by Sharon Lee
"No," said Jeffrey slowly, "I don't." He bit his lip, unrolled the top of the bag and dug within. "All right. As a favor. To you. You hear what I say, at least."
"Thank you," said Rob, momentarily wondering what favor might be required in return--and when.
The apple was quickly eaten. The carton of milk was empty soon thereafter as Rob walked Jeffrey back to his classroom and saw him situated at his desk in the back of the room and returned to his own office, still walking slowly.
Jeffrey's folder had not yet reached the filing cabinet; Rob lifted it from Mrs. Jenson's in-box. The secretary raised a coy gray brow at him. He shrugged and murmured something about a call to the boy's family. He shut the office door behind him.
The boy's home number was written in purple ink on a slip of pink paper clipped to the front of the folder. Rob dialed and listened to the phone at the other end ring once...twice...three times.
"Hello! Yes? What is it?" The voice of an older man, slightly and mysteriously accented.
Rob cleared his throat. "Good afternoon, " he told the voice, though he doubted it. "My name is Robert Davis. I'm a guidance counselor at Deer Creek Elementary School and--"
"Has Jeffrey been injured?" The man's voice was crisp--a gentleman used to slicing directly to the heart of matters.
"No, sir. There has been a problem however, and I'm afraid that Jeffrey's parents are going to have to come to school and--"
"Impossible, sir. I am sorry. Jeffrey's mother is doing fieldwork in Auckland at the moment--the grant runs eighteen months, I believe--and his father is out of town until next Monday or Tuesday. Perhaps I might be of assistance? I am Jeffrey's Uncle Tulaine.
Rob grinned ruefully. "Well, sir, the problem concerns a candle Jeffrey brought with him in his lunch bag. I'm afraid school regulations explicitly forbid children to use matches or candles, or indeed, play with fire in any manner on school property."
There was a silence on the other end of the phone. Then, "Surely, Mr. Davis, you apprehend that Jeffrey is not your common six-year-old. May the rules not be circumvented?"
"Mister--sir." Rob paused a moment to gain control of himself, biting his lip on the smile that would not fade. "The regulations are made and enforced by the school's officials to insure the greatest good for the greatest number--"
"Yes, yes," said Uncle Tulaine impatiently. "I know of that theory--some Englishman's idea, no doubt. But really, sir, can you imagine in the long run such a course is beneficial?"
"The problem at this point," said Rob with laudable evenness, "is that Jeffrey will not eat without lighting the candle and the school requires him both not to light the candle and to eat his lunch."
"So," said Uncle Tulaine, and there was a silence. Rob shifted uneasily on his end of the line.
"Young man, please hold on," Uncle Tulaine directed decisively. "I see that the problem as you present it is not one that can be most efficiently resolved over the telephone. I will ascertain whether there is someone within the house who may come to you today. Hold..." The voice faded and went away. Rob shifted again and fidgeted with Jeffrey's folder, frowning as he noted that no placement tests had been given to the boy. Six years old? Put him in the first grade. Rob pulled a pad of paper toward him and made a notation.
"Hello? Yes? Mr. Davis?" Uncle Tulaine was back.
"Yes sir."
"It has been arranged, sir. Jeffrey's aunt, Miss Elmira Brown, will come to you. She is ready to leave immediately and should be at your office within twenty minutes. Is this satisfactory to you?"
Rob blinked. Twenty minutes? When there were parents who were concerned--oh yes--but their schedules would not permit them to get away for at least two or three weeks --
"Mr. Davis? Are you there?"
"Yes, sir. I'm sorry, I didn't expect such immediate action. Please tell Miss Brown that I will be waiting for her."
"I will do so, sir. You are most kind." The connection was broken.
Rob sat holding the receiver for a little longer before he cradled it and forcefully turned his attention to Jeffrey Eljensen's file.
* * *
THE BUZZER ON his telephone razzed him just as he was assimilating the fact that Jeffrey Eljensen's mother was indeed in Auckland on a grant from Monsanto. It was perhaps the third or fourth peculiar fact contained in the folder and Rob was feeling a bit off-balance as he stretched out a hand for the receiver.
"Ms. Elmira Brown to see you, Mr. Davis, " his secretary's voice murmured in his ear.
"Ah." Rob straightened. "Thank you, Mrs. Jenson. I'll be right out."
Two of his long strides took him to the door; he pulled it open, professional smile in place for the older woman he expected to find in the waiting room.
"Miss Brown, I'm Rob Davis-- "
He was glad that much was formula, for the woman who stood and took his outstretched hand was perhaps thirty, nearly as tall as he was and slender with an athlete's tautness. She wore a denim shirt two sizes too large for her over a pair of much-abused and paint-spattered blue jeans. But her face was serene, her eyes as competent as though she stood in a tailored suit, briefcase in hand.
Her handshake was firm and brief. "Mr. Davis," she said, and her voice like a fall of cool water.
He half-turned and gestured. "Please come in," he managed and followed her into his office, closing the door behind him. She had already seated herself in the wooden chair to one side of the desk. He took his seat behind it and glanced at the notepad and file on the blotter before he looked at his visitor.
"Thank you for coming so promptly. I was a bit taken aback when Jeffrey's uncle said someone could be with me in twenty minutes. So many parents today are unable to arrange appointments for days, even weeks..."
She dismissed this with the flick of a ringless hand. "Uncle Tulaine tells me that Jeffrey has not eaten lunch, that he is denied his candle." It was a demand for an explanation.
Rob sighed. "Fire is dangerous. Children in this school are forbidden to play with fire." He held up his own hand, anticipating her.
"Jeffrey has explained that there is a family ritual that requires a candle to accompany every meal of every family member, everywhere. His uncle Tulaine has called my attention to the fact that Jeffrey is a rather extraordinary little boy. The regulations of this school, however, are only valid when they remain equal for all the children attending the school." He glanced down, surprised and a little ashamed of his own vehemence, then glanced back, startled.
She was laughing, softly and unmaliciously, inviting him to join in. "Poor Mr. Davis," she said. "First Jeffrey in one of his icy rages, then Uncle Tulaine..." She shook her head. "And now a maiden aunt who is much younger than she ought to be, all spattered with paint and laughing at you." Again, that rueful headshake. "Forgive us, Mr. Davis, we're an odd family."
He grinned. "I noticed Uncle Tulaine asked if there was a way to get around the rule--" he sounded aggrieved in his own ears.
She had the grace not to laugh this time. "But he's like that, you know; an--elitist. Ritual by common consent is one thing, arbitrary rules that cross the ritual he has accepted are quite something else." She tipped her head. "Should I apologize for Uncle Tulaine?"
Rob shrugged, laughing a little himself. "It would insult him, wouldn't it? And I'm afraid my sympathies lie as firmly with Jeffrey as his uncle's do."
"Which brings us back to the reason I'm here." She nodded. "The rules are the rules, as you say, no matter where your sympathies may lie. And to get along in the outside world, one must acknowledge at least a few of the rules..." She frowned; it put a slight crease between her brows, winged like Jeffrey's.
"Jeffrey is an extraordinary small boy." She shared an eyeblink with him. "As we all have noticed. Unfortunately, he is a little boy in many ways still. The rules of his family must seem to him to be the strongest--the best--to him. And I'm sure that none of us--from great Aunt Phyllis down--would eat a meal without a candle, except with extreme unease." She sighed and
shook her head. "It has no easy solution, Mr. Davis."
"Could Jeffrey be brought to understand that his lunch can be graced with a candle only on days when he's not at school?" He said it diffidently, hating the necessity that made him offer it as a solution.
"I suppose that he could," she said slowly, "But I would not want to be the one to teach him. Nor would you find much help from Uncle Tulaine, or from Jeffrey's father. Nor, for that matter, from his mother."
She leaned forward, tipping her palms upward in a showing gesture.
"Mr. Davis, our candles are not second nature to us, but first nature. I can't say how long it has been so, but the family dates back centuries, and there is always a candle burning in the house when someone is home. There are candles for talking, candles when we play music, when we have guests, for weddings, for funerals--and for lunch."
She flipped her hands quickly, as if switching gears. Rob noticed that they were competent looking hands, with a stain here and there that might be new paint or an old tattoo.
"I think that Jeffrey does not find school easy," she was saying when Rob brought his attention back to her bright face. "In fact he will not find it easy. I was afraid of that when Madelaine accepted her grant and went off to do research for a year and a half. She had been teaching Jeffrey and Phoenix at home. None of the rest of us is a teacher--at least, not as recognized by this state. No tutors were to be found. So Jeffrey must go to school--and Phoenix when her leg is healed..." She smiled at him.
"The maiden aunt rambles. But the point is, Mr. Davis, that Jeffrey has been taught much that I feel is not taught in the first grade of this school. In other cases, Madelaine came to the knowledge by a different path..." She stopped, eyes focused beyond the tips of her outstretched fingers.
"You're saying," Rob said slowly, "that Jeffrey is in a new environment, probably being taught things he already knows and that he'll be bored."
She smiled, eyes still hazy in thought. "But he's a polite boy, so he won't say anything. Only feel ready to scream with frustration and strangeness and noise." She lifted her eyes to his.
"He'll need his candle more than ever, to remind him who he is, who we are. To remind him that there is a place that is not strange and people who do not ignore him, perhaps, because he is only a little boy.
Rob sighed, leaned back in his chair and regarded nothing with great intensity for a time. Finally, he said, "Is there some kind of a substitute? A--I don't know--a flashlight? A painting?" He looked at her, unaware of the admiration lighting his face. "You're a painter, aren't you? Why not paint him a picture of a candle?"
"Paint a picture?" She frowned, then suddenly stood, radiant, holding her hand out to him. Confused, he rose, took it and stood holding it tightly in her own. She did not pull free.
"Mr. Davis, you have hit upon the solution. Not a painting, exactly--but no playing with fire in defiance of the rules, either!" She smiled and disengaged her hand; frowned again briefly. "What day is it?"
"Day? Thursday," Rob said, content that she felt some sort of compromise had been reached.
"Thursday." She laid her hand on his sleeve. "You must allow us a day's grace, Mr. Davis. I think that by Monday all will be harmony, as Uncle Tulaine would say. In the meantime, I will pick Jeffrey up and take him to lunch tomorrow--if that's not against school regulations?'
"No--here, I'll write a note for Jeffrey's teacher." He scrawled a line on his notepad, signed it "R. Davis," and handed the slip to Elmira Brown, maiden aunt. She folded it carefully and placed it in the pocket of her jeans.
"Thank you, Mr. Davis," she said as he opened the door for her. She moved away a step, then turned back to him. "You should come to dinner on Sunday. Around seven." And she was gone.
Rob shut his door on Mrs. Jenson's look of speculation.
* * *
IT WAS AN old house, and a large one; the roof overhung the second story to form a porch around the entire perimeter--one side of which had been converted to a sunroom. Wisteria and ivy grew where they would. There was a walnut tree by the gate.
Rob stood for a moment, regarding the house, the flagstone walkway, the fence and gate of black wrought-iron. Carefully, he worked the latch and let himself in, making sure the gate closed firmly behind him. He walked the flagged path slowly, breathing in the smells of damp grass and growing things. His feet found the steps to the porch and he mounted.
At the front door he paused, confronted with choice: a heavy brass knocker in the shape of a man's beak-nosed face or a cord attached to a ceramic bell suspended from a roofbeam.
He rang the bell.
There was a moment when he feared no one would answer. Then there was a creak in the hallway beyond and the door swung open to reveal a stoutish woman of indeterminate--though undeniably middle--years; apron tied around her sturdy waist and a smear of flour on her cheek.
He smiled. "My name is Rob Davis. Miss Brown invited--"
"You to dinner," she finished for him, a broad grin on her face. "Of course she did. She had an aversion to poor Mr. Marley, too. Bell was the first thing out of the kiln when she came to us." She pulled the door wider.
"Well, come on in, if you're company. I'm Jessie Martin." Having gotten him safely into the hall, she turned and pointed up the stairs. "They're all in Elmira's studio. Up the stairs and follow your ears. Might as well go on up--dinner'll be awhile" She grinned again. "Did she tell you seven?"
Rob admitted it, a little dazed.
"Well, we do hit seven sometimes," said Jessie, as one being fair. "But tonight it'll be close on to eight." She tipped her head. "Starving?"
He laughed, "No'm, not quite yet."
"You start feelin' that way, you send Jeffrey down for some beer and cheese, because I tell you the truth, sugar, dinner's been as late as nine, some nights."
Again he laughed, and she joined; and seemed about to shoo him upstairs when an odd look crossed her face.
"What can I be thinking of? You hold on a minute right here." She startled him with her speed, heading off into the back of the house, toward what must be the kitchen. He surveyed the hall in which he stood, glimpsing a portion of comfortable living room filled with older furniture and what appeared to be piles and piles of books--at the side of the sofa, by each chair, overflowing one table. On the walls were candle holders and --
"Oh, I do forget sometimes when I'm cooking. I just don't know sometimes where my manners go..." Jessie Martin, returning.
She carried a white taper in her right hand, a bulky box of strike-anywhere matches in her left.
Bustling past, she nodded at the center branch of the five branch candelabrum to the left of the front door; its fully lit twin was on the right.
"Now light your candle and put it up there in that middle spot." She shook open the box and laughed when he looked around for a place to strike it. "Right there, sugar," she directed with another nod and Rob saw the rough metal plate set into the door.
He lit the candle, noticing the fineness of the wax. It wasn't dyed white or tinted white; the candle itself was of fine, translucent, white wax.
The candle flame steadied after a moment, and the efficient Jessie Martin took the match and hurried him up the wide stairs.
"Do we have one of Jason's?" Heard through the door Jeffrey's voice had an edge to it, but Rob wasn't able to determine if it was annoyance or excitement. "He makes those grayish ones, like fog--you know."
Rob tapped on the door and the boy's voice cut off, to be replaced by a cool, "Come in."
He did, and slammed to a halt just inside the door, mouth a little open. He began, for lack of any other way to deal with it, to take inventory of the place.
Start with the kiln over to the left, standing tall on its blue tile pedestal, flanked by workbenches, tools hung neatly above on pegboard sheets, clay confined to covered pans. Proceed to the potter's wheel nearby; catalog yet another bench piled high with sheets and shards of stained glass, coils of copper ribbon, gnomish lumps of lea
d.
Moving his eyes past the workbench, he stared at the easels--three--each with an unfinished painting upon the prop.
Rob finally took a second step into the room, and then a third, craning to see. One painting was--would be--a round black vase stuffed full of blown red roses. Another was very nearly an ocean lashed furious by a wind almost seen, pounding against towers of rock. The canvas flanked by these contained a mist-blue castle poised high on an indigo cliff.
A faint clink drew his eyes up, and he began to inventory all over again, counting windchimes of pottery, of stone and glass and shell--dozens of windchimes, hanging from every exposed beam.
"Hi Rob!" The edge on Jeffrey's voice was excitement, the man decided, giving himself a brisk mental shake and deliberately shutting his mouth. He turned to pay his respect to his hostess.
And felt his gape return. The back room of the wall was gone, replaced with floor-to-ceiling windows opening onto a porch. Grouped before the windows was a cluster of mismatched furniture: a Victorian chaise in rose brocade, an ottoman in plaid wool, two nondescript chairs of the overstuffed variety, two elbow tables on which resided beaded lamps, and a large-ish square table in the very center of the group.
Elmira was smiling at him from the chaise. Her jeans today were pristine blue, her white shirt unblemished. A wry girl with light brown hair tumbling over her shoulders sat in the overstuffed chair nearest the center table at which Jeffrey knelt, sorting what seemed to be random lumps of colored wax. A pair of crutches leaned on the arm of her chair.
"Hi, Jeffrey." Rob thought his own voice sounded a little odd, but the boy was absorbed in his task and didn't look up. The girl did, quickly, showing him dark-lashed gray eyes and a smile that changed her face from wry to lovely before she glanced back down at the table.
"There's one." She pointed and Jeffrey's hand closed around a mist-gray lump, bringing it up for her inspection.
Rob lowered himself carefully into the unoccupied overstuffed chair, sparing a moment to admire the life-sized statue of the borzoi lying between his seat and Elmira's chaise.