The Studs

You find a wall stud by knocking. Hollow, hollow, solid. Everyone who's ever hung a shelf has heard it. I've heard wall.

I've knocked from the left and from the right. I've knocked with a knuckle and with the handle of a spoon. I marked every spot where I thought the sound changed. The wall above the couch ended up with forty-one pencil marks and twenty-two small holes where I'd checked.

Mr. Alvarez came in September to paint the bedroom. On his way out he looked at the living room wall and didn't say anything. By the time I got home he had filled all twenty-two holes and sanded them smooth. There was one pencil X in the middle of the wall, with a circle around it. I hadn't drawn it.

I hung the shelf there. It has held for two years.

I never found another stud. As far as I'm concerned that X is the only one in the house, so everything we own now hangs from it.