? CHAPTER 5 ?
Life with the Day family acquired a reassuring pattern. My father would leave for work before any of us stirred from our sleep, and that golden waking hour between his departure and my march to school was a comfort. My mother at the stove, stirring oatmeal or frying breakfast in a pan; the twins exploring the kitchen on unsteady feet. The picture windows framed and kept away the outside world. The Days’ home had long ago been a working farm, and though agriculture had been abandoned, vestiges remained. An old barn, red paint souring to a dark mauve, now served as a garage. The split-rail fence that fronted the property was falling apart stick by stick. The field, an acre or so that had flushed green with corn, lay fallow, a tangle of brambles that Dad only bothered to mow once each October. The Days were the first to abandon farming in the area, and their distant neighbors joined them over the years, selling off homesteads and acreage to developers. But when I was a child, it was still a quiet, lonesome place.
The trick of growing up is to remember to grow. The mental part of becoming Henry Day demanded full attention to every detail of his life, but no amount of preparation for the changing can account for the swath of the subject’s family history—memories of bygone birthday parties and other intimacies—that one must pretend to remember. History is easy enough to fake; stick around anyone long enough and one can catch up to any plot. But other accidents and flaws expose the risks of assuming another’s identity. Fortunately we seldom had company, for the old house was isolated on a small bit of farmland out in the country.
Near my first Christmas, while my mother attended to the crying twins upstairs and I idled by the fireplace, a knock came at the front door. On the porch stood a man with his fedora in hand, the smell of a recent cigar mixing with the faintly medicinal aroma of hair oil. He grinned as if he recognized me at once, although I had not seen him before.
“Henry Day,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”
I stood fixed to the threshold, searching my memory for an errant clue as to who this man might be. He clicked his heels together and bowed slightly at the waist, then strode past me into the foyer, glancing furtively up the stairs. “Is your mother in? Is she decent?”
Hardly anyone came to visit in the middle of the day, except occasionally the farmers’ wives nearby or mothers of my schoolmates, driving out from town with a fresh cake and new gossip. When we had spied on Henry, there was no man other than his father or the milkman who came to the house.
He tossed his hat on the sideboard and turned to face me again. “How long’s it been, Henry? Your mama’s birthday, maybe? You don’t look like you’ve grown a whisker. Your daddy not feeding you?”
I stared at the stranger and did not know what to say.
“Run up the stairs and tell your mama I’m here for a visit. Go on now, son.”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Why, your Uncle Charlie, a-course.”
“But I don’t have any uncles.”
The man laughed; then his brow furrowed and his mouth became a severe line. “Are you okay, Henry boy?” He bent down to look me in the eye. “Now, I’m not actually your uncle, son, but your mama’s oldest friend. A friend of the family, you might say.”
My mother saved me by coming down the stairway unbidden, and the moment she saw the stranger, she threw her arms into the air and rushed to embrace him. I took advantage of their reunion to slip away.
A close call, but not as bad as the scare a few weeks later. In those first few years, I still had all my changeling powers and could hear like a fox. From any room in the house, I could eavesdrop on my parents during their unguarded conversations, and overheard Dad’s suspicions during one such pillow talk.
“Have you noticed anything odd about the boy lately?”
She slips into bed beside him. “Odd?”
“There’s the singing around the house.”
“He’s a lovely voice.”
“And those fingers.”
I looked at my hands, and in comparison with other children’s, my fingers were exceedingly long and out of proportion.
“I think he’ll be a pianist. Billy, we ought to have him at lessons.”
“And toes.”
I curled up my toes in my bed upstairs.
“And he seems to have grown not an inch or put on not a pound all winter long.”
“He needs some sun is all.”
The old man rolls over toward her. “He’s a queer lad, is all I know.”
“Billy . . . stop.”