The Pillow Friend (5 page)

“Oh, I know. That's okay. He's your pillow friend, I wouldn't expect him to talk to me, but can't I borrow him anyway? Just for tonight? Please?”

Silently, painfully, she handed the doll to her friend, who received him with reverent gentleness. “Oh, thank you. I'll be so, so careful. I'm sure he'll tell you that I was when you see him again tomorrow. Bye-eee!”

Agnes had thought she would lie awake for a long time that night, and she did. What she had not thought, had not even considered, was how comfortable she was, alone in her bed for the first time in over two months. For once she didn't have to strain to listen, didn't have to examine her own behavior for whatever she might be doing wrong, didn't have to struggle to go on hoping and feel her hopes dashed again. She fell asleep, surprisingly at peace.

“He talked to me!”

Agnes looked at the little doll which Leslie had thrust into her hand and the familiar painted face stared coldly back. They were in Leslie's room, and as soon as Agnes had come in, Leslie had bounced over to her and dropped her bomb. She looked from Myles' ungiving face to her friend's lively, excited eyes, searching desperately for a tease, not daring to display disbelief.

“Really?”

“It was so neat!”

“What did he say?”

“He told me a story. It was just like you said! I can't remember it exactly, but it was really exciting. It was about us, you and me, finding a treasure—jewels and everything, buried under a bush. We put them in the cubby so the grown-ups wouldn't take them away from us.”

It numbed her, this betrayal. Unless, she thought, Leslie was pretending, or had dreamed it—but that was something she did not dare to hint at, or Leslie would suspect that she had lied. “Neat. Um, look, I can't stay, I have to go now, my mom's taking me to the library.”

“I'll walk you halfway. Just wait for me to get dressed.”

“No, I really have to go. I told my mom I'd run straight back.”

“You going to come over later?”

“Probably.”

“You're not mad at me?”

“For what?”

“I don't know. Maybe something about . . . Myles? I know he's yours, and it was really nice of you to let me borrow him.”

“I'm not mad.” She knew she had no right to feel so murderously hurt. She was jealous, of course, but who was she mad at? It wasn't Leslie's fault if Myles had spoken to her. . . . “I'm just in a hurry. I'll see you later.”

“Alligator.”

“After while, crocodile.”

Halfway home, clutching Myles in one sweaty hand, she stopped to have another look at him. He looked the same as ever, like a cold, dead, antique doll. But she knew that wasn't so; she could still feel the reality, the life buried beneath the surface. The question was no longer why wouldn't he talk; it was why wouldn't he talk to her. Or maybe the question was, why couldn't she hear him? Leslie had heard one of Myles' stories—and it didn't even really matter to her.

It's me, thought Agnes. There's something wrong with me. Myles had spoken not to Mary but to her sister Marjorie; he had spoken not to Agnes but to her best friend.

She began to walk again, blindly and fast, her sandaled feet slapping the hot pavement as the unwelcome truth pounded through her brain.

He'd talk to me if I were different. If I was someone else, I could hear him.

She didn't notice that she had passed her own house until she had turned the corner. When she did realize, she just kept going. She had lied to Leslie. Her mother wouldn't mind if Agnes stayed out all morning.

Agnes kept walking without a plan in mind. She soon left the familiar, four-block area that was her regular territory, driven by the desire—so powerful it seemed a need—to be somewhere new and different. It was strictly forbidden to venture beyond the boundaries of Oak Shadows without an adult, and she didn't feel brave enough to defy that rule. She was supposed to ask permission if she wanted to cross The Boulevard, but her sisters were allowed, and she knew it was a much smaller sin. She was careful to look both ways before crossing, although at this time of morning, after all the adults with jobs had gone to work, there was no sign of a car moving on any of the quiet streets.

The first two streets she came to on the other side of The Boulevard looked familiar. There was even one house that was practically identical to her own, only the trim was painted gray instead of green. The sight of it brought Agnes up short. She stood and stared, fascinated, until a woman, a stranger, appeared at one of the large front windows to stare back at her. Then, unsettled by the idea of complete strangers living in a house so much like her own, Agnes hurried away.

Gradually, as each successive block took her farther from Rosemary Street, the atmosphere began to change, and Agnes was aware of more differences than similarities to the houses that she knew. This was the more expensive side of Oak Shadows. The houses and the lots were larger, and some of them had swimming pools.

Something—some sound in the hot, quiet air—caught her attention, and made Agnes stop. She looked around, but nothing moved. She raised her hot, sweaty hand and unclenched her fingers. She looked at Myles, and he looked at her.

It was as if she had been struggling along in a high, buffeting wind which had suddenly stopped. Coolness flowed over and through her. The eyes of the little doll were shining and his face was sharply alive, intelligent, knowing. There could be no mistake about it. He had just spoken—the words had been muffled by her hand. She waited, holding her breath, for him to speak again.

She began to feel dizzy. She broke their eye contact and breathed again as she looked up at the nearest house. It was large, Southern plantation-style, with a second-story verandah supported by white pillars. Flowering magnolias and other glossy-leaved trees and bushes dotted the immaculate green lawn. There was a red-brick path which began a few inches from her feet and led up to the front porch.

She suspected—and then she
knew
—that the house was significant. It wasn't by accident Myles had broken his silence on this spot; there had been good reason for it. She looked at him again, sharply, to see if he would confirm her thoughts. He made no sign, but that didn't matter. She knew she was right, and she knew what he wanted her to do.

Slipping the little doll into the pocket of her shorts, she walked up to the front door. It was unlocked, as she expected, so she walked in.

The front hall was elegant and spacious, high-ceilinged and with a thick, beige carpet underfoot. Framed prints hung on the pale walls, progressing up the wide staircase. Agnes stepped forward, toward the staircase, and began to climb. She felt excited, tinglingly aware of her own disobedience even as the reason for it remained a mystery. Words, a jumble of broken sentence fragments, swirled in her mind, but none of them explained what she was doing. The house did not feel empty, but she made her way safely upstairs without encountering anyone.

The first room she looked into was a bedroom, decorated in shades of pink and cream, with a canopied, four-poster bed, a pink Princess telephone on the marble-topped table beside it. Impressionistic pastel drawings of ballerinas adorned the walls; the curtains, like the bedspread, were thickly flowered. There was a large, gilt-framed mirror on one wall, below it a dressing table, its glass surface covered with rows of tiny perfume bottles, each one different, more perfumes than she'd ever seen in one place outside a drugstore counter. She was briefly tempted to open and sample a few, but resisted the urge—that wasn't why she was here—and continued down the hall to check out the other rooms.

There was a room in yellow and white, with twin beds, white-painted wicker furniture and flower prints on the walls, and what appeared to be the master bedroom, full of dark, heavy furniture she assumed were antiques, with a connecting bathroom. There was also a sewing room and another bathroom. There was nothing that looked to her like a child's bedroom, nowhere she felt at home. For a few seconds, standing in the upstairs hall of a strange house, Agnes was scared, but then she felt the weight of Myles in her pocket, against her hip, and remembered she wasn't alone. She took him in her hand, and then she could move again.

Back along the hall to the white and yellow bedroom. If it didn't feel like hers, at least it didn't feel like it belonged to anybody else. She took off her sandals, pulled back the coverlet on one of the beds, and settled Myles onto the pillow. Then she lay down with her head beside him.

“Are you awake?”

Agnes surfaced groggily. She expected her mother, but when she opened her eyes she saw a strange lady, plump and blond, her painted face pushed far too close to her own.

She gave a yelp and wriggled to try to escape. Something knocked against her head: Myles. She grabbed him and held on tight to the one familiar thing in this terribly strange place.

“Do you know where you are, dear?” said the strange lady. Beyond her, Agnes saw another person, a black woman in a white uniform. “Can you tell me your name and where you live?”

Don't talk to strangers.
That ritual admonition had been drilled into her so regularly that now it rose up and blotted out everything else. She shook her head. She had no idea where she was, or how she had come to be here, surrounded by strangers, but she knew that strangers were dangerous. She would never accept candy from them, get in their cars, or answer their questions.

The woman sighed. “Come on, sweetheart, you must know your own name! You're a big girl. . . . How about your phone number, so I can call your mother and tell her where you are?”

When they tried to lure you into their cars, strangers might pretend they knew your mother. Agnes wouldn't let herself be fooled. She set her mouth firmly.

“I'm sure she doesn't live in any of the houses on our street—I've never seen her before, have you, Jewel?”

“No, Ma'am.”

“Where do you live? Were your parents visiting someone nearby? Did you wander off and get lost?”

But Agnes wasn't talking, and after a while the stranger gave up trying to win her trust. She sighed and stood up. They were still both on the bed, Agnes having refused to go anywhere with the strange woman. “I guess I'd better call the police. Jewel, please stay with her, all right?”

It had to be a trick. Agnes had learned in school that the police were there to help protect children against strangers. If a stranger bothered you, you could always go to the police for help.

Jewel sat down on a white wicker chair, looked at Agnes and shook her head. “You in trouble now,” she said. “The police. Mmm, mmm, mmm. You don't tell them where you live, they put you in jail.”

Although she was desperately thirsty, as well as hungry, Agnes refused all offers of food and drink. She asked to go to the bathroom and, when she was alone in the small room, drank water from the tap.

The police arrived, two men in uniform, and Agnes told them her name and address as soon as they asked, aware of the strange lady's exasperation.

“And how did you come to be in Mrs. Carter's house? Did somebody bring you here?”

“No, I walked.”

“Did you knock at the door?”

She shook her head. “No. I just walked in. It wasn't locked.”

“Had you been here before? Do your parents know Mrs. Carter?”

“No.”

“Well, why did you go inside like that? Do you usually go into strange houses?”

“It didn't feel strange.” She hesitated. She couldn't tell them about Myles; even if she did it wouldn't explain what she'd done. “I thought I knew it; I think I recognized it.” That, at least, approached the truth of what she had felt.

One of the policemen said to the other, “There's a house on Pine Shadows looks sort of like this one.” He looked at Agnes. “Maybe this house looked like one where your friends live?”

She nodded uncertainly.

“But why did you go to sleep?” asked Mrs. Carter.

“I was sleepy,” she said simply, and was surprised when they all laughed.

Her parents concluded that she'd suffered from sunstroke. She lost her allowance for a week as punishment for crossing The Boulevard without permission, by herself, but the much greater sin, of going into a stranger's house, went unpunished. Probably because they couldn't understand why she would walk into a strange house and fall asleep, her parents interpreted her behavior as illness. She had stayed out in the hot sun too long, lost her way, and then, feeling dizzy, had entered a house that seemed familiar to ask for help. Inside, feeling worse, she had stretched out on a bed and fallen asleep.

Agnes knew that it hadn't happened like that, but she never contradicted her parents' story. She wasn't entirely sure herself why she had done it. She'd had some notion that in another place Myles would speak to her as he had spoken to Marjorie and to Leslie. Maybe she was trying to find a special place where magic could happen, or maybe she had thought that in a different house she would be a different person. She was home again now in the same house, still the same person, but what she had done had made a difference. Finally she had made contact with Myles, and she was certain he would speak to her.

But that night was the same as every other night, despite her certainty. Myles looked again like a lifeless doll, and he did not speak to her as she lay awake in bed while the house around them settled into silence as everyone else fell asleep. Finally she, too, drifted toward sleep, and as she drew closer to that far shore she thought she heard someone whispering.