Interior Design (14 page)

*

Isabel stands quietly in the dark foyer, a shopping bag under her arm. The living room lights are out. Though that long shadow on the couch might be Richard, Isabel can't force out even a whisper. I'll do this alone, she decides, and sneaks up the stairs.

In the bedroom she pulls the blouse from the bag, rips off the sales tag, and starts to undo the buttons. But before she can pad over to Richard's closet, she hears a creak of the floorboards out in the hallway. Then there's another—he must be just outside the door. Isabel quickly stows the blouse in her dresser. When she sees the shopping bag on the floor she kicks it under the bed, wincing at the noise, then turns and waits for her husband's entrance. But all she hears is silence—is he waiting for her? With a regretful glance back at the dresser—she'll have to leave that blouse for later—Isabel leaves the bedroom as nonchalantly as she can.

The hall is empty. She'd like to believe that creaking was just the house itself, but the door to the guest room is ajar. Again, she finds she can't call Richard's name, and she hurries downstairs.

In the kitchen Isabel opens the lid of the crockpot and sees that Richard must have spooned out a plate of stew for himself. Then she hears the faint wooden rasp of a drawer opening upstairs. The drawer closes, then another opens. It's Richard, and Isabel knows what he must be searching for. But will he recognize the blouse when he finds it? She waits, and through the lingering quiet comes the slide of the distant closet door.

Barely able to contain herself, Isabel is waiting below when Richard walks down the stairs. At the sight of her he stops in mid-step, and he looks so sheepish standing there, one foot suspended in the air, that Isabel feels herself suppressing a grin. Maybe they should both laugh right now, just as they laughed years ago—if only the television were on, some studio audience might get them going! But the house is quiet, the moment passes, and Richard takes his step. They both glance away as he walks past her to the dark porch.

Isabel follows. He's settled in his chair, facing the cool night breezes, and she sits nearby on the steps. Together they listen to the air sifting through the trees, the drone of a distant airplane hidden by clouds. Already this is a bit like their long-ago, silent moment, and neither of them has to say a word about the secret they're creating.

*

Isabel spends her lunch break the following day in the thrift shop, searching through cluttered aisles and brimming cardboard boxes. The hangers squeak, as if encouraging her to hunt further through the cotton prints, the long, dark skirts, and she feels a budding panic at the sight of other customers, afraid they might be the first to find what she's looking for.

In an old box behind a stack of lampshades, Isabel finds a pair of dark pumps. Though the left heel has a few ugly scuffs, she steps into the dressing room. The shoes fit, and Isabel sits for a long time in quiet gratitude. When she slips them off she remembers Richard kneeling before her, cradling her bare feet, and his hand is whole again—she can feel the long gentle touch of his index finger and thumb, and she waits for him to rise and unbutton her blouse. He hesitates, and so she shifts a little in her seat to encourage him, she reaches out to stroke his soft, straight hair. But the salesgirl is knocking on the door: “Honey, are you all right in there?”

*

When Isabel returns home, still held by that reincarnated touch, Richard is standing in the living room doorway, scanning the bag under her arm, its bulge. Afraid he'll reach for it with his bad hand, she walks by, yet feels the unfairness of this and stops by the stairs when he says, “Shoes?”

“Uh-huh,” she replies, turning to him, “but they need a little polishing.”

She knows Richard wants to offer his help—his hesitation is so familiar—so she sets the bag down by the banister. “I'll go make a quick dinner,” she says.

Later, as she shakes the colander, steam rising from the spaghetti, she watches Richard's reflection in the darkened window before her: he's waiting at the table, his eyes following her. She lingers, filling the bowls—he can watch as long as he likes.

“So how was work?”

Startled by this unexpected question, Isabel pauses. If he's really curious, he's picked the right day. She places the spaghetti on the table and says, “Well, a fellow came in before closing and bought seven different kinds of lawn sprinklers. The girl at the next counter even noticed.”

Richard laughs—he was actually listening.

“We couldn't imagine what he wanted with them all. I wish I'd asked.”

Serving himself, Richard says, “Maybe the guy… oh, I don't know.” He lifts his knife and fork, then stops and grins. “No, wait—maybe he's a spy. Maybe each sprinkler … is a different signal. For his contact. The kind that covers a whole front lawn means, ‘I'm being watched.' Or one of those twisting jobs means, ‘Meet me at the drop-off point.' Stuff like that.”

Isabel doesn't know what to say to Richard's sudden burst of words. “Yeah,” he continues, twirling repetitive loops of spaghetti, “it might be a kind of sprinkler code. Big secrets—has nothing to do with the lawn. Better tell your manager to call the FBI.” He stops, embarrassed by all this talk, and soon he's sopping up sauce with garlic bread—he seems surprised that the meal is so good.

That night, Isabel listens to Richard's stirrings in the dark and she can't wait for that figure in the closet to be finished. Then, she's sure, he'll reach across the space between them on the bed. He'll whisper to her as he used to—first complaints about the assembly line, perhaps one of those little jokes she could never remember afterward, then short phrases about her hair, lips, shoulders, and his remembered voice murmurs to her until she falls asleep.

*

Two days later, Isabel is swinging the shopping bag in time to her light gait as she returns home, enjoying the heft of the folded woolen skirt inside. Even though she found it in an expensive shop and blanched at the price, her search is finally over.

She's halfway up the walk to her porch when she hears the squeal of an electric drill. With a few quick steps she stands just outside the workshop and tries to decipher that shrill grinding. What could Richard possibly be adding to the figure—a face? She opens the door. He's bent over the workbench vise, sparks rising as he drills a hole in a thin metal tube. There's curved piping of all sizes scattered across the bench. Richard turns his goggled face up, the plastic lenses hazy with tiny scratches.

“You gave me a great idea, hon,” he says, smiling, and he gestures at the metal clutter. “I'm making a sprinkler—comes with attachments, so folks can water the lawn any way they like. Seven sprinklers in one, y'know?”

He picks up a slim, half-oval cylinder. “This one'll do the side lawn, but it won't drench the house or spill over into the neighbor's.” He reaches for another. “And this one …”

“Not now, all right? Maybe later,” Isabel says. She shifts the shopping bag from one hand to another, shakes it a little so he'll notice.

Richard nods, though she's not sure how well he can really see through those goggles. Or is he staring through her again? He turns back to the vise. She shakes the bag again until the skirt inside thrashes about—doesn't he understand what she's found? But the drill has already started its piercing whine. Sparks loop into the air.

She walks alone up to the bedroom. The drill squeals again. Isabel slides open the closet door and pushes away Richard's shirts. The figure simply hangs there, the clothes flat on its frame, and Isabel is embarrassed at the sight of the panties beneath the blouse, the curve of those exposed wire thighs. She pulls the new skirt from the bag and presses its itchy woolen pile against her face, inhales the startling freshness of this last piece of a puzzle she and Richard have been trying to solve.

Then Isabel kneels down before the figure, gathers one wire foot and then the other, and slips them, jangling, into the gray skirt. When she pulls the skirt up the curve of wire legs the figure shivers, as if it too understands something momentous is about to occur. Isabel stops and shivers as well, imagining that it's ready to lift both arms and raise itself off the wooden rod, no longer content to dangle.

Isabel grabs the figure's hands to hold it still. She feels the wire edges through the gloves' fabric, the soft fabric that has no real fingers to cling to.
I
should be wearing these gloves, she thinks, and she pulls them off. The skirt, only halfway up those thighs, slips slowly to the ground.
So why stop?
Isabel decides, reaching for the buttons on the blouse, and within moments she's undressed the wriggling figure down to its bare metal frame.

The scattered clothes lie in a pile on the floor, and Isabel realizes with a shock that they're waiting for her.
Of course
, she thinks, and she strips off her outfit as quickly as she can. But when she stands exposed before that still quivering figure, its emptiness seems to mock her, its faint metal tinkling sounds like a dismissive giggle. “Don't,” Isabel hisses, rage rising inside her, and suddenly she's ready to tear apart that torso, twist off that head. She shakes her fist at the thing, squeezing her hand so hard it trembles painfully before her, curled and floating.

Uncoiling her hand and stretching her fingers, Isabel watches the pink patches vanish from her palm. Then she reaches out and bends and bends a wire shoulder until she tugs an arm joint loose. But she cuts herself on a sharp metal edge and a red squiggle runs across her knuckle. She licks it. At first queasy at her own taste—a slightly strange sweetness—she sucks at herself until no new drop appears.

She returns to that dangling arm, but when its cold metal edge brushes against her breast as if in protest, Isabel has to suppress a scream. She lifts the figure off the rod and throws the clattering thing on the rug. Kneeling, she bends and twists apart the wire limbs and body, and though some part of her cries out against this, it's a tiny voice, one that grows smaller and smaller, until the figure is nothing but a grimace of wires on the floor. Isabel stops, gulping for air. What will Richard say when he sees this? she thinks, What have I done?

“Just what I needed to,” she says to the empty room. She kicks those misshapen pieces into the closet and slides the door shut. Then, with great deliberation, Isabel dresses herself in those clothes that are hers, hers.

She sits in a chair and assumes the pose of the photograph: her lips slightly parted, her eyes oval, her legs crossed and balanced just so, one foot stretched, the shoe pointing toward the door. Richard will forget he ever made that wire thing when he sees me, she thinks. But the door is still closed, there's no hint of him. Her legs begin to numb.

The drill downstairs screeches again and again, but he
has
to finish sometime. Then he'll wonder where she is. He'll have to remember her standing in the doorway holding that shopping bag, he'll understand at once what was inside and he'll be amazed that he didn't notice before. Isabel wants so much to hear the steps' little creaks and groans that she knows so well until there's just Richard's hesitation on the other side of the door, his fingers on the knob but not yet turning it, he's so excited. And when he finally opens that door he'll see her patient smile. Then, like a photo rising out of itself, Isabel will raise her arms, and each white-gloved hand will stretch toward him.

The Reverse

Still exhausted from hauling Happy Shrimp platters at the restaurant last night, Fern lingers in bed and listens to the muffled echo of David's voice in the shower. He's crooning a song he made up yesterday about a heart breaking into different geometric shapes, how unhappiness is only a puzzle with actual pieces that can join and heal. Fern loves the awkward quirks of his voice as he sings about a pulsating trapezoid fitting with a warm little parallelogram. She imagines him in his subway booth later in the day, selling tokens and melodically counting out change, waiting for a great song to finally strike.

Fern has an audition for a commercial this morning, but she's wary of yet another script holding secrets she'll probably never decipher. And today's audition sounds so peculiar, the trade listing simply announcing,
Dress for the role you prefer
. She reaches across the bed for the clock—9:22, less than two hours—and then hurries over to the bathroom. Shivering from the cold floor tiles, Fern stares in the mirror at her blurry face, her flattened brown hair. With a sigh she pushes away David's razor and shaving cream, certain that only the most inventive application of makeup can make her presentable this morning. Fern digs her fingers in her lopsided hair but she can't fluff it. She decides to join David in the shower.

“Hey sweetie,” she says to his soapy back, and suddenly the swirl of water at her feet and the wet folds of the shower curtain give Fern a brief glimpse of last night's dream, something about a beach. She closes her eyes and tries to hold the image, but David has turned around and is making slippery patterns on her breasts. Her back against the wet tiles, Fern smells his hair with its scent of shampoo, and her sleek arms encircle him. Now I'm
really
going to be late, she thinks. “Isosceles triangle,” he croons, his hands sliding down her stomach.

*

Fern stands at the edge of a large room among a crowd of actresses in costume: there's the Slinky Diet-Cola look, the All-Natural-Cereal look, the Harried Housewife look and more. Not sure why she's even come, Fern glances down at her plain blouse and jeans, thrown on in her rush: the Unprepared look.

Technicians are slowly swiveling large cameras into place. Why are there cameras? she wonders. Everyone is wandering about and no one seems in charge. A woman with an enormous comb in her thick hair passes Fern and trips over a cable. She falls to her knees, the comb clattering on the floor, and Fern watches it dangle from the woman's lobe by a long silver chain. It's an earring, Fern realizes—what is
she
supposed to be? A lanky man with a clipboard helps the woman snatch up the swaying comb. When she stands and whispers to him, he giggles and writes something in his pad.