Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

  King Rex’s curved spine and musculature took shape under my pen. I scribbled in a few scales and charted out the spiky lines of his teeth with a few flicks of my wrist. It was hard to effectively capture his eyes in black and white, and even harder, with just a ballpoint pen, to shade in the area where the black shadow had lurked. I longed for the full range of colors, textures, and effects my oil pastels could produce, but this would have to do for now.

  I tilted the drawing up, scrutinizing it to see if I’d accurately depicted the moment emblazoned in my mind—the terrifying seconds just after King Rex and I had come face to face and he had roared and sprung after the shadowy figure. I followed the impression of the pen lines with my fingertips, looking for a clue. What was it that David’s dinosaurs were protecting him from, and was it a common childhood fear or something more concerning?

  “More coffee?” Lorraine asked. I looked up to see her peering over my shoulder at my sketch. Her penciled-on eyebrows were so high they almost disappeared into her ash-blond hair. I flipped the portfolio closed, but it was clearly too late.

  Great. Just what I needed, another rumor about me: the crazy girl who sat alone drinking coffee and drawing dinosaurs.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I didn’t get a call from Lippmann Chiropractic, but I did get a call from my old neighbor, Stacy. Not about any mailed responses to my resume, but about my rocking chair. Her husband, Brett, had gotten a job up in Rhinelander, and she wanted to know if I wanted to come and get the chair before they moved so far away. She called on a Friday, and they were packing up and heading out that Sunday. Meteorologists were predicting record high temperatures that weekend, and driving all the way to Milwaukee by myself in the stifling hot minivan sounded about as pleasant as a root canal. Winston’s car was too small for hauling a rocking chair, and besides, he and Duffy both had plans for that Saturday. Duffy had her “blue rinse brigade” ladies booked all day, and Winston had hired himself out to fix some farm machinery on the Larsons’ farm. As far as I could see, that left only one other person who I could ask to help me. Someone I knew who had a truck.

  Jamie Presswood.

  It was after dinner, seven o’clock, and the day’s heat didn’t show any sign of relenting. Throughout the neighborhood, sprinklers gracefully bowed in timed precision on front lawns. Practicing what I would say in my head, I hastened past the wishing well and across the green no-man’s land that connected my grandparents’ yard to the Presswoods’. I had prepared myself to knock on their door and catch up a little with Wendy before casually asking to speak with her son. I had not prepared myself for the contingency that Jamie would already be outside. Shirtless.

  On the driveway sat a pile of mulch about the size of a small elephant. Jamie stood in front of it, dressed only in khaki cargo shorts and flip-flops, shoveling mulch into a wheelbarrow. He didn’t have the scrawny physique of a fifteen-year-old that I remembered; instead, his shoulders were wide and sturdy, his biceps were thick and shapely, and his chest and stomach muscles were well-defined. As he dug into the pile with his shovel and scooped more mulch into the wheelbarrow, his back muscles rippled and glistened with sweat. I bit my lower lip. He didn’t notice me until the wheelbarrow was full and he lifted the wooden handles to swivel it in my direction.

  “Anna!” He was startled, to say the least; he made my name sound like a curse. He ran his fingers through his damp, wavy hair and frowned at me like I was the last person on earth he’d expected to see instead of his next-door neighbor. “What do you need?”

  I prickled at his automatic assumption that my visit meant I needed something from him, but of course it did. “What are you doing?” I asked stupidly. This wasn’t going how I’d envisioned it at all.

  Jamie glanced down at the wheelbarrow, the shovel, and the mulch pile, and then back up at me. It was the kind of look David often gave me when I asked him something exceedingly obvious. “I’m putting down a new layer of mulch on our flower beds.”

  “It smells good.” Ah! I needed to stop with the kindergartener observations! But to my surprise, the corners of Jamie’s mouth curved upward into a tiny grin.

  “It’s my favorite too. White cedar. It’s got the added benefit of keeping the mosquitoes away.” He started pushing the wheelbarrow down the driveway. When he turned and saw that I was still standing in place, he waved impatiently at me to follow him. We stopped at the front of the yard where a flowerbed shaped like a half moon was bordered by blue and gray river rocks. It contained all kinds of flowers and plants I didn’t know the names of.

  He punched the sharp edge of his shovel into the mulch pile, lifted it from the wheelbarrow, and then gently sprinkled the contents over the earth, avoiding the plants. The braided muscles in his arms leaped and danced with the movement. He repeated this process several more times. I tried not to look as utterly hypnotized as I felt.

  “You want it at least two inches thick,” he said. “That way it keeps in the moisture and keeps out the weeds.” The wheelbarrow was nearly empty now, and Jamie squatted down to smooth out the clumps of mulch that were spread too thickly. “Can you thin out that patch over there?” he asked.

  I stared down at him. “With my bare hands?”

  Expression sober, Jamie said, “Well, it is highly unorthodox, but you could use your butt if you wanted.”

  Well, then. So even if he didn’t look like my dopey childhood friend, he still had the same maturity level. I punched him in his very muscular arm.

  Jamie pretended not to notice. He reached into his cargo shorts pocket, produced a pair of leather work gloves, and handed them to me. “Here. So you don’t dirty your pretty little hands.”

  “Thank you.” The gloves were stiff from sweat and dirt and about three times too big for my hands, but I slipped them on anyway. I crouched down at the opposite end from where Jamie was working and started sifting through the mulch. Up close, it smelled even more fragrant. It reminded me of the cedar hangers Duffy kept in the coat closet, so that when you opened the door and pulled out your winter jacket, it smelled like a forest.

  “So, what’s going on?” Jamie asked. His naked torso was only a foot away. At this distance, I could see that an angry red scar, about the width and length of an earthworm, curved around his right shoulder socket. I had the sudden impulse to take off my glove and trace my fingers over it.

  Instead, I gently patted the mulch around the base of a bush with flowers that looked like a hundred bluish-purple butterflies all resting together. Had Jamie and his friends talked about me after I’d left the lake house? I wished that he had sought me out after his big confession instead of the other way around. Or did he think it was my turn now to extend an olive branch? I felt presumptuous and bumbling, which were new and not very welcome emotions for me. “I was wondering if you’d do me a favor.”

  Jamie dusted his hands off on his shorts and stood up. “Oh, yeah? What kind of favor?”

  “I left some furniture in Milwaukee. Only one piece of furniture, actually—a chair. My minivan’s not up to the task, and Winston’s car isn’t big enough, so I was wondering if you’d let me use your truck.” I bit my lip. The request had sounded so much more reasonable in my head.

  Jamie raised his thick eyebrows. “You want to drive my truck?”

  “No,” I said. “I want you to drive your truck.”

  Jamie laid the shovel in the empty wheelbarrow and started pushing it back up the driveway. He didn’t look back or invite me to follow this time. “When?” he called.

  “Ideally, tomorrow,” I called back, realizing then what unbelievably short notice I was giving him. He was probably scheduled to do landscaping stuff for his business, or maybe since it was supposed to be one of the hottest Saturdays of the summer, he had plans to go to Long Lake or the beach at Port Ambrose.

  He didn’t say anything for what felt like a long time, just continued to shovel mulch, and I was about to tell him to forget it when he finally responded. “Fine. I’ll pick you up a
t seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Eight thirty,” I countered. “I’ve got to drop David off at a play date at eight.”

  Jamie glanced at me over his shoulder, with an expression somewhere between exasperation and amusement. “Whatever you say, Anna.”

  I dropped my chin so he wouldn’t see my triumphant smile. “Great,” I said casually and stepped toward my grandparents’ house. “Thanks. See you then.”

  Edna had been delighted when I’d called her yesterday to ask if it was her Saturday with her grandson and if we could set up that play date she’d suggested. But all the bribery and persuasion in the world couldn’t convince David that his dinosaurs need not come along on said play date. King Rex and Weeple watched us, hunkered down in the front yard like the two largest, ugliest garden statues ever made, as David and I went down the same conversational path we’d already been down many times before.

  “You’ll have a friend to play with at the Franklins’ house. A boy your own age. You won’t need to have other friends along.”

  “But I want to play with my dino-suss.”

  “You can play with your dinosaurs whenever, but you don’t always get a chance to play with another kid. You’ll have a lot of fun with Gunner. He’s going into kindergarten just like you in the fall. Besides, King Rex and Weeple won’t fit in the minivan.”

  David eyed the Dodge Caravan parked in the driveway. “They can run.”

  “It’s too far away for them to run.”

  His lower lip pooched out as he considered the minivan again. “King Rex can fit.”

  Fantastic. Of the dinosaur duo, the carnivore with the murderous eyes and teeth was the one I least wanted to send along to an unsuspecting household. But I knew it was a battle I couldn’t exactly win. Even if I forbid King Rex from getting into the minivan, how could I stop him from materializing at the Franklins’ house whenever David wished it? Transport was kind of a moot point with imaginary friends.

  “I expect you to be on your best behavior,” I said when we pulled up to their house. I turned to face the backseat, where David was buckled up and King Rex was ridiculously crammed into the trunk space like a hairless, leathery Doberman. “David, are you listening? King Rex, I’m talking to you, too. Be nice, share toys, say please and thank you, and absolutely no chasing, roaring, or biting. You’re here as guests, so be good.” Oh my god—was this really my life? I rested my forehead against the steering wheel for a second.

  David took my hand as we walked up the brick pathway to Edna and Chuck’s house, King Rex staggering a few paces behind us. David wasn’t usually the hand-holding type unless he wanted to pull me along more quickly, so I suspected he was nervous. A boy with orange hair and dark freckles flung open the door before we could even ring the doorbell.

  “Hi. I’m Gunner Nathaniel Rasmussen.” He articulated loudly and carefully as though he feared we might both be dim-witted.

  “Hi, Gunner. I’m Anna, and this is David. Is your grandma home?”

  Edna’s head poked around the door, as though she, too, had been waiting eagerly for our arrival. “So glad you could both come. When Duffy mentioned that David’s birthday was the day after Gunner’s, I just knew they were destined to be friends.” She beamed down at the two boys and then up at me, corralling us into her house with her bony arms. “And can you believe that they’ll both be starting kindergarten next month? Lord have mercy, where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday that I was sending my little Joy off to kindergarten, and now she’s a mom herself and enrolling my precious grandson at Port Ambrose Elementary. Have you decided if you’ll be sending David there as well? Gunner has Mrs. Banaszynski—all the kids call her Mrs. B—and I hear she’s fabulous.”

  It was hard to imagine Duffy and Edna as good friends. How two such rapid-fire, tangential talkers could hold a conversation without tripping all over each other was beyond me. Perhaps one monopolized the discussion for an hour and then they switched. Or maybe they simply talked over each other, totally oblivious and content.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted, adding it to my ever-growing list of worries. Hopefully, kindergarten enrollment would be open for at least a few more weeks until I could secure a job. I hated the thought of having to uproot David from a school once he had already settled in somewhere.

  “Well, I’m sure there’s still plenty of time,” Edna said, but her pinched face betrayed her true opinion. “I just made a pitcher of iced tea. Would you like a glass?”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I wish I could stay.” I looked down at my watch. Eight twenty-two already. “I have an errand in Milwaukee today, but I should be back by lunchtime.”

  Edna looked incredibly put out, like she’d been expecting us to drink iced tea and gossip the whole time Gunner and David played. I could only imagine what kind of dirt she’d been hoping to get from me. “Oh. I didn’t realize. Gunner, I bet David would like to see Grandpa’s collection of ships-in-bottles.”

  At the mention of the collection, David’s face brightened and his grasp on my hand relaxed. “That sounds really cool,” I said. “Why don’t you go check it out?” I squeezed him against my hip and then released him. He followed Gunner down the hallway, with King Rex creeping along behind them as though trying to be as small and inconspicuous as possible, which, as could be imagined, was not very. My hopes rose like little effervescent bubbles; maybe this play date would be even better for David than I had imagined. Maybe it was what he’d needed all summer. I chose to ignore the galling voice in my head pointing out that even with six-year-old Jamie as my next-door neighbor, I had continued to play with Leah Nola.

  “Remember, boys, look with your eyes, not your fingers!” Edna called after them.

  “I really appreciate your watching him,” I said and gave her David’s backpack and my cell phone number on a slip of paper. “I’d be happy to return the favor sometime.”

  Edna smoothed her auburn hair. “Of course. Well, enjoy your trip to the city.”

  Jamie’s red pickup was idling in my grandparents’ driveway when I returned. Inside the air-conditioned cab, he was fidgeting with his cell phone. His face was clean-shaven, but he was wearing his all-black ensemble again. Black jeans, black T-shirt, black leather wrist cuff with silver studs.

  I buckled my seat belt and glanced up at the house as we backed out of the driveway. Duffy was standing at the front door in her purple metallic apron. I gave her a little wave, but if she could see me, she didn’t wave back. Jamie asked for my old address, and when I told him, he seemed to know exactly where we were headed. The radio was turned off, and a cool, awkward silence settled between us.

  “Why Demeter Landscaping Services?” I burst out. “Why not Presswood?”

  Jamie shrugged as though it hadn’t occurred to him, as though naming his business after the Greek goddess of agriculture had been a thoughtless accident. “It’s kind of embarrassing, actually. Ever since middle school I’ve been a Greek mythology freak.” He turned onto the county highway that would lead us out of Salsburg. “I think I liked the idea of this wise council of beings sitting up on a cloud planning out your fate for you, and if you didn’t like it or something went wrong, you could just pray to a specific god or goddess, make a sacrifice, and everything would magically work out.”

  “That does sound kind of nice,” I agreed. “Except for the sacrifice part.” I slipped off my sandals and arranged myself cross-legged in the seat. I recognized the back of the wooden welcome sign as we flew by it, and then the Milwaukee River raced alongside us for a while. “So how is your business going?”

  Jamie glanced over at me, taking in my cozy position and lack of shoes. “My outlook changes hourly. Do you want my cautiously optimistic answer or my dark, despairing answer?”

  “Let’s go with dark and despairing.”

  “I’m worried,” he said and blew out a sigh. “Right now, I’m just mowing, planting, and weeding, which doesn’t really pay the bills; it just takes the
cash out of neighbor kids’ pockets. But I know if I can just get a few bigger projects and prove myself, I’ll get some referrals, and business will pick up. I put a bid in on a brick patio in Lawrenceville that I’m hoping to get to build because I’m guessing I’m the lowest estimate by a long shot.” He clenched and unclenched his hands on the steering wheel. “I figure I’ll give the company at least a year before calling it quits. This fall, Marshall’s going to try to get me in at the printing factory, and I’ll stay there indefinitely if I have to. I’ll do whatever it takes to keep the house and take care of my mom.”

  I examined the peeling red nail polish on my toenails. My own financial woes seemed insignificant next to Jamie’s. I didn’t have a family home to lose. I didn’t have the crushing weight of medical bills for an ailing mother. I had grandparents who were willing to take in my son and me when I had nowhere else to turn. Who did Jamie have to turn to?

  Without meaning to, I found myself mentally cataloging the ways he and I would never work as more than friends. We were two people with major responsibilities that demanded all of our time and energy, responsibilities that limited our choices and defined our day-to-day lives. Though not necessarily in a bad way, I reminded myself, thinking of David’s flushed, earnest face as he listened to my bedtime stories. But how would Jamie ever have time for a serious relationship with his landscaping business and Wendy’s care? And how would I ever find someone to whom I could entrust my heart, and more importantly, my most precious possession—David? It seemed unthinkable.

  “I hope you get to build that patio,” I said. “And I hope business picks up. If I hear anyone talking about needing help with their yard, I’ll be sure to give them your name.”

  Jamie gave me a wry smile. “Thanks.”

  “How’s your mom?” I asked.

  “She’s fine.” He leaned forward and turned the air conditioning down a notch. “A little depressed because she can’t do all the things she used to do. But her doctor says she’s in remission right now.”