The End of Vandalism

by Tom Drury

  “What are you up to?” Louise asked.

  “I’m in community college now,” said Maren. “I’ve changed a lot, Louise. College has changed me, and this is causing problems for me and Loren. Do you remember Loren?”

  “He was your boyfriend, right?”

  “That’s what the problem is about,” said Maren. “I say that I’ve changed. An example would be that now I love the music of Van Morrison. I listen to Veedon Fleece and sometimes I could just cry. So the other day Loren and I were driving around and he goes, ‘Put on some of that Don Morrison.’ I mean, it breaks your heart.”

  “People drift apart,” said Louise.

  “I’m in a two-year program, and then I can take my credits and go anywhere,” said Maren. “I may go out to the West Coast. In Cannery Row by John Steinbeck the author talks about a marine biologist named Doc. And reading this, it suddenly dawned on me that I have never put my feet in salt water. And I think that’s something I would enjoy doing, given the type of personality I have. Evidently you can float motionless in the water and there is no way you can sink. Being a poor swimmer, I like the sound of that. So I’m considering California schools, which are all free. What college did you go to?”

  “I didn’t,” said Louise. “I graduated from Grafton High School in the class of seventy-four. We had this guidance counselor who was really more like a fortune teller. Instead of giving advice, he would make these mysterious predictions. He said, ‘Louise, you will work in a small shop.’ So I guess he got that right.”

  “Photography is so intense,” said Maren.

  Russell opened the door and looked in. “Let’s go,” he said. “Mercury’s falling.”

  Steven and Maren resumed their embrace. Russell threw his megaphone to the ground. “Now the dress looks bunchy,” he said.

  “Oh, you look bunchy,” said Louise. “Steven! Put your hand on the side of the dress! Where the pins are! Perfect. Let’s take some pictures.”

  A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk during the photo session. There had been a rumor for years that Sally Field was going to direct and act in a farm movie that would be filmed in Grouse County, and whenever anything resembling acting occurred in public, people would come together and look around hopefully for Sally Field.

  This movie had been rumored for so long that the plot had changed from a young farm woman with cancer to a middle-aged farm woman with cancer. But through it all Sally Field never came to Grouse County, and she never would, and the whole thing was one of those grass-roots misunderstandings that refuse to go away.

  Rumors can last a long time in Grouse County, or they can come back seasonally, like perennials. Take the one about Mary’s trees, which, being on the edge of Grafton, tend to collect a lot of ice during winter storms. About once a winter, word spreads that a photographer is coming down from the Stone City newspaper to take pictures of Mary’s ice formations. And soon all the parents have dragged their kids over to Mary’s place with instructions to get their ass out there and build a snowman. But the afternoon unfolds, and the word proves false, and the sun sets on a poignant landscape of half-finished snow creatures.

  Anyway, the crowd at Russell Ford’s photo shoot had now been joined by Louise’s friend Pansy Gansevoort, who airbrushed for Big Chief Printing and had an impressive mane of ginger-colored hair that would have made her a colorful extra in the Sally Field movie that was not to be.

  Pansy waited for Louise to finish her work. “Hi, hon,” she said. “I just came from Eight Dollars.” This was a sprawling store on the edge of town where every item had that price.

  “What did you get?” said Louise.

  “Two blouses, a case of Cheetos, and a bowling ball,” said Pansy.

  “What kind of bowling ball costs eight dollars?” said Louise.

  “This is what we’re going to find out,” said Pansy. “Want to go to the Rose Bowl?”

  “I’m not a good bowler,” said Louise, “and you bowl league. I mean, come on.”

  “I’ll give you pointers,” said Pansy.

  So they went bowling, but Pansy’s tips did not help. Louise was one of those uncanny bowlers who seem to throw directly into the gutter. That afternoon she even managed to make the classic error of rolling a ball after the pin-sweeping gate had descended. The ball cracked into the gate, and everyone stared, and a guy from the alley had to catwalk down the lane divider.

  Still, the beers were tasty. Pansy and Louise sat at the scoring table and discussed their partners but did not seem to be speaking the same language. The sadism of Pansy’s boyfriend had given way to something more common—just a lot of threats. And Pansy threatened him back, so this amounted to progress in Pansy’s view.

  Her stories involved either herself or the boyfriend cowering in a corner while the other one broke things by throwing them on the floor. Once Pansy’s boyfriend had even entered the kitchen with a pistol, which turned out to be a starter’s pistol but could have been real for all Pansy knew.

  In comparison, Dan’s not being able to sleep or Louise’s feeling that something was not right sounded minor.

  “I would leave the man,” said Louise.

  “We have a history,” said Pansy.

  “What’s the point if you end up with a broken nose?” said Louise.

  “It’s not like that,” said Pansy.

  “It sounds just like that.”

  “I love him so much.”

  “Maybe it isn’t love,” said Louise. “Maybe it’s more of a sadness that you get used to.”

  Louise was speaking very freely with Pansy. This is sometimes known as “the beer talking,” although beer usually speaks in rougher tones. Amid the clatter of falling pins Louise was getting plastered in that loving and rose-colored way you can on afternoons in October.

  At one point she swung her legs from beneath the table and, admiring the cuffs of her clean blue jeans and her rented shoes with their red suede and olive suede, she said huskily, “I love these fucking shoes.”

  Eventually Pansy and Louise emerged from the Rose Bowl into the slanting light. Pansy produced from her bowling bag the shoes that Louise had rented.

  “What a nice thing,” said Louise. She sat down on the curb and put the shoes on.

  “You’re right about not being able to bowl,” Pansy said, “but I still like you.”

  Louise drove home slowly on narrow and little-used roads, reminded of the mechanical way she used to walk when as a teenager she would try to get across the living room and upstairs without her mother knowing she was drunk.

  She and Dan had a fight when she got home. He was grilling peanut butter sandwiches for supper.

  “I wish you wouldn’t reach into the bread and tear out pieces of slices,” he said.

  “I lost my head,” she said. She sat in one chair, her feet in the bowling shoes on another.

  “That therapist I went to called,” said Dan. “She thought maybe you should come in for an appointment.”

  “She’s so perfect,” said Louise.

  “It’s up to you,” said Dan.

  “Marriage counseling after six months,” said Louise. “Not too very promising.”

  “It isn’t marriage counseling,” said Dan.

  “Especially with divorce so easy to get,” said Louise. “I did it not that long ago. They probably still remember me.”

  “Oh, cut it out,” said Dan. “Where were you this afternoon?”

  Louise was crying. “Look at my shoes and guess,” she said.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You married me because I chased you,” said Louise. “My mother said, ‘Don’t chase him, Louise.’ But I did, I chased you.”

  “You didn’t chase anyone,” said Dan.

  “Do you think I’m blind?” said Louise.

  “What?”

  She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “I should have been a lot cooler about the whole thing.”

  “I don’t see why.”

  “Look,” said Louise
, “do you love me?”

  “Yes,” said Dan. With the spatula he put grilled sandwiches on a plate. “Don’t cry,” he said. He had a way of becoming wooden and emotionless just when she needed him to be the opposite.

  “I will if I want,” said Louise.

  The next day Louise felt terrible. All day at work she had to talk to some historic preservation people about a photographic survey of houses. Talk, talk, talk, and then they wanted coffee. They were very concerned with authenticity, and seemed to be scrutinizing Louise to see if she was authentic.

  Then Louise went over to Russell Ford’s and rented a trailer. She thought this could be the separate roof under which Dan might get some sleep, and by doing this good deed she could make up for the fight.

  Russell gave her a discount, but still all she could afford was a tiny trailer made in 1976. Inside, there was just enough room to turn around. Russell said he would tow the trailer to the farm and set it up for seventy-five dollars.

  “And that’s treating you like a sister,” he said.

  Russell’s nephew Steven delivered the trailer two days later. He put a carpenter’s level on the fender and turned a crank on the hitch until the trailer was square. He filled the water tank, hooked up the electricity, showed her how the tiny appliances worked.

  “Do you think I have a chance with Maren?” he said.

  The question sounded to Louise like one you would ask the Magic Eight Ball. “There is always a chance,” she said.

  She enjoyed preparing the trailer for Dan. She cleaned it all up and made the bed with new sheets, pillows, and a quilt. She put beer in the refrigerator and cattails in a vase on the table. She plugged in a lamp with a warm yellow shade.

  By the time Dan came home she had changed her mind. She opened the door and looked down at him.

  “What’s this, baby?” said Dan.

  “I want to stay,” she said. “I fixed this up for you, but I want to stay.”

  It would be wrong to say that the little trailer solved all their problems. But Dan began to sleep once he had the bed in the house to himself. It is true that his therapist had finally come through with a prescription. He and Louise ate together, and every night had the pure emotions of parting.

  One night Dan knocked on her door and read for her a speech he was to give at a seminar on domestic violence.

  “Sometimes we get a mistaken notion of what is strong,” said Dan. “Why? Television, for one reason. We see a man lift five hundred pounds over his head, we see another man tear up the phone book of a large city. It becomes easy to conclude that this is what we mean by ‘strong.’ But turn off the set. Aren’t the real strong men and women right at home, looking out for that family? What do we mean when we say ‘strong’?”

  • • •

  Kleeborg’s Portraits won the bid to take pictures of old houses. For Louise this amounted to long walks with a camera around the nicer parts of Stone City.

  Not everyone understood the purpose of the project. Some people dressed up, gathering the kids and the dogs in the front yard. One thin old gentleman with a steep-roofed house built in 1897 showed Louise the spools in his garage. He had attached dozens of small sewing spools to the walls and ceiling and connected them by taut loops of string, so that when he turned on an electric motor the spools all spun at once and the knots on the strings danced back and forth.

  “Wow,” said Louise.

  “Each one stands for someone I know,” said the man.

  Louise went to see Dan’s therapist. The office had a soft chair and a huge inverted cone of an ashtray. A handle on the side of the chair operated a footrest, enabling Louise to raise and lower her feet as needed.

  She had expected the therapist to be a bombshell, but the woman seemed tired and normal instead. Her name was Robin Otis.

  “Where are your parents?” she said.

  “My mother lives in Grafton. My father is dead,” said Louise.

  “How old were you when he died?”

  “Well, how old was I. Sixteen,” said Louise. “He had a heart attack while getting ready for a party.”

  “Such loss at a young age,” said Robin.

  “Yes, well,” said Louise.

  “Do you remember the last words he said to you?”

  “He said for us to have a happy New Year.”

  “Do you get along with your mother?”

  “You could say that,” said Louise.

  “Tell me about the trailer. I am curious about this. Why did you claim it for yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” said Louise. “It seems familiar. It’s clean. It’s warm. I don’t really know.”

  “Hmm,” said Robin Otis.

  “Why, does Dan want it?” said Louise.

  “I can never read him,” said Robin.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “He’s like some incredible ice cube or something.”

  “I think he wants to stay married,” said Louise.

  “I have no doubt of it.”

  Louise walked out of her office through a hallway that served as a waiting room not only for the therapist but for a dentist and an accountant.

  A couple sat between a stack of hunting magazines and another stack of Highlights for Children. Louise pushed a button and stood waiting for an elevator.

  “All I’m saying is that we don’t necessarily need to get into specifics about sex,” said the man.

  “Ho ho, you wait,” said the woman.

  As part of the architectural survey, Louise took a picture of a palm reader’s house on Pomegranate Avenue. The house was built from rocks of all sizes. The roofline curved like a roller coaster. A sign out front said, “Mrs. England Palms and Cards.” It was an eclectic house, and the woman who came to the door had huge arms and fogged glasses.

  “I’m here to take pictures of the house,” said Louise.

  “Let me shut off my story,” said Mrs. England. She went through an arched doorway, leaving Louise in the front room. The house seemed perfectly silent.

  “Nice place,” Louise called.

  There were framed oval mirrors and a painting of a man with a hammer. Turtles and newts dragged themselves across a sandy tank. A map of the solar system hung on the wall, with a marker saying, “You Are Here.”

  “Mr. England built this house,” said Mrs. England. “He built houses all over Stone City, but he considered them very tame. He was happy enough to build the houses that people wanted, but he also wanted the chance to build a house that would satisfy his need for self-expression. This is his portrait. He was a wild man who perished in the war.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Louise. Mrs. England took her by the hand and led her to a purple davenport.

  “He used the materials of his region and got it all at cost, and I loved him,” said Mrs. England. “How late are you?”

  Louise sat down. “Eleven days,” she said.

  “You have a lot to think about.”

  Louise sank into the davenport. “How did you know?”

  “By touching your hand,” said Mrs. England. “Didn’t you read my shingle? I guess you assume it’s all fake. Well, it isn’t all fake. I should say not.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Louise. “Can you tell from the temperature?”

  “Oh, it’s complicated,” said Mrs. England with a wave of her hand.

  “Am I pregnant?” said Louise.

  “I couldn’t say for sure that you are,” said Mrs. England. “But I do know how you can find out. You go down Pomegranate another five blocks, and you will come to a Rexall’s.”

  “Yes,” said Louise.

  “They’ve got little kits that you can do at home,” said Mrs. England.

  The pregnancy tests were on a shelf between the condoms and the sinus pills. Louise compared the brands without the first idea of what she was looking for. She passed over two tests that could be accomplished in one step, because that did not seem like enough steps. Another featured a plastic wand that was to be h
eld in the “urine stream,” and she rejected this as well.

  Most of the kits were fifteen dollars, but some were eleven, and she ruled out the less expensive ones on the theory that something must account for the price difference, and after all, she wasn’t going to be buying a pregnancy test every day of the week. Beyond these judgments, she went strictly by the design of the packaging. Almost all of the boxes had red lines or red words, as if invoking nostalgia for the menstrual cycle. The model she chose suggested urgency and yet, she thought, not outright panic.

  On her way to the counter Louise checked to make sure the package had a price tag, so the clerk would not take a silver microphone and ask all over the store for a price check on the pregnancy test. The salesboy rang up the purchase with the blank and undiscerning face that they must teach in salesboy school. She might have been buying a key chain, or toothpaste, or flashbulbs, instead of embarking on the mystery of life.

  ELEVEN

  DAN TOOK Russell Ford duck hunting that winter because he wanted something from him. He had no reason to expect trouble; Russell claimed to be a pheasant hunter, and whether the game is pheasant or ducks there are certain rules.

  It was just before five o’clock on a Sunday morning in November when Dan drove up to Russell’s house. Russell lived in the area known as Mixerton, which took its name from the Mixers, a utopian society that existed around the turn of the century but broke up under the strain of constant squabbling. There is nothing in Mixerton now, really, except the Mixerton Clinic and some houses.

  Rain fell steadily. It was the kind of rain that might fall all day—fine weather for ducks. Dan sat in his car looking at Russell’s house. The wipers went back and forth as he unscrewed the metal lid of his thermos. Steam rose from the coffee. Hunting was considered recreational, but when you got up in the dark to go hunting, the act seemed to acquire unusual gravity. The radio played softly “Hello, It’s Me” on the second day of a Todd Rundgren weekend.