A Small, Priceless Thing
by Kris Faatz
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Desmond raised an eyebrow. “I should be asking you if you already finished that homework.”
He meant it to be teasing, the kind of joke that used to be easy. As soon as the words left his mouth, he remembered how his own father would’ve put enough edge on them to spin Desmond on his heel and shove him out of the room. Too late to take them back.
Nicky came over to the couch and sat down. The stiff cushion barely gave under his weight. “I’ll finish,” he said, “but first I need to know.” His shoulder pressed against Desmond’s, and his voice, pitched low, shouted with secrets: “Have you ever been to a museum?”
Desmond had started to smile, but he felt that disappear. “A what, now?”
“A museum.” The same almost-whisper. “Like an art museum. Where they have drawings and paintings.”
For the space of a heartbeat, the idea caught at Desmond. No, he had never been in such a place, but he knew enough to guess what they were like. A roomful of paintings, say: a feast of all the colors anyone could imagine. And designs, patterns, richer and more intricate than he’d begin to try his hand at, although he’d bet anything that his boy could do it.
Next moment, the picture dissolved into shadow. Why was Nicky thinking about such a thing? If he’d gotten it in his head that he’d like to see one... well, they couldn’t do it, that was all. Museums were for rich folk.
“No.” Desmond kept his voice as level as he could. “Can’t say’s I ever did that.” He didn’t think he could bear to know about something else his boy couldn’t have, but he made himself ask, “What’s this about, son?”
“Nothing. I just wondered.” Nicky’s eyes were lit up like Christmas itself.
“You must think your old dad’s gone blind. You’ve got mischief written all over you.”
Nicky laughed, then clapped his hand over his mouth as if a secret would fly out. When he brought his hand down, he’d almost managed a straight face. “I just wondered,” he said again. “Honest, Dad.”
Desmond was only too willing to let it go. “Then hadn’t you better get to those lessons?”
Nicky stood up. “When I’m done, I’ll come draw for you.” He was saying he wasn’t blind, either. Didn’t need to be told what help his father needed.
Desmond stared at the paper again, but the words had turned into blurry blocks of gray. One of these days, we’ll be able to get our kids the things they deserve. How long do they have to wait?
* * *
Over the next couple of weeks, Desmond put one foot in front of the other. Walking to work every morning under the gray sky; lifting and wringing and hauling fabric until every muscle ached and the dyes burned into his chafed hands; walking home again. Trying not to see too much of his wife’s unhappiness. Trying not to count the pennies too closely.
The only brightness in those weeks came in the evenings. Every night, after homework, Nicky did the drawing trick again. He’d come and find Desmond in the living room, where he was reading — or, likelier, pretending to read — and use pencil and paper to lift him out of himself.
One night, he did the trick on a page from the newspaper, putting cutouts in it like an oversized tissue snowflake. Another time, he coiled a fountain pen into a spiral. The night before the start of the school’s winter holidays, he used an empty water glass. Desmond watched as he narrowed it and stretched it up to almost double its height, and then bent it over like an upside-down U. When he was done, it stood on the living room table like a caterpillar caught in mid-crawl.
Desmond leaned against the arm of the couch and surrendered to laughter. “Son, I’ll swear you get better all the time.”
Nicky was kneeling on the rug, using the table as a drawing surface. “It’s pretty good,” he agreed. Left to itself, the glass would stay as it was for an hour or so, and then go back to the way it used to be, but he would fix it now because that was good to watch, too. “But...” The pencil hovered in the air as he looked up at Desmond. He grinned. “I know about something lots better.”
If you put him near a teakettle, Desmond thought, it would start to steam. What was he so excited about? “How do you mean?”
“I can’t tell you yet. You’ll see, pretty soon.”
Another time, Desmond might have thought of Christmas coming, but they had so little to look forward to this year. Worry snagged at him. Surely Nicky wasn’t hoping for anything. He said, “How about a hint, then?”
Nicky turned the paper over to the blank side, ready to draw again. “No hints.” His face was bright as summer. “I don’t want you to figure it out.”
Desmond’s chest felt so hollow that his heartbeat should have banged in the room like a drum. Another time, he would have wondered what his son was planning or dreaming, would have tasted that delight as if it’d been his own. Now he felt he should say, We can’t have dreams these days, son, you know that.
Nicky had started to draw, his eyes intent on the pencil. Desmond followed the quick motions of the boy’s hand and wished his own body could be a shield against heartbreak.
* * *
Christmas morning, the sun at least came out. Grimy churned-up snow lined the streets, but the yards glittered silver-white. Desmond put on his best clothes for morning Mass and put on the best face he could for the day. Mary Anna, fixing her hair at the dresser, caught his eye in the mirror and smiled. “Merry Christmas, Des.”
There was a second-hand jack-in-the-box for Charley to unwrap. There’d be baked beans, with ham and brown sugar, and biscuits for dinner. Desmond slipped his arms around his wife and kissed the side of her neck. “Merry Christmas, Moll.”
Charley got his present after Mass. The four of them sat at the kitchen table, in ordinary clothes again, and Mary Anna showed the little boy how to wind the box up. When the lid flew open and the jack’s orange-painted head sprang out, Charley shouted with joy.
Nicky laughed. “Now you try it,” he told his brother. Charley did, his pudgy hand firm around the metal crank. Desmond had a feeling they’d be hearing a lot of that tinny jack-in-the-box tune over the next few days.
Mary Anna started to push her chair back. “Those beans soaked all night. They’ll be ready to drain.”
Nicky said, “Mom, wait a second.”
The flush in his cheeks made him look like the little boy he wasn’t anymore. Desmond saw that, saw something like shyness in his eyes, as Nicky reached into his shirt pocket and drew out two little white-paper packages, each about the size of a playing card.
“This is for you,” he said. He passed one of them across to Mary Anna. The paper, Desmond saw, had a tracery of holly leaves drawn on it in black ink. “Dad, this one’s yours.”
His hand trembled as he held the package out. Desmond took it. It was thicker than he’d thought, heavy for its size. Snowflakes decorated the paper, each one different, with tiny precise details.
Desmond said, “What’s this, son?”
The boy shook his head, struggling against a smile. “Open it.”
Desmond carefully unfolded the paper. Something dropped out and landed on the table with a startlingly loud click. A nickel.
The package held five of them. Mary Anna’s had the same. Desmond gathered his on his palm, where they gleamed in the light from the ceiling lamp.
Mary Anna said, “Nicky, how did you do this?”
She sounded exactly the way Desmond felt: the same way he’d felt when he’d first seen the drawing magic, when he’d stared and thought, This can’t be. Fifty cents was no small thing. For him, it was a decent part of a day’s wages.
Charley was reaching out, trying to touch the shiny coins. Mary Anna put one of them on the table in front of him, keeping a close eye so it wouldn’t end up in his mouth. Nicky said, “I did some work for my teacher at school.”
Desmond had one moment to feel frightened as Nicky told them he had earned the money by drawing. Suppose he had used the magic, showed it to someone, suppose he’d had to sell it that way. But then, more of the words caught up with Desmond, and the worry lifted away from his shoulders and floated off into the air.
“She had some line drawings in one of her books, and she wanted to hang them up in the classroom so we could all see,” Nicky said. “For our drawing lessons. Except she said she needed them to be bigger and she’d have to get them copied, so I asked if I could try and copy one for her.”
He had never done that kind of thing before. The magic couldn’t help him there, not to make finished work that would last and, besides, Nicky said, “I wouldn’t’ve showed it to her anyway, Dad.”
Of course not. Desmond should have known better. He wanted to tease the boy about being too smart, reading his old dad’s mind, but he couldn’t have opened his mouth to interrupt. Nicky went on to tell how his teacher had asked if he wanted help figuring out how to scale up the drawing, but he’d said no, he’d like to try it on his own first.
“It didn’t turn out right away. I had to try it a few times. But finally I got it, and I showed it to her, and she said it was excellent.” He couldn’t keep back a grin. “So she asked me to do all the ones she wanted, and she paid me five cents for each one.”
Mary Anna said, “But didn’t that take you a while?”
Nicky nodded. “I wanted it to be a surprise, so I didn’t want to work on them here. In case you saw.” Instead, he’d used his lunch and recess periods for the past couple of weeks, and time before and after school, too.
Desmond pictured him gulping down his sandwich and skipping out of marble games and stickball to get back to the classroom and work. Down to the soles of his feet, he wished the boy was still small enough to scoop up and wrap in a bear hug. You shouldn’t have had to do that, son, but...
Nicky said, “But the money.” His face had that flushed, shy look again. “Mom, yours is for whatever you want. Dad...” His eyes found Desmond’s. “Yours is because she told us about the art museum. The one here in the city. I want you to go see it.”
Then Desmond understood. Something lots better. Drawings and paintings: rooms filled to the brim with color. Pride and astonishment and a happiness so sharp it hurt tangled together in his chest. See, there. See what your boy thinks you’re worth.
Nicky was saying how he’d asked his teacher more about the museum, and she’d said the price for one adult’s admission was a quarter. He looked so shy now, he might have been ready to cry. Desmond understood that, too. The boy knew, perfectly well, how they could use money for every practical need under the sun. He held this gift out anyway: this priceless thing.
Mary Anna leaned forward. Desmond knew she was about to say exactly what he’d just been thinking, how useful the money would be, the fifty cents together, and how they’d better be practical with it now and save the museum for later.
He reached over to touch her hand. “Moll.”
Charley was still playing with the one coin, pushing it carefully along the tabletop with a fingertip. Desmond held his wife’s eyes. Boy worked so hard for this. He wants it so much.
Her mouth had gone tight again, but she looked from him to their son, and then at the four coins gleaming on the holly-traced paper in front of her. “Nicky,” she said, “this is a big help. Thank you. And I’m sure your dad will like the museum.”
The boy’s relief looked like a sunrise. “You’re welcome.”
Desmond set his coins down on their wrapper. Two steps got him around to the other side of the table. “Stand up, son.”
The top of Nicky’s head came up just to his father’s chin. Desmond held him tight and pressed a kiss on his hair. “You are something, you know that?” Thinking, too, as his boy hugged him back, that he wasn’t the only one who deserved a feast of color. You’ll see those paintings with me. Somehow we’ll do it.
* * *
A child under age thirteen could get a museum ticket for only five cents. Desmond rationed more cigs to make the carton stretch farther yet. At this rate, it would be a long time before he restocked, but some things were important.
On the Saturday after Christmas, he and Nicky rode the free commuter bus to Center City. They timed it to get there when the museum opened. When they stepped through its great front doors, Desmond froze. The ceiling was miles away, the air still and cool, as if no one had ever breathed it. The very walls seemed to glare at his worn jacket and pants. His brogues would leave scuffs on the gleaming floor.
Nicky touched his arm. “Dad.” The whisper bounced off the smooth walls. “Come on.”
The well-heeled young lady at the broad front counter handed Desmond the tickets he asked for and a map of the “galleries.” A glance at that maze of rooms told him they’d never see half of the place in a day. The gallery names meant nothing to him, or Nicky either, so they went into the nearest one first. The map called it “Impressionism: French Masters.”
There were dark walls, velvet ropes, picture frames that looked ready to pull loose from the wall under the weight of their paint. Desmond took in those things at a glance and forgot about them. Nothing mattered next to the colors.
Washes of them. Dazzles of them. Desmond stopped in front of a huge canvas, all blues and greens and whites. It wasn’t a picture, and yet somehow it was: it was sky and clouds and grass, all seen through a haze of rain. It was the shifting surface of Portmarnock harbor, the way he had loved it, the way it still sometimes drifted into his dreams.
“Son,” he managed to whisper, “are you seeing this?”
“Yes.” The boy’s face told Desmond he’d have had his nose up against the painting if the red velvet ropes weren’t there. Who had ever known that colors could be like this?
They walked slowly from one painting to another. It felt like eating a rich meal, savoring one bite at a time, trying to save enough room for more. Once they had seen everything in that first gallery, Desmond knew that one day in the museum would barely scratch the surface. He knew, too, that this couldn’t be the last time they came here.
When they finally had to catch the bus home, the swirl of colors and shapes crowding Desmond’s mind made him feel as tired as he did at the end of a workday. Except this wasn’t the dull, hopeless tiredness that came from too much trying and nothing to show for it. He felt like he’d run a race and done all right.
As the bus jounced onto the main eastbound avenue, Nicky rested his head on Desmond’s shoulder. Desmond put an arm around him. “We’ll get back there, son,” he said. “Before too long.”
Nicky lifted his head again. “We will?”
“Yes.”
“But...”
“I know. We’ll do it somehow.”
Desmond had no idea how he’d come up with the money for another visit. He only knew, as clearly as he’d ever known anything, that they had to go back. “Some people would say it’s a treat to see things like that,” he said. “But really, you know, we need it just the same as food.”
Nicky smiled. He was worn out, too, his eyes drifting closed. “I’d like to go back sometime.”
The city slid along outside the bus’s windows. Philadelphia winters were dreary enough, but Desmond saw how, even under the overcast sky, the snow on the lawns gleamed here and there in stray snatches of light. Red brick houses stood out like splashes of paint. The bare trees looked as dark and rich as coffee.
He hadn’t noticed those things in a long time. Nicky had fallen asleep, his body relaxed against Desmond’s, his head on his father’s shoulder. Desmond held him and watched the colors go past.
Copyright © 2025 by Kris Faatz
