Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 6 Wittily’s Commission

  Wittily paused and looked up from her place on the sidewalk, taking in the lights gleaming in the upper stories of Grace House this early evening. Though it was the biggest, it was far from the grandest house on the street. She had often joked with her friends and relations about the shabbiness of the place and its crowd of inhabitants. The Grace House folk claimed they were citizens of another country, Heaven, and she had mocked that too. But Grace House was different in another way, one that resisted both her analysis and her mockery: the people inside thought differently. She had noticed it again and again. Most of them didn’t seem unusually intelligent, that wasn’t it, but their cult involvement seemed to cause them to look at many things backwards, to reach unexpected conclusions, and to defy convention. The most recent instance she had noted was when she had asked Goodness Orchard what she intended to study at college, and had been answered that it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter! When Wittily had pressed her about this, the girl had said that the way she treated others was of far more importance. At this, Wittily’s usual facility with a joke had failed her, she had simply sat and stared, which was probably why the conversation had so rankled her that she remembered it.

  Now she ascended to the double front doors where her knock was answered by the odd, dwarfish servant woman Honesty, so merry and so ugly. Strange stories were told about her, such as that her name had once been Doubt, but that she had taken her present name after being revived from a fatal heart attack. That would have been at the time the Heavenite government had taken over the house, when Wittily had been a little girl.

  “What do you want?” the little ogress said almost rudely.

  “I’ve come to see Goodness,” Wittily said.

  Honesty was in no hurry to make way for her to pass, but looked up at her with a smirk. “We don’t see you here often.”

  This was true, for Wittily had never counted Goodness as a close friend. The girl could scarcely be persuaded to laugh with her at others and had several times refused to take part in conversations which the Heavenite girl called gossip. Goodness could be both a prig and a bore. On the other hand, she was a ready and thoroughly confidential listener to other’s troubles, and it was chiefly because of this virtue that Wittily was seeking her out. This would be, it seemed, her last chance to pour out her heart to her.

  “No, I should come more,” Wittily replied insincerely, for she was sworn to her parents never to come again.

  “You should come often,” Honesty said firmly. “You need to be around Goodness so she can have a softening influence on you, and then you won’t write funny put-downs like that about Prevarica. That was cruel.”

  Wittily compressed her lips, unable to say a word in her defense. Her parents had already made it clear that, accurate or not, humorous or not, her poem about Prevarica had brought the family to the brink of disaster.

  “It wasn’t meant to be cruel,” she said.

  “Of course not,” Honesty said and finally stepped aside, but as Wittily passed, the woman jabbed two fingers into her side with a force that made the teen cry out.

  “And that wasn’t meant to hurt,” the little woman said, laughing, “but did it?”

  With shocked backward looks, Wittily hurried upstairs to Goodness’ room.

  “The Mammons were giving Dad a sweetheart deal,” Wittily said, “and I ruined it for him.”

  She and Goodness were sitting on the Orchard girl’s bed, and Goodness’ twin brother Gentleness was lingering just inside the doorway. Wittily hadn’t wanted him to be present, for she thought him even more doltish and uninspired than his twin, but Goodness never seemed to mind having him around, and Wittily was hardly the one to tell him to shove off. At least he was tall and good looking like his father; that much was all right.

  Goodness scanned again the poem copy that Wittily had brought with her. Wittily saw that she couldn’t help but smile.

  “This ruined it? But how?”

  “Because the Mammons want to spread a certain story of what happened when Sluggard House collapsed, and so Prevarica has to be thought of as truthful,” said Wittily, who had no trouble getting to the heart of a matter. “Then all three kids are supposed to say that what looked like walking lizards was really policemen wearing masks.”

  “But the Wiz will never say that.”

  “Quake will. He’s already agreed.” Wittily sighed. “Actually, I’m supposed to try to salvage the situation by apologizing to Prevarica. She’s lost a lot of ground with the neighborhood kids since I put that out.” She tapped the poem copy. “About all that remains of her parrots is her own brothers. She’s furious, of course. But if I apologize, then her and Quake’s story about policemen in masks will gain some credit. She has to appear trustworthy to the people in the neighborhood.”

  “But I thought her story was that she didn’t see anything?” said Goodness.

  “Well, it was, but now she’s going to say she saw masks. Oh, Goodness, this sort of thing is all orchestrated, don’t you know that?”

  Goodness bit her lip as if to hold back her natural response. “No, I didn’t know. But, Wit, you know there weren’t any policemen in masks.”

  Wittily knew that Heavenites had their own narrow, and frightening, explanation of Relocation and felt that it was nonsense. She felt that, unlikely as it might seem that grown men would be larking with masks after a house collapse, it was nevertheless the only story that was faintly plausible. That had to be it.

  “I didn’t see them myself, so who knows?” she said charitably. “It’s just what people will accept the easiest, that’s all.” She shook her head as if to dismiss the subject. “But can you believe those Mammons? I just hate them for what they’re doing, tricking Dad into giving them complete power over his business, so if they don’t like something I did, he’s ruined. And I hate Mom and Dad for being so gullible. And now, because of the position we’re in, even those rotten Leasings are able to tell us what to do.” She refrained from adding a few bitter words against Goodness too, whose baby-sitting had only made matters worse. “I just hate them all.”

  “Now, Wittily, you can’t hate them all,” Gentleness said cajolingly.

  “I can try.”

  “OK, you can try. Are you really going to apologize to Prevarica?”

  Wittily paused glumly. “Who knows? Yes, I guess I am. I promised Mom and Dad I would, because Dad says he’s in such a bad financial situation that we have to do whatever the Mammons want.”

  “What are the Mammons holding over your heads?” Goodness asked. “You said they have power over your family business?”

  “Right. We toe the line or lose a City contract for Dread Printing. Actually,” and Wittily looked even bleaker, “Dad’s already lost it. After I blew it with the poem, someone, probably Mammonette, tipped off Mayor Strawman about Dad supporting the other candidate, and he canceled the contract immediately. Dad’s face just looked terrible when he got the letter today. But since Dr. Therion won the election, Mayor Strawman is just a lame duck anyway. So Dad can get the contract back if he just doesn’t offend the kind of people who count. That means I’ve got to apologize to the little dirtbag.”

  “But couldn’t you apologize for another reason?” Gentleness suggested.

  Wittily looked up at him with resentment, knowing perfectly well what he meant. “I am not concerned,” she said with an edge, “about Prevarica’s tender little feelings. Did she cry? I hope so. Nobody seems very concerned when she’s leads all the kids in the neighborhood around by the nose and has her own precious little fan club. The poem got Grovel and Snivel away from her, that’s what matters.”

  The tall boy raised his palms and grinned as if to say he was sorry he had asked.

  “I’ll apologize because I have to,” she went on. “Then I suppose she’ll get Grovel and Snivel back, but I can’t help that.”

  Wittily didn’t like s
aying such things, sounding so worldly-practical and unethical. But that was life. She had to help her parents. Now she had to say something worse.

  “I see how sad you are, and I’m sorry you’re in this mess,” Goodness was saying to her.

  “It gets worse,” Wittily replied. “Everybody knows you Heavenites have your own ideas about what happens in Relocation, and Mom and Dad have to be really careful not to seem to, well…” She trailed off. “Or maybe I should put it this way, that it’s our patriotic duty to back what the City says. If we don’t…” She made a sharp slicing motion across her throat. “Look, I wasn’t supposed to tell you the whole truth about this, but the fact is that Dad’s under pressure to keep our family away from you. He was going to just call you, Goodness, and tell you that you can’t baby-sit for us any more; but then I said I should actually visit you to tell you, that it’s more polite. Dad let me, but he said it would have to be the last time I come here and that I shouldn’t see you any more. I wasn’t supposed to say that either, but just to let you figure it out after I stopped showing up.” She looked away. “We Dreads have to give up any appearance of Heavenite ties,” she said, quoting her parents’ words to her.

  Plainly, Goodness didn’t know what to say. This moment was so sticky that Wittily realized she could not now expect any more sympathetic listening to her troubles. She would have to go. No, that was not true. The twins were so sweet natured that they would listen even now, even when snubbed, and somehow that made things worse. A little bitterness on their part would have been preferable.

  She stood up. “I’m sorry. Don’t let it get you down—you know it’s not personal. Oh, here, I’m supposed to give you this.” She took an envelope from her jacket pocket. “Dad wanted to get this out of the house. He thought maybe you could give it back to whoever is supposed to get it and tell them we can’t come. It’s the invitation to the ball.”

  Goodness took the envelope. “Oh, Wittily, it shouldn’t be like this.”

  “I’m sorry! What can I do? Goodby to both of you.”

  She brushed past Gentleness and escaped into the hallway.

  Something now happened that she could never afterward explain. Grace House was, it was true, very big, but she had been in it often enough to know her way around. She should have had no difficulty in finding her way out. Yet she was quickly lost. She couldn’t find the stairs. Instead, she arrived in a small, dark hallway ending in a window. She went to the window to get oriented and, looking out over the neighborhood at dusk, recognized the street corner to the east where Sluggard House had stood. Just beyond was her own home, looking cold and unwelcoming with bleak, leafless trees around it. Or could she see it? Though she strained to make it out again, it almost appeared that only trees were on that lot, that her house had disappeared!

  She quickly concluded that she must not be looking east after all. But it now felt very important to her that she spot her own home. Since she was probably looking in the wrong direction, she went to the other end of the hallway to look for another window. There was none. Instead she found a spiral staircase made of unfinished wood, leading upward and smelling of newly sawn lumber, having just been built. It was inviting of itself and perhaps would lead to a better view, so she went up, clinging to the narrow, curving banister. The stairway, she discovered, didn’t end on the next, the attic, level, but went right on up through the roof itself to where a platform was being constructed. When she came out, she immediately sat down with her lower legs in the stairwell, for she was at a dizzying height with roof shingles sloping sharply downward on all sides.

  When she raised her eyes to look for her house, her heart started beating wildly. She turned and looked behind her, then left, right. Where were they? Where were the houses! In every direction she saw only gently rolling hills sprinkled with trees. The City, where was the City! She stared her eyes out looking for anything, anything beyond this one house she was sitting on. No, they were all gone. The last light of day showed her only countryside.

  She had never been so frightened. She pitched back down the stairway, hoping to find someone, anyone, to tell about this. Half screaming, she ran back down the little hallway, found an unlocked door, ran through someone’s bedroom, made it to a main hallway, and found some stairs leading down. At the bottom of these stairs, and finally under a decent light, she met Gentleness.

  “What’s the trouble?” he said.

  She ran gasping into his arms and leaned her little blond head against his chest.

  A few minutes later she was carefully keeping some distance from him as they sat on the bottom steps of the stair and talked about what had happened. She had her composure back and would never hug this bumpkin again.

  “No,” she said firmly, “I was already overexcited about being lost, and I had just climbed a high steep stairway. I was out of breath, and it took so much oxygen from my brain that I was hallucinating.”

  Gentleness nodded to this agreeably although it was a very different explanation than his own, which she had already rejected. He had called it a vision from God and had said she should see old Grace about what it meant.

  “No,” she said again, although he wasn’t arguing with her, “I don’t see visions, I never have.” She stood up suddenly and found that she had to place a hand against a wall to keep from tumbling over. He made a move to help her. “No, I’m fine! I can certainly stand up without help. I’m going home now. Uh, will you just show me the way out?”

  He obliged and even followed her out the door and down to the sidewalk. There she paused with profound relief, looking around at the houses of Sandhill Street. There they stood as always, solid and immovable.

  “I think I better walk you home,” he said.

  This required a moment’s consideration. She didn’t want him with her. Despite his straight B average at school, Gentleness was not, she felt, the sharpest knife in the drawer. He had no standing with her ‘crowd,’ was laughed at by them for his simple, guileless ways and slow speech. So she did not want to encourage him to think she liked him, especially not now when she was supposed to be avoiding all contact with his family. On the other hand, she had just had the fright of her life, and this boy was big and strong and reassuring. She walked on and, in a moment, noted his presence beside her. Good enough, she hadn’t asked him.

  When they came to the corner streetlight, the same one the Halloweeners had gathered under a few days earlier, they met Prevarica Leasing coming the other way.

  “Wittily, I think you’ve got something to say to me,” the girl sing-songed.

  “What are you doing out?” Wittily said. “You should be at home.”

  “Your Mom and Dad are at my house, and they said you’d apologize to me for the poem when you came back from Grace House. Right? You’ve got to say it’s just your meanness and I’m not like that.”

  Gentleness reached down and tousled Prevarica’s hair. “Give her a chance to say it, ya kid, ya.”

  She laughed. “Right, OK. Well, Wittily?”

  The little girl was triumphing again, and Wittily hated that.

  “I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “I’m sorry I wrote it and spread it around.”

  “Wit,” Gentleness said softly, “I don’t think you should apologize unless you really mean it.”

  She briefly considered slapping him. “It’s going to have to do,” she said tightly.

  “But it won’t do. Just think how tough it is for you when somebody points out your faults in public, how much you wish they’d been kinder and kept quiet. Everybody needs that kind of break.”

  “I cried,” Prevarica prompted.

  Feeling trapped and almost ready to cry herself, Wittily tried again. “I’m very sorry. I know it must have hurt you. You can tell everyone that I apologized.”

  “And you’ve got to say that I’m not really like that,” Prevarica insisted, raising a forefinger. “
Say it.”

  “OK, you’re not—” Wittily began, but was interrupted by a pressure on her arm from Gentleness.

  “Better not lie,” he said.

  She gave him a quick hushing look. This was hard enough as it was, and she needed to get it over with.

  “No, Prevarica, you’re not—”

  “You really are like that,” Gentleness interrupted, speaking to Prevarica, “but you don’t have to stay that way. That’s why you should keep the poem and think about it.”

  Prevarica made a sound like an enraged cat. “You’re both hateful! You’ve got to really apologize to me, Wittily, because your parents say so. And Gentleness, you’re a stupid foreigner, and I’m going to tell everyone, Wittily, that he’s your boyfriend!”

  With this savage threat out of her mouth, the little girl turned and ran back toward her house.

  A few minutes later Wittily was in her living room alone, where, without pausing to turn a light on, she sank in a chair, feeling drained and scared. Not that she had spent many days in her life free from fear. Her house was full of it. Sometimes, of an evening, she would surreptitiously watch her parents’ long faces as they sat in the living room brooding, each alone, and what she saw in their expression seemed to be a hopeless foreboding of some massive doom. The sun had seldom shone on Dread House.

  Now things promised to become darker yet, and it was her fault. Commanded to break off all relationships with the Orchards, she had been caught walking home with one of them; and if that wasn’t bad enough, he had led her to bungle the all-important apology to Prevarica. So there went the government contract, and with it her father’s business! In a few months they would be paupers. Their house needed work, but there would be no money for it. Unless the Mammons showed mercy, they would be ruined. In a few minutes her parents would come home from their conciliatory visit to the Leasings, and that’s what they would tell her, that she had brought them to ruin. She sat in the dark and felt her jaw tremble.

  Someone knocked at the front door and she started, realizing that she had left the door partly open. Whoever it was had knocked on the storm door, which was unlocked.

  “Pardon me, Miss Dread,” came a calm voice from outside. “Ambassador Grace, you know. May I see you for a moment?”

  She jumped up and flipped on a light. What could he be doing here? He never had come here. She knew the old fellow to be elaborately polite, and so it occurred to her that she might simply tell him to go away, and he would. That is certainly what her parents would tell her to do. In fact this visit was the only thing that could make things worse. Suppose the Leasings saw him on the doorstep! She must get rid of him immediately. The words of rejection were on her lips.

  “I understand you had a bit of a fright at Grace House this evening,” Grace said from the other side of the door. “Please don’t let it worry you. We’re adding a cupola and it has special properties that no one prepared you for. What you saw was merely this neighborhood as viewed spiritually. A very handy thing if one is ready for it, but it must have shocked you greatly. Please accept my apologies.”

  She was just on the other side of the half-closed door from him now. “Thank you,” she said, loudly enough for him to hear. “I’m all right, really. Mom and Dad will be home soon. Thank you, but I’m fine.”

  “It’s you and not your parents who will save this house, my dear,” Grace said. “If you will be so kind as to let me in, I’ll take care of the rest. I think I can assure you that your parents won’t be coming back from the Leasings for another half hour or so.”

  She stood still for long seconds, knowing there was no way out from making a decision. What if he really could get her family out of this miserable mess? He sounded so competent, so sure. No one else was offering any help. But no, he couldn’t possibly help. Still, she could at least keep up good relations with him, just in case. She reached out and opened the door. There was the fine-looking old gentleman on the step, smiling at her through the glass of the storm door. She opened it and took one step outside.

  “I can’t let you in,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I understand,” he said, “but it won’t always be that way. In the meantime, perhaps we can transact a little business here on the doorstep. I believe you have an art project in hand, don’t you? It happens that Grace House has need of a statue to top our new building addition that you explored, and I think a representation of liberty would be specially fitting. If you could provide a small model, I’m in touch with artisans who can use it to fashion a full size replica. Then I would return your original.”

  Wittily was relieved to have an excuse to get out of this. “I’m sorry, Ambassador, but I haven’t been able to come up with a design. It looks like I won’t even get the assignment in on time.”

  The old man took a sheet of paper from his breast pocket. “I have here a design that might be suitable.” He handed it to her and she looked at it in the light of the lamp over the door. She kept on looking at it and looking at it. This was it. This was freedom.

  “Will it do?” he asked.

  “Do?” she said, almost in tears. “It’s perfect, it’s wonderful. If I could do this, I mean if I could make this live in clay, then I would never want to do another thing. It would just be more than I ever hoped for.”

  “We have an agreement then,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question. “I assume that $500 would be adequate payment for your commission?”

  Her large eyes got larger. “Are you kidding? For a concept like this, I should be paying you!”

  “It’s decided then. I know your assignment is due in two days. As soon as your teacher has graded it, give me a call, and I’ll have someone pick it up from your school.”

  She nodded dumbly. I shouldn’t be doing this, she thought. This is only getting me more involved with the Heavenites. When will I learn?

  “And my dear,” the old man said before parting, “don’t be afraid. We have an eye on your house, you know, and won’t let you come to harm. Don’t you remember that invitation to the ball?”

  “I—I gave it back. We can’t use it.”

  “Oh, but that was your parents’ decision, and as I said, it’s for you to decide. I would be the last to suggest disobedience to parents, but you are quite the young woman now, and to put it plainly, our King has chosen you to represent your family. You will recall that no RSVP was required. Simply come when the day is announced.” He squeezed her hand. “You are loved and appreciated, Wittily. Goodby for now.”

  And he was gone.

  “Wow!” she said to herself in the living room when the door had closed behind her. “If he were fifty years younger, wouldn’t I go for him!” And a moment later, “Wait a minute. How did he know when my assignment is due?”

  Part II The Loss of Gentleness