The Night Gift

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  I called Barbara when I finished, to see if she wanted to talk. Her voice was tired, subdued.

  “Did you get home okay last night?” she asked.

  “Yes. My parents were waiting up for me.”

  “So was my mother. I didn’t want—I had to tell her. Joslyn, Joe had gone to bed, so I didn’t have to face him. I didn’t—it was a little hard to. And today he—last night Neil came over, after we all went to bed. He said he’d been with Brian before.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “He said they just went to that all-night doughnut shop where Neil works, and just sat. Like we did, I guess, only they talked. About cars.”

  “Cars?”

  “That’s what Neil said. Then Neil came to my house and knocked on my bedroom window, and I went outside, and we talked until almost dawn.”

  “About cars?”

  Her voice loosened a little. “No, just things. Everything except—And then today, Joe—he—Joslyn—”

  “I know.”

  She drew a breath. “Did Brian tell you?”

  “Yeah. How is—Is he okay, now?”

  “He’s watching TV with the twins. Sometimes I think they’re the only people he wants to have around. Joslyn, my mother looks so tired.” She sounded close to tears. “She doesn’t know what to do anymore; she doesn’t know how to help him. He’s got to go back to that place after a while, and it costs so much, but he’s got to go…It seems so hopeless…”

  I agreed, but I said comfortingly, “Maybe he just needs a little more time. After all, they did send him home now.”

  “Yes, but—Well. Maybe. Joslyn, I still can’t—I still can’t figure out what we did wrong. I don’t understand how we could have been so completely and totally wrong about that room.”

  “I don’t know. But I guess we were.”

  She was silent a moment; we both were. Then she said, “Well. I’ve got to help with dinner. I’m glad you called.”

  “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  And that was the last any of us talked about Joe’s room for a while. We just avoided mentioning it. Claudia went to have her operation, but I couldn’t see her because of the hospital’s visiting rules. So I had to be content with phoning her every day. I pinned the hem to Barbara’s Junior Prom dress the day she had to wear it, and helped her stitch it up at the last minute; she had been so preoccupied she’d forgotten about it. I studied with Brian every afternoon; my grades were getting better because I didn’t have much else to think about. But Brian was never satisfied; he wanted his guitar, and I wasn’t making enough A’s. He went back to his normal, browbeating techniques, and we had funny squabbles that seemed to draw us closer together; but he never spoke of Joe.

  And then, the day after Claudia had come back to school again, we had lunch together, the four of us: Neil, Claudia, Barbara and I, under one of the big pines on the front lawn of the campus. The sky was hot blue; looking up at it, my eyes slid straight across it because there wasn’t a cloud to stop them.

  Barbara, lying with her head on Neil’s stomach, said softly, “Joe’s going back tomorrow.”

  None of us said anything. I had a sudden urge to throw something at something, but all I had in my hand were potato chips, which I was eating. Neil, who had been intently poking grass blades into Barbara’s hair, let his hand fall.

  He said after a moment, “I took the fish and the sea horse out so they wouldn’t die.”

  I had forgotten about them. Thinking about them made the room fall into place again in my head, piece by piece, the banners, the painting, the candles, the plants. Claudia, on her stomach with her face in the grass, lifted her head suddenly.

  “The plants must be dead.”

  Neil gave a long, slow sigh, making Barbara’s head sink. He said wearily, “I couldn’t—” Barbara glanced up at him.

  “I’m glad you got the sea horse, anyway. By the time I remembered it, I was sure it must be dead. So I didn’t—I didn’t check. I should have. But I—”

  “It’s okay.” He was still again; his fingers found a stem of crabgrass, snapped it, and tucked it behind her ear. Then he said, “We should take our things out. They might get stolen, and some of them don’t even belong to us.”

  Barbara made a sound and rolled away from him. Her hair swung in front of her face; he reached toward it, but she brushed it back herself and her face appeared, puckered. She nodded, sighing.

  “Just one more time,” Neil said. I heard footsteps by my ear then, and turned my head. Brian dropped down unexpectedly among us. Claudia’s face came out of the grass. I stared at him.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He didn’t answer me; he was looking at Claudia. She turned red under his gaze. Her nose seemed longer, straighter, and when she smiled, as she was doing then in spite of herself, you hardly noticed the faint blurring of the shape of her upper lip. She had gotten her hair cut, too; it lay short and very smooth against her head. Her face looked older somehow, and thinner. Brian whistled, and she dropped back into the grass.

  He said, “Don’t do that; I want to see—” But she wouldn’t come up.

  Neil, turning on his side to face Brian, said, “How’d it go?”

  “Oh…maybe.”

  Whatever that meant, it made Neil smile.

  I said, “What have you been doing?” He was wearing shoes and a shirt on a hot spring day. He didn’t want to answer me, but for some reason he decided to.

  “Talking to Mr. Xanthos.”

  Claudia’s head came up. “You going back to school?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” Then he looked at her. “He says I can; it’s just a matter of making up classes. I’ll be a year behind, and I won’t like it. I’m not sure I want to go back, but I might. I might try.”

  “You can do it,” Neil said. Brian ruffled his hair.

  “The question is: why should I?” His eyes gave Barbara a little, fleeting glance. “How’s—how’s Joe?”

  She shook her head. The bell rang then, and we started gathering our things. She said softly, “Not so good. He’s going back tomorrow.”

  He gave a little nod. “I’d like—I’ll come and see him tonight before he goes. Is that all right?”

  She smiled. “Sure.” She still had all the grass blades in her hair; Neil started brushing them out. I picked up my books with a sigh. Four more weeks and unless I flunked my finals, I wouldn’t be a freshman any more. But I wasn’t sixteen; I wasn’t allowed to ask why, before I was plunged into another year of more of the same only harder. There seemed no end to it.

  Then Neil, looking over Barbara’s shoulder, said to Brian, “You have a mind. It’s for thinking. If you can’t use it, you’re dead. You’ve got to start learning how somewhere.”

  Brian reached down to pick up the empty potato chip bag I had left. He wadded it into a ball absently, looked down at it.

  “Maybe.”

  I couldn’t concentrate that night while we were studying. Brian was tossing Spanish vocabulary at me, since I had a test in it the next day, but I got genders wrong and confused words and mispronounced them until Brian, lying backwards on Erica’s bed with his feet on the headboard, said with a groan, “We just did this chapter two nights ago! Will you think!”

  “I’m trying! Hurry up; I have to—” I stopped. He looked at me.

  “What?” But he guessed what. He sat up abruptly. “Now what the hell are you going to try to do?”

  I felt my face burn. I said tersely, “We’re going to take our things out of the house. And if you say one more word—one more—I’ll flunk every test from now till my finals.”

  “Oh.” He subsided, lying back. He propped the book open on his chest. “Umbrella.”

  But I didn’t answer. My face still felt red. He glanced at me and said again, “Umbrella.”

  “So give me one good reason,”

  “Huh?”

  “Why should I tell you what umbrella is in Spanish? Why should I pass my t
ests? It’s okay if I’m grounded now, I’m not doing much of anything and there’s only a few more weeks of school. I don’t even like school, so why should I go on? You wouldn’t care what kind of grades I made if you didn’t want a guitar. That’s all you care about. I don’t have to study. Why should I? You don’t. I’ve never had such a rotten year in my life. Why should I finish one just to start another one? I’d rather make doughnuts.”

  He gazed at me, his mouth open, the book fallen forward on his chest. He had to worry; he was going to be out of a job if I went on strike.

  Then he said softly, “That’s not true. I’ll teach you for free from now on.”

  “Why?” I said suspiciously.

  “Because I care. I don’t want you to drop out. I wish I hadn’t.” He picked up the book. “Umbrella.”

  “El paraguas,” I said a little dazed. “Then why don’t you go back?”

  “Suitcase. Because it’s easy to drop out, but hard to go back.”

  “El maleta.”

  “La maleta. Garden.”

  “La jardín. I’ll make A’s on all my finals if you go back. And you won’t have to teach me for free.”

  “El jardín.” His eyes slid to my face. “You couldn’t. Not in algebra.”

  “Then you’re safe saying yes, aren’t you?”

  He wiggled a little, like a caught fish. “Milk.”

  “La leche. Think of all the money you’d get if I did get all A’s. Don’t you want me to try? I could just try for C’s.”

  “C’s? After all this work?” he said indignantly.

  I said, “You want me to work; you have to pay for it. Deal?”

  He eyed me. The algebra probably made him feel safe. He licked his lips. Then he gave a little nod. “Deal.”

  “I want it in writing. And witnessed.”

  “All right!” He was already nervous, and I grinned. “Now let’s get this finished; I want to go see Joe.” But he didn’t go on; instead he turned his head to look at me again. “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that. At least you tried. I hardly did that much.” He went back to the book. “Mailbox.”

  Neil and Barbara picked me up when it finally got dark. There was no reason for secrecy; my parents knew we had to clear our things out eventually. They might have guessed where we were going, but I didn’t tell them; it was still hard to talk about. We stopped for Claudia at her house, then drove to the deserted house in silence. We got there before the streetlamps went on, so we didn’t have a problem sneaking in. We stood in the dark living room while Neil groped for his lantern. The house smelled lonely, musty; it felt smaller than I remembered.

  Neil murmured, “Can’t even remember where—oh.” He found it, and we followed him. I had a sudden hope that maybe someone had come and stolen our things, maybe even painted the walls over, hiding our work, so there would be no sign we had ever been in that house. But I knew what we would find when Neil switched on the light: dead yellow plants in hard-packed earth; dust on the candles, the books and shelves; dust balls flitting across the floor as we passed. I wondered if we could get everything out without getting caught. I wondered if Neil had brought a hammer to get the crates off the walls. He switched on the lantern, and I blinked in the sudden light. I wondered for a second why everything looked so strange.

  Then I realized that everything was strange because nothing had changed.

  “Who watered the plants?” Claudia said.

  Barbara looked at Neil. He set the lantern down on the floor, carefully. His face was expressionless. He shook his head slightly. “I didn’t. No.” He looked at me, but I shook my head. I didn’t trust my voice.

  “Brian?” Neil suggested. I thought. Then I shook my head again.

  “No. No—he wouldn’t have.”

  Barbara had begun to move again. She touched things: the rocking chair, a shelf, the tree. She whispered, “It’s all been dusted. And the earth under the tree is still damp. And there are—There are used matches. And—there’s a book—there’s a bookmark in this book—”

  “Even the little plants are damp,” Claudia said wonderingly. “And they don’t look like—Some of them have really grown. Someone must have come nearly every—Someone—” She stopped. She put her hand to her mouth. “Barbara—”

  Barbara stared back at her, her eyes growing wider and wider. She moved suddenly. She grabbed the tree by its big ceramic pot and started shoving it toward the door.

  Neil said, “Wait, I’ll get it.” But she didn’t hear.

  She said, “He can take it back with him tomorrow. He can put it in his room and water it there, and watch it grow. He-he must have brought water with him all that way, because we didn’t have much here. Neil, I can’t lift this damn pot.”

  “I’ll get it.” He was laughing, as he bent to help her. She wiped her face quickly with one hand, leaving a streak of dirt on it, but it didn’t do much good because she was still crying even though she was smiling. Neil hoisted the pot in his arms.

  “I thought that lantern had been moved.” He turned a little awkwardly as she ran ahead of him to open the door. “Watch it—Someone may be out there—”

  “Good!”

  The front door banged open. I looked at Claudia, who was still standing with her hand over her mouth. She whispered behind it, “I don’t believe it. Do you believe it?”

  “No.” Then things whirled a little in my head, as if they were colored leaves caught in a gentle wind: things that had happened to all of us, things that hadn’t happened yet, but might. Looking at them, I started to smile.

  “Well. Maybe.”

  Patricia A. McKillip

  Patricia A. McKillip discovered the joys of writing when she was fourteen, endured her teenage years in the secret life of her stories, plays and novels, and has been writing ever since—except for a brief detour when she thought she would be a concert pianist.

  She was born in Salem, Oregon and has lived in Arizona, California and the England that is the setting for The House on Parchment Street. After a number of years in San Jose, where she received an MA in English from San Jose State University, she moved to. San Francisco where she now lives.

  Miss McKillip has also written The Throme of the Erril of Sherill and The Forgotten Beasts of Eld.