Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

  I shook my head, refocusing my eyes, but it was still there. A black corona radiating from my son, head to toe. Like Peter Pan’s legendary shadow. But then, just as suddenly, the dark wreath slipped away and sank to the ground. King Rex let out a shrill, reverberating scream, as hair-raising as a lion’s roar with the otherworldliness of a peacock’s cry. My toes curled involuntarily into the grass. I was sure the whole neighborhood had heard the dinosaur’s roar and would descend on our backyard any minute now to see what all the ruckus was about.

  But instead of turning on me or David as I feared, the T-rex pivoted on his taloned feet and pursued the shadowy substance with lightning speed. Weeple lumbered from behind the bed sheets and set off after the mysterious aura as well. They chased it to the tree line and then continued to stand there, bodies heaving with exertion and their backs and tails turned to us. Guarding the boundary. Guarding it from what I did not know.

  I dragged myself into a sitting position. My lower back was sore, bruised probably, and I was certain I’d have a nice bump on the back of my head too. I inhaled, counted silently to ten, and then exhaled. I still felt hysterical, so I counted to one hundred. David crumpled wordlessly beside me, and I pulled his head to my chest. I knew I should try to compose myself for his sake and say something to dispel the terror we had both just witnessed, but my hands and knees were trembling and my mouth felt parched. I swallowed hard.

  I had just learned three things. One: the dinosaurs and the black smoke were separate beings. I had assumed from the start that the two were entwined, that the shadowy plume heralded the dinosaurs’ arrival in a way. But now, I realized that I had been mistaken and they were two very separate creations.

  Two: some sort of psychological drama I didn’t understand was playing out in David’s imagination. He seemed almost haunted by the black shadow, but what did the shadow represent? The dinosaurs appeared intent on keeping it away from him, as though they were in fact his bodyguards.

  And three: I couldn’t do this anymore. Couldn’t live with the frequent shots of adrenaline. Couldn’t live with the fear of a dinosaur behind every door or, in this case, bed sheet. Couldn’t deal with ominous shadows threatening my son. It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t right.

  Something needed to be done. We needed to meet with a professional, although I wasn’t sure into which category this would fit. I doubted I would find a listing in the phonebook. A child psychiatrist slash paleontologist?

  Dr. Nicole Rosen was not what I had expected at all. She didn’t look old enough to have graduated from high school, let alone medical school. In her oversized white coat and black wedge sandals, she looked like a little girl playing dress-up. But she was sharp. Sharper than David’s regular pediatrician in Milwaukee, Dr. Bob Komanski, who had been practicing medicine for over forty years and was stone deaf.

  “At David’s age, imaginary playmates are incredibly common,” Dr. Rosen said, crossing her legs at the ankle, revealing a coral-colored pedicure and a toe ring. A slender, silver toe ring. Did people really still wear those? “In the past, the literature used to treat them as some kind of warning sign of a child in crisis, but recent studies show that about two-thirds of children have an imaginary friend by the age of seven, and those children even turn out to be better communicators and more creative in general.”

  I’d found a clinic in Glacial Hills affiliated with the medical complex in Milwaukee we normally visited, so I knew they’d have all David’s medical records in their computer system. Unlike her other, probably older and more experienced colleagues, Dr. Rosen was able to squeeze us in within the week, and I was too antsy to wait. Apparently I couldn’t make an appointment directly with a child psychiatrist; I needed a referral from a family medicine doctor or pediatrician so they could rule out any other health problems first. I figured it couldn’t hurt for David to have a check-up anyway because he’d be starting kindergarten in a month and would need to be current on all his immunizations.

  David had been measured (43 inches) and weighed (40.7 pounds). Dr. Rosen had physically examined him from head to foot, and when she’d gotten to his toes, she had pointed out a bruised toenail I hadn’t seen before.

  “What happened here?” she asked David, lightly pressing the blackened nail of his big toe, which caused him to squirm and let out a small yelp. “Did something fall on your foot?”

  He shook his head and looked up at me helplessly, but I couldn’t explain it to her either. With all of David’s running around barefoot, I wasn’t too surprised that he had a black-and-blue toenail. What surprised me was that he hadn’t complained about the pain or cried when it first happened. He was a tough kid. Maybe too tough.

  “Well, the good news is I don’t think it will fall off,” Dr. Rosen said briskly. Whew. I hadn’t known that was a possibility. “But I think it will take a few more weeks for the discoloration to totally go away.” Then she had typed a few additional notes on the computer in the examining room and stood up, clearly on her way out the door.

  “Any other questions or concerns I can help you with today?” she had asked, hand on doorknob.

  “Yes,” I’d said. “Actually, there is one.” She had reluctantly sat back down, and I had explained to her about the recent appearance of the dinosaur duo and the shadow they chased. Not their literal appearance to me, of course—I didn’t want her to call a psych consult on her patient’s wacko mother—but their appearance in David’s life.

  After rattling off her statistics, Dr. Rosen assured me that childhood imaginary friends weren’t an indication of mental illness. I found myself letting out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. The fear that had been with me since Patrick’s diagnosis—the hereditary threat of bipolar disorder—was always present in the back of my mind, and though the fear would persist until my son was much older, at least these imaginary friends were not warning signs of it. There was still hope.

  “Do you know why kids create imaginary friends?” I asked. It had been the question preoccupying my thoughts lately.

  Dr. Rosen jiggled her foot, the one wearing the toe ring. “There are a lot of possible reasons, actually. Usually it’s linked to some kind of transition in the child’s life: the birth of a sibling, the first day of school, a household move. But it could just be that the child is bored and wants a new way to be entertained.”

  It certainly was a time of transition for both of us right now. The move from Milwaukee to a new home, new environment, new routine, and new group of people. I wondered if he missed Stacy and her kids, who were much older than David but really sweet with him, and the handful of friends he’d made in preschool and on the T-ball team. I wondered if he missed our tiny apartment which smelled like cat pee whenever it rained and was so close to the railroad tracks you could practically set your watch by the Amtrak timetable.

  “We just moved to Salsburg, which is when the dinosaurs first showed up, but otherwise he seems to be adjusting well,” I said. “So it’s probably not a warning sign of a child in crisis, like you said,” I added hopefully.

  She cocked her head with a slight frown. “Is there any reason to suspect David is in crisis right now?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s just, well, dinosaurs and shadows seem kind of scary, don’t you think?” I knitted my fingers together on my lap and glanced at David, who was busy sliding the colored beads of an abacus across each row. Only the most educational toys at the doctor’s office, of course.

  She studied him, too. “That depends. Does David seem afraid of them?”

  “Not the dinosaurs, but the shadow…” It was hard to describe the complicated relationship both the dinosaurs and David seemed to have with the black smoke without revealing I could see their actions. “From what he says about them,” I started carefully, “I think part of the dinosaurs’ job is to keep the shadow away.”

  “Hmm.” I didn’t like the sound of that hmm. Dr. Rosen spun in her chair and typed something in David’s chart. “You mentioned moving r
ecently. Do you and David live alone? With his father? Other family members?”

  “With my grandparents,” I said. “Temporarily. I’m a single mom. David’s father isn’t in the picture. Hasn’t been since he was a baby.”

  She dragged her eyes from the computer screen to level them at me. They were a pretty dark blue with curly lashes. They were the kind of eyes that inspired immediate trust. “And you feel safe there?”

  I laughed, taken aback. “Yes, totally.”

  “And David feels safe there too?”

  “Yes,” I said. I knew she was probably required by law to ask these questions, but I was starting to feel unsettled.

  “And before your move, where did you live?”

  “In an apartment in Milwaukee, just the two of us.”

  She scrolled rapidly through David’s chart and fired off a list of questions at me. “Any changes in appetite? Increased irritability? Mood swings? Trouble sleeping? Any injuries?” She double-clicked the mouse with every “no” I gave her.

  “All right then. I’d like to talk to David now, one-on-one, so if you wouldn’t mind stepping outside for just a bit…”

  “Step outside? Why?” I exclaimed. “He’s only four years old! He needs his mother with him.”

  David looked up from his abacus, apparently reacting to the panicked tone of my voice.

  “It will just be for a few minutes, Ms. Jennings,” Dr. Rosen said in an infuriatingly calm tone. She rolled her stool toward David with a big smile plastered on her face. “David, your mom is going to be right outside this door, so that we can get to know each other a little better. I just have a few questions for you about your dinosaurs. I’d love for you to tell me about them.” She turned back to me with a look meant to drive me from the room.

  When I opened the exam room door and stepped into the hallway, the nurse who had ushered us into the room and taken David’s vitals gave me a wide grin. But when David didn’t come out as well, and I shut the door behind me, her expression changed to a hard, wary one. My face flushed, and my stomach felt queasy. In her mind, and apparently Dr. Rosen’s too, I was not to be trusted. A suspected child abuser maybe. I turned away from her and pretended to study a poster on the wall about the benefits of breastfeeding. The door was either soundproof or Dr. Rosen was talking very quietly.

  With each minute that passed, it seemed more and more likely that I would throw up. The rational part of my brain knew I hadn’t done anything wrong and they were just taking precautions like they would with any child. But the insecure part of my brain worried that David would blurt out some of my less proud parenting moments, and this, combined with the troubling imaginary friends, would be enough for them to take him away from me.

  I was seriously regretting bringing him for a check-up today when Dr. Rosen cracked open the door. “All done in here,” she said cheerfully. “Why don’t you come back in so we can wrap things up? Please, have a seat.”

  David looked totally calm sitting near the basket of books and toys on the floor.

  Dr. Rosen crossed her arms, which looked like they were drowning in the sleeves of her white coat. “Overall, I’m not too concerned about David’s overactive imagination. I think it’s a perfectly normal, healthy phase for him to be going through right now with all the changes in his life.”

  It was the exact thing I’d been praying to hear, but it brought only a hollow kind of relief. Because Dr. Rosen knew only half of the story. She could make this pronouncement in the clinic’s sterile, climate-controlled exam room, but if she stepped outdoors into the merciless heat, into the cloaking shadows and glaring sunlight, and could lay eyes on the terrors of David’s imagination like I could? Would she consider my ability a “perfectly normal, healthy phase” for me as well? Or would she write a psychiatric referral for me so fast that it would make my head would spin?

  She’d also lost some of my confidence by suspecting me of harming David or allowing him to live in a dangerous home, which was so contrary to the way I had struggled to remove him from Patrick’s poisonous moods that it made my eye sockets pulse with a dull anger.

  “Now if there are any concerning changes in his mood or behavior, you might consider meeting with a child psychiatrist. I can definitely refer you to one if you’d like to explore that option. I also have a book I can lend you that I think you will find very informative and reassuring. If you can wait here for a minute, I’ll get it for you.”

  The book was a thin, glossy publication called Imaginary Friends, Your Child, and You. The cover featured an outrageously happy-looking mom with her outrageously happy-looking daughter hugging a teddy bear with a huge red bow tie, sitting together on a bed. It looked about as helpful for my situation as a child’s water pistol would be in the face of a wildfire, but I thanked Dr. Rosen anyway and slipped the book into my purse.

  “More coffee?” Lorraine Schiff asked. She’d been hovering around my table for the past hour, and I knew it was because she was curious about what I was doing there with a battered leather portfolio rather than because she needed to clear my table for other customers. It was mid-afternoon on a Tuesday, and there were only three other customers in Ruby’s Diner.

  “Sure,” I said, mostly because I’d turned down her other five offers of refills and I wanted her to stop asking. “You don’t have any almond macarons, do you? Or crème brûlée?” Maybe if enough customers started asking, Carly would be given a little more creative license in the kitchen.

  She looked baffled. “No, we don’t. But if you’re interested in dessert, we have fresh cheesecake, walnut brownies, and ice cream sundaes. The special of the day is berry cobbler.”

  The berry cobbler actually did sound delicious, but I couldn’t justify spending money on a high-calorie treat for myself when I couldn’t even afford new swim trunks or shoes for David.

  “No, thanks. I think I’ll just stick with coffee.” At least that was only one dollar and bottomless. Lorraine snuck one more peek at my leather portfolio before drifting away to pester more customers.

  After weeks of indiscriminately sending out my resume, I’d finally gotten an interview at a chiropractic office in Port Ambrose. I’d cast a wide net—some businesses in the Milwaukee area, some in the Salsburg/Lawrenceville area. It somehow seemed easier than making a conscious decision about where to live, like I was leaving it to chance. If the job was in a fifteen-mile radius of Salsburg, I used my grandparents’ address on my resume; if the job was closer to Milwaukee, I used my old address. I figured if any job-related correspondence ended up there, Stacy would let me know.

  But the interview had been atrocious, and I had no hope of getting a good news call from Dr. Lippmann or his bookkeeping, jealous wife Mindy. As soon as I’d walked through the door and Mindy had eyed my cleavage and measured how many inches my skirt fell above my knee, I knew there was no way I would get hired if she had any say in the matter. Poor Dr. Lippmann had tried to interject easy questions into the interview as Mindy had assaulted me with a relentless stream of incredibly technical questions about chiropracting or chiropractory, or whatever the heck the verb or noun would be, and a medical records computer system I had no experience with before.

  “We have several more interviews this week, but we’ll be sure to call you if we’re interested,” Mindy had said in a smug way that let me know they were very much not.

  Winston and Duffy would be disappointed on my behalf, so I was prolonging the inevitable. But the longer I waited, the more optimistic they’d probably become, thinking maybe the office had hired me on the spot and was having me fill out paperwork or something. Just one more cup of coffee, and I would leave to shatter their hopes.

  I unzipped the leather portfolio that enclosed my résumé, list of references, a pen and notepad, and Imaginary Friends, Your Child, and You. I had thought I would maybe have a few minutes to peruse the book before my interview, but they’d been ready for me immediately. Now I opened the book to its first chapter.

  Self-Ex
pression. You can tell a lot about your child by the form his or her imaginary companion takes. For example, superheroes often reveal the desire to have special powers or more control over his or her life. If your child’s imaginary friend is attached to a stuffed animal, such as a teddy bear, it might indicate a need for security and comfort. Whether your child’s imaginary friend is a talking dog or a “shadow man” (refer to Chapter Nine), however, what is most important is how your child relates to his or her playmate. Listen carefully to the way your child describes his or her friend.

  Does your child claim, like Mariah D., age five, that her imaginary friend, Muffin, is an only child with no brothers or sisters? This might indicate that your child is trying out the idea of what it would be like not to have siblings. Imaginary companions allow children to try on alternate identities and explore other realities. It can be a great learning experience in empathy. Though Mariah D. initially stated, “Muffin is the happiest girl in the world” because she had no siblings, only a few weeks later, she showed a more mature perspective by saying, “Muffin says she’s sad because she doesn’t have a little brother like me. I told her we could share.” Therefore, an imaginary friend can be a mouthpiece for the child’s own concerns, desires, or developing opinions and beliefs about the world.

  I marked my place in the book with my finger and looked up. This, of course, was the most frustrating part of being able to see David’s imaginary friends—it was like watching a silent film. Maybe he was using them as his “mouthpiece,” but I still had no idea what he was trying to say through them. I took a tiny sip of my coffee and twirled the pen between my fingers. Without intentionally setting out to do so, I pressed the pen’s tip to the notepad’s blank page and started to sketch.