The Pillow Friend

by Lisa Tuttle

  “Hey, don't look like that! Your dad's happy enough—he made his choice, he got what he wished for, and he doesn't complain. Everybody has some regrets, including me. . . . Christ, me and my big mouth! I keep forgetting you're just a kid. Which reminds me. You haven't had your breakfast. Your mother would shoot me, letting you starve. What do you want? Eggs? French toast? My special pancakes?”

  “What about my wish?”

  “Hmmm?”

  “When do I get it? When does it come true?”

  “Oh.” Marjorie pursed her lips. “Well, when do wishes most often come true? You have a birthday coming up soon, don't you?”

  “Not until May. I'll be seven in May.”

  Her aunt smiled her mysterious smile. “Well, May sounds like a very good month for wishes to come true.”

  The Greys lived in a two-story wood house on a corner lot on Rosemary Street, in a subdivision of Houston called Oak Shadows. When it was built, in the early 1950s, Oak Shadows was on the edge of the city, but Houston was booming, and by the time Agnes started school her neighborhood was considered a very desirable, central location. It was a quiet, residential enclave, the homes in their green, tree-shaded yards set well back from the street, with sidewalks for roller-skating, and little traffic to threaten the bicycle-riding children. The adults were all agreed that it was a good place to live, the ideal setting for a happy childhood.

  For Agnes' seventh birthday on May 23 the weather was clear, hot and humid, as it had been all week. She went to school in the morning wearing her new red and white birthday dress with the flounced petticoat underneath. It was too heavy for the weather, but it would have been unthinkable to wear anything other than her birthday dress on her birthday. It was looking a little limp and bedraggled by the late afternoon, but she was still buzzing with excitement.

  Her mother had tied red balloons and paper streamers to the branches of the big pecan tree behind the house and pushed the picnic table, covered with a festive cloth, beneath it. A pile of presents waited for her at one end of the table, and her mother was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to her birthday dinner as Agnes ran between the front and backyard, watching for the rest of the guests to arrive, despite pleas from her father to sit still.

  It wasn't a large party, just the family, her father's parents who had come up for the day from Beaumont, and Leslie and her parents. When Leslie's family arrived, Mary Grey emerged from the kitchen with a pitcher of drinks and began directing the others to carry trays of food outside. “We might as well start with the cake, before our little birthday girl explodes.”

  “Mom,” said Agnes urgently. “Mom, not yet. Marjorie's not here!”

  Her mother's beautiful, made-up face tightened. “We can't wait on her, I told you, she probably won't come.”

  “Did you send her an invitation?” Agnes had nagged her mother on this subject for weeks.

  “Of course I did. But I haven't heard back. It might not have reached her. She could be anywhere. You know what she's like. She turns up when she feels like it. Family birthday parties aren't really her scene. If we have to wait on her, we could all starve.”

  Agnes hadn't seen Marjorie since February, and not a day had passed without thoughts of her, the wish, the dream, the doll. She was certain she would get the doll for her birthday, and had imagined that Marjorie would bring it. But Marjorie had never said so, and there were other ways for wishes to come true. She did want to open her presents, so she shrugged and nodded at her mother, and let Leslie link arms with her and pull her away.

  After the singing of “Happy Birthday,” as the flashbulb in her grandfather's camera popped, she blew out all seven candles with a single breath. Now she had to get her wish. She looked at the pile of presents and wondered which one held the doll.

  Leslie pinched her. “Go on.”

  “Which one should I open first?”

  “Mine, of course. I'm your best friend.” She pushed forward a tiny, pink-wrapped box which turned out to contain a round locket on a golden chain, just like the one Leslie wore, which was in turn just like the one Hayley Mills wore in Pollyanna, their favorite movie.

  “Oh, boy! It's just what I wanted!”

  “I know. I was afraid you were going to steal mine, that's why I got you one. Ha ha just kidding.”

  Her sisters both gave her books: Charlotte's Web from Rosamund, and A Child's Garden of Verses from Clarissa. The other gifts included a piano for the dollhouse, a Snoopy beach bag and towel, a jigsaw puzzle, a box of pencils, and bubble bath. Finally there was only one package left, the one she had been saving. It was obviously “the big one,” but it looked too big for her heart's desire.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? There's still one left,” said her mother. Her cheeks were flushed, her lipstick faded, and she was fanning herself with a Japanese paper fan.

  “Maybe she's had enough presents for today,” said her father. “You going to save that one for tomorrow? Or maybe you want to give it to somebody else?” He leaned across the table as if he would take it from her, and she tore the paper off in one jerky motion, and lifted the lid of a plain white box to see what was inside.

  Dead blue eyes in a hard pink plastic face glared at her, the finger of one hand pointed accusingly. Her chest went tight with shock.

  All around her the others were making noises of awe and delight. A flashbulb popped.

  “She talks,” said her father, his face gone soft and round in a big grin. “Pick her up; let's hear what she has to say.”

  When she still didn't move, Leslie reached past her and picked the thing up out of its box, speaking self-importantly: “I know how it works; I saw it on TV. There's a ring at the back of her neck that you can pull. Look, want me to show you?”

  There was a whirring sound and then an eerie, wavering voice declared, “I like you.”

  “What'd she say?” demanded one of the twins.

  “‘I wike you,'” replied the other, and they both hooted.

  “Please brush my hair.” The whirring sound of the ring-pull. “I like you.” Whirring sound. “Will you be my friend?”

  Agnes screamed.

  Everyone went quiet. Leslie pushed the doll into her arms. The horrible closeness with the dead, plastic body, her recollection of that ghastly, robotic voice grinding on, was more than she could bear, and she hurled it savagely to the ground.

  There was a reproving gasp from her grandmother. Leslie giggled. “Leslie,” said Leslie's mother sharply.

  “I'm sorry,” Leslie muttered.

  “Honey, what's wrong?”

  It was her father who asked, but she looked at her mother when she replied, at her mother who stopped fanning and turned a disapproving face away from her awkward daughter.

  “It's not real! That's not what I meant! I want a doll that really talks!”

  “This doll talks,” said her father. “At least, it does if you haven't broken it.”

  “It does not! It just says things, like a record. That's not talking. If I say something, it can't answer me back!”

  “I'd call that an improvement,” said her father. Then he sighed. “Look, Nessie, you're a big girl, you know dolls can't really talk. Maybe by the time you're grown up the scientists will give us walking, talking robots, but for now that's as good as it gets. It honestly is. I asked in the store, and although there are a couple of other, cheaper talking dolls, this is the very best one.”

  “It's not, it's not, it's not!” Still her mother would not look at her, move, or reply, and she burst into howling tears. “I want the real one! I don't want that thing!”

  And so her seventh birthday ended with Agnes in disgrace, banished to her bedroom without her dinner, without even a chance to taste her cake. She fell across her bed and wept until she fell asleep.

  When she woke up it was dark outside, the lamp was on, and her mother was standing beside the bed with a tray. “Here, you'd better have something to eat and then get undressed and go to bed.�
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  She sat up, feeling dazed and uncomfortable. She rubbed her arms where the elastic on the puffed sleeves had cut into the flesh, then pulled up her skirt to scratch her legs.

  “Stop that.”

  “Huh? It itches.”

  “It's not meant to be slept in. You've probably ruined it, like you ruined your own party.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes but she kept her gaze down and went on stubbornly scratching at her thighs.

  Her mother set the tray down on the little table with a jarring clatter and seized her wrist. “I said, stop it. Get your clothes off, go on.”

  “I can't help it if I itch.”

  “No, but you can help scratching. Now get that dress off before you completely destroy it, and get your pajamas on.”

  “Can't I have a bath first?”

  “No you may not. Do you know what time it is? You just get into your pj's and eat your dinner and then go straight to bed. And if you don't hurry up you can forget about eating.”

  Sullenly, she did as she was told, and then sat down at the table and looked at the tray her mother had prepared. There was a ham sandwich surrounded by small mounds of coleslaw, potato salad and beans, a glass of milk and a slice of birthday cake, but what caught her attention was a package about the size of her new pencil box, wrapped in shiny green paper with a purple ribbon. “What's that?”

  “That's your present from Marjorie.”

  “Oh! Is she here?”

  “No. You missed her.” Her mother sounded grimly pleased. “You were having a temper tantrum, and she didn't have time to stick around until you decided to behave. But she left you that present. If it'd been me, I'd've taken it back.”

  “Can I open it now?”

  “You can do what you like. It's yours.”

  She could hardly breathe, she was so excited. Her earlier disappointment and fury were forgotten as she opened the last present.

  Inside the paper, inside the box, something was swathed like a tiny mummy in strips of soft white tissue paper. Gently, patiently, she peeled away each layer until the doll was revealed.

  Her first, instinctive response, quickly suppressed, was disappointment. It wasn't anything like the doll in her dream. But because it came from Marjorie, because this must be the pillow friend, the answer to her wish, she could not be disappointed, only surprised by how far reality diverged from her fantasy.

  It was neither a baby nor a girl like her other dolls, but a small, old-fashioned gentleman in a painted black suit. He was about five inches tall, bigger than the dolls in the dollhouse but much smaller than Barbie. He was made of something hard and breakable—porcelain, she thought, or china, like some of the ornaments on her grandparents' what-not shelves which she knew to handle with care. But this was different from an ornament, because the arms and legs moved. His face and hair, like his clothes, were painted on.

  “I can't believe she gave you that.”

  Something in her mother's voice made her shoulders hunch and her hand close protectively around the doll.

  “That's not a toy, it's an antique. It's valuable, too valuable for you to play with. Give it to me and—”

  “No.”

  “What did I hear you say?”

  “It's mine. She gave it to me.”

  “Of course it's yours. I know that. I want to put it somewhere safe for you, and look after it until you're old enough to appreciate it.”

  “I am old enough now. That's why she gave him to me.”

  “She gave it to you because she has no sense, she has no idea what children are like. She doesn't realize that you'll treat it like any other plaything. That's not an ordinary doll.”

  “I know.” Excitement surged up in her. “Marjorie told me about him.”

  “Then you know he's not for you to play with. You'll thank me for this later, when you're older. Now, give him to me.”

  She shrank back from her mother's reaching hand. “No, no, I'll take really really good care of him. I know what to do. Marjorie told me. He's the pillow friend.”

  All at once the remote expression came over her mother's face, that deliberate blankness and distance she always dreaded.

  “Well, if you know best, you know best, I guess. I'm only your mother. Don't come crying to me when you break it, or lose it, as I'm sure you will. Just don't come crying to me.”

  She watched, confused and dismayed, as her mother left the room, hating to see her go, hating the feeling of dread her words instilled, yearning to call her back, yet knowing that there was no point unless she was prepared to give up the pillow friend. And she couldn't do that. She had made a wish and it had been granted. Now she had to accept the consequences.

  Agnes had been alone in her room often enough, sent there by her mother when she'd been bad, or because it was time for bed, but this time, for the first time, she was not really alone. A thrill of pleasure ran through her. She'd gotten her wish, she had a pillow friend, she would never have to be alone again.

  For once in her life she felt no desire to delay bedtime. She ate her cake and drank the milk but nothing else. As she munched her way through the sweet cake she held the little doll in one hand and stared at the tiny, painted face, at the bright blue eyes and rosebud mouth beneath a mustache as fine as an eyelash. When she had finished the cake she knew his name. Very carefully, aware of how monstrous her huge, wet lips must seem to someone so small and delicate, she kissed his cold, smooth face and said it out loud: “Myles.”

  She put him on her pillow with a handkerchief laid over him, and then she put out the light and climbed happily into bed. What a difference it made to have someone, her pillow friend, close beside her in the dark! Having to go to bed alone had always seemed so unfair. Her mother had her father, and the twins had each other, but she was always the odd one out. Now, finally, she had someone, too, and the pleasure of his presence was so calming and satisfying that she fell asleep before she ever heard him speak.

  The next day she dumped all the pencils out of her new pencil case and lined it with a green silk scarf her mother had given her. Myles would be safe from accidents there, and with the pencil box fitted snugly into the bottom of her school bag, she could take him everywhere. When she showed him to Leslie, in the playground before the bell rang, she could see her friend was not impressed.

  “Oh, neat,” she said, unenthusiastically. Then, “Too bad he isn't big enough to be Barbie's boyfriend.”

  The idea made her bristle. “I couldn't play Barbies with Myles.”

  “Why not? What's so special about him?”

  She was used to telling Leslie everything, but just then Mindy came along, making secret sharing impossible.

  “That's a funny-looking doll,” said Mindy.

  “It's not an ordinary doll,” she said coolly. “It's a valuable antique.”

  “Oooh, neat-oh.”

  The bell rang then and, as she was settling Myles back into his box, Mindy linked arms with Leslie and walked with her into the building. She fussed over Myles longer than was necessary, forbidding herself to look after them, trying not to feel betrayed.

  Agnes and Leslie had been best friends forever, paired off at the dawn of time by their mothers, who had plonked them down in a playpen together when they were too young to do more than stare at each other. They lived only four houses apart, their parents belonged to the same country club, and there were no other girls their own age in the immediate area. From the time they were allowed to walk down the street alone they'd been in and out of each other's houses, almost as much together as if they'd been sisters. After they started school, friendship had become a major issue. All the little girls were obsessed with the hierarchies of likes and dislikes, and Leslie and Agnes slipped into the routine as if born to it. Degrees of closeness had to be defined, and the superiority of their own bond continually asserted and confirmed as they rated other girls as “second-best,” “third-best” or “just” friends. Yet even though these conversations always came to the
same triumphant conclusion, exalting their own relationship above all others, they left Agnes feeling dissatisfied. If they were really so important to each other, and understood each other so well, why did they have to keep talking about it? Rosamund and Clarissa never said anything about how close they were—why should they, when they communicated so well without words? And Agnes knew, even though her mother seldom mentioned Marjorie's name, that her mother and her aunt were as close as two people could possibly be. But she said nothing of this to Leslie. Her friend would only take it as a criticism of herself, and Agnes didn't mean it that way.

  She couldn't help resenting Mindy, and feeling that Leslie really should have pulled away and waited for her, but the thought of the inevitable long discussion she'd have to have with her friend later, yet again dissecting and discussing both their friendship and Leslie's feelings for Mindy, made her tired. There ought to be a way of just knowing someone, of looking into their eyes and understanding, without words, the way it had been in her dream of the doll.

  She stroked Myles with her forefinger, gazing at him wistfully for a long moment before she put him back into the pencil box and went into her classroom.

  As she waited that night for Myles to speak to her she began to feel that maybe he was waiting for her to do something first. She wondered if there was a magic word which Marjorie had forgotten to tell her.

  “I know you can talk,” she said. “Marjorie told me so. She told me you used to tell her stories at night. It's okay, you can tell me stories now.”

  But he didn't. She knew that he could, if he would, because he wasn't like any other doll. She could feel his life, a dormant vitality, even though he never moved. Why was he refusing to speak? She wondered if she had done something wrong. When her mother refused to speak to her, it was because Agnes had offended her. But what wrong could she have done to Myles in the short time she had known him?

  “Is it your name?” she asked. “Did I choose the wrong name for you? Marjorie didn't tell me. Myles seemed right, but—how'm I supposed to know what to call you if you won't tell me? Please talk to me—please, tell me your name. Tell me what's wrong!”