In the night room Page 0,11

“the Children’s Home” or, as its familiars knew it, “the Block.” All in all, Willy had spent something like two and a half years “on the Block.”

Tee Tee Rowley, who stood five feet tall and weighed perhaps eighty pounds, responded to challenges by squaring up to them and suggesting her readiness to do anything necessary to instill respect in her challenger. Unlike some of her peers, Tee Tee did not default to crazed violence at the first sign of difficulty, but the willingness to employ craziness and destruction spoke from her posture, her eyes, the set of her mouth.

That of all her acquaintances from the Block the one to pay a phantom call should have been Tee Tee made perfect sense to Willy. It was to Tee Tee that Willy, who had begun to enjoy a small reputation as a storyteller, had told the best story of her young life.

From the first, Willy Bryce half-sensed, half-suspected, and, she hoped, half-understood that she had not fully explored the dimensions of the inner life awakened by the books she devoured in the Block’s library: that it contained some element, some enigmatic quality that was of immense importance to her. Deep within, this unknown element shone.

Willy’s discovery of what the unknown element contained had led Tee Tee’s shade to appear. Willy had discovered how to save her own life.

This was how it happened: one day, tough, ten-year-old Tee Tee Rowley materialized before eight-year-old Willy Bryce in the second-floor lounge and asked her what the fuck she thought she was doing there anyhow, you fucking piece of shit. Instead of backing away and slinking off, Willy said, Listen to this, Tee Tee. And told her a story that almost instantly drew half a dozen other girls to that side of the lounge.

If she had stopped to think about what she was doing, doing it would have been impossible. But she did not have to think about the odd little tale. It spun itself out of the unknown element and gave her the right words, one after the other. She launched into the first real story of her life.

—When Little Howie Small stood before the ancient wizard and wiped the tears from his eyes, the first thing he noticed was that a sharp-eyed bird was peering out at him from within the wizard’s enormous beard.

And an entire adventure followed, a story involving an eagle and a bear and a furious river and a prince who rescued his princess-to-be with the aid of a walnut discovered by the bird who had been hiding in the wizard’s beard. The whole thing just rolled off Willy’s tongue as if it had all been written out in advance. Whenever she needed some new information or a fresh development, the perfect thing arrived at the proper moment to be inserted into a blank space exactly its size and shape.

—That was a real good story, said an astonished Tee Tee. You got any more like that?

—Tomorrow, Willy said.

Tomorrow came, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that, and on each of them, day after day until she walked out of the Block for good, Willy entertained the Tee Tees and Raylettes and Georginas with episodes from the adventurous life of Little Howie Small. As far as she knew, the little person within her who had come into her own, the secret Willy, always told the truth. She was like Scheherazade, except at the time she was not fighting for her life.

That came twenty-nine years later, after her companion on the Block began calling on her in Massachusetts.

—You’re writing again, Willy? asked Dr. Bollis. I think that’s excellent news. Is it a story, or is it about yourself?

—You don’t know anything about fiction, Willy told him.

Dr. Bollis smiled at her. —I do know how important it is to you. Will this one be like your others, or are you going to try something new?

Dr. Bollis had let her believe that he had read her books. Willy thought he had probably read perhaps half of both of them.

—Something new, she said.

Her doctor gave her a look of careful neutrality.

—It’ll be good for me. It already is.

—Can you tell me what it’s about?

She frowned.

—Who’s the main character?

—A brave little person named Howie, she said, and immediately burst into tears. Willy had never told Dr. Bollis that when her daughter, Holly, was first beginning to speak, and then for a long time after, she spoke of herself as “Howie.” In fact, Willy tried