100 Cocktails Later

At first it looked like a purple tornado with yellow lightning bolts. “What are you drawing?” The therapist watched as yellow cows seemed to be flying and a green boat was in the sky.

“Daddy is angry.” The girl calmly drew two stick figures with masts which must be two women with skirts. One of them had a large blue cricket bat. “This is mommy chasing the woman she found with daddy in the bedroom.”

The girl was so clinical, so detached, it bothered the therapist. The girl was drawing lots of bottles everywhere. On rooftops, in trees, some disguised as buildings, some with wheels like double-decker buses, some had people inside. Now the girl was making all the bottles orange.

The therapist inquired, “What are these?” Now there were tulip-shaped glasses with bubbles foaming. The glasses had feathers like a cockatoo top.

“Daddy says mommy drinks too many cocktails. I do not know what they are, but I can guess they are something you can drink too much.”

Then the girl darkened the entire picture, wrinkled it into a ball, and tore it in two. She told the therapist, “When I asked mommy about why she wants to divorce daddy, mommy says, when a story is done it is done.”