gold balls has fallen off a bottom branch.
Eh, hang on a minute, son. Wee repair job here.
Dad loops the string round some bristles, bends the branch’s wire a bit. There we are, he says, right as rain. Now then, what have we here, ho ho.
Jacob points, says That one’s for you.
Dad picks up the little present, reads the sticker. To: Dad From: your son Jacob. Guess I’m no on Santa’s list again this year.
Jacob shrugs, tries to smile. His face heats when Dad starts popping Scotch tape.
Grand wrapping, son.
Did it myself.
Dad tears the paper. Hey hey, Luciano Pavarotti!
I was gonna get you pipes and drums. Black Watch. But it’s hard to find ones you don’t have.
No, son, this is great. Your dad loves old Looch.
Jacob looks at the other present.
Dad reaches for it, says Well then, here you are.
Thanks, says Jacob. He picks it up. To Jacob, Merry Xmas, love Dad.
Dad nods, blows on his tea. Slurps, his eyebrows like drawn bows, then swallows and tries not to smile. But his front tooth shows.
Jacob looks away, pops tape.
I’m no expert wrapper like you, Dad says.
It’s really good, Dad, says Jacob, thinking that the sketch-book’s no cheapy. It feels thick, heavy.
Son, I’ll no be saving the paper.
Sorry. Jacob tears. And stops, when, in the book’s bottom corner, he sees a skeleton hand but coloured in pink and gold.
Dad bobs his eyebrows.
Jacob tears more paper, sees another hand. A live hand, with a hairy thumb, holding a skinny marker and colouring the drawing of the bones.
Holy, Dad, what is this?
Look and see.
Jacob pulls on the book’s bottom edge and the flaps of paper fall away.
The Anatomy Coloring Book?
Now, what do ya think o’ that, kid!
Jacob swallows.
Couldnae believe that when I saw it. It’s perfect for you, son. Slurp, gulp. Something missing, is there?
No. It’s great, Dad. Thanks.
Dad sets his tea down, looks out the window. His Adam’s apple bobs. I know it’s Christmas and all, he says, staring between the curtains. Then he looks back at Jacob – hard – and says But let me say this anyway. Son, it’s not your drawing I mind. You know I wasn’t too bad with a brush meself once.
Jacob hunches, stares at Dad’s shins.
Son, look at me. You like your drawing, that’s great. Really, it is. But all they comic book, wam-bam pictures and whatnot.
Fantasy art, Dad.
Whatever they call it, you’re gettin too old for all o’ that stuff.
Eleven?
Aye, and goan on twice that sometimes.
Jacob looks away, swallows.
Son, listen to your old dad. Look at me. You’ve got a talent, there’s no one gonna deny that. Neily Waldengarden’s seen it, too, knows like I do you’ve got some grey matter in that noggin. Dad leans forward and raps Jacob’s head like a door. Use it, son, is what I’m saying.
Jacob’s left nostril twitches.
Son, I’ve told you, you don’t wanna end up like your old dad, driving bloody ambulance. You could be a doctor. Like your mum.
She’s a nurse.
Slurp. Coulda been a doctor, is what I mean.
Why wasn’t she?
Well, gulp, gid tea, that. There was no money for to go to university, son. Not like here. Back home, it was only the richies. Off to St. Andrew’s and Cambridge, and see you, McKnight, get yourself a trade, boy. Nae chance. In the mines I was, by sixteen. Six-teen. With your mother it was nursing. But you could go to university, and know more than half the bampots in it do by the time you get there. I mean, look at this. Dad thumbs open The Anatomy Coloring Book. Look, he says, at the detail of this thing.
Jacob double-takes, bends closer. A big black-and-white eyeball glares back at him.
Dad pins down the page with his fingers, points to the muscles attached to the eye. Look here, son. The idea, see, is that you colour in each part differently – B, say, in green or what have you – then you use the same colour for the proper names of the parts on the left here, so’s you remember. See? B, Inferior Rectus. You’d colour it –
Green, says Jacob, Inferior Rectus. But he can’t look back at that eye.
Son, you can do this nae problem like, and then, what with how you can draw ‘n’ all, you should actually reproduce the drawings yourself, like medical students do with their dissections ‘n’ what have you. Dad draws his index finger down Jacob’s torso, says Then you’d really know what you’re made of.
Jacob eyes the long crevasse in his PJ top.
The whole human body you could know before you even get to high school. You’ll breeze through, boyo, I’m tellin you.
Jacob just nods.
Dad claps his hands and slaps his thighs to make galloping sounds. Got tae get myself shaved and away, he says.
Thanks for the book, Dad.
Welcome.
Dad jumps up, heads off. Jacob just sits, looks at his face in the surface of the gold ball that Dad put back on the tree. He flicks it with his middle finger.
Tink.
Harder.
Tink.
Harder.
Tink!
But it doesn’t break or fall.
Jacob eyes the book. Wrinkles his nose. Eyes the book. Looks out the window. Eyes the book. Thumbs pages.
Ankle bones.
The spleen.
Half a face, with the skin peeled off.
Jacob stops. Stares at a blank space
