“Why would I?” I asked him. “I wrote the line. You drew the picture. That’s how it worked.”
“Okay,” he said. “I think I can do this. Here, come to my room.” He turned to the kitchen. “Mom? Dad? I’m taking Frankie to my room.”
“Okay,” they said in unison, and their ease made me think that they had dealt with much worse. I mean, I had been responsible for much worse, but I was still grateful that they let us go into his room.
His room was crazy neat, and the walls were covered with framed pages of old comic books.
“It’s, like, the one thing I spend money on,” he admitted. “These are original works by guys like Wally Wood and Johnny Craig.”
“They’re really cool,” I said.
He had a desk with some of his projects stacked up, but he moved them out of the way. I got out my phone and pulled up a picture of the poster. He looked at it for a second, like he was admiring the work of one of those pages on his walls. Like he hadn’t made it. He kind of smiled, and then he nodded. He got out some paper and pens. “Okay, yeah,” he said. I was a little shocked that it didn’t unsettle him more; I wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen it. I wondered if ever, in his whole life, he had seen one of the posters that I had hung up after that summer.
I took a pen and wrote the phrase, just like before. I took another blank page and did the same thing. It looked exactly like the original. It was so easy to do.
“Now show me,” I told him.
It was such a relief when he eased up, gave in. He stared at the page. I saw him reading the phrase, remembering the rhythm, like a prayer. And then he started drawing those lines, so delicate and yet a little rough, primitive, the way he bore down sometimes without meaning to, and I copied him as best I could. After about twenty minutes, constantly looking back at the poster for guidance, he had most of it sketched out. I loved watching his hands, the way he seemed, with each new consideration, to wave his fingertips across what I’d written, like he was reminding himself of its presence on the page.
“The buildings,” he told me, looking at mine, “are too small. You need to, like, connect them, but make them bigger. And, like, here, make the windows like this, just—” and he leaned over me and showed me on my own page. I copied him, feeling the image come together the way I’d hoped it would.
The beds were harder, the children, and I kind of messed it up, but I mostly focused on him, watching where he started each new line. I wished he’d have let me video the process, so I could go back and see exactly where he set his pen, but I was already committing it to memory. I was good at this, I think, knowing when I needed to remember something for later.
He did the hands last, and I followed along, and they looked close enough. I knew I’d practice. I’d make it a thousand times before I showed it to Mazzy, if she even asked. She knew something was complicated about the poster, that someone else was involved, and I would have to say that I’d copied it from someone, someone from years before, or I’d say that I found it in an old book, or that I found it in our house, or something. I could figure out that part.
When he was done, he took a deep breath, really considered the drawing. “This feels so weird,” he admitted. “I don’t draw like this anymore. I like it.”
“Could you do it again?” I asked.
“Again?” he replied, looking at me.
“One more time,” I told him.
“Okay, sure. One more,” he said, and started again.
I didn’t even try to copy him. I just watched him draw.
And then he was done. I took it and put it with the other one. I nodded. “Okay,” I said, but he got another piece of paper. And he started to draw.
After about ten minutes, he had sketched this forest, these trees, stripped of leaves, the limbs thin and sharp. And then he drew a clearing in the middle, just enough space to suggest an opening. And then he stopped. He looked at me, and I nodded. It was good. Keep going.
And he drew this little house, like a fairy-tale cottage. I was about to tell him that I thought it was enough, that I liked it, but then, all around the house, on the floor of the forest, he drew what at first I thought were brambles. But he kept building and building and building, and I realized that they were flames, a fire, and it wound around the cottage, but not so near that it would harm the cottage, and not so far that it would burn down the forest. It was this circle of flame, properly demarcating the world, what was inside and what was outside.