The Painted Table(37)

Never far from her mind since it reappeared, and even now as she stands watch, is the old wooden box that found its way to their basement shelf and holds her mother’s death certificate.

Today, maybe not tomorrow, but today, standing at the building site in the chilly air, she declares that her fate will not be like her mother’s. She has designed a wonderful house. She can drive. Nels has often told her there is “nothin’ wrong” with her so she “shouldn’t act like there is.” Today, she believes it. Yet, why then won’t he give her another baby?

Looking around her post, she has time to wonder what will eventually be built on lots adjacent to the new house. She decides that Nels should plant a stand of evergreens on the north side of their property to create a privacy screen as well as a windbreak. To the south is the apple orchard. Let people build what they want beyond those trees; the Kvaales won’t be bothered.

When the bricks she carefully selected arrive, four burly men unload heavy pallets of red bundles. Joann scrutinizes the delivery. She had imagined a more massive stack. She counts the bricks in one bundle, counts bundles, and multiplies.

“The cheats! They shorted me sixty bricks. They’re robbing me blind.”

The error is soon corrected. As time goes on, the construction project brings an assortment of such concerns, as well as exhaustion, to Joann. And, as always, when she is stressed, everyone suffers. But in October the Kvaales manage to move into their new ranch-style house.




Later that month, on a gray afternoon when the girls step off the school bus, they are disheartened to see their mother in the open garage, furiously slapping tan enamel onto the old wooden Norway table. They are stunned by her disheveled appearance, her unpinned dark hair falling over her face as she leans into every stroke. She mutters to someone they cannot see and does not look up as the girls approach.

“Why are you making demands again?” they hear her say. “Yes. I’m painting. Can’t you see? But you lied. It does no good! . . . Comfort. Comfort? Layer upon layer has given me no comfort. Won’t I ever be free? . . .”

Alarmed at her mother’s mental disarray, and recalling previous histrionics, Saffee hugs her books to her chest. April huddles against her and whispers, “What’s she saying, Saffee? Who’s she talking to?”

Saffee doesn’t answer.

“Smoke! The shadow of death.” Joann’s alarm intensifies. “You are marking me for hell!”

Joann abruptly raises her head and emphatically shakes a heavily laden brush in the girls’ direction. “Stop tormenting me!” she yells at an invisible phantom. Paint drips down her arm and splatters across the table. The girls want to flee, but their feet will not move. April buries her face in Saffee’s sweater.

Suddenly weak, Joann drops her brush and crumples forward, forearms flattened against the wet, glossy table as she continues her garrulous talk. “What’s that?” she demands. “You say He prepared a snare for me? He prepared a trap? No! It’s not true! Go away!”

Slowly, slowly, she strokes with her hands and arms as if fashioning finger paint. She sways back and forth. She no longer smears, she caresses. Her voice, a whisper, turns resolute. “It wasn’t a snare. I know it wasn’t. ‘He . . . prepareth . . . a table’ . . . A table before me. To deliver me from the presence of my enemies!” She looks heavenward. “Oh, God . . . help me!”

The daughters bolt into the house to elude the disarray that countermands their mother’s once rational mind. Behind them, Joann droops over the enigmatic table and cries.

They hang their jackets in the hall closet and dumbly sit on the new kitchen chairs that still feel foreign. Saffee wishes they were in their old house on Second Street.

“You know what I was thinking about on the bus?” April sounds wistful.

“What?”

“I was hoping when we got home Mommy would be in the kitchen, making chocolate chip cookies.”

“Sure, April.” Saffee rolls her eyes. “Might as well hope for the moon.”

April wilts. She sinks her head into folded arms on the kitchen table and begins to cry. Saffee watches her dully.

Suddenly, April raises her tear-streaked face and demands, “Why doesn’t she just get rid of that awful table if it makes her so upset?”

Lately, Saffee has felt more sympathetic toward her sister, but as usual, she can’t resist an opportunity to flaunt her wisdom, valid or not. Furthermore, sniping at April relieves her own tension.

“Get rid of a holy thing? Don’t be stupid, April. Why would anyone do a blasphemous thing like that?”