Donovan was a beautiful boy. His skin was a puffy, coral white, like full bright clouds, which shone as if the sunlight cart wheeled and shouted on his limbs and face, where it only moped and waved on those beside him. His hair was yellow, his mother told him, like corn almost overripe, bursting yellow just before it falls off the husk, onto the ground and is no good. In fact almost everything about Donovan suggested he’d only barely evaded the indiscriminate mallet and chisel of decay and deformity; been born at just the right time, conceived in just the right way, just when the cosmic proteins and sugars of his genesis were at their most potent, before they turned sour or unbearably sweet. Thinner than most boys, Donovan could easily have looked sickly or odd had his cheek bones been a little higher, his eyes more lemon shaped, his shoulders more wing-like. But as it was, he was a fine looking boy and learned to guard his cheeks with according vigilance.
More than this though, Donovan was beautiful in heart, guileless in intent.While other children pulled apart lizards, excavated flower beds, he played his whistle for his sister while she cooked, for his brother while he wrote. He would sit quietly reading in front his house while his friends snuck cigarettes, dissected the world with rocks and sticks and with the violent curiosity of pubescence. For awhile, Donovan seemed to be the perfect child.
It was little things at first, things she passed off as products of his excessively gentle nature, that his mother began to notice: giving away his lunch to drunkards or strangers he’d met on the bus, bringing home stray, and he would be tutored, “filthy”, dogs (which inevitably found their way to the edge of his bed). The pinnacle of these episodes occurred when Donovan’s mother happened upon an impromptu funeral he’d prepared for a rat he’d found suffocated beneath a pile of hay, whereupon Donovan kissed it sweetly on the forehead before placing it in the shoebox. She had filled the entire barn with her screams, which Donovan was certain was improper conduct for a funeral.
What bothered her most though were the disappearing presents. Twice a year, once on his birthday and once on the day she sobbingly remembers as, “ The day God almost took her Donnie” , Donovan’s mother gives her son very special, and very heartfelt, if not very expensive gifts to commemorate these occasions. This particular year, however, was a special one. Being Donovan’s twelfth year and the tenth anniversary of his bleary eyed, red fisted victory over a particularly insidious strain of flu virus, Donovan’s mother endeavored to find her son the perfect gift: a clean white, pocket-sized rocking horse, exquisitely hand-carved from bone, costing over 8 shillings. Which he promptly gave away.
Giving her son the benefit of the doubt, which all mothers do the first twenty or so times, she assumed it had been misplaced and so searched his room. Unsuccessful, she resolved to ask Donovan about it when he got off class, at around 3 o’clock. When 4 o’clock rolled around and he hadn’t arrived she was worried. Imagined some ape-faced bully dangling her son by his ankles over a pile of garbage, flicking his ears. At 5 o’clock she was upset, hands stuck to her face, rubbing the anxiety into knotted pools around her temples with two erect fingers. By 6 o’clock she was in full terror mode. Had parked her chair in front of the door, stared at it like a spaceship or a fat dark hole retching fiery steam, coiling down into the innards of the earth. Imagined devils and worse nibbling at her sons teeny bones, apologizing for their appetite between mouthfuls of soft yellow hair and moon-white flesh. At 7 o’clock Donovan arrived with a vicious cowlick and pumpkin-orange hands. First came the kissing and hugging, then came the yelling.
“Donovan, where have you been!?” his mother bellowed, after she was content he was safe.
“Just walking mum, and playing my whistle”, which was partially true.
“Donovan Jacobs you’ve made you mother nauseous with worry! I’ll need something a little better than ‘walking’!”
“…”, he paused to think of something (he’d rather not lie) twirling a loop of golden hair dangling by his eye.
“And what’s that dirt on your cheek, hmm? You look like a street urchin! Alright mister off to the bath with you, then we can figure this out.”
Donovan didn’t bother to conceal his relief. Sweet as she was, his mother could squeeze confessions from a guilty conscience easier than juice from an orange. Averting her needle like questions, even for a little, was something to be glad about. It was after this short, warm repose that the bomb finally dropped. She asked about the horse. The horse she’d worked almost a week to buy. The horse he’d given away in less than a minute. And when she asked, he saw the lines in her face, the love and worry in her eyes, tumbling over one another like two desperate animals. Saw the grey hairs he’d given her before his third birthday, and some new ones which had given up their dark shine only recently. Understood only then the meaning she imbued upon these little gifts and trinkets. Realized what they meant to her, what she thought they meant to him. And so, then and there he told his first, no butts-about-it lie. And it wasn’t half bad.
“Leeland’s got it. He wanted to show his dad. Cuz’ he carves em’ himself you know.”
And she bought it.
Off to bed with only a bowl of soup, for his mother was too kind hearted to send even a naughty child to bed with no meal, Donovan thought about the horse. It wasn’t that he hadn’t appreciated it, or any of the other things his mother had given him, simply that he felt there were better recipients. People who would get more from the thing than he himself did. Who could love and understand and appreciate it more than he could. Kind and empathetic as he was, Donovan could only now begin to understand how the giver of the gift could feel hurt by his giving it to someone else. His re-gifting it.
Donovan blew into his soup and watched his reflection quiver. It was that very day he’d given the rocking horse away. After school, Donovan liked to wander about town, and often took the least direct route home. He would watch the different people, all with somewhere to go, something to do, parade around town: Clean shaven men in floppy hats and charcoal suits, and dark bearded ones with stringy taut limbs in overall and jeans. Girls much younger and prettier than his mother watching the traffic, swaying on the street corner in summer dresses, like flowers in a breeze. With his eyes he would chase the automobiles that scurried past, like wild, shiny beetles, gobbling up the short stretches of road that snaked through town. On the boulevard, Donovan would peer in through the Shoppe windows, admiring the intricate cakes and candies glittering inside, thinking they almost looked too perfect to be as delicious as they were.
His favorite place to play his whistle was in town: in the cool shade of the church beneath a rainbow of stained glass, where he unwittingly alleviated the boredom of the saved. It was here that he’d sat earlier that day, unraveling a melody that reminded him of good butter, when he saw her inside a 2nd story window. A girl with patient, sad eyes, still as photographs, gazing outward. Out past the exposed plumbing and the rusted brick-red ribs of the fire escape, through the fizzy haze of dusk and the dirty, stooping buildings. Gazing into it all like a mirror which refracted a thousand something’s she was intimately familiar with; knew like old dead friends.
And it gave Donovan an odd feeling, seeing her there, like that. The feeling that he wanted to kiss her. Kiss her ‘till she smiled. But he knew this would be a silly notion even if she weren’t two stories up. So he played his whistle instead. Imagined he was Mozart and Beethoven melded and sharpened into one soul. Spat all the butterflies and beaches his little tongue could summon from that whistle. Donovan played and played, for what felt like hours behind his flexed, thoughtful brow. And when he looked up, she was gone. Just like that. For a matter of minutes he sat there, looking at the window she had only moments ago adorned. Watched the wraith-like oval of breath she’d left on its frosty glass evaporate then disappear altogether. Sat there, absently running his finger over the ribbed man of the little white rocking horse, in his pocket.
Then, as if struck by something, he widened his mouth in satori, realizing what he must do. And before even contemplating it, with litheness that surprised even him, Donovan clambered over the dumpster onto the fire escape. The metal was old and peeling, and quickly turned his hands an off orange color but he climbed quickly and surely to her window. Once there Donovan couldn’t help but look inside. He could see the thick oak chair that she had been sitting on. Could see a bed, neatly made but nothing else in the room save a nightstand and lamp. Carefully Donovan removed the horse from his pocket, first wiping his hand on his shorts as to not mar its color. Setting it on the window sill, he looked at it one last time.
Lit up by the gas flames it glowed oddly, he felt. Its eyes seemed to flicker this way and that, darting and strange, mane coursing orange then yellow then white then black as the wind played with the flame. In unison, the chiseled bone horse and its shadow, rocking back and forth, back and forth. It was a very proud and reliable horse, Donovan thought. The Perfect gift.
And now, laying in bed, he pondered: how to get it back. It had to be around 8 0’clock. His mother never checked on him past 10 o’clock. Donovan knew this, so he waited, almost falling asleep. Half imagined the girl from the window’s plain blue eyes wandering like spilled water, slowly and barely away from her stare onto his. Then, 10 minutes after what he deemed was 10 o’clock, Donovan quietly opened his window and crawled through it into the night.
Huge clouds hung above, puckered and black, mostly concealing a thin yellow moon. The rubbery spires of the cypress bobbing and ruffling in a frigid wind. Donovan pulled his jacket and hood tight against his torso and cheeks. By now the buses had stopped running, leaving him now option but to walk. Right off he decided it’d be better to not be seen than to be seen. Sneaking along he pretended he was a rabbit hopping from bush to bush, darkness to darkness, each new spot cozy in the invisibility it afforded. This game ended though, when he noticed a great ashen owl watching him duck about, hungry, scrutinizing bullet-like eyes poking out from a tepee of crisp, dark feathers, shooing him onward.
Skirting the main boulevard, sinking deeper into the city as if swallowed by her window, Donovan turned down a wet alley. At the far end by some trash bins he could see shadows of feet and legs and arms, hear the tinny clack of dice rattling against stone, men’s laughter soaked in drink and nighttime. Carving a quick left, before the forms and sounds became faces and voices, Donovan found himself in front the church, watching the stained glass set above spinning metallic colors under a tired street lamp.
He could see her window, but couldn’t make out the horse through the darkness. So again, though with greater difficulty than before, Donovan hurried on top the dumpster, reaching upwards ‘till he felt the cold, reassuring weight of the first rung of the fire escape in his hands, and with fingers now once again resembling carrots, he climbed to her window. There, describing an easy bob in a pool of soft yellow light was the little white rocking horse, on the other side. At first, he figured he’d just open the window and grab it. But one sturdy push proved it to be locked shut. Had Donovan been someone other or older than himself, he might have cursed right then. It was so close. Reminded him of the toys and candies in the Shoppe windows, withheld from his appreciation by only a fragile sheet of something he could easily break, but would never.
So discouraged, Donovan alighted from his perch to sit once again beneath the stained glass of the church. Waiting for his mind to strain a single clear idea from his thoughts like an eye discerns constellations from millions and millions of stars. He was about to pull out his whistle when she appeared at the window, like the sun from behind a cloud. Donovan’s face shattered with warmth. For a moment he forgot about the horse altogether, the thought of going to her a crackling current raging through his mind, casting it, and his mother and his whole brief life into humble shadow. He had to get up there.
Slipping around to the front of the building things lit up quite bit. Two great brass lanterns riveted to the maple door, housing tall spearheads of steady flame, illuminated much of the area. The ratty, slump shouldered men littered around the door well like old bottles and cigarette butts, thrown in a sultry glow.
Donovan had no idea what this place was. Was even a little curious as to why so many people had gathered here, so late in the night. The side of the building had smelled like moldy clothes, and the front inspired whole new avenues of speech on the subject. The whole place and the people there gave him an ugly feeling, but Donovan knew she was inside. Somehow, she was inside there. She was inside. She was inside. Alone with a sadness he had seen with his own eyes. A sadness that was not ready to die. To be buried and to pass on. And also, with a sigh, he remembered the horse was in there. So on he went.
Once inside, Donovan pulled stares. Pulled stares like a pig giving birth to spiders, like a digit growing from the neck. A man wearing a disheveled vest and a greasy mustache prodded him shamelessly with his eyes. Tall busty women in red lingerie, heaving vinegar and sweat, flocked the stuffy room. One of which approached him with authoritative gusto:
“ Wuh Choo doin’ in a place like this darlin’” she wiggled, smiling through full painted lips.
Her legs were smooth and round and though he didn’t know why he caressed them with his eyes before answering: “I’m here to see someone.”
She frowned like a baker after slaving over 13 apples pies, handed only the money for 12.
“Honey. Who exactly where you expecting to see?”
This threw him off. He hadn’t thought this far. A name. He needed a name. Or did he?
“Uh, my sister. I’m here to see my sister. She’s upstairs”
“Legs? You’re here to see Legs? I didn’t know she had a little brother. Hmm.”
Donovan sat still, wondering if this was going well.
“Just you?”
He nodded.
“Ok then. she’s seein’ a client right now but she should wrap things up in..oh a couple minutes I’m sure. You can go on and wait outside. I’ll come get you.”
Outside, Donovan thought about what he’d just seen. He couldn’t imagine such a wondrous thing as the girl at the window in such a skuzzy place. It reminded him of a beautiful exotic parrot he saw once, crooning something in parrot inside of a nasty rusted old rag of a birdcage. He thought of the things he wanted to ask her. What was her name? Where did she come from? What was she sad about? Jostled by a fat, boar of a man, this line of thinking was cut short. He shuffled, almost through, Donovan and didn’t even seem to notice. Donovan noticed him though. He walked with a graceless lumber, and his brow wore a band of pungent, sour sweat. He was not a pretty man. The woman he’d spoken with a moment earlier, followed shortly after, beckoning him in.
“Alright then, up the stairs with you boy. But be quick about it. Your sis’ is a working girl and none of my other girls get the night off for family reunions. Neither does Rose.”
Rose. Her name was Rose. He walked up the stairs. They were old and covered in red felt and each creaked a little differently when he put his weight on it. The door was now directly in front of his face. He could touch it with his nose. Rose. Rose. Horse. Rose. He opened it.
She sat in the oak chair, features pointed out the window, unmoved it seemed from where he last saw he from the church, moments before, the little white rocking horse keeping her company on the sill underneath. Her hair was yellow. More yellow than his. It swam in the light like sand being poured as she turned her head, looked at him, and smiled. “Hello”
“hello” he managed, twirling his own yellow hair in his nervousness.
Still smiling, “You’re the one who left the horse?”
He nodded. How did she know?
“ I saw you climbing down that ladder. I was half afraid you’d break your neck,” she paused, “ I’m being rude though.” She held out her hand, “ My names Rose. What’s yours?”
He held out his own trembling hand. Her skin was so smooth. So white. Like the sun couldn’t bear to mar it with its own rich, dark tones. Like it never had the chance to. “Donovan.”
She smiled even more at this. “That’s a beautiful name you’ve got Donovan.” Her gaze falling upon the horse, “and you are a lovely boy. And this is a lovely gift.” She ended sadly.
And there was that look again. That look he’d seen her wearing the first time he saw her. That look that could have stopped trains and made them kiss the earth, apologize for their clamor, whittled a jester down to a poet. A look that should have melted that window Donovan thought, if it had a heart.
“But I can’t accept this. I’m sorry”
And before Donovan knew what he was doing he was begging her to keep it. Telling her how happy it made him to leave it there for her. And the more he pleaded the sadder she got. Until he gave up.
“Hand me that box, under the bed would you? The other side, that’s it.”
It wasn’t till she asked this that he noticed her legs: the odd angles they rested at, how they seemed to hang from her body like ornaments rather than real live limbs. How they seemed smaller than they should be, seemed like they wouldn’t do one much good at all. Wasn’t till now that he realized she wasn’t able to get the box herself.
Carefully, more afraid of hurting her than the box, he handed it to her.. It was carved from some rich, sooty brown wood and gave off a nice lavender scent. She opened it and took out a worn photograph of a horse. It was a beautiful animal, shining even in the fuzzy black and white picture.
“This was my horse. Before the accident we were best friends.” She smiled again “ Donovan I love the gift you’ve given me, but… I just can’t take it.” Sort of chuckling between, sniff’s,” trust me, I.. I love it. Its just…” She picked up the horse, stroking its mane with her thumb,” Its just too much. I hope you understand”
Donovan was numb. His 12 year old mind was at its limits. His heart. She stuffed the little white rocking horse into Donovan’s hands and kissed him on the forehead.
“Grab me that paper over there.”
“What?”
“Grab that piece of paper. I’ve a pen right here.
He did. She handed him the pen.
“Write your name down.”
Donovan froze, baffled by her request.
“Just do it silly. I want it. I want to keep it. That can be your gift to me. A reminder of you is gift enough.”
Not understanding, but wanting more than anything to make her happy, Donovan Wrote his name down. Careful to make his ‘D’ look like a ‘D’ and not a ‘P’ like he was infamous for doing. Going over his ‘O’s’ twice to ensure they were as close to perfect as possible. Made his ‘N’ like the sweeping banisters he’d seen through the windows of fancy houses. And when he was done, he handed it to her. And once again she kissed him, on the cheek this time, and he left. With the little white rocking horse in his arms.
