The Writing on the Wall A Novel - By W. D. Wetherell Page 0,69
that’s where they found me and for the whole time they shouted bullied threatened I became just an empty headed gal with nothing on her mind but walls and wallpaper and prettying up her home.
They tore apart so much of the house it’s a wonder they didn’t rip off the wallpaper and save me the bother. When they finallyleft instead of trying to clean up their mess I started scraping and discovered the writing wasn’t just doodling but a woman’s story.
When I started reading all I was aware of was how different she was from me it was all so far back in time but soon I realized how similar we were to each other and how fifty years is nothing but a second a flick of the eyelashes a snap of the fingers a whisper.
I don’t have to tell you this about Beth because it’s how you must feel yourself. After I finished her story I worked in the sewing room until the walls were all bare. Seeing this running my hand along the smooth plaster I felt like a little girl who has a secret and will burst if she can’t tell it to somebody. Like that except it’s not an itchy spot in my tummy or a buzzing on my bottom or a tugging on my pigtails or however it feels to a girl. My heart will burst if I don’t tell my story to somebody and that doesn’t feel like a figure of speech but the simple truth and the feeling hurts even worse because there’s not a single living person I can tell.
Nurses at work always tease me about my pens about how I carry so many colors and why bother since all we ever write are memos to doctors or the charts on beds. Now that I had a wall to write on I was happy to have so many and I spread them out across the floor like they were paint brushes I could pick up or put down according to my mood. In a way I can’t explain the bare walls are DEMANDING I write on them so it isn’t just the secret in me bursting to get out but something outside me yanking just as hard.
Stripping the paper off reading Beth’s story has been good for me it’s helped get me through these first days after my sweet lovely foolish boy left but the part of me that will never heal is the part I need to write down. Everybody has a secret they can’t share but MUST share and it could be who you loved or who you hurt or lied to or cheated or envied or fucked or didn’t fuck or a secret shame or crime or failure or even a secret triumph no one knows about but you and all that goes on the wall or stays inside you and rots.
I’m telling you this in the last few seconds before I finish my writing and cover it up with wallpaper that might not be stripped off for another fifty years. First Beth then me now you. We are the sharers of secrets we are sisters we are the women who write on walls.
Four
THE writing slanted like a ramp toward the floor but didn’t quite touch. In the six-inch space left blank Dottie had inserted a photo, wedging its bottom edge into the molding that formed the border with the fractured maple of the floor. Vera reached down and gently tugged to see whether it would slide out without having to use her scraper, and when it did, brought it over to the kerosene lamp where she could study it closer.
It looked like an old-fashioned Polaroid, the kind that only took one minute to develop. Andy—it could only be Andy— stood on the back steps of the house with his arms outstretched, holding what appeared to be a pie fresh out of the oven, since he held it with a fuzzy white mitt. He was younger looking than she imagined and more handsome, with his blond hair in a crew cut that was long enough now it could have used combing. He wore khaki work pants and a white t-shirt, and it was this last that made the photo seem ancient. No logos in those days, no shaping, just that bleached, angel-like whiteness billowed out from his chest. His expression seemed a bit exasperated, as if his mom had badgered him into posing, but patient enough now that she