Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

  And then suddenly, my arms and legs felt like they’d been filled with lead. All I could do was watch in horror as David’s body was cloaked in a black nimbus, pulsating and radiating, almost obscuring his blond hair with its darkness.

  The black shadow. David’s unnamed fear was effectively swallowing him whole, and King Rex or Weeple weren’t here to chase it away this time. What should I do?

  As I gaped, still paralyzed, the nimbus separated from David and formed its own shape, close beside him. It was as big as a German shepherd but moved with a slinky, almost cat-like grace. The bad cat. The paranoid look returned to David’s face, and he hurried to follow Winston to the next tractor, but the large shadow animal seemed to be blocking his path.

  “David?” I called, my voice cracking with uncertainty.

  My son’s chin and oval face whipped around, and just like that, whatever weird enchantment had fallen over the barn ended. A ray of sunlight obliterated the large, cat-like creature, and David darted to his grandfather’s side. Still, my headache throbbed, and my blood whizzed excitedly through my veins. No matter how many times I witnessed David’s imagination come to life, it could still be near-heart-attack-inducing.

  “Are you alright?” Jamie asked, his warm, strong hand steadying my back.

  I nodded. “Just a little lightheaded. I must be hungry. Maybe we could all get some lunch?”

  Minutes later, David and I were seated at a picnic table, while Jamie and Winston went off to get hot dogs and hamburgers from the concession tent. The picnic table was near a large, grassy field where a few kids older than David were running alongside rolling hoops and trying to keep them in motion with sticks. He leaned forward on his elbow, watching a chubby boy galloping after a runaway hoop.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him. I wanted to ask directly about the shadow animal, but I didn’t want to give away what I had seen in the barn without David’s first acknowledging it.

  He glanced over his shoulder, almost like he was expecting the large cat to be lurking right behind him. The circles under his eyes looked like bruises, like someone had pressed their thumbs under his eyes until it had left a mark. “Nothing. Can Grandpa Winston take me for a tractor ride?”

  “Maybe later,” I said. “You’ll have to ask him nicely.” I straightened up on the picnic table bench and spotted Jamie in line at the concession stand about fifty yards away. Even from this distance, I could see his strong, sexy back and the way his black hair curled messily around his neck and ears. My heart felt like it was being clamped in a vice. Because I knew I needed to ask David about Jamie.

  I needed to know if it was only a coincidence that the bad cat had appeared twice now when Jamie was present, and that King Rex and Weeple’s first instincts had been to ambush him, or if Jamie was somehow contributing to David’s fears. I’d made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t ignore the warning signs of my son’s imagination, and this seemed like a pretty conspicuous one.

  Though I didn’t entertain the thought of Jamie having a child perversion for one second, perhaps there was something else worrisome or threatening about him to David. Or maybe David was just concerned by the idea of my dating, period. Either way, I would never forgive myself if I didn’t at least open up the conversation to my son. How might things have gone differently if my own mom had been willing to do the same and had actually listened to me?

  “I want you to tell me the truth, David,” I said. “What do you think of Jamie?” I tried to keep my expression neutral, but the vice grip around my heart was tightening.

  He returned his attention to me from the kids rolling hoops and then smiled hugely, the kind of smile usually reserved for spaghetti night or new action figures. “I like Jamie. He’s fun.”

  The vice started to loosen. I blew a strand of hair out of my face and relaxed my spine a little. “I’m glad. But if he ever says or does something that bothers you, please tell me right away.” I felt kind of guilty for even suspecting Jamie of any potential wrongdoing because he was such a good guy, a guy I was quickly losing my heart to, but probably my mom had thought that about Dennis too. And as far as I was concerned, until I could figure out what was upsetting David, I couldn’t be too cautious. “Is the bad cat bothering you?” I asked.

  He nodded and let out a cavernous yawn. “Sometimes I wish he’d just go away,” he whispered fervently.

  David slept for the rest of the afternoon, and I pulled out Imaginary Friends, Your Child, and You, which I’d written off weeks ago as totally useless. But I was getting desperate, so I paged through it until I got to Chapter Nine, which was aptly titled Boogey Monsters, Bullies, and Shadow Men.

  Scary Imaginary Companions. The dark. Thunderstorms. Spiders and wasps. Big dogs. The list of childhood fears is extensive and well-known. Though not all children are afraid of the same things, inevitably between the ages of three and eight, there will be at least one significant thing that scares them. This is a perfectly normal occurrence, so much so that overcoming these fears is often seen as a rite of passage in many cultures.

  But what happens when your child seems to be afraid of his or her imaginary friend? Though it is more common for children to create imaginary friends who are submissive to them and whose sole purpose is to entertain and make the child happy, there have been several cases reported of just the opposite. Case studies have shown that some children have imaginary friends who insult them, make them cry, and even seem to “haunt” them at night, making it difficult for the child to sleep.

  Many parents are disturbed and confused by this turn of events. “Isn’t my child the one who invents the imaginary companion?” they wonder. “Why would my child intentionally create a boogey monster to tease and torment him or her?” Other parents jump to extreme conclusions, suspecting that their child might be haunted or possessed. But just like other more friendly imaginary friends, these “scary” companions are serving an important purpose for the child too.

  Consider, for instance, the case of Sierra B., age seven, who started having sleepless nights after a Shadow Man took up residence in her bedroom closet. Her parents performed nightly “closet checks” and bought her an extra bright nightlight. But still Sierra woke up in the middle of the night from vivid nightmares about the Shadow Man standing over her, tugging off her blanket, and proceeding to count her fingers and toes, which she was sure he was going to bite off.

  Poor kid, I thought. What a creepy nightmare. I glanced at the black and white photo at the end of the chapter. It depicted a girl with pigtails, smiling happily, as her strong, hardy-looking father checked under the bed, presumably for monsters. Definitely not Sierra B., I suspected.

  After months of disrupted sleep, Sierra B.’s parents tried having her share a room with her younger brother, emptying out the entire closet so she could see there was no one inside, and sleeping with the light on, all to no avail. The bad dreams continued. The family went to see a child therapist. Over several sessions, it was determined that Sierra B., an aspiring ballerina, was putting too much pressure on herself to perform well in her dance classes and recitals. Her parents made her take a break from ballet, and the Shadow Man disappeared, the nightmares stopped, and everyone could have a good night’s sleep again.

  What is most important about the boogey monsters, bullies, and shadow men is not what form they take, but what fear they represent to the child. It is important to talk to your child, on your own or with the guidance of a therapist, about what he or she is afraid of. Once the source of the fear has been determined, it will be easier to “exorcize” the scary imaginary friend. Just remember that conquering fears is a natural part of childhood, and an imaginary friend is just a resourceful, external way for your child to do that.

  Sure, right, of course. It was very “resourceful” of David to have a shadow creature stalking and scaring the bejesus out of him. Way to go, David’s imagination. The moral of the book seemed to be that every odd, freaky aspect of children’s having imaginary friends was
“PERFECTLY NORMAL,” “HEALTHY,” “VERY COMMON,” and “A SIGN OF CREATIVITY.” I wanted so badly to believe that the book was right and I was just reading too much into things. That maybe David was scared of something as mundane as the dark or thunderstorms, and his imagination would help him work through these problems. Perhaps my laying eyes on the ominous-looking dinosaurs and black cat was just riling me up unnecessarily—the dark underbelly of childhood to which parents simply shouldn’t be privy. I wanted to think that, but my own history with imaginary friends as harbingers had me predisposed to believe the worst.

  Over a dinner of hamburger noodle casserole and cornbread, David still seemed tired and grouchy, picking at his food in silence. Afterward, Duffy suggested a game of Candy Land, David’s favorite, and he cheered up considerably. Duffy, David, and I played the board game at the kitchen table, while Winston washed the dishes, served us bowls of ice cream, and then joined us for a second round. Despite his long nap, David seemed ready for bed at his usual time but declined hearing one of my made-up stories, so I read him Where the Wild Things Are instead. When I asked him if he wanted me to check in his closet before I left, he looked at me like I was insane. He didn’t seem scared, lying there in his green striped pajamas, atop his rocket ship comforter, and I felt like maybe I was starting to let my imagination run away with me. My son was just fine. Things were going to be just fine for us.

  Since my worries about David had made me kind of cold and distant to Jamie at the pioneer village today, I was longing to see him and make up for it. The Presswoods’ garage door was wide open, and light spilled out onto their driveway when I crossed the lawn. I poked my head inside and heard a country music station crackling over the radio. Dressed in only boxers and a T-shirt, Jamie was bent over a work bench, peering inside a cardboard box.

  “Do you always hang out in the garage late at night in your underwear?” I teased, wrapping my arms around him from behind.

  “Only when I’m hoping my hot neighbor will show up,” he said. He nodded toward the cardboard box. “I thought you might like to see this. It’s the box I found your sketchbook in.”

  “Oh.” I moved around him to inspect it. “One of your mom’s memory boxes?”

  “Yeah.” The way he bit his lip made me wonder if he’d been lying about that. If he had been the sentimental one all along, not Wendy, boxing up and collecting my happy memories for me to return to at a later date. Perhaps in the hopes that I would return to him at a later date.

  “It’s mostly garbage. I don’t know why I kept a lot of it,” he said. “And I haven’t the faintest clue what some of it means. Like this, for example.” He held up a long, brown-and-black-striped feather.

  I shrugged. “Beats me.”

  We sifted through the box’s contents together. There were empty, flattened boxes that had once held sparklers; loose bills of Monopoly money; smooth, gray river stones; mason jars with holes punched in their lids; cryptic lists compiled of random words: pickle, kangaroo, fart. It was the debris of a short-lived, yet happy time in my childhood, and even though it was mostly junk, it had once been prized by Jamie and me. At the bottom were a few faded three-by-five photographs. Jamie flipped through the pictures and then handed them to me.

  The first were fuzzy, off-center snapshots of the backyard and what appeared to be a turtle. The next was a shot of Wendy, looking younger and stronger and more beautiful than I’d remembered, clipping a checkered tablecloth to a picnic table. The last two were pictures of me and Jamie, glowing with suntans, grinning wide smiles dotted with missing baby teeth. I was nearly a head taller than him, and the way our arms were looped around each other with an intentional gap in between, suggested that maybe Leah Nola had been there with us.

  “Can I have one of these?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Jamie carefully returned one of the mason jars to the box, as though it were a Ming vase, not something he should probably toss in the recycling bin. I saw it then. Even more so than the night of the firemen’s picnic or any of our time together since. He loved me. Really, really loved me. And it wasn’t a fleeting whim; it was something he’d been growing and nurturing, like one of his rose bushes, since he was a little boy. I felt ashamed that I’d even speculated he had anything to do with David’s shadowy fears. I felt undeserving of a heart as precious and kind as his.

  I leaned forward to kiss his collarbone and then stood on my tiptoes to kiss his lips. He hoisted me up and I wrapped my legs around his waist as the kiss grew more passionate. He fumbled for the garage door remote, not breaking our kiss, and set me down on the work bench as the door began to creak closed.

  “Not here!” I laughed as he started to pull my shirt over my head. “There are spiders…and engine grease…and someone could see!”

  “Spoilsport,” Jamie teased. “Maybe the spiders want to watch.” But he led me noiselessly through the house, so as not to wake Wendy, and up to his bedroom, where we not as noiselessly tumbled into bed together, and he proceeded to make our first mind-blowing, earth-shattering night together look like amateur hour.

  I felt too dazed for words, too dazed for thoughts, even, and it was such a solace, just lying there in his arms, utterly satisfied and exhausted. The ceiling fan wobbled as it spun. Jamie rubbed small circles on my back as he talked about another lawn makeover job he had scheduled for this week in Lawrenceville. His first clients had been so pleased with his work that they’d recommended him to their neighbors, and as a result, his September was quickly booking up with landscaping jobs. His business was finally taking off, and he was starting to feel cautiously optimistic that he could actually make a go of it. That he wouldn’t have to sell the house to pay his mom’s medical bills or go to work at the printing factory with Marshall.

  “I am so proud of you,” I said. “Can you hold that thought for just one minute? I need to use the bathroom.” I slithered down the bed and walked naked to the en suite bathroom, pleased that I was able to conceal my usual post-sex insecurity and that I was giving Jamie an eyeful.

  I flicked on the light switch and shut the door. The bathroom was in keeping with the rest of the bedroom’s chic, hotel-seeming décor. So clean, it almost seemed like it was never used. White tile floors, white porcelain pedestal sink, spacious bathtub enclosed by a charcoal gray shower curtain. When I went to wash my hands, I noticed the only thing out of place, the only thing betraying that somebody did in fact use this bathroom. A little orange pill bottle with a white cap. I dried my hands and told myself not to look, that it wasn’t any of my business. But I couldn’t help myself. I snatched up the bottle and glanced at its script. Oxycodone, the bottle read. Wendy Presswood. Take two pills daily, or as needed, for pain.

  I tried to replace the pill bottle where it had been balanced precariously on the edge of the pedestal sink, but it tipped over and fell to the tile floor. I didn’t bother picking it up. I opened the mirrored medicine cabinet as quietly as I could, and there it was. The evidence of what I’d been refusing to believe all this time. Each shelf was occupied by a neat row of orange prescription vials. Some full, some empty. All made out to Wendy Presswood. All with recent dates ranging from six months ago to one week ago. Duffy had been right all along. He was abusing his mom’s prescription medications. He wasn’t a recovered or recovering drug addict; he was just a drug addict, period.

  I clicked the cabinet shut. Standing naked in his bathroom, I felt foolish and vulnerable. The fluorescent bulb and white walls washed me out, and my face in the mirror looked pale. Pale and angry. More angry at myself than at Jamie. Why hadn’t I learned my lesson? If something seemed too good to be true, it was! Why hadn’t I listened to my grandmother and the entire town? Why had I been so blind, choosing to see only what I wanted to see, when the facts were so pitifully obvious? I scanned my memory for times when he’d seemed overly mellow and detached or giddy and euphoric. Had he been high the night he told me he’d loved me since we were kids?

  Even if he did really love me
, it still wasn’t enough. Patrick had loved me too, and look where that had gotten us. Even if Jamie was the best friend I’d ever had and probably would ever have. I couldn’t put myself through what I’d gone through with Patrick again. It wasn’t fair to David either; he was enamored with Jamie right now, but if Jamie was still hooked on painkillers, there was no way I was letting him near my son again. Maybe David’s subconscious mind had somehow sensed Jamie’s duplicitousness, and the shadowy animal was a manifestation of that. The thought further infuriated me.

  I opened the bathroom door and stalked into the room. “I need to go,” I said, stooping down to grab my bra and underwear. I hated that I was still naked in front of him when he’d betrayed me so badly. I found my shirt halfway under his bed and held it against me as a partial covering while I slipped back into my underwear.

  “Anna, what’s wrong?” He’d been lying provocatively against the pillows with a big smile on his face when I’d come out, but the smile had quickly been erased. He bent forward, tugging the sheet self-consciously across his lap.

  “I think you know what’s wrong,” I said and pulled my top over my head. Now where the heck were my shorts?

  “No, I don’t know.” Jamie huffed out an aggrieved sigh. “That’s why I’m asking. Can you please tell me so I can try to fix it? I don’t want you to go.”

  I thought about going back into the bathroom and dramatically tossing the vial of oxycodone at him. But that would take too long, and frankly, all I wanted was to get out of there, back to my grandparents’ house, so that I could slip into my son’s bedroom and kiss his forehead while he slept.

  “The painkillers,” I said.

  His eyes widened. “You went through the medicine cabinet?”

  “No,” I snapped. That had come after. “There was a bottle out on the sink.”