The Pillow Friend (2 page)

Agnes wanted to please her aunt by agreeing, but she couldn't. Already, her pleasure was souring, turning desperate. It was always that way. She didn't understand why it happened, why she couldn't be happy with what she was given, but Marjorie's presence always made her greedy for more. Showing her need made Marjorie withdraw, which made Agnes feel even more needy, and she couldn't seem to learn to hide what she felt. “Why don't you ever spend the night? Why do you always go? You could sleep on the rollaway bed in my room with me. Please.”

Marjorie regarded her steadily out of blue eyes so much like her mother's, so unmistakably not. “Don't think I don't appreciate the invitation, but . . . Your father wouldn't like it. Or your mother.”

This was so unarguably true that Agnes couldn't say a word. She must have looked miserable, though, because Marjorie gave her an unexpectedly gentle smile. “I'm here now, sweetie. Enjoy. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.”

“What does that mean?”

“There's a saying in Spanish which roughly translates to ‘I give you a hug, and you ask for a squeeze!' It means to be grateful for what you've got. If you keep pushing and questioning and asking for more you're just setting yourself up for unhappiness. Which is silly, because it's so unnecessary. It's very easy to be happy. You can have whatever you wish for—as long as you accept the consequences.” She turned her head slightly to exhale a plume of smoke, and then stubbed out her cigarette.

“What would you wish for?”

“Oh, I've already had my wish.”

“Do you only get one?”

Her aunt considered. “Not necessarily. You can have as many as you like, as long as they aren't contradictory.”

“What's that?”

“Mutually exclusive. Two things that are so different they can't both exist at the same time. Like your mother. She wanted a family, wanted it more than anything. And she got it. She met your father, married him, had the twins, had you—but instead of being content with that she's gone on wishing she'd taken the other path she used to dream about. I suppose if she really was an actress now she'd be regretting the children she never had, and drinking too much or popping pills to soothe the loneliness. She got what she wished for but instead of being happy she keeps on looking that gift horse in the mouth, and dreaming about a career she is simply never going to have. She only makes a fool of herself, trailing around to every open call at the Alley.”

Agnes felt the slow, poisonous seep of guilt that came with any mention of her mother's thwarted career. She could have been, should have been, an actress, and would have been if she hadn't met and fallen head-over-heels in love with Mike Grey. Her children had heard that story often enough from their mother. And it wasn't the twins who had truly settled their mother's fate—she had been so young when they were born, only nineteen, she would still have been young enough to embark on a stage career after they'd started school. Except that by the time the twins were at school all day, baby Agnes was on the way, putting an end to her mother's career plans. But the dream had not died, and every now and then Mary Grey would vanish to attend an audition, sometimes at the Alley Theatre, sometimes for a movie being shot in the area. There weren't that many opportunities in Houston for an actress, particularly an inexperienced hopeful now past thirty, but Mary Grey built her hopes up around every single one. Her husband seemed indifferent, resigned to Mary's little hobby, the twins were sarcastic and embarrassed by their mother's fantasies of an acting career, but for Agnes each attempt and each failure felt like her own fault. She wanted her mother to be happy, she wanted to be absolved from the blame of ruining her mother's life, yet she was terrified of the great changes that would follow if Mary ever got a job. It would be bearable if she landed a role in a production at the Alley, but what if she became a movie star? What if she had to move to Hollywood? Would her father leave his job, would they leave their house and friends and life that they knew here, or would Mary abandon them? She suffered her fears in silence, there was no one she could confess them to; only Leslie, her best friend, knew, and Leslie thought it would be “neat” to have a mother who was a star like Doris Day or I Love Lucy or Beaver Cleaver's mother—“Of course your mom won't leave you. You'd all move to Hollywood and meet all those famous people. Maybe the Beaver would be your next-door neighbor!”

“Did my mom go to an audition today? Is that where she is now?” asked Agnes.

Marjorie gave a loose shoulder-roll of a shrug and picked a pill of wool off her black sweater. Although physically identical to Mary, she inhabited her body in a different way. All her gestures were easier, more relaxed; she didn't sit or stand as straight. Mary was a fastidious, fashionable dresser concerned with every detail and matching accessory, but Marjorie's wardrobe appeared to be limited to black sweaters, mannish white shirts, plain black skirts or chinos. She always wore flat-heeled shoes which made her seem shorter than her elegantly turned-out sister.

“There's a Hollywood scout visiting Houston this week. Mary read about it in Maxine Messenger's column and there was no stopping her. Your mother doesn't seem to realize that it's not about acting talent—we're talking about a Hollywood talent scout, not Lee Strasberg, and to those guys talent equates with sex appeal. Pardon my French.”

“What?”

“He's not looking for actresses, he's looking for starlets. Pretty, sexy young things. Your mother might have qualified back in 1949, but she's thirty-two now, and that's way too old for the meat market. Sure she's kept her figure and she looks really good for what she is, but what she is ain't a starlet. But try to tell her that. Easier just to let her go, say, sure, I'll look after Nessie for you.”

She felt a tingle when her aunt smiled and called her Nessie, she felt like someone different. Agnes didn't like her name, and “Aggie,” which was the name Leslie and the other kids at school used for her, was no better. It sounded like someone gagging. Her father sometimes called her Nes or Nessie, but her mother didn't like nicknames and said that Agnes was a lovely name. It meant “pure.”

“I wish,” she began impulsively, but her aunt cut her off.

“Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.”

Her tone was so sharp, as if Agnes was in real danger. She felt a thrill, and everything was bright and clear around her. Maybe this was it, at last, the moment like those in the stories she loved, when the fairy appears and wishes are granted. Maybe Marjorie was a fairy, or a good witch, able to work magic. It would explain so much that was mysterious about her.

“Will I really get what I wish for?”

“That's what I said.”

“I mean right now, if I wish.”

“If you really want it.”

“I do.” She thought of her dream, the way it had made her feel, how happy she had been. “I'd wish for my dream to come true.”

Marjorie smiled. “Of course you would. What is it?”

“I had a doll that was really alive. I was so happy, I felt so good, just looking at it. It was looking back at me, and it was just about to talk—it said something, I can't remember what, but it could really talk!” She stopped, frustrated by her inability to describe what was so important about the dream. It wasn't just the doll, or what it could do—in fact, she found it hard to remember what the doll had looked like, exactly. The special thing was the way the doll had made her feel. It was the feeling she wanted to describe to her aunt, the feeling she wanted to recapture. The important thing about the dream—she realized it now more clearly than before—was that moment when she and the doll had looked at each other, the closeness that had linked them just by looking, even before the doll spoke.

Despite her feeling of frustration, she saw that Marjorie was nodding, as if she understood exactly. She had a serious, intent expression on her face. “I had a doll just like that when I was little.”

Magic charged the air like electricity. “You did? Really? Exactly like in my dream?” Agnes stared in awe at her aunt, but Marjorie seemed to be looking inward, and did not meet her gaze.

“Mmmm. I called him my pillow friend, because I kept him beside me on my pillow, and that was when he talked to me, at night in bed. He told me the most wonderful stories.” She smiled to herself and turned aside to light another cigarette.

Agnes felt as if her heart would break with longing. “I wish—I wish I had a pillow friend!”

Marjorie took a long drag on her cigarette and said nothing. They were both silent, listening to the sound of Agnes' wish rising to wherever wishes were granted.

“Aunt Marjorie?”

“Yes?”

“Did you get what you wished for?”

“Of course.”

“What was it?”

“The only thing that matters. A life of my own.”

“But—everybody has a life.”

“Ah, but not everybody has their own life. How many people do you know who can actually live as they want to, do what they want to do when they want to do it?”

“Grown-ups do.”

“It looks like that to you. Do you really think your daddy likes his job so much that he goes into the office every day because he wants to? Don't you think he might rather spend more of his time traveling and reading; haven't you heard him say how much he'd like to live near the water and have a boat?”

Agnes felt a little wobbly. She knew her mother was unhappy, but her dad, too? Despite her fear that her mother might run off to Hollywood, given half a chance, she had never imagined the possibility that her father might leave them. . . .

“Hey, don't look like that! Your dad's happy enough—he made his choice, he got what he wished for, and he doesn't complain. Everybody has some regrets, including me. . . . Christ, me and my big mouth! I keep forgetting you're just a kid. Which reminds me. You haven't had your breakfast. Your mother would shoot me, letting you starve. What do you want? Eggs? French toast? My special pancakes?”

“What about my wish?”

“Hmmm?”

“When do I get it? When does it come true?”

“Oh.” Marjorie pursed her lips. “Well, when do wishes most often come true? You have a birthday coming up soon, don't you?”

“Not until May. I'll be seven in May.”

Her aunt smiled her mysterious smile. “Well, May sounds like a very good month for wishes to come true.”

The Greys lived in a two-story wood house on a corner lot on Rosemary Street, in a subdivision of Houston called Oak Shadows. When it was built, in the early 1950s, Oak Shadows was on the edge of the city, but Houston was booming, and by the time Agnes started school her neighborhood was considered a very desirable, central location. It was a quiet, residential enclave, the homes in their green, tree-shaded yards set well back from the street, with sidewalks for roller-skating, and little traffic to threaten the bicycle-riding children. The adults were all agreed that it was a good place to live, the ideal setting for a happy childhood.

For Agnes' seventh birthday on May 23 the weather was clear, hot and humid, as it had been all week. She went to school in the morning wearing her new red and white birthday dress with the flounced petticoat underneath. It was too heavy for the weather, but it would have been unthinkable to wear anything other than her birthday dress on her birthday. It was looking a little limp and bedraggled by the late afternoon, but she was still buzzing with excitement.

Her mother had tied red balloons and paper streamers to the branches of the big pecan tree behind the house and pushed the picnic table, covered with a festive cloth, beneath it. A pile of presents waited for her at one end of the table, and her mother was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to her birthday dinner as Agnes ran between the front and backyard, watching for the rest of the guests to arrive, despite pleas from her father to sit still.

It wasn't a large party, just the family, her father's parents who had come up for the day from Beaumont, and Leslie and her parents. When Leslie's family arrived, Mary Grey emerged from the kitchen with a pitcher of drinks and began directing the others to carry trays of food outside. “We might as well start with the cake, before our little birthday girl explodes.”

“Mom,” said Agnes urgently. “Mom, not yet. Marjorie's not here!”

Her mother's beautiful, made-up face tightened. “We can't wait on her, I told you, she probably won't come.”

“Did you send her an invitation?” Agnes had nagged her mother on this subject for weeks.

“Of course I did. But I haven't heard back. It might not have reached her. She could be anywhere. You know what she's like. She turns up when she feels like it. Family birthday parties aren't really her scene. If we have to wait on her, we could all starve.”

Agnes hadn't seen Marjorie since February, and not a day had passed without thoughts of her, the wish, the dream, the doll. She was certain she would get the doll for her birthday, and had imagined that Marjorie would bring it. But Marjorie had never said so, and there were other ways for wishes to come true. She did want to open her presents, so she shrugged and nodded at her mother, and let Leslie link arms with her and pull her away.

After the singing of “Happy Birthday,” as the flashbulb in her grandfather's camera popped, she blew out all seven candles with a single breath. Now she
had
to get her wish. She looked at the pile of presents and wondered which one held the doll.