A Friend at Midnight (12 page)

The following morning was Monday, and in school Michael's teacher carefully wrote the date on the board and Michael saw that it was the first of December. Wild excitement seized him.

From then on, every day the moment he got home, he would check both the front and the back steps for packages. His father's handwriting was a square linked print, and he always used black ink.

The days plunged off the edge of the calendar, throwing themselves at December 25.

On television, advertising gave Michael hope. Dad was seeing these things. He couldn't help connecting the ads to Michael.

The days diminished in which Dad still had time. Eight more shopping days! the television would scream. Seven! Six!

Once Michael wept. He was just lying there on his back, while Nathaniel slept on the other side of the divider, and then Michael's face was covered with tears and his pillow was wet. He had promised himself never ever to cry again, and here his eyes were crying without him.

On December 24, they went to the earliest Christmas Eve service, the one for really little kids who had to be in bed by eight. The only way Nathaniel was going to bed by eight was if Michael went with him. Michael had been feeling numb all day. He might as well feel numb in bed.

The chancel of the church was one big wonderful stable, filled with real animals brought from farms and backyards. There were a donkey, a goose, four rabbits, two sheep and a pony. Michael loved animals. Sometimes he wanted to be a veterinarian. He pretended that Mom wanted pets this year, even though she insisted that their lives were too chaotic and nobody was home to love and feed and walk a pet. Maybe tomorrow under the tree Michael would find a puppy and some kittens.

It suddenly came to Michael that Dad had mailed the big box of Christmas presents to
Mom.
And Mom had hidden it away with all
her
gifts! In the morning, under the tree, there would be presents wrapped with shiny paper and tied with ribbons and bows. Plastered all over them would be gift tags. In Dad's big square black linked print, each tag would say:

To Michael

With Love,

Dad

It didn't matter what was in the boxes. There didn't even have to be boxes. He just wanted the words.

Christmas Eve had a limited number of sermon topics, and since everybody actually came to sing Christmas carols and watch the children watch the animals, the sermon had to be short.

Lily had tossed religion in the trash, but Christmas Eve didn't count; it was perfect on its own. You didn't have to believe any of this stuff to be totally happy.

The donkey was making an amazing racket. Mom called it braying. Lily thought it was the sound of being strangled alive. The goose, rabbits and sheep looked on in silent astonishment while the pony ate the hay in the manger and the children's choir giggled. The Baby Jesus, who actually was a baby, waved at his real mother in the front pew. Nathaniel, who loved to wave, shouted “Jesus! Over here!” which was just how Lily felt all the time.

Dr. Bordon spoke of the inn, and how it was full, and how some hearts were too full of themselves to see that there were empty hearts all around that were in need.

Lily watched Michael. He hadn't sung the carols. He didn't see the three kings. He seemed unaware of the candles lit after the last carol, while everyone promised to hold up the Light of the World.

His heart is empty, thought Lily.

She was going to start bawling. It was a good word for the kind of sobbing she wanted to do, the way “bray” was a good word for what the donkey was doing. Lily wanted a huge raw sound to come out of her, and tears by the bucket, the kind of crying that left you with more headache but less heartache.

She too had expected love at Christmas.

But at least on Christmas morning Lily had the joy of sharing Christmas with a two-year-old. Nathaniel was thrilled by the wrapping paper and the ribbons and the great and wonderful privilege of ripping it all off. An especially fine box (containing a set of red fire engines) was just the right size to sit in while Michael pelted him with crushed wrapping paper balls. No one could coax Nathaniel to bother with the fire engines themselves so that they could take a photograph and send it to the giver.

Reb had taken up knitting at college. She had made Michael a yellow cap and mittens with his initials stitched in green. When they all telephoned Reb in Texas, Michael said, “The mittens are very lovely, Reb. Thank you for all the time it took to make them.”

Michael—who previously would have used stupid old mittens as tinder for a bonfire in the snow! Lily hated how
old
Michael was this year.

When Nathaniel opened
his
mittens and cap, he was puzzled and quickly moved on to more rewarding gifts. “Say thank you,” prompted Mom when it was Nathaniel's turn on the phone with Reb. But Nathaniel remained silent.

“He's a little young for the joy of hand-knits,” Lily told her sister, but Reb didn't laugh.

In the late afternoon, as always, friends, neighbors and relatives came by for dessert.

But the relative Michael cared about did not call.

All day long, all through dinner, all into the evening, he still believed the phone would ring. Because nobody doesn't remember Christmas.

Around eleven o'clock at night, some kids from Mom's band showed up and serenaded her with “Jingle Bells.” Everybody came in for hot chocolate with marshmallows. Michael stayed close by the phone, in case the racket of all those instruments and all that talk drowned out the ringing that mattered.

Finally Lily said to him, “It's twelve o'clock, Michael. Let's go to bed.”

Twelve o'clock.

So Christmas had come. And gone.

Slowly, silently, he followed his sister up the stairs, and at the top of the stairs Lily turned right to go into her bedroom while Michael turned left to go into the room he shared with Nathaniel.

Lily went into her room.

She looked out the window at the sparkling lights on roofs and trees.

She opened the window to let chilly snow-tonight wind blow in.

Lily said to the birthday boy, “It's midnight, Jesus. And you're wrong.

“There are no friends at midnight.”

chapter
10

W
hen school began again the following September, Lily had high hopes for her junior year. Age sixteen was such an improvement over age fifteen: Lily could drive her own car, earn her own money and leave the babysitting to others. Along with the pleasure of new notebooks, new pencils, new clothes and, best of all, totally excellent new shoes, was that first-day-of-school joy. A fresh new year in which to get things right for a change.

Of course, no sooner had the satisfying rhythm of class begun than they had a Teacher Work Day.

Students didn't have school, but Lily's mother had to show up at her school for Teacher Improvement, and Kells didn't have the day off, so Mom and Kells were out the door and into their cars as early as ever. Michael had been invited to go on the last all-day sail of the season with the Mahannas, while Amanda had agreed to keep Nathaniel for the hours that Lily was at work.

For Lily had a job.

Since both Reb and Lily had had four years of orthodonture, Dr. Alzina knew Lily well. The day she graduated to a nighttime-only retainer, her orthodontist said, “So, Lily, you want to work for me? Two afternoons a week and alternate Saturdays?”

Lily loved the orthodontists' office. Her first job was to answer the phone and say cheerily, “Good afternoon! Doctors Bence, Alzina and Gladwin, orthodontists. This is Lily! How may I help you?”

Her second job was to hand out free toothbrushes on the off chance that an actual living kid would voluntarily brush his or her teeth.

Her third job was taking the Polaroids of Befores and Afters.

Befores were hideous: gap-toothed, beaverish, crooked-mouthed urchins with terrified eyes.

Afters were beautiful: each smile perfect and each face wreathed in pride.

Not only did Lily get to skip the icky parts of dental offices, like saliva, she earned money. Almost a year after the terrible plane flights, she had finally earned back the airplane ticket money.

It was nice not to have to babysit Nathaniel for free. Then not only could Lily turn him over to Amanda, but also she could go earn money that, at last, she could spend on herself. Lily was working all day on Teacher Work Day, because the receptionist hadn't found a sitter and had to stay home with
her
kids. Lily strapped Nathaniel into his car seat (he was a three-car-seat kid, since he got strapped down wherever he went). She braced herself. He would now burst into song.

Nathaniel had started nursery school over the summer. He was an old hand now—he knew how to sit in a circle around the keyboard and everything. But did he learn fun little rhymes like “The Farmer in the Dell” or “In and Out the Windows”? No. He came home singing ditties like
“Stay home; lock the doors; wear your safety helmet; help with chores.”

This was the most depressing list Lily had ever heard. How come they weren't teaching kids to go everywhere and do everything? All previously brave three-year-olds were going to become scaredy-cats.

How contradictory were the orders of teachers. Here in nursery school, teachers did everything they could to tamp down energy and daring. Then in high school, teachers tried to retrieve it. Be free! they cried. Find your own life. Set your own boundaries. Be spontaneous. How, Lily wanted to know, when school had so busily been destroying all those skills since age three?

Nathaniel sang lustily,
“I always use a seat belt, it keeps me safe and sound. It really is a great belt! It holds me all around!”

“We're going to Amanda's,” she told him.

Nathaniel clapped. He loved Amanda, and her collection of yellow rubber duckies, and especially how Amanda was willing to bob for hours in the shallow end of her pool playing Escape the Sharks.

Lily's cell phone rang.

“It's me, your sister, Rebecca, reminding you before we even start talking not to call me by the nickname I discarded last year, a rule you have not observed even once, and which if you were ever going to give me a gift, it would be to call me Rebecca.”

“Give it up, Reb,” said Lily, laughing with delight at her sister's voice. “Nobody's ever going to call you Rebecca.”

“Please? If I beg and grovel?”

“You've never begged or groveled in your life.”

“Today's the day. I'm flying into LaGuardia tonight and I beg you—I'm groveling—can you tell Mom to pick me up at four-thirty? I hate taking the bus.”

“You're coming for a visit? How fabulous! I'll come and get you.”

“You'd drive into LaGuardia by yourself?” said Reb. “I wouldn't dare.”

“Doesn't scare me,” said Lily, although it did. It was almost exactly the one-year anniversary of Lily's flight to get Michael. “Mom will be thrilled to see you,” she said, trying not to sound reproachful, because after Reb spent Christmas with Freddie, she also spent January break in Texas with Freddie's family. Spring break, Reb went to Florida with friends and, of course, the perfect Freddie. And at the end of Reb's freshman year, just when Mom and Lily were aching to have her around all summer, Reb came home for precisely three days and then caught up with Freddie in Labrador, of all places, where they both had summer jobs. “Labrador?” Lily had said. “Isn't that awfully far north? Up past Anne of Green Gables?”

“Camping on an ice field,” Reb had confirmed. “Are we tough or what?”

Lily was fond of the environment and all that, but she preferred the environment of cities. Freddie and Reb could have the wilderness.

Mom had said sadly, “She likes Freddie's family better.”

“She expects them to be different,” Lily pointed out. “She didn't expect us to be different.”

This was the closest they ever came to discussing that Lily and Michael had accepted Kells, while Reb had not; that Lily and Michael thought Nathaniel was perfect—which included being perfectly awful—while Reb simply found him awful.

Now her sister said, “Guess why I'm coming home.”

“You adore us,” said Lily.

“I do. Madly. But why else?”

“You need your laundry done?”

Reb laughed. “I'm coming home to plan my wedding.”

O lovely word of white gowns and bright flowers, blaring trumpets and joyful guests. “Reb! I'm so happy for you!” Lily saw a long row of handsome young men in black and white formal garb, their eyes fastened upon the row of beautiful bridesmaids. One of those young men—an intelligent and charming college boy, perhaps with dark hair (Lily warmed to people with dramatic coloring), perhaps a math or engineering major, because Lily had languages and history covered and there was no point in duplicating knowledge—one of those young men would see Lily Victoria Rosetti coming down the aisle, perhaps in rose satin (Reb still liked pink and Lily had begun to accept the pink end of the spectrum), so the flowers would be roses, and shoes—what kind of shoes?—well, anyway, that young man would fall in love with Lily right there in the very same church in which Lily would later marry
him.

“Will you be my maid of honor?” asked Reb.

“Oh, Reb! Yes!”

Mr. Mahanna's boat, the
Saint Anne
(named for Mrs. Mahanna, who told her family loudly and often that she was a saint for putting up with them), had a very powerful engine.

Over the summer, Michael had discovered the joys of fast and loud.

Trey had turned seventeen and lost interest in the expensive power toys he had previously killed Jamie for touching, so Jamie (and therefore Michael) got to use Trey's Jet Skis and ATV. Michael had found that fast and loud could pull you in: you thought no thoughts; you worried no worries. Speed was such an answer.

All summer long, Michael rode his dirtbike over to the Mahannas', where he and Jamie argued fiercely over who got to do what, and because Jamie wanted to be a wrestler when he grew up, this argument was often settled with violence. They took corners too fast and fell off things and got gravel stuck in their torn kneecaps. Jamie loved a good wound and was always hoping for streams of blood.

Michael and Jamie had classmates whose parents never even let them be alone in a toy store, never mind on bikes five miles from home. They had acquaintances whose only excitement in life was on a video screen and knew one boy who had never done a single thing outdoors: never fallen or tripped or bled; never even got dirty.

Mr. Mahanna let Michael drive the boat first while Jamie yelled that it wasn't fair, which it wasn't, and when Jamie finally got a turn, Michael sat with Trey. “Your new fourth-grade teacher?” Trey yelled over the engine. “I had the same teacher when I was in fourth! I loved fourth grade!”

Michael was always astonished when people claimed to love school. Michael's crowd—not Jamie, of course; the Mahannas were perfect—were always getting tutored or remediated. They had to be “brought up to speed” or given some “one-on-one.” You never loved that kind of school. You showed up and eventually it ended.

Jamie wanted to motor up to Plum Island, where scientists studied infectious animal diseases. Jamie had heard that if you landed on the island, they had to shoot you because you were now a carrier of death. Jamie wanted to penetrate the island's defenses or at least find out whether the scientists shot blanks or real bullets.

“You guys are lucky enough you've got a Teacher Work Day, whatever that is,” said Mr. Mahanna. “Even luckier that I can take the day off. And now you also want the joys of being shot at? Forget it.”

Trey opened a bag of Cheez Doodles for himself and tossed Michael the Fluff and peanut butter sandwich Mrs. Mahanna had made just for him.

My own father doesn't know I love Fluff, thought Michael. Doesn't know I'm pretty much okay in fourth. That I read almost at grade level. That I can drive a boat.

Michael had largely unmemorized the two and a half weeks spent with his father. But now and then a piece of the visit would spew forth, getting him in the eyes like chlorinated water from a pool. He remembered the testing at that new school where Dad had put him. How scornfully the principal had considered Michael's scores. “Your son needs a special class,” he had said, and Dad had shot a look of shame and anger at the son who was stupid.

Michael was as smart as anybody else. But he could not scrape knowledge up off the page the way all the girls and most of the boys could. It just lay there, stuck in little black shapes on white paper, and he couldn't get hold of it.

Michael held the uneaten Fluff sandwich and stared out to sea.

Then he unmemorized his father. It was too bad school didn't require unlearning. He was a whiz.

Lily opened the high, difficult latch of the gate that protected Amanda's swimming pool from marauding toddlers. Amanda lay flat on her chaise, her bare back facing the sun, her eyes closed.

What a contrast their lives were. Amanda's so slow and leisurely; Lily's so frantic and full. What if Amanda continued to be comfortable in the sun, doing nothing much, while Lily joined the footrace that was city life? What if their friendship dwindled away, like Lily's friendship with her very own sister—and only one of them noticed?