Imaginary Things

by Andrea Lochen

“How is Gunner?” I asked, looking past Edna to the living room, since she clearly wasn’t going to invite me in for a glass of iced tea this time. I could see Gunner sprawled out on the couch with a handheld videogame. He didn’t look bloody or mangled, thank goodness.

  “I think he’ll be okay,” Edna said grudgingly. “He’s more shook up than anything else.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” I stroked David’s hair, brushing the tear-dampened strands from his eyes. He was huddled against my legs. “I’m so sorry about all of this. It’s just so unlike David. I wish I knew what caused it.”

  She scowled at me, as though I’d just suggested Gunner had had it coming to him. “All I know is the boys were getting along just fine, making a fort in the den, when one of them started screaming. Before I could get to them, Gunner came running out with this huge mark down his neck and chest, dripping blood. He said that, out of nowhere, David jumped on him and started scratching him.” She narrowed her eyes at the back of my son’s head.

  I doubted that version of events, especially the part about its being unprovoked, but I wasn’t feeling up to going head to head with Edna. “Well, I will definitely talk to him about fighting,” I said, “and he’ll be punished when we get home. Has he apologized to Gunner yet?”

  Edna shook her head vehemently. “Gunner, sweetheart, please come here by Gram-Gram a minute.”

  Gunner ambled toward the door, still playing his videogame. I could see the bright red line against his pale skin as he came closer. It wasn’t a fatal dinosaur bite but it wasn’t a kitty-cat scratch either. About half a centimeter wide, the scrape ran from the top of Gunner’s neck to somewhere beneath the stretched-out collar of his white T-shirt. Bright pink, inflamed skin was revealed, and in one place, a few speckles of wet blood shone. The scratch ran along his jugular vein. If what Gunner said was true, David had literally gone for his throat.

  I peeled David off my legs and turned him around. “Tell Gunner you’re sorry for scratching him,” I instructed.

  “But it wasn’t me,” he wailed through a fresh batch of tears, trying to bury his face in the fabric of my shorts.

  My stomach clenched like a fist, but I ignored it. “David,” I warned, and he whimpered out an apology. Gunner cast him a glance and then walked back to the couch, his videogame revving like a racecar engine the whole way.

  David’s damp hair smelled like baby shampoo. He had eagerly climbed into my lap the instant he’d gotten out of his bath and spotted the rocking chair Jamie had set in my room. I pressed my nose to his scalp, and together we rocked.

  “Tell me what happened today,” I murmured into his ear.

  He’d already had his lecture on the drive home about never scratching or hitting someone and using his words instead. He’d been so tearful I hadn’t been able to get a straight answer out of him about what had actually transpired. No dessert after dinner and an early bedtime was the extent of his punishment until I could figure out what exactly I was punishing him for. I figured the warm bath and the rocking would coax him into opening up to me now.

  David pressed his nose against my collarbone, and I stroked his soft, brushed-cotton pajama top.

  “It’s okay, buckaroo. You can tell me what happened. Why did you scratch Gunner?”

  Nose still pressed into my clavicle, David finally spoke up. “I didn’t scratch him. King Rex did.”

  I drew in a sharp breath. I had been prepared for opening up this can of worms, but he had still put my deepest, darkest fear into words. I knew it was irrational and the least likely explanation, the one that most children with an imaginary friend would probably offer up in the face of punishment. I’d consulted the book Dr. Rosen had given me as soon as we’d gotten home.

  Negotiating Blame and Responsibility. A vase breaks. Cookies are missing from the cookie jar. Chances are, if your child has an imaginary companion, he or she will not confess to the deed and will instead insist that his or her imaginary friend is the one at fault. Do children really believe their imaginary friends are responsible or are they simply using them as scapegoats? As a parent, how should you navigate this difficult situation? Insisting that your child is a liar is unproductive but so is allowing him or her to keep passing the buck to his or her imaginary companion.

  A child’s sense of power and control is developing at this stage. With this newfound realization of their ability to make things happen, children also experience the aftermath of their agency—praise or punishment—and while eager to garner the former, they are much more reluctant to accept the latter. Is a child testing you when he or she blames the misbehavior on his or her friend? Yes and no. While your child might be testing the waters to see what he or she can get away with, he or she might also be feeling that the imaginary friend is the one with the power and that he or she is less in control. For children who feel themselves to be impotent in their home life or at school, having an authoritative imaginary friend can be a great reassurance, but this kind of imbalance should be discouraged over time so the child can learn how to properly stand up or act for him or herself.

  If your child blames his or her mischief on the imaginary companion, patiently and thoroughly ask him or her questions and then listen. When Taylor B.’s mom found a chunk of cake missing from her husband’s just frosted birthday cake, Taylor B., age six, blamed her imaginary cat, Caramel. But after she had been asked several questions, Taylor B. admitted that while she hadn’t been the one to “cut the cake,” she had in fact eaten “some” of the cake. Her mom could then appropriately discipline her (by not allowing her another slice of the cake at the party that night) and explain why Taylor B. and Caramel’s behavior was wrong for ruining the cake before its rightful owner could have a slice of it first.

  But stolen cake and an imaginary cat didn’t seem to fit into the same constellation of problems as the possible physical evidence of a Tyrannosaurus rex attack. I also couldn’t help wondering if Taylor B.’s mom had had the same ability as I had and had peeked in the kitchen at the right moment, would she have witnessed Caramel up on the counter, slicing the forbidden cake for her master? Of course the developmental psychologist author of Imaginary Friends, Your Child, and You hadn’t thought to speculate on that possibility because it was sheer lunacy. But I wanted to know just how submerged children were in the world of their imagination. Did they actually visualize their imaginary friends doing these physical actions they claimed they did or did they just invent their actions later in story form? I wished for the hundredth time that I could remember my own experiences with Leah Nola.

  I gently lifted David’s head, so we could see eye to eye. “I need you to tell me the truth.”

  “He hurt Gunner,” he maintained. His little chin quivered.

  “Why did he hurt Gunner?” I asked, trying a different tact. “Did you tell him to?” David’s orchestrating King Rex’s aggressive behavior was a disturbing thought, but even more disturbing was the thought that David was losing his control of the dinosaur. Did he feel powerless in his home life as the book speculated? Was he making up for it by having a fierce defender?

  “No,” he whispered and played at stretching out the cuff of his pajama top. “Gunner didn’t want to play dino-suss. He said dino-suss are for babies.”

  “That wasn’t very nice,” I said. “But that’s not a reason to hurt someone.”

  David’s words came out in a breathless rush. “He wanted to watch his movie, and I didn’t like it. I shut my eyes and hid in the fort. He knocked down the fort and made me watch. He called me a baby and sat on my tummy. I couldn’t get up. Then King Rex pushed him off and Gunner cried.”

  I pictured the red-haired boy pinning David to the ground and taunting him. In a four-year-old’s mind, being called a baby was the ultimate insult. So David, or King Rex, had shoved Gunner away, a bit too forcefully. I envisioned the long scratch on Gunner’s neck, trying to determine if David’s ragged fingernails or King Rex’s talons were a better match. Gunner had claimed that Da
vid had jumped on him and scratched him, but of course, he wouldn’t have been able to see the dinosaur. He would’ve felt himself get pushed off, seen David lying there, and assumed it was him. It would be crazy to believe anything else. Absolutely crazy to believe King Rex had done this, I scolded myself.

  “Oh, David.” I tightened my arms around him. “What Gunner said and did was wrong. But you have to promise me you won’t hurt anyone or let King Rex hurt anyone either. If someone says something mean to you, tell an adult or just walk away, okay?”

  He grunted his consent.

  I rocked a little faster. The chair had a slight squeak in it that I’d always found comforting. He wasn’t the chubby, fussy infant that I’d rocked to sleep. He wasn’t my troublemaking, into-everything toddler anymore either. He was becoming a full-fledged boy with his own personality and an interior life that was growing more knotty and complex with each passing day.

  “Just love ’em,” Winston had told me once, late in my pregnancy when we’d made a midnight run to buy two pints of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. In between spoonfuls, I’d been venting my increasing anxiety about becoming a parent, single or otherwise, and Winston had listened stoically, not contradicting me or assuring me that everything would be all right as Duffy would have done. “Love ’em because they’re yours,” he said, the grocery store parking lot lights illuminating his craggy profile. “Love ’em because of their sweet selves, but most importantly, love ’em in spite of themselves.”

  Though I had recognized the truth in his words, love had still seemed like such a paltry thing in the face of all my doubts then, much the way it felt now. David had worries my love couldn’t touch, fears my love couldn’t easily dispel. I didn’t know where he’d be going to kindergarten yet, but he’d be going, and I didn’t know how to protect him. I didn’t know how to protect him from the other kids, and I didn’t know how to protect him from himself. My love seemed like a well-worn blanket instead of the titanium shield I needed.

  I bent down to sweep his hair off his forehead and saw that he had fallen fast asleep.

  With all the excitement in the hours following David’s catastrophic play date, I hadn’t had time to call Patrick’s parents yet. Duffy and Winston were curled up on the couch—my disloyal cat snuggled between them—watching a Miss Marple rerun on PBS, so I stepped outside with my cell phone. I didn’t want to alarm them until I knew for sure if I had something to be alarmed about. Duffy was already all keyed up about Edna’s handling of the boys’ fight, and I was starting to think that maybe David and I and all our baggage were getting to be too much for even my sainted grandparents. It was exhausting to me, and I was only twenty-two. They deserved to be easing into retirement and enjoying each other’s companionship, not slaving away on side jobs and dealing with our drama. But I knew Duffy wouldn’t agree. “Family,” she was fond of saying, “are the people who put up with you even when you’re being a tremendous pain in the heinie.”

  The evening air was shimmering with heat, and the old air conditioner was working double time, cranking out a warm, musty breeze as a result. I walked as far away from its blowing heat and rattling noise as I could without leaving the deck. I scrolled through my contacts on my cell phone and speed-dialed the Gills’ home number.

  On the fourth ring, a man answered. Patrick’s father, Quentin, the Milwaukee symphony violinist.

  “Hi, this is Anna,” I said. “I was hoping to talk to Abigail.”

  There was some muffled discussion before Quentin spoke again. “Anna, it’s nice to hear from you! Abigail will be right with you. How are you and David doing?”

  “We’re good,” I said, trying not to sound as guarded as I felt. “How is everybody there?” Which of course meant, how is Patrick?

  “We’re hanging in there,” Quentin said, and then something loud crashed and clunked. What had I caught him in the middle of doing? Demolishing a building? “Patrick has been working on his art a lot, which makes us all very happy.”

  Quentin had never been as open about his son’s illness as his wife. There was no asking him straightforward questions about Patrick’s drug regimen or mental health because Quentin preferred to pretend those problems didn’t exist. And reading between the lines with him was a skill I hadn’t quite mastered. If Patrick was painting again, did that mean he was totally off his meds and unblocked? Or had they finally found a dosage that allowed him to still feel productive and creative?

  “That’s good. So he’s still living with you?”

  “Of course,” Quentin retorted, as though Patrick hadn’t been disappearing on and off for the past five years. More loud banging. This time it sounded like metal against metal. A wrench whacking a pipe? “Anyway, it was nice chatting with you, Anna. Here’s Abigail.”

  “Anna,” Abigail breathed into the phone, and she sounded genuinely happy to hear from me. “How are you? How’s our favorite little guy? We miss you both so much.”

  “We’re good,” I repeated, trying to speed the conversation along. “How is Patrick doing?”

  Abigail was silent for a beat. I could still hear the banging sounds in the distance, but they were quieter, as if she’d moved to another room. “It’s been an uphill battle, but I think maybe this is finally it.” Abigail had believed “this was it” several times before and had been wrong every time. She loved her son so much and was unwilling to give up on him, and for that, I was glad; Patrick deserved someone who could give him that kind of love, since I was clearly unable to. “He’s been very diligent about taking his medication and seeing his doctor. And he’s been dividing his time between working part-time at the grocery store and painting the most beautiful paintings of Saint Jude you’ve ever seen.”

  “Did he tell you he stopped by our old apartment looking for us last week?” I asked point blank.

  There was a long, fraught pause. “No, he didn’t mention that,” she finally admitted. I was sure there were probably several other things that Patrick was hiding from her. “How do you know? If you’re living out of town, I mean.”

  “My old neighbor told me. She said he seemed very agitated.”

  “That’s puzzling,” Abigail said. “He’s very clear on the restraining order and how it will affect his chances of seeing David if he breaks it again. I’ll make sure to sit down and talk with him about it. You didn’t call the police, did you, since technically Patrick didn’t actually make contact—”

  “No,” I interrupted her, because her quavering voice was pinching at my heart. “But I’m thinking about it. And if he tries it again or he sets foot on my grandparents’ property, I definitely will.”

  “I can promise you he won’t, Anna. He’s really doing so much better. He’s been talking about David a lot lately and how he’s furious with himself for missing his early years. He seems willing to do just about anything to get to be a part of David’s life again, and it is Quentin’s and my sincerest hope that we could all sit down with a mediator to discuss trying supervised visits for Patrick again in October. Of course, we’ll only do it with the permission of Patrick’s doctor and regular updates from him. I know it’s been a hard road for you, dear, but things can get better. They will. And we all love David, but he’s Patrick’s son too, and he deserves a chance to know his dad. So just think about it, okay?”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head back and forth. Half of me wanted to believe in Abigail and her assessment of her son, her dream of what could be. That Patrick could pull himself out of the abyss for good and be the kind of father that David deserved. Or if not that, then at least a father who was just there sometimes and didn’t do impulsive, dangerous things. But the other half of me knew that Abigail’s impressions were clouded by motherly love. Patrick’s contempt for the restraining order proved he hadn’t changed as much as she thought. And I couldn’t help admitting to myself that deep down I was frightened by the idea of letting Patrick back into our lives. He had hurt me deeply, irreparably, and I didn’t want him to hur
t David as well. I wanted David to have the kind of childhood that I hadn’t had—security, consistency, and an abundance of love—and Patrick with his uncontrolled bipolar disorder didn’t exactly fit into that picture.

  “That’s months away,” I said, sidestepping her question, not wanting to bring up the more realistic likelihood of another injunction. “David’s going to be starting kindergarten soon, and it’s all kind of a whirlwind right now.” I stepped down from the patio onto the grass. It felt dry and spiky under my bare feet.

  “Our little guy, all grown up!” Abigail said with a wistful sigh and then asked about the logistics of setting up a visit with him soon. She and Quentin hadn’t seen David since Easter, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to put them off for much longer, but with all the other pressures in my life right now, it was one I hoped to postpone.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “Mommy, what’s that?” David was pointing at the grassy field across the street from us and the packed dirt lot beyond where a few white tents had been erected and a row of port-o-potties set up. We were walking to Salsburg’s tiny post office to mail a package for Duffy.

  “It looks like they’re setting up for the Firemen’s Picnic,” I said, grabbing his hand to cross the street. And sure enough, as we got closer, I could read the blue lettering on the banner hung on the side of a semi, from which brightly colored, collapsed carnival rides were being unloaded. SALSBURG FIREMEN’S PICNIC, AUGUST 9-11. The annual festivities always heralded the impending end of summer and the start of the school year.

  I couldn’t believe that David would be starting kindergarten in only a week and a half at Port Ambrose Elementary. I’d finally enrolled him, deciding to limit my still as of yet fruitless job search to the Salsburg area. It would allow me to live with my grandparents a while longer until I could save up enough for an apartment in Lawrenceville. Moving back to Milwaukee—where the cost of living was twice as high, and where there was now no Stacy or other supportive friends and ready babysitters, and where Patrick was apparently waiting for me to try to insinuate himself back into our lives—no longer felt like a viable option. I was trying to feel good about my decision to stay, instead of just plain trapped.