Acquainted with the Night Read online

  On the brick before her, in small letters, were scratched the words “Tony” and “Annette.” An arrow went through them. Mrs. Saunders gazed for a long time, aware that she would be late meeting Jill, but not caring, for once. She broke the staple on the Woolworth’s bag, slipped her hand in, and drew out a piece of chalk. It turned out to be powder blue. Shielding her actions with her coat, she printed in two-inch-high letters on the brick wall outside the shoe store, FRANNY. Then she moved off briskly to the parking lot.

  At home, after fixing herself a light lunch, which she ate excitedly and in haste, and washing the few dishes, she went back down to the garbage area behind the buildings. In lavender on the concrete wall just behind the row of cans, she wrote FRANNY. A few feet off she wrote again, FRANNY, and added WALTER, with an arrow through the names. But surveying her work, she took a tissue from her pocket and with some difficulty rubbed out WALTER and the arrow. Walter was dead. She was not senile yet. She was not yet one of those old people who live in a world of illusions.

  Then she went to the children’s playground, deserted at nap-time, and wrote FRANNY in small letters on the wooden rail of the slide, on the wooden pillars of the newfangled jungle gym, and on the concrete border of the sandbox, in yellow, lavender, and blue, respectively. Choosing a quite private corner behind some benches, she crouched down and wrote the six letters of her name, using a different color for each letter. She regarded her work with a fierce, proud elation, and decided then and there that she would not, after all, give the chalk to Luke and Kevin. She was not sure, in fact, that she would ever give them anything else again.

  The next week was a busy and productive one for Mrs. Saunders. She carried on her usual round of activities—shopping, cooking, cleaning her apartment daily, and writing to Walter, Louise, and Edith; evenings she babysat or watched television, and once attended a tenants’ meeting on the subject of limited space for guest parking, though she possessed neither a car nor guests; she went to the bank to cash her social security check, as well as to a movie and to the dentist for some minor repair work on her bridge. But in addition to all this she went to the shopping center, three times with Jill at noon, where, using caution, she managed to adorn several sidewalks and walls with her name.

  She was not at all disturbed when Jill asked, “Anything special that you’re coming in so often for, Mrs. Saunders? If it’s anything I could do for you ...

  “Oh, no, Jill dear.” She laughed. “I’d be glad if you could do this for me, believe me. It’s my bridge.” She pointed to her teeth. “I’ve got to keep coming, he says, for a while longer, or else leave it with him for a few weeks, and then what would I do? I’d scare the children.”

  “Oh, no. Never that, Mrs. Saunders. Is it very painful?” Jill swerved around neatly into a parking space.

  “Not at all. Just a nuisance. I hope you don’t mind—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Mrs. Saunders. What are friends for?”

  That day she was more busy than ever, for she had not only to add new FRANNYs but to check on the old. There had been a rainstorm over the weekend, which obliterated her name from the parking lot and the sidewalks. Also, a few small shopkeepers, specifically the butcher and the baker, evidently cleaned their outside walls weekly. She told Jill not to pick her up, for she might very likely be delayed, and as it turned out, she was. The constant problem of not being noticed was time-consuming, especially in the parking lot with its endless flow of cars in and out. Finished at last, she was amazed to find it was past two-thirty. Mrs. Saunders was filled with the happy exhaustion of one who has accomplished a decent and useful day’s work. Looking about and wishing there were a comfortable place to rest for a while, she noticed that the window she was leaning against belonged to a paint store. Curious, she studied the cans and color charts. The colors were beautiful: vivid reds, blues, golds, and violets, infinitely more beautiful than her pastels. She had never cared much for pastels anyway. With a sly, physical excitement floating through her, Mrs. Saunders straightened up and entered.

  She knew something about spray paint. Sukie, Walter’s wife, had sprayed the kitchen chairs with royal blue down in the cellar last time Mrs. Saunders visited, nearly two years ago. She remembered it well, for Sukie, her hair, nose, and mouth covered with scarves, had called out somewhat harshly as Mrs. Saunders came down the steps, “For God’s sake, stay away from it. It’ll choke you. And would you mind opening some windows upstairs so when I’m done I can breathe?” Sukie was not a welcoming kind of girl. Mrs. Saunders sighed, then set her face into a smile for the paint salesman.

  As she left the store contentedly with a shopping bag on her arm, she heard the insistent beep of a car horn. It was Jill. “Mrs. Saunders, hop in,” she called. “I had a conference with Kevin’s teacher,” Jill explained, “and then the mothers’ meeting to plan the party for the end of school, and after I dropped the kids at Wendy’s I thought maybe I could still catch you.”

  Jill looked immensely pleased with her good deed, Mrs. Saunders thought, just as Louise and Edith used to look when they fixed dinner on her birthday, then sat beaming with achievement and waiting for praise, which she always gave in abundance.

  “Isn’t that sweet of you, Jill.” But she was not as pleased as she tried to appear, for she had been looking forward to the calm bus ride and to privately planning when and where to use her new purchases. “You’re awfully good to me.”

  “Oh, it’s nothing, really. Buying paint?”

  “Yes, I’ve decided to do the kitchen and bathroom.”

  “But they’ll do that for you. Every two years. If you’re due you just call the landlord and say so.”

  “But they don’t use the colors I like and I thought it might be nice to try. ...”

  “It’s true, they do make you pay a lot extra for colors,” Jill said thoughtfully.

  Mrs. Saunders studied the instructions on the cans carefully, and went over in her mind all the advice the salesman had given her. Late that evening after the family noises in the building had subsided, she took the can of red paint down to the laundry room in the basement. She also took four quarters and a small load of wash—the paint can was buried under the wash—in case she should meet anyone. She teased herself about this excessive precaution at midnight, but as it happened she did meet one of the young mothers, Nancy, pulling overalls and polo shirts out of the dryer.

  “Oh, Mrs. Saunders! I was frightened for a minute. I didn’t expect anyone down here so late. So you’re another night owl, like me.

  “Hello, Nancy. I meant to get around to this earlier, but it slipped my mind.” She took the items out of her basket slowly, one by one, wishing Nancy would hurry.

  “Since I took this part-time job I spend all my evenings doing housework. Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.” At last Nancy had the machine emptied. “Do you mind staying all alone? I could wait.” She hesitated in the doorway, clutching her basket to her chest, pale and plainly exhausted.

  “Oh no, Nancy dear. I don’t mind at all, and anyhow, you look like you need some rest. Go on and get to sleep. I’ll be fine.”

  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 washing 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 th
e 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, lustrous 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 harassed 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 space near the mailboxes. It was astonishing, she came to realize, how little you could rely on being unobserved 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 identity, 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 participation, 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 hell 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 shifted 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 petition 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 brushing the wispy hair from her face. “I’ve been meaning to ask, what’s your first name again?”

  In her embarrassment 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 compassion. The poor girl could not hide the relief that spread over her, like the passing 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 knobby 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 assuage 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.