The Road Through the Wall

by Shirley Jackson

  The word that dear little Helen had for Mrs. Desmond was “horse’s behind.” “Thinks she owns the world,” Helen said.

  Helen’s little sister Mildred came home the last day of school and went immediately out into the back yard, where for the last month or so she had been building an elaborate playhouse, partly underground, dug out with a spoon, and partly put together with pieces of board salvaged from vacant lots and other back yards. The playhouse was just big enough for Mildred to crawl in and lie down, and her dolls were in there and what pillows and dishes she could take from her own house. “It’s for my mommy and me,” she told Mr. Donald over the fence. “When Helen and Gram go away my mommy and me will live here.”

  The afternoon that Harriet’s mother found out about the letters, Hallie found Helen alone in the living-room, dancing solemnly around to “Missouri Waltz” on the phonograph. Hallie fell into line behind Helen, imitating her and saying, “Bet when you find your father you’ll be the best dancer there.”

  “I’ll dance all day long,” Helen said. “I’ll never stop dancing till I’m hungry and then I’ll eat ice cream and chicken and chocolate creams.”

  “I wish I could go with you,” Hallie said.

  Helen stopped dancing and fell down on the couch. Hallie lifted the needle off the record and set it aside. She came over and sat down next to Helen and said, “Listen, Willie, can’t I go with you?”

  “You want to know something?” Helen said dreamily.

  Hallie nodded, leaning forward.

  “Don’t tell,” Helen said, and Hallie nodded again. Helen looked around sharply, and Hallie crossed her finger over her heart, and Helen said impatiently, “Don’t do that, baby. Swear on your honor.”

  “I swear on my honor,” Hallie said obediently.

  “Well,” Helen said, “you know where I was last night?”

  Hallie shook her head, her mouth a little open.

  Helen laughed excitedly. “Well,” she said, “I went out for a walk and I went over down by the stores.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Helen said vaguely, “I just felt like going that way. And you know this guy, the one in the gas station, the one we stopped and kidded with once?” She waited while Hallie nodded again, and then went on, “Well, he was there and we got to talking and he says he’ll take me to the city some night and we’ll go somewhere and dance.”

  • • •

  “I don’t know, sweetie,” Dinah Ransom-Jones said to her sister, “I really don’t know, you have such a sense of flowers.”

  “But it’s your garden, dear,” her sister said gently. “You’ll be here a good deal longer than I will.”

  “Brad always says the flowers look prettier when you do them,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said.

  “But I won’t do them always,” her sister said. “He loves the way you plan them.”

  “Sweetie,” Dinah said, “you’ve just got to decide. Nothing ever goes well around here unless you help. You know that.”

  “Well.” Her sister hesitated. “Over there, then.” She pointed to a far corner of the garden, near the street hedge.

  “Really?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “You really think there?”

  “Not if you have a better place,” her sister said.

  “Of course not,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. She picked up the gardening basket and the bag of bulbs. “Don’t you lean over,” she said, “I don’t want you overtiring yourself.”

  “It doesn’t matter, really,” her sister said.

  Mrs. Ransom-Jones moved with determination, and her sister said, quickly, “Not that way, dear. By the street hedge.”

  “Oh.” Mrs. Ransom-Jones stopped and looked around. “I thought you said over here,” she said.

  “Well, I did say by the street hedge,” her sister said, “but if you have a place you like better. . . .”

  “Of course not, sweetie,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. She started off again toward the corner of the garden. “Brad will think this is wonderful,” she said. “That’s just the spot for shy flowers.”

  “He loves everything you do,” her sister said, following.

  • • •

  It was evening, and the kids were all outside; Harriet could see them from her bedroom window, Miss Fielding could see them from her chair on the porch, Marilyn Perlman could see them from the living-room window, past her father’s head bent over papers at the desk. Early evening and twilight were always longer on Pepper Street than anywhere else; dinners were early up and down the block so the children could play longer; even Miss Fielding, who did not play, felt uncomfortable sitting down alone to her dinner later than anyone else, hearing the noise of dishes being washed at the Merriams’. Mrs. Perlman served dinner early because Marilyn might want to play with the other children.

  They played tag and hide-and-seek and long involved games with a line across the street from curb to curb and elaborate systems of bases and penalties. Mr. Desmond, who walked out for the evening air, met Mr. Roberts halfway down the block, and together they stood on the sidewalk and watched the game.

  “If those young animals could put half that creative ability into their school work,” Mr. Desmond commented drily.

  “Healthy kids,” Mr. Roberts said. “Good to see.”

  They stood quietly in the half-darkness, smiling vaguely. Past them their own children and the children of their neighbors moved swiftly back and forth, following some ancient ritual of capture and pursuit, dance steps regulated as far as the placing of the feet. With a wild howl little Jamie Roberts made a capture in the gutter near his father, and Mr. Roberts took the pipe out of his mouth to say, “Good boy, Jamie.” He lifted his eyes to where, across the street, his older son sat with Pat Byrne on the Donalds’ lawn. They were half-watching the game, half-talking. Mr. Desmond followed his attention, and said quietly, “That’s a very good boy, that Art of yours. Bright kid.”

  Mr. Roberts sighed and turned to watch Jamie shrieking up the street.

  “I guess just anywhere where you could find a job,” Art Roberts was saying. “Anywhere not here.”

  “They send you right back,” Pat Byrne said. “You can’t get a job because you’re too young, and they send you right back.”

  “In another year, maybe,” Art said. “I could say I was eighteen.”

  “They take you in the navy at sixteen,” Pat said, “I think.”

  Hallie cornered Helen for a minute, away from the glow of the street light, and said insistently, “Are you going to take someone? A friend?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Helen said, turning away.

  “Tell me,” Hallie said insistently. “You said to him you’d take a friend?”

  Helen looked down on the top of Hallie’s head. “I said I’d take a friend with me, not a dirty little baby.”

  James Donald came out of his house, spoke to Art Roberts and Pat Byrne on his way down to the sidewalk. He was all dressed up, and when Mr. Roberts and Mr. Desmond saw him they smiled at one another and waved across the street to him. He stood uncertainly for a minute and then crossed over to where they stood and said, “Evening, Mr. Desmond, Mr. Roberts.”

  “How’re you?” Mr. Desmond said. “And your family?”

  “Dad’s not well again.” James turned, hands in his pockets, and surveyed the game as though he belonged with Mr. Desmond and Mr. Roberts instead of with the kids in the street.

  “Got a date?” Mr. Roberts said cheerfully.

  James moved nervously, and swallowed. “Thought I’d go out for a while.”

  “Young men,” Mr. Roberts said, and he and Mr. Desmond laughed.

  James straightened his shoulders and laughed with them.

  “Have a fine time, son,” Mr. Roberts said, and began to walk on. “Good night,” he said over his shoulder, and James and
Mr. Desmond both said, “Good night.”

  “Come in and see me some evening,” Mr. Desmond said to James. He smiled tolerantly and added, “Sometime when you’re not so busy.”

  “Thank you,” James said awkwardly, “I’d like to.”

  “Still set on architecture?” Mr. Desmond asked.

  “Guess so,” James said.

  Mr. Desmond put his hand on James’s shoulder for a minute before he turned away. “Good fellow,” he said. “You come in and see me.”

  “I will,” James said. He watched Mr. Desmond go down the street, and then he looked ostentatiously at his watch and began to walk in the other direction, proudly aware that the children in the street were watching him over their game. He had not gone as far as the Perlmans’ house when he heard footsteps behind him and Helen Williams caught up with him.

  “Hey, James Donald,” she was yelling.

  He turned with dignity and waited, his head held back and his arms folded across his chest in a manner strongly reminiscent of Mr. Desmond. “You running away from me?” Helen asked.

  “You’re very much mistaken,” James said.

  Helen looked up at him from under her eyelashes. She was very blond and wore her hair in a long straight bob, and when she bent her head down her hair fell softly along her cheeks. “You never came over to see me at my house like you said you would,” she said.

  “I don’t have much time any more to play with the kids,” James said.

  Helen put out her lower lip; all her gestures were very much exaggerated because she practised them alone in front of a mirror. “I wouldn’t play with the kids, either,” she said meaningly, “if there was anything else to do.”

  James looked at his watch again. “Well,” he said.

  “Where you going?” Helen demanded.

  “I am going,” James said elaborately, “to an orchestra rehearsal at the high school. Now are you happy?”

  “Bet you got a girl there,” Helen said to his back, and when she saw his shoulders tighten she said more loudly, “You got a girl at school, James has got a girl.”

  When he was past hearing her she turned and went back to the game still going on. Tod Donald ran up to her and said loudly, “We missed you, Willie, you don’t want to talk to my old brother.”

  “Let me alone,” Helen said. “I’m going home.”

  • • •

  “I suppose I should be used to this by now,” Mrs. Merriam said. She took out her clean handkerchief and put the damp one down on the table next to her. “After all,” she said, “I’ve been your wife for eighteen years, Harry, and I think by now I deserve a little consideration. Every sort of humiliation and insult. . . .” With a wail she lifted the clean handkerchief and began to cry again.

  “Oh, Mother,” Harriet said irritably, and her father began heavily, “Josie, honey.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Mrs. Merriam almost screamed. Harriet looked at her father, but he turned his face away and sighed.

  “I try to make my daughter into a good decent girl in spite of—” Mrs. Merriam sobbed, “—in spite of everything, and I work all day and I worry about money and try to make a good decent home for my husband and now my only daughter turns out to be—”

  “Josephine,” Mr. Merriam said strongly. “Harriet, go upstairs again.”

  Harriet went upstairs away from her mother’s sorry voice. Her desk was unlocked; instead of eating dinner, she and her mother had stood religiously by the furnace and put Harriet’s diaries and letters and notebooks into the fire one by one, while solid Harry Merriam sat eating lamb chops and boiled potatoes upstairs alone. “I don’t know what it’s all about,” he said to Harriet and his wife when they came upstairs. “Seems like a man ought to be able to come home after working all day and not hear people crying all the time. Seems like a man has a right to have a quiet home.”

  Alone in her room again Harriet sat down by the window. Outside, the eucalyptus trees in the first rich darkness were quiet and infinitely delicate, a rare leaf moving softly against the others. Harriet was accustomed to thinking of them as lace against the night sky; on windy nights they were crazy, pulling like wild things against the earth. Tonight, in their patterned peacefulness, Harriet rested her head somehow against them and stopped thinking about her mother. Lovely, lovely things, she thought, and tried to imagine herself sinking into them far beyond the surface, so far away that nothing could ever bring her back.

  “Harriet,” her mother said from the foot of the stairs. Her voice was steady. “Harriet, dear, come downstairs.”

  Harriet came down the stairs, hitting every step violently with her great shoes. Her mother waited at the bottom, newly powdered and very tall and gracious. “Dear,” she said, “I want to apologize.”

  In the living-room her father was reading the paper. His face was very tired and his mouth stiff, but when Harriet came in with her mother’s arm around her he looked up and said, “Now everyone’s happy,” and went back to his paper.

  “Your father,” Mrs. Merriam said meekly, “has made me feel that I have been too severe with you today. I was very much upset, of course.”

  “Oh, Mother,” Harriet said. Now that her mother was calm Harriet felt at last like crying. She loved her mother again, as one should love a mother, tenderly and affectionately. She put her arm around her mother and kissed her. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Her mother patted her shoulder. “We’ll spend more time together from now on. Reading, and sewing. Would you like to learn to cook, really cook?” she added brightly.

  Harriet nodded, and her mother laughed deprecatingly. “We can write together, too. I used to write poetry, Harriet, not very well, of course, but that’s probably where you get it.”

  Warmly Harriet smiled at her mother, and thought how pleasant it always was after these scenes, how for a little while the three of them would live together in vast amiability.

  “You’ll show your mother everything you write, of course,” her father said.

  “Everything,” Harriet said earnestly. The room was so quiet, so friendly.

  “And we won’t see that Helen Williams any more,” her mother said. “Now that there’s no more school, there’s no need for my girl to run around with that sort of person.”

  “She’s not going to be here much longer, anyway,” Harriet said. “She’s going to live with her father.”

  Mrs. Merriam raised her eyebrows delicately and said, looking obliquely at her husband, “And perhaps next year, some really nice private school.”

  There was a long silence, and then Mrs. Merriam sighed and went on, “I’m not going to punish you any more, Harriet. As I said, I feel that some of this is my fault.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Harriet said. She put her head on her mother’s shoulder, and her mother touched her hair lightly.

  “I’ll try to make it up to you, dear,” Mrs. Merriam said.

  • • •

  “I do not know why,” Mrs. Roberts said with a deadly level voice, “I really do not know why a grown man is not capable of conducting his affairs so that his women know their places.”

  “I don’t know anything about this ‘women’ business,” Mr. Roberts said sullenly.

  “Arthur took the message,” Mrs. Roberts went on. “Arthur. Someone named Jeanie.” She said “Jeanie” with a great casual gentleness, as though the name itself were precious to her.

  “Arthur wouldn’t know,” Mr. Roberts said. “Why don’t you mind your own business?”

  “It is my business.” Mrs. Roberts stopped and said, “Be quiet. Here come the children.”

  Artie and Jamie hurried in, taking off jackets as they came. Mrs. Roberts called Jamie over to her and pushed his hair back out of his eyes. “Both boys look mostly like you,” she said reproachfully to her husband.

  “Why weren’t you playi
ng with the other fellows tonight?” Mr. Roberts asked Artie.

  “Talking to Pat.” Artie had his foot on the bottom step, his hand on the stair rail. He waited.

  “You might come in and talk to your mother and father once in a while,” his father said.

  “I was just going upstairs to read.” Artie came reluctantly into the living-room and sat tentatively on the piano bench.

  “If we’d been going to a movie you’d be down here fast enough,” his father said.

  “Mike,” Mrs. Roberts said.

  Artie looked at Mr. Roberts solemnly. “There was a phone call for you,” he said. “Some dame wanted you.”

  “Bedtime, darling,” Mrs. Roberts said to Jamie. “Artie, you may go upstairs now. Turn off your light in half an hour.”

  She went to the foot of the stairs with both boys. “I’ll be up to kiss you good night,” she said. She watched them up the stairs, and then turned back to her husband.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nobody ever noticed Tod Donald very much. He was a quiet boy who had spent nearly thirteen years trying hard to be moderately good at what his older brother James was able to do naturally and effortlessly. James was tall and pleasant-looking; Tod might be tall some day, but at thirteen he wore a perpetual nervous smile which deepened occasionally into apprehensive trembling, and he was what his brother James called “a bad sport.” Tod had learned, painfully, to ride a bicycle and play football and rollerskate; no one had ever taught him anything; but when Tod sat on his front steps or walked off to school or joined in a game or brought out his bicycle, no one waited for him or asked him to wait. No one ever chose him for a side in a game; he was always allowed to merge himself undesired into one team or another, never allowed to bat in the baseball game.

  Perhaps if Tod’s father had been more interested in his children he might have favored Tod beyond anything he could feel for either James or Virginia, but Stephen Donald (perhaps, once, he had been very much like Tod, never like James) had no pity to waste on anything so distant as his youngest child. There was no recognition, now, in any look Stephen Donald gave the world; he had absorbed too much disappointment already to jeopardize himself needlessly for his children.