Chapter 86 - The Question Behind the Drawing
The next morning, I put Leo's train drawing on the refrigerator, where it leaned awkwardly over the grocery list I'd been avoiding for three days.
Elena stood in my kitchen eating cereal straight from a mug. She studied the paper for a while before asking, “Does the dinosaur have a driver's license?”
“Apparently he's the conductor.”
“Unlicensed dinosaur. Sounds like a Moretti family employment policy.”
I laughed, but it caught on something in my throat. The train had seven windows. One held a small face labeled LEO, another a tall figure with silver hair, and a third an enormous green shape that might have been a tree. The last four were empty.
“Why didn't he draw his mother?” Elena asked.
“Maybe he didn't want to.”
She nodded, respectful of the answer.
I had learned not to interpret a child's picture as a legal affidavit. Leo was four. Yesterday a dinosaur could drive his train; tomorrow the engine might fly. Still, the empty windows held my attention longer than they deserved.
At nine, I called Dorothy. She answered from Vermont over the sound of dishes being put away.
“Leo wants to know whether you liked it,” she said.
“I loved it. Would he mind if I wrote him a postcard?”
“He'd carry it around until the corners fell off.”
I bought a postcard from the bookstore near my apartment. It showed the Brooklyn Bridge, the cable lines spread across the sky like an enormous piece of drafting. On the back I wrote: Thank you for the train. My favorite part is the dinosaur. Do you think he knows where he's going? Love, Claire.
Then I hesitated over the signature. Love was a large word in a family where people had used it to conceal decisions. With a child, it could be simple. I left it.
Adrian called that evening. “Dorothy said you spoke.”
“I sent Leo a card.”
He was quiet. I heard distant voices behind him—an office, not Vermont.
“Are you angry?” I asked.
“No. I was about to ask whether I could send you a photograph of him receiving it. Then I remembered you had said not to share photographs without asking Dorothy and his advocate first.”
“Did you ask?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don't.”
“Understood.”
The old Adrian would have called that unnecessary bureaucracy. This Adrian sounded disappointed and did not try to persuade me. I let the silence stand without rewarding it.
May you like
After we hung up, I looked at the picture again. The empty train windows weren't a demand that I fill them. They were simply room on a piece of paper.
I went back to my drawings. Tomorrow my own work needed a decision I could no longer postpone.
