The Precious One

by Marisa de los Santos

  We sat. Even though I wasn’t a believer in place cards, when we’d found out that Barbara and her husband, George, would be late, we had created a seating arrangement that mixed the two empty seats in with the rest, in the hopes of making them less conspicuous. But I took care to keep Ben next to me, both so that I could put my hand on his leg under the table and because I’d seen the flash of naked hatred in Wilson’s eyes when he’d first caught sight of him and wanted to guard him against the attack I knew was coming.

  Wilson took his time lashing out. I had forgotten that about him, how when it came to anger, he could be patient, choose his moment. He sat stony as an Easter Island moai at the head of the table, not touching his food, only his eyes moving as he watched us all. Somehow, to my gratitude, everyone made conversation and ate as though there weren’t a glowering silence at the center of the dinner party. When we were well into eating, when Luka, in fact, was on to his second helping, Wilson tapped his knife against his water glass, waited for the chatter to subside, and said, with gusto and a sneer, “Thank you for your attention. At all but the most informal dinner party, it is customary for the host to rise before the meal commences, say a few words of welcome, and to thank his guests for coming. I have not done so, and I fear you must think me remiss. Therefore, in the interest of preserving my reputation as an observer of niceties, I want to state that I am not the host of this event.”

  As if someone had disputed this assertion, he nodded, convivially, and said, “Oh, yes! It’s quite true!”

  Willow’s face across the table had gone deathly pale, her lips trembling. Damn you, Wilson!

  He went on. “Despite the fact that this is my house, and I sit here at the head of my table, I invited none of you. I would not, in point of fact, have chosen to dine with a single person in this room, apart from my wife and daughter, Willow.”

  He slung his straight razor gaze in my direction. “If anyone is shirking her duty, it must be Eustacia, since I believe it was she who put together this rather unlikely guest list.”

  As soon as he had started to speak, Ben had grabbed my hand under the table, but while I was always grateful to touch him, I found I didn’t need the moral support.

  “I did,” I said, simply.

  And then, clear as a bell, Willow: “So did I.”

  And Caro, very quietly, “And I.”

  I saw Marcus lift his head and look sharply from one to the other, with frank admiration, but Wilson gave no sign that he’d heard them. His eyes stayed on me.

  “You gave us leave to do as we liked,” I told him. “Have you forgotten?”

  “I humored Willow in her wish to have a family gathering. But clearly, that is not what this is.”

  “Oh, but it is,” I said. “It can’t shock you that my definition of family is broader than yours, Wilson, since yours is so narrow as to exclude two of your biological offspring.”

  “Let us not pretend anymore,” he said, “that there was any point to this farcical evening beyond creating a situation that you hoped would—what?—embarrass me, put me in my place?”

  “Because it’s all about you, Wilson,” said Marcus.

  “No, Daddy!” said Willow. “We never meant to do that!”

  Wilson smiled at her. “Not you, dearest.”

  “None of us! I wanted this! I wanted everyone who is here to be here.”

  Ignoring her, Wilson turned his attention back to me. “Tell me about that person next to you . . .” He flicked his fingers in the direction of Ben without looking at him. “He is in your life in what capacity?”

  “A permanent one,” said Ben.

  Only now did Wilson’s face begin to redden and with alarming speed. It was like a time-lapse film of a ripening strawberry. Slowly, he rose from his chair.

  “Then, Eustacia, you are no longer invited to be part of my daughter’s life.”

  Willow leaped to her feet. “Yes, she is! I invite her!” She looked pleadingly at me. “Not that you need an invitation.”

  “I know, honey,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

  “She’s my sister,” said Willow, vehemently, to Wilson. “She is supposed to be in my life.”

  At this unpropitious—or depending on your point of view, supremely propitious—moment, the doorbell rang. Caro threw me a stricken look, and I started to get up, when Willow said, “No, I’ll get it,” and flew out of the room. We all sat staring after her, Wilson included, as though we were spellbound. While I’d been talking to Wilson, I’d felt calm, but now my heart was pounding. I heard voices and the click of the coat closet door, before Willow, with a determined face, ushered in Barbara and her husband, George. There was no way to miss Wilson, standing in full emperor mode at the head of the immense table, and when Barbara saw him, in an instant, she froze, and, in the next instant, she thawed, every feature of her face, her entire chicly angular presence, lapsing into softness.

  “Oh, Wilson,” she said, tenderly. “Oh, I would know you anywhere.”

  Caro had assured me that the doctors had proclaimed Wilson’s heart to be fit as a fiddle, but for a second, he grew so pale that my own seemed to stop beating. Wilson did not go pale; it wasn’t what he did. For a few, terrifying seconds, he seemed to waver, as though the very atoms of his body were shaking loose from one another, but it must have just been my imagination because without sitting or even leaning on the table with his hand, he suddenly grew solid again. He didn’t yell, but neither did he melt. He said, evenly, “You must leave, Barbara, and never come again. You don’t belong here.”

  Willow cried out, “But she does! She’s my aunt. Daddy, she’s your sister!”

  “I don’t have a sister,” said Wilson.

  At this Barbara’s face crumpled, and she pressed one of her lovely hands to her mouth. George put his arms around her.

  “I don’t know you. Get out of here,” said Wilson, flinging his hand toward the door. “Out.”

  Barbara began to weep, her rich voice turning raw and ragged. “No one really believed you did it on purpose. You loved Archie.”

  “What?” gasped Wilson.

  At this, Caro sprang up. “Don’t!” she said, went to Wilson’s side, and in the same protective gesture George had just made, put her arms around him.

  “You were a child, Wilson. You were blameless.”

  Everything in the room seemed to go into slow motion. People exchanged glances; pressed napkins to their mouths; looked at Wilson; looked at anything but Wilson. As I watched, Wilson moved his head from side to side, a repeated, mechanical no.

  “You loved him!” said Barbara, opening her hands toward her brother. “That’s the important thing. God, all of this, this rupture was so unnecessary, such a waste. You were a child, and you loved Archie. Even our bastard of a father understood that, deep down.”

  “How dare you mention this, here, in my house,” Wilson said, gasping. “Get out.”

  “We’re going upstairs,” said Caro to her husband, pulling out his chair so that he could step away from the table. He did, and with Caro’s hands clasped around his upper arm, they began to walk past Barbara and George.

  Barbara stepped close to Wilson and took a few long, steadying breaths. “Wait,” she said. “Please.”

  “No,” said Caro. “Not now.”

  But, incredibly, Wilson stopped walking and waited. Barbara wiped her eyes and said, sadly and with great kindness, “It’s time to let it all go, Wilson. Long past time for both of us to let the pain go. How I’ve missed you.” She leaned in until her face was just inches from her brother’s.

  “It’s time,” she said again, and then: “Our father was a brute. What he put you through was unforgivable. You didn’t kill Archie, Wilson. He just died. I know you didn’t mean for him to die.”

  AFTER WILSON AND CARO disappeared upstairs; after Barbara had hugged me and Willow and she and George had silently left; after Willow and I bustled about serving pie to our remaining guests, who, with mindboggling good sportsmanship,
ate it and talked of anything but Barbara and her shattering pronouncements; after I had kissed all but Marcus good-bye, and they’d gone back to their houses or hotel rooms; just as Willow, Marcus, and I were finishing cleaning up the kitchen, Caro came down and said, “Your father would like to speak with you. Ten minutes from now. In the living room.”

  Marcus was washing; I was drying, and over the sound of running water, he leaned close to me and said, “He can’t just come down and tell us who he murdered. He has to hold court. ‘Ten minutes.’ ‘In the living room.’ Do you think I need to put my jacket back on?”

  I smiled. “Maybe. But at least he’s telling us himself instead of sending an emissary.” I gave him a sharp poke in the chest. “Behave. For Willow’s sake.”

  “When did I ever not behave?”

  When we got to the living room, filing solemnly in, Wilson was already there, and it was true that ensconced in the big velvet armchair with his red satin dressing gown, and Caro by his side, standing sentry, he was at his most royal. It was all I could do not to drop a curtsy. But then I noticed his face, which looked different somehow, more open than I had ever seen it and very, very, tired, exhaustion—or maybe emotion—tugging at the skin around his mouth, making it tremble. Vulnerable. Wilson looked vulnerable, and even though part of me had probably been waiting my whole life to see him this way, I found it painful. Sneer, I thought, scowl, be imperious and scornful.

  And right away, the moment we were properly assembled, as if he’d read my thoughts, he drew himself as upright as anyone could possibly sit without actually standing, and he nodded to each of us in turn, as kingly as you please. And then he commenced.

  “As Rudyard Kipling put it: ‘Never look backward or you’ll fall down the stairs.’ And it has been my hope never to have to. I had a childhood. Like Kipling’s it was not particularly happy. Like Kipling, I rose above it and became my own man. But because of what happened today—”

  Willow gave a guilty start and opened her mouth to speak, but Wilson stopped her with the most gentle of smiles. “I am not here to recriminate, child. You must not worry.

  “Because of the melodrama that unfolded this evening,” he continued, “I am compelled to look backward, if only to offer clarification. I do not need sympathy or understanding. Why would I?” There was the scoff. “But I want, as they say, to set the record straight and perhaps to set my daughter Willow’s mind at ease.”

  Marcus’s lips tightened at this, and I knew he was hating Wilson for only worrying about Willow’s mind, not mine, but, truly, I found I did not care. I just wanted him to tell the damn story.

  “I was not a popular boy, nor did I want to be. My peers regarded me with disdain as stupid people disdain anything that is beyond the reach of their understanding. My father loathed me. I am merely being honest when I say that my intellect was immeasurably superior to his, and he hotly resented that. Frankly, the man was eaten up with jealousy, and consequently demeaned me at every opportunity. Or tried to demean me. I did not give a whit for his opinion, and my own mind was the greatest solace and the best company I could wish for.”

  He paused, and I couldn’t help myself. I said, “And your sister? What about Barbara?”

  Wilson shot me a look of annoyance, then shrugged and said, “She was years younger than I, a baby really. She did not figure into my life in any meaningful way.”

  I remembered Barbara, with her parallel play and her drawings and her sisterly adoration, and my heart ached for the little girl she’d been.

  “However, I was still a human child, and some part of me, in spite of itself, craved companionship, which brings me . . .” Wilson took a breath. “To Archie, my dog.”

  Oh for the love of god, a dog! I knew that if I looked anywhere in Marcus’s direction that we would both burst out laughing, so I stared steadily at Wilson, and there it was again, that tremble in the loose skin around his mouth, and suddenly, the idea of a dog, Wilson’s dog, wasn’t funny anymore. Wilson cleared his throat.

  “Someone abandoned him in our neighborhood when he was too young to be taken from his mother, and I was the one who found him. My father let me keep him, mostly because Barbara begged that I be allowed to do so, and I bottle-fed him until he could eat solid food. He was a tiny dog, no more than five pounds, a mixed breed, but probably mostly Chihuahua. He was black and white, with great triangular ears.”

  At this bit of description, my throat got tight, and there was Ben’s voice in my head, Who did you ever headlong, all-out love without having to try? That was turning out to be the right question after all.

  “Because he was so small, Archie was more likely than most dogs to come to harm, so I applied my intelligence to keeping him alive and well. At nine, I rigged springs to all the doors in the house to keep them from slamming on Archie. Because Archie’s throat was so narrow, I threw away his collar and fashioned a harness out of an old leather chamois and some buckles I bought at a shoe repair store. I tethered a plastic owl to a fencepost in the backyard to scare away hawks. And I researched foods that were dangerous to dogs.”

  Wilson paused again, and Caro leaned over and kissed the top of his head. He found her hand where it lay on the back of his chair and pressed it, briefly.

  “I managed to talk my mother into keeping grapes and raisins out of the house. However, my father drew the line at chocolate. He loved dark chocolate long before it was fashionable and kept bars of baking chocolate stacked in the spice cabinet. So in the seventh grade, I came up with a plan to make Archie immune to chocolate.”

  Again, he cleared his throat.

  “I fed him chocolate chips, first just one every three days and gradually increasing them, keeping careful track of the number of ounces and of the dog’s reaction to the chocolate in a journal I kept locked in my desk drawer. It was a good idea, but I do not think it would have worked. Without going into too much detail, chocolate contains methylxanthines, stimulants to which dogs are far more sensitive than people. These stimulants inhibit the activity of an enzyme that breaks down something called cyclic adenosine monophosphate, which regulates metabolism. High doses in dogs can result in seizures, irregular heart rhythms, and even death.”

  At the word death, Willow pressed her hands to her mouth. I wanted to put my arm around her, but she was sitting too far away.

  “But I was not to learn whether or not my plan had merit because I made a mistake.”

  Caro slid her hand from the chair back to Wilson’s shoulder, and he took it and held on. I saw that Caro, soundlessly, had begun to cry.

  “I came home to find the nearly full, five-pound bag of chocolate chips ripped apart on the floor of my room. Every last chip was gone.”

  “Oh, Daddy,” said Willow, starting to cry. I wondered if she were thinking, as I was—it was impossible not to—about Pidwit and Roo.

  Wilson didn’t look at her, just stared straight ahead. “If Archie had not been so small, the chocolate would have made him sick, but it would not have caused his heart to stop. I found him stretched out under my father’s recliner, dead.”

  Wilson bent his head, just slightly. “I was a remarkably disciplined young man, but I was a child, and children make mistakes. I simply forgot to put the bag away. I blamed myself very harshly.”

  He looked up, this time at Willow. “I was heartsick and full of shame, which is why I took Archie, placed him in a box, buried him under a tree in the backyard, and told my parents that someone had taken him. I told them I left him alone in the fenced-in yard for a few minutes, and when I came out, the gate to the yard was shut, but Archie was gone. I told them someone had to have stolen him.”

  Willow’s shoulders quaked with sobs. “You didn’t mean to,” she said, raggedly.

  Wilson shook his head. “No, I did not. But I should not have lied. I should have faced up to what I had done, but I was not used to making mistakes. I hated to make them. I suppose lying was my way of trying to erase my error. In any case, I did not expect what hap
pened next to happen. Barbara told everyone, all the families in the neighborhood, that someone had stolen Archie. As I have said, I was not a popular boy, but Archie was a popular dog. He was so tiny, you see, and people like tiny things. Also, he would wear a coat in cold weather, and when I walked him, the neighborhood kids would be drawn to him like iron filings to a magnet.”

  The note of pride in Wilson’s voice was heartbreaking.

  “So the whole neighborhood became involved, putting up flyers with Archie’s picture all over town. Children brought them to school and passed them around. There was even a small article in the local paper, with an old photo of me holding Archie.”

  “So there was no turning back,” said Marcus.

  Wilson didn’t snap back at him. He said, “No. It was like a top gone spinning out of control, so that even if I had wanted to confess to someone what had really happened, I could not have. I never would have, I’m sure of that. But then, a week or so after Archie died, we had a torrential rainstorm, and unbeknownst to me, the spot where Archie was buried caved in a bit because the earth was so saturated. While I was at school one day, my father saw the spot, and I do not know if he was just curious or if he guessed what had happened, but he dug, and he found the box with Archie, and he knew I had lied.”

  Wilson’s face hardened. “He left the box on the kitchen counter for me to find when I got home. The box with my dead dog inside.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said. “Vicious.”

  “Indeed,” agreed Wilson. He was the very picture of scorn now, sneer in place, all mournfulness gone. “And because my father was a jealous, pathetic little man, he made it his project to shame me publicly. He had me go door-to-door in our neighborhood, standing behind me while I confessed what I had done.”

  “Oh no!” cried Willow.

  “My father would plant me in front of the door, reach over and ring the doorbell, and then he would step slightly to the side.” Wilson smiled a terrible, bitter smile. “Not to the back, you see, because that would not allow him a full view of my face. He wanted to watch.”