The Pillow Friend

by Lisa Tuttle

  The thin strip of yellow light marking the boundary of her dark bedroom suddenly expanded as the door was opened. “Agnes? Did I hear you say something?”

  She shut her eyes tight and kept very still. After a little while the door closed, but she kept quiet a little longer in case her mother was still listening.

  Finally she picked the doll off her pillow and held him suspended just above her. The white blur of his face in the darkness was like a tiny, distant moon to her near-sighted eyes.

  “Who are you?” she whispered. When he did not reply, she drew him down close enough to feel the hot breath of her words as she spoke. “You're Myles, and you're mine. Marjorie gave you to me, so you're my pillow friend now and you have to talk to me, okay?” His silence continued. The small figure never moved as her hand closed more tightly around the fragile body, squeezing it harder and harder until abruptly, furious and ashamed, she opened her fingers and closed her eyes and felt him fall, bouncing off the side of her face, then slithering down the pillow to come to rest half on her neck, half off, still unspeaking. She closed her eyes on tears.

  Eventually she fell asleep, but it was not the deep, easy sleep she was used to. Instead, it was as if she continued to listen for Myles even as she slept, as if her awareness of his presence in the bed was too strong, too vital to relax. She woke several times believing that she had felt him move, that he was about to creep away from her in the dark.

  In the morning, for one heart-stopping moment she thought he had gone because he was no longer beside her head on the pillow. She jumped up and pulled the covers all the way back and found him about halfway down the bed. She stared at him for a little while before she picked him up, wondering if he had traveled that far on his own, or if she had pushed him away in her sleep.

  Despite her mother's cautions and her own feelings about his difference from other dolls, she tried once to play with him, introducing him into the dollhouse one afternoon after school.

  The dollhouse had been built by her father. He had also made one for the twins before she was born, but this was his masterpiece. It had a hinged front, and he had designed it to look like their own house. The resemblance was closest from the outside, when the front was closed—a shingled, gray, two-story wooden house with white shutters and a white front door—because although the floor plan was the same inside, with kitchen, utility room, hall, living room, and den downstairs, three bedrooms and two bathrooms upstairs, the furnishings were different. It was both familiar and strange.

  Myles dwarfed the family who lived in the dollhouse, and looked awkward in conjunction with most of the furniture, although he was not actually too big for the space. She put him in the kitchen, her favorite room, thinking he would be better there because the wooden table and chairs, a recent acquisition to replace the pink plastic set she'd had at first, were actually too large for the dollhouse family. She'd been right about the new furniture being his size, and the feast which was spread out on the tabletop—the loaf of bread, the bowl of fruit, the plate of pink meat—were all just about in proportion. But when she sat him on a chair he looked all wrong with his legs thrust out before him (they had not been made to bend). It was obvious that he did not belong, so horribly obvious that she was ashamed of herself for having put him there. In her haste to remove him she knocked some of the little dishes off the table and left them there, where the sight of them, the next time she played with the house, would recall her shame and the feeling of frustrated sadness she had carried away with Myles.

  School ended and summer vacation began. She continued to sleep badly, and Myles continued to keep his silence, but still she hoped and waited for the night he would reveal himself to her for what he really was.

  The days were bright and mercilessly hot. Agnes' mother, or Leslie's, took them swimming at the country club three or four mornings a week. Apart from those mornings in the pool, or the weekly visit to the library, she liked the evenings best. Her father was teaching her to ride a bicycle, and sometimes the twins would include her in running and hiding games, imaginative variants on hide-and-seek which they'd invented and taught to all the children in the neighborhood. The cooler evenings, in the couple of hours of light between dinner and bedtime, provided time for her best games with Leslie, when they became explorers, or pirates, or spies, riding their bicycles or climbing trees.

  One long afternoon they worked at the table in her bedroom creating a wonderful map, with a coded rating system, of all the climbable trees in the four blocks that comprised their immediate neighborhood. The pecan tree in her backyard was pretty good, but they both agreed that the best tree of all was the huge old oak on the corner at the other end of the street, in Mr. and Mrs. Darwin's front yard. The Darwins were an elderly, childless couple, but they were the friendly natives who never objected to having their yard taken over and used as a playground. Rosamund and Clarissa had given up climbing trees as being too childish shortly before becoming, officially, teenagers. If that was the kind of deal you had to make to become a teenager, Agnes thought it was definitely not worth it. She was pretty sure that she and Leslie were the only children who played in that tree now. There was a hollow in a branch near the top which they called their “cubbyhole,” and they left treasures and messages in it which no one else had ever found.

  There were also things to do indoors, during the heat of the day. Often she played with Leslie, but, for the first time this summer, Agnes found herself wanting to spend more time on her own. Myles wasn't the only thing she couldn't share with her friend—there were also books. Agnes had fallen in love with reading, but Leslie couldn't understand why anyone would want to sit quietly with a book outside of school. It puzzled and hurt her that Agnes would rather read than play with her. One day that hurt came spilling out.

  They had been at Leslie's house all morning, playing with dolls, and then outside in the inflated wading pool, with the hose and the Slip 'n' Slide, splashing and shrieking and scooting along on their stomachs through the wetness. Leslie's mother, Jane-Ann, had given them lunch, and after lunch they'd been sent off to Leslie's room with instructions to stay there and play quietly for at least an hour, so Jane-Ann could have a rest.

  “Maybe I should go home?”

  “No, you can't go home. Let's play games. We can play Candyland.”

  So they had played Candyland and Go Fish and Old Maid and Beetle, and all the time Agnes had been fretting, impatient to get away, her mind wandering off to the stack of library books waiting for her at home. She had read the first one last night, but the others called to her, tempting, tantalizing, each one different, exciting, new. The one she wanted to read next was called My Favorite Age. She had peeked at the first page that morning and was in a tingle of excitement trying to imagine what would happen next. She had expected to go home for lunch, after which it would have been easy to curl up in the big leather chair in her father's den, surrounded by his books, and lose herself in the undiscovered pleasures of a new library book.

  “Aggie, will you just play right?” Leslie threw down her cards and Agnes stared at her in astonishment. She was crying.

  “What's the matter?”

  “I don't know! You don't want to play with me, I don't know why. Aren't we best friends anymore?”

  “Of course we are!”

  “Then why don't you tell me things like you used to? Why don't you tell me the truth about him? Why don't you ever let me hear him talk?” She gestured at Myles, on the floor, and Agnes reached down without thinking to cover him with her hand.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you think I'm stupid? You told me what your aunt said about her pillow friend, and then for your birthday she gives you that doll. It was her doll, wasn't it? Well, it's obvious. You carry it around with you all the time, it must be special, but you don't play with it. So what is it with that doll that you won't tell me?”

  Although Leslie left pauses for her to speak, Agnes was unable to say anything. She had not told L
eslie anything about Myles, because there was nothing to tell. It had been nearly two months now since her birthday, and Myles had still not spoken, or moved, or given her the slightest sign that he was the special, magic doll she still longed to believe in. She continued to hope, and always kept him near her, to be ready for the magical moment, but her faith was getting a little wobbly.

  She had not meant to keep a secret from her best friend; she had only been waiting until there was something to tell, something to share. She couldn't share her doubts; she was afraid that as soon as she voiced them, they would become the truth, and Myles would become ordinary. Aunt Marjorie would be revealed as just another grown-up who told stories to credulous children—stories Leslie would have been too smart to swallow.

  But now she had to say something. “He is special. It's just, it's hard to explain why, he just is. I know he is. I wasn't keeping that a secret from you. It's—it's just—well, there's not that much to tell.”

  “Does he talk to you?”

  “Sometimes.” The lie was out before she had time to think. “Sometimes, late at night, when we're in bed, just before I go to sleep, he'll tell me a story or something.”

  “Neat!” Leslie's blue eyes were round and shining; the faintly freckled skin of her face fairly glowed as she leaned forward, drinking in the story. “Like what, can you tell me one?”

  “Maybe . . . not right now. It's hard to remember all the details, you know, after a few days.”

  “Next time he tells you a story will you tell me?”

  Agnes nodded.

  “Promise.”

  “Yes, I promise. Leslie, I wasn't trying to be mean, or anything, not saying anything before, I just didn't think you were interested.”

  “Well, of course I'm interested! Geeze, Louise! Honestly! Some people's children!” They laughed at the phrase which was their own adaptation of a frequent exclamation of Leslie's mother, and they were close again, closer than before, despite the guilt Agnes felt about her lie, a guilt that was worse for knowing she could never, ever confess it.

  They played happily together for the rest of the afternoon, and when it was time to go home—her mother had called to say that dinner would be on the table in five minutes—Leslie walked her halfway. At the halfway point (which had been instituted at their mothers' insistence, to keep them from walking endlessly back and forth with each other) Leslie asked, “Could I keep him tonight?”

  It was like something cold and hard sticking halfway down her throat, like swallowing a cube of ice. She looked at her friend's eager, pleading, loving face and knew she could not deny her. They had always shared everything. Even Leslie's most valuable possession, the square-cut emerald ring she'd inherited from her grandmother, too large to wear, had been in Agnes' pocket, and her jewelry box, for a day and a night despite the fact that Leslie was strictly forbidden to take it out of the house. Although Myles, too, was valuable, Agnes was under no such prohibition, as her friend knew perfectly well. Selfishness was her only reason for wanting to say no, and selfishness was not allowed between best friends.

  “He probably won't talk to you. He doesn't always talk, and . . .”

  “Oh, I know. That's okay. He's your pillow friend, I wouldn't expect him to talk to me, but can't I borrow him anyway? Just for tonight? Please?”

  Silently, painfully, she handed the doll to her friend, who received him with reverent gentleness. “Oh, thank you. I'll be so, so careful. I'm sure he'll tell you that I was when you see him again tomorrow. Bye-eee!”

  Agnes had thought she would lie awake for a long time that night, and she did. What she had not thought, had not even considered, was how comfortable she was, alone in her bed for the first time in over two months. For once she didn't have to strain to listen, didn't have to examine her own behavior for whatever she might be doing wrong, didn't have to struggle to go on hoping and feel her hopes dashed again. She fell asleep, surprisingly at peace.

  “He talked to me!”

  Agnes looked at the little doll which Leslie had thrust into her hand and the familiar painted face stared coldly back. They were in Leslie's room, and as soon as Agnes had come in, Leslie had bounced over to her and dropped her bomb. She looked from Myles' ungiving face to her friend's lively, excited eyes, searching desperately for a tease, not daring to display disbelief.

  “Really?”

  “It was so neat!”

  “What did he say?”

  “He told me a story. It was just like you said! I can't remember it exactly, but it was really exciting. It was about us, you and me, finding a treasure—jewels and everything, buried under a bush. We put them in the cubby so the grown-ups wouldn't take them away from us.”

  It numbed her, this betrayal. Unless, she thought, Leslie was pretending, or had dreamed it—but that was something she did not dare to hint at, or Leslie would suspect that she had lied. “Neat. Um, look, I can't stay, I have to go now, my mom's taking me to the library.”

  “I'll walk you halfway. Just wait for me to get dressed.”

  “No, I really have to go. I told my mom I'd run straight back.”

  “You going to come over later?”

  “Probably.”

  “You're not mad at me?”

  “For what?”

  “I don't know. Maybe something about . . . Myles? I know he's yours, and it was really nice of you to let me borrow him.”

  “I'm not mad.” She knew she had no right to feel so murderously hurt. She was jealous, of course, but who was she mad at? It wasn't Leslie's fault if Myles had spoken to her. . . . “I'm just in a hurry. I'll see you later.”

  “Alligator.”

  “After while, crocodile.”

  Halfway home, clutching Myles in one sweaty hand, she stopped to have another look at him. He looked the same as ever, like a cold, dead, antique doll. But she knew that wasn't so; she could still feel the reality, the life buried beneath the surface. The question was no longer why wouldn't he talk; it was why wouldn't he talk to her. Or maybe the question was, why couldn't she hear him? Leslie had heard one of Myles' stories—and it didn't even really matter to her.

  It's me, thought Agnes. There's something wrong with me. Myles had spoken not to Mary but to her sister Marjorie; he had spoken not to Agnes but to her best friend.

  She began to walk again, blindly and fast, her sandaled feet slapping the hot pavement as the unwelcome truth pounded through her brain.

  He'd talk to me if I were different. If I was someone else, I could hear him.

  She didn't notice that she had passed her own house until she had turned the corner. When she did realize, she just kept going. She had lied to Leslie. Her mother wouldn't mind if Agnes stayed out all morning.

  Agnes kept walking without a plan in mind. She soon left the familiar, four-block area that was her regular territory, driven by the desire—so powerful it seemed a need—to be somewhere new and different. It was strictly forbidden to venture beyond the boundaries of Oak Shadows without an adult, and she didn't feel brave enough to defy that rule. She was supposed to ask permission if she wanted to cross The Boulevard, but her sisters were allowed, and she knew it was a much smaller sin. She was careful to look both ways before crossing, although at this time of morning, after all the adults with jobs had gone to work, there was no sign of a car moving on any of the quiet streets.

  The first two streets she came to on the other side of The Boulevard looked familiar. There was even one house that was practically identical to her own, only the trim was painted gray instead of green. The sight of it brought Agnes up short. She stood and stared, fascinated, until a woman, a stranger, appeared at one of the large front windows to stare back at her. Then, unsettled by the idea of complete strangers living in a house so much like her own, Agnes hurried away.

  Gradually, as each successive block took her farther from Rosemary Street, the atmosphere began to change, and Agnes was aware of more differences than similarities to the houses that she knew. This was the m
ore expensive side of Oak Shadows. The houses and the lots were larger, and some of them had swimming pools.

  Something—some sound in the hot, quiet air—caught her attention, and made Agnes stop. She looked around, but nothing moved. She raised her hot, sweaty hand and unclenched her fingers. She looked at Myles, and he looked at her.

  It was as if she had been struggling along in a high, buffeting wind which had suddenly stopped. Coolness flowed over and through her. The eyes of the little doll were shining and his face was sharply alive, intelligent, knowing. There could be no mistake about it. He had just spoken—the words had been muffled by her hand. She waited, holding her breath, for him to speak again.

  She began to feel dizzy. She broke their eye contact and breathed again as she looked up at the nearest house. It was large, Southern plantation-style, with a second-story verandah supported by white pillars. Flowering magnolias and other glossy-leaved trees and bushes dotted the immaculate green lawn. There was a red-brick path which began a few inches from her feet and led up to the front porch.

  She suspected—and then she knew—that the house was significant. It wasn't by accident Myles had broken his silence on this spot; there had been good reason for it. She looked at him again, sharply, to see if he would confirm her thoughts. He made no sign, but that didn't matter. She knew she was right, and she knew what he wanted her to do.

  Slipping the little doll into the pocket of her shorts, she walked up to the front door. It was unlocked, as she expected, so she walked in.

  The front hall was elegant and spacious, high-ceilinged and with a thick, beige carpet underfoot. Framed prints hung on the pale walls, progressing up the wide staircase. Agnes stepped forward, toward the staircase, and began to climb. She felt excited, tinglingly aware of her own disobedience even as the reason for it remained a mystery. Words, a jumble of broken sentence fragments, swirled in her mind, but none of them explained what she was doing. The house did not feel empty, but she made her way safely upstairs without encountering anyone.