Cloud Watching

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Meredith and Timothy are lying in the grass at the local playground. They’re cloud watching, something they’ve done since Timothy first began speaking.

“Bunny,” Timothy says, extending his arm to point at an oddly shaped cloud to his left.

“Looks more like a… I dunno, maybe a person.” They sit in relative silence for a long time, only breaking it to point out a cloud of a particular kind every once and awhile. The quiet is peaceful, so Meredith closes her eyes. As soon as she starts to drift off, Timothy speaks.

“Can I hold the clouds in my hand?”

When Timothy was first born, his father used to always joke that Meredith better look up why the sky is blue, in case he asks. Lance, Timothy’s father, liked to joke that she was stupid, because she never finished school. She didn’t need to be smart, and she didn’t need a job. Lance made the money, all she needed to do was take care of Timothy.

The boy has never asked once why the sky is blue. Maybe he realizes the irony of the question. Why do kids never wonder why everything else is colored a certain way? Why is the sky so special? Maybe he just forgets to ask.
“When it rains you can. When it rains it’s like the clouds are all around you.”

At this, Timothy seems puzzled for a moment, before he smiles wide, showing off his missing teeth. And then it starts raining, and Timothy screams loudly and giggles right after, jumping up and running in the direction of The Foxberry.

“I got the clouds,” he yells, “all of them!” His arms are stretched above his head, his hands cupped. They run home like this.
Once they make it inside the apartment, Meredith makes quick work drying Timothy off and changing him into dry clothes. Afterward, they settle on the bed in the single bedroom.

“What’s a heart attack?” This question is different from the one’s Timothy tends to ask.

“I’m not really sure, actually.” Meredith’s response makes the boy’s shoulders slump, “It’s when the heart can’t do what it needs to do. We can look it up later.”

“Are you supposed to bleed when you heart attack?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Well, the police people says Mr. Evans died of heart attack, but I saw… lots of blood.”

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