She knew that I was lying. I didn’t want to find out what else she knew. Or did not know. She was seething with anger and, more interestingly, fear.
“You let the candle go out,” she said.
“No, ma’am.”
The “ma’am” did not mollify her. “Who was here, Calley?”
I yawned and fidgeted. “Nobody.”
She looked disgusted with me, and I had no doubt that she knew that when I used the word nobody that I was only telling the technical, literal truth.
“Get out of my sight, Calley Dakin,” Miz Verlow said, “and the next time I see you, I want the truth.”
I lunged for the backstairs.
Which book? Which one?
I looked back to make sure that Miz Verlow was not watching me, and slipped into the linen closet, closing the door behind me as silently as I could, in case Miz Verlow was listening.
In a moment my eyes adjusted to the darkness and I could make out the darker dangle of the chain pull with its white ceramic knob at the end that turned on the light inside the closet. I gave it a yank. Both knob and chain felt creepily colder than they should have. I usually enjoyed pulling a light chain, feeling the catch when it was at its full length, and then slowly releasing it, waiting for the instant that the bulb lit, or went dark. In that instant of electric light, I saw where I was and where I wanted to go, and yanked the chain a second time to return the closet to darkness. No line of light would be showing at the bottom edge of the door.
Dropping to my knees, I crept to my shelf of books.
How could I be certain that Tallulah Jordan meant one of these books when she told me to listen to the book? Some people called the Bible The Book. She had said listen, not read.
I ran my fingers across the row of spines. As I touched the Audubon Bird Guide, the finger burnt in the candle flame instantly hurt again, hurt as bad as when it was actually in the flame. Reflexively I jerked it back. And it stopped hurting. Stopped burning. I braced myself, and gingerly touched it to the spine of the bird guide again. This time there was no pain.
And a voice said. This one.
It was not the voice of Tallulah Jordan, or my great-grandmama or Mamadee. It was the voice of Ida Mae Oakes, the mellifluous, comforting voice of Ida Mae Oakes. My eyes welled and I nearly blubbered. I tugged the book from the shelf and hugged it tight.
I had been up all night. I climbed to my favorite shelf and settled into a comfortable nest of toweling and feather pillows and tucked the book under the pillow for my head. I didn’t think of pajamas or brushing teeth or any of the everyday going-to-bed routine. Dr. Keeling’s odd prayer came to mind. I heard my great-grandmama Cosima speaking again:
I could hear the water clearly, rushing in and out, and it sighed like great wings all around me.
shushabrush, shushabrush shushabrush
Forty-five
THE clock seemed to have stopped that Christmas, for when I came downstairs again in the early afternoon, after dinner, the stockings still hung from their hooks and none of the gifts under the fake tree had been opened. It was the first time that I realized that grown-ups did not have to struggle to postpone opening their presents. Such an indifference to the excitement of Christmas morning shocked me, and made me feel sorry for them to have it mean so little to them. It seemed to me in that instant of realization that this was the clear dividing line between being a child and being an adult. Adults were people who had lost the innocent greedy joy of Christmas morning.
Still wearing the previous day’s clothing, and looking like an unmade bed, I’m sure, I was fortunately disinclined to mourn my future, thanks to the hunger of a healthy growing child unfed since Christmas Eve’s supper. I rummaged myself a bellyful in the kitchen and then wandered to the parlor, where the tree stood forlornly, its odd and gaudy fruit strewn meagerly about it.
Father Valentine sat alone in his favorite chair, wearing his blind-man’s dark glasses, and doing nothing. He heard me enter, of course, and grinned.
“Is it Rip Van Calley?” He cackled. “I thought you’d be sitting here with everything all opened when I came down this morning.”
“Merry Christmas,” I said.
“And to you,” he replied. “It had ought to be merrier, really, in Merry Verlow’s house. I believe I like the smell of the smoke from this wood fire as much as I do the warmth from it. Nostalgic.”
“What’s that? Nostalgic.” I twiddled my sock dangling from its hook under the mantel.
“The way you wish it once was, but of course it wasn’t. Bring me my stocking, Calley. I’m tired of waiting for it.”
Father Valentine never hesitated to play at being childish, and when he did there was a quaver in his voice that was as good as a wink. It was a relief to have a grown-up at least willing to fake a little Christmas excitement.
Using a hassock as a step stool to reach it, I unhooked his stocking. It was mysteriously lumpy but even though the fabric was stretched thin to near transparency, I could not make out what was in it.
He took it eagerly and ostentatiously felt it all over.
“Grand,” he said. “Just what I wanted. So thoughtful.”
As if at a signal, the rest of the household began to filter into the parlor, greeting me with Merry Christmases and joshing about Father Valentine and me getting the jump on the presents.
Dr. Keeling paused by her chair to ask, “What do you have there?”
“Mine to know and yours to find out,” said Father Valentine. His hands clenched around his stocking. “It’s mine and you can’t have it.”
“Don’t want it,” Dr. Keeling answered, “but I’d take it if I did.”
“No squabbling, you two,” Mr. Quigley said. “Not today.” He took down my sock and gave it to me.
Miz Verlow and Mama arrived lastly, after the Slaters.
I squatted on the turkey rug with my sock at my feet. There was a rectangular box in it, the corners catching in the fabric, requiring me to work it out a snag at a time. I had it in the grasp of thumb and forefinger when Miz Verlow walked in. She paused to flip a switch and the lights on the aluminum tree bloomed like a dozen candle flames. The cranes on the tree wavered slightly as if on a passing air, but it might have been an illusion caused by the sudden multiple sources of light on the highly reflective tree.
The sock clung to the rectangular box, which was about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Miz Verlow stooped over me to seize the toe of the sock, and the box slipped out into my hand.
She was smiling at me. If she had been angry or suspicious earlier, there was no sign of it.
“Merry Christmas,” she said, and uncurled the fingers of her free hand.
Two AA batteries rested in her palm.
Hastily I ripped the paper from the box and tore it open, to see the transistor radio that the batteries would power.
The guests all laughed and applauded.
“I’m not going to listen to that hurdy-gurdy day in and day out,” Mama said. “You hear me, Calley?”
All too clearly, somewhere in my inner ears, as if she were sticking pins in them.
Miz Verlow winked at me.
I remember nothing else that was given me that Christmas, except for the sweater and watch cap that Mrs. Llewellyn had sent. It seems to me that there were no real toys—suitable for my age, I mean. No dolls, no children’s books, no records of children’s songs, certainly nothing as extravagant as a bicycle. My memories of later Christmases with the same guests, though, assure me that what I received were make-do tokens, like something a parent might pick up at an airport notions kiosk on the way home from a trip, after having forgotten to obtain a real souvenir: a fresh pack of cards from the Slaters, probably one of the several that they always brought with them, a secondhand science-fiction novel from Dr. Keeling, a little cheaply framed watercolor seascape from Mr. Quigley, a chocolate Santa Claus from Father Valentine.