Dating for Two. Marie Ferrarella

life by utilizing an old green sock her mother had brought her.

      Somehow he managed to stay with her—in spirit and in drawings—all the way through school. A while later, she decided to give Tex a better form. Her mother went to a craft store and bought green felt, and Erin had had stuffing. Armed with a needle and thread as well as a black Magic Marker, she brought the dinosaur to “life” one fall afternoon.

      From that day forward, in one form or another, Tex had remained with her.

      A chance comment from a child in an on-campus day-care center was ultimately responsible for her creating a friend for Tex—Anita. Anita was equally nonmechanical. Equally gifted with a soul via Erin’s imagination.

      And suddenly, Imagine That was born.

      “And now we get to tell a cluster of second graders all about you,” Erin told her stuffed animal with pride.

      “Don’t forget the part where you would be nowhere without me,” “Tex” reminded her in that same high-pitched version of her voice.

      “I won’t forget,” she promised, saying the words as if she were actually carrying on a conversation with another human being.

      She indulged in the little charade mainly when none of her staff was around, so that they wouldn’t think she was losing her mind if they happened to overhear her in effect talking to herself. It helped her knock off steam when things got tense, but she could see how it might unnerve someone witnessing her exchanges with herself.

      “We made it, Tex. We made it to the big time—or to the little time, if you will,” she augmented with a grin.

      For once Tex said nothing.

      But she knew what he was “thinking.” The very same thing she was. That they had truly “made it” in more ways than one.

Chapter Two

      Steve hung up the landline phone in the kitchen and looked over at his son. Jason, as usual, was in the family room, his attention glued to the action on the TV screen.

      “Did you have anything to do with this, Jason?” he asked.

      “To do with what, Dad?” his son responded after he repeated the question a total of three times. As had become his habit, Jason was only half paying attention to anything going on outside of the video game he was playing. The game had become an all-important obsession for him, something he did with most of his waking hours unless his father made him do mundane things like eat and sleep and go to school. Aside from that, he could be found before the TV in the family room, defeating aliens and making the universe safe for another day.

      He was not about to relax his vigilance, convinced that slacking off for even a second would bring about dire consequences. It could bring about the end of life as he knew it, as everyone in his world knew it. He couldn’t allow that to happen. Not on his watch. He’d already lost his mother; he couldn’t afford to lose his father or his grandmother, as well.

      “I was just on the phone with your assistant principal,” Steve said, nodding toward the receiver he’d just hung up. “She asked if I’d speak to your class on Career Day.”

      He sank down on the sofa. Jason’s thumbs were going a mile a minute on the controller. The TV monitor was filled with dying aliens that disintegrated into tiny purple clouds before vanishing altogether.

      Steve couldn’t help wondering if his son had even heard him. “I didn’t know you had a Career Day.”

      Jason shrugged, his small shoulders rising and falling in an exaggerated motion since he was lying on his stomach. “I guess so,” he mumbled.

      Without Julia, his late wife, as a buffer, Steve had found himself groping around, trying to find his way in his son’s world. Every time he thought he was making just a tiny bit of headway, something would happen to show him that he hadn’t made any at all.

      But he couldn’t give up now, because the next thing he said might be just the right words that would help him to get through to the boy. Above all, he wanted to keep their relationship open and honest—so he asked a lot of questions. But he didn’t get a great deal of feedback.

      “She sounded desperate, so I said I’d do it. Is that okay with you?” he asked. The last thing he wanted to do was embarrass his son, no matter how persuasive the woman on the other end of the line had come across.

      “It’s okay, I guess,” Jason said with no real enthusiasm. Then, turning to look at him over his shoulder, his son added a provision to his agreement. “As long as you don’t kiss me around the other guys.”

      Steve suppressed a grin. Now, that he could fully relate to and understand. He could remember how embarrassing parental demonstrations of affection could be at that age. “It’ll be hard, but I promise I’ll control myself.”

      “Good.” Jason nodded. Going back to killing aliens, the boy asked absently, “Whatcha gonna talk about?”

      “My career.” Then, because of the perplexed look on his son’s face when Jason turned toward him again, Steve added, “I’m a lawyer, remember?”

      “I ’member,” Jason answered almost solemnly, then asked, “You gonna do some lawyer stuff for the class?”

      There were times when he felt that Jason didn’t have a clue as to what he did for a living. Julia liked to say that he argued for a living. He supposed that was as apt a description of his profession as any. But he doubted that a group of seven-year-olds would understand the joke.

      “I’m going to explain to your class what a lawyer does,” he told Jason.

      “Oh.” It was clear that Jason didn’t seem to think that would go over all that well with his class—but he had a remedy for that. “Maybe you better bring treats, like Jeremy King’s mom did when she came to talk about her job.”

      He honestly considered Jason’s suggestion. “Maybe I will bring treats since food seems to be the only thing that impresses people your age.”

      The aliens still weren’t dying and the controller remained idle in Jason’s hands, telling Steve that he had his son’s full attention—at least for a half a minute more. “I like chocolate, Dad.”

      “Yes, I know,” Steve said with as straight a face as he could manage.

      And then the consequences of his affable agreement hit him. He was going to have to stand up in front of a classroom full of restless little boys and girls and try to hold their attention for at least ten minutes, if not more. Steve looked over toward the phone he’d just hung up on the wall. Maybe he’d been just a little too hasty saying yes.

      Oh, he had no trouble standing up before an audience. Most of all, he was really apprehensive that he might inadvertently embarrass his son—which in turn might push the boy even further away from him than he was now. Seven-year-olds were sensitive and desperately wanted to blend in, not stand out, and having him in the classroom would definitely single Jason out.

      “So you’re okay with my coming to your classroom?” he asked again.

      “Uh-huh.”

      Steve gathered from his son’s tone that Jason was once again clearly engaged in the business of knocking off tall, thin gray aliens and was a million miles away from him.

      * * *

      A few days later, Steve was still having second thoughts about talking in front of Jason’s class. Actually, his second thoughts were into their third edition at this point.

      But if nothing else, he was well aware that it was too late to pull out. He had committed to this speaking engagement and he was nothing if not a man of his word.

      It was a lesson he was trying to teach Jason and he knew if he bowed out at the last minute, aside from leaving the assistant principal high and dry, he would be teaching Jason that