J e r r y s p I n e L l I

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29 . Still There 
It’s almost ten o’clock when the last of the visi-
tors leave and the party’s over. His parents come 
and sit on the rug by the sofa and tell him how it 
happened the night before. 
“You didn’t come home when you were sup-
posed to,” says his mother. 
“As usual,” his father cuts in. 
“But we weren’t worried at first. We thought 
you were out playing in the snow. But then it was 
eight thirty, nine o’ clock, and you still weren’t 
home.” 
“That’s when we officially started to worry.” 
His mother called the homes of kids he might 
be playing with while his father started trekking 
the streets, calling his name. They really didn’t 
want to call the police. Only an hour before, there 
had been all that commotion over the little lost 
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girl on Willow Street, and now they knew how it 
would sound: Guess what? Another one’s lost. 
But when it’s dark and the streets are deserted 
and every kid in town is safe and snug at home 
except yours, you don’t care how it sounds, you 
call the police. And they came, like a flashing 
army, the same police cars and rescue trucks and 
emergency vans that had been out for the little 
girl only hours before. Now it was their street lit 
up like a block party. 
“Only it wasn’t like the little girl,” says his 
father. “We weren’t finding you fast. And the snow 
was coming down, turning into sleet, then rain.” 
“You were out looking too, right, Dad?” he says. 
His dad looks at him. “Yeah, I was out.” 
“Piece a cake for you, right?” 
He’s thinking of his father delivering the mail 
in all kinds of weather. He’s remembering how 
he used to sit in school and picture his dad 
hunched like a fullback punching a hole in 
whistling blizzards. 
His father gives him a lopsided smile and a 
squeeze on the knee. “Yeah, piece a cake.” 
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They tell him how slowly the minutes and 
hours passed, and how long Polly tried to stay 
awake but finally couldn’t. There are things they 
tell him and things they do not tell him, and when 
they come to the end, when the man in the snow-
plow finds him far from home and brings him 
back, and the rescue squad takes over the house 
and gets him dried and warm and checked out 
“stem to stern” and he’s just floppy dopey like a 
zombie and they’re both so happy and his mother 
is “bawling like a baby,” when they come to the 
end of the end, how they carried him upstairs and 
put him right into their own bed between them— 
by then there’s a smile on his face and he’s feeling 
something he hasn’t felt in years, like he’s little 
again, like he’s been hearing a bedtime story. 
“So,” says his father, “just where were you, 
anyway, all that time? Where were you looking?” 
He shrugs. “Alleys, mostly.” There seems no 
need to say more. 
They stay up until midnight. “I know you’re 
not tired,” his mother says, “but why don’t you 
just give it a try anyway. See what happens.” 
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He asks them if he can stay downstairs and 
sleep here on the sofa. He’s getting to like it. 
They look at each other and finally say okay, 
as long as he promises not to go sneaking out the 
door as soon as they turn their backs. 
They kiss him good night, one final hand on 
his forehead, and upstairs they go. 
The house is dark and quiet, everything is dark 
and quiet but the inside of his head. In there it’s 
still party time; the phone is ringing, the pizza 
dripping. In there it’s still snowing and still rain-
ing, and still he treks the alleyways looking for 
Claudia. But now it’s almost fun, because the rest 
of him is plenty warm and on the sofa, and 
Claudia got found by eight o’clock, tops. 
He closes his eyes and gives it a try. Not much 
happens, but he keeps trying. He hums a lullaby 
to himself. In the dark a few small muscles here 
and there continue to stir: They do not want to 
sleep, they want to be out in the alleys, searching. 
And it comes to him, what he needs to do. He 
gets up. He wears the blanket like a robe. In the 
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dark he feels his way to the front door. He feels 
for the deadbolt latch. He turns it slowly, as 
silently as he can, holding his breath. He turns 
the knob, silently, slowly. He opens the door. He 
leans out, trying to keep his feet on the carpet 
inside. The night air is cold on his neck. He leans 
out as far as he can and looks up. He smiles. The 
sky is clear. They’re still there. The stars. 
He comes back in, closes the door. Once 
again on the sofa, he pulls the covers snugly 
about him and in minutes is fast asleep.