After Sylvia

by Alan Cumyn

  In the cold darkness, when the house was still except for the creaking of the walls against the winter wind, Owen crept out of bed and pulled on his robe and slippers and walked downstairs in the dark. Sylvester was at his side immediately, wanting to look for the rock some more. Owen was afraid he might wake the others with his whining.

  “In the morning,” Owen said, and he rubbed at Sylvester’s face and ears the way the dog liked it. “Just hang on until then.”

  Some days before, Owen had made a Christmas card in class for Sylvia. It had little winter sparkles glued in the shape of a snowman. But he had not written anything inside it yet. Owen got it now and sat in the living-room with one small light on and the card on his lap. Sylvester waited impatiently by his feet.

  Owen thought of writing, “How is Elgin? Well, Merry Christmas!”

  He almost wrote, “I miss your orange coat.” And he thought a great deal about asking, “Do you still have the ring that I gave you? I know it’s too big but I’m hoping it will fit some day.”

  It was awful trying to decide on the right words. Finally something occurred to him which he wrote swiftly. He penned Love with only the slightest tremble, and signed his name with a flourish. Then he inserted the card and sealed the envelope.

  He stared at the blankness of it.

  What was her address? He knew his own, and wrote it quickly in the top left corner. And he wrote Sylvia Tull in the middle and wondered at how such a little thing, writing someone’s name, could almost conjure her into the room.

  But he didn’t know where she lived. Elgin, of course, but what street and what number?

  Horace had a drawer full of maps in the little room that he kept as his office beside the kitchen. Owen went there now and turned on another little light.

  His father stored his important papers in that office along with his typewriter and adding machine, which he used when he brought his work home. That room was full of the mystery of selling insurance. Now that Owen was vice president he knew what it was like to go to long meet­ings and try to convince people of whatever it was they ought to be convinced about. Horace’s office had a smell to it of old suits and something else that Owen was only now beginning to recognize — anxious letter-writing.

  Owen pulled open the map drawer. The boys had gotten in trouble before for fooling with those maps. Horace used them in his work when he was meeting new clients and he hated it when the creases tore or peanut-butter stains showed up in formerly, clean residential districts.

  The map of Elgin was near the bottom. Owen took it out carefully and unfolded it on top of the typewriter. In the past the boys had jabbed its keys and rung its bell until Horace had yelled at them to get their grimy hands off his machine.

  Owen had never looked closely at a city map before. He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for — just some clue to where Sylvia’s house was. But as he looked at the little streets on the map — mere lines, with the occasional school marked, the post office, the water tower — he saw no helpful little note saying Sylvia Tull lives with her parents here. The house has a swimming pool and boys who want to send her a Christmas card should use the following address.

  Owen’s eyes wandered and he noticed on a shelf near the desk the big black binder where Horace kept his client list. It held pages and pages of names and addresses. Owen opened it and flipped through: Campbells, and Dunstans, and Everleighs and Gullsteads. He climbed the alphabet and got to the Tilleys, Todds, Toddlemeyers, Trundalls... Tulls.

  Tulls!

  Owen held his breath and looked at the page. Mr. Lee Tull it said in thick, official type. Mrs. Elizabeth Tull. An address was scratched out, and another was written on top in pencil: 1837 was clear, and ELGIN in big letters, underlined twice. The street name was River-something — Riverbend? Riverside? Riverworth?

  Owen couldn’t make out his father’s handwriting.

  At the bottom of the page it said Dependant/daughter: Sylvia.

  Owen felt sweat beading on his forehead. Sylvia’s parents were clients of his father! Horace had written Sylvia’s name in his black binder!

  Owen was feverish. Even in the muted light, the colors in the office seemed suddenly brighter, even dizzying.

  His father had met Sylvia’s parents.

  His father might even have met Sylvia!

  Owen carefully put away the binder and the map of Elgin, and he turned out the little office light. The house was cold but he felt hot at the same time. He returned to the living-room and wrote 1837 Riverbendsworth, ELGIN on the envelope. He was sloppy on the second half of the street name so the post office would know that he meant whatever the right word was for Sylvia’s street.

  Still no sounds from upstairs. But Sylvester knew something was happening. He pawed and whined at the front door and soon everyone would be up. So Owen threw on his winter clothes over his pajamas and ran out through the snow with Sylvester and down the road to the spot where the dark highway met the equally black and lonely railroad tracks. Then he plopped the card into the mail box.

  The deed was done.

  He returned to the house but could not enter without searching with Sylvester through the field once more. Owen was certain that his luck had changed now that he had written to Sylvia. They kicked and sniffed and looked with renewed faith but found no special rock there.

  “In the morning!” Owen promised him. He managed to get himself and the dog in the house and up those loud and creaky stairs and back to bed between his brothers without anyone knowing.

  But in the morning Owen could hardly be awakened. He trudged downstairs on feet as heavy as porridge. Sylvester was still whining, still anxious to go out to look for his rock.

  “I have to eat breakfast first!” Owen said and walked into the kitchen, which was blinding. All the windows were pouring in white light.

  “Sure is snowing out there,” Horace said as he tended the bacon.

  “The field!” Owen cried and raced to the window. Past the apple tree, a thick new covering of snow had erased all signs of search and effort in the field, returned it to an unspoiled and unmarked state.

  “Looks like Sylvester’s going to have to find himself another rock,” Horace said.

  Days passed. Owen and the others looked again in the field but the rock was irretrievable now. Owen began to question not only which field he had thrown the rock in, but whether he had thrown it at all, or if Sylvester had dropped it somewhere. And he began to question whether he had sent Sylvia a card. That whole night seemed like a dream now.

  Every morning his mother trudged out to the letter box at the end of the driveway and returned with a handful of colorful envelopes, all addressed to Mr. Horace Skye or Mrs. Horace Skye, who was Margaret, or the two of them. There were snowy trees and glittery snowmen much nicer than the one Owen had made, and sleighs and stars and Santa Clauses with reindeer and elves. And warm looking houses brightly lit under fluffy snow that wasn’t like the cold, heavy, bitter stuff that Owen had searched through looking for Sylvester’s one source of joy in life. Cards came from down the street and across the country and over the ocean.

  But there was nothing from Sylvia.

  Poor Sylvester moped about the house, always wanting to be outside, searching. He could go by himself for hours, sniffing and mumbling, worrying over and over the same ground, and then later racing to some other spot where he had convinced himself the rock might be. For a time he seemed to think it was under the apple tree. Later he switched to burrowing under the snow-shrouded old boat. It was pitiful for Owen to watch the hope sailing in him, to see and feel how he trem­bled at home when another day was done and his rock had not been found.

  The day before Christmas Margaret brought in the mail and handed Owen a card. Owen stared at it in disbelief, then ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. There were marks all over the front of the envelope. He tried to be c
areful ripping it open.

  The card that fell out was blank, though the envelope was filled with sparkles that drifted onto his clothes.

  He opened it up and read the little note, in very familiar handwriting: Dear Sylvia, I am Vice-President now. But you can still call me Owen.

  Why had she sent him back the same card he had sent her? Just because the glue for the sparkles had given up?

  He looked again at the envelope. In blurry, black, official print on the front it said: RETURN TO SENDER. INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE.

  He’d forgotten all about the stamp!

  Disappointment buried him like an avalanche, and Owen felt himself shrinking, shrinking almost to nothing under this mounting snow and mud of daily defeats and bitter failures.

  Christmas

  IT was shocking to Owen how the return of that one small envelope could nearly ruin something as momentous as Christmas. In the morning Andy and Leonard roared out of bed in a fever of excitement. Santa had visited in the night. He had eaten the cookies left out for him on a small plate in the kitchen, finished most of a mug of hot chocolate and, surprisingly, had even left part of a glass of Scotch as well. The boys’ stockings were now stuffed with packages that, when unwrapped, turned into balsa-wood gliders and scale model fighter jets and plastic robots and watery half-globe worlds that snowed drunkenly when shaken. There was also, as usual, an orange filling the toe of each stocking.

  Andy’s balsa glider sailed the length of the house and curled back and disappeared into the kitchen. Owen turned his gaze to the presents under the tree. How glorious they appeared in their wrappings, even in the dark shadows before dawn. That tree looked like it could shelter everything a person could want. Owen just wished that among the many bright cards propped in the branches along with the ornaments was one to him from Sylvia.

  Even Sylvester was sniffing at the packages as if his long-lost rock might be there.

  “Let’s make breakfast,” Andy said. “So Dad won’t have any excuses.”

  Last year at Christmas Horace, who was awake by six-thirty most mornings of his life, could not be roused until almost nine o’clock. Then he insisted that no presents under the tree could be opened until breakfast had been served and eaten and the dishes cleaned and put away. So now Andy started the bacon and Leonard managed the toast, and when they were ready Owen expertly cracked six eggs into the big pan and cooked them gently. He even managed to flip one of them without breaking it. Andy squeezed the stocking oranges and Owen filled the sink with hot soapy water so that the dishes could be done the instant people stopped chewing.

  They were in luck. The coffee percolator still had grounds in it from the day before, so Andy set it on the stove and when it started to boil he poured out two stiff smelly mugs’ worth. Then the boys sat back and looked at the clock.

  It was three minutes past six.

  “Leonard, go see if they’re awake,” Andy ordered.

  “Why me?” Leonard asked, using his whining voice that cut through the chilly morning air like freezing rain.

  “You don’t have to wake them up,” Andy said firmly. “Just open their door and see.”

  “We could take them their breakfast,” Owen said.

  Their parents couldn’t possibly be upset at that. Leonard knew where the trays were and the boys loaded them up with cutlery and napkins and all the food they had prepared. Then they carried the trays to their parents’ door.

  It seemed deathly silent.

  “Open it!” Andy urged. He and Owen held the trays. Leonard was the only one with a free hand.

  “Maybe we should wait,” Leonard said.

  “What for?” Andy replied. “If Dad was asleep we’d hear him.”

  That was true, Owen thought. The whole house knew when Horace was asleep.

  Andy kicked off a slipper and reached up with his bare toes to turn the knob. Just for a second Owen glimpsed their parents, large lumps in the gloomy room, completely still and huddled together under the blankets. Then Sylvester bounded through the door and started sniffing and whining under the bed.

  “Breakfast is served!” Andy announced and pushed his way into the room. Leonard switched on the overhead light.

  Horace snapped upright and looked around as if under attack. His face was a horrible shade of gray, his whiskers the beginnings of barbed wire. Margaret raised her head, too, and looked at them with unfocused eyes.

  “What’s going on?” Horace demanded.

  The boys froze.

  “Get out of here!” Horace barked. “Turn the light out!”

  Andy turned so quickly that the orange juice on his tray spilled onto the egg on Owen’s. Then Owen tripped over Leonard, and in a moment coffee was soaking into the wallpaper, and the one unbroken egg, which Owen had saved for his mother, was being lapped up by the dog along with all the bits of jam and butter that had not yet been ground into the rug.

  “Blast you!” Horace roared, and when he twisted into action the covers slumped off the bed and onto a puddle of spilled coffee.

  It was almost eleven o’clock before they got to the presents under the tree.

  Lorne and Lorraine and Eleanor and Sadie came over in the middle of the afternoon. By then the presents sat in odd piles in different parts of the house: socks and sweaters and mittens and books, and complicated board games with a thousand tiny pieces. Together the boys had worked for weeks to build their parents a crossbow that launched small sticks the length of a room. But the one demonstration shot that Andy fired caromed off a sofa cushion and hit Leonard in the glasses. The crossbow was banished to the basement immediately, and when the girls arrived all the children were ordered outdoors as a matter of sanity.

  “Now’s our chance!” Andy gloated as the boys pulled on their winter gear. The girls were already outside, shivering in the wind. “Finally we can pay Eleanor back for throwing Sylvester’s rock in the river!” All the disasters of the day seemed to roll off him in anticipation of what was to come.

  “How are we going to do that?” Leonard asked.

  “They’ve never been to the haunted house,” Andy said. “Let’s take them now and leave them there. They’ll be scared out of their brains and we’ll have to rescue them!”

  “Why would we want to rescue them?” Leonard asked.

  “Because that’s what you do with girls,” Andy said.

  “Just the girls you’re in love with!” Leonard said.

  Andy blew wet air into Leonard’s eyes. It wasn’t quite spit, but Owen was close enough to tell it wasn’t completely dry, either. Leonard’s face filled with outrage just as Margaret said, “What’s going on here? Why are your cousins freezing outside while you three dawdle in here?” Then she opened the door and pushed them all out into the cold.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Eleanor asked. She and Sadie were shivering in a dull patch of sunshine in the small shelter of the south wall of the house. Sylvester raced around begging them to go to the field to look once more for his long-lost rock. He jumped up and pressed his paws against Sadie’s shoulders, knocking her back, and licked at Eleanor’s face even as she shoved him away.

  “Dog slobber! On Christmas Day!” Eleanor said in a disgusted tone. She wiped her face with a hankie that she pulled from the sleeve of her coat. “Is this the afternoon’s entertainment?”

  “I know a place,” Andy said calmly. “If you girls are brave enough. Probably you aren’t.”

  “You go ahead,” Eleanor said.

  “Aren’t you even curious?” Andy stammered.

  “Knowing you guys,” Eleanor said, “it’s probably filthy, or freezing, or really dangerous, or completely boring, or all of the above.”

  She looked right back at Andy until he turned away in disbelief.

  “So I guess you don’t want to meet the Bog Man’s wife,” Andy said finally. “You don’t want t
o go to a real haunted house and be scared out of your wits and learn something for a change.”

  “Why would I want to meet the Bog Man’s wife?” Eleanor asked.

  “She’s very interesting actually,” Leonard said. “She’s had a really tragic life. I met her once on Halloween.”

  “You did not,” Eleanor said firmly. “But if you three go, we’ll watch you make fools of yourself. If Leonard walks with Sadie,” she added.

  Andy jabbed Leonard through his snow jacket and silenced the protest that was trying to emerge.

  “It’s a deal!” he said.

  Quickly Andy started them on the way to the woods. It was so cold the wind made them weave back and forth on the road as if they were avoiding enemy fire. But at least it was a relief to enter the shelter of the trees.

  But the trail had filled in with weeks and weeks of snow. Even Andy floundered to his knees. Eleanor and Sadie were unhappy in their Christmas dresses. Poor Leonard had to walk beside Sadie and pull her out of the worst of it and brush the snow off her legs. Sylvester fought his way gamely, as if swimming. He struggled in front of them and behind and around and between all the nearby trees, as ever sniffing and whining for his lost rock.

  “It’s not very far!” Andy said. “You’ll be able to climb the rafters and try out the red couch that the Bog Man brought up for his wife to sit on while she was dying.”

  Owen knew that Andy was giving just enough details of the story for Eleanor to ask for more. But she stayed quiet.

  Owen scanned the woods for signs of the house. They’d never gone in the winter before. Everything looked different. The fir trees were weighed down with heavy loads of snow, the old trail was invisible, and it was impossible to tell where they were.

  “When we get there,” Andy whispered back to Owen, “we’ll boost them in through the window and then leave them for a while. I can’t wait to hear Eleanor screaming for help.”

  But when Eleanor spoke finally, it wasn’t to scream.

  “You’re lost!” she said. She had stopped walking and stood with her arms folded across her chest. “Where is this supposed haunted house anyway?”