It was a good Christmas morning, all things considered. In years past, the parents had always been woken by Davy and Bug laughing and yelling as they tried to get past Ernie, who was the guardian of the door to the parlor. This year, though, Mr. Pullman awoke to see that the clock already said seven-thirty, and there wasn’t a sound from the children.
He shook his wife awake. “They let us sleep in,” he said.
“They’re probably already in the parlor unwrapping everything,” she said.
But they weren’t. They were in the kitchen, and Davy had made cheese sandwiches for Bug and Zanna. “I don’t know how to make oatmeal,” he said, “and I don’t know how to break an egg without making a mess.”
Cheese sandwiches were an excellent Christmas breakfast, Mother said. The thicker and chunkier the slices, the better, said Father.
And as the parents joined in the unconventional breakfast—adding some sliced banana and glasses of juice to the mix, so they’d be fortified against the candy they expected Santa had put in the children’s stockings—Father finally had to ask, “Well, how’s the haul this year?”
The kids looked at him blankly.
“How did we do? Did Santa spill his sack? Or is it just coal for us all this Christmas?”
Davy looked at him like he was insane. “How should we know?”
“You haven’t been in the parlor?”
“That would spoil Christmas,” explained Bug patiently.
When breakfast was finished, Father got out his camera and waited in the parlor for the children to come in one by one, snapping their faces as they saw the tree and the presents. Just like normal. Except that there was one fewer picture.
Everyone thought about Ernie, but no one said anything. The children didn’t mention him because they knew it might make their mother cry and their father sad. The parents didn’t speak of him because they couldn’t have done it without breaking down and crying, and they didn’t want to spoil Christmas for their surviving children.
So Ernie’s name remained unspoken, and the whole ceremony of unwrapping presents one by one was unusually solemn, until the very end.
“Well, that’s all the presents,” said Father.
“No it’s not,” said Zanna.
“Oh?” said Father. “I don’t see any others.”
“It’s in my room,” said Zanna.
She ran out and came back a few moments later, carrying the picture she had made for Ernie.
Mother was afraid she meant to give it to Father as a test, and that it would spoil Christmas for her if he failed to guess what it was: She had kept her promise not to tell.
Still, there was always a chance he might guess right. So she held her breath.
Father, on the other hand, was afraid that Zanna expected them to give the picture to Ernie somehow. He didn’t think he could handle going out to the cemetery today and putting his daughter’s drawing on his son’s grave.
But if that’s what she required of him, he’d do it.
Instead, she stood in front of all of them and held up the picture. “This is a picture of Ernie reading the Bobbsey Twins to me. I made it for Ernie for a Christmas present and it’s the best picture I ever made.”
“It’s beautiful,” said Father.
“It doesn’t look like anything,” said Davy.
“I’m reading you the Bobbsey Twins now,” said Bug.
“I know,” said Zanna impatiently—though which brother she was answering was unknowable. Probably both.
“So it’s the last present,” said Zanna. “But I can’t give it to him. So here’s what. I’m going to save it for him.”
Davy made a face and looked away. Bug answered her a little testily. “He’s not coming back.”
“I know,” she said, as if it were the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “But someday I’m going to go see him, and I’m saving it for him till then.”
“You can’t take pictures with you when you die,” said Davy.
“I’m not stupid,” said Zanna, “I’m four. By the time I’m old like Mommy I won’t even remember what my picture looks like if I don’t keep looking at it.”
This seemed to make sense to her brothers, and despite the tears in his eyes, Father had to smirk a little at Mother because Zanna had called her “old.”
But Zanna was as good as her word. She saved the picture she had made for Ernie, and the next Christmas she brought it out of the bottom of her drawer and had it beside her as she opened all her gifts.
And the Christmas after that, when she was six. Mother had thought for sure she would forget; and Father had forgotten about the picture himself until Zanna brought it in.
The next year, when Zanna was seven, Davy’s present for her was a picture frame, just the right size to hold Zanna’s picture for Ernie. He carefully put it in behind the matte and reattached the thin wood backing.
“That way it won’t get all beat up in your drawer,” he said. “It’ll stay nice.”
Davy was now the age Ernie had been when he died, and Father and Mother agreed, when they spoke together later of his gift to Zanna, that he was every bit as fine a boy as they could have hoped.
“If growing up in Ernie’s shadow causes a boy to be as sweet as Davy is, then his shadow is a pretty good place to be.”
The years passed. The world went to war, and when Davy was eighteen, he enlisted, instead of waiting to be drafted. His mother wanted to make him promise to be careful, but Father wouldn’t let her. “He’s not going to war to be careful,” he told her. “He’s going to serve his country. He’s going to save the world. He wants to be brave. He wants to make a difference with his life.”
“I know,” she said. “But I just . . .”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence. Father knew that two of her five children were buried already, and she did not want to lose another, lying in a foreign grave like so many young men in the First World War.
But they were fortunate. By the time Davy had finished his training, the fighting was over in Europe, and even as his troopship carried him across the Pacific to prepare for the invasion of Japan, two atomic bombs were dropped and the Japanese surrendered. He didn’t get to come home that Christmas—he was on occupation duty—but the family knew he was safe. Probably having the time of his life.
The Christmas when Zanna was fifteen, the family was all together again, perhaps for the last time, because Lucy, the girl Davy had brought home to meet them, was from California, and he was planning to move out there and go to school on the GI Bill at a university near her family’s home.
Everybody was so excited at meeting the girl that Davy was hoping to marry that the present-opening was almost over before Bug turned to Zanna and said, “Zan! Did you forget?”
She looked at him blankly. “Forget what?”
“The picture!”
For a moment, Zanna looked puzzled, and then when she remembered, she looked embarrassed. Not because she had forgotten, though—her quick glance at Lucy made it clear to her mother that she was embarrassed to bring out such a childish picture in front of someone that she wanted to impress.
“Zan, darling,” said Mother, “you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Then Zanna thought better of her reluctance and said, “I do want to, Mom. But you tell about it while I’m gone, would you?”
Before Zanna could even leave the room, Lucy spoke up. “I wondered if you’d let me see the picture. I wasn’t going to ask because it’s a private family thing, but Davy told me all about Ernie, and Zanna’s present for him, and I was hoping you’d like me well enough to let me see.” She put her hand over Davy’s. “I know what it’s like to love somebody so much you want to keep them with you all your life.”
They all fell in love with her at that moment, and when Zanna brought the picture back, Lucy held it and studied it.
“Nobody can ever see anything in it,” said Zanna. “I draw a lot better now.”
“I know,” said Lucy. “Davy already told me which of the paintings on the wall were yours.”
“It’s me and Ernie,” explained Zanna.
“He’s reading to you from The Bobbsey Twins,” said Lucy. “My father read me that book when I was little. It made me wish I were a twin. I wish you could have known your sister.”
“It’s kind of a silly book,” said Zanna, suddenly shy again.
“But it isn’t when you’re little,” said Lucy. “I’ll always love it. And now I’ll also think of it as a book you shared with your brothers.” Lucy glanced at Bug then, so it was plain that Davy had told her that Ernie wasn’t the only one who read the book to Zanna.
It occurred to Mrs. Pullman then that Zanna’s gift for Ernie had become something important to the whole family. Even though no one but Zanna had ever been able to see Ernie’s face in that drawing, that picture held his face for all of them. And when that picture was present in the parlor on each Christmas morning, it was a way for Ernie to be with them, too, in their hearts, in their memories, and still part of their lives. And Davy had shown them a thing she couldn’t have hoped for—that he hadn’t brought home a girl for them to meet without first making sure that she knew about the children they had lost so many years ago.
The truth was, they all saw Ernie’s face in Zanna’s picture now. Just not with their eyes.