by Laura McNeal
The older deputy takes this in, then nods toward the door. “Let me just have a word with you, Julia,” he says, and the two of them go out to the landing and stand talking in low voices for a minute or two. Once they both look down toward the street and the deputy points at something.
The Snicks, Lana thinks. They’re talking about the Snicks, and her, and probably the car that could be considered stolen. Lana walks over to the window and looks down. Chet has rounded up Alfred and Garth and is standing near the Monte Carlo talking to them and Tilly, who is out of the car now. The sketch paper is nowhere to be seen.
A few seconds later, Miss Hekkity reenters the shop alone. Lana can hear the boots of the older deputy as he descends the stairs.
Lana says, “I put two dollars under the tray in your cash register. To replace the two-dollar bill. So we’d be even steven.”
“Even steven,” Miss Hekkity says in a low voice, almost to herself. She regards Lana for a few moments, then gazes down through the shop’s front window. The two policemen are across the street, talking to a farmer wearing a seed hat. Carlito has spotted them and is walking toward them in his stiff, openmouthed manner. The young policeman shrinks back a little, but the farmer and older policeman seem relaxed. Carlito touches the policeman on the shoulder, then the farmer, then the younger policeman.
“What in the world is he doing?” Miss Hekkity says.
“That’s Carlito. He’s a shoulder toucher. The girl down there—her name is Tilly—she says it’s Carlito’s way of blessing people.”
Miss Hekkity nods and keeps watching. The older policeman leads Carlito back to the car and addresses Chet. It looks like a friendly conversation, but it goes on a while, and then Chet takes something from his pocket and hands it to the older deputy.
The car keys is Lana’s bet.
Chet and the deputy both glance up at Miss Hekkity’s shop, then the deputy points down the street while Chet nods and looks off in the designated direction.
“I imagine Carl’s telling them where the park is,” Miss Hekkity says. “It’s not big, but it has a gazebo and nice shade trees.”
Chet writes something on a piece of paper that he slips under the Monte Carlo’s windshield wiper, then he leads the others off in the direction of the park, single file, a short parade that a few of the people on the street stop to watch. Lana knows that probably all of them are looking forward to never seeing them again.
Miss Hekkity says, “A little while ago you said those people down there are your friends.”
“That’s right.”
Miss Hekkity turns to look at Lana. “They aren’t more than your friends?” Her voice is soothing, coaxing, but she seems to want a real answer, not just something that will sound good.
Lana tries to compare the Snicks to her friends, but the truth is, she only has one friend, and that’s Chet. She says, “They’re more than my friends in some ways, less in others.”
Miss Hekkity takes this in. “But something’s gone wrong with your more or less friends?”
Inside Lana, some of her composure gives way. “Everything, actually.” She glances down toward the street. “They don’t really get it yet, but their whole world’s coming apart at the seams. The state’s going to send all of them every which way and I sort of … drew it on them. I just can’t …” Her voice trails off.
“Let that happen?” the woman says.
Lana nods.
Miss Hekkity pulls in a deep breath, then slowly releases it. She slides two chairs from a nearby table and positions them by the window. They sit down. The air smells faintly of eucalyptus. Probably liniment oil, Lana thinks.
“What’s the worst thing about taking care of your friends?”
To Lana’s surprise, this is the question Miss Hekkity chooses to ask.
Bathroom problems, Lana thinks, then, Never being able to leave them alone. And How people see them in public. But then to her own surprise she says, “Nothing. There is no worst thing.”
A silence stretches out.
Miss Hekkity says, “The last time you were here, I mentioned that I took care of a nephew nobody wanted. He was over forty years old by then, but he was still like a child in his head. Like your friends out there.”
Lana remembers the nephew’s name and says it out loud. “Quinn.”
Miss Hekkity nods and stares off with her luminous blue eyes. “When he was small and came visiting, I used to make him happy by pretending to draw illustrations on his back for the stories I was telling him. He loved adventure and he loved beef stew and he loved the color red, so most of the stories were about a Quinn-like character going through a deep and scary forest full of traps and trolls and wolves until he finally found a snug little cottage with a red door. On his back I would scratch out the thatched roof and the red door with black strap hinges and then inside the cottage I would draw a warm fire and then a big pot of stew hanging over the fire and then a nice woman who’d been waiting for someone just like the Quinn-like character to come through the door and eat it.”
Miss Hekkity keeps staring off. “But he grew up, and I didn’t draw on his back for many years. Then he got sick and I did.” A small smile forms on Miss Hekkity’s lips. “He would close his eyes, and his body would relax, and I could almost feel him slipping off to that place where somebody was waiting behind a red door with a big pot of stew.”
Without thinking, Lana says, “You drew him the perfect wish.”
“What?” Miss Hekkity says. She seems startled.
“I just meant it was nice you knew exactly what to do to make him feel better about … what was happening to him.” It’s quiet again, and Lana says, “Did you ever finish those big mittens you were knitting?”
Miss Hekkity makes a small laugh. “I did, yes. Finally. I gave them to a neighbor boy who likes the color red. They’re too big, but he didn’t seem to care. He said they could be his pot holders.”
A silence, a calm pleasant silence, then Miss Hekkity looks out the window and points past the opposite buildings. “See that green roof right over there?”
Lana nods. It’s the same housetop she saw the crow fly from.
“That’s my house,” Miss Hekkity says, and Lana suddenly remembers the curlicue H on its iron gate.
“I saw that house when I was here before,” she says. “It’s pretty.”
The shopkeeper gives a mild nod. “Pretty big is what it is. It’s got seven bedrooms. I’ve just been using the downstairs since Quinn died, but I’ve kept the house up.” She pauses. “It seems like a waste, a big house like that.”
Lana feels something faintly expectant rise in her, like seeing a wrapped present in a room without knowing who it’s for. She says, “I’m not sure what you’re saying.”
“I’m saying I’ve got a track record of sorts. I’ve got a house. I’ve worked with the state before as a guardian and every now and then somebody from their agency calls me up to see whether I might be willing to do it again.” She’s been staring out the window, but she turns now to Lana. “They seem a little desperate for new recruits.”
Lana doesn’t know what to say, so she sits quiet, and after a moment or two Miss Hekkity smiles and says, “I have the feeling you and I would get along. You’re the spunky type, and I’ve always had a soft spot for the spunky types.”
Lana, feeling herself being pulled ahead, suddenly shakes her head. “I couldn’t,” she says. “I couldn’t come by myself. I promised them.…” Her voice trails off.
Miss Hekkity’s eyes are bright. “I didn’t mean just you by yourself. That’s why I mentioned the seven rooms.”
Lana stares at her. “This wouldn’t be a good thing to joke about.”
Miss Hekkity lets out a laugh, the same young-sounding laugh Lana remembers from her first visit. “No,” she says. “No, I suppose it wouldn’t.”
Then Miss Hekkity pushes up the sleeve of her sweater and checks her watch. “Well, let me make some calls and we’ll see where we stand,” sh
e says. She glances down at the street, where the older deputy stands talking to one of the plump gardening women, still wearing her knee pads. “Why don’t you see if Carl will come up here,” Miss Hekkity says, “then you can join your friends at the park and help keep them out of trouble till we know something. How would that be?”
Lana says that would be fine, and she means it because then she can get right down to the car and see what’s on the last sheet of sketch paper. Because what Tilly has drawn will tell her something about what happens next.
59.
The note under the windshield wiper of the Monte Carlo says,
If you’re reading this note, it means (a) you haven’t been kidnapped by the ancient shopkeeper or (b) you were kidnapped! but managed a daring escape! We ourselves are walking north to the park. (P.S. The badged man took our keys, so I guess we’re more or less busted.)
Lana pulls open the back door to the car. The leather box sits on the backseat, and the flap is open, but the last sheet of paper isn’t there. Lana gets in and looks everywhere, frantically, but it’s not there.
The park.
Maybe Tilly took it with her to the park.
Almost before she’s completed the thought, Lana’s jogging in that direction, but as she nears the park, she slows to a walk. Chet has borrowed what looks like a kick-ball and in a wide section of shady grass he’s set up two trash cans as goalposts—the spread is wide—and the Snicks are trying to kick the ball past him and between the trash cans. Again and again he dives at the ball and misses, and each time it draws gleeful shouts and laughs from the Snicks. It reminds Lana of something Whit might’ve done, the good Inside Whit, the Whit who wasn’t.
A ball rolls Lana’s way and she kicks it neatly back. “Glad to see you’re letting them score,” she says to Chet, and Chet, sprawled on the ground, says, “Who says I’m letting them?”
He calls a time-out and walks over to Lana, with the Snicks not far behind. Lana gives Tilly a close once-over: she isn’t holding the sketch paper, but she has pockets. Tilly always has pockets.
“Did someone draw on my sketch paper?” Lana says once they’re collected, and all the Snicks go quiet and turn as one to Tilly.
“Me,” she says without a trace of remorse. In fact, her face brims with pleasure. “You bet I did!”
The Snicks look from Tilly to Lana, waiting to see what happens next. Hoping for some real fireworks.
But Lana just nods. “Can I see it?”
Tilly works it out of one of her front-leg pockets and hands it folded to Lana.
Lana holds it for a second, feeling its scant weight in her hand, wondering how something so slight can mean so much, and then she unfolds it.
Spreads it open before her.
On the page Tilly has drawn a large circle, with a cluster of small circles drawn inside the larger one. The lines are loose and fluid. What they’re meant to suggest is hard to say.
Lana stares at it and keeps staring.
The smaller circles, she notices, are slightly elongated, almost oblong.
Finally Chet speaks. “Tilly says it’s a drawing of something in particular, but she won’t say what.”
Suddenly Lana is through looking at the drawing. She raises her eyes from it and turns to Tilly, who is smiling and staring right back at her. “Guess!” Tilly says.
But Lana doesn’t have to guess.
She knows, and with this knowledge a kind of liquid warmth spreads through her. “It’s a nest,” she says. “A nest with eggs in it.”
Tilly’s smile cracks wider and her head begins to bob up and down. She seems about to explode with sheer pleasure. “Yes!” she says. “Yes yes yes.”
Lana looks again at the drawing. She won’t put it in a pocket or store it in a box. She’ll smooth it and frame it and hang it wherever she lives so she can always remember the day that divided her life from grim to good. “It’s perfect,” Lana says, because it is, and then she’s grinning at Tilly. “You’re perfect.”
Tilly falls into her arms. The others pull close, too, even Garth, though he keeps his inches. Only Chet stands clearly to the side.
And then Lana notices something in the drawing.
“There are five eggs,” she says. “How come five?”
Tilly is beaming again. “It’s me, ’Lito, Garth, Alfred, and you!”
Chet gives Lana a droll look. “You’re an honorary Snick,” he says.
And Lana, looking at Chet, already feeling the first hint of missing him, thinks that the nest is one egg short.
60.
There is just one more thing.
After the Snicks walk off single file, Tilly in the lead, to investigate the bandstand and gazebo at the center of the park, Lana tells Chet about Miss Hekkity’s idea.
Quietly Chet says, “Is there any chance of this actually happening?”
Lana thinks of Tilly’s drawing. One nest, five eggs. “Maybe,” she says.
Chet is silent for a second or two, then he makes a smile and says, “Well, this is good. This is very good.” He says it like he wants to mean it, but Lana can see that just below his wanting to be happy for her is a low-grade sadness of his own.
“You’ll get a new and improved Snick House,” he says. “One with no Veronica in it.”
Lana nods. “That would be good.”
“And no Whit,” Chet says, letting his eyes settle on hers.
“That would also be good,” Lana says. This feels true to her, down-to-the-bones true. She looks off toward Miss Hekkity’s house, then back at Chet.
“You know the part I don’t like, though?”
He shakes his head, and she says, “The part about your not being next door.” She smiles at him. “I liked being part of Conversations with the Long-leggedy Neighbor Girl.”
She wants him to say he could do Conversations with the Long-leggedy Girl in the Next County Over or something like that, but that’s not what he says. He just says, “That’s all right.”
They’re quiet for a few seconds, then a small smile appears on Chet’s face, and Lana follows his eyes to the gazebo in the center of the park, where Carlito, Alfred, and Garth are pretending to play band instruments while Tilly performs some kind of cheer.
“What’s Alfred supposed to be playing?” Chet asks.
Lana gives it her best guess. “Trombone, I think.”
A second or two go by, then Chet says, “They’re really something.”
“Yeah, they are.” She turns back to Chet. “We should make them honorary Chetteroids and Chetteristas.”
“Why honorary?” He grins. “I say, give them full privileges.”
Behind Chet, a black-and-white police cruiser wheels onto the street and heads their way. When it pulls up to the curb, the older deputy gets out, and so does Miss Hekkity. They stand by the car and wait.
Lana looks at the boy in front of her.
He is sad, he is semi-handsome, and he is Chet.
“Quick,” Lana says, “do you have a pencil?”
He does. She turns away from him and pulls from her back pocket the piece of paper containing his wish. Next to Lana, she adds & Chet and draws a quick fluid circle around both names. Then she folds the paper back up and turns around.
She hooks a finger through his belt loop, tugs him forward, and slides the folded paper into his front pocket. “You’ve got to promise you won’t read that till you get home.”
He stares wonderingly at her. Behind him, the older deputy has begun walking their way. Miss Hekkity waits still by the police car. Even from this distance, what you might notice first are the red shoes. She looks small, but she stands at ease with herself, relaxed. The news she bears cannot be all bad.
Lana looks again at Chet. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he says, but he still looks confused, so she kisses him on the mouth, once, like she means it, like she has never kissed anyone, because she wants Chet to feel just a fraction of what Tilly felt when she drew her nest and what Lana is
feeling right now, which is the pleasure, the pure and gratifying pleasure, of a wish well made.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance and inspiration of Laura Orcutt, Lilly Sabel, and the consumers of The Arc of San Diego, who know how to make a good pure wish. Thanks also to Joan Slattery, Allison Wortche, and George Nicholson: first and keenest readers, always.
Laura Rhoton McNeal is a graduate of Brigham Young University with a master’s degree in fiction writing from Syracuse University. She taught middle school and high school English before becoming a novelist and journalist.
Tom McNeal graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. His prize-winning stories have been widely anthologized, and his novel Goodnight, Nebraska won the James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the California Book Award for Fiction.
Together, Laura and Tom McNeal are the authors of Crooked, winner of the California Book Award for Juvenile Literature and an ALA Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults; Zipped, winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children’s Literature; and Crushed. The McNeals live in Fallbrook, California, with their two sons, Sam and Hank.