AHMM, June 2005

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "What can these parents be advertising?” A broad smile lit up her face. “See our daughter, the beauty queen? That must be it. Brigadoon High's homecoming queen."

  Walt shrugged and switched his attention to the architectural virtues of the house across the street. Gwen guessed that something about the picture made him uneasy. It was almost too lifelike, too in-your-face.

  They drew even with the big portrait. The face that beamed at Gwen appeared to be about eighteen. A mature eighteen year old. Blond hair fell to her shoulders, fanning out, as Gwen's hair did when she let it grow a bit too long. In fact, there was a disquieting resemblance to Gwen herself, except that the girl's smile was on the naive end of the spectrum, while Gwen's leaned toward the skeptical, bemused end. To complement her innocent, open smile, the girl wore a lacy white blouse, snugged at the neck with a bow.

  Her modest dress surprised Gwen. These days, high school girls’ outfits tended to copy the tube-top, bra strap-revealing knits that prostitutes on TV crime shows bopped around in. Below the picture were large black block letters: ANASTASIA WYNN CREEL. A second line of sky blue print, harder to read from Gwen's spot on the street, ran beneath the girl's name.

  Gwen drew closer. Bending at the waist, chin jutted out, she walked up the driveway onto the lawn, and read the fancy sky-blue script: OUR DAUGHTER IS IN HEAVEN.

  Gwen sucked in her breath. She pulled back, shoulders hiked.

  Not homecoming queen. A dead girl. Advertising their dead daughter.

  She stepped off the lawn feeling she'd trespassed on private grief; but then the portrait sign had lured her, an unwary passerby.

  Eyes wide, she neared Walt. “Over there.” Her voice was the bait. She slid her eyes sideways as if not wanting to be seen taking interest. “Quick. Read the fine print."

  Walt ambled over. Once the words registered, he stepped back nimbly, as if evading a cobra's strike.

  In silence they walked past another house, Piccolo straining at the leash to own the middle of the street.

  "Isn't that the weirdest thing you ever saw?” Gwen said at last.

  Walt's cheekbones looked extra white. “Can't say I've ever seen that before. No."

  "Imagine.” Gwen was a ventriloquist, lips barely moving. “Who would put up a sign like that? Why?"

  No answer came from Walt. He seemed embarrassed.

  Gwen was aware of a silly smile on her own face, impossible to wipe off. “Wild. Advertising their daughter in heaven. That trumps all the stellar achievements of every other kid around here.” She laughed. “Still, these other ambitious parents might ask, but what's she doing in heaven? Cheerleading, playing soccer, the trumpet?"

  "Do we have to talk about this?"

  Gwen's shoulders dropped. Walt was only willing to talk about cheerful subjects or how-to stuff. So much else was distasteful. Gwen was always having to remind herself of this. But on the subject of death, she felt she needn't be timid. Not these days. Her favorite cousin had died only three months ago. They'd been close friends.

  Painful as his death was to her, she hadn't banished his name from the here and now; she mentioned him whenever he came to mind. But though Walt had liked Steve, he clearly didn't want to hear his name, as if talk of the dead might put the kibosh on his nicely structured day, make the sky a bit less blue, the cumulus clouds a tad less puffy.

  "I wish Steve were here.” She gazed up at the placid blue sky. “He'd really get a bang out of this."

  "The parents must be in a lot of pain,” said Walt in sepulchral tones. “You might understand that."

  "Of course,” Gwen said, and clamped her lips shut. She had been effectively censored. But on the inside she was saying, Pain! Of course they were in pain. After Steve died, she was in pain too, but she'd never think to erect a shrine to him on the front lawn. Sometimes, especially in the last year, the atmosphere around Walt was stultifying. She wished she had the freedom to make a joke without earning his disapproval, even if the joke were a little bit in bad taste. Instead, Walt had to jump to the conclusion that she was laughing at these people's sorrow.

  She walked on, tried to imagine being the girl's mother, passing that sign every day as she pulled into her driveway, the same static face smiling the same fixed smile, the constant reminder.

  "Probably a car accident,” Gwen said.

  "What?” Walt looked confused. Gwen knew he wasn't. He was pretending not to grasp her reference, to point out that he'd already passed on to cheerier subjects of thought.

  "A car accident,” Gwen repeated. “She's so young. At that age, usually it's a car accident."

  "Whatever."

  Dismissive. Someone erects a huge glass-paned portrait trumpeting their daughter's death and resurrection, and Walt didn't even wonder about how she died or who would advertise such a thing. If she were walking with her friend Jenny now, back in New Orleans, they would be dissecting this curiosity.

  What were the parents like? The mother especially. This display was probably her idea. Gwen pictured a plump, hyper-religious woman, literal minded, histrionic; the husband a hulking, stolid type, quietly going along with his wife's mania, knocking the sign's legs into the ground with a mallet, but secretly pained to have to drive past his daughter's face every day on his way to and from work.

  Gwen and Walt continued with Piccolo. Three houses down, they came upon two little girls, about nine or ten years old, manning a sidewalk refreshment stand. Gatorade, not lemonade, was for sale, along with bags of M&M's.

  "Thirsty?” one of the girls called out. “We got what you need."

  "We sure are thirsty.” Walt seemed grateful to break the strained mood. “But I haven't got my wallet."

  "We trust you,” said the blond-haired girl. “And if you buy two drinks, your dog gets one free!"

  "She only drinks water,” said Gwen as she caught sight of the prices on the stand's sign.

  "Seven bucks for two Gatorades and a bag of M&M's! Movie theater prices,” she said once they were out of earshot. “Doesn't matter if they're off the beaten path. One sale makes their day."

  "It's for a good cause,” said Walt.

  Gwen wanted to say, When you go back to pay, Walt, be sure to get a receipt; but she kept her mouth shut. In the last year, he'd become obsessive about saving receipts. For Christmas one of his gifts to her was a plastic box with many compartments. He explained that she was to keep all receipts and store them in the box—grocery slips in one compartment, gas in another. There were more than ten categories. Whenever he found a stray receipt, he called it to her attention with a most disappointed look on his face.

  Sipping their drinks, they circled one more cul-de-sac, then strolled through a thickly wooded park past bright purple safety-tested playground equipment, until they finally reached the cul-de-sac that was their own.

  The very idea of a cul-de-sac had formerly struck Gwen as connoting wealth and leisure; but these days, the tight, house-encircled curve presented itself as a metaphor for that more ominous street description: dead end.

  As they crossed the threshold, Gwen felt she was entering a tomb, even if it was a beautiful, comfortable tomb. She'd never lived in such a well-appointed house. Soaring ceilings in the foyer and living room. Oak floors, granite counters, luscious views of the pool from nearly every room. Water poured down the steps of a rock waterfall into a pool that glistened like aqua-mint jelly, the background planted with palmettos and other verdant shrubs she hadn't had time to identify. Plants that took care of themselves. A postcard from Hawaii it was.

  Now that Walt had been transferred and promoted, his pay had jumped nearly by half. Gwen had had to give up her job at the college. Her salary wasn't needed anyway, Walt said. Did she really miss grading English themes? She could focus on her real interests, her poetry, her ambition to write a play. They could start a family. This planned community was designed with children in mind. Great schools, crime statistics barely recordable.

  So how could she account for her feeli
ng of being trapped, sealed in a tomb? The answer that popped into her mind was a quote, a deft, five-word sentence from Nabokov's Pale Fire: “We are most artistically caged."

  The Russian writer had been the subject of her master's thesis some years back, and now that line seemed to pack more meaning than when she'd first read it.

  We are most artistically caged; the words romped in her head all the rest of the day. Nabokov meant that to be true of living in this world in general, but it seemed most particularly true of Brigadoon.

  That evening as she bathed in her streamlined tub, its massage jets going ninety to nothing, she tried to gauge how much of her caged-up feeling was Walt's fault. He hadn't been controlling in their first years together. Maybe she was overreacting, but lately she'd come to view him as her personal censor. Perhaps the change could be blamed on the move, this totally unlooked for, unwanted transfer to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.

  Area. They no longer lived in a real town, or city, but in a homogenous area full of Stepford wives and transient, ethically-challenged CEOs.

  Walt hadn't wanted to move either, but now that they had, he'd taken to their new environment like a unicorn to an enchanted forest. He loved the woodsy atmosphere, the well-run aspect of the planned community of forty thousand souls. He loved the rules, even appeared to worry they might not be enforced as strictly as the real estate literature promised.

  He couldn't enter into Gwen's bemused riffs on the insulated, out-of-this-world flavor of the place any more than he could show interest in who'd erected the crazy sign on Rosethorne Place to the memory of a sainted daughter.

  Whatever had caused the change in him, she was beginning to view him as her nemesis. Basically kind and loving, but a jailer all the same.

  Gwen suddenly stood up in the tub, water streaming down her body. The room seemed drained of oxygen. She gasped for air, reached for a towel, and wrapped it around her. Is this how a panic attack feels? she wondered. No, she couldn't stay in Brigadoon another minute. She would tell Walt. This was urgent. They would have to separate, for her sanity's sake.

  But when she rushed into the bedroom, the towel still wrapped around her body, and saw Walt propped up in bed reading his fishing magazine, her courage failed her.

  "You're dripping,” he said, registering faint surprise. “You're all wet."

  She opened a drawer, hunted for her nightgown, then spied an errant Office Depot receipt she'd left on her bureau. Hand trembling, she whisked it into the drawer, grateful Walt hadn't seen.

  But you will have to say something, do something, she told herself later, once the lights were out. Or, maybe not, she faltered. Maybe this suffocating feeling had nothing to do with Walt. It was all in her head. His need to keep track of every expense even though he didn't itemize his income tax, might simply be a neurosis he'd inherited from his parents. She was taking everything too seriously.

  Still, the fact that she found it nearly impossible to discuss such subjects with him was not imagined. As Gwen drifted off to sleep, the face of the dead girl floated with her. Gwen regarded the guileless smile with envy. “You will never save receipts,” she heard herself tell the girl in a half dream.

  The next day, when Walt returned from work, he announced that the company was sending him to Nigeria for two months. The news was sudden, his departure imminent. There were shots to suffer, a visa to secure, mosquito-repelling longsleeved shirts to buy. A scant week later, Walt was gone.

  She felt as if a stone had been rolled away from her tomb. Gwen was free, even of Brigadoon if she so desired. She told her mother she might come home for a month with Piccolo. After paying bills, hiring a pool company, stopping the paper, holding the mail, she would head to New Orleans.

  A week after Walt left, though, Gwen still hadn't budged. An unaccountable inertia filled her. She felt that she was becoming enchanted by Brigadoon herself, or maybe only bewitched by her few responsibilities. Odd, going to the grocery and knowing that never in a million years would she see a familiar face; but anonymity had its advantages. It was exhilarating to know that she need meet no expectations other than Piccolo's voracious demand to be fed each evening.

  Every morning, she walked her dog to the park at the center of their neighborhood, then up and down the eight streets that radiated from it like the legs of an arthritic spider. Though the house with the strange sign sat on Rosethorne Place, the street farthest from her, Gwen felt her walk wasn't complete unless she passed the smiling girl. Each time she rounded the snaking curve where the picture first rose into view, she experienced a breathless fear that it would not be there. Surely, erecting that memorial had been a temporary gesture—perhaps done once a year on the girl's birthday. It would disappear any day now.

  Each time she anticipated its absence, Gwen felt an odd emptiness. The portrait was creepy, but if it were no longer there, she would miss it—even wonder if it had ever been there in the first place.

  But the portrait never let her down. As Gwen rounded the curve and climbed the gradual incline, dragging Piccolo behind her, she sensed Anastasia's eyes, trained on her, like the stealthy, wandering eyes in oil portraits painted by the old masters. Tracking Gwen, Anastasia's eyes glided right, then slightly left, then zeroed in on Gwen's final approach head on, her canned smile beaming a scary welcome. A stranger's face, conventionally cheerful, yet eerily familiar because of its resemblance to herself.

  At the beginning of the second week of Walt's absence, when Gwen passed the picture she experienced a moment's fear that Anastasia's lips would suddenly move, offer a peppy “Good morning.” By the time she drew even with the sign, the idea was so chilling, she looked away, muttered to Piccolo: “I'm too isolated. Talking billboards, yet."

  Farther down the street she passed the blond-haired girl who'd hosted the Gatorade stand. The child was bouncing a big red ball in her driveway, a simple act that struck Gwen as sweetly old-fashioned. The girl grinned at her. “Hi!” she said. “Hi,” Gwen said back, feeling happy all of a sudden. It was the first word another human being had said to her in many days, outside of a long-distance conversation with her mother and a garbled overseas call from Walt.

  I could have a little girl like her, Gwen thought, and the idea filled her with a frightening joy.

  Just then she became aware of a speeding car. She gave the leash a last-minute pull as the car whizzed by. Dopey Piccolo trotted on, unhurt, oblivious to the danger.

  With a pang, Gwen realized she'd let the leash go slack, hadn't paid attention, the very thing she'd warned Walt about. The lead-footed drivers of Brigadoon, cell phones to their ears, didn't seem to care whether they hit a dog or not.

  "My mom says people drive absolutely too fast around here,” the little girl called out behind her.

  Gwen turned on her heel and said, “That's the truth.” Again, she felt charmed. She loved the way the girl said “absolutely". But oh, to have a child like that—so much harder than taking care of Piccolo. And if something bad happened to her—she couldn't bear it. Perhaps she shouldn't have children. Walt was right. She would be too protective, and if the worst happened, how could she endure such a loss?

  But why was she dwelling on such dark ideas now? She could blame Anastasia Wynn Creel. To think she'd actually feared her lips might move. And since Anastasia resembled Gwen so much, around the eyes, the mouth, it would be like having a deceased twin speak to her. From now on she would steer clear of that morbid sign. She would go to New Orleans, visit her mother. Soon.

  But next morning, she walked her usual route; only this time, as she approached Anastasia's house, she spotted a woman standing in the garden near the portrait. She wore a bright yellow sun hat with an upturned bill and white gardening gloves. She was much thinner than the woman Gwen had pictured as Anastasia's mother. A young Hispanic man, shovel slung over his shoulder, stood in the garden with her.

  "I want banks of verbena here. They'll set off my Easter lilies once they bloom, and caladiums would be nice, for later in
May.” The woman's voice was musical, lilting.

  Though curious to see this woman who was probably Mrs. Creel, Anastasia's mother, Gwen kept her eyes on the road and clicked her tongue at Piccolo to pick up speed.

  "My, what a precious little dog!” the woman sang out. Gwen smiled, thanked her. Mrs. Creel beamed a wide-eyed, slightly loopy grin. “What breed is that?” She stepped forward in the bed, the big portrait even with her shoulder.

  Gwen paused, uneasy, sensing Anastasia's presence, a third person mediating this exchange. She scrutinized Piccolo, drawing a blank, then answered, “A miniature long-haired dachshund,” as if she were a quiz show player coming up with the correct answer just before the bell.

  "Now, isn't she the cutest thing!” Mrs. Creel gave a fluttery wave. Working her legs faster, Gwen sensed the woman's eyes on her back as she and Piccolo wound their way up Rosethorne Place.

  Older than Gwen had imagined—late sixties—but she wore her age well as most slender women did. More upbeat, cultivated-seeming. Her gardening outfit—yellow hat, striped clam digger pants, red clogs—was perfect. But her eyes were too wired, reminded Gwen of Carol Channing in a ditsy role. She wouldn't be surprised if she launched into a giddy rendition of “Hello, Dolly!"

  Later that day, Gwen called her mother and said, “No, I'm not sure when I'll come. There's so much to do right here."

  Gwen shopped for curtains for an upstairs guest room. She fiddled with an old poem, reread notes she'd made for a play over a year ago. And she walked Piccolo, invariably passing Anastasia's garden shrine.

  The need to pass the smiling girl was a compulsion, Gwen knew. Perhaps it was a reasonable thing to get on friendly terms with Anastasia, the symbol of youthful tragedy who looked so much like herself. She was also aware of wanting to see Mrs. Creel again. This woman had been forced to deal with losing her daughter, and apparently had, if in an outlandish way. Whatever the big portrait meant to her, it must have helped, because she could still look after her garden, still notice a cute dog and call out a cheerful compliment.