Beyond the Bedroom Wall

by Larry Woiwode

  When our father first took us through the room, he said he'd install a dormer there, pointing, and fill the room with daylight after he finished the downstairs more, but for the time being, all he did was move in a double bed for Tim and Jerome (I was at an age when I couldn't stand to be touched, much less sleep with anybody), and set a narrow cot up against one wall for me.

  I'd lie awake at night and listen for sounds in the wind or otherwise to bring good news or keep me company. Black Forest leaves above and friends below. A wooden catwalk with no rails ran from the door of the room to the steps downstairs, and I'd get out of bed and go along the catwalk and down the stairs toward a house deep asleep, and enter its warmth as though stepping down steps deeper underwater. A low hallway (I could hear it) led from the stairs to the left, past the bathroom, and opened on the long living room. I never snapped the wall switch in the living room, because windows would blink, rugs snap flat, chair backs straighten and make ready for you to sit in them. At the far corner of the room, near the front entrance, the door of my parents' bedroom guarded their sleep as their sleep guarded me from bad dreams, or so I thought then. Another arch led to the kitchen-dining room—a higher star-lightened arch that was like a door on the night. Pans sitting out, and the faceted-glass knobs on the kitchen cabinets, picking up bits of starlight, were like the eyes of creatures gathered beneath this sea.

  Back in bed, hearing the whole house creak and sigh in Its heavy sleep, I thought of my family asleep inside it and prayed that I might be, too, soon, but the dark air was alive with excitement; a passing train, a car, the lashing of a tree, a cat scaling the tree, and other disturbances that made no noise, sent currents of feeling over nay skin. My mother's sleeplessness came to me in cold waves. When the sun rose, the air grew thick and agitated and harder to breathe, and some nights, for a reason I could never understand, it thickened and pressed against me.

  There was misunderstanding, or ill will, among the board members of the new consolidated school, or somebody made a promise he shouldn't have, or there was a mix-up in the hiring (none of this was explained to us children), and our father started working in one of Jay's plastering crews. The remodeling of the house slowed to a stop; gray rock lath rose to shoulder height and above it the bare studs, black with dirt and age, stood exposed. Our father wasn't one to break a promise, or leave a job undone, but the dormer to our room never appeared.,

  My mother didn't like the new house and was upset that my father wasn't teaching again, and this time not of his own free will. And I was old enough to know that she was pregnant again. "Well, we've got enough to make a basketball team, and now we'll have enough for a six-man football squad," my father would say, trying to lighten her mood, but there was never any sign that she beard him. He watched her from the time he came home until he went to bed. How was she feeling today? Fine. Was there anything he could do? No. When her answers turned from single words to shrugs, and his smile and time-honored burlesque of the schottische, with a broom for a partner, failed to cheer her up, he became silent, too.

  *

  One afternoon I was at the top of a stepladder in the kitchen, nailing rock lath to the partition my father had built. She sat beside the kitchen table below me, ignoring the noise I made, and embroidered in the middle of a silver-colored hoop. I missed a nail completely, and the stud, too, and a moon-shaped hole appeared in the lam, where the head of my hammer had hit home. I cursed and she didn't look up. She usually washed my mouth out with soap when she heard me curse. My father never swore around her or anybody else and now she was letting me get away with it. I felt manly and arrogant and made even more noise.

  And then I realized how much she must have changed, to be able to ignore what once angered her so, and studied her from the top of the stepladder. Her face was dry and chapped and there was a color to it I'd never seen. Her hair, which had almost always hung loose, was now pinned behind her ears as if to hide its stringiness and oily sheen. At her temples I could see the bones of her skull. She paused in her sewing and looked at her hand, first the palm, then the back, then the palm again.

  "Mom? Are you O.K.?"

  "Yes," she said, but she picked up her sewing in such a quick way it was as if I'd caught her at something.

  "Don't worry about me. Just do your job."

  Her tone of voice frightened me. I came down the stepladder, marked a piece of lath, and cut it with razor knife, shakily curving off in the wrong direction two, or three times. I snapped the lath across my knee, snapped off the hinged endpiece, and started up the ladder. An emotion rose from her and pressed on me like a hand, stopped and stared at the grooves of a step and tried to figure out what she was feeling, and then turned to her and the grooves seemed to lift with my eyes, reach through the air, and link us. She lifted her eyes to me. At any other time she would have smiled, or told me, with a blush, to stop staring, but now she held me with her eyes until I was the one who blushed, and so badly I had to start hammering again.

  "Don't," she said.

  "Don't what?"

  She was running her fingertips over her embroidery.

  "Don't work any more."

  "The noise bothers you?"

  "I don't want you to work."

  "Why?"

  "Go and play."

  “Who with?" I took a nail out of my mouth and pounded it in place. "Dad told me to finish this wall." .

  "You're too young to work."

  "I am not."

  "Don't argue. Go outside."

  I couldn't see her face and with her face hidden her voice didn't seem a part of her. I came down the step-ladder, angry, ready to force her to look at me, and saw that the length and breadth of her cheeks were wet with tears.

  "You're never to work with your hands," she said. "Do you hear? Never!"

  I went out of the kitchen and sat on the back concrete steps. It wasn't right for her to go against my father, and she never had, and now she was even going against herself: Just do your job. She wouldn't talk to you, and when she did she wouldn't look at you, and then she cried. If something was wrong and she didn't want me to know what it was, then I wished she'd leave me alone. Whatever was bothering her was affecting the rest of us, and that wasn't fair of her and I wanted it to stop.

  Then I remembered the long unguarded look she'd held me with and felt ashamed.

  One January night I woke and felt that the dark air had thickened. It was denser than it was when the sun rose, and a sound was fluttering up through its denseness to where I lay. I strained hard to hear, my eyes aching from their search of the dark, and caught a breathy creak like a beating pigeon's wings, a sound that came from below and traveled toward me and almost touched, then fell I to an ebb. I rolled over and my shoulder struck the wall.

  Light switches clicked, there were footsteps downstairs, I the telephone bell jingled as it was cranked to get Central, and I felt the heavy throb of my father's bass voice. There were a number of throbs, punctuated by silences that were like humming question marks in the dark air, and then the receiver snapped into its holder, my father's footsteps crossed the kitchen, and another switch clicked; a white rectangle, opened in equal wings on the wall and the floor, unhinged—the light in the hall at the foot of the stairs. He made hurried trips from the bathroom to their bedroom and back again.

  Jerome?" I said. There was no answer.

  I went out the catwalk and looked down the stairwell. A flowing shadow fluttered over the bottom steps.

  "Dad?"

  There was a long silence, and then my father's face appeared around the corner, his features holding darkness from above him. "What are you doing up?"

  "Nothing."

  "Then get back to bed."

  "Who were you calling?"

  "You heard me on the phone?"

  "Yes."

  "What did you hear?"

  "Talking. Who was it?"

  "The doctor. Do you realize it's three o'clock?"

  "Is somebody sick?"

&n
bsp; He stared up at me, and then said in a whisper, "Get to bed! Please!"

  I did, but I couldn't sleep; the birdlike sounds rose up again, his footsteps crossed the house, in long strides this time, and the jingling of the telephone was prolonged. I got out of bed and went to the bottom of the stairs before I could hear. "—realize it's practically a half hour since I called? You can't be more than two blocks away and if— What? How can a man read at a time like this? Well, I don't give a damn about your damn family doctor's book!"

  The profanity, so wrong on my father's tongue, frightened me, and his voice was usually under control; I'd never heard it like this. "No, you listen to me now. You be here in five minutes or I'll come and get you!"

  He dropped the receiver into its cradle, leaned against the wall, and said, "Oh, Lord, help me, please." He drew up to his full height and when he turned his face to me it wasn't my father's face. It was so pale it seemed his day-old beard had caved it in, and his features still held shadow from the upstairs.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Are you sick?"

  "What are you doing down here?"

  "I have to go to the toilet."

  He gripped the bridge of his nose and moaned as though dangerously ill. "Go," he said.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Do as you're told."

  I went to the bathroom and stood at the stool. On the hamper beside it was a pile of sheets that looked thrown down in haste; one hung on the floor. The stool was still from the days of the gasoline station; its bowl leaked and the boards of the floor were damp around it; it was to be replaced. Boxes of floor tile stood under its perspiring tank.

  "What are you doing in there?" I heard from outside and my stream went over the toilet seat and onto the floor.

  "What do you think?"

  "Come out here!"

  I cleaned up and lifted the sheet from the floor and saw that the other was covered with blood. I ran out and found him blocking the hall.

  "Hurry," he said. "I'll turn out the light."

  "I want to see Mom."

  "No. Not now."

  "Why?"

  "She isn't feeling well."

  "I want to see her!"

  "In the morning. Go now."

  "She's sick?"

  He nodded his head. I couldn't ask him anything more, or disobey and run past him to their bedroom, but as I climbed the stairs I felt I'd done something wrong and couldn't think what it was; and then I realized, more from the silence than from what he'd said, that my mother was ill, not him, and began to shake as though with the fever of pneumonia, but with chills inside this time. I got under the covers, the winged rectangle on the floor went, and darkness lay on me with a weight it had never had before. It took all my imagination and strength, and closed eyes, to keep it away, and then I heard unfamiliar voices, several of them, it seemed, and gave up to the dark.

  I dreamed I was walking with my mother through a large department store. The walls and ceiling were white and the floor was of white marble. There were low display casts set at great distances from one another. My mother had my hand in hers. She wanted to go upstairs and I wanted to stay where we were, on ground level, and look in the display cases. I pulled away from her and ran to one. Don't! Don't look! she cried, and her voice echoed through the empty store.

  The case was filled with blue china figurines. There was a blue swan, like the one in our kitchen, with a hole in its back, so it could be used as a flowerpot, there were blue angels, and small blue busts of young children. My mother put her hand on my shoulder and said. Come with me. I turned to tell her no, and couldn't breathe. She stood high above me, taller than she'd ever been, her face made of blue china, her eyes alive and staring at me as they had in the kitchen. She pulled her coat close up around her throat and walked away. I tried to run after her but my feet wouldn't move in the sand of deathly dreams.

  I woke to darkness, twisted in the blankets, my heart beating hard against the mattress. I had to see my mother right away. I started out of bed and struck the wall. The wall was on the other side of the cot. I tried again, and again I struck it. There wasn't a wall on that side of the cot, and not all the logic in the world, or the wall itself, could convince me otherwise. Being reversed in bed never occurred to me. I tried again and again. I called for Jerome and there was no word. Was I outside the room? Finally I fell back on the cot, exhausted, and my left arm stretched out into blank space. If there was a wall where I knew there was none, then what lay in this emptiness where the wall should be? I pulled my arm onto the safety of the cot and held it over my chest, afraid to move, afraid of the dark.

  *

  In the morning, without having to be told, I knew my mother was gone. My father, who'd had no sleep, gathered Tim and Jerome and me on a cot he'd set up in the kitchen, close to the telephone, and said, "Last night your mother had to be taken to the hospital. I want you all to pray that she'll be all right. This is a time when we have to keep close together, boys." Without being able to confide in him, or in anybody else (once the sun has risen, the dark seems partly imagination), I knew I'd never see my mother again, and started preparing and blaming myself for her death before she even died.

  22

  SNOWFALL ALONG THE ILLINOIS

  Martin hadn't ever had a telephone in the house, and disliked the instrument and its way of invading his private life. One night it rang at 1 a.m. He got on his glasses and grabbed up the receiver before the thing rang itself out; it was the doctor on the other end. He'd been looking through his family doctor book, he said, and thought perhaps Alpha might have an acute form of hepatitis and should maybe see an internist in Peoria or somewhere. He went into a lengthy explanation of hepatitis, of the relationship between the patient and his disease, explaining that this information came from the book lying open in front of him, and soon his speech became rambling and convoluted and took sudden shifts that had no relation to logic, yet made sense to Martin as he listened in. There was a sound of lengthy sighing and then a long pause.

  "Well, I don't know why you're telling me all this at such an ungodly hour," Martin said, and hung up.

  That morning he called an internist in Pekin to see about an appointment; the internist asked who Alpha was presently seeing and Martin told him.

  "Oh, goodness."

  "Why? What's that about?”

  "I'm afraid the poor fellow's about to lose his license. There have been a lot of complaints about him and we're about to get a full-scale investigation under way on him. We're pretty sure he's been using opium."

  An appointment with the internist was scheduled for two days later, and the next night Martin woke to an unnatural coldness that seemed to emanate from beside the bed. Raw-throated sounds, powerful yet constrained, were coming from the direction of the coldness, as if Alpha were crying and attempting to stifle it, but he'd never heard her cry in such a voice. She wouldn't answer, and then her fist hit his face; it was tensed and beating at him with a fury he couldn't fathom. He threw back the covers and turned on the lamp; Alpha was unconscious, having convulsions, and bleeding into the bed.

  He ran and called the Pettibone doctor, who came on at once and was levelheaded and concerned and told him to make sure her tongue was forward in her mouth, to cover her and keep her warm, if it would ease his mind, but mostly to keep back and not hurt her by trying to help her; he'd be right over. Martin went back to the bedroom and the convulsions had stopped; she was breathing through her mouth as if asleep. Her tongue was as it should be.

  He pulled the damp and stained sheets off the bed and covered her well, piled the sheets in the bathroom, and then sat on the edge of their bed. He took her hand and thought. Must I go through this?—feeling he'd been through it before. Her eyelids trembled and opened on him with a tentative stir; she took a long time to focus. "You're so pale," she said.

  "You look better."

  "Why do I feel so light? Have I lost the baby?"

  "No, no. Don't worry now. The doctor's on
his way."

  "The doctor?"

  "You've been ill."

  "How long?"

  "Just a while."

  "I feel I've been under a spell a hundred years. Is this the hospital?'

  "No, we're at home now."

  "Where's the big window that looks out on the front porch?"

  "Here in Illinois."

  "Oh, I'm really confused then, or else I’ve been dreaming. So it's true that I'll lose the baby."

  "No, no, no. The baby's just fine."

  "No, I'll lose it. It’ll be as much sorrow to you as losing me, and you'll think of us together."

  "What do you mean?"

  "It's a girl." She turned to the wall and tears went over her nose and dropped in rapid spots over the ticking.

  "Alpha, I want you to know—"

  Her fingernails cut in and her face was transfigured as her spine arched and beat with the force of another convulsion. He grabbed her and held her while the raw-throated .sounds went and came as if she were falling down past him from a building and trying to cry out some final message or name. Then stopped. Then with a gasping intake of breath went up again and again came flying by with the important syllables missing, until he was afraid he'd do her harm if this didn't stop. Then she lay still on the bed beneath him. There was bloody foam on her lips. Her tongue was cut.

  He ran and called the doctor and was ready to hang up on empty ringing, relieved at least that the fellow was on his way, when the receiver lifted and a calm voice came on talking in a rambling and convoluted manner about the nature of illness and this book of his. Martin shouted something and slammed the receiver down; he was going to call Central and have them get through to the internist in Pekin, when he felt somebody and turned.

  Charles stood in the room, staring at him with Alpha's deep-blue, afflicted eyes. Martin couldn't speak and felt faint for fear the boy had seen her, but he hadn't, and Martin hurried him off to bed as quick as he could, and then got on the phone to the internist, who told him to have an ambulance bring Alpha to the hospital in Pekin right away; he'd be in the emergency room. Then Martin called his mother to come and stay with the children, and she arrived just as the ambulance attendants were wheeling Alpha's blanket-covered body out the front door.