The Road Through the Wall (9 page)

Mrs. Merriam nodded. “Miss Fielding told me today. They're moving in a week or so.”

“I wonder where,” Harriet said.

“As long as it's away from here,” Mrs. Merriam said. “More potatoes, Harry?”

Mr. Merriam looked up from his plate blankly. “More what?”

“Potatoes,” Mrs. Merriam said patiently. Lately, since she and Harriet had been seeing more of one another, she would look significantly at Harriet when Mr. Merriam did something indicating his personal coarseness; frequently, in the long talks which Mrs. Merriam and Harriet had so often now, Mrs. Merriam would say, “Never marry a man who is
inelegant
, Harriet; I can tell you it brings nothing but sorrow.” If Harriet tried to press her on the subject she would shake her head and smile sadly; only when she was angry did Mrs. Merriam permit herself to sink so low as to reproach her husband for not being daintily bred. Now, saying, “More potatoes,” she looked at Harriet and smiled, and Harriet smiled back confusedly.

Harriet had not told her mother about the Chinese man and the invitation to tea, and she was afraid. It was only two days until the appointment, and Harriet knew that Virginia was going to make her go. The subject preyed on her and made her uneasy. Several times her mother had said, putting a hand gently on Harriet's, “My dear, you're
worrying
about something. What is it?” and Harriet, moving nervously, had said each time, “Nothing.” It was always easy to move Mrs. Merriam's mind from Harriet's troubles to her own; she was writing a poem, moreover, entitled “Death and Soft Music” (Harriet was writing a poem at the same time, called “To My Mother”), and any unseasonable disturbance in Harriet was readily attributed to the familiar and reasonable agonies of artistic creation.

“No more potatoes, thanks,” Mr. Merriam said. “What's for dessert?”

“Pie.” Mrs. Merriam rose and started into the kitchen with the plates. Harriet followed, and together they brought in the pie. Mrs. Merriam sat down and cut a single stately piece for Mr. Merriam.

“Apple pie,” Mr. Merriam said. He looked around. “Am I the only one eating pie?”

“Harriet and I are not pie-eaters,” Mrs. Merriam said delicately, and Harriet added virtuously, “I don't see how you can eat it.” She would have eaten a piece of pie with enthusiasm, but artistic creation and delicate upbringing argued against it.

“I'll be very happy when the Williams girl is gone,” Mrs. Merriam said. “I have always felt that she was a bad influence on all the children in the neighborhood. Ever since. . . .” She coughed lightly, and looked at Harriet, who blinked her eyes miserably. “Not that I believe her influence on
you
, Harriet, was as bad as, say, some of the
other
girls.” Her finger touched the edge of her coffee-cup lightly. “I think you know who I mean.”

An idea came suddenly to Harriet, and before she had time to consider it carefully she found herself saying, “I heard something
awful
about Helen Williams the other day.”

Mrs. Merriam looked up eagerly; Mr. Merriam went on eating his pie.

“Virginia Donald told me,” Harriet said.

“Virginia is a very sweet girl,” Mrs. Merriam said. “Don't misunderstand what I said before.”

“It's about Helen. One day she and Virginia were walking down the street and they met a Chinaman who lives down on the corner in the apartment house.” Harriet hesitated. It would be unwise to incriminate Virginia too deeply. “And Helen started talking to him.”

“Of course she
would
.” Mrs. Merriam sighed.

“And he ended up by asking them to come down and see him some day.”

Mrs. Merriam widened her eyes and opened her mouth.

“He lives in the apartment house,” Harriet went on, feeling relief carrying her away, “and he said they could come down some day and visit him in the apartment house.”

“Did they go?” Mrs. Merriam asked. “What did he do to them?”

Harriet thought quickly. “I don't know whether
Helen
went or not. Virginia didn't say.”

“I'm sorry about Virginia, of
course
,” Mrs. Merriam said. “But it's just what I'd expect of that Helen Williams. Fooling around with Chinamen.” She shivered violently. “I'm glad it wasn't
my
girl,” she said.

“
I
wouldn't,” Harriet was beginning enthusiastically, but Mrs. Merriam was saying, “Harry, did you hear that? Helen Williams is running around with Chinamen now.”

“That so?” Harry Merriam looked up at his wife and then reached down for his cup. “More coffee, please.”

Filling her husband's coffee-cup, Mrs. Merriam said to Harriet, “I'd like to hear what happened. You know,”—She dropped her voice slightly, glancing sideways at her husband—“they just
love
white girls.” She smiled slightly in spite of herself, and said, even lower, so that Harriet had to lean forward to hear, “Their houses are made with heavy walls, extra heavy, so you can't get out and no one can hear you if you scream. Scream,” she repeated with relish, and Harriet felt herself hot and embarrassed. “I've heard of cases,” Mrs. Merriam said. She sighed again, leaning back. “Poor Helen,” she said.

“But in the apartment house,” Harriet said. “After all. . . .” She felt a need to protest; she believed everything her mother was saying, but that her mother should appear to enjoy it so much . . . “I'm
sure
nothing like that could happen,” Harriet said.

Mrs. Merriam laughed shortly. “You wait and see,” she said. Then her eyes opened wide, and she said, “Well, if that certainly isn't the reason Mrs. Williams is in such a hurry to move away!”

“No, Mother,” Harriet said, but her mother was up from the table and moving toward the phone.

“I'm just going to call Mrs. Donald,” she said.

•   •   •

Mr. Desmond put his book down and looked across the living-room at his son with tolerant fatherly amusement. “Been a long time since I had a chance to talk to you,” he said.

Johnny looked up and smiled back. “We've both been pretty busy, I guess,” he said. Although they were legally father and son, John Junior had not, as so many adopted children do, grown to resemble his father in small subtle ways; he had taken none of his father's mannerisms, none of his tricks of dressing, not even many of his father's words. In some ways he was a sorrow to Mr. Desmond; who believed, and said often, that adoption was a two-way process. “The children should adopt the parents,” he would say soberly, “as surely as the parents adopt the children.” So that, sitting on opposite sides of the room, they were already two men—Johnny at nearly sixteen as large and broad-shouldered as his father—two men sitting of an evening talking. Mrs. Desmond stood in the doorway looking at them. She was proud of them both, and proud of small Caroline just put to bed for the night. When she thought of her family, beyond meals and clothes and table linen, she thought of them as a unit, the adopted son as permanent and beloved as the natural daughter, the father and mother kindly, loving parents.

She came almost silently into the room and sat down to take up her sewing. As she sat down, both her husband and her son looked up and smiled at her, and she smiled back, the smile still on her face as she bent over her needle-point, and they went back to their conversation.

“I could get my license this winter when I'm sixteen,” Johnny was saying.

Mr. Desmond still looked humorous and tolerant; it was an old argument and he had every intention of giving in eventually, but first he must prove Johnny in a number of vehement arguments over a period of months, must find the boy manly and proud and strong-willed. Mr. Desmond admired strength in any form, and finding it in his adopted son was a sort of bonus to him, as though, beside the qualities of health and bodily perfection he had originally specified in the child to be adopted, he had been rewarded for his generosity to the child by unexpected good qualities: this strength, a quiet humor, Johnny's undefinable self-possession which sometimes awed Mr. Desmond. Some day Johnny would play all-American football, or great golf, or championship tennis; Mr. Desmond saw him happily as beloved of women (perhaps even already; there were the letters that had caused such a fuss recently, and who knew what else?), admired of men, his hand on his father's shoulder, his friends, broad-shouldered champion young men all, toasting Johnny's father, his
adopted
father.

“I don't believe,” Mr. Desmond said, following this train of thought, “that any young man should have a car unless he has proved himself adult.”

“I can drive now,” Johnny said mistakenly.

Mr. Desmond put his book on his knee (it was a mystery story, and Mr. Desmond read them lovingly; some day Johnny could read Homer and Chaucer for him; as Mr. Desmond said so often, “That's what we have children for”), and regarded his son cynically. “What about this girl who wrote you the letters?” he demanded. “You take her out riding all the time if you had a car?”

Johnny made a face, “
Not her
,” he said.

Mr. Desmond smiled at Mrs. Desmond, who smiled back. “Listen to him,” he said.

“Of course,” Mrs. Desmond said fondly. “And all the boys will be crazy about Caroline.”

“I wish you'd just let me get a car,” Johnny said. His eyes became far-away. “Allen has the nicest little car,” he said.

Mr. Desmond frowned. “I've heard about nothing else, it seems,” he said. “Remember, you're not a rich man's son yet. Allen's father can afford nice little cars; if I ever let you drive, you will be using the family car for a good many years before you have a car of your own.”

“I could earn the money for a second-hand car,” Johnny said. “I don't want anything but a car to go around in.”

Mr. Desmond was mildly annoyed. “I will probably be able to afford some sort of a respectable car for you some day,” he said, “without your going out and slaving for it. There is no need to think that at fifteen you can earn the money for a car which your father cannot afford at forty.”

Johnny was stopped. “At least let me get my license,” he said.

“We'll see.” Mr. Desmond picked up his book. “What are you reading?”

Johnny tossed the comic book on to the couch beside him in sudden irritability. “Stuff,” he said. He got up and moved restlessly around the room. “I'm going over to Allen's,” he said.

“So late?” Mrs. Desmond looked up anxiously, but her husband said, “You boys. Out all night and never think how your parents worry.”

“I'll be back early,” Johnny said.

“Let us know if you're going to be late,” his father said. He chuckled amiably. “Driving around in Allen's car, whistling at girls,” he said.

•   •   •

Marilyn Perlman sat on her front porch, wearing slacks and drinking coke and reading
Pendennis
. Inside the house her mother was humming far away; she was in the kitchen making a cake for Mr. Perlman's birthday dinner that night. Marilyn had turned the porch chair so that she could see through the vines off down the street—Helen Williams was moving away. That morning, without any previous knowledge of the Williams's departure, Marilyn had come outside, and the moving van was there; incredulous, Marilyn checked it against the house—it was certainly the Williams house, the moving men were taking furniture
out
. There had been, for a minute, the bare possibility that the Williams family had bought new furniture, but the old furniture was definitely coming
out
, and after two hours it seemed beautifully certain that Helen Williams was leaving Pepper Street. Marilyn relayed the news to her mother, who came out on the porch for a minute, with flour on her hands, and nodded and said, “It's a good thing.”

All the neighborhood children were gathered around the Williams house, and Helen Williams was holding her last court on the front lawn, sitting on one of her own living-room chairs while her grandmother sat indoors in her room holding Lotus and crying, and her mother moved nervously in and out, directing the movers, entreating them to be gentle with certain favored remnants. The Williams furniture was embarrassingly shabby, and Mrs. Williams was obviously conscious of the eyes of her neighbors and their children; they saw her seldom enough as it was, without getting their last look at her by daylight, surrounded by the pitiful implements she used to live and eat and dress and sleep and sit and hold and bring her children up with.

Mildred Williams, in authority for the first time in her life, was ordering people away from the furniture, bestowing favors on children she allowed to come near the moving van. Mrs. Desmond drove past with Caroline in the car, and stopped to say good-bye courteously to Mrs. Williams, and Mildred ran up and pressed a grimy rag doll into Caroline's arms. “This is from my mommy and me,” she cried, and Mrs. Desmond was able to say good-bye again, and thank you, before her repugnance hurried her home, to take the doll by an arm and drop it into the garbage can before she took Caroline into the house to wash.

Marilyn watched, thinking of life without Helen Williams—maybe they were moving far away, far enough so that Helen would never be in school again—and realizing, as she saw the threadbare, unmatched furniture, that it had not been necessary to be so afraid of Helen. If Helen dressed every morning for school in front of that grimy dresser, ate breakfast at that slatternly table, then Marilyn had no need to run from her; no one whose life was bounded by things like that was invulnerable.

By noon the truck was full and ready to drive off. Helen's grandmother was brought out of the house with Lotus in her arms, Mildred was forced into a coat, and wearily, desolately, Mrs. Williams prepared to lead her family to the bus that would take them to their new home, a place darker, perhaps, and poorer, but where Mildred would grow up for another year or so, where the old grandmother would sit in her room and perhaps die, where Helen would continue as before, surrounded by new friends, frightening a new Marilyn, and where Mrs. Williams would be able to come home every night after a shorter journey, sitting alone every evening in a new living-room, planning so that they would not have to move into another home eventually, another home still darker. Miss Fielding, on her front porch, stood up to lean forward and say good-bye to Mrs. Williams and bow to the old grandmother, Mildred danced along the street, calling back to the other children, “I'll come and see you some day,” and Hallie Martin, holding her arms around Helen and sobbing, cried out “Write to me, Willie, write to me,
please
.” Mrs. Merriam waved from her kitchen window, and the neighborhood children, secure and firm on Pepper Street, stood in a body watching until the Williams family had turned the corner to Cortez Road and the highway, and mothers began calling them home for lunch.