The Road Through the Wall (27 page)

•   •   •

“‘Woe to him,'” Mrs. Mack read, her voice rising slightly as the dog watched her patiently. “‘Woe to him that coveteth an evil covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil! Thou hast consulted shame to thy house by cutting off many people, and hast sinned against thy soul. For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity!'”

•   •   •

“I am so damn sick of all this business I could scream,” Mrs. Roberts said. She sat up in bed and looked angrily down on her husband, barely visible in the darkness. “What the hell do you know about it anyway?” she demanded viciously. “You were too drunk to do anything except fall over your own feet.”

“Good night,” Mr. Roberts said into his pillow.

“And the way you talked to Mr. Desmond,” Mrs. Roberts went on inflexibly, “right there where everyone could hear.” She raised her voice to a high mimicry. “‘Desmond, I'm so sorry about your little girl getting kidnapped.'”

Indignant, Mr. Roberts rolled over on his back. “What I said—” he began in a voice of cold logic.

“I could have
died
,” Mrs. Roberts said. “And his little girl lying there dead.”

“Oh, God,” Mr. Roberts said. He rolled over onto his stomach again.

“I was so ashamed,” Mrs. Roberts continued, her voice dropping almost an octave. “Seems like I always have to be ashamed, when everyone else is out there helping and
my
husband has to be lying there dead drunk, the only one on the block who had to go to a nice party and get dead—”

“Good night,” Mr. Roberts said again.

“And dancing with Virginia Donald like a college boy,” Mrs. Roberts said. “And the children right there all the time.” Sitting up in bed in the darkness she began to cry.

•   •   •

“So.” Frederica leaned back and regarded her sister across the round table. Beverley was listening open-mouthed, her hands on the table and her eyes wide. “You see?” Frederica said. “All that I told you is true, every word. You see what happens to bad girls that run away all the time?”

“Tell it again,” Beverley begged, scarcely breathing with excitement, “Frederica, tell it again.”

•   •   •

The new road was finished on schedule, the following spring, and the first person across it was Hallie Martin. No one ever heard from the Donalds again after they moved out to Idaho where her family lived, but Miss Fielding died very suddenly about a year later and the Merriams went to the funeral, which was badly attended. Mr. Perlman eventually bought the house he lived in on Pepper Street, and put in some improvements, particularly an addition to the garage for the car he gave Marilyn on her eighteenth birthday. The Terrels moved out very suddenly one day and left no forwarding address; no one saw them go.

The Ransom-Jones's cat, Angel, died, and was buried in the garden alongside her three predecessors. After debating for some time, the Ransom-Joneses took another cat, a brown Siamese. The Byrne family finally moved to a home in a fashionable part of San Francisco because Mr. Byrne disliked commuting by train. The Robertses had a third child, another boy, named Francis.

Although the pavement in the new street was fresher and shinier than the pavement on the old Pepper Street block, it was always less satisfactory for roller-skating, being made of some material slightly more slippery. A wide break appeared in the sidewalk the first winter, near the spot where Jamie Roberts had left the print of his hand in the fresh cement.

Mrs. Mack's house remained, a pastoral eyesore, while the neighborhood changed around it. The new boy who moved into the Donald house once ventured in through the apple trees to see the old lady, and she drove him out with a stick.

Harriet Merriam kept house for her father after her mother's death; she never married. The Desmond house was vacant for nearly a year before it was bought by some people from Oklahoma.

The old lady who had owned the wall and the property it enclosed passed away very quietly one night in her sleep. No one was at her bedside when she died.