The Vandal by Jessie Lovett Allen
The four-foot plastic Santa lay sideways in the gutter, and Jesus had been ejected from the manger into the snow. The camel, presumably the property of the wise men nearby, rested on a dense row of hedges. Across the street, a string of lights had been yanked from around the porch and coiled in a tangled mess on the hood of the homeowners’ car.
The doorbell camera had captured the vandal on video, and the next day someone posted it online. Here’s what happened: Wanda Brodzki, who has dementia and lives on the next street over, had wandered outside at around 1:30am. Another neighbor, who knew the family, commented on the video with the backstory, which was that Mrs. Brodzki had gotten dressed and slipped out the side door after Mr. Brodzki had gone to bed. They were on the waiting list for assisted living, because she’s getting to be too much of a handful for Mr. Brodzki. Someone else replied, thank God they found her pretty quickly before she got hypothermia!
In the video, Wanda wore a black velvet dress and snow boots, but no coat. There was a clear shot of her face, right up near the camera with a fisheye view. She wore a full face of makeup, including bright red lipstick, plus chunky gold hoops clipped to her earlobes. She’d looked into the camera with what seemed like a defiant smirk. Stepping off the porch with a spry hop, she pulled a solar lamp out of the snowy lawn and swung her arms wildly—almost delightedly—at the plastic molds, pulling the corded bulbs from their backs and tossing and kicking them about the yard. Mary and Joseph. Wise men. Sheep. Angels.
Someone else replied to the video, bless her
Long before the dementia, Wanda had planned to leave her husband. This planning phase lasted nearly 40 years, but she never executed the plan. Decades ago, in a beauty parlor under a hooded hair dryer, Wanda had read an article in a ladies’ magazine about how to tell if your man was “the one.” The intended audience for the article was not a woman like Wanda, who at this moment in the beauty parlor shared three teenaged children and three-bedroom house with John; it was for younger women, trying to decide if a man would make a good husband. The magazine asked, “Is this the person you want pushing your wheelchair someday?” And under that hood, as the heat baked her hair follicles, Wanda was certain that no, should she ever require a wheelchair that she could not propel herself, she did not want John behind it.
Everyone loved John. Wanda supposed she probably loved him too. He was a good husband. He woke up early every Saturday and cheerfully tended to the grass or the gutters or leaky toilet seal. He didn’t even drink, save for an occasional highball around the holidays.
Once, they’d attended cookout at the home of John’s coworker. Large groups of people made her uncomfortable, so after the introductions, Wanda would hover on edges of the crowd and explore the home: the family photos, knick-knacks, record collections. This particular party included the backyard, so after following John outside and briefly meeting a few of the partygoers, Wanda strolled towards the lilac bushes, blooming with pink and purple flowers. She continued exploring further back towards the unoccupied swing set, as there were no children at this cookout. Tentatively, she lowered herself onto a swing, reassured by its apparent sturdiness. Back here she could still smell those lilacs, which reminded her of being 15 and trying to suntan in Trudy McCarty’s backyard after school, when May afternoons would first creep towards 70 degrees.
John was across the yard in a lawn chair, chatting with a woman wearing big square sunglasses and flowered dress. Although Wanda was some distance away, the same breeze that brought the lilac smell also carried John’s voice over the chatter, and she heard him say to the woman, “Look at poor Wanda. She looks miserable. You’d think she was at a dentist appointment, not a party! And why on earth is she on the swing?” The woman laughed, genuinely, beyond just a polite giggle. Wanda felt a shiver in her buttocks, a sting of shame. Maybe she’d misheard. No—her mind couldn’t have invented such a joke. Maybe he had a point. She didn’t feel miserable, but perhaps her facial expression showed otherwise. That happened a lot. Was she scowling and appearing impolite? Although she couldn’t force a smile at this moment, she willed her jaw to relax into a more pleasant expression, arose from the swing pretending as if it was her own idea, and began walking back towards the gathering.
Wanda was virtually certain John hadn’t had any affairs. After they’d bought the second car for Wanda to use in the daytime, he’d carefully monitor the gas tank and keep it full—she’d never once pumped her own gas. John rarely raised his voice and never once punched a hole in the wall. He didn’t smoke cigars, gamble, or hide pornographic magazines under the mattress. He was a good husband. So why didn’t Wanda want him pushing the imaginary future wheelchair? The best she could think was that he didn’t wonder about her, what it felt like to be her. He wouldn’t push her to the places she wanted to go, because he’d think those places were silly. He’d leave her in corners.
Not long after this moment in the beauty parlor, Wanda got the idea for the log cabin. It was a fuzzy plan, with significant gaps in chronology and logistics. She never checked real estate listings or envisioned a specific floor plan. But a few of the details appeared with startling sharpness: A yellow bread box on the counter. A pink Pyrex dish on top of the refrigerator. A string of white lights on the porch railing. Sometimes there was a faceless man, a blur of different husband lurking quietly at the end of the sofa, but more often she imagined living alone. Not lonely, though. She’d have guest rooms with comfortable twin beds and wooden hooks for the guests’ jackets and purses. Her grown children would sleep here when they visited, and so would the faceless future grandchildren. There would be a large hot tub out back, with a sturdy safety cover to prevent the small, curious grandchildren from drowning. Women friends, imaginary ones that she hadn’t met yet, would visit on the weekends. Together they’d sit on the wooden porch, laughing raucously and smoking cigarettes as the sun set. Current Wanda didn’t smoke, but this reincarnation of Wanda did.
This cabin wasn’t a real cabin, as Wanda never enjoyed the idea of camping or any sort of primitive accommodations. It was a modern house, with plush carpets, a dishwasher, and central air; but the exterior style was distinctly log cabin. Wooded property surrounded the cabin—she owned several acres—and it was full of trails that she maintained herself with a machete. In the winter, she’d cross-country ski on these trails. In the summer, she’d go to yard sales and buy used skis, poles, and boots, so when her friends and family came to visit, they could ski the trails too.
She sometimes imagined the cabin while cooking or baking. Once as she baked a chocolate cake for the family, it occurred to her someday in the cabin, she might rather bake a carrot cake. And instead of making a whole big cake, she’d portion it into cupcakes, which she would freeze and Saran wrap individually. When she was in the mood for cake, or if she were entertaining guests, she’d thaw out the desired number cupcakes on a plate on her counter.
And while peeking at her pot roast through the oven glass, it occurred to Wanda that in the cabin, she wouldn’t need to make meat every day and maybe would just eat scrambled eggs, or bread and butter, or canned fruit cocktail. Sure, once in while she’d crave a slice of meatloaf with mashed potatoes, so she’d just go to the diner (the one down the hill from the cabin) and sit at the counter. Another woman eating alone would offer her a cigarette, and Wanda would smoke it. Wanda had always liked counter seating because even if you chatted with a stranger, you didn’t have the intensity of facing each other. Together, you observed the business of the diner: the waitress scooping a small dome of cottage cheese, pouring a tiny glass of orange juice.
Starlite Drive-In. Hot salted french fries, vertical in a paper cup. Rows of cars, each its own metal bubble, all strung together with speakers and cables. Children swing and slide in the dark on a metal playground beneath the movie screen. In the next car ahead, Wanda can see a large baby sleeping on folded up quilt, contained in a makeshift bed against the rear window behind the heads of its siblings in the back seat. Tonight,Wanda is 16, and it will be another three years before she meets John, and another five years before she is responsible for the care and feeding of her own first child.
Boyd is 17, and Wanda occupies the passenger seat of his car. Wanda’s mother, an alcoholic, occupies the cold tile of bathroom floor at home, where she is passed out, her robe open, her naked body visible. Wanda’s father occupies a military cemetery plot in Europe.
Inside the car it feels electric, like an extension of the speaker cable. Actresses on the screen flicker over the playground, like gigantic inhuman goddesses. Their Hollywood voices and the orchestral soundtrack vibrate through the metal frame of the car. Wanda turns her back against the passenger door and slides her shoeless feet across the wide front seat. Boyd lifts Wanda’s stockinged foot into his lap and holds it against the inside of his thigh.
Wanda will not go all the way, and Boyd does not try for it. The terror of involuntary parenthood supersedes all desire, and Wanda can only guess that Boyd feels the same—she knows he is the oldest of eight (or is it nine?) children. Wanda cannot picture how an infant can possibly fit inside her, nor can she imagine how it would possibly squeeze through the exit. Heck, she can hardly imagine how a man would fit his whole thing inside. Someday, yes. But not tonight.
Boyd drives her home after the movie, edging the car to the curb in front of her house. Most of the indoor lights are on, and Boyd comments that her mother must be waiting up. “Yes, probably,” Wanda lies. She knows her mother is unconscious by now. Inside, Wanda turns off the lamps, and locks both the front and back door. With a warm rag, she wipes the vomit off the toilet seat and coaxes her mother off the bathroom floor and into bed. And that night as Wanda settles in between the cool, stiff sheets of her own bed, she wonders what it would be like if she were Boyd’s wife, if she could slip her leg across the bed and feel his warm legs.
On Monday morning, Wanda wakes thirty minutes earlier than usual, brushing her wavy hair extra smooth and applying lipstick and rouge with more careful precision. Out in front of the of the high school, the grass is coated with a fall frost, and the air reeks of school bus fumes. Wanda spies Boyd in his usual spot with the usual group of boys, near the oak tree. She walks towards him, and when he sees her, his face turns nervous and he darts his eyes away. Wanda’s chest suddenly feels hot and cold and full of rocks. Boyd never speaks to her again.
On some nights, after her mother passes out, Wanda sneaks out and walks around town with her best friend Trudy. Trudy’s father is also dead (car accident), and her mother works the higher-paying night shift as a nurse at the psychiatric hospital. After high school, Trudy would go to nursing school as well. She’d move across the country and work in an emergency room, the ideal job for a woman who craves incessant stimulation and the constant possibility of danger. Although Wanda tended towards caution and logic, the nights with Trudy bewitched her into another person. Their roamings about town unfolded like lucid dreams—a parallel reality where the regular rules did not hold and everything was possible.
The night they plan to walk to Boyd’s house, Wanda layers long underwear bottoms, an undershirt, and a turtleneck under her regular clothes. Trudy taps with her fingernail on the back door, just in case Wanda’s mother isn’t fully unconscious yet. “You have two pairs of socks?” Trudy whispers. “You can last longer in the snow. Trust me.”
On the edge of town, where Boyd lives, the houses spread farther apart. After the sidewalk ends, the girls walk on the graveled edge of the road, darting into the trees whenever they see headlights approach in the distance. Boyd’s house is on the corner, and they approach it from the backyard. The snow is shallow enough that the grass blades poke through the icy top layer. The girls’ feet punch through making craters. Through the back window, they can see Boyd’s mother and one of his sisters washing dishes in the kitchen.
“What about our footprints?” Wanda worries.
“They’ll lead back to the road and disappear. Besides, they would never suspect us girls.”
“I’m afraid his parents will see us out here.”
“Think about it. When your lights are on, and it’s dark outside, you can’t see anything out your window. All you see is your own reflection. It seems like they’re looking at us, but really they’re just watching themselves wash dishes.” Trudy says this last part with hint a mockery, as if the mother and sister are fools who somehow enjoy watching their reflected selves engage in such a boring task. Wanda finds this funny, but another piece of her aches with envy as the mother hovers above, drying glasses and reaching over her daughter’s head to put them on a high shelf.
Wanda follows behind Trudy as they creep closer to the house, where they can smell the fireplace smoke puffing from the chimney. Around the side of the house, Wanda can see the glint of chrome bumper and imagines herself back inside the car, leaning her ear on the cool glass of the passenger-side window. Back at the Starlite before the weather had turned colder. Before Boyd had turned cold.
Through one of the basement windows, a single light bulb hangs from the ceiling. The walls have dark wood-toned paneling. As they approach the window well, they can see this is Boyd’s bedroom. He is there. Wanda feels a gentle punch of nausea but still edges closer to the window. Trudy whispers, “Have a good look! Remember he cannot see you.” Wanda looks down to be sure her feet aren’t too close to the window well. Are frogs or snakes squirming around down there? She hopes they’re hibernating. The curtains are partially open, and they have a clear view of Boyd in his bed. He’s sitting up on the bedspread, his back slouched against the metal frame. Wanda can see that his pants are unzipped, and his undershorts are partially visible. Boyd’s fingers, wet with saliva, move in and out of his mouth. He is biting off his fingernails and spitting them onto the rug beside the bed.
Back in her bed that night, Wanda’s legs, still cold from the hours outside, itch terribly as they gradually warm up under the blankets. She shivers, and her stomach muscles ache from so much laughter.
After a few sunny afternoons the next week, much of the snow has melted. Mounds of snowpack, contaminated with soil, grass, and vehicle exhaust, still encrust the edges of parking lots and street corners. But temperatures drop after dark, so when they sneak out on Friday, Wanda and Trudy still layer their clothes and wear two pairs of socks. Wanda carries six stolen cigarettes in her pocket, wrapped in wax paper, and a pack of matches. Tonight, they head towards the cemetery.
With a clear sky, a nearly-full moon, and the factory lights nearby, they can make out all manner of strange graves. They girls smoke their first cigarettes next to a grave for a two-year-old, which includes a rusted iron child-sized chair, its legs slightly embedded in the soil. “I suppose the parents thought its ghost needed a place to sit,” Trudy says. “How ghoulish.”
“Oh I think it’s lovely!” Wanda, squatting near the ghost-baby chair, lights another match to see the chair bit more clearly. “If I die, promise me you’ll bring one of my mother’s patio chairs out here for my ghost. The yellow one.”
“And if I die, keep bringing me more of your mother’s cigarettes.” Trudy delivers this line like TV comedy punchline, but after they stop laughing Trudy’s gets more serious. “I wonder what our mothers were like, before they met our fathers. Do you ever think about it?” Wanda remembers an old photo she’s seen once, of her mother relaxing on a blanket outside with her sisters, all teenagers. Probably a picnic. Could that girl imagine being a drunk and miserable widow someday? Probably not. Wanda tries to imagine her own future marriage, but she can’t picture anything realistic. Maybe she and her husband would move to a space station or the moon someday. Who knows. The future feels uncontrollable, like it jerks you by the wrist and you must go where it pulls. It doesn’t matter what her mother felt like at that old picnic. But she can’t explain this to Trudy.
Trudy navigates the cemetery well, because her mother often takes her to visit her dead father. Sometimes Wanda thinks about her own father’s grave, in France somewhere. Sometimes she dreams of his body underground, decomposing, worms crawling inside his eye sockets, before she gasps awake and wills the image out of her mind.
They smoke their next cigarettes in a special section just for newborn babies. These infants’ plots and gravestones are miniature, and many have a small carved lamb figure sitting on the stone. Little lambs of Christ or something. The figures remind Wanda of the molded butter lambs they sell at the market at Eastertime. Some of the older grave-lambs have weathered features or chipped off noses and are hardly recognizable as lambs. For decades after this night, Wanda will think of these baby graves every year when she mars a lamb with her butter knife at Eastertime.
Soon they’re standing next to a statue of the Virgin Mary, closer to the road and better illuminated due to the streetlights. Nervous that a passing car will notice them, Wanda watches Trudy open a gold lipstick tube and gently dab it on the sad mouth of the holy mother. What is she doing? Is God is watching them? Wanda worries this must be sinful. Not only the lipstick, but the wandering around at night, spying on Boyd, all of it. But as she watches Trudy’s tenderness in touching the color to Mary’s solemn face, Wanda feels this cannot possibly be sinful. Or even if it is technically sinful, somehow God has already forgiven them.
They smoke their last cigarettes near a large angel statue, slightly taller than them, still close to the streetlamps but partially hidden behind a large bush. The angel’s thin lips are at eye level. Still wielding the lipstick tube, Trudy carefully paints them red. She touches the lipstick onto each of the angel’s cheeks and smears the rouge into the stone with her fingers, stepping back to ensure the color is even on both cheeks. Trudy stares up at the stone eyes. She sucks hard on the cigarette, then purses her lips and blows a focused line of smoke up into the angel’s face.
“Wanda, let’s try to tip her onto the ground.” Trudy whispers this with a breathless and pleading intensity, the cigarette jiggling on her bottom lip.
The girls push hard, but the angel won’t move.
Jessie Lovett Allen is originally from western New York and currently teaches English at North Platte Community College in western Nebraska. Recent work appears in Best Small Fictions 2022, Milk Candy Review, Bending Genres, The Forge, NCTE English Journal, and JMWW.
11 August 2023
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