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.
She’d worn the black slacks, black-and-white silk shirt and black-and-white tweed and silk jacket to honor their last meeting.
Today she would say goodbye to her son. And she would be fine.
If anything came of the collage, if she studied it and felt certain that Kent was crying out for help in some way, she’d approach Mrs. Barbour. Or Kent’s teacher. Someone.
“You don’t have to leave early, do ya?” Kent raised his arms up so she could place the board on his desk.
“No.” If she had her way, she wouldn’t leave at all.
But Talia knew she wasn’t going to have her way this time. She’d given up that right knowingly, of her own accord, ten years before.
She handed him the glue. Showed him how to best apply it so as not to damage the magazine photos. “Be sure you’re positive of your positioning before you glue,” she told him. “Once they’re set, we can’t get them back off or change them around anymore.”
She’d been positive when she’d given this child away that it had been the best thing for him.
Some thought she’d taken the easy way out. Well, Rex had. He’d wanted her to have his son, for them to have that between them while he rotted away in jail. But she couldn’t do that to her boy. It hadn’t been easy giving up her baby.
It had been the hardest thing she’d ever done. Way harder than taking off her clothes and walking onto stage for the first time, wearing only a couple of pasties, a G-string and stiletto heels. Though she’d wanted to die that night, too.
Giving up Kent had been the hardest thing she’d ever done until today. Saying goodbye a second time, after spending a whole week’s worth of sessions alone with him, in their little glass room in full view of the principal’s desk and that of her secretary, too, was going to knock the breath out of her permanently.
“I can’t decide if I should put the gun here, or the microscope.”
That gun bothered her. It was innocuous enough. A toy cap gun. When there’d been other, much more deadly choices. He’d picked a toy.
And he was a smart boy. Smart enough to know that if he’d cut an Uzi out of a magazine someone might have asked why.
She wanted to pick the microscope. To advise him that maybe the gun didn’t really go with the rest of the poster. But she couldn’t color his story with her own brush.
Besides, it was with other boy things—a computer, a tablet, the microscope...
“It’ll show up better here, don’t you think?” He was frowning, his lips pursed as he pondered his dilemma. None of her students to date had taken the project so seriously. Not even the adult ones who knew that there was a purpose to the activity.
Then again, she’d never spent one-on-one time with any of them, either.
“I think you’re right—it has more prominence,” she said as much as she could. “But only because of the grouping around it,” she finished. “Change anything in the group and you could change the prominence. Put the gun on top and it would have prominence. Put it below and it might still steal the show.” He had it pointed upward, and the shape of it drew the eye.
After some deliberation he set it aside. “I’ll come back to that part,” he said, and picked up a birthday cake. It had six candles. He pasted it on a picnic table that was already glued to the board.
The rest of their time together flew by in kind. Kent’s independent work was amazing for a kid his age. At least Talia thought so. And yet, he involved her in every step of the process, as well. He knew his own mind, but he also asked for her opinion.
All in all, without studying his collage or knowing that he’d been expelled from class, she’d say that his parents had done about the best job parents could hope to do raising a child.
Or a mother would hope that someone else would do when raising her child.
“What do you think?” Her son held up the top edges of his poster.
His work with her was done.
She had to blink. Pretended to need to scratch her nose.
“I think you’ve got the makings of a talented artist.” They weren’t any of the words raging through her. They were the ones she could say.
And they were the truth.
Her son might not have her hair. Or her nose. But he had her artistic ability, and then some.
He nodded. “I like it.”
“Good.”
Oh, my God. This was it.
“How soon can I have it back?” He was looking at her. She couldn’t just sit there and stare at him. Or cry.
“Within the week,” she told him.
“Cool.”
Talia stood. There was