9
“Billy?”
Her own voice came up through the years, trailing moments that had been, not lost, but waiting in ambush for her return.
“Be a good boy now and answer me, Billy. You’re not hiding again, are you?”
Sometimes when he was hidden he gave himself away by answering or by giggling with delight at having fooled her.
She went through the house calling him, very softly, so that she wouldn’t disturb Miss Lewis. It was Miss Lewis’s day off and she was still asleep in the room above Billy’s. Miss Lewis could awaken at the drop of a pin, and she went to sleep just as readily, anywhere and any time, as if her whole body had been trained to respond to the closing and opening of her eyelids. I close my eyes, I sleep. I open my eyes and I am instantly alert, ready for activity, competition, disaster, death, or just a sunny day.
“Billy...” The word crept through the house like smoke, and Miss Lewis sat up in bed, scratching the thinning hair above her left temple. Nine o’clock, a sunny day. Too fine to be wasted.
She began to dress, knowing that it would be only a matter of time before Mrs. Wakefield appeared, in need of help. Whenever Billy disappeared for a few minutes Mrs. Wakefield became very perturbed. She didn’t show it by wringing her hands and getting all excited, but she got what Miss Lewis described to herself as a “gone” look on her face. Mrs. Wakefield never seemed to realize that Billy always turned up, in the toy chest in his room, behind the davenport, or in the broom closet. Hiding was Billy’s favorite game, and when Miss Lewis found him he always looked so comically pleased that she couldn’t help laughing.
Miss Lewis had known other children like Billy and she had never been repelled by their appearance the way many people were. She considered Billy rather appealing, with his expression of vivacious curiosity and his button nose slightly pink at the tip, like a clown’s.
A sunny day.
Miss Lewis pulled aside the drapes, squinting under the sudden splash of sun. When she picked up the brush and began to do her hair, her glance into the mirror on the dressing table was impersonal and uncritical, as if she was meeting a new patient for the first time and was reserving judgment.
“Billy... Now answer me, be a good boy, Billy. Are you hiding?”
Of course he’s hiding, Miss Lewis answered silently through the closed door. Under the flying brush her hair sparkled with electricity; it stood way out from her head, a nimbus of fine grey wire.
Of course Billy was hiding. She should know by this time. Always getting in a tizzy. A very quiet tizzy, worse, in a way, than the screaming-meemy kind. Emotional, oh my, yes, in spite of that firm controlled manner of hers. Emotions were necessary, Miss Lewis conceded that, but she kept her own, as she kept her best gloves and handkerchiefs, in an old chocolate box covered with a sachet of rose petals.
“Coming,” she said briskly, like a general with fresh troops and supplies coming in to replace a battered and defeated division.
She opened the door and Mrs. Wakefield said, looking quite “gone”: “I’m sorry I woke you up.”
“I’m not much of a one for lying in bed,” Miss Lewis said, rebuking the defeated troops who might easily have lost the battle by lying too long abed, or having unboxed emotions. “I heard you calling. Now you know, you know, he likes to be called. Remember the time he was in the broom closet? Hours, it was. Simply because everyone made such a fuss calling him.”
“He... he never used to hide like this.”
“It’s only a new game he has. I’m rather pleased with it myself. It shows a development, a step forward. He’s getting more independent. Look at it that way.”
“I’m afraid he might hurt himself.”
“He hasn’t yet,” said Miss Lewis. Afraid. Yes, that was the word for Mrs. Wakefield’s expression, not “gone.” A constant fear that fitted as tight as her skin.
Miss Lewis felt a sharp little pain in her chest, invisible under the starched chambray house dress — a twitch of revelation. Was Mrs. Wakefield’s fear merely that Billy would hurt himself, or was it much deeper, uglier: I am afraid because in the very bottom of my mind, in the depths where I live naked and absolutely alone with myself, Billy is dead, drowned, never existed.
If such a fear existed, Miss Lewis knew that no one could ever find out — except in terms of results — least of all, Mrs. Wakefield herself. She could never recognize it because it was already broken up into little digestible chunks. It was natural, even commendable, for a mother to be afraid that her son might hurt himself. A cut, a scratch, a fall, these were legitimate worries, viewed separately. But when Miss Lewis thought of them as pieces off the big fear, she got a crawly sensation along her spine.
Miss Lewis said, gently, as if in apology for her thoughts, “Have you looked under the beds?”
“Yes. Everywhere I could think of.”
“He might be with Mr. Roma and Carmelita.”
“No, they’re working in the garden.”
“Where did you see him last?”
“He was playing with his blocks on the patio,” Mrs. Wakefield said. “He was very quiet. I thought I’d run upstairs and change into a lighter dress.”
“That’s probably just the chance he was waiting for, blocks or no blocks.” There was no rebuke in Miss Lewis’s voice; she seemed secretly amused that Billy had had wits enough to slip away from his mother and hide. Billy had been showing a great improvement lately, and while Miss Lewis gave most of the credit to the thyroid extract, she took some for herself. The odd part of it was that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Wakefield noticed or commented on his improvement. It was as if they dared not look, or hope, for fear he would slide back again.
“He’s getting sharp as a fox,” Miss Lewis said.
They went through the whole house again, systematically, so that Billy wouldn’t have an opportunity to slip from one room to another to elude them. Miss Lewis found a button that had been missing from her best crepe dress, but no Billy.
“He might be with his father,” she said. “Why didn’t we think of that before, my goodness.”
“John’s on the beach. He knows I don’t allow Billy down there without me. It’s too dangerous.”
“We’ll have a look anyway.”
They crossed the lawn, fringed satin embroidered with clumps of marguerites. It had rained during the week. The trellis beyond the patio was a wall of white and scarlet and mauve sweet peas. The ribbed leaves of the loquat almost hid the golden eggs of fruit. The oleanders were choked with blossoms, and the camellia tree stood like a duchess, pink and perfect after its bath.
“It’s a pity they don’t smell,” Miss Lewis said. “The camellias.” But she sniffed them anyway as she passed, just to make sure.
The sun was steaming off the moisture from the roof of the house and from the boulders at the top of the cliff. In the windless air the steam rose straight and purposeful, as if to complete the cycle of change without delay: the cloud, the rain, the steam, the cloud.
Shielding her eyes from the sun, Miss Lewis knelt at the cliff’s edge and peered over at the stretch of sand below.
“Of course. Just as I thought. He’s with his father, you see?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Wakefield knelt, too, looking a little humble, as if she were kneeling not only to see over the cliff more easily, but out of gratitude to a nameless and unpredictable god.
“There now,” Miss Lewis said crisply. “He’s perfectly all right. Better not lean on that boulder. It’s a little unsteady, I noticed the other day.”
“It’s time,” Mrs. Wakefield said, “time for Billy’s orange juice.”