Things Invisible to See (20 page)

Everybody else left their doors open. He carried their groceries into the kitchen, collected the ration stamps and tokens they left for him, and put away the perishables. He knew their kitchens as well as he knew his mother’s. Mrs. Curtis kept seashells above the toaster. Mrs. LaMont called out, “Is that you, Willie?” and liked to order him around: put the Spam over here, the Dreft over there. Mrs. Johnson’s kitchen was always spotless; her maid bleached the enamel on the icebox and the stove.

Today he was surprised to find her kitchen a mess: dirty dishes in the sink, a burnt pot on the stove, a dishcloth on the floor. No doubt the maid was sick, and Mrs. Johnson was fending for herself. He put away the milk and eggs and picked up the dishcloth and found a twenty dollar bill. Without a moment’s hesitation, he slipped it into his shirt pocket, hoisted the empty delivery box to his shoulder, and closed the door behind him.

T
HE PARTY WAS FOR
him. That’s what Aunt Helen had said when she called for him at school. But it was also for Clare, she explained, who needed some excitement to take her mind off Ben. No letters from Ben had arrived in a long time.

“Is it mostly my party or mostly Clare’s?”

“It’s a party for your birthday. Who would you like to invite?”

Davy hesitated.

“You and my mom.”

“Don’t you want any children at your party?”

There were lots of children in his kindergarten class, but he did not know any of them very well. He never saw them except in school. Probably they lived far away. And there were no children in this neighborhood except himself. Perhaps Aunt Helen hadn’t noticed.

“No, just you and my mom.”

“We should have someone besides the family, or it won’t seem like a party. Now, what would you like to do?”

He looked puzzled.

“Games,” Aunt Helen said. “At Clare’s birthday parties we used to play Pin the Tail on the Donkey and Fish. Everybody loved Fish. You got a fishing pole and you put your pole over the top of the big screen and waited for a nibble. I was hiding on the other side of the screen. I put a present on the end of each line.”

Davy did not like the thought of everyone getting presents. The presents might run out before his turn came.

“Will I get a present, too?”

“Oh, you’ll get lots of presents. You’ll get presents from everybody.”

“Will I get springy shoes?”

“You mean those things in the magazine?”

He nodded. Every night he saw himself wearing those silver shoes with bedsprings on the bottoms, leaping over fences, fleeing Nazi spies, like the boy in the picture.

“Honey, things you send for from magazines never work right. But you’ll get lots of presents.”

“I want lots of presents,” said Davy, thinking of the springy shoes.

“When I was little,” said Aunt Helen (Aunt Helen little? he could not imagine it), “we played games outside. We played Red Rover, Red Rover. I wonder if children still play that one?”

“I want to play hearts,” said Davy.

“What?”

“I want to play hearts. I want to play with Uncle Bill and Uncle Bill’s wife.”

He remembered with pleasure an afternoon when his mother and Bill and Bill’s wife came to visit him. He was in bed with asthma, and Bill brought him a deck of cards and told Davy to call him Uncle Bill, and Davy did, but his wife didn’t say to call her Aunt Heidi, so he just called her Uncle Bill’s wife.

And Uncle Bill showed him how to play hearts. Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen and his mother sat around his bed and they all played hearts, while Uncle Bill’s wife looked out of the window. The third-floor room was small and crowded, and he felt important and powerful, and he wished they would all be happy. Uncle Bill’s wife was not happy. She paid no attention to the game but gazed with great interest at the snow falling on the garden next door.

That evening at dinner Aunt Helen said, “He wants to play hearts, and he wants to invite Bill and Heidi,” and his mother said, “That’s all right. Heidi always comes along,” and Davy wondered if he had asked for the wrong thing.

“I don’t know why kids don’t play Red Rover anymore,” said Aunt Helen. She was using her special cheerful voice, but it did not cheer Clare, who ate in silence and looked on the verge of tears. Helen had warned him not to talk about Ben or the war. When he asked her why, she reminded him that Clare had not heard from Ben for a long time and was worried. And they must all be extra nice to Clare, even though it wasn’t her birthday.

On the morning of the party, Aunt Helen vacuumed the dining room and opened the linen drawer in the sideboard and asked him, “Do you like this purple tablecloth? Or this ruffled blue one?” She had hardly any plain ones. She bought them white and dyed them when they got stained. Davy wanted a paper Mickey Mouse tablecloth, but she had none, and he did not want to hurt her feelings. So he said “Blue” and wished she could make up her own mind and didn’t have to ask him about every little thing.

He wanted to run upstairs and see how his mother was getting on, but Aunt Helen said she was getting on just fine and she would be down very soon. When Aunt Helen went into the kitchen, Davy sneaked up to the third floor and saw the bathroom door closed and his mother’s Madame Du Barry box open on her bed and a dress that looked like a nightgown hanging on the lamp—it was made of blue floating stuff, and you could see right through it, and it had no sleeves—and as he was thinking how nice it was of his mother to go to all this fuss for him, she put her head out of the bathroom door and hollered, “You wait downstairs with Clare.”

But Clare was in her room, making a present for him, and she couldn’t let him in till she’d finished it, and Aunt Helen was setting the table, so he sat on his little stool in the kitchen beside Grandma, who sat on her big stool and scrubbed the roasting pan, which was perfectly clean.

“It’s my birthday,” Davy told her.

She looked astonished. “How old are you?”

“Six.”

“Already six!” She put down the pan. “Do you want to play ‘Spin the Knife’?”

“Oh, yes.”

He had never seen Grandma play anything. She took the carving knife from the wooden rack which Aunt Helen had hung well out of his reach, and she put it on the kitchen table between them.

“If it points to you, you can make a wish.”

She gave the knife a flick and it turned, faster and faster, a knife no longer but a spoked wheel, and every spoke flashing at him, and they both held their breath and watched to see whom it would choose. And Aunt Helen came into the kitchen.

“Davy!” she shrieked. “You know you aren’t to touch the knives. That knife could cut your finger
right off.
” She grabbed the knife and slipped it back into the rack. “I don’t know
why
you can’t mind. I just don’t know
why
you
can’t
. I do so much for you.”

“Grandma said we could play Spin the Knife,” whispered Davy.

“Go into the dining room and sit there till the guests arrive. I don’t need another Eddie O’Toole.”

He sat at the beautiful table, ready to weep. Such things should not happen to him on his birthday, and he was hurt that Aunt Helen would think him as bad as Eddie O’Toole, the little boy who had come long ago to one of Clare’s parties and plunged his fist into the cake. Eddie O’Toole was now grown up, and in the army maybe, or dead. Davy would never forget Eddie.

“Someone’s at the door,” said Aunt Helen. “Go answer it.”

There stood Uncle Bill and Uncle Bill’s wife, all dressed up, and Uncle Bill’s wife had on her blue dress made of floating stuff you could see through, just like his mother’s, but she was fatter than his mother. And she wore nice perfume, the same as his mother’s only stronger. And she curled her hair like his mother did, but frizzier. Davy was so pleased he couldn’t think of a thing to say, not even when they handed him a present, and Aunt Helen had to nudge him and whisper, “Don’t forget to say thank you.”

“Thank you,” said Davy.

He wanted to tear off the gold wrapping paper right away, but Aunt Helen said no, not till his mother came, not till Clare came. And when he wanted to run upstairs and hurry her, Aunt Helen said that they must be patient with Clare and not upset her.

He waited till everyone had gathered in the living room, and then he sat on the sofa and opened his presents. And after every present they said “Oh” and “Ah” and told him it was just what he wanted. There was a teddy bear with an iron box in its stomach so you could feed it crackers (“to replace that knotted towel he takes to bed every night,” Aunt Helen whispered to his mother) and a book called
Copy Cat
from his mother with very nice pictures of a kitten, a cow, a duck, and a dog, all of them orange, which was not the right color (if he colored a cow orange in his coloring book at school, the teacher always told him that was not the right color), but he liked it all the same. Clare gave him a box of stamps and envelopes and coupons cut from magazines which you could send away and get free samples of things in the mail, and a little book of pictures she’d drawn in which she’d hidden the faces of animals. Under each picture she’d written how many faces he could find: ten foxes, nine raccoons, five birds.

He was coming to the end of the presents, and he glanced around to see if anyone had given him the springy shoes, if they were hanging up somewhere, or if Aunt Helen had them in a box hidden behind her, but there was only one present left. On the white bow, something jingled. Davy picked it off.

“That’s from me,” said Uncle Bill. “It’s a keyring.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Aunt Helen. “What’s on it?”

“The Chevy insignia. I got it when I took my car for a tune-up.”

“Isn’t that nice,” said Aunt Helen.

“I
bought
my present,” said Uncle Bill’s wife.

“What is it?” asked Uncle Bill.

“Open it, Davy,” said Clare.

A wild idea overtook him—that now, in this last box, he would find the springy shoes, though he knew the box was much too small. He tore off the paper, which Uncle Bill’s wife gathered and folded into a square and then a smaller square, and he lifted the lid and took out a tiny wooden toaster.

“Thank you.” He was afraid he would cry.

“Isn’t that nice,” said Aunt Helen.

“Press down the lever,” urged Uncle Bill’s wife.

He did so, and a piece of cardboard toast popped up. It had writing on it.

“Read it so we can all hear,” she said. She looked almost happy.

Shame flooded him. He did not know how to read so many words together. He searched for something friendly, a “the,” an “and.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Uncle Bill’s wife asked.

“No,” said Davy.

Nobody spoke for a few minutes.

“I was taught to show my appreciation for a present,” said Uncle Bill’s wife, “when I
got
a present. And I didn’t get many.”

“He can’t read yet,” explained his mother. “He’s only six.”

“I could read when I was five,” said Uncle Bill’s wife. “I learned on the canned goods in my mother’s cupboard.”

“Clare, you read it,” said Aunt Helen.

Clare read it. Her voice trembled. “‘“And now there abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” —First Corinthians, Chapter 13, Verse 13.’”

“It’s a sort of prayer,” said Uncle Bill’s wife.

“A prayer toaster!” exclaimed Aunt Helen. “Why, isn’t that the darndest thing you ever saw!”

“I never saw one before,” said Clare.

“Neither did I,” said Uncle Bill.

“It has seven prayers and they’re all different,” said Uncle Bill’s wife. “I got the Protestant version.”

Davy wondered what else the toaster could produce besides prayers. As soon as everybody left, he would ask it for something better, like a stick of gum. The toaster was not such a disappointment after all.

“I believe I like this present best,” said Davy.

Uncle Bill’s wife smiled at him.

“Let’s go into the dining room for the cake,” said Clare and wheeled her chair toward the door. Grandma was sitting at the head of the table, still scrubbing the roasting pan. They had forgotten all about her.

“Grandma, you can put that pan away now,” said Aunt Helen. “We’re having cake.”

Uncle Bill’s wife gave Grandma a pitying look that said: You poor woman, used by your children, worse than a slave.

Grandma put the roasting pan under her chair and Davy sat at the opposite end of the table in Hal’s chair and Aunt Helen turned out the lights in the dining room and vanished into the kitchen. Davy listened eagerly for her return.

“She’s lighting the candles,” said Clare.

A light gleamed in the doorway and the cake appeared, wearing its little crown of stars, six flames for him to blow out and wish on, and his mother started to sing “Happy Birthday,” and Clare joined in, lower and louder, and Uncle Bill’s wife trilled over them all in her piercing soprano, and Davy was overcome with the burden of their love.

“Make a wish!”

“Don’t tell it!”

“Make a wish for Clare,” said Aunt Helen.

“Davy, you wish for whatever you want,” said Clare.

I wish I may get those springy shoes.

He blew. Five flames winked out forever and set up aimless trails of smoke. One flickered and came to life again. He blew once more, sure he had it this time, but again it burned brightly.

“Bill, did you sneak one of those trick candles on the cake?” demanded Uncle Bill’s wife.

“That time didn’t count, honey.” His mother snatched the candle off. “Blow again and make your wish.”

But he had already blown out all the candles except the trick one, and Aunt Helen was turning on the lights and telling Uncle Bill’s wife how she served plum pudding with brandy sauce (you soak a sugar lump in alcohol and light it and it’s simply spectacular), and Uncle Bill was handing Davy the carving knife.

I don’t know why you can’t mind. I just don’t know why you can’t.

He glanced at Grandma to see if she would help him, but she was securing her hat with bobby pins, which she always did just before she announced she had to go.