Henry
The kids and Nadine are watching Home Alone. It’s the scene where Macaulay Culkin is setting up all the booby traps that will eventually terrorize the Wet Bandits.
“What do you think Mr. and Mrs. McCallister did to afford a place like that in the Chicago suburbs?” I ask the group, but everyone just shrugs.
Bella is on the couch, braiding the second half of Nadine’s hair.
Ian had already started his initial sketch before Meredith and I got here.
He’s on the floor, sitting at the coffee table with his art pad, and I’m squatting beside him.
We took maybe a dozen pictures of the neighbor’s decorations, so he’d have different angles to work from.
“The sky’s gonna be tricky,” I tell him.
We’re struggling to pick a marker from the pile scattered on the coffee table. “I know,” he says, pulling his hair.
“You think a night sky is black, but it isn’t really, is it?” I maximize the image on his iPhone for a better look at the yellows and grays.
Meredith, still in her coat, stands between the kitchen and TV room as Harry Styles sniffs her boot. “I don’t mean to alarm anyone,” she says. “But there’s a cage in here with mice in it.”
“Mhm,” says Nadine. “Those’re for you, Mouse Man.”
“Oh, right,” I say. “I’ll get those later.”
“You’ll what?” asks Meredith. “You’ll get them?”
“He frees our mice in the forest because they can’t live with us anymore,” says Bella. “They really like peanut butter.”
Meredith gives me a look that’s all question marks. There wasn’t enough time on the ride over here to tell her everything, I guess. I see her eyes go to Grace and Tim’s wedding photo now. Harry Styles headbutts her other boot.
“Your glasses are really pretty,” Bella tells her.
Meredith smiles and thanks her, and it briefly feels less tense in here, but then Bella says, “So, are you Henry’s girlfriend?” and it’s like she’s rolled a grenade of awkwardness into the living room.
Nadine play-swats Bella’s knee. “Bell Bell, that ain’t your business.”
Harry Styles settles onto Nadine’s lap now to stare at everyone, and Ian takes a stab at blending black and yellow markers on his scratch pad. Unfortunately, like most marker-blending experiments, the result is a dung-colored mess.
“I got an idea, buddy,” I say. “Your art stuff, where do you keep it?”
Both kids point to the corner at a giant white cabinet and say, “Chaos cabinet.”
The “Chaos cabinet” is at least a foot taller than me, and when I open the two big doors, I catch a falling pencil sharpener, a Nerf football, and an extension cord. The art supplies are in a box behind an abandoned Crock-Pot. I dig around until I find his paint set and a blank canvas.
“Forget markers,” I say. “There’s only one true way to blend colors. You know that.”
Ian sighs. “I’m not good at painting, though.”
“That’s not true at all,” I say.
“But I’ll mess it up, and it’ll be terrible.”
“It’s like the paintings at the Walters, remember?” I say. “One step at a time. You’re almost done with your sketch. Here’s your canvas, paints. You’ve got everything you need to crush this.”
Ian pulls his hair again, nervous, then he looks up at me. “Can you…can you stay and help me?”
I look at Meredith because I don’t think this is going to be a flyby after all. She nods a resolute little nod and takes her phone out. “I think I’ll get that Uber.”
“No, I can—”
“Henry,” she says. “It’s okay.”
Nadine seems to understand what shifting to a different artistic medium means. “Um, if y’all are gonna be here a while,” she says, “maybe I can head home?”
“Um,” I say.
“Does anybody want popcorn fish?” asks Bella.