Part 4 (2/2)

She inserted her quarters and started the machine as Nancy disappeared. The clothes were mostly clean; she had grabbed any old thing to make a respectable-looking load. The extra was.h.i.+ng wouldn't hurt them. With a tingling all over her skin and an irrepressible smile, she unsealed the can. Spraying was much easier than she had expected. The F, which she put on the wall behind the washer, took barely any time and effort. Paint dripped thickly from its upper left corner, though, indicating she had pressed too hard and too long. It was simple to adjust the pressure, and by the second N she felt quite confident, as if she had done this often before. She took a few steps back to look it over. It was beautiful-bold, thick, and bright against the cream-colored wall. So beautiful that she did another directly across the room. Then on the inside of the open door, rarely seen, she tried it vertically; aside from some long amateurish drips, she was delighted at the effect. She proceeded to the boiler room, where she sprayed FRANNY on the boiler and on the wall, then decided she had done enough for one night. Waiting for the laundry cycle to end, she was surrounded by the red, l.u.s.trous reverberations of her name, vibrating across the room at each other; she felt warmed and strengthened by the firm, familiar walls of her own self. While the room filled and teemed with visual echoes of FRANNY, Mrs. Saunders became supremely at peace.

She climbed the stairs slowly, adrift in this happy glow. She would collect her things from the dryer late tomorrow morning. Lots of young mothers and children would have been in and out by then. Nancy was the only one who could suspect, but surely Nancy didn't come down with a load every day; besides, she was so tired and hara.s.sed she probably wouldn't remember clearly. Mrs. Saunders entered her apartment smiling securely with her secret.

Yet new difficulties arose over the next few days. The deserted laundry room at night was child's play compared to the more public, open, and populated areas of the development. Mrs. Saunders finally bought a large tote bag in Woolworth's so she could carry the paint with her and take advantage of random moments of solitude. There were frequent lulls when the children's playground was empty, but since it was in full view of the balconies and rear windows, only once, at four-thirty on a Wednesday morning, did she feel safe, working quickly and efficiently to complete her name five times. The parking lot needed to be done in the early hours too, as well as the front walk and the wall s.p.a.ce near the mailboxes. It was astonis.h.i.+ng, she came to realize, how little you could rely on being un.o.bserved in a suburban garden apartment development, unless you stayed behind your own closed door.

Nevertheless, she did manage to get her name sprayed in half a dozen places, and she took to walking around the grounds on sunny afternoons to experience the fairly delirious sensation of her ident.i.ty, secretly yet miraculously out in the open, sending humming rays towards her as she moved along. Wherever she went she encountered herself. Never in all her life had she had such a potent sense of occupying and making an imprint on the world around her. The reds and blues and golds seemed even to quiver and heighten in tone as she approached, as if in recognition and tribute, but this she knew was an optical illusion. Still, if only they could speak. Then her joy and fulfillment would be complete. After her walks she sat in her apartment and smoked and saw behind her closed eyes parades of brilliantly colored FRANNYs move along in the darkness, and felt entranced as with the warmth of a soothing physical embrace. Only once did she have a moment of unease, when she met Jill on her way back in early one morning.

”Mrs. Saunders, did anything happen? What's the red stuff on your fingers?”

”Just nail polish, dear. I spilled some.”

Jill glanced at her unpolished nails and opened her mouth to speak, but apparently changed her mind.

”Fixing a run in a stocking,” Mrs. Saunders added as she carried her shopping bag inside. She sensed potential danger in that meeting, yet also enjoyed a thrill of defiance and a deep, faint flicker of expectation.

Then one evening Harris, Jill's husband, knocked on Mrs. Saunders' door to tell her there would be a tenants' meeting tomorrow night in the community room.

”You must have noticed,” he said, ”the way this place has been deteriorating lately. I mean, when we first moved in four years ago it was brand-new and they took care of it. Now look! First of all there's this graffiti business. You must've seen it, haven't you? Every kid and his brother have got their names outside-it's as bad as the city. Of course that Franny character takes the cake, but the others are running her a close second. Then the garbage isn't removed as often as it used to be, the mailboxes are getting broken, there's been a light out for weeks in the hall. ... I could go on and on.”

She was afraid he would, too, standing there leaning on her doorframe, large and comfortably settled. Harris was an elementary-school teacher; Mrs. Saunders guessed he was in the habit of making long speeches. She smiled and wondered if she ought to ask him in, but she had left a cigarette burning in the ashtray. In fact she had not noticed the signs of negligence that Harris mentioned, but now that she heard, she was grateful for them. She felt a trifle weak in the knees; the news of the meeting was a shock. If he didn't stop talking soon she would ask him in just so she could sit down, cigarette or no cigarette.

”Anyhow,” Harris continued, ”I won't keep you, but I hope you'll come. The more partic.i.p.ation, the better. There's power in numbers.”

”Yes, I'll be there, Harris. You're absolutely right.”

”Thanks, Mrs. Saunders. Good night.” She was starting to close the door when he abruptly turned back. ”And by the way, thanks for the recipe for angel food cake you gave Jill. It was great.”

”Oh, I'm glad, Harris. You're quite welcome. Good night, now.”

Of course she would go. Her absence would be noted, for she always attended the meetings, even those on less crucial topics. Beneath her surface nervousness the next day, Mrs. Saunders was aware of an abiding calm. Buoyed up by her name glowing almost everywhere she turned, she felt strong and impregnable as she took her seat in the community room.

”Who the h.e.l.l is Franny anyway?” asked a man from the neighboring unit. ”She started it all. Anyone here got a kid named Franny?” One woman had a Frances, but, she said, giggling, her Frances was only nine months old. Mrs. Saunders felt a throb of alarm in her chest. But she soon relaxed: the nameplates on her door and mailbox read ”Saunders” only, and her meager mail, even the letters from Walter, Louise, and Edith, she had recently noticed, was all addressed to Mrs. F. Saunders or Mrs. Walter Saunders. And of course, since these neighbors had never troubled to ask. ... She suppressed a grin. You make your own bed, she thought, watching them, and you lie in it.

The talk s.h.i.+fted to the broken mailboxes, the uncollected garbage, the inadequacy of guest parking, and the poor TV reception, yet every few moments it returned to the graffiti, obviously the most chafing symptom of decay. To Mrs. Saunders the progress of the meeting was haphazard, without direction or goal. As in the past, people seemed more eager to air their grievances than to seek a practical solution. But she conceded that her experience of community action was limited; perhaps this was the way things got done. In any case, their collective obtuseness appeared a more than adequate safeguard, and she remained silent. She always remained silent at tenants' meetings-no one would expect anything different of her. She longed for a cigarette, and inhaled deeply the smoke of others' drifting around her.

At last-she didn't know how it happened for she had ceased to pay attention-a committee was formed to draft a pet.i.tion to the management listing the tenants' complaints and demanding repairs and greater surveillance of the grounds. The meeting was breaking up. They could relax, she thought wryly, as she milled about with her neighbors, moving to the door. She had done enough painting for now anyway. She smiled with cunning and some contempt at their innocence of the vandal in their midst. Certainly, if it upset them so much she would stop. They did have rights, it was quite true.

She walked up with Jill. Harris was still downstairs with the other members of the small committee which he was, predictably, chairing.

”Well, it was a good meeting,” Jill said. ”I only hope something comes out of it.”

”Yes,” said Mrs. Saunders vaguely, fumbling for her key in the huge, heavy tote bag.

”By the way, Mrs. Saunders ...” Jill hesitated at her door and nervously began brus.h.i.+ng the wispy hair from her face. ”I've been meaning to ask, what's your first name again?”

In her embarra.s.sment Jill was blinking childishly and didn't know where to look. Mrs. Saunders felt sorry for her. In the instant before she replied-and Mrs. Saunders didn't break the rhythm of question and answer by more than a second's delay-she grasped fully that she was sealing her own isolation as surely as if she had bricked up from inside the only window in a cell.

”Faith,” she said.

The longing she still woke with in the dead of night, despite all her work, would never now be eased. But when, in that instant before responding, her longing warred with the rooted habits and needs of a respectable lifetime, she found the longing no match for the life. And that brief battle and its outcome, she accepted, were also, irrevocably, who Franny was.

The profound irony of this turn of events seemed to loosen some old, stiff knot in the joints of her body. Feeling the distance and wisdom of years rising in her like sap released, she looked at Jill full in the face with a vast, unaccustomed compa.s.sion. The poor girl could not hide the relief that spread over her, like the pa.s.sing of a beam of light.

”Isn't it funny, two years and I never knew,” she stammered. ”All that talk about names made me curious, I guess.” Finally Jill turned the key in her lock and smiled over her shoulder. ”Okay, good night, Mrs. Saunders. See you tomorrow night, right? The boys are looking forward to it.”

THE WRATH-BEARING TREE.

”SIX-TWO-FOUR AVENUE D?” the old man asks me. He clutches at my wrist with k.n.o.bby fingers. ”Six-two-four Avenue D?”

”I'm very sorry. I can't help you.”

”Come on, don't pay any attention,” my father mutters impatiently, pulling at my other arm. We proceed. Behind my back the old man whimpers to a woman by his side, ”No one wants to help me.

”That's the way it is with these young people. They won't give you the time of day.”

Anger and guilt rise in me simultaneously like twin geysers. I hastily prepare two lines of defense, one to a.s.suage the guilt, the other to justify the anger. Number one, he's already asked me three times today. Number two, I have enough troubles of my own.

I am taking my father for a stroll down the hospital corridor, our arms linked at the elbow like a happy couple on a date. An intrusive third wheel is the IV tube dangling from its chrome stand, a coatrack come to life. My father is here in order to die. Even now, terminally ill, he walks very fast, he runs.

The old man, the one searching for 624 Avenue D, is the spectacle of the floor. Ambulatory, he spends long hours in the waiting room, where he occasionally urinates on the floor. Also, from time to time he exposes himself, spreading wide the folds of his white cotton gown with a quick flapping like a gull's wings. This is disconcerting to new visitors, but my sister and I merely smile now, humoring him. We have found that a brief, friendly acknowledgment will satisfy him for the day. Between ourselves we call him the flasher, and giggle. ”How's the flasher today?” ”Not bad. He looked a little pale, though.” Having seen his private parts so often, I feel on intimate terms with him, like family. He is not really annoying except when he gets on one of his 624 Avenue D jags, lasting for two or three days, after which he returns to simple urinating and self-exposure.

My father, thank G.o.d, would never expose himself. The humiliation. As a child I once accidentally glimpsed a patch of his pubic hair; he looked as though he might faint with shock when he saw me in the room. My father, thank G.o.d, is in full possession of his mental faculties. Just yesterday he gave a philosophical disquisition, shortly after taking a painkiller. ”There are times,” he said, ”when the mere absence of pain is a positive pleasure.” He paused, and swallowed with difficulty. We could see his throat muscles straining. ”That is,” he went on, ”under certain extreme conditions a negative quality can become a positive one.” My heart swelled with love and pride. Isn't he smart, my father? He cannot resist saying things twice, though, that is, paraphrasing himself, a trait I have inherited. I think it comes from a conviction of intellectual superiority, that is, an expectation of inferior intelligence in one's listeners.

”Six-two-four Avenue D?” The old man looms up, having padded in on soundless feet, before my sister and me in the waiting room.

”I think it's the other way,” I say gently. ”Try that way.” He shuffles towards the door. My sister and I are chain-smoking and giggling, making up nasty surmises about the patients and their visitors.

”That one will probably put a.r.s.enic in her grandma's tea the day she gets home.” She points to a young girl with long gold earrings and tattered jeans, who is speaking sternly about proper diet to an old woman in a wheelchair.

I nod and glance across the room at a fat, blue-haired woman wearing a flowered, wrinkled cotton housedress. ”Couldn't she find anything better to visit the hospital in? He might drop dead just looking at her.”

We giggle some more. ”How did the Scottish woman's kidney operation go?”

”All right. They took it out. She'll need dialysis.”

”At least she's okay.” We lower our eyes gravely. We like the Scottish woman. There is a long silence.

”Norman died last night,” she says at last.

”Oh, really. Well ...” This is not a surprise. Norman was yellow-green for two weeks and wheeled about morosely, telling his visitors he was not long for this world. He convinced everyone and turned out to be right. ”That's too bad. He was nice.”

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