The Night Gift

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “Pretty good,” He stopped for a red light. “How did you—What made Barbara think of an idea like that?”

  “I don’t know. We were just talking, and it sounded like a good idea. She just didn’t want Joe ever to do that again.”

  “Do you think you can stop him? She thinks so. Do you?”

  I hesitated. The little, weary room with its peeling wallpaper and boarded windows drifted into my mind. Staring at it, I said softly, “I don’t care. If she thinks so, we can do it.”

  The light changed. The truck jerked a little as he switched gears. He was frowning. “I hope so. She—I hope so. I’ll help.”

  My brows went up in surprise. Then I remembered that Joe had been in Neil’s class. I said, “You realize all this is very illegal.”

  “That house has been empty for years. Besides, you don’t seem very concerned about legality.”

  “Well, it’s different for us.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we—you—we aren’t vice-president of the junior class, or on the basketball team. And we’re not studying political science, either. We can always say we didn’t know any better. You can’t. What if you get thrown in jail? You’ll get kicked off the basketball team.”

  “Ignorance of the law is no excuse. I’ll just say I fell in with bad company.”

  “Neil—”

  “Joslyn, that’s silly. If we get caught, we’ll just explain.”

  My eyebrows were getting tired up in the air, so I let them down. “I didn’t know you were allowed to do that,” I said doubtfully.

  “Anyway, we won’t get caught. Nobody cares about that house. You tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

  “Sure.” I still felt a little dazed. “I didn’t know you knew Joe that well.”

  “It’s not—” The truck jerked again. “It’s—Brian and Joe and I were freshmen together. This year, Brian dropped out on his birthday; and Joe—Joe just gave up. He—”

  “Do you know why?” I whispered. “Do you know why?”

  He shook his head. We were almost home. “Just living.”

  I didn’t catch as much hell as I thought I would from my parents. I told them how we were seized with an impulse to ride up the mountain, didn’t realize how long it would take, and fell asleep for four hours the minute we got there. My mother said, “You could have called sooner.”

  “I didn’t think. I just didn’t think.”

  “Typical,” Brian grunted, and for once I was grateful. It was exactly the kind of stupid thing I would do without premeditation. My father, drinking straight scotch, pinpointed me with his eyes.

  “You—” he said. I waited, breathless.

  “Yes, sir?”

  He gave up and turned to my mother. “What are we going to do with this child?”

  My mother shook her head. Brian suggested, “Put her back under her toadstool.”

  “Take her back for a refund,” Erica said gleefully. “Throw her back and try again.”

  My mother’s brows went up at that. “No, sir!”

  So, swallowing my tongue and letting Erica and scotch handle matters, I got off pretty easily. I dragged myself to bed and slept until noon.

  Sunday afternoon, sitting in the park and chewing grass stems, we had a serious consultation.

  “We should make a list,” Claudia said. “We should get organized.”

  “Were your parents mad?” I asked curiously, and she shook her head.

  “No.” She sounded still surprised about it. “They—I never do things like that. I never do anything. I think they liked it. Only—”

  I nodded. “Next time, warn them first. Call when you get there. Plan ahead, get organized. Only how can you get organized when you don’t know what you’re doing in the first place? I suppose in some magical, mystical way you’re supposed to know.”

  “We have to get the tree from Neil,” Barbara said. She was stretched out on her side with her head on one hand. It was a beautiful afternoon, with a baby blue sky and grass bright as cellophane. Lying on my stomach, I dropped my face deep in the grass and daisies and sniffed. I felt something tickle my nose, and stared into the bulbous eyes of a big brown beetle. I got up fast, squealing. Claudia laughed until she had hiccups, and the beetle bumped along over the grass blades, ignoring us with dignity. I settled down again carefully. Then I said, “Oh, I forgot. Neil said he wants to help.”

  They gawked at me. “Neil Brown?” Barbara said, to make sure. “Neil?”

  I nodded. “He said so last night, taking me home. Out of the blue. Is that okay?” I asked casually, and Claudia grinned.

  Barbara said, “Joslyn, you’re blushing. What else did he say last night?”

  I sighed. “Nothing. He just wants to help. So of course I said yes. Is that okay?”

  She nodded dazedly. “Of course. I guess so. But I don’t understand why.”

  “Joe was in his class,” Claudia said.

  “Yes, but they weren’t—But Neil—” She gave up, shaking her head. “He must have known Joe better than I thought.”

  “We have to make a list,” Claudia said, “so we know what we’re doing.”

  So we made a list. Mulling it over afterwards, Barbara said thoughtfully, “We have some paint in the garage, old half-empty cans nobody’s used for ages.”

  “So do we,” Claudia said.

  “I have some wind chimes,” I said, sucking on the pencil eraser. “One with little copper pipes, and one with painted glass…but the windows are boarded up; there’s no wind, unless we can get the skylight open.”

  “Fan,” Claudia suggested.

  “No electricity.”

  There was a silence. Barbara said, “We’ll try the skylight. I can make pillows; we’ve got a lot of scraps around the house from sewing.”

  “I have some burlap,” I said. “I could make some banners—burlap and felt, to hang down from the ceiling.”

  “Good.”

  “Put it on the list,” Claudia said. “Where are we going to get a sea horse?”

  “Pet shop,” Barbara said.

  “But you’d need a fish tank, and a filter, and all kinds of—”

  I straightened so fast I surprised myself. “Brian has a fish tank he hasn’t used for years in the attic. Fish. They’re bright—blue, red, orange—they’d be pretty.”

  “Put it on the list,” Claudia said.

  And Barbara said, “That’s good. I really wanted a sea horse. What else?”

  “Plants,” I read. “Flowers. Candles, lamps, flutes, mobiles, tapestries, books, rocking chair, sheepskin rug and prisms. What on earth is a prism?”

  “It’s glass in a geometric shape,” Claudia said. “Triangle, square, hexagon. You look through it, and it refracts light into neat colors.”

  “Oh.” I swallowed the grass I was chewing and picked a new blade. “Well, where are we going to get prisms? And a rocking chair? Or a sheepskin rug? We’re not exactly millionaires.”

  “Well,” Barbara said reluctantly. “Maybe we can get along without the sheepskin and the prisms. But I really would like a rocking chair. I’ll get it. I’ll think of something. What else?”

  I looked down at the list. “Candles are easy…flutes and recorders?”

  Barbara’s forehead wrinkled. “I’ll find them. What—”

  “Mobiles, they’re easy. Books, easy. Tapestries.”

  “Well.” She cleared her throat. “On some of these things we might have to compromise.”

  “First thing we have to do,” Claudia said, “is clean that place up.”

  “Tonight,” Barbara said. She lay back down on the grass. I smoothed the grass I had picked between my thumbs like a reed, and blew hard. A noise came out of it like the sound you might hear from an elephant blowing its nose. Barbara sat up again, fast, grinning.

  “Joslyn—” Then her eyes went over my head. A shadow fell over me. She said shyly, “Hi, Neil.”

  I looked up. He was laughing down at me, hi
s eyes the color of the warm sky. He gave Claudia, whose face had gone still, a polite nod, and waited to be invited before he sat. He said to Barbara, his face going a little red beneath his eyes as if he had suddenly, inexplicably, gone shy, too, “I went to your house; your mother said you should be here. I wanted to know what you want to do about the tree. I replanted it.”

  “You did?” she said wonderingly.

  “I put it in a big ceramic pot, I hope—It’s not a bad-looking pot.” He shifted a little. “It’s yellow.”

  Barbara, gazing up at him, closed her mouth finally. It was her secret, so she had to ask him to sit. “We were just—we were just talking about what we were going to put in the room. You can—Do you want to sit down? That was really nice of you to replant the tree.”

  “We were making a list,” Claudia said abruptly, as if the words had been forced out of her, and her face went bright red. Sitting cross-legged between Barbara and me, Neil looked at her.

  “Is it okay if I read it?” he asked, and at the uncertainty in his own voice, her face lost its tension. She stared at him, surprised.

  “Sure.” She took it off my knees and gave it to him.

  He read it slowly, while we watched him, his head bent over the list, the wind straying through the hair on the back of his head. He finished it; his eyes went to Barbara’s face.

  “A sea horse?”

  She flushed a little. “Well. Sea horses. I thought he might like one. I mean, how can you be depressed when you look at a sea horse?”

  He smiled. “I guess not. You need a saltwater tank for that.”

  “We have Brian’s old tank,” I said. “Only I don’t know how to set it up.”

  “You’d need electricity for a filter,” he said, and I sighed.

  “I forgot.”

  “Do we need a filter?” Barbara said pleadingly. “I’ll change the water. I just have to know how much salt to put in it.”

  Neil glanced up from the list again. “I’ll help you. I’ll get you one.”

  We looked at him, amazed. He looked a little amazed, too, as if he hadn’t expected himself to say that. Then he said abruptly, “Did you know that male sea horses carry their young in what looks like their stomach, and when they’re born, the front part opens and the baby sea horses come out perfectly formed, tiny miniatures?”

  Barbara, her mouth open again, smiled slowly. I got a sudden vision of a father sea horse rocking sedately in the middle of the ocean with his tummy open, and tiny, perfect sea horses, grave as gentlemen, drifting out of him like thoughts. Neil’s face, lowered again to read, was pink, as if sitting among three girls and discussing the reproductive habits of sea horses was too much for him. I lay back down on the grass, my face in his shadow. I could hear his soft breathing.

  Barbara, suddenly practical, said cautiously, “How much would it cost? I don’t have much money.”

  “Oh…” He didn’t look up. “Shouldn’t be more than—a couple of dollars…”

  She sighed with relief. “Good. That’s so good. But Neil, you don’t have to—I mean, you must have so many other things to do.”

  He came out from behind the list finally. “It’s no problem. I like sea horses.” He looked at me, smiling again. “Will Brian mind if we use his tank?”

  I smiled back. “No. He hasn’t used it for years.”

  “Well, I’ll ask him if I can borrow it; that way he won’t ask you a lot of questions.” He went back to the list, leaving me breathless at his tact. “Prisms?”

  “That’s to look at light through,” Barbara said, and I thought of something else. I sat up.

  “There’s no light! He has to come there at night. There’s no wind for the wind chimes, no electricity for the fish, no light for the prisms—”

  “Candles,” Barbara said. Her hands had closed. “We will have candles. And oil lamps with colored oil; they’re not expensive. We’ll have light. And the movement of the air around the flames will stir the chimes. We’ll have problems with this, but I know we can solve them. And it will work.”

  In spite of her words, I heard a faint shake of uncertainty in her voice. So I lied firmly, “We’ll make it work. Only first we’d better get that place cleaned up. You want to do that tonight?”

  She nodded. “If you’re not too tired.”

  “Not a bit. What should we bring?”

  “Brooms, rags, mops—”

  “There’s no water,” Claudia said softly. Barbara dropped her face in her hands briefly. She said, emerging, “We’ll just need a couple of buckets.”

  I grinned. “Are we going to ride to the front door of that place with brooms and buckets hanging from our bicycles? We’ll look like chimney sweeps.”

  “Yes,” Barbara said stubbornly. Neil cleared his throat.

  “I have an idea. I want to bring that tree to the house tonight. So I can take you there in the truck, but we’ll have to be careful going in. Is that okay?”

  Barbara’s eyes flicked to his face. They dropped again almost as fast. She said softly, “All right.”

  So we cleaned that evening. Neil picked me up first, promising my amazed parents and an equally amazed Brian that he would bring me home before curfew. And for two hours I watched him wielding a mop, wiping his wet hands over his face when he got tired, poking a broom at cobwebs in corners. It was so strange having him unexpectedly close that I almost couldn’t talk, so for awhile, with Claudia shy again, only he and Barbara talked as they scrubbed the windows clean. Then, noticing my silence, he threw a damp cloth at me across the room, surprising me while I was tearing off the trailing ends of wallpaper. I soaked it and threw it back, hitting him in the chest, and he laughed. I tensed myself for the return attack, suddenly sprung tight, ready, longing for a rowdy, exuberant water fight. But he went back to work then, hard, his forehead wrinkling above his eyes as he concentrated. We finished with ten minutes to spare.

  It didn’t make the room any less sad-looking, but it was clean. Barbara swallowed a yawn.

  “Now we can paint.” The whole front of her blouse was wet; her jeans looked as if she had waded through a flood.

  Claudia said blearily, “When?”

  Neil, holding his mop like a musket, said, “Wednesday I can borrow the pickup again. And I don’t have anything special to do.”

  Barbara’s hand strayed to her hair. “Neil—”

  “I want to do this,” he said. “I want to.” He met her eyes stubbornly; she looked down and said simply, “Okay. Thanks. Is Wednesday all right?” she asked Claudia and me. We nodded.

  I remembered, mid-yawn, that I had a book report due the next day. I said tiredly, “Damn.”

  “What?” Barbara said.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s been a nice weekend.”

  “I know.” She bent then, and tugged the tree that we had left in the hall into the center of the room. It was so green and alive against the torn walls that it made me smile. I felt Barbara’s fingers close suddenly, tightly, on my arm as she stared down at it.

  “We’ll do it,” she whispered, as though for the first time she believed it herself. “Joslyn, we’re going to do it…”

  I gave my oral report the next day in English. I talked about references to the color red in the book, and the cowardice of the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, and how all the women in the village probably secretly envied Hester for having a love affair and a child out of wedlock. I talked longer than I realized, since more came out of me than I thought I knew, and I was still going when the bell rang. Mr. Frank gave me a funny look. He crooked a finger, and when I went to his desk, he showed me the scarlet A he had given me in his grade book.

  He said slowly, “You have brains. I thought they were there, but I was never sure.”

  “I wasn’t either,” I admitted.

  He closed his grade book and asked hopefully, “What inspired you? Was it Hawthorne?”

  I stared at him. He had to be kidding. “It was my father.”

  At home, I found my mothe
r and Brian talking in the kitchen. I heard her say as I dropped my books on the living room couch, “I wish you would go back to school. I really do.”

  “It wouldn’t work,” Brian said softly. “I’d just cut classes like I did before. I’d never study. I just—I just can’t get inspired.”

  “But it’s not good for you to hang around the house doing nothing.”

  “I’ll get a job and move out, then. Neil Brown says he can get me a job at the doughnut shop where he works.”

  “You can’t spend the rest of your life making doughnuts.”

  It was a familiar argument; I could recite a hundred different versions of it by heart, with varying degrees of temper. I walked in and said cheerfully, “I got an A on my book report.”

  Brian, hanging onto the cupboard and trying to balance his chair absently on one leg, let it fall with a thump. “You? Got an A? In English?” he said incredulously. I opened the refrigerator and poked around. There wasn’t much promising: half a jar of dill pickles, leftover meatloaf, some moldy cream cheese.

  “Mom, there’s nothing to eat,” I complained, but she was looking at me the way Mr. Frank had looked. I should have known what was coming.

  “That’s wonderful. If you did it once, you can do it again. I want nothing less than A’s out of you from now on.”

  I stared at her. Brian was grinning. “Mother,” I said reasonably, “that’s unreasonable—”

  She got up. “So I’m an unreasonable, cranky old lady—you two have driven me there. Brian, if you don’t put that chair down, you’ll break your neck. You both have more brains than you’re using.”

  “Oh, Mom,” Brian groaned, and I said plaintively, “Why can’t you just be glad I got an A for a change?”

  “Ha,” Brian said. “There’s some excuse for me—I simply can’t take school. But there’s no excuse for you. You just can’t stop with one A, That’s like—that’s like an artist painting just one picture, or a rock group cutting just one record—”