Trespassing(7)

“That’s you, Daddy.”

“What am I doing?”

“Flying.”

This makes sense. Micah has been a pilot with Diamond Corporation for only a few months, but before that, he flew with a commercial airline. He’s flown since before she was born. She doesn’t know a life without planes.

“Flying without his plane?” I ask, although Bella and I have been through this conversation before.

“Silly Mommy. The plane went to God Land in the water.”

I freeze, and a chill runs through my system. She did not say that the first time I asked. Micah looks up and meets my gaze. He’s wearing a look of concern.

“And here’s the water, where the plane is,” Bella says, as matter-of-fact as if she were telling me the water is wet. Her chubby finger travels over the page. “And the place over here is where the big house is.”

I swallow over the lump in my throat. “There’s a big house?”

“A very big house,” she tells me.

“Is it an imaginary house?” Micah asks. “Or a real house?”

“Real.”

“Real like Nini?”

“Nini goed there once.”

This time, when my husband looks at me, it’s with relief, as if to say, There you have it. God Land is a haven for her imaginary friend.

But because I’m not especially comfortable with Nini, knowing my daughter has now created an imaginary place to put her does little to calm my anxieties.

“Want me to draw it for you?”

“Would you do that?” My fingers tremble as I push the morbid scribblings a few inches forward on the table. “It’s a beautiful drawing.”

From Micah’s lap, she reaches for me and presses a hand to each of my cheeks. “We can ’member him when he’s gone.”

All is silent, except for the sound of the neighbor’s landscaping crew blowing leaves.

I’m staring into my daughter’s eyes.

My breath catches in my throat, and tears prick my eyes.

I don’t know what to say, so I go with the old standby: “Mommy loves you, Ellie-Belle.”

“All right, sugar cube.” Micah pulls her back into his lap. “Let’s eat this ice cream and get you in the tub.”

I suppose we’ll set those ground rules about Nini another time.





Chapter 3

November 11

“If I were you, I’d nip it in the bud,” Claudette says.

Claudette and I shared the same whim, which I’m beginning to regret, and spontaneously met at Centennial Park after preschool today.

“I don’t tolerate imaginary friends.”

Of course she doesn’t. She doesn’t allow her kids to eat when they’re hungry, either. They eat at seven, noon, and five, with snacks at ten and two, whether they’re hungry or not.

I check my watch now. It’s almost two.

Like clockwork, she’s unzipping an insulated cooler and calling over her shoulder to Crew and Fendi—her children, who know better than to delay responding—before she turns back to me. “Listen. If you put on like this Nini is real, it’s going to encourage her.”

I’m sorry I mentioned Nini at all. “The professionals say it will encourage her imagination.”

“Professionals don’t always know what they’re talking about. A professional plumber fixed my garbage disposal last month, but it’s on the fritz again. I told him what was wrong, and he insisted otherwise, so . . .” She shudders, as if a colony of ants just wandered out of her hair. “Sometimes you have to take charge of what’s going on in your own household, if you know what I mean.”

The kids, Bella included, are running toward us.

Claudette spreads a red-and-white gingham tablecloth over a picnic table and is pulling snacks from her cooler—homemade and prepackaged in tiny, resealable containers with matching forest-green lids—and placing them into three neat piles. “I always bring extra,” she says. “Just in case. Don’t want to leave anyone out. I assume you didn’t plan to have snacks at the park today?”

I feel my brow knit. I want to tell her that my kid is perfectly all right to gnaw on whatever stale crackers or fuzzy, high-fructose fruit snack I happen to find at the bottom of my purse, but the fact of the matter is that I don’t even have a crumbling saltine to offer Elizabella.

It’s not like this outing was a planned picnic. If it were, I’d surely have sliced grapes into quarters and mixed an organic peanut butter spread for celery sticks and . . . whatever else Claudette does when she isn’t listing and selling houses. We were simply driving by, and Bella said Nini wanted to stop for a swing. So here we are. I can’t deny my daughter an offered snack when her playmates are bellying up to a table set more for a ladies’ luncheon than a quick snack at a park.

Claudette’s son reaches for a container labeled with his name, but Claudette pulls it just out of reach. “Set the table first, Crew.”

He begins to set out biodegradable paper plates and even proceeds to fold the napkins in half.

“Say thank you,” I remind Bella.

She glances up at me, then down at the foods in the containers, which must look foreign to her. “Where’s Nini’s?”