I needed him to say: The opossum is North America’s only marsupial, Dad. Things Aly taught him: how hard winters were on opossums, how frostbite punished their hairless ears and tails. But he scowled in silence at the thought of the most despised large animal on Earth.
He swung his head toward me, stunned. You lied to me, Dad. You said nobody knew what it was.
“Robbie. It was only for a minute.” But no: it was forever, really.
He tilted his head and shook, as if clearing his ears. His voice was flat and low. Everybody lies. I couldn’t tell if he was forgiving me or condemning all humanity.
It was way past bedtime. But there we were, the two of us on his bed, the last of the crew of a generational spacecraft that had come to the end of its possibilities long before reaching its new home.
So she chose not to hit it, even though…?
“She didn’t choose anything. There wasn’t time. It was a reflex.”
He thought for a while. At last he seemed appeased, although some part of him was still mapping the changing coastline between reflex and choice.
So Jayden’s parents are full of crap? Mom wasn’t trying to hurt herself?
I felt no need to reprimand the language. “Sometimes, the less people know about something, the more they want to talk about it.”
He got his notebook and scribbled in it, holding it away from me. He snapped it shut and squirreled it away in the nightstand drawer. Something brightened in him. Maybe he was happy that he might be friends with his friend again, tomorrow.
I stood and kissed him on the forehead. He let me, preoccupied with his hands, remembering how they’d deceived him.
How about this one, Dad? What does this mean?
He held one cupped hand upward on the stalk of his arm and twisted it back and forth. A tiny planet, spinning on its axis.
“Tell me.”
It means the world is turning and I’m good with everything.
We traded the signal, and he nodded. I told him I was glad he was who he was. I twisted my own hand in the air again by way of saying good night. Then I turned out the light and left him to fall asleep in the comfort of my larger lie. I’ve always been especially good at lying by omission. And I lied wildly to him that night, by failing to tell him about the car’s other passenger, his unborn little sister.
-
HE WOKE UP SUNDAY in high excitement. Before dawn, he was climbing all over me, shaking me awake. Great idea, Dad. Listen to this.
I was still half-asleep, and I cranked at him. “Robbie, for God’s sake! It’s six in the morning!”
He stormed off and barricaded himself in his lair. It took forty minutes and the promise of blueberry pancakes to coax him out.
I waited until he was sluggish with carbs. “So let’s hear this great idea.”
He weighed the quid pro quos of forgiving me. His chin jutted out. I’m only telling you because I need your help.
“Understood.”
I’m going to paint every endangered species in America. Then I’ll sell them at the farmers’ market next spring. We can raise money and give it to one of Mom’s groups.
I knew he’d never be able to paint more than a fraction of them. But I also knew a great idea when I heard one. We cleaned up breakfast and headed to the Pinney branch of the public library.
My son loved the library. He loved putting books on hold online and having them waiting, bundled up with his name, when he came for them. He loved the benevolence that the stacks held out, their map of the known world. He loved the all-you-can-eat buffet of borrowing. He loved the lending histories stamped into the front of each book, the record of strangers who checked them out before him. The library was the best dungeon crawl imaginable: free loot for the finding, combined with the joy of leveling up.
Usually he followed the same route through the trove: graphic novels, sword and sorcery, puzzles and brain teasers, fiction. That day, he wanted art lessons. The shelves were a total candy shop. Wow. How come you never told me about these? We found a book on how to draw plants and one on how to draw simple animals. From there we went to Nature, where we zeroed in on endangered species. Soon he was trying to choose from among a pile of books that came up almost to his waist.
I’m over my limit, Dad. He could make thrilled sound over-whelmed.
“You take your limit, and I’ll take mine.”
He sat on the floor of the aisle, narrowing down the choices. Opening one of the bigger volumes, he groaned.
“Tell me.”
He read, robotic. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service lists more than two thousand North American species as being either threatened or endangered.
“That’s okay, buddy. Small steps. One drawing at a time.”
He toppled the tower of books and sank his head in his hands.
“Robbie. Hey.” I almost said, Grow up. But that was the last thing I would have wished on him. “What would your mom do?”
That made him sit up again.
“Let’s check these out and get some supplies.”
The clerk at the Art Co-op fell in love with him. She was an art student herself, recently graduated. She took Robin around the shop. He was in heaven. They looked at pastels and colored pencils and little tubes of bright acrylic.
“What do you want to make?” Robin told her his plan. “That’s so beautiful. You are so awesome.” She didn’t believe the project would outlast the day.
Robbie loved the watercolor brush pens. The clerk was impressed with what he could do with one, even on his first go.
“This one would make a nice starter set. Forty-eight colors. That’s probably everything you’d need.”
Why is that other one so much more expensive?
“That one’s for pros.”
He grabbed the starter set, hiding his eyes from me. I overruled and upgraded him. As investments went, it felt like a steal. We also got micro-pen fine liners, a pad of cheap drawing paper for practice, and some sheets of the good stuff for the finished works. The clerk wished him luck, and he hugged her on the way out. Robin did not hug strangers.
He painted all afternoon. My hot-tempered, ungovernable son knelt for hours on the slats of a wooden folding chair, copying examples from the art books with his face up close to the paper. Sometimes he snorted in frustration, like the cartoon bull from one of his favorite childhood picture books. He crumpled up botched efforts, but with more artistic flair than violence. Once he tossed a watercolor pencil against the wall, then shouted at himself for doing so.
I tempted him to take a break. Ping-pong or a walk around the block. He refused to be derailed.
Which creature should I start with, Dad?
Creature was his mother’s favorite word. She used it for everything, even my extremophiles. I told Robin that no one ever lost an audience with charismatic megafauna.
No. I should do the most endangered one. The one that needs the most help.
“Pace yourself, Robbie. The first farmers’ market is months away.”
The amphibians are in trouble. I’m going to start with an amphibian.
After much agonizing, he settled on Lithobates sevosus, the dusky gopher frog. It was a strange, secretive animal that spread its webbed fingers in front of its face to shield its eyes from threats. It puffed up when frightened and oozed a bitter milk from the glands on its back. Wetlands development had reduced it to three small ponds in Mississippi.