Child by Chance

“What do you think should go here?” The boy turned to look at her.

He had Tatum’s eyes. A grayer version of Talia’s blue ones.

“I think you should decide,” she told him. “This is your time to make all the decisions. To use whatever pictures you want to use from these magazines.”

She’d already learned to qualify her statements with him. The day before he’d tried to get away with cutting out letters to form swear words for the middle of his collage.

“What if I want to use a picture that isn’t in the magazine?”

For a second she froze. Did ten-year-old boys look at dirty pictures? Was that what he was implying?

“What picture?”

He reached for his notebook, thumbed through some papers in the back of it, fumbled around in a plastic pocket and pulled out a photo.

“This one,” he said.

Oddly, it was a picture of him. Dressed very similar to the way he was now. Obviously a school photo. Maybe a year or two old.

What kid carried around a picture of himself tucked in his notebook?

“Sure, you can use it,” she said, while her mind wrapped itself around the newest piece of the puzzle she so desperately wanted to see complete. To know that it was a good picture. A healthy one. The picture she needed to have with her as she traversed the roads of her solitary life.

He dropped the picture in a space he’d left after she’d made him remove the curse words. “You never said what’s going to happen to this.”

Why did it matter so much?

“What do you want to happen to it?” she asked.

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

She wished she could believe that. Because she wanted to keep it more than just about anything. To hang it in her home. To have it to look at for the rest of her days.

“I’ll need to keep it for a week or two,” she said. Her program trial included written reports from her on every collage made, to show the board of education what she gleaned from the collages and how that information, that insight, could be used to help the kids. “But after that it’s up to you.”

The collages she was having the kids make in class were on sixteen-by-eleven-inch pieces of poster board. Kent’s was on a full-size piece of poster board.

Picking up the scissors, Kent reached for a magazine. “I guess I could take it home. I mean, if we have to do something with it,” he said.

His tough-guy armor had some definite chinks.

“I’ll make sure you get it back, then,” she told him. Wondering if it was against professional ethics if she took a photo of Kent’s finished work to have blown up and framed for her wall.

* * *

SHERMAN TOOK KENT into LA for a basketball game Thursday night. The tickets were a gift from one of his clients, the seats located in a private suite with a full buffet spread. Kent was grinning and talking the entire way there, throwing out statistics and asking Sherman’s opinion on scores and strategies. A banker and his family were supposed to be there, as well. One that Sherman was counting on for a sizable contribution. But when their passes got them on the elevator and then into the suite, it turned out that they were sharing the box with just the banker and his twelve-year-old daughter, who knew absolutely nothing about basketball. And who seemed to think entirely in rapid-fire questions.

Sherman tried to involve Kent in the conversation. To ask his opinion on answers to some of the more thoughtful questions, but his son was having none of it. Five minutes into the game, or the constant chatter depending upon one’s perspective, Kent got up, helped himself to a plate of finger food and reseated himself in the farthest corner of the booth away from the rest of them, planting his face at the glass separating them from the rest of the stadium.

Sherman called out to him a few times. All but once Kent appeared not to hear. And Sherman, who had business to tend to, couldn’t call his son to task. He probably wouldn’t have even if he could. He didn’t blame Kent for being disappointed.

“Quite the game, huh?” he asked as soon as the two of them were alone in their car, pulling out of the parking garage. Their team had won in the last seconds of the game with a three-point shot from midcourt.

“You wouldn’t know,” Kent practically spat. “You hardly saw any of it.” In his jeans and team jersey, Kent looked about as cute as any little guy ever had, but Sherman didn’t figure his son would want to hear him say so.

“I saw all of it,” he said now. “I just didn’t get to listen to as much of it as you did.” Their suite had had the announcers’ voices piped in.

“Yeah, well, you could’ve told me it was going to be business.”

He’d hoped it was going to be a couple of families spending an enjoyable evening, with the dads having a chance to spend some relaxation time together before discussing business over lunch Friday.

At least his lunch appointment for the next day was still on.

“What about that spread, though?” he asked, pulling onto the highway that would take them to their home over an hour down the road, way past Kent’s bedtime. The boy was going to be tired in the morning, not that Sherman was all that worried about it, considering his son was only going to be sitting in the principal’s office all day. “Chicken nuggets, mozzarella sticks, brownies, chocolate chip cookies...”

There’d been healthy foods, too, but he named Kent’s favorites.

“I had carrot sticks,” the boy said. He had, too. Kent had always loved carrots. Even as a baby. His favorite baby food had been jarred carrots.

“You also had two brownies, a plate of nuggets and some cheese sticks,” Sherman told him. If Kent thought his father was ignoring him, he needed to know that wasn’t the case.

“So?” Arms folded, the boy looked out his window.

“So...I was just talking about the spread. You liked it.”

“Whatever.”

God, he hated that word. Wished it had never been invented. If he had a dollar for every time he came up against that word in a week, he’d be a damned millionaire. Damned because the word was a reminder, every single time, that he was failing his son.

No matter how hard he tried. He just hadn’t found the way to get it right yet. To make Kent’s world right.

But he would. Sooner or later, they were going to beat this thing.

And be happy together again.

* * *

FRIDAY WAS GLUE DAY. She’d covered the board with a tacky substance on Monday night as she’d prepared it to take to Kent on Tuesday. Enough to hold pictures in place temporarily, but allowing for removal and switching positions without damaging the photos. Each day she’d carefully covered and carried the board back and forth from the trunk of her car—which she’d cleared to allow the collage to lie flat—to the principal’s office. Each day her son had seemed more eager, watching for her as she’d come around the corner. Each day since the first, he’d used up every second allotted to them, searching out pictures, cutting and, later, as she’d shown him, tearing them into the shape he wanted and placing them on the board.

Friday, when she’d turned the corner into the office, he’d been grinning and rubbing his hands together.

She’d dressed up that day. Working at a department store required that she have expensive-looking professional clothes and while she spent most of her time in jeans these days, she had a decent wardrobe.

Emphasis being on decent. The slinky leggings and revealing tops she used to wear were packed away under her bed.

“Wow, you look pretty!” Kent said, and then ducked his head.

“Why, thank you,” Talia said, acting as though she’d heard the same from every kid she’d passed in the hallway. “I’ve got an appointment this afternoon,” she told him, not bothering to mention that the appointment was him.