Describe a wall

"Victoria,” Agnes had said earlier that morning, “I think I’ll clean the first floor myself.”

Victoria had gotten the children out of the house after breakfast on the red herring of a day at the zoo, which gave Agnes the opportunity to clean house and get ready for Grace’s birthday party. First she dusted – in the parlor room, where they spent all their time and where most of the children would surely congregate. Agnes hoped they wouldn’t gravitate to the music room. She didn’t want 11 year olds banging on Granny’s Steinway.

She took a cloth to the paintings and photographs on her back wall. She’d worked hard to put this collage together, despite Norman’s fussy barbs about creating a monument to dead relatives – and they stood in sharp contrast to the dark paneling behind it. But have it she would, notwithstanding her husband’s need to dominate the space – a portrait of her father, Martin Limerick, commissioned by Granny just a year before he died in the influenza epidemic; Gracie Honeywalker's father, the slave rebellion leader's sneer plain on his face; a photograph of Norman’s parents at their wedding (hard to believe Victoria had ever been that young); and now a photograph of Norman standing in front of Logan Circle’s fountain.

That sharp smile, the way his eyes narrowed to sparkling slits when he lifted up one side of his mouth, exposing those sharp teeth that still had her thinking he was a vampire. How strange, even a year after he’d come home from the war in a casket, to think he’d never again bewitch her with that smile. But at least now she was free from it.