Child of My Heart by Alice McDermott Page B

Under her fat elbow were Flora’s mother’s scarves, all but the turquoise-and-white one, just where she had left them.
    Daisy and I backed out of the room, waving. The house behind us seemed empty. I took her hand as soon as we got outside.
    The spattered canvas was still against the wall of the garage, and I thought about what he had said, about masterpieces unfinished. I told Daisy, as we walked to the Kaufmans’ to give Red Rover his evening walk, that maybe tonight we could sleep in the attic, in the two old beds. We could push one of the chairs over to the window, and maybe, I said, if we wake up and see the ghost Uncle Tommy always saw, we could ask him his name, and the name of the little boy in his lap.
    “What do you think their story is, Daisy Mae?” I asked her. She thought awhile and then she said, “The ghost is the little boy’s father. And he was waiting by the window for him to come back. And then the little boy came back and sat on his father’s lap, in the chair.”
    I nodded.
    “Reasonable enough,” I told her.
    “Now we just have to figure out where the little boy had been.”
    “On a ship,” she said without hesitation.
    “That finally returned.”
    I laughed. The sun was lower now, and the grackles were going crazy in the trees, preparing for night. Somewhere from behind one of the high hedges we heard children’s voices calling, laughter and a shout. From somewhere else came the sound of a tennis ball. There was the lovely scent of fading summer afternoon in the air—maybe a hint of the unseen children’s suntan lotion. I began to sing, “And it finally returned, it finally returned, it came back from the sea. And from that day to this”—I glanced down at her and she looked up at me, expectantly.
    “Fond hearts,” I said clearly, “are happy”—she seemed relieved: the air was too lovely for more bad words—“because the ship had finally returned.”
    We heard Red Rover whining and yelping even before we reached the house. Clearly, he’d had a miserably lonely day, and I let him lick my face, and Daisy’s, to make it up to him.
    We walked him back to the beach, and sure enough, Petey’s and Tony’s bicycles were still in the sand. Daisy and I picked them up and rested them against the garbage cans while Red Rover explored the shoreline, then we brought him back to his pen. A light was on in the Kaufmans’ front window, as was the side porch light, but this house, too, was empty. Dr. Kaufman had not returned from the city yet. I hoped he would remember to visit Red when he did.
    Going back to the beach to fetch the boys’ bicycles, we ran into the Richardsons with their Scotties. Mrs. Richardson looked Daisy up and down as I introduced her, and I feared for a moment that she would actually say—the word was all over her mannish face—pitiful. Poor Daisy did indeed look like a waif. Her braid was coming undone and her sash was limp and there were streaks of dirt, baby June’s handprints, Red Rover’s paws, on the skirt of her white-and-yellow (and now, suddenly, under Mrs. Richardson’s all but monocled eye, outdated) hand me-down dress. And then the unpolished saddle shoes, merely two shades of gray, rather than black and white. I had the notion that the shoes alone had transformed her from the charming sprite she’d been this morning, walking the Scotties under the tall green trees, that those cheap pink things had some magic in them after all.

“And where in the city do you live?”
    Mrs. Richardson asked her, and Daisy, mumbling, shy under her scrutiny, bowed her head and said, “
Two Hundred and Seventh Place
.”
    Mrs. Richardson put her big face into mine.
    “What did she say?” (The implication being, of course, that the child should really be taught to speak up.)
    I smiled, pushing Daisy along.
    “She lives on
Sutton Place
,” I said.
    “Shall I come by for the dogs in the morning?”
    Mrs. Richardson glanced at her husband, who had his pipe stem