The Writing on the Wall: A Novel by W. D. Wetherell Page A

beside him with her head bowed praying. Praying for the house to be finished quickly? Praying for the rafters to collapse? It was going to be nicer than the house she had as a bride so she was jealous. Since her lips barely moved and her voice emerged from her neck, people in church thought she was speaking in tongues. It made me shiver and if no one was watching I covered up my ears.
    The house was finished in October. Alan did not tell me until we moved in, but some of the timbers had been salvaged from the Hodgsons’ farm when Mr. Steen tore it down. This made me sad but then I felt comforted and reassured, that those good people were still somehow with me. Alan painted the house red and put up a small barn and I was responsible for making everything pretty inside. I had my collection of books and Alan crafted a shelf for them which we put under the window here in the parlor. There were not very many. Mrs. H. had given me her Dickens and teachers in school felt sorry for me and sent textbooks and I had some poetry from the library they were otherwise going to discard. Not many books—and so I cherished every volume like old friends.
    The workmen left a mess inside and it was many weeks before I had things straightened and cleaned. The kitchen was too big but Alan found a wide silver stove that made it cozier. I ordered a beautiful paper from the Sears and Roebuck book but I procrastinated pasting it up since I loved the bare walls just as they were. The plaster was cream colored and so smooth you could not resist running your hands along them. They gave you the feeling that they could be anything you wanted them to be, that they were just waiting for your command. Mr. Steen hired his roughnecks to build the house but for plastering the walls he sent for a gentle Italian man, Mr. Cipporino, who lived three towns south and was a master of his craft.
    “Ah Beth!” he would sigh as I sat watching him work. I knew that it was not me he was sighing for, but someone he had left years ago in Italy. “Ah, mia Beth!”—and then, turning back to the wall, he would smooth his artist’s hands across the plaster to make it perfect.
    Mrs. Steen hated the walls, she always complained how bare and ugly they looked without paper and when was I going to decently cover them? Never, if it was up to me. Not until I understood what their smoothness was asking of me, what they wanted me to make them.
    I would have liked the house more if I was not bothered by a feeling that grew stronger toward winter. What had I done to deserve something so nice? I knew about housework, I could clean and scrub all day long, and yet my labor had not earned the house and for that matter neither had Alan’s. I had no one I could talk to about this. Alan could be strong at night in our room, so strong and loving in the light from our candle, and yet this would fade once dawn came and he would be timid and uncertain, letting his parents boss him or even his friends. I loved winter more than summer because in winter the nights were longer and the longer the nights lasted the longer he was mine.
    A baby was supposed to come that spring, we both knew what was expected, and when it did not I had no one to ask questions of and I was left alone to suffer everyone’s whispers and stares. It was then that my idea formed, though really I had clung to it all along. I know it was Decoration Day before I got up the nerve to ask.
    We sat on the porch waiting to go into town. When I was little there would be a parade with all the G.A.R. veterans but now only poor Asa Hogg was left. Alan was going to drive him to town and hold him steady while he laid a wreath on the monument. I knew we would not have time alone later so I decided to ask now.
    “I will put the garden in tomorrow,” I said, not knowing how else to start. “I think blueberries will do well here, so we need to find out about cuttings.”
    Alan, who sat with his chair propped back against the railing the