The Birthday Present

by Zara Wilder

~*~*~*~*~*~

At ten o'clock, Mary began to worry that he wouldn't come. The hour rang along the pipes, followed by the reassuring ALL'S WELL. Mary told herself that Pascal's pipecode bespoke the truth. The children sleeping in the Orphans' Dormitory were all peaceful, warm. The Nursery was neat and clean, all the toys returned to their baskets and shelves, the dress-up clothes hung up on the coat rack Cullen had shortened to suit a child's height, the books reshelved or stacked into mostly tidy piles on the table beside the storytime chair. Mary's own chamber was in perfect order, nothing out of place, nothing to be afraid of. But what if he didn't come? What if she had to do this alone tonight?

Her hands wanted to pick up her knitting needles and add a few rows to the orange square she was currently shaping, but she interlocked her fingers and held those nervous hands still on her lap. The work wouldn't turn out right if she tried to distract herself that way. She'd only have it to do over again in the morning, and she didn't want that kind of reminder from this night of all nights. She already harbored too many regrets. Adding one stitch more to the pieced afghan of her sorrows would hurt her too much.

She really shouldn't expect him to come, or even to remember. Mary knew that. He had been so ill, so recently. Oh, he was much better this week, instructing all of his classes, even finding the energy to play with the children, and organizing duty rosters for the lamplighters and sentries. But Mary could still see the pallor in his face, the remnants of nightmares shadowing his gentle blue eyes. Sitting beside his bed in the Hospital Chamber, Mary had looked into those eyes and mourned. How could they have hurt him, those men from the Surface world? How could anyone meet those eyes and refuse to help the owner of that gaze?

"I want to go home, Mary," he had whispered to her. That had been only one day after Catherine brought him back from Columbia University, where those two heartless men held him prisoner in a research lab—in a cage. Mary had sat forward in her chair to take hold of his large, clawed hand.

"Vincent, you are home. I'm here with you. Everything's all right now."

He blinked at the privacy screens surrounding his hospital bed, white fabric curtains stretched between the rods of freestanding frames. He was worn thin, dazed and frightened. Mary had folded his long fingers around her left hand and patted his wrist, trying to comfort him.

"Let me out. Please. Let me go."

It was enough to crack the heart, to wring all the joy out of seeing him safely returned to the world where he belonged. Mary tried to think of something to say, but her patient fell asleep then. She continued to hold his hand for awhile, hoping that some part of him could feel the warmth of her love.

The half-heard sounds of a subway train passing overhead echoed along the tunnel into Mary's chamber. She closed her eyes, wishing that the interior dark she saw could release her from her memories. To have nearly lost him, as she had nearly lost him so many times before when he was sick or injured, as she had lost other Tunnel children, as she had lost her own child—

Mary gasped and looked down at her hands. Her fingertips dug painfully into the reddening skin at her knuckles. She relaxed her fingers. Vincent was home. Everyone Below was safe. It was selfish of her to want more than that, to expect a convalescent to remember an occasion she had never even explained to him.

Mary sighed and murmured to herself, "I've never needed to explain." She rubbed her knuckles. "From the time he was a boy, Vincent simply understood."

Her first year Below was the only year she had ever spent this night alone. She remembered lighting a fresh candle and staring dully at the flame, a hollow woman in a frigid cave. Telling herself that she was lucky, and that she was not genuinely bereft, did no good.

She had sobbed for hours, heartbroken, and childless. At the time, she believed that no one had heard her. Her secret remained Mary's alone. When the next year came, Mary stole into the Upper Storage Chamber after dinner and brought a new beeswax taper to her room. After lighting it she looked up to see a shadow lingering shyly at the mouth of the entrance tunnel.

"Vincent!" she said, surprised.

He walked in, soft-footed. The youth's face was just beginning to lengthen into an adult's face, his strange features seeming out of all proportion with one another, as if everything that lay between the young lion's muzzle and the young boy's sloping forehead were engaged in an ongoing argument over what shapes they should assume. Mary's visitor was aware of these discrepancies, but she had yet to hear him make the least complaint or show any trace of bitterness or embarrassment. He came to her and stood beside her chair.

"Are you sad, Mary?" he had asked.

Thinking it over, Mary answered, "Yes. I'm sad for myself. And at the same time I'm happy for someone else."

He tipped his head a little to one side, listening to her.

"In the world Above, we take one day each year to celebrate the moment a loved one was born," Mary said.

"Yes. Birthdays."

Mary nodded. "You have naming days down here."

"It's easier," Vincent said. "Not all of us know when we were born, or want others to know."

Smiling, Mary replied, "But everyone has a day when the whole community first welcomed them by name. It's a beautiful custom."

Vincent smiled back at her, his wise blue eyes slanting up at the corners, the line of his mouth tightening into a shallow arc.

Mary had turned to ponder the light of her candle. "I'm remembering a birthday tonight. I'm sad I wasn't there today to share this time with—" She stopped. She couldn't say anything more. To speak the name would be her undoing. It was Ben's second birthday. Mary didn't want to spend all night crying again.

Vincent knelt on the floor beside her chair, looking at the candle too. After a moment he leaned his golden head against her side and let Mary wrap her arm around his shoulders. They sat silently, watching the candle burn. Mary's heart held a hodgepodge of hopes and fears. Her young companion said nothing else. His quiet acceptance of her pain was balm to Mary's soul.

The year after that, he arrived carrying a small chocolate cake on a china plate.

It was their tradition now. Something that existed between just the two of them. Every twenty-sixth of April, Vincent was there for her, no matter what else was happening in the Tunnels, or in Vincent's life, and no matter how happy or sad Mary was feeling that day. It was something she depended on.

But maybe this time the ritual was too much to hope for. Maybe this was the year she would have to somehow find the courage to face her memories on her own. Her pensive solitude might even be for the best. Ben was a young man now. Eighteen, strong and intelligent. Soon to be independent. An old friend sent her news when there was news to be had. Ben would complete his senior year of high school in June. He was an honor student, as both of his parents had been. Ben was well-liked, he had many friends. He was president of his school's Key Club, a service group that his grandparents must find more socially acceptable than his father's passionate political activism in the 1960s. Mary hoped her son was happy, wondered where he wanted to go to college, worried about what she should do after he graduated. Or if she should do anything at all.

Eighteen years old. An infancy. A childhood. An adolescence. All past. Now he would be ready to enter the world as a man, full of promise and dreaming dreams of his bright future ahead. Would he ever know how much his mother loved him? Would she ever see him grown, perhaps looking even more like Johnny than he did when he was a just baby cradled in her arms?

Mary tried to remember the details of that resemblance. She felt a terrible chill when she could not bring her baby's face to mind. There was a baby-shape, a blue blanket, a warm bundle snuggled close at her breast—but the face of her son was a blank space with rosy skin.

"Oh!" Mary sprang up from her chair and rushed to her bedside table. She pulled the drawer open so quickly the objects inside rebounded off the back of the drawer and slid with a bump and a rattle to the front. She rummaged. Where was it? Every single morning she took it out and savored it. She could not have lost it. Not possibly! Never in a million years—

Her fingers found the back of the picture frame.

"Ben!" she whispered, her throat aching with her tears. "My little Ben. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry." She lifted the photograph out of the drawer, hunching over the silver frame. She pored over Ben's baby-blue irises shifting slowly into his mother's gray. Johnny's chin. Johnny's smile in toothless miniature. Soft, silken soft, brown hair, like hers had once been. Such a sharp little nose for so young a child. He looked like a tiny wren, nestled in a blanket Mary had crocheted for him, her three-month-old, smiling up at her, the sunlight on his face.

Mary sat down on her bed. She held the picture in her gloved hands. The knitted fabric of her fingerless gloves polished the back of the frame as she coddled the filigree bordering her baby's image. Her tears dropped onto the glass rectangle which protected the tattered photo from further wear. She couldn't do this alone. Not yet. She wasn't ready. Eighteen years, and she still wasn't strong enough to be the mother her son deserved.

"Mary?"

She also couldn't look up. Even as her heart rose in relief, she felt her stomach shrivel into a tiny ball for shame of ever doubting her visitor. Vincent was a son worthy of his adoptive father. How could she have forgotten so much about the two boys who had always occupied the chancel of her maternal affections?

"Come in," she managed to say.

Vincent entered, setting the plate and book he'd brought with him next to the unlit candle on Mary's square table. He crossed the room to her bed and stood beside her. Vincent said nothing, only stayed close, waiting for her.

"I...I want to show you something," Mary said, once the ache in her throat subsided enough to allow the words to come out. "We'll...we can sit over there. Where the light is better."

Mary stood up. Vincent walked with her to the chairs at the table. He pulled one chair out for her and sat down himself on the seat Mary had vacated only a few minutes ago. Mary found she had difficulty looking away from Ben's picture. What if she forgot his face again?

She closed her eyes. She held out the picture frame. She felt the merest touch of Vincent's claws as he took her treasure from her hands.

"This is my son," Mary said. "His name is Ben."

Vincent was silent for so long, Mary opened her eyes to see what was wrong. He was studying the photograph. He must have sensed her looking at him. He said, "Ben was a beautiful baby, Mary."

She smiled in spite of herself. "Yes."

Vincent looked up, met her eyes. "How old is he now?"

"He's eighteen today."

"Hmm."
    
"I'm proud of him, Vincent. He's done so well for himself."

Vincent gave the picture back to her. Mary unfolded the frame's flat, velvet-covered prop to place the picture upright beside the candle holder. "I wish I could see him now."

"Why can't you?" Vincent asked, his voice as gentle as Mary had ever heard it.

Why? was always a dangerous question in their world. Mary knew she was free to withhold the answer from him. However, the fact that she had doubted Vincent, when he had gone to the trouble of remembering her special night regardless of his latest trials, made her feel that she owed him an explanation.

"He wouldn't know me. He wasn't six months old when I left him with...with his grandparents. They hated me. They still do. They blame me for my husband's death. I can't bear to imagine what they've told Ben about me."

Vincent thought through what she had just revealed to him. Then he asked, "Is it Ben's opinion that means the most to you?"

She looked at him, questioning.

Vincent's voice dropped to a low murmur. "Any son who never knew his parents...would want to know many things about his mother. If he ever had the chance to meet the woman who gave him life..." Vincent trailed off, taking a moment to select his words. "That meeting would be a priceless gift."

Mary folded her hands on the table. She regarded Ben's sunny smile, the paperback book Vincent had brought in, the little birthday cake dusted with powdered sugar, her best dishes waiting for slices of cake, the candle awaiting its memorial flame. "Isn't it too late for that?" she asked.

Vincent reached for her hand and clasped it in his own. "Never."

His hand was big and warm. He had grown so tall since the night she'd first met him as a boy all those years ago. She'd been hardly more than a girl herself, a nursing student who couldn't go back to her school or her training because the government had become virulently intolerant of dissenting voices.

Hers hadn't been a very loud voice, really. That didn't matter to The Establishment. If she had stayed on the map, she was sure she would have given birth to her son in prison. Remaining visible with the movement or going into hiding with Johnny: both choices amounted to the same thing in the end. If she hadn't entrusted her child to Johnny's family after Johnny's death, Ben would still have been taken away from her, for his safety. By the standards of the world Above, she was an unfit mother. Her arrest warrant was still on the books. She had told that much to the Council after she'd arrived Below.

Mary's sparse confession emerged from her concern for their security. Her new friends needed to know the risk they took by sheltering her. Not a very great risk, no; Mary had done nothing violent, no agency would be putting up roadblocks on her account—although Johnny's parents had told her that the FBI was watching their house and she must not try to see Ben. None of the Tunnel Elders had believed that Mary's efforts as a student activist even constituted crimes.

Nan and Chuck Miller had promised to send word via the contact number Mary gave them, to tell her when it was safe to return for her son. Then they never called. Years passed before Mary could admit that Johnny's parents had lied to her about their intentions, maybe even about the FBI. And in the world Below, her situation meant that she was never assigned to any of the foraging teams. Once she settled in, she had no reason to go Above anymore. Mary sighed again.

"I'll think about what I want to do, Vincent. About what I should do. As a mother."

They sat quietly, listening to pipecode and the inner hush of old griefs remembered. It was different every year. Mary could never predict what she might feel. She could only hold tight to the one thing—the one person—that remained constant on this night, the same way he was still holding tight to her hand. Mary smiled at him. She pulled her hand away to take a small box of matches from the pocket of her dress. She lit the candle, snuffing out the match as she sat down in her chair once more. She nodded at Vincent's book.

"Have you brought a story with you?" she asked.

"A poem." Vincent picked up the book and gave it to her. Mary read the title printed across the cover. Poems of the Brontë Sisters: A Complete Collection.

"This looks like more than one poem to me," Mary said.

Vincent smiled. "Catherine sent this book Below. She says that when she saw it, she thought of you. The children have mentioned to her how much you like Jane Eyre."

Catherine was such a thoughtful young woman. And the children were such attentive little souls, to repeat that title to their newest Helper. Mary stroked the smooth paper cover. "Will you tell her I appreciate the gift? The next time you see Catherine?"

"I'll tell her."

"All of you are far too good at looking after me. I'm becoming spoiled by my family."

"No. Only loved."

The sentiment warmed her. She put the slender volume into his hand. "Which poem was it that you wanted to share with me?"

Vincent held the book, not opening it yet. He recited:

A spark of tender mischief had appeared in his eyes. Mary was moved to laughter. She'd never been able to resist that expression. "No Brontë sister wrote that," she said, feeling suddenly comforted by how easily he was able to return a smile to her heart.

Vincent's recitation told Mary that he had read the book of poetry she gave him after he was well enough to return to his chamber. She'd offered him that collection with a scrap of ivory lace marking Emily Dickinson's "The Soul has Bandaged moments—" She hoped those verses had consoled him. As far as Mary knew, Vincent did not want to talk very much with anyone about his imprisoned days at Columbia. Dickinson was the best Mary could do for him without broaching that painful subject directly.

Vincent opened the paper-bound book. "Ah, but Anne Brontë did write this." He paused, applying a lesson Father taught to every child who received the benefit of Father's tutelage throughout the years: permit a poem to breathe before voicing it aloud. "Memory," Vincent read.

Mary rested against the back of her chair while she listened to him. Vincent's rough-hewn yet cultured voice evoked visions of the upperworld wonders the poem described. Primroses, crocuses, wall-flowers. Daisies and buttercups, the mountain star and heather bell. Mary gathered the flowers in her imagination. She saw the cheerful bouquet Johnny had given her on the day he bent his knee to ask her to marry him. She saw the way he smiled at her, so handsome in his brown suit, as he slipped the golden band onto her finger and leaned down to kiss his bride. She saw him set aside his anger at an unjust world, and even his fear of being found by the authorities, of being separated from her, so he could look into Mary's eyes and caress the place where their child was resting, growing, dreaming inside her womb. Johnny her strength, Johnny her love.

Would he have thought eighteen years too long a passage of time to foster a reunion? Would he have let inertia stop him from meeting Ben at last?

"He's old enough to go to war," Johnny might tell her now. "He's old enough to know the truth. Ben's an adult citizen now. Mom and Dad can't stop him from seeing anyone he wants to see."

But would Ben want to see her?

Very bitter, Mary agreed. And yet she'd never been any good at being a bitter person. That identity was just too sour for her to stomach. There were always too many other things to do: blankets and sweaters to be made or mended, children to teach, scraped knees to soothe, medicines to be prepared, gifts to give or to receive, women to be guided through their pregnancies, babies to deliver, friends to help.

How could she exclude her only son from her life of willing generosity? Why should she not, as Vincent suggested, give her Benjamin a priceless gift? To be sure, it was too late to meet him for his birthday. The day was done, this night already drifting into tomorrow. But another occasion was coming soon. An important occasion. Ben's graduation day.

Mary's chamber was quiet now. Vincent had stopped reading. Mary looked at him.

"You were lost in thought," Vincent said softly, "but now you have decided something."

Mary nodded. "I've spent all these years praying for Ben to grow into a man his father would be proud of. It's time he came to know John the way I knew him. I think...it's time he knew me." Her hands were trying to flatten a crease in her skirt out of existence. Vincent reached for one of her wrists, moving that hand away from its restless preoccupation.

"Can I help you, Mary?"

She took a deep breath. "I only went back once, after I came Below. To ask a friend to...not to spy, but to...keep watch, when she could. To let me know how he was doing. It's been a long time since then. Everyone tells me the city has changed. Vincent, I love my son. I do want to meet him. How do I do that?"

"We'll make arrangements. You can stay Above with one of the Helpers—"

"No!" Mary understood how deeply afraid she felt when she heard how sharply she had spoken to him. She shook her head. "Please, no. My presence would place anyone I stayed with in danger. Our Helpers don't need that kind of trouble."

Vincent was quiet for a few seconds, not letting go of her hand. "Then we'll find another way. Is it all right if I talk to Father about this?"

"Of course. And I'll talk with him myself. There's no hurry. There's...time to plan." She gripped his hand, grateful for Vincent's recovery of his strength, humbled that he was here, sharing that strength with a confused, upended midwife, a former agitator for civil rights and fugitive from legalized Topside injustice. "Vincent, thank you."

Slowly, he lifted her hand and bent his head to kiss her work-roughened palm. The gesture startled her. "You deserve to know your son too, Mary. Never lose sight of that. Never doubt it."

Father was so lucky, so blessed.

They sat together soaking in the light of the birthday candle. Mary felt a new peace sending down roots inside her. The decision made, her hope began to grow.

"What kind of cake is it this year?" she asked, breaking their mutual silence.

"Carrot and raisin. William got carrots from the foragers yesterday."

Smiling, Mary took her hand from his to pick up a silver knife and one of two serving plates she had left behind the candlestick. She cut a slice of the cake for him and one for her. She gave Vincent a fork, placing her own on the table beside her plate.

"Mary?"

She looked up at him.

"I want you to know, if you don't already, that you are a good mother."

Her breath stilled in her chest.

"Ask any of the children." Vincent gazed steadily at her face. "Ask me."

After a moment to collect herself Mary ventured, "While you were growing up you saw an old woman like me as your surrogate mother?"

Vincent's bristling yellow eyebrows lifted a little. "Mary, you're not old. Truly, you're too young to be my mother. A cherished aunt perhaps..." He smiled. "But if I could have chosen anyone to call 'Mother,' that woman would be you."

It was the greatest gift anyone Below had ever given to her.

Mary sat, trembling, her tears returning to her eyes. Then she got up so she could hug him. "I'm so glad you're better," Mary whispered. "I'm so glad you came tonight."

"I'm glad you told me about your love for Ben," he answered.

When Mary sat down again, they ate their cake. William had outdone himself. The cake was a perfect confection, not too sweet, not too dense. They took turns reading Brontë poems until just after midnight. At length Mary closed the book and told Vincent that she felt she should be able to sleep now.

They stood together, looking at the candle.

"Will you make a wish tonight?" Vincent asked.

"I always make a wish."

What she wished for was too large for words. She fixed her eyes upon Ben's baby picture instead. The wren's face aged behind the glass, becoming that of a handsome young man. "Happy birthday, Ben," Mary said for the first time in another person's company. She blew out the candle.

The smoke spiraled upward toward the city Surface. Mary watched her hopes and dreams dance lightly in the air. "Good night," Vincent told her. He gave her one last sideways hug and left her chamber as quietly as he had arrived.

The candle smoke had dissipated before Mary turned toward her entrance tunnel. She breathed, "Good night...my wonderful son."

~*~

Posted in Tunnel Tales - October 1, 2012

Written as a prequel to the unproduced script: Subterranean Homesick Blues

Unproduced script available online 
courtesy of the Beauty and the Beast Scripts & Transcriptions Project

Listen to this story in audio format at The Whispering Gallery

~*~*~*~*~*~

~ Return to Fiction ~