Nick did not answer. The question hung over the bed palpable as a thick and heavy cloud. There was no answer to it, and in time, the boys fell asleep.
Hours later, when the house was quiet for the night, a scratching at the door awakened Nick. He had heard that sound before. At his grandparents’ house, their little Yorkie would paw at the door whenever it wanted to be let out or let back into the house. Nails scraped the wood, more desperately now, as if something was trying to dig its way into the room, and a canine whine came through the space between the floor and the door. Nick could hear it snuffle and breathe and then the low-pitched growl rumble from its chest. In the trunk of the police car, the dead dog’s mouth was pulled back exposing two rows of sharp teeth. He could see them clearly now, the long fangs snapping at him. He could feel the canines ripping at his pajamas, hear the vicious mad barking. With a whimper, he turned away and shook Jack Peter by the shoulder. Nick knew he had been drawing again. “Make it go away,” he whispered, repeating and repeating until the boy rose from his dreams and whatever was beyond the closed door padded down the hall and went back to that special hell where nightmares are born.
v.
The dream house now sat at the bottom of the sea. Waves broke six feet above the roof, and bubbles escaped from the chimney and streamed one by one to the surface. In between the fronds of the kelp forest swam the windup fish, shining brightly as it passed through columns of sunlight. An octopus hid in the mailbox, two arms slithering through the slot. Starfish clung to the balustrade along the front porch. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. With great care he drew dorsal fins, walleyes, scales, and the little beard beneath the mouth open for one underwater breath. The cod took a long time to draw, but Jack Peter didn’t mind, he had all morning, he lost track entirely. The pencil weighed just right in his hand, the lines certain and crisp, and the sketch paper was smooth and willing.
One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. He remembered the sound of the Dr. Seuss book, its music in the background of his mind as he drew, and he could picture the illustrations and how the book was about counting things and observing details. Say, what a lot of fish there are. Windup fish swimming in the sea all the way from Japan, and the lady with the cloudy eye knows how he works. Inside his head. All these fishes need deep water, and if the ocean came and rose above the roof, Daddy would be dead, and Mommy, too, and Nick, bodies floating in the deep. Their friends could come and gather the dead and drowned and hang them up to dry. The end. No more pictures to draw, no more secrets. His hand cramped, and then the pencil grew as heavy as a spade.
He studied the house, vaguely dissatisfied with how he had drawn it, the difference between the perfect construct in his brain and the finished images on the page. He felt a bit sick to his stomach and slid the paper to the bottom of the stack on his desk. He turned off the light and sat in the gathering dawn. The others slept, slumbering in dreamland. Nick sprawled across the mattress, twisted sheets wrapped around his body like a fishing net. Late in the night, he had been crying again. Always crying. Always wanting something else. Nick could be such a chore; there was a limit to Jack Peter’s patience. Down the hall, his parents drifted, two on a raft. They would be up soon enough, his mother off to work, his father wandering restlessly from room to room. If they were drowned and dead, who would take care of him? “Be careful,” he whispered, and then all at once, the whole house sprang to life.
“Wake up,” he said to Nick, and the boy obeyed at once, sitting up in the bed, wiping the sleep from his eyes. A glimmer of leftover resentment lingered, but Nick said nothing, just dutifully rose and hurried off to the bathroom. Jack Peter heard the others make way, the quiet good mornings exchanged in the ebb and bustle of another daybreak. His father stuck his head into the room, and from the chair at the desk, Jack Peter nodded at him.
“You’re up. Just us boys today,” Tim said. “Your mother’s back to work. Come have some breakfast with us and say good-bye.”
Good-bye, he thought after his father departed. Good-bye, mother; good-bye, father. Good-bye, Mr. and Mrs. Weller. Good-bye, Nick at the bottom of the sea.
At the breakfast table, Jack Peter watched his parents get ready for the day. They moved like bees from flower to flower. Coffee on, muffins in the toaster. Cereal bowls and spoons, a bottle of milk, cornflakes, a ripe banana cut into coins. The newspaper rescued from the front stoop, shedding its plastic skin. She was trying to tell his father a story, but had trouble keeping his attention. A manila folder on the counter contained her evidence, and she kept returning to it and brandishing different sheets of paper.