First Came the Owl (10 page)

She told the whole story.

Ma-jah even smiled at the dwarfs' song.

Finally, Snow White lay in her coffin.

When the owl cutout flew in and swooped down toward Snow White, Ma-jah's breath hissed in. She was not looking at the puppet but at the shadow on the wall.

“Owls are bad luck,” she whispered.

“I don't think so. Really! This is the owl that came to bemoan Snow White. It feels
sorry
for her.” Nita moved so the shadow was not on the wall. Still, Ma-jah turned her head away.

“No, don't,” said Nita urgently. “Listen! And then came the raven, but at last came the dove. And it's a real mystery, too,” Nita went on, “because I saw a terrific snowy owl, and Petrova and I even banded it! And I found a black feather on the floor to point the way for Snow White—maybe it was a raven feather. But we haven't seen the dove.”

Nita's voice died away. She remembered the dove's sad call that almost made her cry when Anne imitated it. Ma-jah had talked, but now Nita was afraid she would slip back into silence, like a fish that came to the surface and then sank down again, back into the deeps.

Nita couldn't help it, she felt so sad that she heard her own voice whisper, “I wish you would come home.”

Ma-jah looked at Nita. She didn't turn away. She didn't close her eyes. Then she said, in the most normal voice, as if she had never had a problem in the world, “The only doves I remember in the Landing live under the railroad bridge in the ferry parking lot. Doves … are pigeons.”

Nita gave a little snort of laughter. “And no one can park their car in that part of the lot because the birds are so messy. I hope that pigeon is not going to mess up Snow White's nice plastic coffin.”

Ma-jah's brown eyes looked into Nita's. Was there a twinkle of laughter in her eyes for just a second?

“I'll get the dove to sit near my enemy, Henry,” Nita said. Her smile grew bigger. “My enemy, the Prince.”

Then Ma-jah leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes.

“I think she's going to sleep,” said Mrs. S. quietly. When had she crept in? Mrs. S. beckoned to Nita, who tiptoed out into the hall, carrying her owl puppet.

“That was really nice. I bet your mom loved it.”

“Did you hear her talk? She talked to me!”

“That's wonderful,” Mrs. S. said, and squeezed Nita's arm.

“I think she was even trying to cheer
me
up. So, can she come home now?”

“Oh, the doctor will have to decide.”

Nita looked back at Ma-jah's door. Ma-jah was still in there, stuck in her glass coffin, but at least now she had talked through the breathing holes.

Mrs. S. and Nita drove through the dark night back to Maushope's Landing.

“Do you think they'll let her come home soon?” Nita asked again. “Do you think she'll come to the play?”

“Well, it would be nice.” But Mrs. S. didn't say, “Yes, of course.”

As they came into town, Nita could see the flash of the lighthouse. Suddenly she longed for her own room, for Dad polishing his shoes, and the smell of curry coming from the kitchen. Maybe soon she could be back there.

When they got to the Stillwaters' house, Nita rushed past Bill and Petrova, who were working on the owl model at the card table. She hurried up the stairs and flopped down on the end of Anne's bed.

“Guess what? Mom talked!”

“Oh, Nita, that's so nice. What'd she say?” Anne put her finger in the orange fairy-tale book to hold her place.

“She was scared of the owl for a second, but she made a joke about the dove! She said they're like the pigeons under the railroad bridge, the ones that make such a mess.”

Anne laughed. “So that's the famous dove.”

“I'm going to make the dove sit over Henry in the play.”

“Good idea. And then in real life, we'll be like the wicked queen and say, ‘Oh, Henry, wouldn't you like to take a nice walk with us, under the railroad bridge?' Anyway, I'm glad you're here. Dad and Petrova are being awful.”

“What did they do?”

“Oh, they made me do math for hours. And they said mean things about my rock report because I found out some neat stuff about the native Americans, the first people who lived around here. There are stones that they
carved,
but Dad and Petrova call them ventifacts and say the wind did it.
Plus,
they laughed when Henry called up.”

“
Henry
called up? On the phone?”

“Well, how else would he call? Oh, sorry, Nita, I'm not mad at
you.
” Anne bounced up in bed and the orange fairy-tale book fell on the floor. “You should've seen Petrova dancing around, saying, ‘Annie has a boyfriend, Annie has a boyfriend.' And Dad laughed! I hate them. And anyway, Henry's
your
stupid prince.”

“He is not. Oh, you mean in the play,” said Nita. “Why did he call?” Henry was a thing that happened in school, not a person who called you on the phone.

“His mother wants to measure for our costumes. She's going to come to school tomorrow.”

Nita's worlds shifted around a little more. Now there was a new world called “Henry's house.” “Where is it? I mean, where does he live?”

“You know the vegetable stand on the road to Maushope? In there. They've got a farm, and Dad says they're the last of their kind. Maybe that's good, considering they've got Henry.”

“Do they grow mangoes?”

“I don't think mangoes grow in Massachusetts.”

By this time, Nita had on her pajamas and her bed was all arranged: stuffed cat, two pillows. She went to brush her teeth, then hurried back and jumped under the covers.

From the attic came a series of lonely, haunting cries.

“The owls are calling,” said Anne. Nita imagined the owls soaring in the dark night over the Landing, their soft feathers protecting them from the cold, their sharp eyes seeing everything.

Anne turned out the light. The black shadows of the night took over the bedroom, and Nita drifted off.

Seventeen

T
HE NEXT DAY
, Nita tried to look up owls in her book about Thailand, but the word
owl
was not in the index. She couldn't find
birds
either. But she still felt a strange sense of already knowing some of the things in the book. She remembered more and more Thai words and was copying some of them out of the book for her report when Brenda came back into the classroom and said, “Hey, Nita, I think I saw your Dad.”

Nita shot out of her chair. “Where?”

“In his car, out front.”

Mrs. Sommers looked at the girls with a question in her eyes.

“Can I go see if my Dad is out there?” Nita asked softly. The teacher nodded.

Nita flew down the old wooden stairs and out into the playground. He was there! She raced down the walk and hopped into the passenger side of Dad's old blue car. He hugged her hard with one arm. “Oh, Daddy, you came back.”

“Hey, I wasn't gone that long. Do you think your teacher will spring you a little early?”

“Six days
is
long,” said Nita, but she ran back to ask Mrs. Sommers and get her coat. Dad's coming home felt like snow in July or a surprise party. Like the owl, he just flew into her world and made it seem so different. “Where are we going?” she asked as she got back in the car.

“I thought we'd go out to our house and see the new construction you and Pudge got going while I was out of your hair.”

Was he pleased? Nita couldn't tell. “Did he tell you about the Roots Committee?”

“Yes, and he told me about some other things, too. Seems like you've been very busy while I've been gone.”

They drove along Water Street and turned down toward the beach. Nita wondered if he knew Bill was angry at him.

As they got closer to their house, they could see the new window bulging out of the white side wall. A man on a ladder was painting the trim.

“Hi, Frank,” said Nita's dad.

“Hello, Lieutenant Orson, sir,” said Frank.

Inside, the whole kitchen was torn up. Nita stumbled over some cans of paint.

“Putting in that window turned out to be more complicated than Pudge thought,” said Dad. “They found some water damage in the walls. Then they decided to paint the kitchen and the living room while they're at it.”

Nita felt confused. This is what you wanted, isn't it? she said to herself. For Dad to come home, for us all to come home. But now, even if they all did come home, it would be different. Better? Or just different? And it smelled funny because of the paint, so it seemed even less like home than when she had been there with Petrova.

Dad was looking kind of unhappy, too, not the way he had when he first picked her up. “So, we can't stay here. I guess I'll stay down at the base and you can stay with the Stillwaters' for a few more days. Marian says it's fine, she loves having you. Okay, kiddo?”

“No, it's not okay,” said Nita.

Dad looked at her in surprise.

“I mean, I thought Mom could come home when you got here. I thought…” She couldn't go on.

“I'll go see her tonight.” Dad had his old worried look again.

“She talked to me. She
is
better,” said Nita firmly, as if this would make it true.

“I know. They told me on the phone, but she can't come home just yet. You have to be patient, Nita. We want her to get
really
better. We don't want her to slip back again.”

Nita tried to smile.

“That's my girl,” said Dad. “I tell you what. Let's go get a cup of coffee, I mean, some ice cream or something. I'll tell you about the cruise.” Nita leaned against Dad in the car and pretended he had never been away and that Mom was waiting for them at home.

They stopped at the Docksider on Water Street.

Nita sat down at the sunniest table and said, “I'll have a banana split.”

“I thought you hated your flavors all mixed up.” Dad looked surprised.

“I did? I guess I'm different now,” said Nita slowly. When her banana split arrived, in a dish shaped like a boat, she took a bite each of the chocolate ice cream with marshmallow sauce, the strawberry ice cream with pineapple sauce, and the vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Then she took a bite of banana. Dad had coffee and mud pie while he told her about the new navigation system of the
Islandia.
Then he said, “So what have you been doing?”

“Well,” she said, “Petrova and I banded the snowy owl. Remember the snowy owl I told you about? We used my earmuffs for bait and the owl thought they were a rabbit! So he swooped down and we caught him. Petrova had this great trap that doesn't really hurt the owls, it just…”

Nita went on and on with her story until Dad finally said, “Whoa, slow down, I've never heard you talk so much in your whole life.” But he laughed as he spoke, so Nita could see he really
liked
having her go on and on this way.

She kept talking to keep Dad listening, but finally even her enormous banana split was finished. Dad paid the bill, and when they came out of the restaurant, they walked up and down the street looking in windows, as if they were on vacation or it was a holiday.

And then Nita saw it again. The sun quilt. It glowed in the afternoon light and lit up the whole street. A huge burst of color, made of hundreds of tiny scraps. “Look!” breathed Nita. It was even more wonderful than the first time she saw it. Dad stopped in his tracks.

“That's amazing,” he said. “Each scrap is separate, and yet they make a pattern.”

The quilt glowed in the late afternoon light like a thousand hummingbirds, like a multicolored sun.

“Maybe … maybe,” said Nita, “we could buy it for Ma-jah.”

“Oh, it's probably much too expensive. And why are you calling her Ma-jah?”

“Because I'm going to speak Thai to her. You know about the Roots Committee.”

“If only she hadn't taken that trip ho—back to Thailand.”

“See, you almost said ‘trip
home
'! Oh, Dad, let's just
ask
about the quilt. If we put it on her bed, then it won't be white like a freezing snow bank, but a promise of the sun coming back. Maybe then she'll remember that if she feels bad, she could get better, the way the days get longer and the winter ends and the sun gets warmer. Then she'll
like
being home.”

Dad looked at her. “Well, you're … maybe this acting … honestly, Nita, I've never heard you talk like that before. But”—he held up his hands—“I get your drift.” He opened the shop door.

“It's expensive,” said Dad, looking at the back of the quilt and fingering the tag. Then he peered around to see the front of it again.

“Everything here is handmade,” said the woman at the counter.

Nita held her breath and just looked at Dad, silently pleading, almost begging him. Please? said her eyes.

“Aye, aye, sir! Let's do it!” said Dad, laughing at Nita's spaniel look.

“A wonderful present,” said the salesperson. She took Dad's check. “Thank you very much.”

Nita beamed at her. “Thank
you,
and could you tell the person who made it how much we like it?”

“It was a group of people, actually, in a handicapped workshop.” She smiled back at Nita. “They're up in Maushop and they always make such beautiful things, I just—”

“Thanks. Good-bye,” said Dad, as if he were a bit tired of all this chatting. So who's impatient now, thought Nita.

“What a great idea, Nita,” he said, squeezing her arm as they walked back out onto Water Street. “She'll love it. For the first time, I feel like she really will come home.”

Nita smiled back at him. Now, she thought, maybe he will stay home, too.