As he quickly dressed and straightened his sheets and blankets, he stole glances at the desk drawer to make sure it did not suddenly pop open and release its contents. He sat on the smoothed quilt and counted off the remaining minutes, tapping his left foot on the floor to keep time. At the seven-minute mark, he got up and went to the doorway, anxious for the schedule to be maintained. Even though he knew it was coming, when the door swung open, he was caught by surprise. Clad in a yellow robe bright as a canary, his father stepped out of the bathroom in a cloud of steam that trailed him to the bedroom door. “Up and ready to get cracking? We have Dr. Wilson this morning.”
“I don’t want to go. I don’t like Dr. Wilson.”
“Look, I had to call and get them to squeeze you in this morning. I know you don’t want to go, but it’s mandatory, I’m afraid. No Dr. Wilson, no magic pills.”
“I don’t want to take the magic pills.”
His father scowled at him. “Jip, I’ve told you a hundred times, that’s not an option. Now hurry and get ready. We’ve barely enough time for breakfast.” Just as he was about to leave, the scrabbling and bumping in the drawer began again.
“Wait!” The boy held out his arms like a toddler. “Didn’t Mommy tell you about the noise in the drawer?”
“The mouse?”
Jack Peter took two steps back into the room, hoping to entice him to follow. “Aren’t you curious? Aren’t you going to check?”
His father followed him in. “Curiosity killed the cat, my boy. Or, in this case, the mouse.” He quickly opened the drawer and peered inside, pretending to shuffle the contents. “Nothing here to meet the eye. But not to worry, if there’s a mouse in here, it won’t eat much. We’ll take care of it later. First, Dr. Wilson. There’s no time for games.”
The eggs had gone cold and the little triangles of toast had become hard and dry by the time he came downstairs. He pushed the food with his fork and sipped at a mug of lukewarm cocoa, stealing glances at his father, who was spying on him from behind the newspaper. With a bit of effort, he thought he could dawdle all day, but his father folded the sports section with a crisp crease and laid it down beside his empty coffee cup. “Time to go.”
Condemned, he pushed away from the table and followed his father to the mudroom. First came the dark sunglasses, which made the day into night, and then his coat and hat, his scarf and mittens. He tried to screw his feet into the floor, but he hadn’t the strength to resist his father’s tug at his hand. On with the red boots. They marched to the doorway, and Tim left him standing at the threshold while he went to start up the Jeep. The sun fell brightly upon his face and the cold air wormed its way through the layers of clothing and fingered his skin. He tucked his chin against his chest and shivered. The engine roared to life and his father came trudging from the driveway with an old stadium blanket they kept in the back for just such occasions.
“I can’t,” Jack Peter said.
“Of course you can,” his father answered, and he threw the blanket over Jack Peter’s head and shoulders and wrapped him up so tightly that only his face could be seen. With a firm hand against his son’s back, Tim guided him onto the driveway. On the first step outside, the boy let out a low moan that rose to a steady wail as he was herded the few feet to the car. His father pushed him into the passenger’s seat and slammed the door behind him. Jack Peter banged the seat with his back over and over until he was strapped into place. His cries subsided to a quiet singsong whimper that Tim drowned out by turning on the radio.
“Honestly, Jip, can you cool it just this once?”
Behind his dark glasses and buried in his swaddling, the boy whined softly all the way to the psychiatrist’s office. Once a month to Dr. Wilson. Once every other month to the state-provided therapist. Twice a year to the dentist’s. The odd trip to the pediatrician for other maladies. Every time a little hell.
Even so, it was better now than in the beginning. They had not understood at first what triggered the seizures, and it was only through months of tribulation that they realized that it was being outside that made him panic. When their son first started having the attacks, Tim had to carry him, seven years old, bawling like a rabbit in a trap, pleading not to be taken from inside.
The ordeal with Dr. Wilson took the rest of the morning. First, they had to move from the car to the medical building and then unwrap the blankets once inside. Then Jip had to adjust to the new environment of the pediatric waiting room filled with people. He liked to sit on an end seat with his father next to him, but no two seats together were available, so they stood by the water cooler affecting a casual air. As usual, they went in together for the interrogation.
Wilson rose from his chair, a giant of a man, and reached down to shake Tim’s hand in his huge paw. Emerging from his bushy beard, his smile of greeting was alarming, for he usually wore a severe expression on his face. His joker’s grin was his attempt at appearing nonjudgmental, which often had the opposite effect. While he settled into his throne across from them, Wilson invited them to sit on the couch. He gave Tim one last cursory glance and then turned to the boy.
“So how are we doing these days, Jack? Ready for Christmas?”
Jip said nothing and tucked his chin to his chest. The doctor bent forward, made himself smaller, and put his face closer. “Come now, it’s me. What’s new and exciting? Are you working on anything?”
“He’s doing much better,” Tim volunteered. “Been drawing, haven’t you?”
Like a hummingbird, Jip’s hand darted forward and he used one finger to trace a pattern in the air.
“What do you like to draw?” Dr. Wilson asked.
Jip dropped his hand back into his lap and stared straight ahead.
“What is it that you see?”
He rolled his eyes quickly in the direction of his father. Like a wooden contraption, Wilson unfolded himself, straightening his body, and then leaned back in the chair. He put the tips of his index fingers against his lips, considering his next steps, before addressing Tim. “Perhaps you could leave us alone for a while. Perhaps there’s something Jack would like to talk about in private?” He arched his eyebrows, eliciting a small smile from the boy.
“I’ll call you back in when we are done,” Wilson said. “And we can talk about his routine, whether his meds are working for the anxiety. We won’t be long, eh, Jack?”
In the reception room, Tim waited with the other parents and their children arranged on the furniture, each caught up with a private malady. A yawning boy with circles dark as a raccoon’s mask. A teenaged girl twisting a tissue in her nervous hands. Another child, face upturned and as blank as a stone, counting the tiny squares in the ceiling tiles, a kindred soul perhaps. Twenty minutes passed like eternity. When at last they stepped out into the room, Jip and Dr. Wilson looked as chummy as conspirators.
“You have yourself a good Christmas, Jack,” the psychiatrist said. He towered over Tim and put a hand upon his shoulder. “Mr. Keenan, I think we’re okay for now with the dosage, but I want you back here next month, and we really should talk about group again, or somewhere he can talk, let some of his anxieties out in a constructive way.”
“It’s just so hard to get him out of the house, doctor.”
“I’m not sure how much his agoraphobia is actually making his overall anxieties worse, but he’s worried that whatever he’s afraid of outside is trying to come inside the house. It’s probably best we tackle this latest beastie while we can. Let’s give it a try, maybe in the new year? Meanwhile, I think it’s healthy to encourage the drawing, eh? Jack, why don’t you grab your coat and get your father’s.”
When the boy was out of earshot, Wilson took Tim aside and spoke softly. “Keep an eye on what he’s drawing, would you? Bring some in next time. There’s usually a story there.”
Lunchtime had come and gone by the time they made it back home and repeated the whole process in reverse, shuttling him from the Jeep and those fifteen feet into the mudroom. Tim
unwound the swaddling from the boy, and he was whole again. They talked about his homeschool lessons over tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. At two o’clock, as usual during the school year, his father left to attend to the few chores and errands of the day, checking on the properties he looked after, making sure the winter was not invading the summer homes of his wealthy clients. For a glorious hour or so, Jack Peter had the whole house to himself.
He was supposed to be reading. That was the deal they had made that past September when Tim and Holly finally agreed they could leave him alone for a small part of the day. Prior to that, one parent stayed at home while the other was at work, and during the summertime, when Tim’s duties kept him busy, there had been a nurse two afternoons a week and a string of babysitters, college girls mostly, whose company he both enjoyed and resented.
“I’m almost eleven,” he had argued. “Too old to be babysat.”
“You’re just ten,” his mother had said. “How do we know we can trust you?”
“He’ll be fine with a book,” his father had countered, and that settled the matter.
Today, however, he merely cracked the text at hand and left it spread upon the table. He wandered through the old house as aimless as a ghost. In the living room, he peeked in the coat closet and stared at the hidden presents wrapped in bright Christmas paper. He turned on the lights on the Christmas tree and then turned them off again. In the kitchen, he opened the refrigerator and straightened out the bottles and leftovers on the shelves. Each time he passed a window, he checked the locks, and double-checked the front door and the side entrance. He wrote his name in the dust on the coffee table and erased it with his sleeve. At three o’clock, he went into the mudroom to stare through the picture windows at the road that wound through the fir trees. He counted off the minutes between the first flash of yellow in the distance to the moment when the school bus turned the corner and came into full view. At the next driveway, the Quigley twins skipped down the steps in their matching plaid skirts and green jackets. Alert to the possibility of any oncoming traffic, he watched them cross the road and followed with his gaze until they were safely through the front door. Their obsessive border collie nearly knocked them over when they stepped inside. “Hello,” he mouthed silently. “Good-bye.” The red lights of the school bus stopped blinking, and with a belch of smoke it rumbled away. Framed in the windows, the children’s heads bobbed like dolls.
Right after the twins got home, his father was due. Sometimes it was just a few minutes after, sometimes up to half an hour. There was no way to count on him. Better to go back to the kitchen table and pretend to be reading when he arrived. Pretend, because he had already read the book three times. First on Friday, when his father had handed it to him. They always overestimated how long it would take, and the books in the fifth-grade home curriculum were much too easy. For those first few books, when the hour finally arrived for his father to quiz him, Jack Peter often had forgotten some of the details, so now he spent the week going over the text again and again. His parents thought him a slow reader because he never seemed to get any further along in a book, but he was faster and smarter than they could ever guess.
His thoughts strayed from the page. Nick would be home by now, and he could picture his friend sitting down to an afternoon snack, Mrs. Weller flitting around in the background, asking about school, and good old Nick letting her know that everything was just fine, nothing new, and maybe he had drawn some monsters in his notebook.
At four o’clock, the front door opened suddenly and in came his father, tired and disheveled. A black slick of grease crossed his pants at midthigh, and his hands were covered with the same goo. He saluted his son and went to the kitchen sink to lather and scrub. “Sorry it got so late, Jip. I went over to check on the Hollisters’ place, up by the crescent, and something had gotten in through a hole in the crawl space. Dug a big, big hole and squeezed right in underneath and made itself at home. I could fit my whole self in it. Nothing worse than trying to keep out something that wants to come in.”
“Did you see who it was?”
“What?” He laughed and rubbed his hands furiously under the hot running water. “Not a who. A what. And, no, I didn’t ever find out if it was a cat or a raccoon or a whatever. Maybe a skunk by the smell of things, but I had a devil of a time fixing up the hole so it won’t get in again.”
Jack Peter sidled up to his father and leaned against the counter next to him. “Maybe it was a big mouse.”
“Right, like the one your mother said was hiding in your room. This old place is crawling with mice,” he said. “Just last week, I found a whole bunch of them had made a nursery school down in my workshop. Let’s go take a look. Get to the bottom of the secret of the hidden mouse.”
They went upstairs together, and though he had not heard the rattle from the desk since the morning, Jack Peter knew what to expect. His father removed his left shoe and held it in his hand. “They’re wicked quick,” he said. “You’ve got to be ready before you see ’em or you haven’t got a chance.”
“What are you going to do with that shoe?”
“If there’s a mouse in there, Jip, your mother said we’ve got to get rid of it. Don’t want it running loose in the house.”
“You’re not going to kill it.”
He put a hand on his son’s shoulder to steady himself. “Well … no, not if I can help it, I guess. We’ll just stun the critter and then I’ll take it outside and let it go, if you want. Now, slowly open the drawer while I get ready. One, two—”
“I don’t want to. You’ll kill it.”
“Never.” He pulled on the handle and yanked open the drawer with a start. There was no startling flash of brown, no tail zipping like a pulled string. No evidence that there had ever been a mouse at all, no seedy droppings, no chewed paper. Tim rooted around in the clutter and found nothing, and only as he was about to close it and admit defeat did he spy the scroll of paper. As he unrolled it, the drawing took shape, a picture of a boy alone on the shore, emerging from the sea, behind him the lines of waves breaking in the distance. Half unfurled, the picture amazed him, and had he bothered to open it all the way, Tim would have seen the legs of the other figure running off the page.
“When did you do this?”
But Jack Peter would not answer. His eyelids fluttered, and his eyes rolled back into his head, the whites showing as blank as clouds. He fainted onto the bed, and he remembered nothing more till the sound of his father’s voice gently calling his name brought him back fully into the world.
viii.
“Did you get rid of it?” Holly leaned across him and spat in the sink. Bits of foam stuck to the corners of her mouth. In the mirror, Tim was startled by his own reflection and his frown of disgust. He uncurled his lip and considered his appearance, the deepening lines across his forehead and the crow’s-feet radiating from his eyes. The outside man in the mirror looked back at the inside man, both thinking the same thoughts, just a second apart. He tried to remember his wife’s question.
She rinsed the toothpaste from her mouth and checked her teeth, running her tongue over the enamel. “Well, did you get rid of it?”
The mouse, right. He had nearly forgotten the mouse given their son’s peculiar reaction to the hidden drawing. “I put down some traps.”
Moving on in her preparations for bed, Holly took up the brush and ran it through her hair, counting the strokes, the numbers passing stealthily through her lips. “Not where Jack can hurt himself?”
“Of course not. One in the back of the closet and one between his desk and his old toy box.”
Like a marionette on a string, she tilted her head so that her long hair spilled to one side, and she brushed the flow of it. “Make sure you check on those traps. I can’t imagine anything worse than a dead mouse in the room for a couple of days.”
He had stopped looking at himself and now squeezed behind her on his way out of the bathroom. “Not that there was any sign of it.
No droppings, no shredded tissues on the floor.”
“I didn’t see it,” Holly said, “but I sure heard it in the desk drawer. Jack’s not going to step on a trap in the middle of the night?” She turned and followed him into the bedroom. The small table lamp was the last one on in the house, and Tim imagined how it might appear to those out on the sea, a tiny pinprick of illumination against the blackness of the night, one small star upon the shore. If there were a man out there in the cold, he would be drawn, surely, to any sign of life.
“No way he can step on the one in the closet, and I’m sure he doesn’t go near that toy box anymore. Why do we keep it, anyhow? It’s probably full of nothing but baby things and stuff he’s outgrown.”
Holly folded back a triangle of the covers and bedsheet, but rather than climb in, she sat on the edge of the mattress as though trying to remember some unfinished task before going to sleep. “How was he at the psychiatrist’s?”
“Same as ever. Lots of questions, few good answers.”
They slipped into bed and lay flat on their backs side by side, and Tim turned out the light.
“Honestly,” he said, “I don’t know why we keep going to that guy. Jip is never different afterwards, just gets a different pill.”
“To keep Jack under control.”
“That’s just it. Maybe keeping him under control is what’s keeping the problem alive. Maybe if we trusted him, Jip could make it on his own. Without the pills. Everybody is on something these days. It’s a racket. Overprescribing, masking the problem.”
“I can’t have this argument again,” she said. “I’m tired.”
“I’m just saying that maybe there’s less than meets the eye. Take the Weller boy. He’s shy, introverted, but you don’t see Nell rushing off for a pill.”
The Boy Who Drew Monsters Page 6