First Came the Owl

by Judith Benét Richardson

  “He is not. Oh, you mean in the play,” said Nita. “Why did he call?” Henry was a thing that happened in school, not a person who called you on the phone.

  “His mother wants to measure for our costumes. She’s going to come to school tomorrow.”

  Nita’s worlds shifted around a little more. Now there was a new world called “Henry’s house.” “Where is it? I mean, where does he live?”

  “You know the vegetable stand on the road to Maushope? In there. They’ve got a farm, and Dad says they’re the last of their kind. Maybe that’s good, considering they’ve got Henry.”

  “Do they grow mangoes?”

  “I don’t think mangoes grow in Massachusetts.”

  By this time, Nita had on her pajamas and her bed was all arranged: stuffed cat, two pillows. She went to brush her teeth, then hurried back and jumped under the covers.

  From the attic came a series of lonely, haunting cries.

  “The owls are calling,” said Anne. Nita imagined the owls soaring in the dark night over the Landing, their soft feathers protecting them from the cold, their sharp eyes seeing everything.

  Anne turned out the light. The black shadows of the night took over the bedroom, and Nita drifted off.

  Seventeen

  THE NEXT DAY, Nita tried to look up owls in her book about Thailand, but the word owl was not in the index. She couldn’t find birds either. But she still felt a strange sense of already knowing some of the things in the book. She remembered more and more Thai words and was copying some of them out of the book for her report when Brenda came back into the classroom and said, “Hey, Nita, I think I saw your Dad.”

  Nita shot out of her chair. “Where?”

  “In his car, out front.”

  Mrs. Sommers looked at the girls with a question in her eyes.

  “Can I go see if my Dad is out there?” Nita asked softly. The teacher nodded.

  Nita flew down the old wooden stairs and out into the playground. He was there! She raced down the walk and hopped into the passenger side of Dad’s old blue car. He hugged her hard with one arm. “Oh, Daddy, you came back.”

  “Hey, I wasn’t gone that long. Do you think your teacher will spring you a little early?”

  “Six days is long,” said Nita, but she ran back to ask Mrs. Sommers and get her coat. Dad’s coming home felt like snow in July or a surprise party. Like the owl, he just flew into her world and made it seem so different. “Where are we going?” she asked as she got back in the car.

  “I thought we’d go out to our house and see the new construction you and Pudge got going while I was out of your hair.”

  Was he pleased? Nita couldn’t tell. “Did he tell you about the Roots Committee?”

  “Yes, and he told me about some other things, too. Seems like you’ve been very busy while I’ve been gone.”

  They drove along Water Street and turned down toward the beach. Nita wondered if he knew Bill was angry at him.

  As they got closer to their house, they could see the new window bulging out of the white side wall. A man on a ladder was painting the trim.

  “Hi, Frank,” said Nita’s dad.

  “Hello, Lieutenant Orson, sir,” said Frank.

  Inside, the whole kitchen was torn up. Nita stumbled over some cans of paint.

  “Putting in that window turned out to be more complicated than Pudge thought,” said Dad. “They found some water damage in the walls. Then they decided to paint the kitchen and the living room while they’re at it.”

  Nita felt confused. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? she said to herself. For Dad to come home, for us all to come home. But now, even if they all did come home, it would be different. Better? Or just different? And it smelled funny because of the paint, so it seemed even less like home than when she had been there with Petrova.

  Dad was looking kind of unhappy, too, not the way he had when he first picked her up. “So, we can’t stay here. I guess I’ll stay down at the base and you can stay with the Stillwaters’ for a few more days. Marian says it’s fine, she loves having you. Okay, kiddo?”

  “No, it’s not okay,” said Nita.

  Dad looked at her in surprise.

  “I mean, I thought Mom could come home when you got here. I thought…” She couldn’t go on.

  “I’ll go see her tonight.” Dad had his old worried look again.

  “She talked to me. She is better,” said Nita firmly, as if this would make it true.

  “I know. They told me on the phone, but she can’t come home just yet. You have to be patient, Nita. We want her to get really better. We don’t want her to slip back again.”

  Nita tried to smile.

  “That’s my girl,” said Dad. “I tell you what. Let’s go get a cup of coffee, I mean, some ice cream or something. I’ll tell you about the cruise.” Nita leaned against Dad in the car and pretended he had never been away and that Mom was waiting for them at home.

  They stopped at the Docksider on Water Street.

  Nita sat down at the sunniest table and said, “I’ll have a banana split.”

  “I thought you hated your flavors all mixed up.” Dad looked surprised.

  “I did? I guess I’m different now,” said Nita slowly. When her banana split arrived, in a dish shaped like a boat, she took a bite each of the chocolate ice cream with marshmallow sauce, the strawberry ice cream with pineapple sauce, and the vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Then she took a bite of banana. Dad had coffee and mud pie while he told her about the new navigation system of the Islandia. Then he said, “So what have you been doing?”

  “Well,” she said, “Petrova and I banded the snowy owl. Remember the snowy owl I told you about? We used my earmuffs for bait and the owl thought they were a rabbit! So he swooped down and we caught him. Petrova had this great trap that doesn’t really hurt the owls, it just…”

  Nita went on and on with her story until Dad finally said, “Whoa, slow down, I’ve never heard you talk so much in your whole life.” But he laughed as he spoke, so Nita could see he really liked having her go on and on this way.

  She kept talking to keep Dad listening, but finally even her enormous banana split was finished. Dad paid the bill, and when they came out of the restaurant, they walked up and down the street looking in windows, as if they were on vacation or it was a holiday.

  And then Nita saw it again. The sun quilt. It glowed in the afternoon light and lit up the whole street. A huge burst of color, made of hundreds of tiny scraps. “Look!” breathed Nita. It was even more wonderful than the first time she saw it. Dad stopped in his tracks.

  “That’s amazing,” he said. “Each scrap is separate, and yet they make a pattern.”

  The quilt glowed in the late afternoon light like a thousand hummingbirds, like a multicolored sun.

  “Maybe … maybe,” said Nita, “we could buy it for Ma-jah.”

  “Oh, it’s probably much too expensive. And why are you calling her Ma-jah?”

  “Because I’m going to speak Thai to her. You know about the Roots Committee.”

  “If only she hadn’t taken that trip ho—back to Thailand.”

  “See, you almost said ‘trip home’! Oh, Dad, let’s just ask about the quilt. If we put it on her bed, then it won’t be white like a freezing snow bank, but a promise of the sun coming back. Maybe then she’ll remember that if she feels bad, she could get better, the way the days get longer and the winter ends and the sun gets warmer. Then she’ll like being home.”

  Dad looked at her. “Well, you’re … maybe this acting … honestly, Nita, I’ve never heard you talk like that before. But”—he held up his hands—“I get your drift.” He opened the shop door.

  “It’s expensive,” said Dad, looking at the back of the quilt and fingering the tag. Then he peered around to see the front of it again.

  “Everything here is handmade,” said the woman at the counter.

  Nita held her breath and just looked at Dad, silently pleading, a
lmost begging him. Please? said her eyes.

  “Aye, aye, sir! Let’s do it!” said Dad, laughing at Nita’s spaniel look.

  “A wonderful present,” said the salesperson. She took Dad’s check. “Thank you very much.”

  Nita beamed at her. “Thank you, and could you tell the person who made it how much we like it?”

  “It was a group of people, actually, in a handicapped workshop.” She smiled back at Nita. “They’re up in Maushop and they always make such beautiful things, I just—”

  “Thanks. Good-bye,” said Dad, as if he were a bit tired of all this chatting. So who’s impatient now, thought Nita.

  “What a great idea, Nita,” he said, squeezing her arm as they walked back out onto Water Street. “She’ll love it. For the first time, I feel like she really will come home.”

  Nita smiled back at him. Now, she thought, maybe he will stay home, too.

  Eighteen

  DAD STAYED in Maushope’s Landing, but he didn’t go home, and Nita couldn’t either. Wednesday Dad came to the Stillwaters’ for dinner, and Thursday he took them all out for Chinese food. Still, no one said when Ma-jah could come home, but Nita was so busy with rehearsals, she only had a few minutes to think each night before she fell asleep. Then she would see the lighthouse flashing in her mind’s eye and think, Home, home! before she drowsed off.

  On Friday morning, nothing seemed to go right.

  “Has anyone seen my Thailand report?” asked Nita. The Stillwater breakfast table was covered with cereal bowls, geology journals, yesterday’s mail, and one red mitten, but no Thailand report appeared in the jumble.

  “I can’t find my Thailand report,” said Nita. She searched in her school bag and knocked over the jam.

  “Your report’s in the fruit bowl under the bananas, of course,” said Petrova. “Hey, we glued your coffin together again yesterday. I hear you wrecked it the first time, so could you please be more careful?”

  Mrs. S. looked at Nita. “Your coffin?”

  “For the play,” muttered Nita. She found her report in the fruit bowl and headed out of there before anyone could ask another question.

  All week, she’d managed to forget the last act of the play when she had to get in that damned, yes damned, coffin. Just calling it that made her feel a little bit better, but at the rehearsal, when David and the dwarfs carried it in from the back porch of the school, Nita shivered. An actual cold shudder ran up her spine.

  “Three of us on each side and one for her head,” said the dwarf Pokey.

  “I don’t think I can,” said Nita, and her heart thumped.

  “Yes, get in,” said Sleepy. “I’d love to get in there and snore.”

  “But drop it very carefully, guys,” said Amy.

  “Very carefully,” said David, “or the sides will fall off, and that will look ridiculous.”

  “I really don’t want to,” said Nita.

  “You have to. And you have to be dropped. Otherwise, how will the poison apple get unstuck from your throat? Trust us, Nita,” said Amy. Her brown eyes were serious.

  It was hard to say no to Amy.

  Nita couldn’t believe she was doing it, but once more she got into the plastic box and let them close the lid. She took a deep breath and shut her eyes. And like a vision, the snowy owl, soaring over the beach, sprang into her waiting mind. Her breathing slowed down and she rested.

  A loud whisper made her eyes fly open. Henry knelt by the coffin and practically spit his words through the air holes. “Oh, Princess S. W.,” he slobbered, “I cannot live without you.”

  No one heard him but Nita.

  “Speak up, Henry,” said Amy. “Throw your voice to the back of the room.”

  Henry stood up and stomped off the stage. This time he galloped in, as if he were on a prancing horse. He waved his sword toward the coffin. “I must have her,” he shouted. “Get going, dwarfs, and carry her to my castle.”

  Nita lay in the plastic coffin. Through the plastic she could see Henry waving his sword. It looked like a crazy world out there with Henrys in it. Right now, I don’t mind it in here. At least I’m protected from the spit.

  “Time out,” called Amy. Her words came faintly to Nita.

  Saved! David opened the coffin and Nita sat up to see what had called a halt to the action. Sounds got louder and there was a bustle around the door.

  “Ma!” said Henry. He tripped over his sword as he headed toward a large pile of clothes that was moving into the room on two little legs. “Is that you, Ma?”

  “In here,” said a muffled voice from the pile of clothes. The clothes landed on a desk, and Mrs. Sporoni rubbed her back. “There now. Costumes. Dwarf jackets and a fabulous skirt for you, Anita, if I do say so myself.” Mrs. Sporoni beamed at Nita, even if she didn’t get her name right, and brought the fabulous skirt over to her. It was embroidered with white flowers that had embroidered holes. You could see the pale pink underskirt through the cutwork.

  Nita fingered the fabric shyly. “Did you do all that fancy sewing?” she asked.

  “Lord, no,” said Mrs. Sporoni. “It’s my old tablecloth. Doesn’t it look great? Get out of your coffin, lovey, and I’ll slip it over your head.”

  The waist fit perfectly and the silk underskirt rustled when Nita walked. Maybe being in the play wouldn’t be so bad, wearing this dress. On the other hand, she could see how it was: they dress you all up in pretty clothes and then you have to marry Henry. She would have to read more of Anne’s fairy-tale books to see if there was a way out of this destiny.

  “Roll up your jeans,” said Anne. “What a great skirt. But you can’t wear sneakers. You can borrow my pink ballet shoes if you like.”

  “You guys look pretty girlie,” said Henry to Nita and Brenda, who was posing in slinky black silk.

  His mother squelched him with a glance. “Get your homework together, Prince Henry,” she ordered. “My coach won’t wait.”

  Henry went off as meek as a lamb. Brenda stabbed her long fingernails in the direction of his retreating back in a witch’s hex.

  “See, that wasn’t so bad, was it, Nita?” said Amy with a grin. “I guess you’ve put off the carrying until next week. Last rehearsals next week, guys! See you then.” She pulled on her jacket.

  Suddenly, the play seemed awfully real. Am I really going to get up there in front of all those people? Don’t think about it, Nita told herself fiercely, you’ll just scare yourself to death, and then you will need a coffin. “Anne,” she said, “will you walk down to the base with me? Dad’s going to take me to see Mom and he’ll give you a ride home.”

  “Sure, and we could take the long-cut and go see the pigeons.”

  They put all the clothes away carefully and went out into the darkening afternoon. The sky was streaked with red over the harbor and the water was a steely dark blue. Nita took a deep breath of the chilly air as she watched the red winter sun slip below the horizon.

  Nineteen

  WHEN THE TWO girls reached the parking lot, one plain dark gray bird with a tiny head balanced on the railing of the bridge, its outline etched against the sunset exactly like a shadow puppet.

  Another pigeon flapped up under the bridge and several others bobbed along the pavement. A pink-green-purple sheen livened up their dark gray necks, like an oil slick on a rain puddle.

  “Why did the story say ‘but at last came the dove’?” Anne wondered. “I mean, why ‘but at last,’ as if some great thing was going to happen?”

  “Well, some great thing did happen. Ma-jah talked! It means the bemoaning worked! Snow White woke up, Ma-jah talked. It was like … like going back to normal life.”

  “Look! That pigeon’s got a little stick,” said Anne. “Do you think it’s making a nest? In January?” They watched the heavy bird flap up under the bridge.

  “I think it means Ma-jah’s coming home, back to our nest,” said Nita.

  “Petrova would say it’s just a coincidence,” said Anne. “But, I hope it’s
true.”

  They left the pigeons and found Dad just coming out of the main Coast Guard building. “Hi, Anne. Hi, Nita,” he said. “Do you want to eat supper here? They’re having meat loaf.” Dad knew Nita loved Coast Guard meat loaf.

  “Can I call my parents?” asked Anne. Good smells drifted down the hall. Nita sniffed hungrily as Anne dialed home from the petty officer’s desk.

  The dining room was like a little restaurant, all brown and shiny. They got their trays and found a table in the corner, where Nita’s red sweatshirt stood out among all the dark blue uniforms. There was a clatter of dishes, and people smiled to see Dad with her and Anne. It was cozy at the Coast Guard base, like living in the woods with the dwarfs. Dad looked like he wished he could stay right here forever. Nita could see why.

  Captain Pudge came by and beamed at them. “That window’s just about finished,” he said.

  Dad smiled back. “Great! We really want to move back in this weekend.”

  “Yay!” said Nita. “How about tomorrow?” She grabbed Dad’s hand and squeezed it. “I love your meat loaf, Captain P—uh, Vanderpost.”

  He patted his round stomach. “So do I,” he said, “made it myself, that’s the only way to get what you want around here!” The men at the next table burst out laughing.

  Dad pushed back his chair. “Let’s go, girls,” he said. “We’ve got to get to the hospital.” He bussed his tray and waved good-bye to his buddies. Nita gulped down her milk, and the girls hurried after him.

  After they dropped off Anne, the problem that had been nagging away at Nita came back to her.

  “Dad, why does Snow White have to marry Prince Henry? I mean, he’s kind of weird. Even when he thought she was dead, he wanted to keep her at his castle like something in a museum.”

  “It’s only a story,” said Dad, as he pulled into the visitors’ parking lot.

  “It’s like how you want Mom to stay in the lighthouse while you go to sea, or out with your dwar—Coast Guard buddies.”