Wild Heart (14 page)

He did, from a jolly-looking woman in a white apron. "Ten cents," she said after drawing their drinks out of a silver tube. Michael put all Sam's money on the metal counter and found a dime. "Thank you," he said, placing it in her fleshy palm, and she said, "Enjoy 'em," with a big smile. They drank their sodas right there, standing up, because the lady wanted their glasses back.

Outside, Sam told him, "When you just give her the money, you don't have to say thank you. Because you're giving it to
her,
see? But when she gives you the soda, then you say thank you."

"What do I say after she says thank you?"

" 'You're welcome.' Or you can say, 'Thank
you,
' but I never say that. That's more of a grownup's saying."

They had conversations like this all the time, Sam explaining the simplest things that Philip and even Sydney would never think of, never realize he didn't know. "Thank
you,"
he said, and Sam laughed because he thought he was practicing. But he meant it.

"Come on, I want to show you something. I want to show you
two
things, and they're both on the same street."

They walked away from the world's busiest corner, past buildings twice as tall as trees, on cement sidewalks with glass "bull's-eyes," and sometimes you could see people through the glass and know you were walking right over them. Once a man dressed in a red and white suit with yellow paint on his face and a big red nose passed by, holding a sign that said murphy the tailor, $io suits, diversey blvd. Michael stopped in his tracks
to stare. "What is it?" he whispered, shocked and embarrassed, and Sam explained that it was just a clown. You were supposed to notice him and then go buy a suit at Murphy's. It took him almost three blocks to explain what a clown was.

The first thing Sam wanted to show him was a giant set of teeth that clacked all the time. They were above the door of dr. walls, the painless dentist, and just down the street from the second wonderful sight, a pair of enormous eyeglasses at Dr. Kramitz's, with an eye behind one that winked at you slowly and constantly. Meaningfully. "It's kind of spooky after a while, isn't it?" Sam said, and Michael agreed. He liked the teeth better.

They were starving by then, so they bought hot chestnuts and red pop from a pushcart man. After that they bought two dill pickles, a bag of peanuts, four peppermint rocks, and a yard of licorice.

Feeling better, they went into a drugstore where Sam said you could play a record on the phonograph for a penny. They played "Mother's Smile" and "The Swiss Echo Song," and then they bought Michael a fifty-cent straw hat. "Men wear hats," Sam claimed, and Michael had seen the proof of that today. He looked at himself in the mirror on the drugstore counter, trying to believe he was that beardless man in a blue suit with a bowtie, and now a hat that had a black band around it and smelled like hay. Michael MacNeil? It couldn't be. He stared and stared, until Sam pulled him by the arm and dragged him away.

They rode in an elevator; they went six blocks in a cable car, standing up and hanging on to poles; got their shoes shined; looked in store windows at wax figures of people dressed in ready-made clothes, in this style, cheap at $8.80. But the strangest, most amazing sight of all was the Magnificent Medici's Mysterious World of Magic.

They came upon it by accident, in a little green park by the train station. They heard the music first and followed it to a clearing in the grass surrounded by people, mostly
children and their mothers. In the middle of the clearing were the Magnificent Medici and his helper, a beautiful lady who could play a harmonica and an accordion at the same time. Michael had seen Sam do card tricks before, so he had thought he understood magic. Now he realized the truth. Sam was a child and the Magnificent Medici was a master. And magic was . . . unexplainable.

"I can't see," Sam complained, so Michael got behind him and lifted him up. They both gasped when the magician pulled a white dove out of his tall black hat, and then a white rabbit. Red and orange scarves kept coming out of his hand, one after another, yards of scarves that he finally tossed to the beautiful assistant while everybody clapped and whistled. He did impossible things with four big silver rings, so fast Michael's senses were no use to him. He poured milk, ink, and water out of the same bottle. Finally and most wonderfully, he put the helper in a trunk, locked it, and made her disappear!

Michael's world tipped upside down, even while something in him said,
I
knew it, I knew it,
and wasn't surprised at all. Things you couldn't explain happened all the time—what was the sunrise if it wasn't magic?—and this black-caped man with a waxed mustache was a reminder of it, maybe the
proof
'of it. All the way to the train station Sam tried to convince him it was just tricks, mirrors and sleeves and fake trunk bottoms. Michael got tired of arguing and pretended to believe him for the sake of peace. But he knew better. The Magnificent Medici might be a fake,
might
be, but magic existed. He had seen it. He knew.

"Pipe cleaners, flypaper! Pipe cleaners, flypaper!"

He had learned by now that it was rude to stare, so he waited until they passed the little boy, even younger than Sam, standing by the newsstand with a tray in his hands. "Is he a clown?" Michael whispered. "Why is he dressed like that?" In ragged, dirty, holey clothes and a rope for a belt, a cloth hat that looked as if he'd been gnawing on it. He had a smart, playful, baby's face, like a fox cub, and two teeth missing in front.

Sam wanted to stare at him, too. "He's poor," he whispered back.

"Doesn't he have parents?"

"I don't know. Maybe not. He could be an orphan. He's not a beggar, though, he's a peddler. He sells flypaper."

"Let's buy it."

"Okay."

They bought all of it, and all the pipe cleaners, but the price only came to seventy-four cents. They still had two quarters left, just enough to get home on the train.

"Do you want this, too?" Michael said, holding out the quarters. The little boy looked at the money, and then at him. "You can have it if you want it. Fifty cents. A gift."

He had small, grimy hands with black fingernails. One of them reached out and plucked the two quarters from Michael's palm, quick as a snake, and stuffed them in his pants pocket. Then he looked scared for some reason, like a sick animal that doesn't trust you and doesn't understand why you'd give it your food. Without saying thank you he stuck his empty tray under his arm and ran away.

"Uh oh," Sam said. "Now what'll we do? How are we going to get home?"

"Easy," said Michael. "We'll walk."

* * * * *

"What were you thinking of? Just tell me that. Were you thinking at all?"

"I thought we'd be back. I didn't even think you'd—I mean—"

"You didn't think we'd notice you were gone." Aunt Estelle pounced. "Isn't that right? You
sneaked away,
didn't you?"

Poor Sam hung his head. Sydney would have felt sorrier for him if she hadn't been almost as angry as her aunt. "We didn't sneak," he said to the floor, "we just walked. And you shouldn't yell at Michael because it wasn't his fault."

"Don't you tell me whom to scold, young man."

"But I told him it was going to be a lesson. On arithmetic and how to—"

"Yes, yes, we've heard that. We know how you squandered your life savings on candy and nonsense and—a
hat"

Michael paled a little under Aunt Estelle's withering glance. He looked miserable. Sydney would have wanted to hug him if she hadn't wanted to throttle him even more.

"Harley, do you have anything to say to your son?"

"Hmm?" Papa looked up from the chicken breast he was cutting on his plate. Dinner had been delayed because of the two truants, and he was hungry. "How'd the lesson go? Did all right, did he?"

Over his aunt's loud snort, Sam said, "Oh, Daddy, he did swell! He kept all the money and paid for stuff, and he got change and counted it right and everything."

"Good, that's—"

"Harley."

"Hm? Oh." He made himself scowl. "Can't have you going off like that, you know. Worried your aunt, worried your sister. Almost called the police on you. Say you're sorry."

"I'm sorry."

"That's it. Now—"

"That's if?" Aunt Estelle all but screeched. Michael and Sam, who had started to relax and move toward the table to take their places—Aunt Estelle had forbidden them to sit until their case was judged—stopped short. "You," she said, pointing a finger at Michael. She never called him by his name; either she didn't believe he really had one or she thought he didn't deserve it. "Leave the room. The family would like to continue this conversation in private."

Sydney's relief that he would be spared any more awkwardness and unpleasantness changed to distress when she saw his face. Aunt Estelle couldn't have said anything worse. "Oh, let him stay," she murmured in a rush, pushing back in her chair.

Aunt Estelle prevented her from rising by getting up herself and pressing Sydney down with a firm hand on the shoulder. "You will please go," she commanded, and Michael, his rakish new hat incongruous with the hurt in his face, did as he was told.

Sam's eventual punishment was no dinner, confinement to his room tomorrow, and a three-page composition on the wisdom and necessity of obedience in children. Sydney had no quarrel with his sentence; what he had done was wrong, and it had frightened the life out of her. Still, she could never stand to see him punished for his childish misdemeanors, however much he deserved it. Tonight, as usual, she made an illicit visit to his bedroom prison and tried to sound stern while she comforted him.

"Well, what
were
you thinking of?" She sat beside him on his rumpled bed, letting him lean on her while he snuffled and blew into a handkerchief.

"I don't know. I didn't think anybody'd care."

"Sam, how could you think that? We were all worried sick."

"Daddy wasn't."

"Yes, he was," she denied automatically. "He just doesn't show it. I'm really disappointed in you, Sam. I thought you had better judgment."

"I've taken the train before," he said defensively.

"Not by yourself."

"I
wasn't
by myself. And Michael was perfect, Syd, and we had the best time—"

"Why didn't you ask permission?" He swung his legy against the side of the bed and didn't answer. "I think it's because you knew you wouldn't get it. Am I right?"

"I guess," he mumbled.

"And you really do understand why we're upset, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Then you won't have any trouble writing a three-page paper about it."

He fell back on the bed and groaned.

She laughed. "Hungry?"

"Yes!" He sat up like a jack-in-the-box. "What did you bring me?"

"Spoiled brat."

While he ate the chicken and tomato sandwich she had smuggled out of the kitchen, he told her why he and Michael had been so late. "He gave all the money we had left to this raggedy little boy on the street. So then we couldn't take the train, so he said we should walk. So we did, but I got tired, but he carried me piggyback almost the whole way. We went along the train tracks, and he can go
really, really fast.
All I had to do was hold his shoes, because he said they hurt his feet and made him go too slow. He went over rocks and everything, and it didn't even hurt him. People saw us but they didn't think anything of it—they thought we were playing, they didn't know how far we were going. And when we got home he wasn't even tired."

"Well," was all she could say.

"I made him buy the hat. He never had a hat before."

"That was nice of you."

"And I didn't care about the money, I
wanted
to give it to the little peddler boy, but I wouldn't've if Michael hadn't said to first. I just wouldn't've thought of it." He lowered his voice. "I don't think he really understands about money yet," he confided. "About saving and being careful and all that."

"Probably not."

"But only because he doesn't have experience. But we're going to teach him stuff, arebn't we, Sydney? You and me and Philip, we're all going to show him how things work, right? So he can be a regular person."

She nodded, sliding an arm around his narrow shoulders. "That's what we're going to do," she agreed with a little more conviction than she was feeling. She kissed him on the top of his blond head and added, "But only
after
we ask permission."

* * * * *

Michael wasn't in his room. On an instinct, she went outside and walked down the path toward the lake. The moon, half full, had risen above the trees, and through the leaves she could see it sparkle silver on the jet black water. At the bottom of the path, she stopped to scan the shoreline and listen to the quiet clash of waves on the invisible sand.

A movement, dark against dark. Despite the distance, she knew it was he. She slipped off her shoes and stockings and started toward him.