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The Painted Table(22)

By:Suzanne Field


Saffee and April find Mr. Clement’s mid-meal visits amusing, but Joann is put out. One evening, as the Kvaales enjoy pork chops, scalloped potatoes, green beans, and homemade applesauce, the hapless tenant lethargically stares at his near-empty shelf. Saffee wonders if he has fallen asleep in his hunkered-down position. Suddenly Joann blurts, as if to a naughty child, “Henry! You’re letting all the cold out! Our electric bill will be sky-high if you keep that door open much longer!”

Mr. Clement’s shoulders slump. He stands slowly and turns toward her, his face beet-red. “Oh, I-I’m sorry,” he stammers, “I’m so sorry,” and makes an empty-handed retreat. “I . . . I just couldn’t decide . . .” The door closes softly behind him.

From then on, it seems Mr. Clement makes an effort to shorten his refrigerator gazes, but the number of his mealtime appearances remains about the same.




“Mom, what’s this pile of books?” Saffee asks one day as she passes through the dining room. She puts down her opened copy of Heidi and riffles through pages of an imposing textbook. “Did you go to the library without me?”

Joann looks up from her study and tells her that the books are Mr. Clement’s college books about psychology. She has borrowed them. She glances toward the door that leads to Mr. Clement’s apartment and whispers, “I want to find out if our tenant suffers from neurosis or psychosis.” She speaks in an airy way that signals delight in a new word or two.

Joann’s married years have been filled with self-education. She no longer resents her father for preventing her from going to high school until she was considerably older than her classmates. By the time she enrolled, she had matured to the point that learning fascinated her.

“What’s ’chology mean, and that other word?”

“Psy-chology, Saffee. And you’re too young to understand.”

But Joann is very intent on understanding. Perhaps it will help her avert her own mother’s fate. She pores over Mr. Clement’s books for days. But to Joann’s disappointment, her study comes to a halt when Henry Clement and his books move away.

“Maybe he moved because he wanted his books back and was too neurotic to ask,” says Joann.

“Maybe he wanted his own refrigerator,” says Saffee.

They were both wrong, of course. What Mr. Clement wanted was something the Kvaales were not skilled in giving—friendship.





CHAPTER FOURTEEN



UP AND DOWN





1950





All spring and into the summer, Joann sews draperies, tries her hand at upholstery, and adds touches that give the main floor of the old house a certain distinction, albeit homemade. As she bends over each task, she often repeats scraps of high-minded poetry and melancholy song.





Sweet sounds, oh, music, do not cease!

Reject me not into the world again . . .





After this brief hiatus, Joann’s nightmares resume, and something within her urges that she employ her brush again. Although disappointed, she almost dutifully removes her portable sewing machine from the table and spreads the canvas drop cloth beneath. After all, the experiment had brought relief for a while. As does the next application. For a while. And the next.

Baffled by what now seems to have become his wife’s obsession, Nels tries to dissuade her, but makes no headway. The sober intensity with which she works restrains the girls from asking questions. Her colors of choice are first yellow, and then red. Now, in late summer, Joann dips her brush into chartreuse.

Nels watches his wife’s fervent splattering.

“How do you like it?” she asks with a smirk. “It’s vomit green.”

“Joann! What’s got into you?”

She glares at him. Paint drips from the brush. “This is my business, Nels. You stick to yours.”

He retreats, shaking his head.

Curious about the exchange, Saffee appears in the doorway between the kitchen and dining room. She leans against the wall and watches her mother’s deliberate stroking. She recalls how that morning Joann had poured the last of the milk from its waxed carton onto April’s cornflakes. When the carton was empty, Joann continued to hold it tipped in midair over the bowl. One more drop finally appeared, then none. Still her mother held the carton, motionless. Was that her frugality or, like it seems now, had she been rendered immobile, abducted into some invisible lair?

Saffee is tired of her mother’s complexities. She has always hated the trance-like staring. And now, after months of her mother’s painting obsession, which Saffee can’t possibly understand, she has grown to hate the Norway table. She heads out the front door and crosses the screened porch. April and her neighborhood friend, Marilyn, are busily drawing stick figures with chalk on the cement walkway.