Chapter 3
I did my best to keep up the mood during dinner after that. Marcus started telling me about the adventures that the dinosaurs were having, assaulting the castle of pop bottles and I would react with shock and relief at the appropriate moments. Afterwards we cleaned up the table in silence; Marcus had exhausted his creative energies and any conversation I had with Alice would only leave Marcus looking at me like a lunatic talking to an imaginary friend, sans hallucinogenics. In the silence I started cleaning up the table. I mentally reopened the case file of Alice's situation and reviewed the contents. My wife was there, that is for certain – I glanced behind me and saw her reading a book at the kitchen table. I threw her a covert smile, then went back to the washing the dishes. As nearly as we have been able to confirm it, Alice both existed and did not exist at the same time, but now I was the only one that could see her and confirm her existence. It was like those old overhead projectors, the ones that use those plastic sheets that you could use the markers on – imagine one sheet held the entire world and it was projected up on the screen. Now imagine a second sheet, identical in every way to the first one save for a single difference – one person has been added. If the sheets were put on top of one another it would look like it was just a single sheet, the image projected on the screen wouldn't be anything particularly special. However, if you imagine that people were living inside of the world of the first sheet, they would have no concept of the person in the sheet of the second world. What Alice was experiencing was something like that. I wasn't sure if the “sheet” that she existed on was being pulled away, or if the world decided to start looking at the sheets directly rather than the combined image on the screen, but whatever it was, Alice had faded away from the perception of everyone except for me. It didn't take long for the contents of the case file to overwhelm me, so I closed it and took a break. “Hey buddy, do you need help with school tomorrow? Do you want me to talk to your teacher or the principal?” Marcus may have only been 10, but his face reacted like he was 16 as a wave of disgust flashed across it. “Dad! Come on, don't do that!” Sometimes Marcus was too considerate for his own good. I knew that he didn't want to cause a fuss for the school or his class, not to mention the long-term social consequences of crying to daddy when you had a problem – he was 10 and the cool kids did not go crying to daddy. Still, I couldn't help but worry for him. “Tell you what – how about we make a mommy for you?” He looked at me with a mix of confusion and apprehension; he was old enough to know about Dr. Frankenstein and he wasn't too sure of where this conversation was headed. I let out a laugh. “Go sit down at the table and I'll be right there.” He went back to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair, unconsciously avoiding the char that Alice was currently occupying. I flicked a glance at her and saw her peeking over her book, curiosity gleaming in her eyes. I think that a board would have been less stiff as Marcus sat there, nervously. I grabbed a piece of plain paper and a pencil, then I sat down next to him. “What if we draw a picture of what your mom might look like – then you can show it to your friends!” The comparison to the board now extended to his face as he gave me a flat look. I was pretty sure he was going to start getting splinters soon. “Dad, that is the dumbest idea. Why would they believe that?” Sheesh, the kid reaches double-digit years and suddenly he thinks he can point out flaws in my reasoning. “Okay, you're not wrong there, but with a picture you could at least imagine what it would be like. And besides,” I looked over at my wife, “I am pretty sure that she would be the most beautiful mom in the entire world.” Alice raised the book higher so that I couldn't see her face, but not before I caught a glimpse of the redness in her cheeks. “Well, if you think she'll be pretty then I guess it wouldn't hurt.” “Awesome, let's get to it.” I'm not a professional or anything, but I've loved to draw for as long as I could remember and I could think of plenty of people that weren't as good as me. I began to sketch Alice as she sat across the table. I captured the way that her hair fell over her shoulders and to the top of her back; how her eyes, filled with kindness and love, were also a little impish and playful; how the edge of her mouth had begun to slightly wrinkle from smiling. My pencil flew across the page as I tried to capture all of that and more. Marcus looked on. He had been ready to offer his input on his perfect mommy, but as he saw the picture take form, he sat watching, silently. When I finished I turned to him, “Well, what do you think? Is she good enough to be your mom?” And as I finished saying it, I turned my head to look at Alice. “Dad, this is great! She is the most perfect mom ever!” “Charles,” Alice choked, “It's beautiful.”