The Death and Life of Zebulon Finch, Volume 2

by Daniel Kraus

  The door flew wide.

  Mrs. Shirley White was younger than anticipated. She was twenty-six, pretty but stern-chinned, with natural orange hair set in a permanent-wave pin-curl cut that nuzzled into her shoulders. It was in moderate disarray; a lock had caught in the string of pearls tight around her neck. She wore a periwinkle polka-dot dress, though I could not say if it flattered her figure, because of a shin-length yellow apron. She wiped her hands on it, streaking flour. Her eyes bounced away from me after only a second.

  She’d been warned about my appearance.

  “Mr. Gray, is it?”

  Was that the name I’d chosen? With all this color, I couldn’t think. Yes, that’s right, Mr. Joe Gray, for I’d been afraid that my hostess might recall the name “Zebulon Finch” from the photo spreads with Bridey Valentine in the 1940s. Alas, Mrs. White wasn’t old enough to have been a Photoplay subscriber, and now I was stuck with the unbecoming alias.

  “Joe Gray,” confirmed I. “How do you do.”

  She did not extend her hand for shaking. Her eyes skittered down the lane, as if concerned we might be spotted.

  “Come in, sit down. Can I get you a cup of Nescafé?”

  My response of What, exactly, the hell is Nescafé? was lost, as was the sound of the door closing behind me, for the room I’d entered was not a room at all but an electric pink womb. I shielded my eyes, staggered, found a chair and collapsed into it. This was . . . a kitchen? But constructed in what kind of delirium? The checkerboard floors were pink. The curtains were pink. The refrigerator was pink. Dearest Reader, are you hearing me? The refrigerator was pink. And larger than von Lüth, a hulking, huffing turbine that, when Mrs. White opened it to retrieve a carafe of milk, revealed a robin egg–colored musculature of shelving, wild entanglements of golden bars and trays, hinged doors, and sliding drawers. Soda bottles jingled and plastic-wrapped jellies quivered.

  Mrs. White placed the milk on the pink countertop and filled a pink percolator from the stainless steel sink. A half-eaten piece of cake was on the counter; she took it, dumped it into the sink, and flipped a switch. The sink roared to hellish life with the snicking whirlwind of a thousand sharp teeth. I jumped—a Communist booby-trap here in Midwestern suburbia!—but Mrs. White thought nothing of it, retrieving two mugs from a pink cabinet, leaning an aproned hip against the stove, and lighting a cigarette.

  I detected a scent. A strange one, pleasant even, but after the loamy bouquets of the mountains and the oil-stink of the Streamliner, it was too exotic to identify.

  Mrs. White’s cig winked red.

  “I don’t know how much they told you,” said she.

  “Only that you have an available room.”

  “A room for rent. Nothing personal, but this isn’t a charity situation.”

  “Of course.” I indicated the suitcase. “I am able to pay.”

  “That’s fine. But I want to be up-front with you, Mr. Gray. I have some—well, hesitations. My Charles was a soldier too, and when I heard about this program, helping injured soldiers rejoin communities and all that, I knew that’s what Charles would have wanted. And I do need the extra money. But you’re a single man. I can’t have any trouble here. I have two children, you know. They barely understand what happened to their father. It’s been less than a year.”

  Through a merlon of expelled smoke, she dared a longer look. By the time the percolator gurgled and its red light mirrored the tip of the cigarette, Mrs. White had moderated the grind of her jaw. I believed that she felt relief. I was, to be blunt, disfigured, and therefore my presence was unlikely to be construed by neighbors as untoward. She prepared the Nescafé, centered our cups upon pink saucers, and joined me at the pink breakfast-nook table. I lifted my cup and considered the anemic beige bilge.

  “What did happen to Mr. White, if I may ask?”

  She snugged her cig between her knuckles and with the same hand brought her cup to red-painted lips. Smoke and steam braided.

  “Korea.”

  It was apparent that no further details were in the offing, and for that I was grateful. Mrs. White had been told that my own war had been Korea, not World War I, and the fewer specifics offered about either conflict, the better off I’d be.

  “So what it is you do, Mr. Gray?”

  I’d had fifteen hundred miles to concoct clever cover.

  “I am a writer,” proclaimed I.

  She ashed.

  “Are you one of those men who writes about war? What it means and all that?”

  I’d studied the book racks each time I’d stopped for a twenty-cent tank of gasoline. Men called Hemingway, Jones, Mailer, Salinger, Uris, and Vidal had made combat experience a prerequisite for crafting the Great American Novel; it was reasonable to believe that Korea vets like myself would follow their lead. Of course I’d read not a single published line from these literary lions. My familiarity with modern lit began and ended with Jason Stavros, the poet-soldier who’d survived trench warfare in hopes of doing exactly what Mrs. White had cavalierly dismissed.

  “You have it exactly right,” said I. “War. What it means. All that.”

  I set down the coffee cup with finality.

  “Careful,” snapped she. “You’ll dent the Formica.”

  “The what?”

  Her green eyes, bolder now, searched for evidence that I was putting her on. Oh, how I loathed being ugly, and yet I returned my bravest face. At last she shrugged, wedged her cigarette into the crenellation of an ash tray, and slid across the table an aerodynamic chrome cube outfitted with dual ammunition slots and a spring-loaded trigger. I tensed for action. It was a shrapnel bomb, and this woman was some kind of kitchen kamikaze.

  “This toaster,” sighed she. “It’s made by Western Brass. They made torpedoes, you know? I figured they could make a pop-up toaster. But I’d kill to have my Toastmaster back. This thing’s a hunk of junk. You can’t adjust it worth a hoot. It burns one piece, then hardly heats the next.”

  I traced the gadget’s electrical cord to the wall outlet. There, upon a platter, were piled some ten pieces of cold toast, the color of one char-black, the next virgin-white, proof of Mrs. White’s unflagging siege against the alleged time-saver.

  An egg-timer buzzed. The woman sprung from her chair, yanked on an oven mitt, and opened the oven. The pleasant aroma I’d detected earlier poured forth in a visible cloud, damp and sweet like a summer’s morning mist.

  “So, the toaster,” said she. “Do you think you can fix it?”

  Perhaps a fib was a dicey way to begin a relationship, but the scent was so intoxicating that suddenly I could not imagine a life without it. Survive cruel winters in the Rocky Mountains I could do; stroke the antler velvet of feeding elk I could do; but how to fix a toaster, I hadn’t the first cockamamie clue.

  “I can fix it,” said I.

  “Good. Like I said, it’s nothing personal, but that’s what I put in for. A man who could help around the house. I know you have an illness, or an ailment, and I’m sorry about that, but without Charles, this place is falling apart and I can’t keep pestering the neighbors every time a light goes on the fritz. I know they say the suburbs are full of young couples, but that’s not true, not in Heavenly Hills. Half the people here are older than sin. And they avoid me, I swear they do. It’s like Charles’s death was polio and they’re afraid they’ll catch it.”

  The proclamation was punctuated by the clatter of cooking pan, scrape of spatula, and clang of plate being set upon more Formica. With a whirl of apron hem, she spun on a high heel and planted before me a plate of chocolate-chip cookies. I was seventeen, or seventy-five, either way too old to be hypnotized by confections. Yet something about the golden dough and gooey chocolate squeezed my dead heart.

  “Toll House,” said she.

  I nodded, gathered my suitcase, and began to unbuckle it.

  “And how much is this toll?”

  She sat down, crossed her legs, then arms.

  “Toll House. It’s a
cookie mix. You’ve really been away from it all, haven’t you?”

  Good and humiliated, and constitutionally incapable of partaking in either Nescafé or Toll House, I tried to save face by busying myself with the toaster. I peered into its twin abysses and shaped what I hoped were wise, scrutable frowns. It worked. Mrs. White stamped her cig and exhaled.

  “All right. If you’re willing to do some handiwork, like I said, I can lower the rent to sixty dollars a month. Including meals.”

  Even in pink plastic palaces crafty minxes crept. The housing honcho in Wichita had told me that Mrs. White of Heavenly Hills had advertised her spare room at fifty dollars. My hesitation at this price hike was minute, but, perhaps feeling guilty, she tightened her crossed arms and scowled.

  “Charles was a wonderful man, but his financial planning . . . He didn’t do as much with war bonds as he might have. The house alone cost six thousand. It was too much. I told him so, but you couldn’t talk Charles out of anything once he had his mind set. Now he’s gone and there’s a mortgage. I have to pay it, don’t I?”

  The insolent tilt of Mrs. White’s chin recalled Merle’s, though it was plain to the eye that she hadn’t my daughter’s steel skeleton.

  “A perfectly sensible price,” said I.

  “First month in advance, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “And you’ll have to keep one eye on the children on Monday nights. I have my bowling league in the city. The Lane Ladies. I can’t miss my bowling league.”

  “No, that would be regrettable.”

  “And I have canasta after dinner on Wednesdays at Mrs. Shoemaker’s.”

  “Canasta Wednesdays. Very good.”

  “And Junior League meetings every third Sunday. I believe volunteerism is vital for a vibrant community, don’t you?”

  “And how, and how.”

  After she exhausted herself of blather, the only sound was the scritch of her red-painted nails across the rim of the cookie plate. Two extrusive canines bungled her otherwise straight teeth, and these fangs chewed at her bottom lip as if hoping for another cigarette to facilitate a final confession.

  “And I work.”

  Her fair skin went the same pink as the walls.

  “Only while the children are at school. But from time to time my supervisor has me stay late and the children get home before I do. It’s just—well, you need to know about that. I work at the library, and only part-time, but I know that’s not something everyone considers proper. Neighbors come to the library with their children. I have eyes, I see how they look at me. But what the Army gave me for Charles’s death wasn’t enough, not even close. There’s nothing wrong with a woman who works, even a woman with children. Nothing at all.”

  ’Twas not me that she hoped to convince.

  “I am a writer,” reassured I. “I shall be here. Writing.”

  She nodded, her face draining back toward white.

  “I’ll show you your room then, Mr. Gray.”

  “You may call me Joe.”

  Her smile was piano-wire taut.

  “Mr. Gray will be fine,” said she. “And you may call me Mrs. White.”

  III.

  THOUGH SHE WAS THE PHYSICAL opposite of the Marine Corps’s Major Horstmeier, Mrs. White delivered orders at the same clip, assigning my first project within thirty seconds: a hole in the wall outside my room, punched by the negligent elbow of her son. The hole had been there for two years, sighed she. Could I plaster it and paint it? As easy as pie, I lied. I was prepared to agree to anything if it meant I could get inside that room and, hoped I, never emerge again.

  The room was a former storage area, long and narrow and just wide enough for a single bed, a chipped wardrobe, and a desk-and-chair set tailor-made for an enterprising author. Though partitioned from the basement, this was no Berlin bomb shelter. Sunlight shone from three lawn-level windows that, if I jumped, allowed dandelion- obstructed views of the side and back yards. I resolved to block them out.

  The egg timer again cried like an infant, and Mrs. White swished away, leaving me to unpack my sparse cargo. My single sad change of clothing I hung in the wardrobe. My envelopes of cash I stashed beneath the mattress. The last and heaviest item in the suitcase was my one prop, a sea-foam blue Royal Quiet de Luxe portable typewriter I’d picked up in Cheyenne, Wyoming—a much kindlier device than von Lüth’s Enigma. I centered it upon the desk, stacked next to it a pile of “twin-pak” ink ribbons, and contemplated the forty-nine teeth of its goofy grin.

  Quickly I saw the flaw in my pseudonymous ploy. If Mrs. White did not hear typing, she would become suspicious. I rifled through my belongings until I found a single sheet of paper—the receipt for the rented Streamliner, blank on the reverse. Then I—Mr. Joe Gray, Author!—sat at my writer’s desk, knobbed the paper through the guide, snapped the release level, returned the carriage, and adjusted the Magic Margin stop. I limbered my stiff fingers above the sleek plastic keys.

  It was at that inconvenient instant that I discovered that, given the decades of strife it had caused me, the notion of writing was abhorrent. I fished the murky waters of memory for a phrase I could type without thinking, and for my sins landed upon Luca Testa’s immortal warning, later echoed by the Barker and reignited when Church almost died. It was easier to yield than resist; I made pointers of my fingers and began to type.

  You gotta have fear in your heart.

  Carriage return.

  You gotta have fear in your heart.

  Carriage return.

  You gotta have fear in your heart.

  Carriage return.

  Not quite Pulitzer-level, but the musical clickety-clackety-zing! did help thwart flashbacks of each deleterious time I’d ignored the advice, as did the overhead clop of Mrs. White’s heels and the metallic chokes of the toaster dishonoring another slice of bread. My fingers eased into secretarial position and soon had coated the page in Testa’s augury. Upon finishing, I rolled the page back to its top, discovered the shift key, and added another patina of type atop the first, this time in capitals. Enjoyable? Hardly. But there was a gratification in watching something pure white stain black.

  The sensation did not survive the afternoon. So accustomed was I to mountain vistas that the low plasterboard ceiling and faux-wood-panel walls contracted upon me; the frayed Navajo rug beneath my feet, meanwhile, made a shameful replacement for the Blackfoot wilds. How I scratched and fidgeted! When I heard from outdoors a mechanized cry not unlike the hydra inside Mrs. White’s kitchen sink, I welcomed the distraction. I scooted my chair alongside the wall, stepped atop it, and peered into the backyard.

  My grub’s-eye view looked between the slats of a white picket fence, behind which a man in a chambray shirt pushed along a gargantuan tomato-red lawn mower powered by what looked like a race-car engine. It spat bright green grass like Maxim machine guns did lead. It was a hell of a thing, and I admired the impressive low-hanging cloud it emitted. At one point, the man idled to accept a glass of lemonade from a woman in an apron embroidered with pastel hearts. I pressed my forehead to the glass, eager for a gander at her goods. Even eunuchs, Dearest Reader, can appreciate a pair of gams.

  A monster smashed its beslobbered face against my window. I yelped and pinwheeled for balance as thick jaws cranked wide and a pink tongue darted past sharp white teeth. Blasts of hot breath clouded the glass before a wet black nose wiped enough of it away that I could see a single crazed, idiot eye goggling at me.

  It was a dog. A filthy dog.

  The Whites had a goddamned filthy dog.

  The hellhound snuffled and galloped off. Seconds later came shrieks of glee as four dimple-kneed legs gave chase. Here was Mrs. White’s aforementioned litter, louder than the canine’s bark, louder than the grass-gobbling mower, louder than their mother’s upstairs pacing. I retreated from my post and, to my disrepute, went fetal upon the bed. So much light! So much life! So much noise! This was not a suitable crypt within which a corpse could p
utresce in peace.

  It got worse. When dinnertime arrived at the indecent hour of five thirty, Mrs. White came downstairs and cleared her throat. This fabricated world had customs, and by dint of anchoring at its port, it seemed, those customs became my own. I tugged jacket cuffs and tautened tie, and then, feeling quite sorry for myself, slumped up the stairs as if to meet the hangman.

  By the time I found the dining room, the family was seated and expectant. I took the open chair, trying not to think of its bygone claimant. Mrs. White offered me a cordial smile, but her eyes ricocheted between her children, a young boy and an even younger girl. I sympathized with her concern. One look at my discolored flesh, and either child might break out bawling.

  Instead the youngsters gawped.

  “Children,” said Mrs. White. “This is Mr. Gray, who I told you about. Why don’t you introduce yourselves?”

  Their open mouths could have accommodated softballs.

  My dislike of ragamuffins was nothing new. Besides Little Johnny Grandpa—hardly an ordinary child—I’d shared space with but one, Gladys Leather, who as an infant had revolted me with superfluities of mucus and mewlings, and then, as she’d grown, frazzled my nerves with mood swings, asphyxiating with giggles one minute, only to asphyxiate with sorrow the next. Nevertheless, I would juggle kittens if it meant skirting turbulence.

  “Salutations, juveniles,” said I. “It is satisfactory to make your acquaintance.”

  The girl blinked huge eyes. She was a soft sprite, uncreased by life, white-blond hair partitioned into ribboned pigtails.

  “You talk funny,” whispered she.