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?”
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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Copyright © 2008 Darren Pillsbury. All rights reserved.
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