~~~~~
I got up the next morning feeling like I had had a ton of bricks on top of me all night long. I skipped my shower, threw whatever I grabbed out of my closet first on, and pulled my hair up in a pony tail. I rushed down the stairs and over to the garage so I could check on dad.
He was already awake, the pillow on the ground and the blanket still around his shoulders. Unlike the day before, it looked like he was spending time on the drawing he was working on now. I cleared my throat to announce my presence, but he didn’t seem to notice. I walked over to the desk to see what he was working on. It looked like he was starting in on the lion I had seen in his sketches, but this time more detailed and with smoother lines.
I leaned close and whispered in his ear, “That’s not right. Try something different.” This made him pause, lean back from the drawing, then nod.
“Of course. How could I not have seen it? This is wrong, all wrong.” He crumpled up the paper and fresh sheet from the stack.
I went to the kitchen to grab the smoothie he had started in on the night before. It wasn’t much, but I could get him another smoothie on the way home, or maybe even find something that he would eat. I set the cup next to him, looked at what he was drawing, then whispered in his ear again, “No, that’s not right, either. Keep trying.”
He paused, then did the same thing he had before. It was cruel of me, I knew, but I couldn’t have him settling on a design. I just needed him to wander around until I could think of something to do to help him.
I took one of the cars to school so I could drive home quickly on my lunch break and check on dad again. I didn’t allow Nobuko to come with me, even though she asked. I didn’t want anyone to see my dad in the state he was in. He had finished the smoothie, so I went ahead and made a sandwich for him before I went back to school, but not before telling him that he was still getting his wards wrong.
I did see Jack during history, but I chose to ignore him. What would he have known, anyway? He said he only knew of one other couple that were wardcarvers, and it was so long ago he probably even barely remembered them. They probably didn’t split up at all before dying. Of course, this was all conjecture, but it made me feel better about rationalizing about not talking to Jack about what was going on.
Since it was bad luck to do a practice on the day of a performance, I got to leave as soon as the bell rang. I stopped by the smoothie shop again on the way home and got the same kind of smoothie for my dad, plus a smoothie for myself. I was hungry, but I didn’t want to weigh myself down before the performance.
Dad had only nibbled on the corner of the sandwich, which was disappointing. I had hoped that he would get something solid in him. I left the sandwich where it was, put the smoothie next to it, and crouched down beneath his eye level, hoping that he would maybe look at me.
“Daddy? Can you hear me? I’m going to have a show tonight. The one I’ve been practicing for? I know that you’re not thrilled with it, since I’m supposed to be grounded, but I really hope you can come. It would mean a lot to me if you did.”
He didn’t respond at all. I stood up, disappointed, then looked at what he was drawing. “You still don’t have it right,” I said, then walked straight out the door. The last thing I heard from him was the crumpling of paper, then the slide of a fresh sheet coming off the pile and into place.
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