Face on the Wall (3 page)

Annie snorted. “She doesn't look like a princess to me.”

“Oh, but she is. Last time I saw her she was still as lovely as ever, except—” Mary peered at the newsprint and read the broken sentences aloud.

S. PEARL SMALL

VANISHED

uliar circumstances.

are allegations of

omestic violence.

wice-widowed

ederick Small

es not answer

hone calls.

umored that

large parcel

There was no more. The rest of the page was gone.

“Except what?” said Annie.

“Except for the bruise on her cheek and a black eye. Oh my God, poor Princess! The bruises must have been his doing. Look, that's what it says right here. ‘Allegations of domestic violence.'”

Annie didn't believe it. “She was a battered wife? From
Harvard
?”

“Well, why not? Annie, when was this? Where's the rest of the papert”?

Annie fumbled with the sheets of newspaper under her jars of paint. “These are all from the
Boston Globe.
That one must be from another paper. The type is different.”

“Have you got the rest of it around somewhere?”

“No. I cleared everything out when I moved. All the old newspapers went to the dump. Except these. I wrapped dishes in these.”

Mary looked again at the pink dots that were the printed face of Pearl Small. “Poor Princess, I wonder what could have happened? Tell you what.” Mary snatched up her coat. “I'm going to show this to Homer. Maybe he can do something.”

Annie laughed. “Oh, poor Uncle Homer. I'll bet he's got enough to do. Every time I see him he looks more harassed. So long, Aunt Mary.”

She stood in the doorway and watched Mary Kelly zoom away down the drive. Then she went back inside and gazed up at the emptiness of her wall. For a moment she thought about the battered wife, the princess with long golden hair. Maybe she was like the wife of that wicked monster Bluebeard, who killed wife after wife and stored their bodies in a forbidden room. Was Princess Pearl another victim? Was she stowed away in a dark chamber with the bloated remains of his earlier wives, that long succession of slaughtered women?

Annie dragged a ladder to the far end of the room and told herself she had folktales on her mind. “Bluebeard” was just another story to put on her wall, along with “Snow White” and “Sleeping Beauty” and “Cinderella” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” There were evil creatures in all those stories—wicked queens, wicked ogres, wicked fairies, wicked stepmothers, ravening wolves. Their common wickedness was dark and mythological, but surely it mimicked real life, in which ravening wolves abounded. Annie picked up her straightedge, put a pencil in her teeth, and got to work.

By midmorning she had achieved the outline of the arcade. Six penciled columns rose on the wall, their center lines seven feet apart, their capitals still only a few ruled scrawls. Standing on a ladder with thumbtack, pencil and string, she traced five half-circles between them. Then, swiftly, she ran a line high on the wall between the columns, all the way across. It was the sea horizon.

At last, standing back, she looked up at her morning's work. Her fingers were trembling. She had imagined it so many times, she had sketched it so often on paper, hardly daring to think there would one day be a real succession of round arches marching across a thirty-five-foot stretch of wall. Now the two-dimensional surface fell away, revealing a deep space beyond the room, a kind of porch or gallery opening on a mock outdoors. The penciled lines were so light, no one else would notice them, but to Annie the essential framework was there. The wall had become a not-wall. It was framed in solid elements and poised in open air.

There was a knock at the door. Simultaneously her new telephone rang. Annie froze, then picked up the phone, said, “Just a minute,” and went to the door.

It was a stranger, a guy in a baseball cap. He was juggling three pebbles, tossing them up, catching them neatly, his eyes darting after them, not looking at Annie.

She stared at him, too surprised to speak.

“I was just wondering,” he said, pocketing the pebbles, “if you'd like somebody to paint your window frames.”

“My window frames?” Annie couldn't think. “Excuse me, there's someone on the phone. Wait a minute.”

“Annie?” said the powerful voice on the line.

In spite of herself Annie felt a lurch of joy. “Jack?”

“Annie, look, I've got to talk to you.”

Her old grievances came flooding back. Jack was one of her post-divorce boyfriends. He had walked out on her three years ago to move in with a girl named Gloria. She couldn't forgive him. Warily, with her eyes on the stranger at the door, she said, “What is there to talk about?” The stranger had turned away. His jacket said
WATERTOWN BRAKE AND MUFFLER.

“A thousand things. God.” Jack grunted with disgust. “Look, I'll be out on Friday, okay?”

Say no. Hold out against him.
“Well, okay,” said Annie.

She hung up and went back to the stranger. “Look,” she told him, “I'm not going to bother with the window frames now. Too many other things to do first.”

“Well, all right.” Smiling, he turned away. The pebbles reappeared. Annie could see them rising and falling above his head as he ambled down the walk, heading for the odd-looking vehicle parked in the driveway, a pickup truck with a wooden structure mounted on the back, a sort of gypsy caravan. A stovepipe stuck out of the roof.

Impulsively she called after him, “How much would you charge?”

A couple of bananas appeared from nowhere and soared into the air. He named a reasonable price.

Annie laughed loudly and made up her mind. “Well, I don't see why not. When do you want to start?”

“Right now, if you've got the primer. The wood has to be primed first.”

“Well, I could go out and buy some.” Annie looked uncertainly at her car.

“I'll wait.” He pulled a paper bag out of his pocket. “I'll eat my lunch down the hill.”

“Fine.” Annie went back inside, closed the door, and hurried into her bedroom. She combed her hair and pulled a jacket over her shirt and jeans. Then she went around the house locking doors against the juggling stranger.

As she got into her car she could see him down the hill, sitting on the grass, which must still be damp from the gentle spring rain of yesterday. He was facing away from the house, eating his lunch.

He was a traveling mountebank. Who could tell what he might magic away, if he managed to get inside? The new stainless-steel sink, the beautiful new stove, the CD player?

With a flick of his clever fingers he might even—it was idiotic, but Annie couldn't help glancing back over her shoulder at the north side of her house—he might even destroy her precious wall.

And so the prince was hired as the Imperial Swineherd.

Hans Christian Andersen, “The Swineherd”

Chapter 5

“Know then, my husband,” answered she, “we will lead them away, quite early in the morning, into the thickest part of the wood, and there make a fire, and give them each a little piece of bread.…”

The Brothers Grimm, “Hansel and Gretel”

I
t was moving day for the Gasts. Bob and Roberta scurried around their Cambridge apartment, labeling cardboard boxes, ordering Charlene and Eddy to pack up their toys. “For heaven's sake, Charlene,” said her mother, “your poor dolls. Be more careful. They cost a fortune. Why don't you wrap them in tissue paper?”

Charlene tumbled another flouncy doll on top of the others in the box. “These aren't any good anyway,” she said, looking sullenly at her mother. “I wish I had a princess doll.”

“Oh, Charlene,” said Roberta, “I've told you over and over again. Those dolls are just too expensive.”

“Alice has one, and she's really, really poor. Her mother's a cleaning lady.”

“Well, good for Alice.” Roberta plucked off the wall the antique mirror she had inherited from her mother. The surface was age-flecked and spotted.
Oh, God, there were spidery wrinkles on her upper lip.
She set the mirror down on the bed and snapped at Eddy, “Why don't you throw out those old broken crayons?” But when he made protesting noises, she threw up her hands. “Well, okay, I don't care. Keep them. What about the drawings? You don't want to keep all those old drawings, do you, Eddy?”

Eddy burst into tears and gathered them to his chest.

Roberta shouted at him to shut up. Her husband looked up and said mildly, “Oh, for heaven's sake, Roberta.”

Robert Gast was a talented and clever man. He had been a
summa
at Princeton, majoring in philosophy. He had written a prizewinning dissertation on the metaphysics of ethics. His mother had wanted to know what philosophy was
for.
“Honestly, Bobby, what can you do with it? Why don't you study something practical from now on?”

And then she had financed two years at business school, where Bob did indeed learn useful lessons, like how to set up in business for himself. The result was his own company, Gast Estate Management, specializing in the development of large pieces of open land. Bob's ideals as a land developer were high, having their source in the concept of the universe as a spiritual kingdom (Leibniz) or a city of God (St. Augustine). His method was simple. You put most of the land into conservation, but at the same time you guaranteed the owners a fair return by selling off a few expensive house lots around the edges.

So far Bob's commercial endeavors had not produced a city of God, but someday he fully intended to follow through on his noble plan. For now, the problem was finding the right sort of real estate in the first place—finding it, and then persuading the owners to work exclusively with Gast Estate Management. Just give him time. He was negotiating a promising deal right now.