The Night Gift

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  He shrugged. “First I have to get George Harmon’s car fixed.” He pointed a finger at me. “You. I’ll see you in the driveway in five minutes. Bring your books.”

  So I did homework for an hour, sort of, reading aloud to Brian’s feet as they stuck out from under the car.

  We finished Joe’s room that night. Neil picked Claudia and me up in the truck; Barbara rode behind, keeping the fish tank steady in the back. We waited a few blocks away until it grew really dark, then Neil parked around the corner from the house, and one by one, carrying things, we slipped in. We got the fish and the sea horse settled in the tank again; we watered plants and dusted candles and picked the fuzzballs out of corners. Claudia added shells from her own collection here and there: a conch, a sand dollar, tiny butterfly shells with delicate wings. When there wasn’t anything more to do, we still wandered aimlessly around straightening candlewicks, moving things over an inch, then back again.

  Finally Barbara said, “We’d better go.”

  We left one at a time, since it was Friday night and the cops would be out full force. I got home about ten-thirty; no one was there but Erica, watching television. I plopped down in a chair and took my shoes off, tired for some reason. I wanted to tell someone what we had done, and that it was all finished and beautiful, but there was no one to tell. So I watched TV until I dozed off on the couch.

  I didn’t see Barbara at all the next day. I didn’t expect to, but still I was restless with curiosity and anticipation, wondering if Joe were well, if the house was right for him. Neil stopped by on his bike in the afternoon to add his head to the circle of heads around George Harmon’s car. I knelt on the back of the couch and watched moodily. Every time they turned the engine on, the oil dipstick would shoot straight up into the air, and the crowd of bent bodies would scatter hastily, laughing and swearing. It was the most exciting thing that happened all day.

  Neil saw me eventually and came in for a moment. He said, “Have you heard from Barbara?”

  “No. Have you?”

  “No.”

  “What’s the matter with the car?”

  He wiped sweat off his face with his arm and said wonderingly, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  And that was that.

  The next day, Claudia came by. I was lying on the swing in the backyard, trying to get a tan on my back and reading a book with half my mind. I moved over for her and she sat down. She raised her knees and propped her chin on them. Obviously she had something on her mind, so I waited.

  “I’m having the operation next Saturday.”

  I rocked the swing gently with one foot. “You scared?”

  She nodded. “I hate the part where they give you a shot to put you to sleep, and I get sleepier and sleepier but I make myself wake up because I don’t like that kind of sleep. I hate hospitals. I hate having to be like this. I don’t see why I was born this way instead of someone else.”

  “I don’t know why either.” She rarely complained about it, but the operation was depressing her. I said comfortingly, “You’ll come out with a new face, though. You’ll be prettier.”

  “I’ll just be more normal. My face isn’t pretty. It’s all round and my eyes are round and my hair is fuzzy.”

  “Well, faces change. It’ll grow up one of these days.”

  “I think I wouldn’t mind, if my hair were just straight and thick and long.”

  “Grow it. It’s a pretty color.”

  “It’s too frizzy to grow straight.”

  “Iron it.”

  She looked at me. Then she smiled a little. “I wouldn’t dare. I’d burn it up. I wouldn’t dare…” She gave a little sigh then and came out of it. “Have you heard from Barbara?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if everything’s all right.”

  The side gate banged then, and Brian came into the yard. He didn’t see us for a moment; he just stood with his head bowed, his hands jammed into his back pockets. Then one hand groped around in the pocket and he pulled out his cigarettes. He looked strange for some reason. I realized why finally. He had a shirt on, and it was tucked in.

  I called to him, “Been to church?”

  His head turned, and he looked as if he didn’t know whether to answer or not. Then his feet brought him over to us and he sat down next to Claudia. He put his arm around her, and she blushed.

  “Hi, honey.”

  She was too embarrassed to answer, but she was grinning. He let her go and shook his cigarette pack. It was empty; he looked at it blankly. Then he leaned back, tilting his face to get the sunlight and said, “I just went over to see Joe.”

  I sat up. “How is he?”

  He shrugged a shoulder, his eyes hidden. “All right, I guess. I guess. He said he wanted to go back to school, said I might as well keep him company. He hasn’t changed much…”

  “Is that good or bad?”

  “I don’t know.” He was silent, then he made a restless, wiggling movement. He said almost angrily, “How do I know? How should I know? He was smiling with the twins sitting on his lap. But how do I know what he’s got locked in his head from the past few months?”

  “He could tell you,” Claudia said. “You’re his friend.”

  I stared at her. I had never heard her voice so clear and steady when she was talking to someone besides Barbara or me. And Brian didn’t even notice; he just answered her as if a miracle hadn’t just happened under his nose, “I was his friend before. He didn’t tell me then what was in his head. I didn’t do him any good then.”

  “Well, maybe he’ll use you this time.”

  He looked at her. “That’s a funny way to put it.”

  She flushed under his eyes, her voice going unsteady again. “Well, that’s what friends are for, sometimes. You use them to help you. You have to. Who else will help?”

  He looked down, using both hands to ruffle his long hair wildly, like a dog. “I suppose so.” He didn’t sound angry anymore. He turned to her again and said soberly, “I’ll be there. I don’t know—I don’t know if that will do any good because I don’t know where he’s at, and I’m afraid for him. But I’ll be there.” He got up to go. Then he said, “Oh. Barbara said tonight at nine. She said to tell you, and you’d know what it meant.”

  “Do you want to come?”

  He shook his head. Then he ruffled his hair again and nodded. “I’ll come.”

  I rode to Claudia’s house about seven because I was afraid my mother would invent some reason at the last minute to keep me home. Claudia and I played gin nervously for an hour and a half; then we put the cards away and just walked out of the house without talking, without telling anyone where we were going. It was fairly dark; the stars were surfacing in a blue grey sky. It wasn’t cold, but I felt cold; I walked with my hands under my arms. We didn’t say much as we walked to the house. By the time we reached it, the sky had darkened; the pines in front of the house were shapeless with shadow. The street was quiet. We slipped in and found Neil in Joe’s room, lighting candles.

  He smiled at us, his face drenched in matchlight. Candles burned like stars in the crates, on the floor in front of the curtains and bookshelves, in the closet. Their hot, shifting air stirred the chimes: every few seconds they would give a little tinkling sigh of glass or copper. The sea horse was watching us, his nose pressed against the glass, his tail curled like a question mark, while the pink and orange fish wound through the plants like birthday ribbon. A candle on the shelf of books lit up the galaxy, all Barbara’s careful dots of gold whirling together towards a gold orange core. Another one on the closet floor shook its shadow across the sea, so all Neil’s fish seemed to be rippling, moving. The little tree, the coleus, the fuschia Neil had brought, the daisies I had borrowed from my mother’s garden, the little nameless plants we had bought for forty-nine cents at the supermarket trailed down the crates, curled over the books, made little splashes of green in dark corners, in unexpected places. The banners moved gently above our heads
, shaking their silver stars and flowers. I leaned against the doorway, feeling as though I were in some strange church, or in a spaceship, or somewhere just beyond the edge of the world. I didn’t even hear anyone come in until Barbara touched me.

  I turned. Joe’s dark eyes were looking beyond me for a second, but he brought them back to me while he said, “Hello, Joslyn,” softly. He looked a little heavier than when I had last seen him, and his face seemed shapeless, blurred, but that could have been the candlelight. There was no expression on it. Brian was behind him. Joe went past me slowly, moving into the room. Brian stood beside me, watching.

  Joe stopped in the middle of the room, taking it in with a quick glance. In the flickering light, I saw his face still expressionless, but his eyes moving. His hand went out to the tree first, stopping a second in front of it as if it were a flame and he were warming himself. Then he touched its webbed branches gently. He touched a butterfly shell and ran his fingers down the flute. He stopped in front of the galaxy Barbara had painted, and studied it until he saw the sea horse out of the comer of his eye. His head jerked toward it; he went to the tank, squatted in front of it. He turned his head to look at us briefly, wordlessly. He touched the coleus with its pink and green leaves above the tank, and then he saw the books Barbara had brought for him. He went toward them, but he didn’t reach them. He stopped, his head thrown back, to look at my banners. Then he turned and stopped again, facing one of the long, thin gold curtains Barbara had made. A wind chime tinkled a few notes softly above it. He didn’t move. All I could see was the back of his head.

  His hand moved out slowly, flicked the two lengths of curtain apart. He felt for the window catch and slid the window up easily, almost absently. He reached out. His hand stopped flat on the solid board beneath it.

  My parents were waiting up for me when I got home. It was late, almost midnight on a Sunday night, and they didn’t look very happy with me. My father, who had to get up at six the next morning, looked at me a little bleary-eyed and demanded, “Joslyn, where have you been?”

  I glanced at the clock. “I’m sorry,” I said weakly. “I didn’t realize it was so late.” I didn’t want to argue; I wanted to curl up in a ball on the couch, but they were both sitting on it. I added helpfully, “You can go ahead and ground me; it’s all right now.”

  That stopped them a moment. My mother said, “Where have you been?”

  “In the park.”

  “With whom?”

  “Claudia and Barbara.”

  “At this time of night? What were you doing?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Nothing. Just sitting, mostly. Just—sitting.”

  “Was Brian with you?”

  “No,” I said, surprised. “He’s not home? I don’t know where he went after—”

  “After what?”

  I sighed. “After—After—” Everything was stuck in the back of my throat. After Joe had said politely, perfunctorily, the kinds of things you say when someone gives you a shirt or a pair of shoes you wouldn’t be caught dead in; after we had walked him home in the most embarrassing silence I had ever been a part of in my life. I wondered vaguely if Brian would ever speak to me again for submitting him to that. I wished there was a way of walking out of my body.

  “After—” I was stuck again. Then I saw the way my mother was looking at me, her anger turning to bewilderment, concern; and a lump of self-pity rose in my throat.

  “Joslyn,” she said, alarmed, and I sat down in a chair next to them.

  My dad said brusquely, “What happened?”

  So I told them. I told them about the house we had broken into and the tree we had stolen. I told them about all our lying, and all our cautious sneaking around after dark, in and out of the house, as we brought in paint, candles, books, crates, flowers. I told them about the sea horse Neil bought, about Neil and Barbara, about Neil and Barbara and me. I told them everything. When I finished finally, the house sounded dead still without my voice. The clock’s hands had jumped forward almost an hour.

  My dad cleared his throat. “The important thing is that you tried.”

  I shook my head wearily. “I don’t think that’s true. Because if it is, how come we all feel so rotten? Nobody wants to talk about it. Brian wouldn’t even talk to me, and he didn’t even have anything to do with it. I wish we had never—I wish we had never thought of it in the first place.”

  My mother rubbed her eyes with her fingers. “I knew you must be doing something like that—something that complicated, but I never—I never imagined anything like this. It sounds beautiful.”

  “It just sounds that way.” But when I said that, I knew it wasn’t true. I loved what we had done to that room more than anything I’d ever done in my life. It was the most beautiful place in my mind.

  “I’d like to see it,” my dad said.

  “We’ll, I’ll tell you where it is. But I won’t take you because I never want to see it again.”

  “But, Joslyn—”

  “I don’t. It’s all—it’s all over. I don’t want to see it; I don’t want to think about it. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore.”

  My mother said gently, “Joe probably didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “He didn’t—”

  “Maybe he just wasn’t able to respond the way you wanted, the way you expected. People living that deeply inside themselves sometimes forget how to react to other people’s feelings.”

  I thought about that. Then I said glumly, “I don’t know. He didn’t—I think he saw the one thing in it we all forgot. I saw it in the beginning, but I forgot: that it’s just a little, musty room in an empty house nobody wants. And that’s—that’s what he saw. All the other things were just there trying to hide that. But he saw underneath it all, to the bare boards. That’s what he was looking for when he pulled the curtains apart, and that’s what he found.” My voice hurt as if I had over-used it. “So it just—it just didn’t do him any good.”

  My dad said, “You can’t know that. You all did something for him: that’s what he’ll remember.”

  “I don’t know. He just—I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”

  In the silence, I heard the clock tick. I heard footsteps on the walk, and I was afraid it was Brian, but they passed. My mother drew a breath. “Well, you may feel a little better about it in the morning. I think we should all go to bed. Did Claudia go home?”

  I nodded. “I walked her home. Why?” Then I realized why. “Did Mrs. Gill call?”

  “And Mrs. Takaota.” She stood up, shaking her head. “At least we knew if you were in trouble, you were all in it together.”

  I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I opened the curtains and the window, and lay looking out at the roofs and trees, and the handful of stars, scattered at random like freckles across the top of the window. I heard Brian come home softly about an hour later; then, even later, I heard fire sirens in the distance, and I wondered if the deserted house were burning up. I wished it were, so it would just vanish, and we could forget it had ever existed in the first place. Finally, about the time the moon fell out of sight down somebody’s chimney, I fell asleep.

  I couldn’t find Brian the next day when I got home from school. He wasn’t in the house or the garage, so I went out front and looked under George Harmon’s car. I found his head.

  I sat down on the sidewalk and said wearily, “You don’t have to blame us. We didn’t want to hurt him.”

  He surprised me by answering. “You didn’t.” His hand came out, felt around. “Hand me that wrench.”

  “Then what did we do?”

  “Nothing. He found what he expected. Now shut up about it. Here.” He dropped a greasy bolt in my hand. There was a soft splat I couldn’t place; he rolled out from under the car.

  “I’m going to be a mechanic. Going to get me a job in a gas station and learn all there is to know about engines.”

  “Tomorrow I have to know all there is to know a
bout the past tense in Spanish.”

  He sighed, but he couldn’t find a way out of it. “All right. Let me get this oil changed first.”

  “I thought you and Joe were going back to school together.”

  For a moment he wasn’t going to answer me, remembering the appalling, silent walk the night before; I saw the sudden anger in his eyes. Then it faded and something else came into his face. He rubbed his nose with a greasy palm. “Joe’s not going back to school for a long time.”

  “What do you mean?” I said. “What do you mean?”

  He inched back under the car. “Ask Barbara.”

  “No!” I knelt down and looked at him under the car. “What do you mean?”

  He looked back at me behind a thin stream of oil. Then he came out again and squatted down in front of me. He said quietly, “Joe disappeared this morning. Mrs. Takaota had been staying home with him, and she called to see if he was here. So I said I’d check a few places. I found him down at school, outside the fence around the tennis courts and the pool. His hands were all cut up. One of the teachers had just found him. He—I guess he’d just been holding onto the steel fence so tight he cut himself, and he never even realized it…” His voice trailed away. I felt as though something big inside my head were trying to get out, pushing hard at my eyes, my throat.

  “Brian! Did we do it?”

  He looked as if he were about to cry, too. “I asked Mrs. Takaota. She said no. She said, of course not. She drove us home. Oh, hell.” He took the bolt and rolled back under the car. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because his father died when he was thirteen. Maybe it’s because he’s Japanese and stupid kids called him names in grammar school. Maybe he was born with a kinky brain. I don’t know. I just don’t know.” There was a clank, as if the wrench had slipped off the bolt and banged hard against something. “Now quit talking about it. I don’t want to think about it anymore. Read your history assignment.”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “Well, read something! Anything!”

  So I conjugated Spanish verbs at him until he finished. Then he came upstairs to help me study. I couldn’t concentrate very well, and he lacked his usual money-hungry zeal, but at least he was still speaking to me.