It was late afternoon, with heavy silver and grey clouds reaching from horizon to horizon and permitting only tiny and widely scattered patches of blue to show through, and presently it began to rain. Heavy teardrops fell from above, contrasting harshly with the still bright sunshine, and splattered on the skillet hot rooftops of parked cars and stained the stucco and brick fronts of the row of offices and small businesses on either side of Market Street in downtown Canaan. Pedestrians standing on street corners waiting for a chance to cross darted for cover beneath canvas awnings or by squeezing themselves into recessed doorways of retail storefronts. A boy on a bicycle stood up on the pedals and churned his legs to expedite his race in search of shelter from the rain.
After everyone else had found a dry place to wait out the sudden downpour, the Walking Lady stood still on the corner of Cherry and Market, watching in her own sidelong way for a break in traffic, her back ramrod straight, never moving her chin to the right or left past the imaginary straight line drawn from the tip of her nose to her navel. Dressed in her old green housecoat and worn out pink bedroom slippers, she was as wet as an ancient channel catfish slinking along a muddy river bottom.
And as always, tucked under her left arm, swaddled in a soiled and tattered baby blue receiving blanket, was her one-eyed baby doll. On this day she held her right hand over the doll’s face to shield it from the rain.
She was seen nearly every day about this time in the afternoon, hurrying through town, variously dressed from housecoats and bedroom slippers to tee shirts, overalls, and bare feet, making her way from the formally elegant but now decayed cottage house on the outskirts of Canaan (it had been in the McNeal family since the pilgrims landed) to Morrison’s Drugs, a distance greater than two miles each way, to purchase one jar of mashed green peas and another of pureed plums, along with a single can of enriched baby formula.
How she hadn’t been run over in the middle of the road or while stepping across the railroad tracks no one in town could understand. Most folks turned their heads to look for trains or automobiles before stepping into the path of traffic, but not the Walking Lady. She never turned her chin past that imaginary line down the center of her frame. She also never spoke to anyone, never answered questions, fled if she thought one was approaching her, rarely blinked, always paid for the baby food with the exact change although each time with a different combination of coins, and always, always, carried with her the one-eyed baby doll.
Those who watched her daily knew that the Walking Lady woke up each morning more frightened that she did the morning before; the distance she kept between herself and others grew by the day. It had been a long time now since anyone had stood on the same street corner with her.
For the longest while it was said the Walking Lady purchased the baby food in order to feed her plastic infant in arms, but the clerk at the drugstore dispelled that rumor with the authoritative report that the baby, though it was missing one eye and much of its nylon chestnut hair, was always washed clean, sometimes smelled of talcum powder, and never showed a speck of the dried remains of a meal of peas or plums in the corners of its mouth.
No one knew what the relation was between the Walking Lady and old Mrs. Myrtle McNeal; the Walking Lady just showed up at the cottage one day nearly fifteen years ago and has lived there ever since. It was assumed Mrs. McNeal was still alive although no one had laid eyes on her in at least four Christmases; no one wanted to go to the foul smelling cottage to determine the nature of things there.
A sudden flash of jagged light arcing across the sky, quickly followed by an abrupt clap of thunder that echoed loudly between the downtown buildings. Children jumped.
“Are you crazy? Get out of the rain before you get yourself electrocuted!” someone shouted.
But the Walking Lady bid her time, waiting for that break in traffic she trusted, and then stepped into a puddle of downpour that had pooled at the curb and, unaffected, continued her march to the drugstore for her daily purchase, the soaked through bedroom slipper making a squishing noise each time it was put down on the sidewalk.
Having made her purchase, she headed across the cracked and uneven cement walkway, passing under the rain heavy drooping limbs of the overgrown magnolias and tulip poplars which held in the pungent odor of rotting leaves and old blooms that carpeted the ground, the grass dead for years from lack of sun exposure, and scampered up the sagging steps and onto the littered porch of the dingy cottage. Cobwebs, climbing roses left unattended for ages, honeysuckle and kudzu nearly covered the place, leaving it looking much like an overgrown trash pile but with a working front door. Before she pushed open the old door, over which the transom served no purpose with crudely cut sections of cardboard taped to its windows, she lifted the lid of the battered mailbox. It groaned on rusty hinges but gave way to her intrusion. She plunged her hand in and quickly withdrew an envelope which she then tucked into the folds of her baby’s receiving blanket before going inside. She locked the door behind her as soon as she crossed the threshold.
She stepped into the small foyer, and waited, shivering, for her eyes needed time to adjust. The only sunlight in the house obvious from where she stood was what made its way through the years of grime that coated the oval stained glass window in the adjacent parlor. She smiled at the fuzzy painting the dim sunshine cast in the colors of red, blue, green and amber on the bare and dusty hardwood floor of the parlor. Every day the painting changed, depending on the time when she came in search for it, sometimes finding it bright and almost hard to look at, other times muted and abstract, sometimes in the parlor, other times in the empty hallway or crawling up the walls.
Other than the sunshine painting, the house was quite dark. Every shade was pulled down and if one was missing or refused to unroll, cardboard was taped over the window. Behind these weak barriers, the sound of rain could still be heard.
Her eyes finally adjusted to the darkness, the Walking Lady carefully laid her swaddled one-eyed baby doll in the seat of a rickety chair standing near the door. Satisfied her baby was not disturbed, she slipped out of her wet bedroom slippers, peeled off her clinging housecoat and hung it on a hook. She reached into the two deep pockets and produced the formula and jars of baby food, which she also placed in the seat of the rickety chair but well out of reach of the baby. Then she grabbed the tail of her long wet nightshirt and wrung it out where she stood. Water splattered on the floor, and when she walked toward the kitchen, the baby under one arm and the formula and jars of baby food clutched in the frail fingers of her hands, she left behind an arrow straight trail of dainty wet footprints.
In the kitchen, it representing her no better than did the foyer and parlor, the Walking Lady placed the jars on a scratched kitchen table top. The table was accompanied by two chairs, one for her and a highchair for her baby. Never bending her neck but leaning back at the waist, she reached overhead, grabbed the fob at the end of a cord and pulled to turn on the overhead light. Two of the three bulbs remained dark. She set her baby in the highchair, combed its hair back into place with her fingers, and turned to face the cupboards, sink and stove.
She opened the cupboards to reveal neatly stacked rows of potted meat, cans of pork and beans, soup and ravioli, and bags of white rice. Selecting a can of sausages, she set it on the counter next to the pyramid of baby food bottles, each one neatly washed and precisely stacked upside down and left to drip dry. Next she reached under the sink, her head and neck still stiffly fastened to her shoulders, and pulled forth a pot. She filled it with water, placed it on a burner, and twisted a knob. Waited for the water to come to a simmer, she returned to the table and retrieved the envelope from her baby’s blanket. Sitting down across from the highchair, her nightshirt still damp enough to cling to her boney ballerina frame, she reached with curious fingers into the envelope and drew out a thick of one, five and ten dollar bills.
She laid the bills out on the table, not bothering to count the total, placing them in stacked rows like playing cards in a game of Solitaire. When she laid down the last bill and pressed it flat with her hand, she heard the water beginning to roll in the pot on the stove. She reached across the table for the jars of baby food and twisted the lids, smiled at the popping sound of the seals breaking, and then gently lowered the jars into the slow simmering water. As the baby food heated she took the can of formula and shook it, then poured it into a glass in which she had set a candy striped bendable plastic straw.
She dipped the tip of her little finger into the peas and tested its temperature against her tongue, and then did the same for the plums. Happy, she removed the pot from the heat and with a towel pulled the jars from the water and placed them on the counter next to a deep plastic plate divided into two compartments. One at a time she emptied each jar into its own compartment, scraping the residual mush out with a rubber tipped feeding spoon, and returned the empty jars to the pot of warm water to soak before washing, a chore she would attend to later in the evening.
Lastly, she arranged the glass of formula and plastic plate of mash on the kitchen table in the space between her chair and the highchair occupied by the disinterested one-eyed baby doll.
She padded softly down the hall and neared the door of the bedroom at the back of the house. Inside that room the old television cast a grey-white glow that crept out of the room by way of slipping under the door. She pushed the door open and entered the room without a word.
A crumpled old woman sat wearily in her wheelchair, watching the television but not caring a thing about the comings and goings of the characters of the Guiding Light. It was just noise to distract her from the goings on outside her house and the cracks and moans of decay within it. It upset her whenever she heard the house complain or the Visitor rustle the bushes, scratch on the walls, open the mailbox or shuffle onto the back porch to deposit the box of food he brought once a week. The McNeal family were a proud, private people and not wont to squalor, charity, or onlookers.
Myrtle McNeal, partly paralyzed, nearly blind, and able to talk only periodically in short cryptic sentences that popped up every now and then between her more frequent unintelligent guttural sounds, could swallow only pureed foods and thickened liquids. She favored fresh English peas, stewed black plums and vanilla milkshakes. Her wasted, sallow cheeks and skin that hung like a pleated curtain from beneath her protruding chin hid all evidence that she had once been beautiful. Her practically useless eyes spend hours staring off into untold faraway places.
The Walking Lady took hold of the wheelchair and leaned into it to start it rolling. “Dinner,” she said.
At the table, her chair pushed up to the divided plate and glass with the candy striped straw, Myrtle lifted her hand slightly, laboriously, and with a bent finger pointed to the plate. “Fresh?”
“Of course, I shelled them this morning.”
A gurgling purr rose up from Myrtle. Her bent finger shifted to the glass. “Ahhmmnn?”
“Just whipped it up before I came to get you. French vanilla, as you like it.”
Myrtle’s attention shifted to the one-eyed baby doll watching her from the nearby highchair. With effort she curled her lip and sneered, and tried but failed to spit. “Grrrra … graaaa … Grrraaa!”
The Walking Lady scooped up the first mouthful of peas with the rubber tipped fork and pushed it toward Myrtle. “Our William would be so displeased if he knew you had such contempt for your grandson.”
Myrtle took the peas but then turned back to the doll. “Graaaa … raa!” Green spittle splattered out and dripped down her chin.
The Walking Lady reached for a coarse paper napkin and roughly wiped Myrtle’s face clean. She gave the old woman a sip of the formula and then rose from the table to get herself a fork, plate and a can of sausages. She stood at the counter with her back to her would’ve been mother-in-law and pulled angrily against the key to peel open the can. “If our William hadn’t run over me I would have given you a proper grandchild, Mrs. McNeal. Surely you believe I wanted to, don’t you?” She returned to the table with her meal, sat down to eat, placed one hand on her flat belly where a baby once bloomed, and then reached out for the divided plate and pulled it away from Myrtle. She ate her sausages slowly, looking only occasionally at her ill-favored charge, taking pity on her only enough to feed the old woman a life sustaining portion and not a spoonful more.
An hour later, the dishes washed and left to drip dry, the box of canned goods removed from the back porch and put away, the money hidden in the hollow compartment of the doll and it now dressed in footed pajamas and placed in a cradle for the night, Myrtle pushed back to the drone of the television where she would remain in her wheelchair for the night, The Walking Lady was finally alone.
She stepped into the parlor in search of the sunshine painting, and found it, this evening an impressionist garden cast on the plaster wall, not vibrant but soft, and weakening in the fleeting light of a downing sun and an approaching dusk.
She carefully pulled the nightshirt over her head and let it drop to the floor. Barefoot and clad only in her underpants, she stepped to the wall and placed her empty breasts against it. It still held a bit of warmth and vaguely reminded her of the feel of an embrace. Momentarily, she moved to stand before the old spotted, streaked and foggy Victorian mirror. Her frail and wasting arms lifted sad hands to breasts that had yearned for but never known the eager succor of a child.
She drew a quick breath and brought her dirty and calloused feet together in the first position, her fingertips delicately placed end to end beneath her unfulfilled breasts. A pause, then she swiftly shifted her feet, arched one arm over her head and extended the other and smiled in the mirror with approval of her third position. Dare she attempt a plié? A shallow bend on rusty knees and her confidence soared.
Mustering hope, she lifted a foot to her opposing knee and waited to topple, but didn’t. A smile she had nearly forgotten how to form emerged on her face, and thoughts of a new life crept into her seldom used imagination. One careful pirouette, and then two, and then the rich velvet curtains opened to reveal the splendor of her dreams. A handsome suitor, a third pirouette, a home of her own, a fourth, faster pirouette, a new baby, a fifth pirouette faster still, a sixth even faster, and in a blessed instant she was spinning so fast the watching mirror could no longer see the ugly surgical scar that emerged from beneath her dull red, silver streaked hair and descended far, far down her pale, thin, steel rod straight back.
