The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (6 page)

Five months after our conversation about leaving school we had our second talk. I had not forgotten about the choices lined out for me, but I was no closer to deciding which was best than I had been the first time.

Her expression was graver this time. She started off with the biggest news first.

“Mr. H. and I are giving up the farm. His heart just won’t take it, all the work there is, and my lumbago doesn’t like winter better than it ever has. My brother lives in Ohio and that’s where we’ll be moving. George Steen is giving us something for the land, enough for rail fare anyway. That leaves you Beth to think about.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said quickly, though the words were even more hollow than they sounded.

“Alan Steen you must surely know. Wasn’t he just ahead of you in school? I saw him yesterday when I went to town and he’s usually so bashful and quiet, but he surprised me since we had a nice long talk.”

Mrs. Hodsgon said he asked about me but I gave this no credence. I never saw him speak to a girl in school let alone me. He played baseball but stood at the bottom of the class and never opened a book without wincing. He was gentle with the smaller pupils, he never let anyone bully them, and other than that I knew very little about him.

He is six feet tall, with boyish features, and his friends tease him cruelly about his ears. He slumps too much, being so tall, but when he finally looks at you his eyes are friendly and sympathetic. And his hair is oatmeal colored, with lots of brown sugar mixed in. He is strong, he has always been strong if you talk just about muscles. Once at school the shed caved in from the snow and he went outside and lifted the beam on his shoulders until the men could come brace it back up.

He started visiting the farm now, pretending it was to talk to Mr. Hodsgon. I remember being astonished that he could talk so easily. Most of it was about his parents who he worshipped. He was temporarily angry with his father because he wanted to go join the Canadians and fight against the Kaiser and his father said no, but I never heard him say anything else against him.

Mr. Hodgson did not think very highly of George Steen. He was said to be the richest man in town, but what did that mean up here? “He’s got his head an inch further out of the mud than the rest of us,” Mr. H. said. “An inch—and he thinks it’s a mile.”

When commencement night came Mrs. Hodsgon made a dress for me from muslin she found in her trunk. She tried her best, she looked startled and puzzled when she first saw it on me, but I loved it since I never had white to wear or anything so soft. I worked hard on my speech, I delivered it in a clear, strong voice, but it dissatisfied me terribly. It was about our futures and how bright they were, but when I looked down at the six graduates waiting to receive their diplomas, saw how dull and hopeless they looked, I knew it was all platitudes and I had chosen the wrong thing to say.

They were all going on to high school but not me. The Hodgsons were leaving for Ohio in July. My dress I would never wear again. I hate self-pity more than I do anything, but it was hard and I turned rudely away from people who congratulated me on my speech and tried not to cry. But that was only half how I felt. There was a tent set up and paper lanterns and banjo music and I saw the older boys staring at me in a way they never had before and for the first time ever I felt pretty and feeling this made me dizzy and I wanted to feel it even more.

That was one of those June evenings when the locust trees blossom even beyond what they manage normally, and the creamy tassels looked like decorations hung from the branches especially for us. They were the same color as my dress—I remember that, too. Behind the school was a grove of hemlock and we all knew that if you ducked your head and pushed through the branches you came to a secret path that led down to a soft little wildflower meadow where no one could see you. After a while people stopped congratulating me and I was alone. I could hear fiddle music starting and I was still feeling dizzy, only this time it was from the perfume of the locust blossoms which was overwhelming

Without really thinking about it, I began walking toward the hemlock grove, and without ever hearing him, I noticed Alan Steen walking right behind me. We came to the secret passage and stopped side by side. We still did not talk, though I could feel his eyes on my shoulders and the back of my hair. I knew that if I ducked through the branches and pulled the briars apart and walked down to the meadow he would follow after me, shy as he was. It did not seem just a meadow, it seemed like my future, and I was tired of always waiting for the future, always being frightened of it. That is why when Alan, getting up his courage before I did, stepped through the trees, held the branches back, reached his hand out, I took it, held it hard. I was fifteen and a half years old.

His parents decided that the wedding should be in August. The Hodgsons had left by then and so Alan’s maiden aunt walked me down the aisle, tsk-tsking with her tongue the entire way. It was only afterwards that I got to know Mr. Steen. Mr. H. always described him as a cross between President Taft and President Wilson—“lard topped with preacher.” And it is true, he is corpulent now, though in his younger days he had been a famous brawler and his face, solemn as it is, still bears scars. His skin is the color of old potato peels, his ears and nose are stuffed with briary red hair and his eyes always look frightened and confused without his meaning them to.

He has a business that thrives, buying up land and abandoned farm houses, ripping them apart and having Alan cart the planks down to the city where they fetch a good price. When Mr. Steen was young he had gone for wild times to Quebec and he had the fixed belief that Sherbrooke was going to be the next Montreal. If you took a ruler and drew a line on a map from Sherbrooke to Boston it went right through town, thereby assuring him his eventual fortune.

In the meantime he never worked very hard, but spent all his free time hating. He hates immigrants and Jews and Negroes and professors and Socialists and sissies and scientists and Democrats. None of these people demonstrate true Americanism in his opinion, Americanism being his favorite word. He could be nice enough, talking to me, almost too nice I thought at times, but when the hate comes over him his eyes harden, his neck stiffens, and his fat puffs up until he seems doubled. Where does this come from? I often wondered. His life had not been a bad one. It was like he plucked it out of the air, that was the frightening thing. Like hate had wafted in a cloud from another part of the country and, since it suited him, he reached up and pulled the cloud down.

He has his cronies, the toughest of the loggers and teamsters who are in his employ. “My troopers,” he calls them. There are no Jews here to trouble or Negroes, so during the war they devoted most of their energy to harassing Frenchies. Young farm boys were crossing the line from Quebec to hide from conscription, they wanted no part of England’s fight, and Mr. Steen and his posse patrolled the back roads at night to capture them and send them back, almost always after beating them senseless.

Mrs. Steen is rail thin, with black hair so beautifully silky it seems stolen and a chin that looks hacked out of bone-white flint. Her lips hardly move when she talks, the words seem to emerge half-formed from the bottom of her neck. She is a miser, her fingers enjoy the feel of money which she always turns in her fingers before pocketing. She bullies the minister in church, he goes around in constant fear of what she might demand, and she will not allow a book in her house except the Bible.

She calls me “My little lamb” and all but purrs, but then she remembers that I had finished ninth grade and she had only gone through fourth and so she scowls and calls me “The professor” or “Little Miss Fancy Airs.” She hates me because I will not go to church on Sundays. I told her it was Alan’s one day off, our only time to walk in the woods together or go for a picnic, but this only made her angrier.

Alan listens to everything his parents say, takes it very seriously and will not hear a word against them. They bully him mercilessly, are always comparing his lack of accomplishments to his father’s success. How he gave in on the house is a good example.

We planned to purchase one of the old farmhouses and fix it up. We talked and talked about how we would do this, but his parents said no, that we must live closer to town, that only rough people still lived in the hills. I remember after the wedding when we finished the miserly round of sugarcake that was all Mrs. Steen would allow. “I have a surprise for you, Beth,” Alan said, turning away so as not to meet my eyes. “Mother and Father are building us a new house out by the creamery and it should be ready by autumn.”

The spot they picked was three miles from town but Mr. Steen was convinced business would grow in that direction and then we would be in the center of things. The fields round about were owned by Judson Swearingen and they are wet and soggy most seasons, but there were three flat acres protected from the north wind by hills. The only neighbor lives with his daughter a half mile further on the road, old Asa Hogg who came back addled from the Civil War after all he had seen.

We stayed with Alan’s parents while the house was being built. Mr. Steen would drive us out in his carriage to watch how things progressed. He was good with horses, he could calm the unruliest with a whisper, and except for the fact that he needed them for business he had no use for automobiles at all. He would bark instructions out to the workmen from the road, gesturing with the mallets of his fists. Mrs. Steen sat beside him with her head bowed praying. Praying for the house to be finished quickly? Praying for the rafters to collapse? It was going to be nicer than the house she had as a bride so she was jealous. Since her lips barely moved and her voice emerged from her neck, people in church thought she was speaking in tongues. It made me shiver and if no one was watching I covered up my ears.

The house was finished in October. Alan did not tell me until we moved in, but some of the timbers had been salvaged from the Hodgsons’ farm when Mr. Steen tore it down. This made me sad but then I felt comforted and reassured, that those good people were still somehow with me. Alan painted the house red and put up a small barn and I was responsible for making everything pretty inside. I had my collection of books and Alan crafted a shelf for them which we put under the window here in the parlor. There were not very many. Mrs. H. had given me her Dickens and teachers in school felt sorry for me and sent textbooks and I had some poetry from the library they were otherwise going to discard. Not many books—and so I cherished every volume like old friends.

The workmen left a mess inside and it was many weeks before I had things straightened and cleaned. The kitchen was too big but Alan found a wide silver stove that made it cozier. I ordered a beautiful paper from the Sears and Roebuck book but I procrastinated pasting it up since I loved the bare walls just as they were. The plaster was cream colored and so smooth you could not resist running your hands along them. They gave you the feeling that they could be anything you wanted them to be, that they were just waiting for your command. Mr. Steen hired his roughnecks to build the house but for plastering the walls he sent for a gentle Italian man, Mr. Cipporino, who lived three towns south and was a master of his craft.

“Ah Beth!” he would sigh as I sat watching him work. I knew that it was not me he was sighing for, but someone he had left years ago in Italy. “Ah, mia Beth!”—and then, turning back to the wall, he would smooth his artist’s hands across the plaster to make it perfect.

Mrs. Steen hated the walls, she always complained how bare and ugly they looked without paper and when was I going to decently cover them? Never, if it was up to me. Not until I understood what their smoothness was asking of me, what they wanted me to make them.

I would have liked the house more if I was not bothered by a feeling that grew stronger toward winter. What had I done to deserve something so nice? I knew about housework, I could clean and scrub all day long, and yet my labor had not earned the house and for that matter neither had Alan’s. I had no one I could talk to about this. Alan could be strong at night in our room, so strong and loving in the light from our candle, and yet this would fade once dawn came and he would be timid and uncertain, letting his parents boss him or even his friends. I loved winter more than summer because in winter the nights were longer and the longer the nights lasted the longer he was mine.

A baby was supposed to come that spring, we both knew what was expected, and when it did not I had no one to ask questions of and I was left alone to suffer everyone’s whispers and stares. It was then that my idea formed, though really I had clung to it all along. I know it was Decoration Day before I got up the nerve to ask.

We sat on the porch waiting to go into town. When I was little there would be a parade with all the G.A.R. veterans but now only poor Asa Hogg was left. Alan was going to drive him to town and hold him steady while he laid a wreath on the monument. I knew we would not have time alone later so I decided to ask now.

“I will put the garden in tomorrow,” I said, not knowing how else to start. “I think blueberries will do well here, so we need to find out about cuttings.”

Alan, who sat with his chair propped back against the railing the way he liked, grunted out a yes. A merganser splashing in the stream across the road held his attention.

“We have the house nearly done now,” I said. “We shall have a family, but it may not be for some time yet.”

The merganser paddled off and it was only then that he looked at me.

“What was that, Beth?”

If I was going to ask, it had to be all in one rush.

“I wrote the principal at the high school and he said I could matriculate in September, though I may have to work harder than the others to catch up. I’m ahead in reading and not that far behind in numbers. I might be able to graduate in a year and a half if I work hard. Then I could be of help to you in business and when we have children I can teach them at home even before they go to school.”