The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,4

nothing crafted, and the frost had long since toppled the upper boulders to the ground.

Other than these, there wasn’t much to discover. Strands of barbed wire, tarry shingles blown off the roof, a mushy baseball. She stepped on something sharper than a rock, reached down, picked up a wedge-shaped spike scaled in rust. There was a path worn into the ground, with bleached-out grass, and it led right to the wall and not one step farther. Someone had once walked there, walked there often, but had never gone beyond the edge of the property, though the meadow behind it ran for another hundred yards before the forest. This saddened her—the sense of limits, of obedience, of self-imposed circumscription.

A fence led around toward the front. A picket fence, the slats gray and peeling, only not a picket fence, because the slats were pressed tight together. She struggled to remember the right term. Stockade? A stockade fence? Stockade as in fortress? Stockade as in prison? Again, as always now, she stepped upon the booby trap of words.

Only one tree grew in back, an enormous box elder. From the thickest branch hung a tire swing that must have dated from the 1940s, so old and petrified was its rubber. Vera, reaching, was surprised to have it actually sway. They had hung a tire swing like that for Cassie from the branch of their plum—the solid remembrance of pushing came into her arms, the moment she saw it. Cassie had been reluctant to climb on that first time, she had an only child’s sense of prudence, but after that it became her favorite plaything for the whole of one summer, especially after sunset when she liked to swing back and forth kicking her legs out at the fireflies that flashed near her face.

“Higher Mommy!” she would yell—the little girl’s classic plea. “Higher!”

Good memory? Terrible memory? She wasn’t sure how to tell them apart anymore. Any walk she could find, any path, circled back to facing that.

In heading toward the back door, swerving sideways to get around a midden heap of rusty cans, she came upon a surprise. Poppies, tall ones, as brilliantly red as it was possible to imagine, their blossoms touching heads. They didn’t grow wild, someone must have once planted them, and she felt comforted by this, the evidence of a loving human presence. And there was better than that, too. Behind the poppies was a cluster of blueberry bushes taller than her head, and around these, as a kind of barrier, thorny blackberries, with so much fruit the vines sagged. She ate some of the plumpest, filled her cupped hands with more, then and only then began to think of breakfast.

Stone steps led up to the kitchen. It was dark inside—past ten now, and the sun hadn’t penetrated. A huge sink, zinc or cast iron, took up most of one wall, and past it was a gas range that must have been new in 1950. Hotpoint read the raised lettering on front, though both t's were twisted. This was the one room in the house that wasn’t wallpapered, but painted. The wainscoting, running up from the linoleum, looked greasy and dusty at the same time, and above it the walls were the color of raw liver. A piece of stovepipe stuck out from the ceiling like a fat cigar, but there was nothing under it other than a black scar on the linoleum where a woodstove had once rested. The room smelled of something she couldn’t identify, but seemed part shoe polish, part charcoal, part skunk.

The only thing new was the refrigerator, which Jeannie had insisted on installing ahead of her visit. She had crammed it full of food and then piled even more on top. Half was the junk food they loved as girls, half was the organic that was Jeannie’s new passion; Vera ended up having soy yogurt and a cellophane-wrapped cupcake for breakfast.

The bathroom was wedged in a corner behind flimsy walls. Vera, despite herself, knocked on the door before she went in— the door with heart-shaped openings cut in the panels to let heat flow through. The wallpaper inside had shiny red and green stripes like Christmas wrapping, but it was peeling and didn’t look like it would be hard to strip. There was no tub or shower, which Jeannie had apologized for a dozen times over, but the hose worked out in the yard, and, if she felt adventurous, there was always the stream across the