Page 45 of The Five Year Lie

Luckily, I’m saved from further small talk by the event planner, who pours refills in our coffee cups and then pulls up a chair to talk to Mom.

Buzz gets a little fidgety after he’s done eating. “Draw me something,” he demands. “How about those boats?” He points out the window.

“Sure. Good idea.” I pull out the sketchbook that I keep in my bag, and a travel tin with twenty-four Prismacolor pencils inside.

Buzz climbs into my lap, because that’s our ritual. He unlatches the pencil case with careful fingers.

With his warm weight in my lap, I tap the blank sheet of paper. “What do I draw first?”

“The horizon,” he says dutifully.

“Good man.”

Buzz’s preschool doesn’t teach drawing. They value “free expression over form,” whatever that means.

To be fair, a four-year-old’s dexterity isn’t sufficient for form drawing. But he likes to hear how I approach a drawing. And helovesto stage-manage. So I take the dark blue pencil and rough in a horizon line.

“Four boats,” he says.

“What shape are the sails?”

He squints out the window. “Triangles. Two of them.”

“Are the boats all the same size?” I ask, adding a triangular sail in the center of the picture.

He squints out the window. “Yes.”

“But I shouldn’t draw them all the same size,” I point out. “Measure the closest one with your fingers. Like this.” I hold up my hand and pinch the sailboat in my view. Buzzy copies me. “Now measure a farther one. See?”

He holds his fingers barely a centimeter apart. “They’re not the same size. Except they really are.”

“Yep.”

“Why?” he asks, in the way of four-year-olds everywhere.

“Because your eyes show you one thing, but your brain changes the picture.” I sketch in another boat, this one smaller and closer to the horizon. “You’re a big boy who has some experience looking at things. And you’re smart, so you’ve already figured out that distant things look small, and close-up things look big. If you remember that when you’re drawing, it makes your pictures better.”

“That boat is mine,” he says, pointing at one that has red sails. “Make one for you, too, Mama. And one for Grandma.”

“Yessir.” I pick up a red pencil and writeBUZZon the stern.

“We work with a wonderful florist,” the event planner is telling my mother. “Do you know what you want in terms of flowers? Some things need to be ordered with a healthy lead time.”

My mother frowns, as if tasked with negotiating an international peace treaty. “Nothing exotic,” she says. “Mums would be a nice seasonal choice, I think.”

“Oh, I can tell you are going to be good at this,” the planner says, jotting something into her own notebook. “It’s easier to have a stress-free day if you aren’t reinventing the wheel with every detail.”

My mother smiles, but she looks a little unnerved.

I’ve drawn an entire regatta by the time she gets out her checkbook and puts down a deposit for her wedding.

“Can we take a stroll on the beach?” I ask as she pays the brunch check. “Buzz needs to walk off some of his maple syrup before we get back in that car.”

“Of course.”

After a few minutes of wrestling sunscreen onto my squirmy child, we set off together. I carry Buzz’s shoes and socks so he can wade into the surf. The water will be freezing cold in May. The only people near it are young children and a couple of hopeful surfers bobbing around in wet suits.

I keep my eyes locked on Buzz, as I do anytime he’s near the water. Our progress is slow, since he needs to look at every shell and rock in his path. My mother is quiet, and I’m basically a zombie. So our conversation is stalled.