The Alcove

Robert Froese

Lately he has been seeing faces where he knows there are no faces—in a pile of dead leaves, a laundry basket, a crumpled piece of paper, a cloud. Virtually anywhere. Sometimes the faces seem to stare back at him, sometimes not. And he has grown restless, doubtful in his thinking, suspicious of mirrors. On the verge of desperation, he has yet again taken to the highway, his days receding under the color and odor of asphalt. And would you believe it?—he schemes of beginning a new life, far from the old one—though, in ways he fails to recognize, identical to it.        

Outside is a wind. He can feel it pulling at the roof—the rafters creaking, straining under the gusts, the old house trying to hold itself together. There is some kind of emptiness in the power of that wind. It has none of the glut and the slick of rain, none of the promise of a system moving through. Weather hasn’t a thing to do with it. It is simply a wind rising out of the night—cold, dry, directionless. Where it has come from and where it is headed, there is no telling.

There is a world out there—he is convinced of it. But something seems to have gotten in his way, blocking him. He has watched for an opening while the years have slipped into decades.

* * *

It is late. He has been standing at the edge of the living room carpet, waiting at the bottom of the stairs for what seems like a long time. Twenty minutes? Half an hour? Maybe longer. Now and then he thinks he can hear the old woman moving around up there, rustling, tapping, running water. He occupies himself trying to visualize the significance of those sounds. He pictures her dressing, applying makeup, fumbling with her hairbrush. To tell you the truth, he has no idea what she is doing up there. And the wind—it is hard to know just what he is hearing with that gale tearing at the gutters. A wind like that.

Why is he here anyway?

The question stops him, and a vacant kind of clarity settles over him like a shadow, as if he had just been delivered from the glare of too much understanding.

The room. He has come to see the room. It is going to run into some money—several hundred a month. He spoke to the woman earlier on the phone. Her voice quavered like the voices of the very old when she told him, yes, it was available. Betty, she said her name was. He estimated the woman must have been well into her eighties. Asking whether he might have a look, he tried by his tone and phrasing to understate his interest but was surprised to feel the pace of his heart quickening, his breaths crowding one another.

Her frail voice hesitated before answering yes. “You have your own tools?” she asked.

“Of course,” he heard himself say.

He waited through a silence, then again heard her voice. “At night,” she said. “It will have to be at night.”

“Yes,” he said, automatically.

“I’m blind,” she added without explanation.

He offered no response. He waited, hoping she would say more, his eyes settling distractedly on a small object on the table before him—a tape measure. He reached, and his fingers closed around it. He pulled out the tape and examined the numbers printed there, his expression suggesting bland disbelief. His fingers loosened, letting the tape snap back against the casing. At some point he understood that the old woman was no longer on the line. He switched his phone off.

* * *

Outside, the wind pauses. From upstairs, a new noise. Soft, rhythmical. Like small waves breaking on sand. Coming possibly from her room? He holds still, straining to make sense of it, until the wind gusts again and he loses the sound.

Shifting his weight from one leg to the other, he studies a detail in the design of the carpet resembling the face of Ivan the Terrible, an image he believes is new to him but which—the fact is—he once saw in a comic book. The seconds slip by. He glances around for the housekeeper, the grim-faced woman who met him on the front stoop. She resisted at first even letting him in, wedging herself in the open doorway, blocking his view of the interior, which glowed somehow as though on fire. In the end she relented and left him to stand here at the stairs, waiting.

* * *

Out here on the street, a metal trash can, urged by the wind, is rolling across the pavement, the sound so clear he imagines he sees it.

Then again, maybe she isn’t the housekeeper. She could be Betty’s daughter. Though he hadn’t been waiting five minutes when she appeared at a doorway by the stairwell, her arms cradling a wicker basket of laundry. Without looking at him, she stooped with an accusatory sigh, dropped the basket at his feet, then disappeared into the dining room. Or at any rate what seemed to be the dining room. 

It’s a muddle, I know. I’m only telling you what he thinks.

What did the old woman want with tools?

It may be the house that is tangling his thoughts, reminding him of too many old houses he has seen, their windows hidden under drapes, the careless accumulation of furniture complicating their walls, their ceilings arching almost out of view. Books infest the tables and shelves, their titles suggestive of meanings just beyond his reach. He is squinting, his eyes nearly closed, so bright is the interior of this house, most of the light coming from the cut-glass chandelier suspended from the domed ceiling overhead like a small sun. Every incandescent lamp in the chandelier is burning. For this blind woman.

He rummages in his pockets, fishes out the tape measure, glances at it as if consulting a watch.

He stands, listening against the wind outside for some sound he might recognize. Finally, from just off the landing, he hears clearly the opening of a door. Then footsteps. And maybe something else. Watchful, he slides the tape back into his pocket.

* * *

It seems to happen all at once. There is something, whatever it is brushing against him, spinning him off balance. A wave of light-headedness, and there, he sees her at the top of the stairs. Betty. She is not as he imagined. He is almost certain he has seen her before, yet there is no detail familiar to him. She is small, birdlike, with broad lips and a long neck. The silver rope of her hair coils at the back of her head in a bun. She wears a simple black dress, belted at the waist, the hem just above her knees. She has good legs for an old woman. But—how to say this?—mostly what captivates him is her blindness. As she pauses, teetering slightly forward, testing the yawning space of the stairwell before her, it seems to fill the room like some buoyant liquid.

And then she is descending. Her hand caresses the bannister. She uses no cane. As her feet touch the steps, she counts them off. “Seven. Eight. Nine,” she whispers.

He is frozen in the act of watching her.

On the fifteenth step she pauses. She holds motionless as though listening, as though some particular sound has caught her attention. For an instant her gaze seems to fix on him but then sweeps past him. She continues descending. Now and then a board squeaks under her weight, light as she is.

“Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.”

It occurs to him—she might not even be aware of him.

“Twenty-one. Twenty-two,” she says, “and I’m down.” And in fact, she is.

As if to celebrate her announcement, a rogue gust from the night outside slams into the house, shaking the walls. For a full fifteen seconds afterward, he feels it reverberate through the floor. Drapes undulate in the quiet air. He watches for her reaction, but as far as he can see there is none. Rather, her attention appears aimed vaguely in his direction, not at him but past him into some featureless and mesmerizing distance.

I have been aware of it for a while now, but only this moment does he recognize it too: 

from somewhere on the first floor comes the steamy aroma of cooking. Cabbage, by the smell of it, or fricassee, or some concoction involving fist-sized mushrooms—all of these possibilities, to his mind, dreadful.

* * *

The old woman takes a breath. “So,” she says. “The room.”

He nods, then corrects himself. “Yes,” he says distinctly. “A studio,” he adds, making it sound like both a statement and a question.

She smiles.

He continues, “Second floor. Private bath.”

“Never mind,” she says. “We can decide on all of that later.”

Perhaps it is different, he supposes, communicating with the blind. He says, “But what it said in the ad . . . .” 

Her expression, aimed approximately at the ceiling, suggests an effort at patience. “Let’s be clear, shall we?” she says. “Are you interested in a room or an advertisement?”

He says, “I was just wondering . . . utilities included?”

She doesn’t answer. At the same time, he notices a pinching sensation, a slight pressure at his temples, signaling a twinge of regret. He has driven all this distance, spent all these many hours on the road—yes, a room is what he needs. His own space. No point in dickering over terms of rental. In the trunk of the car there is the toolbox full of cash, never mind how he came by it. What he needs is a room.

He is sifting, wanting to pick up the thread, when the stairwell door squeaks open, revealing this time not the housekeeper, but a man wearing what looks like a chef’s apron. The man is holding a butcher’s knife and something spherical, what might be a large onion.

The man in the apron contemplates the onion, turning it over and over in his hand. 

“Utilities not included,” he says, as though addressing the onion.

“I’ll take care of it, Leonard,” Betty calls over her shoulder.

Leonard’s jaw tightens, but he doesn’t say anything.  

The old woman nods in Leonard’s direction, “My son,” she says.

It is hard to imagine the man as anybody’s son—his roundish head too small for his shoulders, teeth like little spikes. He continues his profound examination of the onion until he appears to make a decision, then eases back into the hallway. The door squeaks shut.

Betty lets slip a little chirp of nervousness or, it may be, pain. With her it is difficult to tell. Her eyes continually elude him. They seem to be everywhere at once and nowhere in particular. There is something distantly majestic, queenly, even a little intoxicating about her. 

        Now, setting herself in motion. Now, holding herself still.

* * *

At his feet lies the laundry basket, in this too-bright room, somehow wanting his attention. His eyes sort over the terrain of folded fabrics. A silk blouse. Pajamas. A puddle of black-lace lingerie—this, the wardrobe of a blind woman in her eighties.

And there amid the rumpled clothes, taking shape apparently on its own, is the face of a woman—her features emphasized with strokes of make-up, her raven hair bobbed in a style that seems to him both strange and inevitable. The woman appears to be staring, her attention directed not at him but away into some pregnant distance only now imagined by him. Whether she is angry, calculating, or bored he cannot tell. It all depends on the drama there, deep in that space she inhabits, a space he will not set foot in. In fact, he understands that she is not a woman at all but merely the work of natural forces caught slightly off balance, a coming together of certain pieces of this world into something resembling a face—perhaps the face of someone in his past, someone he may have long ago forgotten or never even met.

His eyes still are fixed on that face when he says, “Could I have a look at the room?”

The old woman does not answer. She turns and begins climbing the stairs she has just descended. After three steps—he is counting—she pauses, turns to him.

“Come,” she says.

Without a thought, he side-steps the laundry basket and follows, a little behind her, his eyes keeping level with her firm, capable legs. Old Betty—she must have been something in her day! 

She resumes her husky whispering, “Thirteen. Twelve. Eleven.”

Squinting against the brightness, adjusting the rhythm of his steps to hers, he isn’t sure just what he is leaving behind. But whatever awaits him at the end of this climb, he knows he has never seen it before.

At the top of the stairs, he catches sight of Leonard standing a little off to the right like some stoop-shouldered statue, his attention trained on the onion, which it seems he has begun peeling. Except for the flash of that knife, he is entirely motionless. Pieces of the onion peel flake away and settle at his feet.

It could be that the old woman doesn’t realize her son is there, or else she simply ignores him. On the landing she pivots left and, brushing past Leonard, heads for the hallway she came from moments earlier. She doesn’t hesitate. She doesn’t hurry. For a blind woman, she knows how to move around this house.

Before entering the hallway, he turns once more to glance at Leonard, who shrugs without looking at him.

Unlike the stairwell, the hallway is dimly lighted. Betty walks several steps ahead, her left arm extended, fingertips grazing the wall, perhaps counting doorways. She ushers him past a series of rooms—more rooms than he would have thought possible for a house this size. Soon ahead, light pours from one doorway on the right. Here the old woman pauses, her hand on the jamb, her head cocked expectantly. Imagining this to be the doorway to her bedroom, he pokes his head in, curious. Brilliantly candle-lit, heavy with drapery, tapestries, and perfume, it feels to him like a chamber out of another century.

Her stare is fixed a little above his left shoulder. She opens her mouth as if to speak, then seems to think better of it.

She turns and resumes walking, the hallway angling abruptly right, then left.

Little by little, an ill-formed fear begins to invade his thinking. “Hey.” He chuckles. “Where is this room anyway?”

She responds with an unintelligible sound in her throat.

* * *

Who can say where the old woman leads him? They are in some form of motion. Swept along, he is aware of intersecting hallways, more stairs, ever darker and darker spaces, until at some point he bumps into her.

His eyes slowly adjusting to the dark, he sees that she has brought him to the foot of yet another staircase. He counts the steps, as if their number might hold some significance. There are seven, ascending to a landing beneath a bay of tall windows that form an alcove large enough to hold a life-size statue. But the space is vacant. It is not as if anything has been removed, but rather as if the architect might have had something else in mind, a grand idea that never took shape. An idea before which he has been summoned and before which he now stands like some accused, like some supplicant.

The wind outside is reckless, urging the liquid black against those tall windows. Timbers crack and wheeze, the walls labor for breath. There are no faces here, only shadows. What he wanted was a room . . . he barely remembers.

Standing beside the old woman, he is not expecting her touch, but there it is—her fingers against the underside of his wrist.

“Well?” she says, her voice almost a whisper, her voice and her touch becoming nearly the same thing.

“Yes,” he answers. “I see what you mean.” He feels a welling up within him. Her fingers encircle his wrist and tighten. She has a grip on him now.

“It . . . gives me a lot to think about,” he says, on the verge of tears.

* * *

There was a point somewhere in his past when, weary of complication, he yearned for spare, elemental answers, to array in his mind the planet’s fundamental possibilities. Rock. Water. Air. Life. Beyond that, he couldn’t have said. And where is all of that now?

“Ssss,” Leonard hisses. “You want a room or not?” There is no seeing him among these shadows. Leonard is just a voice. “Even a bug, any bug,” Leonard says, “knows what it’s after.”

Betty says, “Just ignore him. The man is my son.”

She lets go of his wrist, leaving him to stand by himself. He watches uncertainly as she advances to the stairs and begins her ascent. On the seventh step she pauses, then hops, light as a bird, and mounts the floor of the alcove. A blind woman!—her move so careless and astonishing that immediately he wishes he could see her do it again. She stands there like a small miracle, her eyes beckoning. The moment hangs, breathless.

He thinks she looks awfully good. But he glances around at the available space. It isn’t much. And anyway, he’s tired. The whole business has worn him down. It isn’t exactly a decision. More like a letting go. More like the beginning of being someplace else.

* * *

Outside, he suspects he has overlooked something. He hurries along the sidewalk, almost breaking into a run. The wind obliterates the sound of his own footsteps, which gives him the sensation that he is airborne. Nor does he recognize the neighborhood. Somewhere around here, his car must be parked. The wind seems to have rearranged things, even the buildings and the streets.

I lie waiting, sprawled on the concrete, clinging to a dumpster for support against the gusts. I have all I can do to keep from being blown away. It isn’t long before he appears, as I knew he would, half walking, half flying over the sidewalk. A plastic lawn chair, bouncing like tumbleweed across the pavement, barely misses him. I have been waiting here doggedly, though he seems not to notice, sailing past me with the indifferent steps of a giant. Something else has his interest now, drawing his gaze off into the distance, into the heart and the teeth of the city, as if he were witnessing there the beginning, the unraveling of some familiar road. I tell him what I have to tell him, though he loses my words among the shapes of concrete and the relentless, freakish howl of the wind. Just then, overhead, where one might expect the sky to be, a flash erupts—nothing like the sky—replacing the night, once, and then again. And there are worse things, things he couldn’t name.

© 2021 Robert Froese

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Robert Froese has written four novels: The Hour of Blue (1990), The Forgotten Condition of Things (2001), A Dark Music (2006), and The Origins of Misgiving (2009). Recently, he has switched to short fiction. His new work has appeared in Ascent, The Catch, The Sonora Review, Prick of the Spindle, and Blackbird. One of the stories was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He has taught fiction writing and creative writing in the University of Maine System. Currently he divides his time between Harrington, Maine, and Silver City, New Mexico.