He thought of not feeding Nipper. Of not letting him in. Sooner or later the pigeon would get the hint and fly away forever. He told Dorothy of his idea, hoping she would forbid it. She did. She yelped so loud he had to clamp his hand over her mouth.
“Okay, o-kay,” he said. He began pacing. “But we have to do something. We gotta get rid of him.”
Dorothy did not argue.
“They’re not gonna give up. No way. Not till they get him.”
Pacing, pacing.
“They’re gonna keep sneaking the cat in. They’re gonna spy on the house. Day and night. Day and night. They’ll wait and wait. Slingshots. BB guns. Maybe even poison. Poison!”
Pacing. Arms upthrust.
“They’ll put poisoned cereal on the roof!”
Dorothy was laughing.
Palmer stopped, scowled. “What?”
She was on her back on the bed, on the toy soldiers, howling at the ceiling. She dragged herself up, found her voice. “Do what you were doing.”
“What?”
“Walk.”
He took a step.
“No no. Walk.” She swept her hand. “Back and forth, like you were.”
He resumed pacing, suddenly conscious of his feet. He looked down—and saw what she was laughing at. Nipper was pacing, turning when he turned, tracing his every move back and forth across his room.
He halted. The pigeon halted. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
The next day his mother confessed.
It happened after breakfast. He was in his room. He heard his mother’s footsteps coming up the stairs. Normally the footsteps would turn and head for the bathroom or her own bedroom. This time they came straight to his door.
She knocked. “Palmer? Can I come in?”
Quickly he glanced about the room. He noted two white powdery droppings that he had neglected to clean up. And a cereal box on the floor. He had been getting lax lately. At least the bird itself had left for the day. He kicked the cereal box under the bed. He composed his face.
“Come in.”
She came in smiling. “Hi,” she said. She waved, as if she hadn’t seen him in the kitchen two minutes ago.
“Hi,” he said. He did not wave. He was standing on one of the powdery poopies. The other was on his desk. Which was exactly where she sat, her left hand, palm down, no more than an inch from the white deposit.
He expected her to look around, to inspect the place that she had been asked to stay away from for months now. But she kept looking only at him, smiling, and he saw now that it was not quite her regular smile. There was a goofy quality to it, it was changing, breaking down.
“I have a confession to make,” she said. Her face was sad now, droopy; but it wasn’t real, it was pretend, clownish.
He said nothing.
The smile was back, real and regular. “We know you have a pigeon.”
He could not move or speak.
She laughed. “Palmer—breathe.”
He breathed.
She held out her arms. “Come here.” He went to her and was swallowed entirely in her embrace. All strength drained out of him, and all of a sudden he understood how alone he had been and how much he had missed his parents’ support. He sobbed. She held him tighter, swaying.
From beyond her heartbeat he heard her voice.
“Didn’t you notice things weren’t always the way you left them? Didn’t you notice that it never got dusty in here? Did you really think you could keep your mother out of a room in her own house?”
Actually, yes, he had thought so.
She held him at arm’s length. He had never seen such a smile. Her eyes were gleaming, radiant. “Didn’t you notice that a new box of Honey Crunchers magically appeared in your closet whenever the old box was almost empty?”
He stared at her, blinking. Yes, he had noticed, and that’s exactly what he had thought: magic.
188
She laughed aloud, hugged him again, released him.
“Did you think you could have a pet pigeon in the house since—what?—January, and Daddy and I wouldn’t know about it?”
“I thought you’d be mad,” he said.
She fluttered her fingers at the door. “Go get me a tissue.” He fetched a tissue from her room. She used it to wipe the dropping from the desk. “And don’t forget the one you’re standing on,” she said, tossing the tissue into the basket. She stared at him. “Mad? Why would we be mad at you?”
He stated the obvious: “It’s a pigeon.”
She nodded. Her voice became even softer. “I understand. We understand. And we were a little concerned, but not mad. Never mad.”
“But—” He did not know how to put it. “Dad.”
She smiled. “Don’t worry. Your dad’s been changing. He didn’t even go to watch Pigeon Day last year, much less shoot.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “One night—don’t tell him I told you this—one night he snuck into your room while you were sleeping and stood there with a flashlight at your closet looking at your pigeon.” She chuckled. “Take my word for it, that bird is as safe with your dad as it is with you.”
They talked through much of the morning. Palmer told her everything. Nipper’s arrival after the snowstorm. The daily wake-up ear peck. The guys and their growing suspicions. Treestumping Dorothy. Spitting on the classroom floor. (He wished he had a camera to preserve the look on her face.) Refusing The Treatment. When he told her of his lifelong fear, that he dreaded the day he would become ten and a wringer, his lip quivered and she made a sound of pain and squeezed him tight to her and stroked his head and his back.
After a while she said, “Don’t let Nipper go. Keep him.”
He tried to explain. He tried to make her understand what life was like for him. That there was simply not enough room in town, not this town, for himself, the guys and a pigeon. His fear was too great, he told her, and his course had been set.
So when, a day later, Dorothy told him that her family was heading to the seashore for a vacation, Palmer asked her to take Nipper along and release him there. She protested, but in the end she spoke to her parents, and her parents, as Palmer had hoped they would, agreed to take care of things.
Dorothy came for Nipper the night before. She refused to use the shoe box. She carried the sleeping bird across the street in her hands. The next day Palmer stayed in bed until noon.