A Small, Priceless Thing
by Kris Faatz
part 1
The colors had gone out of everything. Desmond sat at the kitchen table long after midnight. Cold struck up from the linoleum tile and through the worn soles of his slippers. Smoke from the cigarette he shouldn’t have lit swirled up and fogged the thin light from the ceiling lamp.
Friday nights used to be good. Back before the crash, before the country had gone down the jacks, he’d had the satisfaction of handing his good-enough pay to Mary Anna and knowing he was doing all right by his family. Hard to believe it had already been three years of steady belt-tightening and pinching pennies off here and there.
Now, after yet another factory wage cut, this week had left him feeling as if someone had strapped to his back one of the dye-house vats, still full of sloshing liquid and soaked-through textiles. At the same time, the pay he’d brought home in his dungarees pocket was light enough to sprout wings.
Why can’t you find something better? Mary Anna’s voice during supper tonight, still clanging in his head. And Desmond’s own voice, too angry: Because, Moll, there’s nothing better to find. Nobody was hiring.
The city — hell, the whole country — was crawling with desperate men looking for work. Desmond knew how lucky he was. He still had a job. But the dye house he’d once loved, with its vats of swirling color, now drained a little more out of him with every bolt of fabric he dipped and wrung.
He drew on the cigarette and tapped the ash off in the ashtray at his elbow. The ashtray was cobalt-colored glass, round and flat-bottomed, with a fluted edge. Desmond had always liked the way light went through it and splashed the table with color. It made him think of old Portmarnock harbor, with its shifting blues and teals on cloudless days, but now he barely saw it.
Desmond nagged at himself: You shouldn’t have had a cig tonight, you sap. Can’t have one tomorrow or you’ll run out before you can scrape another carton. The hell with it. There was never enough of anything.
Why can’t I find something better? Don’t you know I would if I could?
Another drag on the cigarette. He was breathing the smoke out, adding it to the cloud over the table, when something happened.
It was like watching a flower blooming, the petals lifting up toward the sun. The sides of the ashtray stretched out, thinning and reaching away from the base. Then they moved toward each other, the fluted top edge smoothing out, the sides rising into a smooth cylinder like a water tumbler. Finally, the top edge flared out again, like the hem of a woman’s skirt.
The whole thing took less than a snatch of seconds. From the first moment, Desmond knew exactly what was happening. Laughter — he’d almost forgotten what it felt like — spread warmth through his chest. “Nicky,” he said, would-be stern.
No sound from the hallway, but Desmond didn’t need to look around to see who was there. Nobody else could do such a trick.
“Nicky,” he said again, “get yourself in here, boy.”
A shuffling noise behind him, slipper soles against linoleum, and Desmond’s elder son stepped into the circle of lamplight. Nicky had the same red-brown hair and gray-green eyes Desmond saw every day in the mirror. He’d have his father’s height, too, or more; he was just eleven, a couple of years shy of a growth spurt, but his lean, stretched look, all arms and legs, told how tall he was going to be. His robe and pyjamas were already too short. Desmond’s laughter shrank back inside him. What on earth would they do when the boy did sprout up? No amount of letting down pant hems would get him by.
Nicky’s face, though. Soon enough, Desmond knew, his son would be the image of his own younger self, the boy who’d left Portmarnock for Philadelphia all those years ago. The same forehead and nose, the same line of the jaw... And right now, as hard as he tried to look sheepish with I know I shouldn’t be up, Dad, delight playing around his mouth and eyes until Desmond wanted to smile again. He would have, too, but for that invisible weight still pinned between his shoulders.
He motioned at the ashtray, or what had been the ashtray. It was more like a fancy vase now. “You’d better fix that,” he said almost matter-of-factly.
Nicky ducked his head, as if that would hide his grin. “Okay.” He slid into the chair next to his father.
He had a pencil and paper with him, of course. That was how he’d done the trick in the first place. One side of the paper showed a drawing of the ashtray the way it looked now. Desmond watched as Nicky turned the paper blank side up, smoothed it on the table in front of him, and started to draw.
Time was, Desmond would’ve given himself over to pride, never mind how many stacks of Our Fathers it’d take to get his soul out of Purgatory. He’d taught Nicky about shapes when the boy was so small he could barely see over the tabletop. He’d guided the little hand the first time it’d held a pencil. Now his son’s skill was far, far beyond anything Desmond could have imagined.
The boy drew the ashtray as it had been, in its right shape. No mischief now; he was intent, serious, his eyes moving quickly from the paper to the blue glass “vase” on the table. As the drawing filled in on the page, the real glass flowed and shifted, so fast you could barely see it happen. Then the vase was gone, and sitting in its place was Desmond’s ashtray, exactly the way it had been before.
Nothing short of magic. The first time Desmond had seen the drawing trick, when Nicky was only eight, it’d stunned him, as well it might. Now it seemed — not ordinary, it could never be that — but what Desmond thought it might be like to have a small, precious thing tucked away in a jewel box. You knew it was there. Every time you opened the box, you wondered at it just the same.
Nicky set the pencil down. His face looked so much like the cat that got the key to the dairy that Desmond couldn’t help laughing at last, exactly what he knew the boy wanted.
The two of them laughed together, careful to stay quiet. Mary Anna was asleep in the master bedroom off the kitchen; if they woke her, her scolding wouldn’t be a joke. Desmond reached over to ruffle Nicky’s hair. “What are you doing out of bed, son?”
The brightness went out of the boy’s face. “I couldn’t sleep, is all.”
He picked the pencil up again. Its tip moved quickly, a few lines, and Desmond saw his own hand taking shape on the paper. His lean, work-worn fingers, the heavy knuckles and blunt nails, exactly as they looked in life, down to the dye stains where the colors had seeped into his skin and no amount of scrubbing could shift them.
Nicky was more than old enough to have followed the argument at supper. More than old enough to know pretty much everything about what was wrong. Desmond looked at his son’s lowered eyes and quiet mouth, at the busy drawing hand that still had a child’s roundness, but that moved with an ease and quickness that any full-fledged artist would’ve been glad to match. Shame climbed up his throat. Nicky was learning, just as Desmond had learned at the same age, what his father couldn’t do.
Don’t be daft. Desmond tried to scold himself, tried to push away the memory of the struggling dockyard worker who’d drowned his own failings in anger. You’re not like he was. You don’t give your boy reason to hate you.
Aloud, he said gently, “You couldn’t sleep, so you came down here.”
Nicky nodded. “I was going to get some water. And then you were here.”
It was too easy to picture what he’d seen. Desmond saw himself slumped at the table, the fog of smoke coiling around him. He saw Nicky going back up to his room, bringing down paper and pencil, propping the paper up against the wall and doing the only thing he could think of to help give his old dad reason to smile.
You wouldn’t have done that, Desmond reminded himself, if it was you and Calum; you’d’ve left that old bull alone. Left the whole house to him, stayed out and wandered the streets instead. Not that he, Desmond, had ever had such a gift as Nicky’s, or that his father would have cared for it if he had. Once, Desmond had told Calum how he’d like to try his hand at paints, see if he could get hold of the harbor’s colors or the way the sky looked at dawn. Calum had made sure he’d never said such a thing again.
Now Desmond touched his son’s face. “You gave me a good laugh. I haven’t had one of those in a while.”
Nicky looked up from the drawing paper. He only used the magic when he wanted to change what he drew. Sometimes, like now, he simply drew what he saw, so true to life that Desmond would have believed that if someone touched that pencil sketch of his hand, he’d feel the pressure against his real fingers.
“I want to work, Dad.” The boy’s eyes were too tired, full of worry. “I want to help make some money.”
Desmond’s stomach curled like a fist. Yes, he’d done that, at the same age. Skived off classes, scrounged whatever jobs he could find to make up for what Calum couldn’t provide. And decided, back then, that one day he’d leave Portmarnock and the whole mess behind for good.
He said, “You’ll do nothing that hurts your schooling.”
It came out too angry, just like at supper. Nicky’s eyes widened. Sorry at once, Desmond smoothed the boy’s hair. I will not hurt you, I swear it. “Your lessons are more important, son. You keep up with them and let me take care of the rest.”
“But I could help.” Nicky motioned at the drawing paper. “Maybe I could do something with this.”
With the magic? Desmond’s stomach tightened again at the thought. From the first time Nicky’d done the drawing trick, they had agreed it was best to keep it quiet. Use it only at home. Nobody seeing it would likely believe their own eyes and, as Desmond had said, it wasn’t fair to go confusing people like that. If nothing else, Nicky shouldn’t be figuring how to sell his gift.
“You let me think on that,” Desmond said. The invisible dye-vat he’d lugged home felt heavier than ever. “But you do help, and don’t you forget it. Next time I need to laugh, I know who to ask.”
Nicky was still young enough to smile at that. “Should I draw some more now?”
He’d do the trick again on something else: a piece of silverware, a plate, even a chair, using the magic to change it however he wanted. He would sit here and draw as long as Desmond would let him, but it was more than late and he needed sleep. “Not right now,” Desmond said. “You go on back to bed.” In answer to the look on Nicky’s face, he added, “Don’t worry. I’ll do the same in a minute.”
After his son had gone back upstairs, Desmond stubbed the cig’s end out in the ashtray. He found his eyes resting on the blue of it.
* * *
The next workweek started out no better. The hours at the factory had never felt so long, with too few men to do the work, every one of them knowing the week’s pay wouldn’t begin to balance the sweat they’d put in. When the wage cuts had started, the foreman had promised that as soon as things got better, pay would go back up. With the first layoffs, the men were told that those who lost their jobs would be at the front of the line for rehiring. Everyone had tried to believe it. These days, words wore plenty thin.
Monday lunchtime, Desmond and his workmates Jim and Andrew went out to the loading dock behind the dye house. It was worth turning up their collars against another frozen gray December day to have a break from the dye fumes. Jim unwrapped his sandwich and wadded up the wax paper. “I don’t know about you boys, but I’ve had enough oleo to last me.”
Desmond agreed. Thin bread and oleo margarine had been the way of things for a long time now. He could get by on it, but it didn’t sit long in the stomach or give the mouth much to enjoy.
For a while, the three of them chewed in silence, making the most of the bites. Desmond and Jim had each been at Phillips Textiles for a dozen years, Andrew for fifteen. They’d all had enough seniority to hang onto their jobs when the layoffs started. Desmond knew they all felt the same now: too much older, as if they should get up some morning to find their skin hanging slack off their bones and their hair frosted gray overnight.
Andrew broke the silence. “What are you two doing about Christmas?”
Jim swigged water from his thermos. “Hell if I know.” He wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his corduroy jacket. “Can’t ask Clarence what he wants.” He laughed, but Desmond heard the bitterness, sharp as an unripe orange. “Can’t afford anything anyway.”
Jim’s boy Clarence was a few months older than Nicky. Andrew didn’t have kids of his own, but he had a knot of nieces and nephews he’d used to treat to peppermint sticks and a bag or so of popcorn balls. Desmond knew exactly how it felt to swallow the fact that, for their children, this Christmas would be just another day.
Jim said, “What about you, Des?”
“Not much for us either.” Desmond’s Irish lilt still stood out against his friends’ American voices. “We’ll try to give Charley a treat.” Charley, his younger son, was only three. Too young to find out about disappointment.
Andrew said, “Nicky won’t mind, he doesn’t get anything?”
“He says not.” Desmond bit down on his sandwich as if it’d stolen his missing pay. “His birthday, last month, he asked for drawing paper. Told us then he didn’t want anything for Christmas.” He’d been the one to ask, too, “But can’t Charley have something?” Desmond had said he thought so. Charley was so little; the gift could be small.
Jim snapped the lid onto his lunch pail, a tinny clang. “One of these days, we’ll be able to get our kids the things they deserve.” The damn it he didn’t say hung hot in the frozen air.
Supper that night was too quiet. Mary Anna’s ladle clanged against the stock pot as she served out cabbage-and-leek soup. She set the bowls on the table without looking at anyone. Anger wrapped her like a shawl, with threads of fear all through it. Desmond watched her and thought how pretty she was, Moll, with her dark, curling hair and dark eyes. He used to be able to make her laugh. Now he couldn’t reach across the table to touch her hand.
On a better night, Nicky would have talked about school. His fifth-grade teacher had just started the class on drawing lessons and had figured out pretty quickly who didn’t need them. “It’s so easy, Dad,” he’d said, the first night after the lessons started. “It’s like how you taught me when I was little. But don’t worry,” he’d added, before Desmond could remind him to behave even if it got boring. “I’m doing what she says.”
The teacher had a collection of art books, too, that she let him leaf through while the rest of the class worked. “You should see them, Dad. All the paintings!” Tonight, Nicky had no such news. He ate with his head down, saying nothing. Even little Charley, propped on a Sears-Roebuck catalog on his chair, swallowed his soup without a peep, careful not to spill so much as a drop on the table.
Desmond stared into his own bowl until shame dragged his eyes up again. His wife, his boys: he looked at their bent heads and ached with love for them, ached with everything he couldn’t fix.
After they finished, Mary Anna took Charley upstairs for bed. Nicky got to work washing the dishes. Desmond wanted to ask him to draw again — Son, I don’t know when I’ve needed a laugh so badly — but the boy had homework to do, and Desmond told himself he had no right to ask for help. His shame made coals in the pit of his stomach.
He was sitting on the living room couch, leafing through the Sunday paper again, when a voice interrupted him. “Dad.” Nicky stood in the doorway, rubbing his hands dry on his dungarees. “I need to ask you something.”
Copyright © 2025 by Kris Faatz
