Interior Design

by Philip Graham

  There’s a good deal she could do to announce herself: sweep the sugar bowl into his lap, swing cups and saucers into the air. Instead, grasping the edge of the table to keep her arms down, Isabel concentrates on Richard as he spreads his good hand through his hair, tugs at his ear. He picks up the coffee cup, fingers fretting against the warm enamel, and she listens to the dull tap-tap and the slosh of hot coffee inside.

  His bad hand rests on the table. Even after a year she’s still shocked by the abrupt end of his forefinger, the missing tip of his thumb. Simply lying there, those fleshy stubs seem like knuckles curling inward, his hand about to ball into a fist and smash smash smash. When Isabel starts to think of Richard by a conveyor belt, something mechanical and dark surging toward his careless fingers, she has to look away.

  His listless chewing finally over, Richard pushes away from the table, and she knows what he’ll say before he says it: “That was good.” He retreats to the living room. Left alone, Isabel wants to pour coffee over her still-untouched eggs and drown those two staring eyes.

  She hears the porch screen door swing open, then slam shut, and there are Richard’s footsteps back to the couch, the newspaper ruffling open, pages turning. She’d prefer him to grumble, even shout about foreign imports and plant closings, this latest layoff. Instead, those scratchy squeaks start: with a magic marker he’s unloosing dark lines, blacking out every reference to the Japanese. When he finishes off the yen and Tokyo, Sony, Toyota, and Mitsubishi, she knows that he’ll search for soy sauce on the recipe page, bonsai in the gardening section. Then he’ll start in on NAFTA and GATT.

  Isabel washes each dish slowly until she hears Richard’s steps crossing the living room to his workshop, and soon he’s hammering away at another one of those projects she can’t keep track of, something he hopes will interest an investor.

  The dishes done, Isabel ventures to her jigsaw puzzle on the dining room table and peers at the face fit together by bright and convoluted shapes: a wholesome TV actress she can’t quite place, perhaps some wisdom-dispensing wife or mom. But there’s something unsettling in the anticipation of those eyes, and Isabel wishes she’d picked up a different puzzle at the thrift shop, even one of those impossible abstract paintings.

  Only a few pieces remain. The dark grain of the table shines through where the mouth and chin should be. A bittersweet whine of struck metal continues in the workshop, and with a fingernail Isabel traces the hairline cracks that curl about the puzzle face like curiously shaped scars. Then she slips in enough pieces to complete the mouth. The affectionate patience around those lips looks so effortless, and Isabel remembers her own, younger face: Richard had just given her a pair of long white gloves—one of his first gifts—and then he took her picture again and again. She’s sure at least one of those snaps lies stacked in a box upstairs.

  *

  She spreads the photos before her on the dresser and picks through them carefully. There she is at her high school graduation, wearing a dark robe and standing before a burgundy curtain, her smile fixed with a carefully practiced joy that now seems almost frightening. But this isn’t what Isabel is searching for.

  Then she finds it: beside a luminous window of afternoon sun, she’s settled back in a cushioned chair, legs crossed, mouth half parted, and eyes oval. Her hands look so extraordinarily long and slender in the white gloves. When she had opened the slim box Richard said, “I saw them and they reminded me of your name—crazy, huh?” Those few words—any words, really—were a lot for him, so he hid behind his camera, snapping flash after flash. Isabel remembers she was about to laugh “Enough!” when Richard set his camera on the rug.

  Because he approached her with something like awe, she sat still on the chair. Though surprised when he began to slip off the white gloves, she held out her hands and enjoyed the smooth fabric sliding from her fingers. Then he knelt down before her and, after a brief hesitation, just as carefully took off her shoes.

  He paused again, and Isabel wondered what this shy man could possibly be doing, until he reached up to unbutton her blouse. She closed her eyes and anticipated his touch against each button. When he slipped the blouse from her shoulders, then unhooked her bra, she rubbed her toes against the nubs of worn wool on the rug and listened to cars passing on the street below—so many and so far away. Only then did she wonder if perhaps she should have whispered No, no, or at least tried to squirm away. But his fingers were at her elastic waistband and she lifted herself slightly as he eased off her skirt, her panties.

  He knelt before her, his head just touching her knees. For a long silence Isabel could feel the chair’s thick weave against her skin, Richard’s light breath on her shins. A sudden shout outside and then a burst of wild laughter startled Isabel, and she glanced down at Richard just as he looked up at her. They laughed too, untangling their little knot of quiet, and into that small room the world returned—more cars, footsteps on the pavement, the distant rattle of construction. Richard moved back and gathered together her scattered clothes.

  He fit her gloves back on and she finally felt exposed, sitting there naked except for her bright white hands. When Richard approached with her panties she stood up to make it easy for him and his hands rose lightly up her thighs. Then his fingers were against her spine while he fastened her bra, and she wanted him to cup her breasts with his hands but was relieved when he didn’t—somehow a caress would have broken this long, strange moment. Finally dressed, her body still buzzing, she giddily considered this a kind of marriage proposal.

  If only Isabel could will herself back into the moment of this photograph, but again there’s that awful hammering downstairs. She glances at her dresser—those gloves are still in the bottom of some drawer and perhaps she should go look, even allow herself the feel of them again. And what was Richard wearing—wasn’t it a white shirt with wide front pockets? Does he still have it? She walks to his closet and slides open the door—it’s almost cool inside, and the shadowy row of his clothes draws her in. She pokes through the crisp smells of Richard’s shirts until, instead of a shoulder’s yielding curve of corduroy or wool, she touches the metal edge of a hanger that jangles oddly.

  Isabel pushes aside the shirts. Before her sways a peculiar construction of clothes hangers, elaborately fit together into the full-sized outline of a person. But this flat thing doesn’t have a face, only a wire circle for a head, and from its top the hanger hook rises like a question mark. Whatever this is, it isn’t finished yet: there’s only one wire leg, and even that has no foot. She reaches out and pulls the figure toward her, and it slides awkwardly along the wooden rod, both jointed arms swinging independently. Half expecting resistance, Isabel reaches into its empty chest, then pulls her hand away. How could Richard be making such a thing?

  *

  He sets down his hammer, surprised by her question. In the vise before him is a wire foot.

  “It’s an all-purpose clothes hanger,” he says.

  “It scared me.”

  There’s Richard’s distracted half-smile and Isabel knows he has already stopped seeing her, that he’s staring into the hallway and he isn’t even seeing that. Is he plotting out an ankle, calculating where to joint the wires? Afraid she might fly apart from another gaze that goes right through her, Isabel makes her face flat and concentrates on his shelves of inventions: the long-armed claw for cleaning roof gutters without a ladder; those tiny brushes for dusting light switches; the screwdriver with a flashlight built into its handle. And there’s another shelf she won’t let herself look at, cluttered with little racing cars and horses made of tin cans that the children on the block love so much.

  “There’s nothing scary about it,” Richard finally says, as if to himself. “It’s a carry-on for big shots who don’t like wrinkled suits. Even holds shoes and socks.” He points to the five toe-like curves at the tip of the wire foot. His hand is still smudged with magic marker.

  “Oh,” Isabel says, but she doubts that anyone would ever want to
buy that odd figure.

  *

  With another dinner over, Isabel sits with Richard on the living room couch in front of the TV, but she can’t quite concentrate on the broad gestures of a flawless family negotiating some temporary crisis. Soon Richard gets up and walks to the kitchen, returns with nothing, then stands in the doorway again, his back to her, as if deciding where to wander next. When two telegenic children chase each other with carefree banter around a coffee table, she glances at the Horizontal dial: just a slight, destabilizing twist could stutter those actors down the screen helplessly, endlessly. Isabel shuts her eyes, imagines her own dizzy free fall.

  There’s a rush of laughter from the television and she opens her eyes, almost expecting to see Richard once again kneeling before her. He’s standing in the doorway, facing the hall, and then he’s gone, restless with something he isn’t talking about. Isabel stands—she needs to hold that photo again and call up his shy unbuttoning.

  *

  The photos are in the box on her dresser now, though she can’t remember putting them back. She riffles through the pile twice but can’t make the picture appear. Could she have dropped it somewhere? She scans the carpet into each corner and peers at the dark under the bed, she opens Richard’s closet and crawls among his scattered shoes until her head grazes against the wire figure’s new foot.

  Kneeling there, she pushes away his clothes and stares up at the slightly swaying thing. It’s really just a cartoonish outline. Why would anyone want to fit clothes over something that looks so awkward? Isabel reaches out for one of the wire hands, examines the clumsiness of the circular palm and broad fingers. With some strain she manages to bend a metal curve into a recognizable thumb. Then she carefully squeezes the rest into tapered fingers and goads the palm into an oval. She places her own hand against the cool wire outline: it’s a comfortable fit. Isabel stands up and moves back. Those thighs are too thin, the shoulders too squarish. Gripping the cold metal, she begins to press and pull.

  *

  That night Isabel lies in the darkness and tries to hold her eyelids open with her fingers, afraid she might dream another terrible dream of a vanishing baby. She tries listening to Richard’s breathing, the occasional car going who knows where, but her fingers slowly slip down her cheeks until she’s asleep.

  Isabel dreams that her face fills the wire circle in the closet. She tries to call out to Richard but her lips won’t move, and as she struggles to make a sound—a whisper, a cry, anything—jigsaw cracks streak across her stiff face. They widen until pieces tumble down: a flat shining cheek, a tip of chin, half of her mouth.

  She wakes. It’s still dark. She carefully makes her way down the stairs, to her dining room puzzle, and she dismantles that jigsaw face, its features crumbling in her hand. But hiding the pieces in a box isn’t enough: clutching bits of ear, hair, lips, she takes them to the kitchen and stuffs them down the disposal. The kitchen fills with a grim and lovely gnawing, and Isabel lets it go on and on until the cabinets seem to shake.

  *

  During breakfast Richard is restless in his chair and throughout the morning he always seems just down the hall or in the next room, though maybe Isabel’s only imagining this: when they were first married she often felt he was beside her even when he wasn’t. And when he was, his silence was an invitation, a quiet asking. She stops, listens for his breathing, and the phone rings. Isabel almost jumps at the sound.

  “Hi, ‘Bel, it’s Donna. Listen, could you cover me tonight? My little girl’s got chicken pox—you wouldn’t believe how fast it spread—and she’s just itching so bad, poor thing—”

  Isabel doesn’t want to hear any more. “I can do it,” she breaks in. “What’s your shift?”

  “Three to nine. Hey, thanks.”

  “I’ll be there,” she says, even though she has to work a morning shift tomorrow.

  When she puts down the receiver she hears sharp footsteps heading toward the workshop. Richard was nearby, listening. The door closes and Isabel knows he’s shutting himself away from the fact that she has to work extra whenever he’s laid off. When the bell-like clanging of the hammer begins she feels her own limbs ache. If she had a wrench or a screwdriver she’d range through the rooms and loosen the legs of tables and chairs, undo every doorknob and doorjamb. She escapes to the backyard, to kneel beside the flowerbeds and the week’s weeding, yet she doesn’t feel her usual pleasure from tugging at roots. She listens to the children’s bicycle race circling around the block—there’s Danny’s whoop, that’s Allie’s teary shout.

  Isabel stuffs humid green piles into a plastic bag and notices that the workshop banging has stopped—Richard must be upstairs now, attaching the last metal leg and foot. She wonders if he’ll notice what she did to the figure. Then the porch door bangs and there are Richard’s steps on the sidewalk—the beginning of the long walk he’ll take until she’s gone to work.

  After watering the plants more than she should, Isabel finally goes back inside to prepare dinner and busies herself in the kitchen with the crockpot for Richard’s stew. She arranges his place setting on the table, and when the fork and knife clink down beside the plate, Isabel pauses. What does that sound remind her of? She lifts the fork again and drops it two, three more times and listens to its tinny clatter—it’s just like that wire figure upstairs when she first pulled it toward her. Yes, she realizes, she’s alone in the house with it now. It’s finally complete.

  Isabel suddenly can’t help wanting to see the thing and its finished foot. She walks softly up the stairs, past all the muted wooden creaks that seem like whispering, and enters the bedroom. Crouching in Richard’s closet, she can make out the wire feet resting on the ground together, flat against the carpet. Dangling above them are her long white gloves, fit snugly over those wire hands.

  She pushes away at Richard’s shirts and sees a pair of her panties stretched like a flat empty pouch over the outline of the hips, her favorite bra strapped across the chest and hanging loosely. Isabel almost cries out at this distorted image of herself. Instead, with a curious finger she pokes one of the lace cups. It easily collapses inward. The figure shivers, as it must have when Richard dressed it, and Isabel retreats and fills her hands with her hair, pulling until her scalp aches, wishing she could rise into the air and fly away from such a thought.

  *

  A computerized voice intones the prices, total, and change while Isabel punches up stationery and blenders and videocassettes, but she barely listens. She keeps imagining Richard finding her photograph, staring at it until something opens up inside him, and then he searches through drawers of stockings and cotton nightgowns until he finds her white gloves. He holds them gently, fingers the smooth fabric until he’s filled with that long-ago intimate moment. Finally he chooses panties from among the snug rows in a drawer. He pauses and pats them, takes in their pliant warmth, and then he reaches for a bra from a neatly folded pile.

  Isabel rings up mouthwash, aspirin, and disposable diapers, and tries to remember what else she wore in that photo. Wasn’t it high, dark pumps, a white blouse with padded shoulders? And a gray skirt, she’s sure, a wool skirt that scratched against her knees. She knows she owns nothing like them now, so during her break Isabel searches through the circular clothes racks, turning from one disappointment after another. When she finds a white blouse with just the right shoulders and thin collar, Isabel holds it against her and tries to evoke Richard’s shy fumbling, the precise distance between his fingers and her skin. But wasn’t the fabric softer, weren’t the white buttons rounded, not flat?

  *

  Isabel stands quietly in the dark foyer, a shopping bag under her arm. The living room lights are out. Though that long shadow on the couch might be Richard, Isabel can’t force out even a whisper. I’ll do this alone, she decides, and sneaks up the stairs.

  In the bedroom she pulls the blouse from the bag, rips off the sales tag, and starts to undo the buttons. But before she can pad over to Richard’s
closet, she hears a creak of the floorboards out in the hallway. Then there’s another—he must be just outside the door. Isabel quickly stows the blouse in her dresser. When she sees the shopping bag on the floor she kicks it under the bed, wincing at the noise, then turns and waits for her husband’s entrance. But all she hears is silence—is he waiting for her? With a regretful glance back at the dresser—she’ll have to leave that blouse for later—Isabel leaves the bedroom as nonchalantly as she can.

  The hall is empty. She’d like to believe that creaking was just the house itself, but the door to the guest room is ajar. Again, she finds she can’t call Richard’s name, and she hurries downstairs.

  In the kitchen Isabel opens the lid of the crockpot and sees that Richard must have spooned out a plate of stew for himself. Then she hears the faint wooden rasp of a drawer opening upstairs. The drawer closes, then another opens. It’s Richard, and Isabel knows what he must be searching for. But will he recognize the blouse when he finds it? She waits, and through the lingering quiet comes the slide of the distant closet door.

  Barely able to contain herself, Isabel is waiting below when Richard walks down the stairs. At the sight of her he stops in mid-step, and he looks so sheepish standing there, one foot suspended in the air, that Isabel feels herself suppressing a grin. Maybe they should both laugh right now, just as they laughed years ago—if only the television were on, some studio audience might get them going! But the house is quiet, the moment passes, and Richard takes his step. They both glance away as he walks past her to the dark porch.

  Isabel follows. He’s settled in his chair, facing the cool night breezes, and she sits nearby on the steps. Together they listen to the air sifting through the trees, the drone of a distant airplane hidden by clouds. Already this is a bit like their long-ago, silent moment, and neither of them has to say a word about the secret they’re creating.