Read Beautiful Boy for Free Online Page B

Marin County. Karen, with dark brown hair and wearing a plain black dress, is a painter. She also writes and illustrates children's books. Karen says she is flying back to New York tomorrow, and I mention that I am going there next week to conduct an interview. There is awkward silence. My friend sitting near me hands me a slip of paper and a pen, whispering in my ear, "Get her phone number."
    I do.
    The next day I call her at her parents' house. I hear her tell her mother to say that she isn't home, but her mother ignores her, handing over the telephone.
    Yes, she says, she will meet me when I come to New York.
    Our first cautious date is at a friend's party on the Upper East Side. The Fine Young Cannibals play on the music system, waiters circulate with trays of Champagne and canapés, and then, though it is a sweltering night, I walk her the length of Manhattan to her downtown loft. It takes a couple hours, during which time we do not stop talking. Whenever we come upon an all-night grocery, we get Popsicles. It's dawn when we say good night at her front door.
    Karen and I keep in touch by telephone and letters. We see each other when she comes out to visit her parents and when I travel to New York on business. After six or so months, during one of her trips to San Francisco, I introduce Karen to Nic. She shows him her art books and they spend hours drawing cartoons. They work for days on long strips of butcher paper, creating an elaborately decorated scene of a park populated by Mr. Grouch, a rotund man sitting on a bench eating a tuna-fish sandwich; skinny Mr. Noodle and his noodle baby; Mr. Fake Hair; and Mr. and Mrs. No Body. (They have no bodies.)
    After living on the fifth floor of a walk-up in the shadow of the World Trade Center for six years, Karen moves in with us in San Francisco. Maybe Nic is just trying to ingratiate himself with this new force in his life, now that it is clear that she's sticking around, but he writes a report about her for school, in which he explains, "She lived in a big loft on top of a restaurant called Ham Heaven. Her loft was a cool place and you could light firecrackers on the roof ... She decided to come back to San Francisco to be with her new family, which is my dad and me and her."
    Soon after, we rent a place across the bridge in Sausalito so we can have a backyard. Our house is reputed to be one of the oldest in town. A rickety, leaky Victorian, it is slightly warmer inside than out, but not much. To compensate, fires roar in the fireplace and at night we pile on heavy quilts. Bundled up in down jackets, the three of us go tide-pooling along the seashore and ride the ferry
across the bay, past Alcatraz Island, to San Francisco. We carpool with another family to Nic's school in the city. Nic, who is now a fourth grader, plays on the local Little League team. Karen and I cheer him on. In his green Braves baseball jersey and ball cap, he is a focused and poised second baseman. The other boys joke around, but Nic is solemn. His coach tells us that Nic is a leader; the other children look to him for guidance.
    Parents often gush about their children, but ask people who know Nic and they will describe his humor, creativity, and infectious joie de vivre. Nic is often the unwitting center of attention, whether in school plays or at dinner parties. One day a casting director comes to his school and watches the children on the playground and then interviews some of them. In the evening, she calls our house to ask if I will consider allowing Nic to be in a television commercial. I discuss it with him and Nic says it sounds fun, so I agree. He gets to spend ten dollars, but with the rest of the hundred-dollar fee, we open a college account in his name.
    The commercial, for a car company, opens with a group of children sitting in a semicircle on the floor of a kindergarten classroom. Their teacher, seated in a child's chair, reads to them and then closes the book, setting it on her