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“How’d that happen anyway?” Mark asks.
“How didwhathappen?”
“You’re just so different from my dad. It’s hard to believe he’s your son.”
“I know.” Julia nods in agreement. “I feel that way sometimes, too.”
Mark smiles, then stands up, returning the jewelry box to the drawer. “I’ll try untangling them again later,” he says. “Right now, I think I could use some fresh air.”
“Of course, darling.”
Mark surrounds his grandmother with his long, skinny arms, kissing the top of her coarse blond hair. She’s been so good to him, he thinks as he’s running down the stairs—letting him sleep till noon, not pressuring him to get a job, never saying a negative word, trusting him, believing his ridiculous lies. And how does he repay her? By taking money from her purse. By attempting to steal her jewelry. By being an even bigger ass than his father.
He opens the front door and steps outside, feeling for the joints in his pocket. He takes a quick look around, then slips into the shadows.
—
He floats back inside almost an hour later. “Nana?”
“I’m in the dining room.”
He finds her sitting at the table, its glass surface covered with sheets of loose paper. “Hi, sweetheart,” she says, smiling up at him. “Come see what I found.”
He approaches the table, noticing that most of the pages are covered with a child’s drawings, some in brightly colored crayons, some in black magic marker. He lifts up several sheets that have been stapled together.
“ ‘Mark Goes to the Pool,’ ” he reads, the words all but leaping off the page and dancing before his eyes. “ ‘By Mark Fisher.’ ” He laughs. “You’ve got to be kidding.” The bottom half of the page contains a pen drawing of a boy with a big smile and curly dark hair walking toward a tiny square labeledPool.
Mark turns the page, continues reading the uneven scrawl. “ ‘One day a boy named Mark was going to the pool and having a great time but…he couldn’t find the change room.’ ”
An empty box labeledChange roomfills the next page, beside another smaller box indicating the time:1:30.
“ ‘But he found it in the end!’ ” Mark reads, laughing now. “ ‘So he changed and went into the pool.’ ” One last drawing, this one of the boy in his bathing suit, splashing in a big pool of blue water. “ ‘I was happy as a butterfly!’ ” Mark is surprised to find his eyes welling up with tears.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
“Imagine being as happy as a butterfly,” he says softly.
Julia smiles and reaches up to touch his arm.
“I can’t believe you saved this.”
“Of course I saved it. I saved everything you made me. See?” She motions toward the other pages strewn across the table. “You were always such an interesting little boy. So full of contradictions. One minute ‘happy as a butterfly,’ the next frantic because you ‘couldn’t find the change room.’ Metaphorically speaking, of course,” she says with a wink.
“Even if I weren’t stoned out of my mind,” Mark says slowly, “I don’t think I’d have a clue what that means.”
Julia laughs. “It means I love you, sweet boy.”
“I love you, too.” He tosses the story back to the table, then plops down into the seat beside her. “I wasn’t trying to untangle those gold chains as a surprise for you,” he admits. “I was trying to untangle them so I could steal one.”
Julia nods, says nothing.
“And I’ve been taking money from your purse,” he says.
“I know.”
A long pause. “If you knew, why didn’t you do anything?”
“What should I have done?”
