The Woman in the Wall (15 page)

Kirsty nodded vigorously and grabbed me by the wrist.

"Come
on
, Anna," she said and dragged me out of the chair and away from Mr. Albright.

"Wait!" I stopped and dug in my heels. I looked back at Mr. Albright speculatively.

"Yes?" he said, seeing me looking at him.

I stared at him for a long moment, measuring him with my eyes.

"Um ... do you like your dress slacks with or without cuffs?" I asked.

"Excuse me?" He sounded rather startled.

"Your dress slacks. Some men seem to like them with cuffs and some without. And how about your shirts?" I asked, my imagination beginning to take fire, "Do you prefer button-down or plain? You look," I said, now happily launched on a whole new winter wardrobe, "like someone who wears a three-piece suit to work."

"
Anna! Come on right now!
"

And Kirsty dragged me away. It seemed as though I had spent the whole evening being dragged around by the wrist.

"Kirsty," I asked as we began to mount the stairs, "is he dead?"

"Is who dead?" Kirsty halted halfway up and stared at me.

My mind was in such a turmoil, I wasn't entirely sure which "he" I had been inquiring about, whether I meant F or our father.

"F," I decided. After all, I reasoned, if our father was dead he had probably died a long time ago, while F might still be lying in a pool of blood somewhere on the premises. "You didn't—hurt him, did you, Kirsty?"

"I'd
like
to hurt him," she said ominously. "No, I couldn't find him. Maybe he walked home."

I sighed, half with relief that he was safe from Kirsty's vengeance, and half with sorrow for the unhappy love, which had undoubtedly sent him home alone.

"And to think," Kirsty went on, "that I was actually almost pleased at getting him for a stepbrother. He seemed semihuman."

"Please, Kirsty," I begged, "
please
don't hurt F."

Kirsty looked at me in silence for a moment.

"One of the reasons I liked him," she said, "was that
you
seemed to like him."

I looked down at my feet and said nothing.

Evidently she read something in my face because she exploded. "That stinking rat! And he made you cry. He
knows
how rough this is on you."

"Well," I said, struggling to be fair, "it isn't very hard to make me cry."

"There he is, talking to Andrea. Don't worry," she reassured me, starting back down the stairs, "I won't lay a finger on him."

"But, Kirsty—" I objected, following along in her wake.

"What do you mean, 'That's Anna'?" demanded a voice below us. "What would
you
know about Anna?"

It was Andrea's voice, threatening to soar into hysterics at any moment. "Mother!" Andrea cried, looking wildly about herself, "This kid here says that girl is Anna. There! That girl right there on the stairs!" She pointed accusingly, and once again a whole roomful of people turned to stare at me as I stood, elevated for their inspection on the staircase. "It's not! It can't be!"

Andrea looked terrible, her hair mussed up and her face swollen and red with tears. Mother, Mr. Albright, and F stood behind her. Mother had one hand on Andrea's shoulder, apparently trying to calm her, but like everyone else, she was looking up at me.

Mother!
I thought, and my hand made a little involuntary gesture toward her. But I couldn't, no, I just couldn't. I wrenched my arm away from Kirsty and ran away, up the stairs.

They ran after me.

Like a pack of hounds in fall cry after a rabbit, they came. I heard the sound of my name being called, of many feet pounding up the stairs behind me.

"Hey!"

"Hey, Anna!"

Thud, thud, thud.

"Darling, come back!" That was Mother, I thought.

"Anna!" Kirsty, sounding impatient.

"Stop her! Make her come back here!" That was Andrea, her voice imperious, sounding out loud and clear above the others.

Thud, thud, thud.

"Who
is
this Anna?" Mr. Albright, sounding mystified.

"Catch her!" An unknown voice.

"Who?"

"The girl in the green dress!"

"Why?"

"I dunno, Andrea wants her."

"She's getting away!"

The thudding swelled to thunder, as the old staircase swayed and groaned under many running feet, like a ship in a gale.

"Oh, A," I heard F's voice, small and far away in the tumult, "I'm so sorry."

The attic door. If I could make it to the attic door before they burst in upon me, I would be perfectly safe. I could slam the door in their faces and lock them away forever. And it was so close! Only twenty feet or so from the head of the stairs.

I rounded the turn and then achieved the top. The door was just there, to the right.

Directly in front of it stood a boy and a girl, arms wrapped tightly about each other, heads lifted like startled deer.

"Out of my way," I ordered brusquely.

They merely gazed at me with wide, astonished eyes.

"There she is!" The leaders of the pack had breasted the top of the stairs and were baying almost at my heels.

I turned and ran in the opposite direction. Back through the upstairs hall, into the old nursery, and hence into the servants' quarters. There was a back stairway, down to the kitchen. I could slip back into my world through the broom closet in the kitchen. I flung myself down the narrow stairs, careless of falling, careless of the racket I was making, careless of everything but reaching sanctuary.

The kitchen was full of people. Evidently not everyone had participated in the chase. A whole group of people were standing around drinking sodas and eating corn chips. Someone had spilled most of the bag of chips on the floor. The broom closet door was open, and a boy was rooting around in it looking for a broom and dustpan with which to clean up the mess.

How could I possibly walk into the broom closet and close the door in front of all these people? The couple upstairs had been bad enough. There were at least ten people here, staring at me, at my wild eyes and frantic face. And the door to the broom closet didn't lock.

Gasping and pressing a hand to my aching side, I fled once again. Past the breakfast room, the laundry room, the scullery, through the butler's pantry, into the dining room, and so to the hall once more. The doorways to the billiard room, the back parlor, the front parlor, the library, all flashed by me. There were people all over, staring at me, pointing at me. And always behind, I heard the shouts of my pursuers, coming ever closer.

They were in the hall now, right behind me. There was nowhere to go. There was literally nowhere to go.

"Oh, help me! Help me," I sobbed, and turned the knob on the front door. It opened slowly, ponderously, as if it were a slab of stone rather than oak. When at last it stood open, I plunged through it, out onto the porch and down the front steps.

After seven years I was once again outside of the house.

It was dark; a flame-lit, dancing darkness. Kirsty had been at work in our front yard as well. Little pumpkins, twenty or thirty of them, were dotted about everywhere, yellow candlelight flickering through wicked, grinning little faces. The street light outside our house was on, and the porch light as well. A swollen, golden moon hung high above me.

I stopped; I stood still, breathing painfully. Where was I to go? I shivered violently. Dressed as I was, I would probably be found dead of exposure tomorrow morning. Ironic, really. Tomorrow, November first, was the Day of the Dead. Dead on the Day of the Dead, I thought idiotically. I turned around to bid a last farewell to my beloved house. It could not protect me now.

And they all came pouring out of the door.

I didn't run. I couldn't. While I kept in pretty good shape crawling through heating ducts and so on, I didn't have the lungs for this sort of activity. Also, my dress was too tight for easy movement.

They stopped too and stood panting and staring at me. It was a smaller group than I had thought: Mother, Kirsty, Andrea, and three strange boys, and in the back, F.

"It's—it's you, Anna," Mother said wonderingly.

At that moment, Mr. Albright appeared. He pushed his way through the little crowd on the front steps.

"Exactly what do you people think you're doing to this poor girl?" he demanded, in a low, intense voice. He stood in front of me, shielding me from their eyes.

"Elaine?" He turned to my mother. "What the hell is this all about, anyway? Why is everybody chasing this girl through the house like a gang of wild hyenas? If she's done something wrong, let's discuss it in a civilized manner instead of scaring her half to death. Elaine?"

"It's Anna," my mother said. "After all these years, it's Anna. And—and she's all grown up!" Mother burst into noisy tears.

"Look, Mom," Kirsty said eagerly. "You can
see
her now."

"Yes," Mother wept, "I see."

Mr. Albright was clearly bewildered, and he was not a man to enjoy being in that condition.

"Will somebody please tell me," he growled, swinging on me with a menacing expression, "
Who is this girl?
"

Kirsty and Mother both spoke at once.

"She's—" Kirsty began.

"Frank, that's my—" Mother said. They both stopped in confusion.

Mother, I saw, was willing to claim me.

"Andrea could tell you," I suggested diffidently.

Andrea stared at me for a moment, expressionless. At last she spoke.

"That's Anna," she admitted.

"Oh, Frank, it's
Anna!
" Mother sobbed.

"I
know
that," Mr. Albright snapped irritably. "But who
is
Anna?"

"Anna is my sister," Andrea said.

Mr. Albright looked blank, as though he wasn't following the conversation.

"Hey, cool!" said one of the three strange boys.

"My
little
sister," Andrea continued, "though that may not be so obvious." She turned to Mother. "Do you think she should be allowed to dress like that when she's only fourteen years old?"

"I think she looks lovely," Mother said, smiling through her tears.

"Me too," offered another of the three strange boys.

"That's not exactly the point, Ma," said Andrea sulkily.

Mr. Albright closed his mouth, which had been hanging open. He cleared his throat.

"Perhaps we should go back inside the house and discuss this. It sounds like you've got some explaining to do, Elaine."

"Yes," my mother said, smiling radiantly. "I do. Lots of explaining. I'm so sorry, Frank," she said, turning a beaming face on him. "I
couldn't
tell you before. I wanted to, but you would have thought I was crazy. I mean,
I
thought I was crazy. But I'm not. I'm not crazy. Oh, Anna, please, please let me give you a hug."

Shyly I submitted. It was strange, being embraced by my mother, but after spending what seemed like hours in the arms of one man after another, it was less of a novelty than it might have been earlier. I even hugged her back a little bit.

We went back into the house. I looked back over my shoulder at the autumn night I had visited so briefly. It was rather beautiful, I thought; unlike the terrifying daylit world, it did not give a sense of infinite space. It seemed a secret, private place, with deep shadows between the pools of lamp light. It was a place where I could go, a place I could walk in unafraid, until I grew accustomed to the wide world.

Mr. Albright scolded the three boys, who were showing a good deal of interest in this new development in our family, and sent them home. Then he sent everybody else at the party home.

Once the hubbub of leave-taking was over, once Mr. Albright had scoured through the house three times, flushing out an impromptu saxophone recital in the front parlor, as well as assorted couples kissing in the laundry room, the linen closet, and the breakfast room, Mother explained.

She explained all about me right up until the moment I disappeared into the wall. Her recitation was interrupted periodically by a series of mini-explosions of disbelief and consternation from Mr. Albright, but she persevered to the end. When Mother finished, F, blushing hotly, explained about our correspondence.

"But, Francis," Mr. Albright protested, looking as though events had gotten a bit beyond his control, "how did you even know she existed?"

"I didn't." He looked miserably at me. I rescued him.

"He didn't. He just wrote a note and stuck it in the wall for the fun of it, thinking maybe someday somebody would find it."

"Yeah," F agreed, nodding enthusiastically. "Like putting a note in a bottle and throwing it in the ocean. Kind of a neat idea, I always thought."

Andrea rolled her eyes.

"F—that is, Francis—has a very romantic nature," I defended him.

"Pff!" Andrea made a contemptuous noise with her lips.

"And you're telling me you've been living in some kind of a little hole in the walls all this time," said Mr. Albright incredulously.

"
Not
a little hole," I contradicted him.

"Oh, Anna, it was too a little hole." Kirsty shook her head at me.

"But—you never saw the rest of it. You don't know—" I stopped. They would never see, never know the full extent of my achievement. They were too big to travel through my passages. Even I was too big. I sighed.

"It wasn't little," I said sadly. "It was the whole world to me."

I was banished from that world forever, I knew. I couldn't go back now. One day soon I would go away from here entirely; I would leave this house, perhaps never to return.

I hugged myself, comforting my fear. Very well then, I thought, I will be my own house. I will build myself a house out of my own flesh and bones where my frightened child-self can find shelter. After all, isn't that one of the things that women do? We are houses for our children, until they are strong enough to breathe and walk alone. Someday I may carry a baby inside me, shielding it from harm within the stronghold of my body. So surely I must be able to give myself shelter now.