Strangewood (4 page)

"Frightening?" Thomas repeated. "You're
joking! Well, obviously you're not joking. This isn't your kind of humor. But,
still . . . what's scary about Strangewood?"

"There are a lot of scary things about
Strangewood," she insisted. "That's half the fun, and half the reason
it's so popular. But live-action is too . . . I don't know, too real. But,
look, I'll pitch whatever you want."

Thomas was kind of cranky, now. He understood what Francesca
was saying; had to admit to himself that she was right. There was an air of
menace to almost everything that happened in Strangewood. Grumbler, for
example, was so well-loved was because he was a bully, a potentially dangerous
character, no matter how loveable. He carried a pair of Colt Peacemakers in
armpit holsters. In the books he'd threatened the life of Mr. Tinklebum at
least a dozen times. And the way Thomas wrote him, Grumbler had meant it.

But still . . .

"Look, just put out some feelers, all right?" he
concluded. "With Disney snapping up the animation rights, it's going to be
a hot property. Even without Nelson DeCastro."

"You're the creator," Francesca replied.

For some reason, the response struck him as amusing, and
Thomas grinned. "Yeah," he said, "that'll be my epitaph."

* * * * *

The afternoon sunlight glowed orange off the glass and steel
as Thomas piloted his Volvo sedan along the Saw Mill Parkway. Nathan was in
kindergarten at St. Bridget's in Tarrytown, where he still lived with his
mother. Thomas had moved to Ardsley, only a few miles away, right after the
separation. Just close enough, and just far enough.

On Fridays, Nathan was in the afterschool program so that
Thomas could have a full workday before picking him up. Most weeks, when he
didn't have to be in Manhattan for a meeting as he'd had to today, he showed up
around three o'clock anyway.

Now it was going on five, and traffic on the Saw Mill was
snarled. Sister Margaret would wait, of course. She was a lovely old woman, not
even the slightest whisper of Sister Teresa, the ancient, belittling crone
who'd taught Thomas when he'd attended junior high at St. Bridget's.

The school was as boring and nondescript a hunk of real
estate as ever graced the real estate rolls of Roman Catholicism. St. Bridget's
church, in and of itself, was a gorgeous edifice, with a towering spire and an
enormous oval stained glass crucifixion scene above the altar. But the rectory
across the street, and the school next to that, might as well have been
military bunkers.

When Thomas pulled the Volvo into the lot behind St.
Bridget's, it was twenty minutes past five o'clock. Sister Margaret was on the
rear steps watching Nathan clap erasers, a beatific smile on her face. As
Thomas slammed the car door, she shot him a stern glance. It occurred to him
that nuns just weren't as imposing now that contemporary thinking had allowed
most of them to wear civilian clothes rather than the traditional
black-and-white habit. Still, Sister Margaret was forbidding enough without the
penguin outfit. If you didn't know how sweet she was.

"Hi, Daddy!" Nathan cried happily, all smiles,
though he squinted through a cloud of chalk dust. "I just have to finish
with these erasers, and then we can go!"

"You got it, buddy," Thomas replied, chuckling to
himself. Nathan was a conscientious little boy. Truly a good kid. His eyes were
ice blue — Paul Newman blue, Emily had always said — and his hair a
sandy blond that could go either way, lighter or darker, as he grew. Bright,
healthy, handsome, gregarious. That was Nathan. The Randalls — back when
Thomas and Emily could still be collectively referred to as the Randalls
— had been extremely fortunate.

But even the joy of Nathan's presence only delayed the
inevitable. Thoughts of Emily brought to mind one of Thomas's favorite songs
from the seventies. It was the Manhattans, he thought. "Some people are
made for each other, some people can love one another for life. How 'bout
us?"

He'd always believed wholeheartedly in such romantic drivel.
At least until real life had intruded on radio daydreams. It had been quite a
blow to him. The truth of the answer — which of course was "no"
— hurt him deeply.

Entropy. Love fades. Nothing gold can stay. Time flies.

Depressing shit, all of it. But at the end of the day, he
had a successful career, and he had Nathan. So in spite of the heartaches,
Thomas was a relatively happy man.

"My apologies, Sister," he said as he mounted the
school steps, remembering quite well the respect drummed into him over the
years he'd spent at St. Bridget's.

"I'll forgive you this time, Thomas," the nun
warned, though the smile had already returned to her face. "But only
because you're usually so early."

"Thanks, Sister M. You're the best," Thomas said.

He turned to call to Nathan, but paused as Sister Margaret's
hand rested lightly on his shoulder.

"Thomas?" she asked, and he regarded her again,
puzzled by her tone.

"Is everything all right between you and Emily, these
days?" the nun asked, then flushed slightly. "I mean, other than the
obvious. Has there been any additional stress or . . . or hostility, that
Nathan might have noticed?"

There was genuine concern in her soft inquiry, and so Thomas
was unwilling to brush the Sister's questions away as he might have with anyone
else prying into his personal life.

"Please understand, my interest is only in Nathan's
welfare," she continued, obviously worried that she might have offended
him.

"I understand perfectly, Sister," he replied. "But
other than the stresses of the divorce itself, I don't know of anything . . . I
mean, Emily and I have been working hard at making it all as easy as we can on
Nathan. Has something been bothering him?"

Sister Margaret frowned, then raised her eyebrows and
sighed.

"It isn't any one thing, Thomas," she admitted. "He
just seems very distracted the past few days. I asked him if anything was
bothering him and he did say he was sad, but that's not too unusual in a child
of divorce."

Thomas noticed that, unlike many other members of the clergy
he'd known, Sister Margaret didn't make the word "divorce" sound
filthy. He was grateful to her for that.

"I suppose it's nothing," she said finally.

"I'll have a talk with him," Thomas decided. "Thanks
for your concern, Sister."

"He's a wonderful boy, with an extraordinary
imagination," Sister Margaret enthused. "I suppose that's not very
surprising for a child whose father created Strangewood, but it's still an
admirable quality."

A sly grin stole across Thomas's face.

"Did I say something funny, Mr. Randall?" Sister
Margaret asked, with feigned consternation.

"I was just thinking about my tenure at St.
Bridget's," Thomas replied. "In the old days, the nuns would try to
stifle my imagination as much as possible. I was drawing and writing things
down all the time. They thought I was strange, a discipline problem, simply
because I wasn't as
serious
as the other kids."

"That was the old school of thought," Sister
Margaret agreed. "These days, we encourage wild imaginations. The creative
impulse serves the child and perhaps, later, the world. It's a gift from
God."

"Daddy, can we
go
now?" Nathan asked,
exasperated. The boy had stood off to one side when he'd finished clapping
erasers, but his admittedly limited patience had run out.

"Sure, buddy," his father said. "Say good-bye
to Sister Margaret, and we'll go for that pizza I promised you."

"Pepperoni?" Nathan cried.

"You bet," Thomas answered.

Nathan whooped, waved good-bye to Sister Margaret, and ran
for the passenger door of his father's Volvo. Thomas reached into his pocket
and retrieved the keys. He depressed the tiny button on his keychain which
deactivated the car's alarm system, and called a thank you to the nun even as
she disappeared back into the school.

Thomas opened his door, instructed Nathan to put on his seat
belt, and took another look at the school before sliding into his own seat. It
was an old building, faded granite and cement. He'd always thought it tediously
boring. But for the first time, he noticed an elegant simplicity to the school,
to the name carved above the door and the crucifix that hung there.

The parking lot was also the playground, where he and his
classmates took recess all those years ago. With the sound of the breeze
rustling the leaves of the mighty oaks that still stood at the edge of the lot,
and the warm late-afternoon sun beating down on the tar, and the birdsong so
familiar as to almost disappear . . . it took him back. Just for a moment.

He wanted desperately for Nathan to have all the pleasure
he'd had in those years. All of it, and more.

"So, how you doing, Nathan?" he asked as he
started up the Volvo.

The boy didn't respond.

"Nathan?" Thomas prodded, as he glanced both ways
on Broadway before turning left and heading south toward Ardsley.

Still no answer.

Thomas glanced over to see that Nathan was staring intently
at a spot about his own eye level, next to him on the seat, whispering almost
imperceptibly.

Ah
, Thomas thought.
Crabapple.

Thomas "TJ" Randall was an army brat. His father
had been transferred often enough — from Massachusetts to Texas,
California to Virginia — that he and his older sister, Tricia, never
spent more that two years in the same school. At least not until their father
died, and even then, not for some years. Eventually, Ruth Randall had moved her
children back to her hometown of North Tarrytown, New York. Thomas was in the
seventh grade at the time.

Since then, it had been the only place he'd ever thought of
as home.

His mother died a month before his college graduation, and
Tricia had long since moved to Los Angeles, where she found work as a
production assistant for a small television production company. She had come
back, to the place Thomas called home, only twice — for her mother's
funeral, and for Nathan's christening. They spoke perhaps half a dozen times a
year.

Thomas loved his sister. He just didn't know her very well. Nor
had he made much of an effort to correct that situation. Writing was a solitary
profession, save for those friends he made in the business — with whom he
spoke almost exclusively on the phone or by E-mail — and his agent. Perhaps
that was part of the reason he had such a difficult time letting go of Emily
entirely. She was the only person left in his life who really, truly knew him.

In his darker moments, Thomas wondered what it said about
him that they could no longer live together.

Still, as long as he had his work, and he had Nathan, Thomas
was content. There were a great many things he wished he could change about his
life, but he had always assumed everyone had such issues. Yet, despite the
lonely times, life was a pleasure. All he had to do, in those dark moments, was
look into the eyes of his son.

North Tarrytown had recently won the battle to rename itself
Sleepy Hollow, since local legend claimed that Washington Irving invented his
tales of the Headless Horseman, Rip Van Winkle, and other fabulous characters
there. Thomas had even attended Sleepy Hollow High, which had proudly worn its
own name long before the town followed suit.

Thomas drove along Broadway through Sleepy Hollow and then
Tarrytown proper, glancing from time to time at the Tappan Zee Bridge,
stretching out across the Hudson River in the wan afternoon sunlight. Up the
hill to his left was Marymount College, where his mother had gone to school.

Squinting against the late-day glare, Thomas snatched his
sunglasses from the dashboard and slipped them on. He glanced back over at his
son and saw that Nathan was still silently chatting away in some muttered
jabberwocky lingo to nobody in particular.

At least, that was how it appeared. Thomas Randall knew
better. He knew just who his son was speaking to.

Crabapple was Nathan's imaginary friend. From what Thomas
and Emily had been able to gather, the invisible amigo was an often cranky
little redheaded boy, two or three years older than Nathan. Crabapple had first
appeared not long after Thomas and Emily decided to separate. Imaginary friends
were not uncommon for children of his age, and even less so in cases where
domestic stress was involved. Or so the therapist, Dr. Morrissey, had said.

"Nathan," he said again.

The boy did not respond.

"Nathan!" he said, a bit sharply, and put a hand
on his son's shoulder. Finally, Nathan turned to face him.

"We almost there, Daddy?" Nathan asked, as if the
drive were taking forever.

"You know where we are. We'll be there in five
minutes," Thomas replied, then smiled. "Does Crabapple want pepperoni
pizza too?"

Nathan began to grin, the way he always did before accusing
his father of being "a silly man." But the grin quickly faded, and
Nathan began to frown.

"Crabapple isn't hungry," Nathan asserted. "But
I am!"

"Good, more for the two of us," Thomas said. "Why
doesn't Crabapple want to eat?"

"He's just being a silly, Daddy," Nathan said. "He's
scared."

"Scared?" Thomas asked, and it was his turn to
frown. He wondered if this was the source of Nathan's distraction. He knew
Sister Margaret would only have broached the subject if Nathan had indeed been
acting strangely. And she already knew about Crabapple, so it wasn't only that.

"What does Crabapple have to be afraid of?" Thomas
asked. "Nobody can see or hear him except for you. And you'd never hurt
him."

Five year old logic. Thomas always did his best to reason
with Nathan, but it was just too far back to remember. Five years old. What's
in your mind at that age? He couldn't recall.