IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 32

10

Jeff felt horrible.

Not since Susan had died had he exploded like that. Certainly not in front of the boys, and never at them. Or at Granny Jobson. And never, ever in front of other people, even if they were family.

The shame was overwhelming. He tried to be a good dad, he really did. He had been dealing with it so well, too. He’d been okay at the mall, at the tree, looking at the ornament she made…hadn’t he been happy all season long?

Not like last Christmas. Last Christmas had been a living hell. And the first Christmas after she died…he barely had any memory of that at all.

He had promised himself it wouldn’t ever be like that again…he had promised himself he would be strong. The boys needed him, needed to see that it was okay.

Except that it wasn’t. It was never going to be okay ever again.

He quietly dried dishes with a cloth, and stacked them on the counter as Granny Jobson rinsed.

She hadn’t said anything since the outburst. Nobody had. And it was killing him.

He ought to say something.

He opened his mouth a couple of times to speak…but nothing came out. Finally, he forced himself by strength of will.

“Granny…”

He couldn’t go on. But he didn’t need to.

“It’s alright, Jeff.” He felt Granny’s tiny arm around him, hugging him. “I miss her, too.”

Something gave way inside of Jeff. First one tiny tear splashed on the dish he had been drying…and then another, and another, until it was wetter than when he had begun.

***

Jeff sat slumped at the homely little kitchen table, and slurped at the cup of mint tea Granny Jobson had made him.

“I’m sorry…”

“It’s alright, Jeff. I shouldn’t have brought Susan up. I know you’re doing the best you can.”

“I still shouldn’t have blown up like that.”

“Well, when you’ve got me questioning your decisions, and Geraldine for a mother…it’s understandable.” Granny Jobson sat down in the chair beside Jeff. “I do have something to ask you, though.”

Jeff looked at her over the cup of tea.

“Oh, it’s not bad. It’s just that after I lost Frank, Susie was a great comfort to me…and when the Lord took her, well…you and the boys were what helped me live on. Which is what you need to do. It’s coming up on three years, Jeff. I think you need to find somebody who can help you live on. Somebody you can look forward to seeing everyday.”

A name popped into Jeff’s head, without him trying, without him wanting it.

Elise.

Jeff felt a sharp stitch of guilt, and pushed her name and her face from his mind. To avoid meeting eyes with Granny, he stared into his tea.

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Granny Jobson looked sad, and not a little disapproving. Which, coming from Granny Jobson, was something Jeff hated to see. “Are you sure Susan would have wanted this, Jeff?”

A tide of bitter resentment suddenly rose in Jeff. That isn’t fair, he thought. Bringing Susan into this isn’t fair.

“Look, there’s nothing I would love more than to have Susan back here right now to help me make this decision,” Jeff said in a low, trembling voice.

“Jeff, I didn’t mean – ” Granny Jobson started.

“But I have to make the best decision for the boys’ welfare that I can, and Brian’s not paying attention in class and he’s falling behind in school, and talking to him about it hasn’t helped, and monitoring his homework hasn’t helped, and tutors haven’t helped, and psychologists haven’t helped, and if military school was good enough for me then it’s good enough for DAVEY, GET YOUR HAND OUT OF THAT TURKEY!”

Davey froze. Unseen until now, he had been rooting in the body cavity of the turkey, his arm in all the way up to his shoulder.

“I’m just lookin’ for the wishbone,” he explained.

‘The Hidden Wishbone’ was a family tradition that Granpa Jobson had started years ago, and was now carried on by Granny Jobson. It was a variation on the Danish ‘coin baked into the Christmas cake’ – which had been the family tradition until Susan cracked a molar on the lucky penny at 17. Hence the change.

When Granny carved the turkey, she would remove the wishbone with surgical precision. She would then make another cut, and push the wishbone into the stuffing inside the bird. Whoever got a serving of stuffing with the wishbone was supposed to be lucky for the year. And if he won the wishbone pull, well, then he got a wish, too.

Davey had just decided to be a bit more aggressive about upping his chances this Christmas.

Suddenly, his face lit up. He pulled out his arm with a wet schlurpping sound, stuffing and turkey fat dripping from his skin – but with the wishbone intact in his gooey little hand.

“See? Got it!”

Grandmother Tanner was staring at Jeff. He knew what she was thinking, could already hear her disapproving voice in his head: if you can’t handle him, maybe you ought to consider putting two children in military school.

A small part of him wondered if that disapproving voice wasn’t right.

Jeff leaped up from his chair. “Look at you – look at you! You’re a mess!” He started yanking off Davey’s shirt.

Davey held up the wishbone. “Modine wanted me to get it!”

“No he didn’t, Davey! No he didn’t! Modine isn’t real, he’s imaginary! IMAGINARY! Stop blaming your behavior on people who don’t exist!”

Davey stood his ground, half-naked but defiant. “They do too exist!”

“Where are they then? I can’t see them!”

“Cause you don’t know how to look!”

Jeff stabbed a finger towards the back of the house. “Go get in the bathtub right now! GO!”

Davey jumped down from the chair, still clutching his wishbone, and ran off into the kitchen and out of sight.

Jeff watched him go, and slowly sank into his chair. He placed his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, and tried to forget how he had just acted.

That is, until the silence around him cranked up to a deafening roar.

Jeff looked up at the four sets of eyes still staring at him. No one said a word, their forks still poised midair, loaded with turkey and vegetables.

“WHAT?” he shouted, and dropped his head back into his hands.

All around him, the clink and scrape of cutlery on china resumed. No one said anything for the rest of dinner.

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Grandfather Tanner looked down at his plate and started raking green beans back and forth.

Davey’s eyes never wavered.

Grandfather Tanner coughed and drank some tea.

Davey kept staring.

Finally, Grandfather Tanner fished a quarter out of his pocket and placed it on the tablecloth in front of Davey’s plate.

Davey still kept staring.

With a sigh, Grandfather Tanner produced another quarter. Clink! Onto the table it went.

Davey palmed the coins, gave Grandfather a reproachful look, and resumed balling up his dinner roll into doughy little globs.

By this time, Grandmother Tanner had begun breathing again. “Well…Brian, you’re very quiet this evening.”

“He’s always quiet,” Davey said.

“In my day, David, children spoke when spoken to.”

Davey looked at her sympathetically. “That was a loooooong time ago, wasn’t it.”

Grandmother Tanner decided to ignore him, and focus on Brian instead. “Are you looking forward to your new school, Brian?”

“Do you remember when they invented dirt?” Davey asked.

“David, I am having a conversation with your brother.”

“Are most of the people from back in your day dead yet?”

Jeff tried to disguise his laugher as a cough. “Davey.”

Again, Grandmother Tanner turned to Brian. But now she was a little out of sorts. “Well, Brian?”

Brian shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Grandmother Tanner prodded.

Brian shrugged again.

“Brian, I asked you a question.”

“I don’t think he wants to go,” Davey stated matter-of-factly.

Grandmother Tanner scowled. “Young man, when I want to talk to you, I’ll address you.”

Davey scowled back. “I can already dress myself.”

“Jeffrey, will you please control your child?”

“Davey, cut it out.”

“Well I can.” He turned to Granny Jobson to explain. “I just need help wiping sometimes.”

Grandmother Tanner covered her face with her hand. Jeff rapped his knuckles sharply on the table.

“Davey, I mean it!”

Granny Jobson looked at Jeff. “Are you sure it’s such a good idea, sending him away to school?”

Jeff paused, and looked at all the faces looking back at him. “…yes. Yes, it’s a very good idea,” he said, not sounding convinced at all.

“When are we taking him?” Granny Jobson asked.

Jeff slumped down a bit, deflated by guilt. “…day after tomorrow.”

“What?!”

“They normally start back January second, but he’s coming in a semester late, so he has to go in for orientation and get used to spending the night there,” Jeff explained quickly.

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9

The food was wonderful. A huge turkey sat in the middle of the table, with dozens of tender slices carved from its bronzed skin. Cornbread stuffing, garnished liberally with sweet baby onions, spilled out between the drumsticks. Great bowls of vegetables filled every available space – green beans cooked with smoked chunks of ham, creamed corn sweet and thick on the spoon, emerald-green broccoli dribbled with melting butter – and a ruby ring of jello held a thousand cranberries suspended within.

The adults sat and talked, and drank their iced tea. Brian had his head down, and doodled on a paper napkin. Davey, who had to sit atop several phone books to reach the table, held court with his imaginary friends.

He had torn up his dinner roll into a hundred squished little balls of dough, and shredded his turkey meat into thin, moist strands. The broccoli had been divided into a small pile of tiny green buds, and a couple of cranberries lay sectioned into eighths.

As he started picking the seeds out of the green bean pods, he looked around his plate like a college professor inspecting his class. A very small class. Where none of the pupils were taller than 2 inches high.

“An’ the food goes down into the stomach, and little men hit it with shovels and sticks an’ knock it into teeny eeny weeny little pieces.”

Granny Jobson smiled at Davey’s lecture on digestion. Grandmother Tanner regarded it with something a few degrees shy of horror.

Grandfather Tanner was talking to Jeff. “So, son, how is work?”

“Fine, fine…we’re hearing pitches for next year’s Christmas line. I’m working on my presentation, which is coming up pretty soon.”

“Speaking of Christmas,” Granny Jobson said, “what did you ask Santa for, boys?”

Brian shrugged.

Davey leapt to his feet on top of the phonebooks, squatted, and bellowed, “I WANNA BUBBLE BABY!”

Every adult in the room jumped in their chairs. Grandmother Tanner looked like someone had mistakenly used heart attack shock paddles on her. Even her hair was frayed.

It took all the self-control Jeff possessed to calmly turn to his son and say, “Davey, use your inside voice.”

“But that’s how I told Santa at the mall, Dad!”

“Yes, well, you told him once and I doubt he can hear you from here, so please don’t try again.”

Davey turned to Granny Jobson. “We saw Santa two times, but he got skinnier the second time!”

Grandfather Tanner gestured with his fork. “That’s because it was two different people, David. Santa Claus is primarily just a symbol used by corporations for seasonal marketing purposes, that’s all.”

Davey slowly turned around and stared at Grandfather Tanner.

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Grandmother Tanner watched him run away. Then she turned her eyes to Brian. The battle might have been lost, but the war was not. She put back on her (somewhat) happy face.

“And what do you have there, Brian?” she asked sweetly.

Brian, looking terrified, lifted up HOW TO DRAW MONSTERS.

Once she read the title, Grandmother Tanner reacted as though she were holding a pop-up book on intestinal parasites.

“`How to Draw Monsters.’ Well. You know, you can’t really make a career out of drawing monsters!”

Jeff stood there as though he had been slapped, as though someone had held up a mirror to show him the ugly, unvarnished truth about himself. He felt bewildered…a little angry…and very ashamed. “Mother, it’s Christmas.”

Davey suddenly peeked around a corner upstairs. “Yeah, Grandma!”

Grandmother Tanner looked around sharply.

“Grandmother!” Davey yelped, and ducked back around the corner.

“Besides, I know several guys at my company who basically draw monsters for a living,” Jeff said. “And baby dolls, and other things, I guess, but they draw monsters and get paid for it.”

Grandmother Tanner didn’t look impressed. “And that’s supposed to prove me wrong?”

“Look, mother, you may not like my job, but – ”

Grandmother Tanner ignored him, and turned to Brian. “Alright then…you can’t really make a good career out of drawing monsters.” She looked back up at Jeff. “Is that more accurate?”

Okay, that tore it. Jeff was about to let loose with both barrels when Granny Jobson walked in, smelling of cranberry salad and wearing an apron and oven mitts.

“Turkey’s on the table!” she cried out, and Grandmother Tanner ushered Brian into the dining room.

Jeff sullenly watched her go. Granny Jobson saw him, and poked him in the ribs. “No sourpusses at my table, Jeff, especially at Christmas.”

“It’s my mother.”

“It generally is,” Granny agreed. “Don’t worry, I spit in her tea for you.”

Jeff stared at her in horror. “Granny, you didn’t!”

“Gotcha!”

Jeff grinned, and put his arm around her. Together they walked towards the dining room. “You know, actually, maybe that’s not a bad idea.”

“Yeah, well, it’ll cost you.”

“How much?”

“How much you got?”

By the time he sat down at the table, Jeff was feeling much better.

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Grandmother Tanner looked at the box of Lego’s Jeff held under his arm. “Goodness, Jeffrey, are you still doing your shopping?”

“Still finding fault, Mother?”

“Don’t be so sensitive. I was merely making an observation.”

Grandfather Tanner, meanwhile, beamed down at his two grandsons and pointed with his pipe. “How are you doing, boys?”

Brian just shrugged. Davey beamed right back. “Me an’ the boys is doin’ fine, Granpa!”

Grandmother Tanner heard that, and turned around sharply.

Davey quickly covered his cheeks with both hands.

“Grandfather,” he spat out quickly.

“What boys are those, David?” Grandfather Tanner asked.

Davey lowered his hands and began counting off his fingers – starting with the littlest one. “There’s Petey, and Modine, and Eubanks, and Joe-Bob – ”

“Eubanks?” Jeff interrupted.

“That’s a perfectly lovely name,” Grandmother Tanner admonished him.

“Now who the heck are they?” Grandfather Tanner asked.

Davey stuck his chest out proudly. “My homies!”

“I think they’re his make-believe friends,” Jeff explained.

Davey looked like Jeff had just announced the Tooth Fairy was taking back all the money she’d ever given him. “They’re not make-believe, they’re imaginary!”

“Okay, okay,” Jeff agreed to quiet him down.

Grandfather Tanner frowned, and tamped down his pipe with a silver rod. “I read once where imaginary friends are indications of an unwillingness to deal with real-life problems.”

Davey stared at Grandfather Tanner. It was not a pleasant stare.

Grandfather Tanner tamped down the pipe some more.

Davey stared.

Grandfather Tanner lit the pipe with hands that shook the tiniest bit.

Davey continued to stare.

Grandfather Tanner pulled at the pipe and blew out a thin stream of smoke.

Davey stared all the more.

Finally, Grandfather Tanner shoved one hand in his pants pocket and pulled out a shiny new quarter, which he held out to Davey.

Without any hesitation, Davey took the coin and turned away…but not before he gave Grandfather Tanner a sideways glance. Watch it, bub, he seemed to be saying.

Grandmother Tanner ignored all of this, and instead tried to reason with Davey. “Don’t you think it’s time you stopped playing with imaginary friends, and made some real ones?”

Davey spoke slowly and distinctly, as though explaining to a child. “They are real.”

Grandmother Tanner flashed her little condescending smile. “No they’re not, David.”

“Yes they are.”

“No, they are not – ”

“Yes they ARE.”

Grandmother Tanner leaned over, her fingers poised like lobster claws. “No they’re not.”

Davey clasped his cheeks and ran shouting from the room.

“YES THEY ARE YES THEY ARE YES THEY ARE!”

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8

So now the three of them stood on the front porch of their modest but quaint house, with Jeff holding the key poised in front of the lock, and Davey and Brian looking up at him with panicked faces.

“Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaase can we go back to the mall?”

“I’m thinking about it…” Jeff said.

But just as he started to withdraw the key and quietly slip away, the door opened on its own.

“Too late,” Davey moaned.

There stood Jeff’s parents. Grandmother and Grandfather Tanner.

Grandmother Tanner’s silver hair sat piled atop her head in a tasteful French twist. Over her shimmering pearl grey dress, she was tastefully loaded with gold and the occasional diamond. Earrings, a bracelet for each hand, four rings, a beautiful necklace ending in a tiny opal pendant. Her makeup was slight but expert, and her skin was perfectly luminous. She would have been a very attractive woman ‘of a certain age’ were it not for the perpetual look of hauteur she wore on her face.

Grandfather Tanner was a bit more just plain folks, though that wasn’t saying much. Under his v-neck sweater, a silk tie was knotted impeccably at the collar of his Italian-made shirt. His dark grey hair was immaculately trimmed. Rimless designer glasses sat perched on the bridge of his nose. The sweet smell of fine tobacco drifted from the hand-carved mahogany pipe he held lightly in his hand.

Jeff grimaced, and tried to fake enthusiasm. “Mother! Father! How are you?”

“I would have been better had my grandchildren been here to meet me on Christmas Eve,” Grandmother Tanner sniffed. “David! Brian!”

“Granma!” Davey said.

Grandmother Tanner smiled. “That’s Grand-mother, David.”

“Grandmom!”

Grandmother Tanner’s teeth set on edge. “Grand-mother.”

“Grandmamma!”

Grandmother Tanner reached down and pinched Davey’s cheeks in a way that was somehow both grandmotherly and sadistic all at once.

Davey caved immediately.

“OKAY, OKAY! GRANDMOTHER!”

Grandmother Tanner immediately let go, and patted his head without a trace of a smile.

A normal person might have objected, but Jeff had grown up with a thousand brutal cheek-pinchings of his own, so it seemed completely by-the-book to him. He barely noticed Davey rubbing his face and stepping far away from Grandmother Tanner.

Jeff sniffed the air. “Boy, something sure smells good.”

“Helen was cooking when we got here,” Grandmother Tanner said.

Helen was Granny Jobson’s first name. Only Grandmother Tanner called her Helen. In return, Granny was the only person who called Grandmother Tanner by her first name, Geraldine. Helen, how are you? Oh, fine Geraldine. That’s nice, Helen. Isn’t it, Geraldine. It was a civil way – barely – they had of sniping at each other.

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7

It wasn’t that Jeff didn’t love his parents. He did. He just would have preferred they live much farther away. And didn’t call so much…and maybe only wrote once in awhile.

His mother was old-school patrician. She served on every community board in the city – at least, every community board where the majority of the members belonged to the Minton Park Country Club. She was the head of several small charities, all of which specialized in fundraisers at tea parties and champagne brunches at the Minton Park Country Club. She presided over a scholarship fund, which every year gave a nice sum of money to an exceptional, college-bound high school senior whose father and mother usually happened to be millionaire members of the Minton Park Country Club.

Jeff’s father was more of a regular guy than his mother, though that was like saying gold is more of a “regular metal” than platinum. She had grown up in the fashionable Birchmont section of town, whereas he had been born on the wrong side of Mainland Avenue (where the denizens were merely upper middle class, rather than rich). But he had used his disadvantaged youth as a launching platform, and pulled himself up by his polished leather bootstraps to become a lawyer, and a very successful one. He made partner in the firm of Bailey, Banks, and Biddle when he was only 29, at which point he had met and married his wife, and then spent the rest of his career mostly absent from the Tanner household. Now that he was retired, he spent five days a week playing golf at the Minton Park Country Club, and the other two watching football and talking about golf.

They had had big plans for Jeff as he grew up. Harvard Law…Johns Hopkins Medical School…studying architecture at wherever one studies architecture (architects were permissible, of course, but not quite on the order of doctors or lawyers). Jeff could do whatever he wanted to do, so long as the tuition to learn to do it would top out over $300,000.

Of course, Jeff’s plans to become a business major had met with some consternation. But that quieted down after awhile. After all, it mattered more what type of business it was he went into. There were plenty of stockbrokers and real estate magnates and technology overlords who were members in good standing at the Minton Park Country Club. And if he met a nice girl at the club, and found a father-in-law who was willing to take him under his wing…

So Jeff’s announcement that he was marrying a Fine Arts major from Tampa, Florida was met with tacit disapproval.

And his decision to become a toy executive encountered flat-out disdain.

“We didn’t put you through five and half years at Stanford” (Jeff had not exactly been the best of students) “so you could sell tinker toys!” Jeff’s mother had sniffed.

“I’ll be designing and marketing,” Jeff had explained, “and I’ll probably be working with products that weren’t considered a classic toy in 1975.”

“Tinker toys were great!” Jeff’s father raged. “If they were good enough for you, by gum, they’re good enough for the little hooligans of today!”

Once Jeff had proved he could pay a mortgage on a house (“Modest…but quaint,” Jeff’s mother had evaluated it) and start a semi-respectable life as an adult, there was a bit of grudging respect paid to him. And when he and Susan had Brian, well, most of the old disappointments were forgotten. After Jeff’s mother got over the shock that she was now a grandmother, the elder Tanners saw their grandchildren fairly often – at least for people who spent so much time at champagne brunches and golf.

Which was fine with Jeff. If Brian and Davey never set foot in the Minton Park Country Club, he would be a happy man.

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“Well, I don’t look that way.”

“Do too.”

“Do not!”

“Do too.”

“I do not!” Jeff turned his head to look at Davey, and saw that Brian had decided to take his face out of the MONSTERS book (miracle of miracles) and join the conversation. After a fashion, that is. “Brian, do I look that way?”

Brian put on a “Sorry, pal” look and nodded. Which meant Yeah, actually you do, in Brian-ese.

Jeff was horrified. “Nunh-unh!”

Davey leapt between the two front bucket seats. “Uh-huh!”

“NUNH-UNH!”

“UH-HUH!”

Jeff realized that he had slipped into kiddie-speak. He spent so much time around his own children, and designing toys for children, and selling to children, that he had begun to talk like children. Which was not a good thing. Not in this situation.

So he drew himself up in his seat, squared his shoulders, and acted like an adult. “No, I do not. And even if I did, it’s none of your business.”

Davey was having none of this adult crap. So he upped the ante. “Daddy and Elise, sittin’ in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G – ”

“Cut that out!”

“First comes love, then comes marriage – ”

Well, hell. If the adult thing didn’t work…

“Then comes Davey in a baby carriage!” Jeff sang back.

It had the hoped-for results: Davey was horrified. The enemy had sunk to his level – and was BESTING him.

“Nunh-unh!”

“Suckin’ his thumb,” Jeff chanted, “wettin’ his pants – ”

“NUNH-UNNNNNHHH!”

And then the greatest coup of all happened: Jeff got an ally, as Brian suddenly burst into song with him.

“DOIN’ THE BABY HULA DANCE!” they shouted together.

Davey flung himself all around the back seat and flailed his legs about. He cupped his ears with his hands, and hollered at the top of his lungs, “I CAN’T HEAR YOU! LA LA LA LA LA – I CAN’T HEAR YOU – ”

Jeff and Brian were laughing so much as they pulled into the driveway that Jeff almost didn’t see the black Mercedes parked there. He slammed on the brakes for real, and as the car rocked back and forth in the aftermath, things grew deadly quiet.

“Great,” he muttered. He had totally forgotten.

Davey sat up from where he had fallen in the floorboards. “What?”

Jeff pointed at the Mercedes.

“Grandmother and Grandfather Tanner are here.”

No one spoke. Hardly anyone breathed. Had there been snowflakes falling outside, Jeff would have been able to hear them as they drifted gently against the windshield.

Someone had to finally break the silence. Davey did, after a good 20 seconds.

“Can we go back to the mall?” he asked.

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“Is Elise opening presents with us tomorrow?”

“Yes, she’s coming over with Nana tomorrow, and we’re all having breakfast together and opening presents.”

‘Nana’ was what Davey and Brian called Elise’s mother, Ruth Ann.

“Nana’s wrinkly.”

“Yes, well, Granny Jobson’s wrinkly, too. I’ll be wrinkly, soon. You’ll be wrinkly, we’ll all be wrinkly.”

“Yeah, but she acts weird.”

Jeff hadn’t ever tried to explain Nana’s beginning stages of Alzheimers to Davey. He wasn’t even sure he should. As far as he knew, Elise had told him in confidence. When she wanted the boys to know, she would tell them, he reasoned.

So instead, Jeff just deflected the question. “Yeah, well, Granny Jobson acts weird. She dances with invisible people all the time.”

“She says she dances with Granpa.”

Jeff looked at Davey in the rearview mirror. This was the first he’d heard of Granny’s choice of dance partners. “She told you that?”

“Yeah.”

Huh…Granpa Jobson had passed away six years ago.

“Yeah, well…you act weird, too.”

Davey looked shocked. “Me?!”

“You talk to invisible birds, and some kid with your face is messing with the toilet paper.”

“But that’s real!”

“Yeah, well, it’s still weird.”

“Is not.” Davey put his face behind the headrest, and pouted. But only for a second, and then he followed up with the sucker punch.

“When’re you gonna kiss Elise?”

“WHAT?”

Jeff nearly slammed on the brakes. It was more of a hard tap, but it caused several car honks and some screeching of tires.

It also caused a great deal of motion in the car. Brian was restrained by his seatbelt, but Davey’s face got mashed against the headrest, and then he collapsed back into his seat.

“Jeez, Dad!” Davey complained, rubbing his nose.

“I am NOT going to kiss Elise! And put on your seatbelt!”

“You always look like you wanna.”

“WHAT? I do NOT!”

“Well, you always look stoopid around her, like Casey Smith does when she’s chasing boys.”

Casey Smith was a girl in Davey’s kindergarten class, who had already discovered boys at an extremely young age – or had just found an inspired way to torture them.

Davey screwed up his face like he had just been asked to eat a particularly disgusting piece of food. Which for Davey would be something like asparagus or spinach, since dog food was fair game. “She always looks stoopid like that when she tries to kiss me or Jack or Benny.”

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6

“Daddy got BUST-ED!”

The voice came from behind a walking Lego’s box. Davey weaved about drunkenly under the weight of the package, but his voice was positively joyful.

“Daddy got BUST-ED!”

Jeff followed him out of the mall, his face very red and brow severely knit. Brian came last, his nose buried deep in his new book.

“I did not get ‘busted,’ Davey,” Jeff fumed. “I explained the situation to the store manager – ”

“Daddy stole my toy for me!” Davey announced to an approaching couple in their late fifties.

“I did not steal anything,” Jeff tried to assure them.

It didn’t help. The couple steered clear of the entire family.

Davey stopped and turned around to inform them of more of the evening’s events.

“An’ I saw some butt-nekkid people!”

“DAVEY!”

The fiftysomethings quickened their pace.

“I’m gonna make a livin’ drawin’ ‘em!” Davey called after them. “Butt-nekkid people!”

They fairly sprinted the rest of the way to the mall.

“Davey, cut that out and get over here!”

Davey turned to follow Jeff and Brian, and suddenly noticed the skinny Salvation Army Santa standing out by the street corner, ringing his bell by his brass donations pot.

Davey stopped, squatted, and screamed, “I WANNA BUBBLE BABY!” then ran to join Brian and Jeff, leaving the Salvation Army Santa to stare in baffled wonder after the talking, walking Lego box.

***

By the time they were all inside the family car, Jeff had relaxed a little. Brian sat beside him in the front passenger seat, nose buried in the MONSTERS book. Jeff just looked at him, sighed, and pulled out into traffic.

Davey was slightly more active. He stood in the back seat, chin perched on Brian’s headrest, and thumped his brother on the head with a flick of his forefinger. Brian didn’t respond, so Davey flicked him again. Brian didn’t respond – he never responded, which Davey knew would happen. That’s what always happened. Maybe it was a somewhat passive-aggressive version of “so-and-so’s on my side of the car!” Maybe it was some sort of bizarre brotherly bonding ritual. Jeff didn’t know, but whatever it was, it was silent, so he just ignored it. He knew that diverting Davey’s attention from annoying but relatively harmless pastimes could be dangerous. Weeping and gnashing of teeth could follow, much as it had earlier tonight.

So Davey just flicked Brian’s head absentmindedly. He was still flicking now, long after he’d lost interest. But he was thinking.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 21

Brian just stared at his father in shock. Jeff looked into his eyes. He couldn’t tell if he’d gotten through. He couldn’t tell anything anymore. He was a failure as a husband, now he was a failure as a father. He’d failed his kids, and Brian was slipping away, further and faster, and there was nothing he could do to catch him.

“Jeez, Dad, he just wants a book,” Davey grumbled.

Pity party interrupted, Jeff whirled around on his younger son.

“Davey, you be quiet – ”

For the first time, Jeff noticed that Davey was thumbing through his own copy of HOW TO DRAW books. Great – more monsters.

“What are you looking at?”

Davey held up the book: HOW TO DRAW NUDES. His eyes got big, and his smile grew even bigger, though his voice was almost religiously solemn. “Butt-nekkid people.”

“GIVE ME THAT!”

Jeff snatched the book away and looked inside. It was Jeff’s turn for his eyes to get big. The particular page Davey had it open to featured a very anatomically detailed drawing of a woman, whose ample chest and sensual pose seemed more appropriate for PLAYBOY than the HOW TO DRAW line of art books.

Brian looked over Jeff’s shoulder at the pictures, then reached for another copy of the same on the shelves.

“Okay, I’ll take that one.”

Jeff grabbed his hand. “NO, you can have the monsters.”

“But Dad,” Davey pointed out, “you said you can’t make a living drawing monsters.”

Jeff hurriedly reshelved the anatomy book. “I changed my mind.”

“But I think you can make a living drawing butt-nekkid people.”

“DAVEY, cut it out. Let’s go. Here.” Jeff plopped a copy of HOW TO DRAW MONSTERS in Brian’s arms.

“No, really, I think you can – there’s lots of butt-nekkid people on HBO.”

Jeff grabbed Brian’s hand and led him toward the register. When he realized Davey wasn’t following, he turned around just in time to see him picking up another copy of HOW TO DRAW NUDES.

“DAVEY!” Jeff lunged and spanked his hand, then drug Davey along with him.

“But Dad, I wanna earn a living!”

Jeff turned and ran smack into the chest of a beefy security guard. He was about to yell again…and then reconsidered. For the first time, Jeff realized that their family discussion on the commercial value of certain forms of art had drawn quite a crowd of customers and teenage clerks.

Jeff looked at the guard, and put on his ‘Concerned Parent’ face.

“Don’t worry, officer, I’m not about to let them get the nudies.”

The officer’s bulldog face wrinkled up into confusion. “What?”

“The nudie books. How to draw nudes –”

“Butt-nekkid people!” Davey chimed in helpfully.

“Fine.” The officer put up one hand to stop them both, and took on an expression like he was fighting a migraine. “Sir, did you pay for that?”

Jeff followed the officer’s gaze to the oversized Lego’s box still under his arm.

He felt his stomach suddenly turn inside out.

Oh crap.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 20

Jeff had finally resorted to looking in maternity clothes shops when Davey rushed in, waggling his little finger.

“Hey Dad, Pinky found him!”

“Why couldn’t you just find him?”

“Cause Pinky found him first!”

Davey ran out of the shop, with Jeff close on his heels yelling, “Why do you have to be SO WEIRD?”

***

Theo’s Arts & Crafts. It was an obvious choice; they just hadn’t made it quite that far yet in their searches.

Jeff and Davey burst in like madmen, Jeff still toting the box of Legos. Brian was serenely thumbing through a book from a display of HOW TO DRAW _______ manuals. How to draw horses. How to draw jungle animals. How to draw cars. How to draw cartoons. How to draw buildings. Trees. Furniture. Babies. Bear cubs. Grasshoppers.

“WHAT are you DOING?” Jeff yelled.

Brian’s head whipped up in surprise. “Looking.”

“You scared me half to death!”

“…I’m sorry.”

“You’re supposed to be in the toy store getting a Christmas gift!”

Brian timidly offered up the book he had been holding: HOW TO DRAW MONSTERS.

Good GOD. On the cover were even more variations on the dozens of strange creatures that already covered Brian’s notepad, and homework, and napkins, and test papers…

“`How to Draw Monsters?’…MONSTERS? Why? Why monsters?”

Brian shrugged.

“Why not at least a good art book? You think you can make a living drawing monsters?”

“Dad,” Davey called from somewhere behind Jeff.

“WHAT?”

“You sell toys for a living.”

Jeff paused, momentarily thrown. The kid was right. Jeff knew at least five people who drew monsters for a living, or variations thereof.

But this was no time for reason. Especially from a five year-old.

He was trying to make a point.

“I do not sell toys for a living, I design PRODUCT. There is a very big difference.”

“Whatever.” Davey went back to the book he was looking at when he spoke up.

Jeff bent down on one knee in front of Brian, and took his son’s shoulders in his hands.

“Brian, I love you, and I’m concerned about you. I really don’t think burying yourself in a fantasy world is going to help you with the real one. You’ve been doing that in school, and at home, and all your teachers are telling me that…that you just don’t try anymore. You just sit in the corner and draw all day. That’s why I’m sending you to military school, okay? Because you can’t just sit in a corner and try to escape from the world all the time. I tell you that over and over, but you don’t seem to listen. And I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve tried tutors, I’ve tried tapes, I tried that therapist lady, I’ve tried everything I know, but you just don’t seem to want to come out of that fantasy world. And I don’t know what else to do. Look, I miss Mom, too, a lot. A whole lot. I wake every morning missing her, and I go to bed every night missing her. We all do. But it’s time we face up to her being gone and move on, okay?”

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 19

Jeff was beginning to wish he had found Brian in the girl’s toy aisle. He could deal with that – someday, it would take some adjusting to, okay, but this, this he could not –

Fifty people in the immediate vicinity jumped as Davey crouched down like a constipated old man and bellowed,

“BRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!”

Jeff gazed down at Davey in horror as the boy stood back up and dusted off his hands. Davey looked up at him like it was all in a day’s work.

“I don’t think he’s around here, Dad.”

***

They raced into pet shops, and startled the iguanas and parakeets.

“Brian!”

They popped their heads in clothing stores, desperately scanning under the racks of shirts and pants for a pair of small legs.

“Brian?”

They ran through the home furnishing stores, thinking perhaps he might be jumping on a display bed somewhere.

“…Brian…”

They stopped in every bookstore, checking to see if he was by the comic book shelves.

“BRIAN!”

He didn’t want to, but Jeff even did a cursory search of every girl’s clothing store they passed. Just in case.

No Brian.

Damn it.

They ran past a Victoria’s Secrets. Jeff paused. Pictures of curvaceous models filled the display windows, all of them in various states of undress.

“Bri…an...”

Jeff started to enter the store – until Davey ran back and bit him on the leg.

“OW! WHAT?!” Jeff yelled.

Davey looked at him reproachfully.

“What?” Jeff persisted guiltily. “He could be in there!”

“Nuh-unh…girls have cooties, Dad,” Davey said in disgust, and ran on.

They checked Hallmark shops, and record stores, and fitness places, and eyeglass showrooms, and still no Brian.

As they ran past Santa on his candy cane throne, Davey suddenly dropped into a crouch again.

“I WANNA BUBBLE BABY!”

He ran away, leaving Santa to recover from his heart attack.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 18

Davey shifted his body so at least one of his eyes could look at Jeff, since most of his face was smooshed against the box.

“But they’re cool! You can build a hundred different things with ‘em!”

“Why waste your time? You could already have a Wack-O! toy shaped any way you want!”

Davey’s eyes filled up with all the hurt a kid his age seemed capable of.

“Gee, Dad…I kinda like building.”

Jeff sagged under Davey’s disappointment. He almost caved – and then an orange sticker caught his eye, rallied his spirits for one last defiant attack. He grabbed the box and held it in the air. Inside the plastic casing, a cauliflower with sunglasses and muscled arms clutched a Buick-sized ray gun.

“Come on, Davey, we could get you a Wack-O! Super Fightin’ Vegetable Commando! Whaddaya say?”

“But Dad…”

Davey looked from Jeff, to the box, and back to Jeff again.

“…those suck.”

***

Two hundred people in line, Jeff thought bitterly. Two hundred people in line, all with different toys my company is selling, and the only Wack-O! executive in the bunch is carrying a box of freakin’ Legos.

Thank God no one from the board meeting was here to see this little travesty.

Davey beamed up at him. “Thanks, Dad.”

Weary and beaten, Jeff grumbled, “Yeah, yeah.”

Davey ignored him and started prattling on to anyone who would listen.

“This is gonna be so cool I’m gonna build a thousand things tonight I’ll even go to sleep when you tell me to it’s so cool I got a toy that doesn’t suck I hope Santa brings me more toys that doesn’t suck – ”

Sometimes, Jeff thought, maybe it wasn’t so bad if your kids were trapped silently off in la-la land…

Brian.

Jeff looked around in alarm, then down at Davey.

“Where’s Brian?”

***

Jeff and Davey dashed out of the toy store, looking wildly in all directions.

“Brian?”

His boy hadn’t been in the store. Nowhere. Not in the girl’s toys (thank God), not in the bathroom, not in the storage area where the indignant clerks had yowled and cried as he pushed them aside to look for his son.

“Brian!”

Jeff hadn’t even realized that he was still carrying the box of Lego’s as he and Davey raced out into the mall.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 17

“I want that one,” Davey said, and pointed. Jeff followed his finger to a display of Dramco Field Marshall Ninja Elite BATTLEFROGS.

“Now Davey, is that a Wack-O! Toy?”

Davey took a closer look at the BATTLEFROG packaging. He had been raised to spot non-Wacko! labels like most children are taught to look for skull-and-crossbone stickers on bottles under the sink.

“No,” Davey admitted.

“Whose product is it?”

Even though he couldn’t read, Davey immediately recognized the bulbous blue letters of the logo.

“Dramco.”

“Who is our main…”

“Competitor.”

“Which means they are…”

“The Enemy,” Davey glumly finished.

“So are we going to buy it?”

Davey and Brian answered simultaneously, “Noooooooooo.”

Jeff ruffled their hair in approval. “That’s my boys. What about you, Brian? What do you want?”

Brian shrugged, and went back to doodling on his drawing pad.

“You’re pretty quiet.”

“He doesn’t want to go away to military school, Dad,” Davey said.

Jeff flinched, and looked down at Brian. If the boy had heard Davey above the din of the toy store, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he kept on drawing, eyes on his notebook, and shuffled off down the aisle. Totally engulfed in his fantasy world.

Jeff didn’t know what to do. He wanted to snatch that drawing pad away from Brian, make him see, make him react, make him do something, anything, as long as he would throw down that damn paper –

“Dad, me ‘n Pinky found what we want!”

Jeff looked over at Davey in a daze. His son was holding up his little finger. He must have borrowed one of Brian’s pens at some point, because now the finger had two little eyes and a mouth drawn on it.

“That’s just a finger, Davey,” Jeff pointed out wearily.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” Davey bent down and struggled to pick up a box larger than he was. When he finally hoisted it to his chest, it covered his entire upper body, including his face. His disembodied voice spoke from behind the cardboard.

“See? Pinky picked it out!”

Lego’s. Ultra Space Exploration Moon Base Kit. 346 pieces, along with six Moon Base Crew figurines and two aliens. Jeff knew it well. Knew the designers. Knew it had ranked 25^th in industry product sales since its introduction in September.

Bubble Babies he could stomach. They were the hottest thing around. They were a status symbol on the playground. It was the five year-old’s equivalent of driving a BMW or wearing a Rolex.

But this…his own kid had turned traitor on him, and for a toy that wasn’t even in the top ten.

“They’re a competitor, Davey.”

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 16

5

After the sadness of seeing the ornament again, Jeff had to do something to clear his head. So he headed back to the thing he knew best, and eventually wound up in Way Mo’ Toys. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.

Jeff secretly preferred Tidman’s Toys, with its giant electric train track, lovingly crafted pull-toys, and hand-stitched dolls of cloth and yarn. There was an atmosphere in there, a nostalgia for a childhood he had never personally known but wished he had, a childhood that belonged to half a century ago.

Not that he could have ever admitted that in a board meeting. Tidman’s was a mom and pop organization, whereas Way Mo’ was one of the shiny, happy corporate chains that predominated in today’s market. Way Mo’ was one of Wack-O!’s biggest customers, whereas Tidman’s didn’t even register on the radar. Tidman’s carried car models and Norwegian block toys, while Way Mo’ carried all the latest anatomically overdeveloped super-hero and -heroine plastic figurines. So when the boys got bored in Tidman’s after five minutes, they always made the trek to Way Mo’.

Jeff figured he shouldn’t complain. After all, he had developed some of those plastic figurine lines himself, and paid his mortgage as a result. Sometimes, though, deep inside and late at night, he worried that he might have been a little too successful.

Now was not one of those times. At the moment, he was just one of hundreds of parents having to explain the more distasteful effects of supply-and-demand capitalism.

“Look, everybody wants Bubble Babies, and they bought them all up! There aren’t anymore, okay?”

Davey was having none of the economics. He stamped, and he moaned, and he made faces. “But why?”

“Because people bought them up and now there’s no more left.”

“But why?”

“Because the company didn’t make enough.”

“But WHY?”

“Because their sales department decided that creating an artificially high demand would increase the buzz on the product. Either that or the Marketing department out-paced the manufacturing division, and boy, is manufacturing going to hear about it at the next quarterly review.”

That threw Davey for a second.

But he quickly recovered.

“But WHY?”

“Hey, isn’t that a Mighty Micro-Man Marauder?” Jeff pointed.

“WHERE?”

And thus was the Bubble Baby temporarily forgotten.

If outside Jeff had been a salmon swimming against the tide, in here he felt like a tortoise in an Olympic-sized pool of molasses. He had to keep an especially tight grip on Brian and Davey as they all muscled through the mob of harried adults and whining kids.

Subconsciously or not, Jeff had steered them into the Wack-O! toy section.

“Hey, what about this? What about the MegaLaser Action Ray Gun?” Jeff asked, as he retrieved a package stamped with the orange Wack-O! label.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 15

When the Tree came down in January, all the ornaments with names on them were gathered and arranged on giant tables in the mall. Most of them were abandoned, but Jeff made a point to go back and get Susan’s. They had taken the kids again, and scoured the tables looking for themselves in miniature. When they couldn’t find it, Jeff began to grow angry that someone might have taken it – until Brian called from over by the glass case that displayed the town’s Collection. Susan and Jeff had been surprised to see their family nestled among the five chosen that year, but to Brian it seemed only natural.

Jeff thought about asking for it back – after all, he wanted it on their tree! But Brian had been so horrified when he said it, that Jeff had backed off. Susan laughed at him. Eventually, Jeff grew thankful he had relented. Every year the four of them went to the ceremony, and every year when the mayor unveiled the Collection, they would point and ooh and aah as their little family took its place of honor three stories high among the uppermost boughs.

They had come and watched the ceremony, just two weeks ago, for the first time since the funeral. Except there had been only three of them.

At that moment, Jeff bitterly wished that he taken back the ornament years ago. Other than her pictures and clothes, it was one of the few things of Susan’s he still had left, and he wanted it for himself and his sons, not to share with the prying eyes of strangers.

But that was two weeks ago. Now, as he and the boys stood quietly on the third floor balcony, he tried again to only remember the good things.

“Do you see it?” he asked, and pointed. Their tiny family hung at the end of a green limb, not 15 feet away.

“I see it!” Davey said as he pressed his face between the iron bars of the railing. Brian, for once, had totally forgotten about his drawing pad, and nodded as he looked at the ornament.

“Remember how Mom used to love this tree? She said that the best was when she would go shopping and she’d be hurrying and in a bad mood and totally forget about it, and then suddenly she would come around a corner, and there it was. Like Christmas just appeared by magic, right in front of her…”

Jeff and the boys stood there for several minutes in silence. The longer they looked at the happy family of four in the ornament, the more the crowds around them seemed to grow quiet and disappear, until the three of them were all alone…except for a fourth person they could no longer see, or touch, or hear, but for whom they would have given up this Christmas and every one after it to have her back, even if just for a moment.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 14

But the big attraction was the Tree. At the beginning of December, there was an ornament-hanging ceremony where the same men who picked the Tree would climb up on giant ladders and cherry pickers and place the ornaments from top to bottom. Thousands would show up to watch from the different levels both above and below as their ornaments – or those of their children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews – were hung with the rest of the town’s.

The greatest achievement was to be named to the Collection, sort of an “Ornament Hall of Fame.” Five outstanding decorations were chosen every year to go into a permanent group, and every year those pieces were brought out of storage, lovingly unveiled, and hung on the Tree last of all. There were close to 300 ornaments and decorations now in the Collection, spanning a period of almost 60 years. Despite Davey and Brian’s heated disapproval, the matchstick reindeer wasn’t one of them.

But the one made by their mother was.

The winter after Davey was born, Susan Tanner had created a batch of homemade playdough, using flour and salt and oil. Brian, only three at the time, used a cookie cutter to make Santas and snowmen and candy canes. But Susan had sculpted a little family of carolers – a mother, a father, a little boy, and a baby. She put them on an elaborate little stage, complete with Christmas tree and tiny boxes at the base. The whole thing was so small that it could easily fit in Jeff’s hand. After baking it in the oven, she used her kit of oil paints to delicately color all their faces, their clothes, the tree, the presents. She had even used a special gold paint to gild the tree’s star, and had glued on tiny colored glass beads to serve as ornaments. A little golden thread crisscrossed the base of the ornament, and somehow the loop it made perfectly balanced their little family.

When they went to the ornament-hanging ceremony that year, Brian demanded that they take along the ornament instead of his candy canes and snowmen. Jeff had been afraid – it was so delicate looking! – but Susan had nudged him and smiled, and promised she would make another one if it broke.

A good thing that it didn’t, because she never would have gotten the chance.

It had been a car crash. Three years ago in February. She had been driving alone, coming back from the grocery store one night while he watched Brian and Davey.

The police told him she didn’t even feel it. How they knew that, Jeff had no idea.

They told him he should be thankful the rest of the family wasn’t in the car, too.

He just remembered screaming at them, crying, telling them they were wrong, they had to be wrong, it couldn’t be her. It couldn’t.

He didn’t remember anything after that for days. Maybe weeks.

Granny Jobson, Susan’s mother, came to stay with them the day after the accident, and had been there ever since.

Since then, Jeff tried to focus on the good memories. Like Susan carrying Davey, bound up tight in a cotton blanket papoose. Brian walking up to the front of the crowd of thousands, holding the tiny ornament out to the mayor, who presided over Decoration Night. Normally, anyone who wanted to have an ornament on the Tree had to send it weeks ahead of time. But one look at the shy little boy with his hands outstretched, and the mayor had smiled and handed the ornament up to a man on a cherry picker, who placed it on one of the highest branches. You could see it clearly only if you stood on the third floor, it was so high.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 13

They were a good two hundred feet away from Santa when Davey suddenly darted from behind Jeff’s legs, squatted down, and screamed at the top of his lungs.

“I WANNA BUBBLE BABY!”

Jeff jumped. Literally. At least two inches. Maybe four.

When his feet hit the ground, the first thing he was aware of was the fifty or so people in their immediate vicinity who were staring at Davey.

Jeff looked over at the candy cane throne, two hundred feet away. Santa was staring. So were the elves. Not to mention the kid on Santa’s lap, and every kid in line, and evey kid in line’s parents.

Jeff’s face was burning red, but Brian hardly looked up from his drawing pad. And Davey…well, Davey looked quite pleased with himself. As though the next best thing to telling someone in person was to tell that person PLUS the 500 people standing between them.

Drawing pad and Pinky be damned, Jeff seized both boys’ hands and hurriedly dragged them away.

***

What he dragged them to was The Tree, the forty-foot centerpiece of the mall’s Christmas decorations. It stood in the middle of the outdoor atrium, poking its way up through three stories of shops. Twinkling lights wrapped every limb, and hundreds of homemade ornaments hung from its dark green boughs.

Every year, two dozen men would venture deep into the forests on the outskirts of town and find the biggest, the best, the most humongous tree they could. Every year, they would transport it under cover of night, so that the next morning the open-air mall would be filled with the scent of freshly cut pine.

And every year, all the grade school kids in town would make decorations in class. From kindergarten through third grade, a thousand little ornaments would come: macaroni angels. Hollow eggs painted like elves’ faces. Wise men made out of clothespins. Santas pieced together from bean bags. A tiny Baby Jesus in a cradle made from a walnut shell.

Kids from all faiths could be proud to display something they made. Every December, a ring of menorahs crafted by tiny hands circled the Christmas tree’s base, creating their own circle of holiday cheer.

In fact, it wasn’t just kids who got into it. Anyone could. Every year, local artists donated original pieces. Wireframe wreaths decked with semiprecious stones, wood carvings of nativities, and ceramic statues of Santa had their own circle near the menorahs. There was once even a lifesize reindeer sculpted out of matchsticks.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 12

Brian looked up briefly from his hand-held mural of tiny freaks, and checked out the jolly old elf.

“Nope,” he said, and went back to drawing.

When Brian took the effort to verbalize his answer, it was pretty much definitive.

Jeff sighed, then took hope again. “What about you, Davey?”

Davey had taken on the look baby rabbits save for approaching wolves. His eyes were bugged out, his mouth (for once) was closed and downturned, and any thoughts of Pinky were gone as both his arms clung around Jeff’s leg.

“What do you say, Davey – wanna talk to Santa?”

Davey feverishly shook his head ‘no.’

“Aw, come on - Santa’s your friend! He brings you presents!”

Again, the vociferous horizontal head-wagging.

“But you have to tell Santa what you want for Christmas! Otherwise, how’s he going to know what to bring you?”

Davey’s lips parted ever-so-slightly, and seemed to move.

“What? I didn’t hear you.”

Again, Davey whispered. Jeff bent over at the waist.

“What was that?”

What he said was barely audible. i wanna somethin somethin.

“What?”

“i wanna bubble baby.”

Bubble Babies were the hit of the holiday season, the toy of choice amongst the five-and-under crowd. They were cute little alien creatures fashioned from clear plastic bubbles, in over five dozen different varieties. Mr. Carruthers had been extremely vexed at their success, and had considered launching a copycat line at one point.

And, of course, they were sold out all over town.

“Don’t you want to tell Santa so he can bring you one?” Jeff asked.

Davey shook his head ‘no’ in a blur.

“He’s not going to hurt you, Davey.”

Davey’s answer was to dart behind Jeff and peer from between his knees like an unarmed soldier in a bunker. Just over the hill was the Enemy, with his small green footsoldiers and eight tiny reindeer.

Jeff gave up. “Alright…alright, then. Some other time.”

As they walked off, Davey stayed behind Jeff’s legs, using them as a protective shield. But he kept his eyes glued to Santa as they moved farther and farther away. His face took on a look of worry…like a man walking away from his dream car because it was just a bit overpriced.

Jeff’s thoughts had moved from Santa and on to the gifts he had gotten. Elise’s was nice…he thought…he wasn’t sure. It was a CD alarm clock, so she could wake up to a CD she liked in the morning. Was it enough? He wasn’t sure. She was really great with the kids, and he wanted to get her something else…but he didn’t want to be inappropriate. He was a little worried about explaining why he got it, if he had to – because that entailed thinking of Elise waking up, which meant she was in bed, which was not appropriate, so it was a thought he always pushed away. He couldn’t believe he could even think about that now, he was so close to the Christmas tree and the Ornament, for God’s sake - but he wondered if a CD alarm clock was kind of cold. He’d thought about a nice cashmere sweater, but immediately pushed that thought away. That was inappropriate, because that would entail thinking of Elise wearing it, because he would probably get a tighter sweater, not a bulky one – although a bulky one would be okay, wouldn’t it? Though it would still mean he would have to make that choice, and imagine what she looked like in a tight sweater, and that was TOTALLY inappropriate, so he just didn’t allow himself to think of Elise and sweaters anymore.

That’s when Davey made his move.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 11

4

Under the jolly hues of twinkling Christmas lights, two hundred thousand people swarmed through the downtown mall on a last-minute buying binge.

Alright, so that was a bit of an exaggeration. The Eastland Mall probably couldn’t hold two hundred thousand people even if you stacked them like plywood all the way up to the third story ceiling. It just felt that way as Jeff fought through the mob, careful to hold onto Brian and Davey’s hands.

Actually, he was holding onto Brian’s head, since Brian had a pencil and drawing pad in hand. Even though he bumped into every other person that passed by, the kid insisted on drawing his one-eyed sock monkeys even now.

Jeff usually demanded that Brian leave the pad in the car. But that led to sulking, and, well, it was Christmas Eve. So he held onto Brian’s head, and Davey’s right hand.

Unfortunately, that left Davey’s other hand free. And at the moment, he was talking to his pinky. Loudly. “Yesh, yew a pwetty wittle baby!”

Davey had his hand balled in a fist, with just the little finger sticking out. He wiggled it, made it dance through the air, bobbed his head in time as he sang songs to it.

Quite a few people were staring as they walked past.

“Do you think you could stop that, maybe, just for awhile?” Jeff asked.

“You want me to talk to my other fingers?”

Jeff suddenly had a clear mental picture of Davey serenading his extended middle digit.

“Never mind. Just…use your inside voice.”

“But Dad,” Davey hollered over the rumble of the crowd, “Pinky couldn’t hear me if I did that!”

“Then pretend he’s psychic, and he’s reading your mind, okay?”

But despite Davey’s shenanigans, despite the ugliness of the board meeting, despite the feeling of being a salmon pushing endlessly against the human tide (not to spawn, he mused, but to charge – on his Visa Gold Card), despite the canned holiday muzak that packed his ears like wet cotton, Jeff was upbeat. This was his favorite time of year. The forest green and crimson banners unfurling from the mall’s high-ceilinged dome…the glitter of sno-in-a-can frosting the store window edges…the model toy train track that Tidman’s Toys put up every year, running the length of the store…the wrapped empty boxes in every shop window, each one a promise of a real box to be opened Christmas Morning…

And way up ahead of them, the crowning glory: a department-store Santa on a candy cane throne, holding court as a couple of green-suited women plopped kids on his lap and snapped pictures for greeting cards.

The guy that Eastland Mall got to play Santa every year was a winner. An honest-to-gosh real beard, white as snow. Plump cheeks, a size-50 waistline, even his own set of silver-rimmed spectacles. And a laugh and a smile straight out of a storybook. Dressed in his glossy red velvet suit, with its black fur trim, he was Father Christmas if ever a Macy’s could hire one.

There were probably a hundred kids in line, but heck…it was Christmas Eve.

“Hey guys, want to see Santa?” Jeff could barely contain the excitement in his voice. “Brian?”

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 10

Shock. Pulse-pounding, ice-water-in-the-belly shock. Twenty pairs of eyes all went straight to the source.

His name was Mitch Weedleson. He was small – his chin barely cleared the conference table. He had a head of overly curly hair, and the babyfat look of the kid always chosen last for kickball. A perpetual deep right-fielder. He had big expressive eyes, an intelligent face, and was the only one at the table wearing a bowtie. He was also the only one wearing polka dots (also on the bowtie). He was a teddy bear come to life in a sports jacket and khakis.

And he kept talking. “Shouldn’t we make toys with redeeming qualities, something more than just an ad campaign, something that holds kids’ attention longer than the five minutes it takes to get back from the store? Do we really want to substitute ad campaigns for quality? Do we want disposable product instead of great toys? Do we want mediocrity instead of excellence?”

Silence.

Jeff looked around the table, trying to gauge what everyone was thinking. Miss Peppy Executive was easy to read: little veins stood up on her forehead as she stared bug-eyed at Mitch. Who was this twit interrupting HER pitch session?!

Jeff hesitated. He wanted to say something…he should say something. Now was the time…the time to agree, to back up Mitch’s opinion. He started to open his mouth…

When the Voice Of God boomed out from the opposite end of the table.

“Mr. Weedleson.”

Jeff turned his head and automatically shut up before he even began. The baritone belonged to Mr. Carruthers, Jim Carruthers, “Mr. Boss Jim Carruthers to you,” the CEO of Wacko! Toys Inc. The fifty-something man sat like a king in his court: charcoal grey suit elegantly tailored, regal silver hair immaculately groomed, large manly hands crossed, grand imposing face tanned from a thousand golf courses. He leaned forward from his place of honor at the head of the table, and smiled a tight little smile.

“That’s exactly what we want.”

The crowd of executives exhaled a collective sigh of relief. Half of them beamed at the CEO, the other half shot daggers at the upstart in their midst.

Jeff cringed in sympathy, and looked over at Mitch.

Mitch looked deflated, yes. Scared, yes. Beaten up, yes. But not beaten. Not humiliated. Still fighting. He opened his mouth, as though to say something –

For the love of God, man! Jeff wanted to shout. Don’t you know when to keep your trap closed?

Mr. Carruthers did the job for him. “Because the profit margin is higher, Weedleson.”

With that, the Great Man turned his gaze away, effectively dismissing any other dissenting viewpoints. Mitch Weedleson sat there with his mouth open as the Booger Blaster presentation continued, the unasked question still perched on his tongue. As Jeff looked at him, he felt his stomach fill up with a peculiar kind of coldness as the waves of blather washed over him and numbed his ears and brain.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 9

“As you can see, R&D has really come up with a winning prototype based on my initial design notes.” She paused, and let that one sink in. “It’s quite simple – you just stir up the Mucus pack…”

She dumped a packet of green powder into a small rectangular box, then added a glass of water. Popped a plastic lid on the green box. Shook the box really hard, up and down.

“…then you pop in the ammo clip…”

Ah, so that’s what the box was. An ammo clip.

Like a mini 5’ 1”, 102-pound Schwarzenegger in a skirt, the Peppy Toy Exec SLAMMED the ammo clip into the pumpkin-colored gun.

“…and the BOOGER BLASTER is ready for action!”

She pulled the trigger, and a green jet of slime blurped onto the table.

Jeff made a face. The stuff was lumpy and clingy, just like real snot. His stomach turned a little.

But the other Executives were hmmm-ing and ahh-ing, no doubt awash in dreams of focus groups and single-digit disapproval ratings.

“It also shoots Laser Loogies!” the Peppy Toy Executive exclaimed, and pushed a button on the size of the gun. Two yellow discs shot out of a slot on the top of the gun, and ricocheted off the tabletop. One smacked into Jeff’s head.

“Oops, sorry about that, Tanner,” she smiled sweetly, then turned her attention to the rest of the table. “The best thing, though, is that the ammo is edible!”

Peppy ran a perfectly manicured finger through the gunk, scooped up a gob, and popped it in her mouth. “Mmm mmmmm!”

Jeff’s face twisted in horror as several nearby Execs leaned over and snapped up a bit o’ booger for themselves.

“Hmmm,” one Stone-Faced Executive murmured as he sucked on his finger. “Minty.”

That’s when the feeding frenzy began. People couldn’t push their way onto the bandwagon fast enough.

“You know – YOU KNOW, WE CAN TOTALLY ACCESSORIZE THIS!” an Incredulous Toy Exec yelped, as though he’d just realized something impossibly brilliant.

A slightly more Thoughtful Toy Exec peered off into the distance. “Our own brand of moist towelettes…helmets with Snot Shields…”

Exuberant Toy Exec stepped up to the plate. “I see a second generation after this! The ‘Double-Barreled Snotgun!’”

The Serious Toy Exec took his moist finger out of his mouth and spoke like Moses come down from the mountain.

“I think…this toy could be its own game show.”

A collective OOOOOHHHH went up from the table, then silence fell, as the executives bathed in a collective nirvana of profit-sharing-induced stock option hallucinations.

“My God…” Jeff murmured to himself.

If the Serious Toy Exec had been Moses come down from the mountain, then what everyone heard next was from a Warner Bros. cartoon. It was quite high and reedy, the voice of a lifelong nerd and a geek dyed in the wool. But it was clear, and confident, and rang with earnestness and the questioning tone of Truth.

“Yes, but what happens when children tire of eating things out of nasal cavities and shooting each other with poker chips?”

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 8

3

Above the ten-story buildings and mid-morning traffic of downtown, one steel and glass monster loomed above them all. It dominated the skyline with its razor-sharp lines and mirrored windows, giving nothing away but its name: a steel-brushed, beveled silver sign, 60 feet long and 20 feet high, that hung suspended like a sword over the revolving doors to the lobby.

WACK-O! TOYS INC.

Up on the 23^rd floor, a monotone Sales Department Man’s voice droned on and on and on.

“…seasonal sales are up 5 percent while overall sales are down 1.7 percent from the last fiscal year…”

Jeff sat at a looooong, dark mahogany table. He slumped forward slightly in his ultra hi-tech swivelly executive leather-padded chair, and stared around at the other 20 or so faces that filled the conference room. Executives, MBA’s, accountants, impeccable suits, clean crisp shirts and blouses, vests and ties, black and white and navy and pinstripes and ooh, if you were daring, maybe a little splash of red. Maybe.

Jeff looked down at his own electric blue tie, and sighed.

The Sales Department Man continued droning on and on and on, shining his little laser pointer at the professionally prepared computer slide-show of charts and graphs, projected up on the screen with the latest and most expensive computer slide-show projector.

Jeff propped his chin up on his hands and tried to look interested. He really did make an effort.

As the Sales Department Man sat down, the Marketing Guy stood up and took his place by the screen. In his hand he clutched a plastic toy frog decked out with army helmet and machinegun. Jeff perked up. Maybe this would be fun.

No such luck.

The Marketing Guy adjusted his circular frame eyeglasses and began. “Dramco’s BATTLEFROGS, despite a strong holiday showing, are starting to slip in the focus groups. We show a 17.2 percent drop in ratings of Very High Interest, versus a 12.3 percent drop in our own corresponding line of Super Fightin’ Vegetable Commandos…”

Jeff really began to fade.

***

Things picked up a bit when the Peppy Toy Executive brought out the gun.

It was an orange and yellow plastic tube-like contraption. These days, no one designed a toy to look like a real gun, and true to form, this one looked more like a cross between a pumpkin, a banana, and fluorescent lighting tubes. The Peppy Toy Executive flipped her very short blonde hair back and broke out her million-watt smile.

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IMAGINARY FRIENDS - Page 7

“What, Daddy?” Davey asked in his best Whatever could be the matter, dear Father? voice.

That phrase, with that particular inflection, was a warning sign equivalent to a siren and a bucket of cold water. After all, he’d heard it a thousand times from Davey, usually against a backdrop of angry shouting and breaking glass.

Jeff returned to reality.

“Stampede’s over. Mind your manners.” He looked up at Elise, suddenly more bashful. “You, uh, still coming over tomorrow, right? You and your mom?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

Davey tugged at her slacks. “You’re gonna be there when we open our presents, right?”

“I dunno,” Elise teased. “I’ve heard you get up at six o’clock in the morning to open your presents…I like to be up by five.”

“I can do that,” Davey said.

Jeff snorted. “Not this year. I’m strapping them both down to their beds tonight after they go to sleep.”

Elise looked down at Davey and Brian. “You actually go to SLEEP? Come on, guys, that’s weak.”

“Don’t give them any ideas,” Jeff sighed, then looked down at his watch. “Sorry, I’ve got to run.”

“I don’t get that. A toy company, and you have to work on Christmas Eve.”

“Well, it’s our – Christmas. You know, biggest time of the year. Got to strategize for market position, gauge the retail returns fallout, determine effectiveness of our marketing campaigns…”

Blank looks from Elise, Davey, and Brian.

“I, uh, I’ll be back by three,” Jeff continued. “Their grandmother’s up in the house – ”

Elise’s face suddenly contorted in horror.

Jeff waved his hands quickly. “No, no, Granny Jobson – my mother’s not getting here until later this evening.”

Elise visibly relaxed, then laughed. “Well…PHEW,” and she wiped imaginary sweat off her brow.

Jeff laughed, too, and stared into her eyes. They were the most beautiful shade of blue…clear and trusting, happy and open to everything in life…captivating…Jeff could look at them for hours and –

“DON’T FORGET WE HAVE TO GO SHOPPING!” Davey screamed.

Jeff jumped. “Uh – right, right.”

“I WANNA GO SHOPPING!”

“Tonight, okay? Tonight. Jeez. Bye, guys.” Jeff turned around and yelled into the house. “Bye, Granny!”

Granny poked her head around the corner of the parlor. “Goodbye, Jeff!”

Jeff turned to Elise, and paused for a minute. He looked into her eyes again, and couldn’t stop…he started thinking about the way she smiled at him, the way she brushed that wisp of hair back from –

“REMEMBER THE SHOPPING!” Davey yelled.

A spasm of shock went through Jeff’s body. “I remember the shopping!”

“YOU DIDN’T LOOK LIKE YOU REMEMBERED!”

“I remember! I REMEMBER!” Jeff looked at Elise and smiled. “See you later.”

“Have a good day!” Elise laughed, as Davey and Brian dragged her into the house.

Jeff stayed an extra minute looking at the closed door, then with a great deal of effort dragged himself away to his car.

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