The Zebra Wall (2 page)

“I get to use the little brush,” Bernice said, running into the house.

“
I
do!” Carla shouted after her.

“I get the new, fat brush,” Dot announced, grabbing the brush out of Effie's dimpled fingers.

Effie started to cry. “Where's Mama? I want Mama!”

“It's okay, Ef,” Adine soothed, starting to cry herself. She took Effie by the hand and pulled her into the house behind her. “Mama's gonna come home soon with a new baby sister for us. You just wait and see.”

The blender inside Adine was revving up again; she was worried about her mother.

The nursery was nearly completed. The same crib that had been Adine's stood in the center of the room beneath a mobile Mr. Vorlob had made from a mail-order kit. The mobile consisted of seven little fawns hanging down with cord at various lengths from a wire framework. Mr. Vorlob had painted a tiny letter
F
on each of the fawn's chests. The small, white dresser, which had also been Adine's, stood nearby. Mrs. Vorlob had stenciled bright
F
s up and down its sides and across all the drawers just a week earlier. When Adine had been born, the dresser was decorated with
A
s; it was repainted when each of Adine's sisters was born—with
B
s for Bernice,
C
s for Carla,
D
s for Dot, and
E
s for Effie.

Three of the walls in the nursery were painted a color called fuchsia. Originally, the color had been so bright that Mr. Vorlob had added brown and black paint to it to tone it down. The resulting color reminded Adine of liver before her mother fried it. Adine thought the color looked as bad as liver tasted. When Adine expressed her dislike of the dark purplish red, Mrs. Vorlob explained, “But, honey, it's the only color we could find that began with
F
. And I really want to keep things coordinated. It'll grow on you.”

The other wall was only half finished. It was the focal point of the room. It was the wall you faced when you entered the room. No windows or doors interrupted it. It was Mrs. Vorlob's pride and joy.

The wall was a mural—a mural of things that began with the letter
F
. Mr. and Mrs. Vorlob had drawn the mural using pictures from their daughters' coloring books as patterns. The entire family got to help paint it. Dot, and especially Effie (who usually settled for painting on newspaper), needed close supervision, but everyone worked together, filling in the penciled outlines with thick, vivid colors. Kind of like a paint-by-number, Adine thought. They had been working on the mural nearly every night after dinner, until the evening they had run out of certain shades and were so low on Colonial White (which Mr. and Mrs. Vorlob used for mixing lighter hues) that they had to stop temporarily.

The Vorlobs referred to the mural as “the
F
wall.” There were flowers and frogs and a fox on the wall. There were fish and ferns and a farm. On the upper left-hand corner of the wall was a fairy with silvery wings. The fairy held a wand that pointed to the words:
THIS WALL BELONGS TO
. There was a blank space after the words. “We'll fill in the blank with the baby's name after she's home and we've decided what to call her,” Mrs. Vorlob had said. Adine loved the way the fairy's wings shimmered when the sun fell upon them in the early morning, but her favorite part of the wall was a large star her father had painted. The star was metallic gold and it had a wavy tail that streaked across the entire mural like the ruffled path a boat makes in water. The tail changed from gold to silver to yellow to orange to pink. When Adine's mother first saw the star she was upset. “Oh, Roland!” she said testily. “How could you put a shooting star on our
F
wall?”

“It's not a
shooting
star, Helen,” he explained patiently. “It's a
falling
star. Relax.”

It occurred to Adine how important the
F
wall was to her mother, when Adine found her alone one afternoon sitting cross-legged in the nursery, staring at the half-completed mural.

“When we finish the
F
wall,” Mrs. Vorlob said, “I'm thinking of sending a photo of it to one of those ladies' magazines your Aunt Irene always buys. Who knows—it might get in.”

Adine remembered the look on her mother's face that day. Dreamy. Dreamy and far away. Adine had never seen her mother look that way before. Ever.

“I might send in photos of the murals we did when you and your sisters were babies, too,” Mrs. Vorlob went on. “Maybe they'd do a whole feature on us.”

Of course Adine couldn't remember what the mural in her own nursery had actually looked like, but photos of the wall showed apples and angels and apricots. An airplane. A map of Africa. A pirouetting alligator wearing a frilly tutu. A long line of ants spelled out the words
THIS WALL BELONGS TO ADINE
. Trailing after the ants was a fat anteater, appearing hungry and somewhat goofy with eyes bulging out of his head like peas popping out of pods. Adine had seen the photos so many times that she had a perfect picture of the wall in her mind's eye.

Adine stared at the
F
wall (not unlike her mother had done), until the images of the fairy and the falling star blurred and blended into one another. Bits of wing and color swirling like oil in a puddle. Around and around.

“Adine!” someone shouted. “Adine!” It was Bernice. She and Carla had tried to open the new can of Colonial White. They had succeeded. But, in the process, they had also succeeded in tipping it over. A miniature ocean of paint was spreading across the floor.

“Oh, no!” Adine cried desperately. She tugged at her right ear, as she often did when she felt completely helpless. “Oh, no!” Upset and confused, Adine stood paralyzed as the paint oozed toward her. She blinked and a tear rolled down her cheek.

“Let's not tug at our ears—there's work to be done here,” a booming voice said from the hallway, startling all five Vorlob sisters. “Get the lead out, ladies!”

Aunt Irene had arrived.

Aunt Irene was hard to figure out. She was older—probably fifty—but she was still energetic and curious. Things Adine thought you lost as you grew older. Aunt Irene was gruff and large and loud and strong, and yet Adine had seen her cry endlessly, watching TV movies, and get weepy at the sight of a clumsy puppy. Spots, connected by knobby blue veins, covered her leathery hands, but her nails were always remarkably beautiful—as pink and lustrous as seashells, as if she worked on them for hours each day.

When Aunt Irene visited, Adine always tried to hide until the welcoming hugs and kisses were over. Getting hugged by Aunt Irene was like getting tackled by a football player. The fleshy undersides of her arms reminded Adine of lumpy mashed potatoes, but they were extremely powerful. If, for some reason, she didn't hug you, she'd thwack you on the back, which was worse. And her kisses were sharp. Sharp, because she had a slight, but prickly, mustache and stale, gamy breath.

Aunt Irene smoked thin, brown cigarettes, which Adine hated more than the regular cigarettes her mother smoked. And she frequently made whistling noises when the exhaling smoke poured out of her nostrils. “I'm a steam engine,” she'd say in a deep freight-train voice as she chugged about in circles, to Dot and Effie's delight. She'd always come to a screeching halt by taking out her teeth and hissing. Adine thought it was disgusting. But the worst thing about Aunt Irene was her cats. She had a real one—gray with black splotches, named Deedee—that came with her wherever she went. And she had more than two thousand other ones that she collected. They filled her house and covered her body.

Aunt Irene owned cat bookends, cat curtains, a cat toilet-seat cover, cat rugs, and cat mugs. Bed sheets with cats, dishes with cats, and pillows with cats embroidered on in gaudy thread. Stuffed cats, porcelain cats, wooden cats. Cats painted on black velvet and framed in chrome hung on her living-room walls. And a set of cat pot holders hung from hooks in her kitchen. Many of Aunt Irene's clothes had cats printed on them, too—blouses, skirts, scarves. She always carried her wicker cat purse and wore one of her numerous pairs of cat earrings. And a tiny gold cat was even stamped on the lower corner of one of her enormous eyeglass lenses.

For Mrs. Vorlob's sake, Adine always politely tolerated her eccentric aunt. She even found her amusing on occasion. But that was before Adine suffered public harassment and private humiliation on account of Aunt Irene.

A few months earlier, Aunt Irene had been featured in the
Mason Journal Times
's “Cook of the Week” column. Beneath a large photo of the cook in her kitchen were printed her recipes for Cowboy Pudding (Spanish Rice), Cornflake Balls, and Chocolate Oil Cake, complete with suggestions for frosting and little cat garnishes made from chocolate wafers and licorice. That part was okay. The bad part was the photo. Aunt Irene had been captured in an awkward pose. One eye closed. Nostrils flared. She was pretending to be mixing batter in her largest cat bowl, one of her cigarettes hanging out of her mouth like an oversized cocktail toothpick. Cats were everywhere. On her apron, on the tablecloth, on the dishrag draped over her elbow. Deedee was on her shoulders. And a stuffed Sylvester from Six Flags Great America was propped up on one of the kitchen chairs, its head resting on the tabletop.

Adine blushed as she'd stared at the newspaper. What an embarrassment! Adine was glad that her aunt's last name was Glickman. Maybe no one would know she was related. And then Adine read the accompanying article. She could have died right then and there.

After discussing her cats, Aunt Irene stated that her recipes were “surefire pleasers.” She said that her Cornflake Balls were her niece Adine's favorite. Adine blinked her eyes, but her name didn't disappear. She didn't think anyone else on earth was named Adine. At least not in Mason, Wisconsin. Now everyone would know that the crazy cat-lady was her aunt. Adine had dreaded going to school the next day.

The next morning, Adine spotted Gary Wilker waiting by the chain-link fence that bordered the playground at school. When she was within hearing range, he squinted, twisted his face, and began meowing in a whiny voice. By the afternoon recess he had talked Mary Rose Wampole, Dirk Reese, and Chad Biddle into joining him.

“Do you want me to call Gary Wilker's mother?” Mrs. Vorlob asked, when Adine told her what had happened. “I'd love to set her straight, but knowing me, it just might make things worse.”

Adine agreed to leaving her mother out of it.

“Oh, hon,” Mrs. Vorlob said, “just bark at them if they do it tomorrow. Bark like a German Shepherd and scare their pants off.”

After pecking Adine on the top of her head, Mrs. Vorlob took the clipping of Aunt Irene down from its place of honor on the refrigerator door and placed it inside the phone book, hiding it deep within the thickness of names and numbers.

When Gary Wilker met Adine the following school day, hunched and sounding like a stray cat in a fight, Adine sucked in her breath, clenched her fists at her sides, and then barked as loudly and fiercely as she could. Gary Wilker's mouth dropped and froze. He stood motionless, as if tempting Adine to continue. As the first bell rang, Adine focused on his shin, closed her eyes again, and kicked him with all her might. Flushed, Adine ran up the worn stone steps two at a time, without looking back. She vowed she'd never eat another Cornflake Ball again. And even though she knew it really wasn't Aunt Irene's fault, Adine was certain she'd never forgive her. How could she?

And there was the special May Day cake, too. Maybe that was worst of all. It had been Adine's first cake made from scratch without supervision (except that Mrs. Vorlob had taken the pans from the oven and released the cakes from the pans when they had cooled). And it had been lovely. Two round, golden pillows (only slightly uneven), with instant vanilla pudding in between. Pale pink frosting sprinkled with coconut flakes topped it off, like snow on a bed of apple blossoms. It sat on the kitchen table, just waiting while the Vorlobs and Aunt Irene ate dinner in the dining room. Adine pushed her chipped beef and parsley-buttered potatoes around her plate, anxious to present her masterpiece. When the time finally came and Adine rushed into the kitchen, she found Deedee on the tabletop, masked in pink frosting, surrounded by yellow crumbs. Deedee had ruined Adine's cake, turning it into a jumbled mess.

Adine went weak. “Help!” she called.

Everyone ran to the kitchen.

Aunt Irene thought it was hilarious. “I'm so sorry, sweets, but you can always bake another cake,” she said as she snapped photos of Deedee, with Mr. Vorlob's Polaroid. “But I might
never
get another chance at photos like these! They're adorable!”

Mr. and Mrs. Vorlob tried to salvage the cake and quiet Aunt Irene. “It's a terrific cake, Adine,” said her father. “A beaut,” said her mother. But all their praise fell flat when Adine looked at the lopsided mound.

“I'm not gonna
eat
it!” screamed Carla in the background. “It's got
cat
germs!”

Adine replayed the scene in her head so many times that it remained as vivid as on the day it actually had happened.

In Adine's opinion, Aunt Irene had a lot of reconciling to do. Adine figured that considering her aunt's age, she'd most likely be dead before she even came close to making up for the bad things she and Deedee had caused.

“Isn't it nice to have things under control?” asked Aunt Irene, after the floor in the nursery had been wiped up. Before anyone could respond, she answered herself, “Yes. It surely is.” Aunt Irene rubbed her hands together as she talked, causing the heavy charm bracelets that dangled from her wrists to jingle. Deedee had had one litter of kittens before she was spayed; there was one silver charm representing each of them on either bracelet, plus one for each of Deedee's “grandkitties.” The charms currently numbered twenty-eight. The bracelets looked uncomfortable to Adine, and she wondered how long Aunt Irene would continue to add charms. She pictured her aunt with a spangled network of charms laced around her neck and waist and ankles like prison chains.