Face on the Wall (14 page)

Of course Flimnap too had to navigate among the lumpy facts of commonplace life. He managed it very well, better than Annie. He could fix anything, make anything, do anything. And yet the Hitchcock chair he had repaired for Annie, gluing the rungs fast in their holes, now had a Flimnappian air. She liked to sit in it, as though his influence might flow up and saturate her soul.

Their relation as employer and employee had changed. Flimnap had begun to make up his own tasks, deciding for himself what needed to be done. Were they friends now, equals, partners? More than friends? Perhaps Flimnap didn't really like her at all. She was eager to know what he thought of her, but there was some sort of gap between them. Something was wrong. Flimnap was like a puzzle with a missing piece. And in his case the piece was crucial. Without it the rest of the linked pieces didn't hang together.

So things were on hold. Annie had become shy about looking at Flimnap directly. His light eyes seemed focused on things far away. Like her wall, he was a story without an end, like the enfolded tales of
The Arabian Nights,
told by Scheherazade to the heartless sultan. If Scheherazade were ever to complete the last of her stories, if her imagination ever faltered, she would lose her head. What was Flimnap's last chapter? Who was waiting for him with a headsman's ax?

Praise be to God … whose purposes concerning me are as yet hid in darkness.

The Thousand and One Nights

Chapter 21

T
he Gasts were having a party. All their friends came. Annie was invited, Flimnap wasn't.

They had put up a fence between the two front yards. Annie walked through the gate and joined the party. It was a lovely April afternoon, as warm as a day in June, and everyone had drifted outside. Charlene carried around a tray of snacks. Some of her friends from school helped with the trays, and then they all gathered in Charlene's room, and admired her princess doll and her swimming trophies and giggled and bounced on her bed.

A teenage babysitter had been provided for Eddy, but just when the talk and laughter were at their height, he appeared in the middle of the party, gaping up at the guests and clutching the front of his pants, which were wet. The teenager was indoors, helping herself to a glass of wine.

Roberta grasped Eddy by the collar, found the babysitter, hissed at her, and removed the two of them to the upper regions.

The party wound down and the guests departed. Annie went home, feeling sorry for Eddy. But as soon as she walked into her part of the house, she forgot about Eddy Gast. There was another unwanted face on her wall. Once again it was ugly and demonic. The eyes were fiercer than before, and the blue beard was matted with blood.

Annie stared at it, shocked and frightened. Who was doing this to her, who was invading her wall, disturbing her jolly visions of children's stories? Who else could it possibly be but Flimnap? Surely it was Flimnap O'Dpugherty! Flimnap had a key to her house, he could walk on his hands and juggle six balls at once and keep three plates in the air (but not four). He could throw his hat in the air so cleverly that it came down on his head. Flimnap could do anything!

No, not quite anything, remembered Annie, exonerating him once again. It couldn't be Flimnap, because he couldn't draw at all. He couldn't draw, he couldn't write, he couldn't even make a diagram. He had no use for pencil and paper. It was one of the missing pieces in the puzzle that was Flimnap O'Dougherty.

This time Annie got rid of the ugly face herself, brushing over it a coat of quick-drying varnish and a layer of ocher-colored paint. As the staring black-ringed eyes disappeared, she heard a whimpering from next door. Through the open windows came the sound of crying and raised voices.

Eddy was being punished. Poor Eddy!

The poor kid was certainly accident-prone. On the very day after the party, he had another misfortune on the highway. The door of his father's car flew open and Eddy tumbled out. Somehow the traffic behind the car missed him as he rolled over and over and sat up, dazed and bruised, in the middle of the road.

“You mean to say he wasn't strapped in?” said a self-righteous woman in the next car, stopping to criticize. “I think that's absolutely criminal.”

Poor old Eddy! When he next came to Annie's door there was a purple lump on his forehead. But he was beaming. “Whassat?” he said, staring up at the wall, pointing at the mouse in Beatrix Potter's pocket and the rabbits at her feet. Annie explained about Peter Rabbit and his invasion of Mr. McGregor's garden. She found her copy of the story and showed it to Eddy. Then she gave him a sheet of her best paper and a collection of colored pens, and climbed her ladder and got back to work. Below her at the table Eddy's small head was lowered over his paper. A bright-green pad was clutched in his hand.

This time his picture took only half an hour. “All done!” cried Eddy, holding the picture over his head.

Annie came down the ladder to look. It was Peter Rabbit. His ears glowed pink, his jacket reflected the blue of the sky, and Mr. McGregor's garden was a corner of Paradise. “Oh, Eddy,” breathed Annie, delighted once again, “how wonderful.”

When Flimnap came in, he admired it too. “I like your pictures, Eddy,” he said, lifting him onto his shoulders. “Come on. I want to show you something.” Annie watched them swoop together out the door. Soon there were squeals of joy from the driveway. She looked out and laughed. Flimnap was still carrying Eddy on his shoulders, but now he was riding a unicycle. Around and around they went, Eddy whirling high in the air, shrieking with delight.

Roberta Gast witnessed this episode, coming unexpectedly out of the house. She stared, blank-faced, until Flimnap lowered Eddy to the ground and jumped down from the bike himself, grinning at her sheepishly. Roberta turned away without a word, climbed into her car, and sat behind the wheel for a moment, looking down.
She's making a note,
decided Annie.
Date, time, witnesses present.

That evening as they got ready for bed, Roberta and Bob Gast had another conversation about Eddy. Roberta stood in the bathroom doorway in her nightgown, watching her husband brush his teeth. “It's no good,” she said. “Nothing works.”

Bob spat and hung up his toothbrush. “What do you mean, nothing works?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Oh, that,” said Bob uncomfortably. He slicked back his hair with a comb.

Roberta changed the subject. She sounded shocked. “You know what, Bob Gast? You're getting bald.”

“Oh, I know,” said Bob. “Don't you think I know?” Because of course it was true. If he had taken the trouble to count them, the separate strands above his high receding hairline would have numbered only one or two thousand. They had once been a thick bushy mass. Embarrassed, he rubbed the shiny place in the middle of his scalp, which was growing larger and larger.
Rub, rub, rub. Oh, genie of the magic scalp, make my hair grow in again!

Roberta watched him put the cap back on the toothpaste. At once she was struck by an idea. She waited until he was finished in the bathroom, and then she got to work right away.

She did not look at herself in the mirror, knowing she wouldn't like what she saw, a tired woman with pouches under her eyes. Instead she opened the door of the cupboard under the sink and took out a little piece of cardboard, handling it with care. On it lay a viscous drop of liquid. It was ant poison. Ants had become a problem on the kitchen counter and the bathroom sink. This nasty stuff seemed to do the trick. The ants were in retreat.

With delicate fingers Roberta put the square of poison down behind the cold-water faucet. Still more carefully she took a small toothbrush from the holder on the wall and laid it bristle side down in the drop of liquid, as though it had fallen there by accident. Then she washed her hands and went to bed.

She lay awake most of the night, staring at the shadowy ceiling. In the morning, just after she fell asleep at last, there was a shout from the bathroom, “What the hell?”

Roberta woke up instantly and opened her eyes. In a moment her enraged husband stood beside the bed looking down at her. “Eddy's toothbrush, it was in the ant poison!”

She sat up and said feebly, “Oh dear, it must have fallen in. The ants were all over the sink, so I—” She didn't finish. She put her legs over the side of the bed and stood up.

Bob stared at her. Then he said roughly, “God,” and went back to the bathroom. He wrapped the sticky toothbrush in toilet paper and threw it in the wastebasket, along with the square of ant poison. Then he scrubbed the sink with cleanser and washed his hands thoroughly, over and over again, his mind in a torment. An unlatched car door, a touch of ant poison, what was the difference? None, there was no difference at all. He shouldn't blame Roberta any more than he blamed himself.

My mother she killed me,

My father he ate me,

… what a beautiful bird am I!

The Brothers Grimm, “The Juniper Tree”