And now Sylvia’s crying more for her mother than herself. Because she knows that she doesn’t love Perry. She’s not sure she ever loved Perry. He was a way to move from one point to another. He was someone she needed badly at one time. Maybe desperately. And she’s crying because she doesn’t know if she’ll ever forgive herself for that.
She reaches down and picks up the razor knife she uses to open supply boxes. She lifts up the ringing telephone and puts it in her lap on top of the pictures of Perry and Candice. She grabs the phone cord in her left hand, makes a small loop. She cuts through the cord and the ringing stops, then she opens the bubble window and heaves the freed phone into the parking lot.
This will be Sylvia’s last day at the Snapshot Shack.
On the walk home, she keeps expecting to see Mr. Quevedo in the distance ahead, walking like the risen dead, an awkward zombie in a fraying suit. But she doesn’t see anyone. The storm has gotten worse and she’s completely soaked after the first block.
When she finally gets back to the apartment, she stands inside the entry and just shakes her shoulders and head like big long-haired dog. Then she un-Velcros the pouch on her anorak and takes out the pictures of Perry and Candice. She thinks about leaving them on the stairway, one on each stair, each picture getting progressively more explicit as you climb to the apartment. A trail of sleazy crumbs leading back to one more boring primal image—the wronged woman.
She puts the pictures back in the pouch and runs up to the back door, takes the spare key, lets herself into the kitchen, goes straight to the bedroom closet and pulls it open. And, thankfully, no one’s inside this time, so she starts pulling off sopping clothes and dropping them into a laundry pile. The plan is to collect all her dirty clothes, grab a bottle of wine, head down to the cellar, toss everything in the washer, pour the first drink of the day and go into the darkroom. She wants to pin the Perry-Candice pictures on the dry-line. She wants to study them the way a bride studies the proofs from her wedding package. She wants to pick the seven most hurtful poses, the seven most insulting and degrading postures. She wants to clip them alternatively next to the Propp photos. Madonna and Child followed by Perry and Candice followed by Madonna and Child. She wants to see what the positioning will do to her. What it might tell her. She wants to see if the combination of alternating images will have some reaction, like chemicals thrown together in some impulsive and radical experiment.
She slides into her mother’s slippers and is belting her robe when she hears a knock on the back door. She puts the pictures in the pocket of the robe, walks out, pulls the door open and sees Mrs. Acker, the landlady standing in her red sneakers and housedress covered by her dead husband’s old canvas fishing jacket, feathery lures still pinned to the lapels. The jacket has a detailed picture of a trout embroidered on the back, a huge hook through its mouth and the words this one’s a keeper written in script underneath.
Mrs. Acker smiles and tries to look into the kitchen. This morning she’s wearing her standard schmear of heavy makeup, layers of some rust-colored rouge from below her eyes to her chin and a bluish, purplish eye shadow that wars with a fire-engine red lipstick that Sylvia has never seen her go without. Last year there was a car crash out in front of the church at three in the morning. Perry and Sylvia ran outside and there was Mrs. A in housecoat and sneakers and full makeup. Someday Sylvia wants to get up the nerve to ask her where she buys her cosmetics.
“Wonderful,” Mrs. Acker says, “you’re home.”
“The Shack’s closed. Problems with the phone system.”
The landlady’s hands go to her hips. “Listen, Sylvia, I wonder if you could do me a little favor.”
Sylvia indicates her dripping hair. “I just got out of the rain, Mrs. A, could you give me about fifteen minutes.”
“This’ll just take you a second, honey. Honest to God. I’ve got some of Begelman’s coffee cake heating,” and she’s got Sylvia by the arm and is leading her down the stairs.
Sylvia doesn’t fight it. She moves to sit at the kitchen table, but Mrs. Acker says, “No, no, the papers are in the living room.”
For all her money, Mrs. A hasn’t redecorated her apartment since Mr. Acker died in 1969—we were up late, watching that moonwalk, and I say, Louie, don’t those big suits they wear look uncomfortable and he doesn’t answer. He’s had a coronary right in front of me and the astronauts …
The walls are covered with heavy flock wallpaper but the paper is mostly hidden by plaque after plaque bearing mounted, shellacked fish and the inscribed date of their demise. Mrs. A shoos a half dozen cats off the couch and they jump and run in a blur of different shades of brown and grey.
“Have a seat, dear, I’ve got the pen here somewhere,” and she starts pawing around the coffee table. “You’re such a help. Such a nice girl. The one before you, she was as surly as they come. A policewoman, of all things. Now she lives with an asthmatic mailman about a mile from here. I say, good luck to her.”
Sylvia looks at the clumps of cat hair covering the plaid wool sofa and sinks into the matching rocking chair. The television is on but the volume is turned down and she sees the Reverend Garland Boetell hopping around a red-carpeted stage in a huge auditorium, waving a Bible and thrusting his microphone around like a stiletto.
Mrs. Acker sees her watching and says, “Isn’t he just wonderful?”
“You’re a fan?”
“Sylvia, we need a man like the Reverend. We need him desperately.”
Sylvia nods agreement and looks back to the TV.
“The Reverend is here in Quinsigamond—” she starts.
“I know,” Mrs. A says. “Isn’t it exciting?”
Sylvia motions to the television and asks, “Is this a tape?”
Mrs. A raises her penciled-in eyebrows and steps over to a cherry bookcase filled to capacity with books and video-tapes. She puts a hand on top of the case like some bizarre display model and says, “I’ve got the entire library. Three hundred and sixty-five hours of wisdom. And all the books.”
She pulls out a volume and shows the dust jacket. The title is Tear Out the Offending Eye and the cover art is appropriately graphic.
“The books are divinely inspired, you know.”
“Is that right?” Sylvia says. She can smell cinnamon coming from the kitchen.
“He just sits down and turns off the business of his brain and the words flood into him. That’s what he says. They just flood in.”
Mrs. A sits down on the edge of the couch and a cat pops its head out from underneath the fringe and starts to mewl around her ankle. She picks up the cat absentmindedly, puts it in her lap and starts to stroke it. “I’ve never been a particularly religious individual, Sylvia. But this isn’t just about religion. This is about cleaning up. This is about restoring things to the way they should be. We’ve drifted, Sylvia.”
“I guess so,” Sylvia says and stares at the cat as its tongue comes out and swipes around its mouth.
“And the time is short,” Mrs. A says. “The time is dwindling. It’s upon us. The prophecies are all there, plain as day for anyone who’d take the time to look.”
The coffee table in front of them is blanketed with crumpled envelopes, manila folders, coffee mugs, a pair of scissors, and a pamphlet with the words Revelation Can Be Yours on the front flap.
“You mentioned a favor,” Sylvia says, pushing her wet hair behind her ears.
“When your Perry told me he was working with the Reverend, well you can imagine, I just about died. When he told me the man himself was in your living room the other night, I could barely contain myself. It’s as if it were destined, don’t you think?”