He dismissed the idea with a flap of his hand and bent over to pry a paper cup from Barney’s jaws. He tossed it at the trash can, missed, tossed again, and then he stood very straight, looking up and down the street, smiling the composed smile of someone whose life was mostly behind him. Joggers pounded past, their faces tense and faraway. Was it possible that my parents had made a recovery of sorts? After all, she wasn’t their child.

“Did you know,” he said, “they’ve started piping classical music into the Metro stations?”

“Oh? Why is that?”

“To discourage gangs from congregating.” It was the kind of story my father thrived on.

“Does it work?”

“Of course not. We’ll just end up with a generation of highly cultured youth!”

He offered his face for me to kiss, flooding me with remorse. He had supported me without question in single motherhood. He had come to Maddy’s aid and guarded her secrets. I may not have given Maddy a father, but I had given her a grandfather, and their relationship had been closer and more open than mine with him would ever be. He would never get over it. He would never be the same.

I waited for him to lay his hand on my head. Instead he gripped my upper arm and released it, his other signature gesture of affection, and set off down the sidewalk after Barney, taking with him the larger part of what he felt about Maddy and about me. Half a block away, he waggled the fingers of one hand behind his back. He knew I would be watching.

Maddy

20

It was true, if a little misleading, to say Jack was helping me with the animation. Depends on what you mean by help. He took the pictures of Serenity, he found some images of cities and forests, he supplied the camera, the copy stand, and the moral support. But the drawings were all mine, the ideas were mine, the head was mine. I made the decisions about how the images changed one into another. So I would say I was the artist and Jack was my assistant.

Once I got started, all I wanted was to be alone in my room. I had the copy stand on my desk with Jack’s camera aimed down at the paper taped to the base. The drawings and photographs I was working from were pinned to my bulletin board. With Cloud on the bed for company, and my mother out of sight but close by, I could continue for sometimes an hour at a time before I had to lie down. The days I was too exhausted to work, I lay in bed and tried running sequences through my mind, imagining the changes I would make. That didn’t get me anywhere. With drawing, the point is to see what you’re thinking.