The Pillow Friend (9 page)

She caught up as her aunt was leaving the highway for an unpaved road that wound into the forest. The air was still hot, despite the shade, and smelled of pine needles, resin and dust.

“Why don't you have a car?”

“Can't afford one.”

“Oh.” She had known that Mary and Marjorie had grown up “dirt-poor” in the backwoods of Texas, raised by their grandmother after their feckless teenaged mother took off for parts unknown. Mary had left Camptown the day after she graduated from high school and hitchhiked to Houston, where she'd found a job as an assistant salesclerk and mannequin for Battlestein's. What Marjorie had done when her sister left, Agnes didn't know. She had assumed they'd left together, left their unhappy past behind forever, but here was her aunt, still poor, still living in the woods.

“Actually,” said Marjorie. “That is not, strictly speaking, true.”

“What?”

“Why I don't have a car. If I lived here all the time, I would. But I'd rather save my money for traveling, and in the cities where I like to be, New York or London or Paris, a car is a burden, not a necessity. When I'm out of the cities, when I come back here, I come to work, not to gad about. Being here is a sort of retreat, and I have to be very frugal. When the money runs out, back I go to the city to get a job.”

“What work are you doing here?”

“I'm writing my autobiography. Here, we take the right fork, remember that and you won't get lost when you come by yourself. The left fork takes you to the pond.”

“A pond? Can I go swimming?”

“Not by yourself.”

“Will you take me?”

“I'll try to make time.”

She had expected a Marjorie who was glad to see her, but this woman seemed as impatient and unforthcoming as her mother at her worst. In desperation she asked, “Are there any kids who live around here? Kids I could play with . . . maybe go swimming with . . . I mean.”

“I'm sure there must be some children in Camptown. I haven't noticed.”

“Your neighbors don't have any?”

“
These
are my neighbors.” She gestured at the surrounding trees.

The forest was quiet except for the monotonous, low, locust-hum that seemed the voice of the heat. A jay screeched overhead and she could hear a fluttering in the branches. She felt tired and thirsty. “Is it much farther?”

“You're not tired already?”

She was, already terminally tired and bored. She imagined the next two weeks without company, with nothing to look forward to but the next book, and dull despair settled on her like a smothering blanket. She wished she'd never come. At home, at least, the boredom was familiar and known, and cool, unlike these dim, stifling woods.

“When we get in we can have a good old talk about what you've been up to since I last saw you.” For the first time Marjorie's voice was kind. “Are you still mad about horses?”

“Horses?”

“That was all you could talk about the last time I saw you. Did I know how to ride, had I ever had a horse, could I talk your parents into buying
you
a horse. . . .” She laughed warmly. “I understand completely—I went through a horse-mad phase myself, but we were so poor I never had a chance.”

The closest Agnes had been to a horse was a ride on a weary Shetland pony tethered in a ring somewhere when she was about six. All she knew about horses had come out of books, and now she remembered that the last time she'd seen Marjorie she'd been in the midst of reading a series of books about a girl learning to ride and becoming a championship show jumper. It had been a brief, literary passion, and although she had occasional fantasies about owning a horse, she hadn't pursued it. If she'd really wanted it, her parents might have agreed to riding lessons. There was a stable with a riding school not far away—she knew a girl who went there. The truth was that she found this girl, like the specialized vocabulary surrounding riding, intimidating; the truth was, she was lazy. The fantasy of riding a horse like the wind, responsive to her every touch, was like the fantasy of being a brilliant dancer—they were what she imagined while riding her bicycle, or skipping around the living room to the strains of “Swan Lake.” She had no wish to spoil the fantasy with the real, hard work of ballet classes or riding lessons.

But she didn't want to say any of that to Marjorie, who was sounding more like her usual, interested self, so she said, “Yeah, sure, I'd love to have a horse, but where would I keep it? They're expensive to stable, and the backyard isn't big enough, as my dad keeps telling me, so I don't guess I'll ever have one.”

“Agnes. You can have whatever you want—have you forgotten that already?” Marjorie had stopped walking and now turned on her the full force of her brilliant blue gaze.

Agnes shrugged uneasily and continued walking.

“Hey, where are you going? We're home.”

She had been aware of a building on their right but hadn't paid any attention to it because it was an old empty shack. Now she gave a little half-smile. “Oh, sure. Right.”

“This is where I live.”

“You're kidding!”

Marjorie frowned and shook her head. “What's the matter?” She hoisted the bags out of the wagon and said, “Well, you can stay outside if you want, but I need something to drink, myself.”

She couldn't believe her eyes. An old, unpainted, weather-beaten wooden house with a tar paper roof, it looked as if it would fall down in the next high wind. How could that be home? The high windows were screened and curtained, but there were no other signs of civilization: no neighboring houses, no driveway or paved road, not even a mailbox or a telephone pole. But Marjorie was going inside, so Agnes went up the steps after her.

Inside, though, it was different, obviously lived in. It was a real home, decently if sparsely furnished, clean and tidy, with pale painted walls and wooden floors that smelled of the polish her mother used at home. It was a square box partitioned into four rooms of roughly the same size, with no connecting passages. The living room opened onto a bedroom on one side and the kitchen on the other, and the second bedroom was entered from the kitchen.

The two bedrooms were linked by a narrow bathroom.

“I had the bathroom put in,” said Marjorie. “When your mother and I were growing up the bedrooms were slightly larger, but we had to take our baths in the kitchen, and the toilet was in an outhouse.”

“Gross.”

“No. It was just the way things were. We might have been living in the last century, for all we knew. It wasn't really until we were in high school, taking the bus to Livingston, and meeting kids whose parents had cars, kids who lived in houses which had not only indoor plumbing but electricity and telephones, that we realized how much we were doing without.”

“You didn't have electricity?” Her mother had never told her—her mother never talked about her childhood.

“Still don't,” said Marjorie. “Don't look so horrified! This is an opportunity for you to find out firsthand how people used to live. Aren't you interested in history?”

“What will we eat?” She spoke plaintively because she was hungry; it was past her usual lunchtime.

“People did manage to eat before the invention of electric stoves. What do they teach you at your school? Did you think that before this century people went around eating fruit off trees, chewing on raw potatoes and sucking raw eggs? Don't worry, I wouldn't let your mother down, I'll give you one cooked meal a day. I hope you won't squawk about cold cereal for breakfast and sandwiches or salads for lunch. I don't use the woodstove in the summer, it makes this place too hot. I've got a hibachi for grilling things outside, and if I want to boil water for coffee or something there's a little camping stove which uses bottled gas. Are you hungry now? A peanut butter sandwich suit you?”

She nodded.

“Tang or tea?” She gestured at the two jars on the counter.

“Tang, please. Is there any ice?”

“Afraid not. No freezer. I do have an icebox in the cellar, to keep things cool, but there's no way I can make ice for drinks.” She turned away, taking a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread from a cupboard.

“You have a cellar?”

There was a tension in her aunt's posture which reminded her unhappily of her mother. “There is a cellar. You're not to play in it, understand me? It's out-of-bounds. You're not to go into the cellar unless I'm with you. Understand?”

“I was just asking.”

“And I'm just telling. You must never go down there by yourself.”

“Who said I wanted to? Don't worry, I won't. I'm not a baby.”

“It's nothing to do with your age. It's just—I'm sorry, Agnes. I'm not used to having anyone else here. I live by myself, I do things a certain way—I guess I'm set in my ways.”

It was true, she thought drearily. Marjorie hadn't wanted her here, not even for two weeks. Nobody wanted her.

“I'll try to keep out of your way.”

Marjorie brought their drinks to the table. “I knew you would understand. We're going to get along just fine. And you're not going to have such a bad time, you know. In fact, I think you may find yourself feeling very, very glad you came.” Marjorie leaned across the table toward her with a conspiratorial smile. “Let me tell you a secret about this place. This is a place where wishes come true. You can have whatever you want.”

Agnes felt her stomach twist painfully as she remembered the last wish her aunt had granted, the doll she had convinced herself could talk. But she'd been a little kid then. Marjorie ought to know she'd grown up and no longer believed in magic. But when she opened her mouth it was only to take a sip of her lukewarm orange drink. Maybe she didn't believe in magic, but she would like to be proved wrong. She would just wait and see, and sneer out loud later, when nothing happened.

“And here is a candle to light you to bed,” said Marjorie. It was a stubby white thing in a brown pottery holder. Although she wasn't usually afraid of the dark, Agnes found herself reluctant to go alone into her room with only this small light.

“Couldn't I have one of those lamps?” There were two hurricane lamps in the front room, one at each end of the desk. Marjorie shook her head.

“I'm afraid not. Reading and writing by candlelight sounds very romantic, but it's hell on the eyes. I'm going to stay up and work for a while, so I'll need all the light I can get.”

“So how am I supposed to read?”

“You'll just have to do the best you can. I'm sorry. Maybe you should go straight to sleep instead of trying to read—you look awfully tired. Tomorrow—I'll get another lamp for you, all right? So it's just this one night you have the candle. Don't wear such a long face. Pretend you're living a hundred years ago!”

“Playing old-fashioned” had been a favorite game of hers for years. But there was a difference between playing because you wanted to and being told to play. Anyway, she thought grimly as she washed herself in cold water by candlelight, a hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, this bathroom didn't exist.

She settled herself in the narrow, lumpy bed, and picked up
Agnes Grey,
her talismanic book. She had read it so often it shouldn't have mattered that she could not see the words on the page, and yet it did. It could not comfort her tonight. She set it on top of the bookcase beside the bed, next to the candle, and then took off her glasses and folded them carefully on top of the book. The strange shadows cast by the flickering candle combined with her nearsightedness to transform the room into a strange and threatening place, with weird figures crouching in every corner. She knew there was nothing there, but the half-glimpsed movements eroded her confidence. Darkness, without shadows, must be better. She turned her head and extinguished the candle with one puff of breath.

Darkness fell like a blow. She felt it rushing into her mouth, flowing up her nostrils. Closing her eyes made it no better; the darkness was still out there, smothering her. She fell onto her pillow and pressed her face into the itchy smell of old feathers. “I wish I hadn't blown it out,” she whispered.

The feathers made her sneeze. She turned her face away and sneezed again and her eyes popped open briefly. She blinked again. She had seen something. And then her eyes opened wide and she could see the room perfectly well in shadow and in light—in candlelight. The fat little candle in its pottery holder was burning away as if it had never gone out.

“This is a place where wishes come true.”
Despite the heat, she held herself tightly, and wished she had something more than one thin sheet to hide beneath. She lay on her back, eyes wide and unblinking, while all around the shadows danced and sneered at her.

She wasn't aware of having closed her eyes, but she must have slept, for all at once she was awake, in darkness left by the burnt-down candle, straining to hear the sound that had woken her.

A murmuring voice from another room, and now a steady, rhythmic creaking—bedsprings? The murmuring stopped and started, but the creaking went on and on. She tried to imagine it: her aunt in the grip of a dream, tossing and turning, turning and tossing. . . . She must have slept again, for the next thing she knew the room was light and it was morning.

They had bowls of cornflakes, slices of bread with apple butter, and orange juice in the kitchen. Agnes was in her nightgown, but Marjorie was already dressed, in the same long skirt with a different top—a plain white one, and obviously no bra underneath. This morning her face looked fuller, with fewer lines, more relaxed. As soon as she had finished eating she lit a cigarette.