the house, she forgot about Eddy Gast. There was another unwanted face on her wall. Once again it was ugly and demonic. The eyes were fiercer than before, and the blue beard was matted with blood.

  Annie stared at it, shocked and frightened. Who was doing this to her, who was invading her wall, disturbing her jolly visions of children’s stories? Who else could it possibly be but Flimnap? Surely it was Flimnap O’Dpugherty! Flimnap had a key to her house, he could walk on his hands and juggle six balls at once and keep three plates in the air (but not four). He could throw his hat in the air so cleverly that it came down on his head. Flimnap could do anything!

  No, not quite anything, remembered Annie, exonerating him once again. It couldn’t be Flimnap, because he couldn’t draw at all. He couldn’t draw, he couldn’t write, he couldn’t even make a diagram. He had no use for pencil and paper. It was one of the missing pieces in the puzzle that was Flimnap O’Dougherty.

  This time Annie got rid of the ugly face herself, brushing over it a coat of quick-drying varnish and a layer of ocher-colored paint. As the staring black-ringed eyes disappeared, she heard a whimpering from next door. Through the open windows came the sound of crying and raised voices.

  Eddy was being punished. Poor Eddy!

  The poor kid was certainly accident-prone. On the very day after the party, he had another misfortune on the highway. The door of his father’s car flew open and Eddy tumbled out. Somehow the traffic behind the car missed him as he rolled over and over and sat up, dazed and bruised, in the middle of the road.

  “You mean to say he wasn’t strapped in?” said a self-righteous woman in the next car, stopping to criticize. “I think that’s absolutely criminal.”

  Poor old Eddy! When he next came to Annie’s door there was a purple lump on his forehead. But he was beaming. “Whassat?” he said, staring up at the wall, pointing at the mouse in Beatrix Potter’s pocket and the rabbits at her feet. Annie explained about Peter Rabbit and his invasion of Mr. McGregor’s garden. She found her copy of the story and showed it to Eddy. Then she gave him a sheet of her best paper and a collection of colored pens, and climbed her ladder and got back to work. Below her at the table Eddy’s small head was lowered over his paper. A bright-green pad was clutched in his hand.

  This time his picture took only half an hour. “All done!” cried Eddy, holding the picture over his head.

  Annie came down the ladder to look. It was Peter Rabbit. His ears glowed pink, his jacket reflected the blue of the sky, and Mr. McGregor’s garden was a corner of Paradise. “Oh, Eddy,” breathed Annie, delighted once again, “how wonderful.”

  When Flimnap came in, he admired it too. “I like your pictures, Eddy,” he said, lifting him onto his shoulders. “Come on. I want to show you something.” Annie watched them swoop together out the door. Soon there were squeals of joy from the driveway. She looked out and laughed. Flimnap was still carrying Eddy on his shoulders, but now he was riding a unicycle. Around and around they went, Eddy whirling high in the air, shrieking with delight.

  Roberta Gast witnessed this episode, coming unexpectedly out of the house. She stared, blank-faced, until Flimnap lowered Eddy to the ground and jumped down from the bike himself, grinning at her sheepishly. Roberta turned away without a word, climbed into her car, and sat behind the wheel for a moment, looking down. She’s making a note, decided Annie. Date, time, witnesses present.

  That evening as they got ready for bed, Roberta and Bob Gast had another conversation about Eddy. Roberta stood in the bathroom doorway in her nightgown, watching her husband brush his teeth. “It’s no good,” she said. “Nothing works.”

  Bob spat and hung up his toothbrush. “What do you mean, nothing works?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Oh, that,” said Bob uncomfortably. He slicked back his hair with a comb.

  Roberta changed the subject. She sounded shocked. “You know what, Bob Gast? You’re getting bald.”

  “Oh, I know,” said Bob. “Don’t you think I know?” Because of course it was true. If he had taken the trouble to count them, the separate strands above his high receding hairline would have numbered only one or two thousand. They had once been a thick bushy mass. Embarrassed, he rubbed the shiny place in the middle of his scalp, which was growing larger and larger. Rub, rub, rub. Oh, genie of the magic scalp, make my hair grow in again!

  Roberta watched him put the cap back on the toothpaste. At once she was s
truck by an idea. She waited until he was finished in the bathroom, and then she got to work right away.

  She did not look at herself in the mirror, knowing she wouldn’t like what she saw, a tired woman with pouches under her eyes. Instead she opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and took out a little piece of cardboard, handling it with care. On it lay a viscous drop of liquid. It was ant poison. Ants had become a problem on the kitchen counter and the bathroom sink. This nasty stuff seemed to do the trick. The ants were in retreat.

  With delicate fingers Roberta put the square of poison down behind the cold-water faucet. Still more carefully she took a small toothbrush from the holder on the wall and laid it bristle side down in the drop of liquid, as though it had fallen there by accident. Then she washed her hands and went to bed.

  She lay awake most of the night, staring at the shadowy ceiling. In the morning, just after she fell asleep at last, there was a shout from the bathroom, “What the hell?”

  Roberta woke up instantly and opened her eyes. In a moment her enraged husband stood beside the bed looking down at her. “Eddy’s toothbrush, it was in the ant poison!”

  She sat up and said feebly, “Oh dear, it must have fallen in. The ants were all over the sink, so I—” She didn’t finish. She put her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

  Bob stared at her. Then he said roughly, “God,” and went back to the bathroom. He wrapped the sticky toothbrush in toilet paper and threw it in the wastebasket, along with the square of ant poison. Then he scrubbed the sink with cleanser and washed his hands thoroughly, over and over again, his mind in a torment. An unlatched car door, a touch of ant poison, what was the difference? None, there was no difference at all. He shouldn’t blame Roberta any more than he blamed himself.

  My mother she killed me,

  My father he ate me,