The Birthday Room (11 page)

Ben didn't know how to respond. It felt odd to be confided in.

Ian said, “Seeing you has allowed me to begin again.”

Ben pushed his knees against the glove compartment and sank into his seat. He coughed once. After a minute or two, he said, “So Aunt Nina knows all about my hand?”

“Of course.”

“Does Mom know what you just told me?”

“No. I suppose she thinks this trip—Actually, I don't know what she thinks.”

“Are you going to tell her?”

Ian shook his head. “Not necessary. Unless you want to. And it's fine with me if you do.”

“Nah.” It would be their secret. Ben turned to his uncle and started to ask something. “Will you—” but couldn't finish.

“You can ask me.”

“Will you tell me about the accident?”

Something out the window, something unseen to Ben, seemed to catch Ian's attention. “I suspect you've heard it all before,” he said. “I still don't really know how it happened. It happened so fast. I was baby-sitting you at my house, and I had given you a little chair I had built and you were very excited about it, as I remember. But the legs were too long. And uneven. I told you I'd fix the chair as soon as your mom came to pick you up. She was late and you wanted your chair and so I took you down to my basement workshop. . . . I was a stupid, stupid—” He stopped himself. With the heels of his hands guiding the steering wheel, he raised his fingers in a gesture that said halt, enough.

He had said the words quickly, but Ben had heard them: “She was late . . .”

“I understand why your mom was mad at me,” said Ian, but Ben was barely listening, now. “. . . the misery I'm responsible for.”

They drove and drove. Neither spoke. Ian turned off the highway, and they threaded through a small town. The bubble of silence between them grew. Ian finally pierced it by announcing, “Here's the post office.”

The post office was a yellow brick cube, so small it seemed more like a playhouse than an official government building. Ian drew the car up to a curbside mailbox in front of it. He retrieved an envelope from behind the sun visor. Ben could tell that it was a credit-card payment, nothing more important than that. Ben also noticed the stamp, for some reason, as the envelope floated through the air in Ian's hand. The stamp had a peach on it. Which, for a moment, reminded him of Lynnie. And Kale. And the problem of the gift.

Ian dropped the envelope into the mailbox. He steered the car around, and they started back.

She was late
.

Was it true? He believed what he had heard, and why not? Ian had said these three particular words so plainly, without any hesitation.

What would have happened all those years ago if his mother hadn't been late? And how late had she been? Five minutes? A half hour?

Maybe nothing would have happened—no accident. Or maybe something worse. Or maybe nothing would have happened differently. There was no way to tell, no reason to speculate. One thing always leads to another, he thought.

He didn't think he could ask her about it. He pictured her crying or becoming silent or hating Ian more than ever. All the progress they had made wasted.

He could feel the pressure mounting behind his eyes. His throat closed over.

“Does the radio work?” Ben asked, blinking. He remembered Nina using it.

“Yeah. Sure,” said Ian. “Here.” He clicked the radio on. The dial was set on a classical station. “The choice is yours.”

Ben flipped the knob around until he found something he liked. He turned the volume up a bit. Up a bit more. Music filled the car all the way back to the house.

 

12

I
N ONE SMOOTH MOTION
, Ian took his sunglasses off and pushed them onto the top of the dashboard. “Thank you, Ben,” he said. He turned the engine off and struggled for a moment to remove the key from the ignition switch.

“You're welcome,” Ben replied, shrugging.

“We'll do the ocean
and
the mountains next time,” Ian told him. “Now that we can check the post office off our list.” He smiled; lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.

Standing outdoors in the strip of shadow beside the car, Ian extended his right hand. Ben took it in his and shook it firmly. And then, Ian reached out with his left hand. Caught unawares, Ben hesitated at first, then did the same. He couldn't remember ever having used his left hand to shake with before. It felt unfamiliar. The grasp broken, Ben curled his fingers tightly against his palms.

“Hey,” said Ian, “I almost forgot. You
are
a good artist. Your mother wasn't just bragging.”

“What do you mean?” Ben asked at once, his forehead creased.

“I found your sketchbook outside this morning.”

“Oh, God,” said Ben. “I forgot about it.” He hoped his uncle didn't think he was ungrateful.

“It was a little damp from the dew. I put it in my studio.” Ian added, “I didn't mean to snoop, but it was open to a wonderful drawing of the tree line and some clouds. Come on, I'll give it back to you.”

In the studio, Ben felt a rush of pride as he looked at the sketchbook open in front of them on Ian's workbench. The drawing
was
good. Ian flipped through the pages. “This is nice, too,” he commented, pointing to the detailed section of grass Ben had done right outside the house. “And this.” Now the sketchbook was open to a quick drawing of a gnarled apple tree. “You've captured it so well, and with very few lines. That's not an easy thing to do. And you already know how to vary the weight of the line. Some people never learn that.”

Ben could see Ian's sketchbooks on the large bookshelf on the far wall. There were dozens and dozens of them, one lined up next to the other in perfectly ordered rows. He started counting them, but it was too difficult; they were nearly all the same size and color, and became a blur.

“You can look at them if you want to,” said Ian.

“Really?” said Ben.

Ian nodded. “Let me help you.”

They looked at the sketchbooks together, taking random armfuls of them down from the shelf to the workbench and leaning over them, turning the pages.

“Wow,” said Ben. “You're a good drawer. The best I've ever seen. Even better than Ms. Temple, my last year's art teacher.”

“Thanks.”

One book was filled with drawings of leaves, nothing else. Another with only stones and rocks. Several were filled with sketches of furniture—tables, chests, stools, chairs. Ben found the two sketchbooks Ian had told him about previously, the ones that were entirely devoted to bark. In Ben's favorite sketchbook, page after page was covered with scenes of New York City. Tall buildings, crushes of people, pigeons, park benches, ships. There were also drawings of famous paintings that Ben recognized, and drawings of architectural details so ornate they seemed to be made up or exaggerated.

How could things so ordinary—pencil and paper—be used to create illusions so astonishing? It was almost magical to Ben what his uncle had done. In comparison, Ben now thought his drawings were amateurish, clunky. And yet, he felt inspired to draw. Maybe an artist was what Ben wanted to be when he grew up, after all—if only he could draw as well as Ian.

“How come you make furniture if you can draw like this?” Ben asked.

“Oh, I like building things best of all. I like working in three dimensions. And I like the fact that a piece of furniture is humble and functional in an everyday kind of way, but if you're good, it can also be a work of art.”

Ben was back to the sketchbooks, completely absorbed. “If I could draw like this . . .” His voice trailed off.

And then: a miracle. In the sketchbook before him was a drawing of branches. Initially Ben thought it was simply a pile of branches, a mound, but then he saw the opening, the door, and he saw the way the branches were woven together deliberately, and he saw the curve that was the roof. A hut. A house. It was a house made of branches.

“What is this?” Ben asked, excitement cracking his voice. “Did you make it?”

“Oh, that,” Ian answered, craning his neck to get a better look. “I did build that. Years ago, when I was living in California.” Ian turned pages to show a number of drawings of the same house. “At the time, I was working on a series of chairs made from branches. And, one day, I was off in some woods gathering branches I could use, when, on a whim, I decided to try to build a little house. I did it for the heck of it. It was fun to imagine people stumbling upon it by surprise as they hiked through the woods.” He seemed to delight in the telling. “I imagined them wondering if someone—or something—really lived in it. And maybe someone or something eventually
did
. I figured I'd never see it again, so I sketched it.”

“Was it hard to make?” asked Ben.

“No, not at all.”

“How big was it?”

“Oh, big enough for me to fit inside. I had to duck through the doorway, but I could sit or lie in it comfortably.”

Ben had more questions, and he asked them. (“Did you bury the ends of the upright branches in the ground to make it secure? Did you use a shovel? A cutter of some kind? String? Nails? How long did it take?” And most important, “Do you think I could build one?”)

“You could build one easily,” said Ian. “Why? What's up?”

“Oh, I just have a great idea,” Ben replied, encouraged. “Thanks to you.”

Ben's heartbeat quickened. He could picture it already, and clearly: a perfect house constructed of branches from the Deeters' tree, a perfect gift for the baby. Kale would have to love it. They would be using the tree, it could be fairly big, it would be a house. They could build it right over the stump, if they wanted to. It would be even better than the original gift. And this was something the baby could actually use someday—a secret place, a hideout. He couldn't wait to tell Lynnie.

“Would it be okay to borrow this sketchbook for a little while?” said Ben softly. “I promise to take good care of it.”

“It's the house you're interested in, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then here,” said Ian, as he slowly, carefully ripped one of the sketches from the book. “Yours.” He handed the piece of paper to Ben.

“Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“My pleasure.”

“Knock, knock,” said Ben's mother in a merry tone, a kindergarten teacher tone. She stood at the studio door, her hand curling around the door frame like a vine. “Private meeting? Or may I come in?”

“Enter,” said Ian.

Ben rushed toward her. “Mom, I've got to go to the Deeters'. This is extremely important. Please let me do this, and let me skip dinner if this thing that I need to do—which is a good thing—isn't finished. Trust me. Okay? Please?”

She gave him a look that was impossible for him to read.

“I'm helping them with their gift for the baby,” he whispered. “
Okay?
”

“Yes, go,” she told him, and reached out to touch his shoulder.

But he was gone.

His feet had wings. In what seemed like both an instant and an hour, Ben was standing on Lynnie's front porch explaining his idea in one long, gaspy run-on sentence. “. . . and it'll really work I think and Kale will forgive us I'm sure and this is a drawing my uncle did and we can use it as a guide,” he told her, pushing the paper at her, his hand unsteady. “. . . and if you've got clippers, a shovel, and string, we should take them with us even though Ian built his without anything but branches and we should start right away. . . .”

When he finished speaking, he looked at her, his eyes wide, expectant.

Lynnie, who had already been nodding and smiling for about a minute, said, “It's brilliant! You're brilliant. I'll just tell Grandma, and then we can go to the shed and get what we need.”

In another instant/hour, Ben and Lynnie were at the site, out of breath, but ebullient and ready to begin.

There were so many decisions to make. They decided not to build the house over the tree stump, but alongside it, so there would be more room inside. They decided to make the house long enough and wide enough and tall enough so that a few people could fit inside at once, so that Kale and Elka could stand up in it. They decided not to use the string to bind the branches together unless absolutely necessary.

They used the shovel to help with the task of burying the ends of the first branches in the ground to form the framework. “It looks like a mini-corral,” Lynnie observed when they had finished this part. She squeezed between two of the branches and pranced around the center in tight circles.

“You're funny,” said Ben, smiling. “I mean, in a good way,” he added quickly.

“I know.” Lynnie joined Ben by the pile of apple branches he was sorting through. “Back to work,” she said.

They worked and worked and worked. They clipped branches, varying the lengths as needed. Starting at the bottom, they wove the branches into the framework as best they could. Since some of the wood was brittle, it occasionally broke, and they had to use the string to tie the pieces together against the framework.

“This is kind of like weaving a big basket,” said Lynnie. “A big upside-down basket.”

The words
upside down
made Ben think of the baby, and he told Lynnie that the baby was breech and how Nina was trying to turn the baby. He told her about the ironing board, too.

Lynnie sat down, resting against the stump, as if considering this required taking a break. She said, “It seems like everyone has something going on in their lives that seems bigger than anything anyone else has going on in
their
lives. I didn't word that properly, but do you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I think so.”

“Sometimes the world just seems so big and full of problems.”