The Color of Nothing

Shirley Harbrecht hissed into the receiver. “Richard! What about the car insurance?”

She needn’t have worried about Jeffrey overhearing her, because her young son was lost in the project that lay before him. Jeff was drawing a picture of his grandparents’ house. They lived out in the country in a big old house with lots of trees around it and a river cutting through the back. Shortly after Richard ran off to Orlando with one of his political science students, Jeffrey and his mom had packed up their things and spent a few weeks at Grandma’s house.

The thing Jeffrey liked about it best, after the dog, was the river.

In the late afternoons Jeffrey and Grandpa would go down to the river, where Grandpa would fish. Jeffrey wasn’t interested in fishing because it was only exciting when it was time to pull a big bullhead or suckerfish. The rest of the time it was boring. Jeffrey got sticks and little rocks and threw them in the water.

“Jeff! What are we going to have for dinner if you scare all the fish away?” Grandpa had growled.

Jeffrey didn’t answer but threw another stick. He knew it didn’t matter whether Grandpa caught any fish or not. Because even when he caught them, Grandma just fed the fish to the cats. They were going to have beef stroganoff tonight, that’s what Grandma had said.

“Can the fish see the rocks falling in the water?” asked Jeffrey.

“Of course,” said Grandpa. “Water is clear.” He picked waterweeds off his fishhook. “Hand me another worm out of that can there, Jeff.”

***  

Now Jeffrey was trying to color a picture of the river. He experimented for a while before asking his mother for help.

“Mom?”

“Yes, Jeffie?”

“Mom? What color is clear?”

Shirley gave her small, dark-haired son a blank look.

“I need to color the water. What color makes clear?”

Shirley came to the table and looked over Jeffrey’s shoulder. “Jeffie, there isn’t a color for clear. Clear is the color of nothing. Clear is what you get when all the other colors are taken away.”

Jeff scowled. “Last time you said that if you take all the colors away you get white. That’s what you said last time.”

Shirley sighed. Her six-year-old was no dummy. Even in nursery schoolteachers had made comments to her about Jeffrey’s sharp memory and the sophistication of the questions he asked.

“I think clear is actually a magic combination of colors, like water,” she suggested. “Water reflects all of the colors in the world.”

“So, if I mix up all of my colors, I’ll make clear?”

“Maybe,” said his mom. “Give it a try.”

For the next several days Jeffrey struggled to create clear. He got a big piece of paper and colored it all over with his red crayon. Then he colored it all over with his green crayon and his blue crayon and even his silver one, which he usually saved for coloring special things like robots. Still, he didn’t make clear. When Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit, he mentioned to them that he could use more crayons.

After dinner, Grandma and Jeffrey’s mom washed the dishes together.

“Shirley, do you think it’s a good idea that he’s going through so many crayons? Are you sure he’s not eating them?”

“Mom!” said Jeffrey’s mother, “Eating them?”

“You never know how a thing like a divorce might affect a sensitive child, like Jeffrey,” Grandma said.

“He isn’t eating crayons! Good grief, Mom, he’s almost seven! Jeff’s experimenting! It’s very healthy!” Shirley said this with all the authority she would muster. After all, she was a high-school art teacher.

“Well, a boy with an imagination like Jeff’s,” Grandma murmured to the plate she was drying.

When it was time for Grandma and Grandpa to leave, they gave Jeffrey some new crayons. Jeffrey put them in his special box under his bed.

For a while, Jeffrey forgot about making clear, because Daddy came to visit from Orlando. He brought Jeffrey a green parakeet in a cage. Jeffrey was glad to have the parakeet and named it Belinda, which happened to be the name of Jeffrey’s father’s new girlfriend. But Jeff had noticed how irritated his mom got whenever anybody mentioned the name “Belinda,” so in front of her, Jeffrey was careful to call the bird “Pixie.”

Jeffrey kept a special box under his bed with things in it like his Batman toys and two half dollars and some other stuff. Jeffrey was playing under the bed on the day he made the Clear. One of the things was a book that his grandma had given him, with clean white pages and a swirly blue pattern on the cover.

On that day, Jeffrey had been playing with his space alien toys under his bed. The alien spaceship happened to be Jeffrey’s new box of crayons. Jeffrey let the aliens fend for themselves and he set out again to conjure Clear in the pages of the book that he’d gotten from Grandma.

Jeffrey scribbled fiercely. He had inherited his father’s habit of sticking his tongue out a little when he was concentrating. Jeffrey finished layers of pink and yellow and had just begun to cover that with a layer of blue-green, when the first glimpse of the Clear appeared. In the darkness under the bed the scribbles seemed to glow a little, like the plastic glow-in-the-dark skull that his uncle Kevin had given him on Halloween, but not so green.

Jeffrey was so excited that he wet his pants. He rolled out from under the bed and ran downstairs as fast as he could with Grandma’s book. “Mom! Mom! I did it! I colored Clear!”

“That’s great, Jeff,” said Shirley. She was glaring at the kitchen clock.

Jeffrey stood in the middle of the living room and stared with pride at his circle of Clear. It was about five inches in diameter, and around the edges were scribbles of colors that didn’t quite make clear. Gingerly, he closed the book and opened it again. He was afraid that if he closed it, the Clear would disappear, but it didn’t.

“Jeffie, I have a meeting with my lawyer. Mrs. Duncan is coming to babysit you, and she’s on her way, but I must leave right now. I want you to be good. I’ll be back real soon,” said Jeffrey’s mom, picking her purse up from the sofa.

“Mom! Don’t you want to see my Clear?”

“I’ll see it when I get back, now be good!” His mother glanced at him and sighed. “Good grief, Jeff, did you wet your pants? Go and change them before Mrs. Duncan gets here!” Then Jeffrey’s mom left, muttering something about child support.

Jeffrey put his book on the living room floor and sat down beside it. He carefully traced his finger around the circumference of the Clear. When his finger touched the clear part; the page seemed to disappear into the air. To his delight he discovered that he could put his whole hand into the Clear.

He set the book up on its edge with the pages open to the colored page. When he stuck his arm into the Clear, his fingers didn’t appear on the outside of the book. He could look into the Clear on one side of the paper, but on the back of the clear page, it was just a normal piece of paper.

Jeffrey ran to get his colors. He tore out a page of Grandma’s book and tried to recreate his efforts. He used the same colors in the same order. But this time, when he colored over the yellow with the blue green, all he ended up with was a blue green. He abandoned the crayons and the blue-green page on the living room coffee table and went back to his book.

Jeffrey heard Mrs. Duncan, the babysitter, come in. She turned on the TV in the backroom. “Hello, Jeffrey! Are you doing all right in there by yourself?” she asked. Mrs. Duncan was always very nice.

“I’m OK,” said Jeffrey, holding the page up to his face and breathing in the good, cool air of the Clear.

When Jeffrey’s mom came home, she was tired. She paid Mrs. Duncan and said goodnight to her, then came into the living room. “Time to go to bed, Jeff,” she said.

“Want to see my Clear, Mom?”

Suddenly, Jeffrey’s mom looked very tired. “Jeffie,” she said, “you can’t make Clear.” Her lower lip stiffened. “It’s not your fault that Daddy moved to Orlando.”

Jeffrey was surprised. It had never occurred to him that it was anybody’s fault that Daddy moved to Orlando. Everybody knows that Orlando is where Disney World is. Daddy lived at Disney World with his girlfriend, Belinda. Who wouldn’t want to move to Orlando?

“Mom,” said Jeffrey, in a serious tone, “I really did make Clear with my crayons.”

“How?” asked Jeffrey’s mom. “Like this?” She picked up the blue-green page from the coffee table.

“Yeah,” said Jeffrey.

“I don’t want to hear any more of this nonsense!” she said. “Do you understand me? Clear isn’t a color! You can’t make Clear. This is what we are going to do with your Clear!” She tore the blue-green page into little pieces. “Bring me the rest of your crayons, right now! I want you to put those crayons in the trash. You have enough toys.”

Jeffrey’s mom looked as if she was about to cry, so Jeffrey went upstairs with his special book. He put the book under his bed and brought his box of crayons downstairs. He watched solemnly as his mother shook the carton into the kitchen garbage can. Sometimes she did funny things like this, but usually only after talking with Daddy on the telephone.

Jeffrey decided not to say anything to anyone about the Clear for several weeks, but when he came home from school he immediately went to his room and crawled under his bed. There he opened his book and felt and smelled the air in the Clear. He liked to look into it, as if it were a crystal ball. He tied a string to his Batman toy and dropped it into the Clear. The funny thing was that things in the Clear didn’t drop. It was as if there was no gravity there. Jeffrey could push Batman out as far as he could reach, and the toy would just stay there, hanging in space. He could close the book, walk with it into another room, and when he opened it again, he could pull on the string and retrieve the toy from the nowhere place.

One day when Jeffrey was looking into the Clear he saw something very strange. At first it was too far away, but when it came closer Jeffrey realized it was a piano. Another time there was a bale of hay or straw just floating around. Jeffrey let his parakeet fly into the Clear. But unlike his toys, the piano and the bale of hay, Belinda could fly around, and Jeffrey was disappointed when she didn’t come back. He sprinkled some birdseed into the Clear occasionally, in hopes that Belinda would find it.

When Jeffrey’s mom asked what had happened to the bird, he told her that Belinda had flown into the Clear. That made his mother very mad. First, she warned Jeffrey to stop talking about Clear. She told him that Daddy went to Orlando of his own free will, and she said that only an idiot would have given a six-year-old a parakeet.

One night, Jeff was lying on his back under his blankets with the book tented over his face, hoping that Belinda might return, when he saw the very scary thing.

It seemed to have come from behind him, suddenly, and it was so close that he could have touched it if he had wanted to. But he didn’t want to. It was a big animal, bigger than a cat, with ugly gray fur and a snaky tail. When it saw Jeffrey, it showed its teeth and seemed to want to bite him. Jeffrey threw the book across the room and ran downstairs to his mother’s room. He babbled, overcome with fear that the terrible monster had eaten his parakeet. He was shaking and sobbing, so his mom let him sleep with her in the big bed.

The next day, two things happened. First, Shirley Harbrecht called for a special doctor who specialized in gifted and emotionally disturbed children. Second, Jeffrey Harbrecht pored through his book, Animals of the Americas. At about noon, Mrs. Harbrecht obtained an appointment for Jeffrey, and at about noon, Jeffrey came across a picture of Dedelphis virginiana, more commonly known as an opossum.

On Tuesday, Jeffrey went to his appointment with Dr. Sahadi. The doctor was a funny-looking dark man with a big mole on his cheek who spoke in a sing-song way that was hard for Jeffrey to understand. Jeffrey told him about the Clear and the piano and the opossum and his parakeet. He forgot to tell him about the bale of hay. Later, Dr. Sahadi talked to Jeffrey’s mom. When they were driving home from Dr. Sahadi’s office, Jeffrey’s mom said, “I’m going to take you out of school for a little while.”

That was fine with Jeff. He used to like going to school and playing with other kids, but ever since he discovered Clear, all he wanted to do was to stay in his room and experiment with it. Jeff wondered how the hay bale and other things got in there. He asked his mom how many crayons it would take to color a whole piano. She said she didn’t know, then she said she had a headache and needed to lie down.

Jeffrey finally discovered a way that the big things could have gotten into the Clear. He was pulling his Batman off the page when he accidentally tore the paper. The rip went all the way to the edge of the page but didn’t stop there. It continued several inches out into the air. Jeff’s heart was pounding. He laid the open book flat on his floor and carefully put his fingers on either side of the rip.

Pulling gently, he tore the edges of the Clear until there was a hole big enough for him to pass his big Tonka Truck through. Jeff was so excited he could hardly breathe! He tore the paper more, making a flap big enough for him to fit in his globe of the world. When he closed the book’s cover the divide sealed. He was about to open it again to see if the tear would reappear when he looked up and saw his mother watching him from his bedroom doorway.

“What is that?” she demanded. “Is that the book with the monster in it?”

“Yes,” said Jeffrey, “But don’t worry, Mom. It isn’t really a monster. It’s just a ‘possum, but I think he ate Belinda.”

His mother’s face turned dark. “Stop this fantasy, Jeff! It isn’t healthy!" She thrust her hand out toward him. “Give that to me!”

Jeff got up and held his book to his chest. He was remembering how his mother had torn his blue-green page to pieces.

“Right now, Jeff!” She took a step toward the door. Jeff looked down at his wonderful, wonderful book, then at his mother. Her face seemed painted with pain and anger. When he held the book out and began to walk toward her, her expression changed. He thought she might cry.

“I’m not mad at you, Jeffie. It’s not your fault that you see monsters in books. It’s because of Daddy. Because Daddy left. So, you know what we’re going to do? We’re going to get rid of all the things that remind us of Daddy. We’re going to move far away. You’re never going to have to see or think about Daddy anymore. And that’s why we’re going to burn that bad book.”

Jeff stood just inside the doorway of his room. He held the book out to her with one hand. With the other, he slammed the door shut, fell against it, and turned the lock.

“Jeff!” his mother shrieked. “Open this door right now!”

“You can’t take my Clear!” he yelled back.

She rattled the doorknob. “Open up!”

“No!” he shouted and frantically looked around the room. He wondered if he could push his desk against the door.

“I’m going to get the key, Jeff!” she said. “And when I do, you’re going to be sorry!”

He heard her storm away toward the kitchen and jerk open the drawer where she kept things like keys and tools and rubber bands. Jeff looked down and ran his fingers over the swirly blue pattern of the cover. Then he knelt and put his book on the floor in front of the door. Jeff opened it to the special page, put his fingers into the space and ripped the paper until the tear ran all the way to the closet. It made a slit in the Clear big enough for a whole piano.

Then Jeffrey sat on his bed and waited.