It is Clive at The Back Beat that does it. Bender had said the important thing was to get her paintings up there and that she could deal with her father later. She'd thought she'd got off scott-free. A week after the opening, she comes home from art class to find her father's Mercedes in the driveway. He's never home in the afternoon.

She cautiously enters. She can hear them arguing in the kitchen, her father's voice raised.

"I found out she has disobeyed me by reading it in a newspaper. My client congratulated me on her art show when I expressly forbid it. That is what comes of all this molly coddling."

"You leave it all to me! I'm the one who does everything. You weren't even here to meet her first boyfriend. You don't like the way I do things, do them yourself!"

A sick smacking sound cuts off her complaint.

"I told you to handle this and you didn't. I work hard so you can enjoy this life and I ask you to do one thing and you fail."

"Raising a daughter all by yourself is not just one little thing, like you'd assign to an intern. I don't work for you! I am your wife and the mother of your daughter!"

Allison is glued to the spot. Her mother is standing up against him. He hit her and she is doing it anyway. He hit her. Her brain has trouble processing this fact.

"She will be punished. No more of this art nonsense. I will see to it myself since you are so unreliable."

Allison slowly backs out of the front door, turns, runs for the stream.

Crumpled on her rock, the sound of the water eventually cuts through her shock. She will be punished. How? He hit her mother. But he has always taken away her art when he wanted to really punish her. He can't. He can't do that.

She has to find Bender.

Finding Bender is more difficult than she'd expected. She looks in the Shermer phone book and finds no Benders. Then she remembers that morning when he found her at the bus stop in Milltown; he must live there. She ends up going to the library to find a Milltown phone book. Yes, there is one Bender in the book, 24 East 1st Street. A helpful librarian finds a map for her as well. Armed with directions, she boards the correct bus. East 1st Street is overshadowed by the mill. The smell is intense but after a few minutes she stops noticing it. She finds herself on a block of white clapboard homes, a solid, respectable working class neighborhood. She climbs the four steps to the porch of number 24 and hesitantly knocks. She can hear the TV. She knocks louder. A boy of 10 or 11 opens the door. He looks at her blankly. She hears someone inside yell, "Davey, who's at the door?"

Davey answers "I dunno, Ma."

"Is Bender home? I mean John. Is John home?"

Mrs. Bender comes to the door. A little girl of about 6 peeps around her skirt.

"Hello. Mrs. Bender? Is John home?"

"Johnny!" Mrs. Bender yells over her shoulder, then looks at Allison. "Come in, sweetheart. He'll be right down."

Allison enters the small living room, which is clean but littered with toys. The TV is playing cartoons loudly. She didn't expect this. She doesn't know what she expected but it wasn't this. Bender always seemed to have sprung into the world fully formed and the idea of small brothers and sisters never crossed her mind. Nor did she expect his mother to be so gracious.

He comes rattling down the stairs. When he looks up and sees her, his expression of surprise is comical.

"Al, what are you doing here?" He crosses the room and takes her by the elbow, steers her out onto the porch. "It's so loud I can't think in there."

She can see the mill, a huge presence, looming over them.

"What's wrong, Al?"

"My father found out about my show. He's going to punish me. He hit my mother. He can't do it." She starts crying. "He can't take away my art."

Bender leads her to the porch swing, sits next to her and takes one of her hands in his.

"Okay, start from the beginning. What happened?"

"I came home, I heard them arguing. Someone showed him the newspaper review of the show. He hit my mother, then he said he would punish me himself."

"Your old man's going to beat you?"

"I don't care if he hits me, he's going to take away my art. He can't. He can't! I can't live without it."

"Alright, Al. I understand. How's he going to take it?"

"Last time, he took away my sketchbooks and pencils, paints, everything. But I think he'll do more this time. I can't lose my sketchbooks. I can't lose my self portrait. I can't lose my new painting of the street under the El. Bender, can you hide them for me?"

Without hesitation he says, "Yes. How will you get them to me?"

"I can send a note to Jeannette at the college, and Stuart at the gallery, asking them to give the paintings to you. But my sketchbooks are all at home. I have to get them out."

"Where's your bedroom window?"

"Upstairs, in back."

"Good, can you throw them out the window to me?"

"Yes."

"I'll come at one tonight."

She knew it, she knew she could count on Bender. She hugs him. After a moment of surprise, he hugs her back.

He eventually says, "C'mon Al, you need to get home. You don't want more trouble than you already have."

It is almost six when she opens the front door. Her father's car is still in the drive way, and he is waiting in the living room. There are piles of sketch books, pencils, watercolor cases, boxes of pastels and charcoals, colored pencils on the coffee table. The piles are neatly sorted and stacked.

"Allison, come in here." She hears controlled rage. When she enters, he doesn't offer a seat, so she stands in front of him like a prisoner.

"You have disobeyed me. I forbade you peddling your paintings and you did it anyway." He lets this sink in."You have been given the privilege of messing around with this art foolishness, but you disobeyed me and that privilege is being revoked. No more art classes. No more art supplies. All of this is going in the trash. You won't be getting it back, as you did last time. You will not engage in any of this nonsense while you are under my roof. If I catch any doodling at all, you'll pay the price. No more drawing. You are grounded until school starts. Go to your room."

How can she rescue her sketchbooks? How can she get them to Bender?

Bender has solutions, he always does, but now she needs to create one herself. She has seven hours to think.

At one o'clock, she opens her window. When Bender comes around the side of the house, she waves from her dark window and he sees her. Now she can test her ingenuity. She lowers a flashlight on a string of curling ribbon, with paper and pen attached. Her note says

The sketchbooks aren't here, he has them.

He said he'd throw them away.

Check the garbage on the side of the house.

Okay?

He reads the note and gives her a thumbs up, disappearing around the side of the house. She listens for the slightest sound and hears nothing. Then he is back, shaking his head. She pulls up the flashlight, paper and pen and thinks.

Give me your number, I'll call at eight tomorrow morning.

She lowers away, he jots his number, and she pulls it up. Her eyes have adjusted to the darkness enough that she can see the glint of his eyes as he waves. Then he's gone.

She is up at six and hears her father stirring. He leaves at 7:30. In stockinged feet she tries the door to his office. Locked. She's known how to jimmy the lock with the ice pick since she was 10. She returns with the instrument, but finds her mother there. She holds up the key.

"I understand what this is doing to you. You were wrong to disobey him, but this is not right. I know cruelty when I see it. Take them and hide them."

She unlocks the door and retrieves the pile of sketch books from the interior of the credenza.

"Mother, thank you. You don't know..."

"I do know, I know it is your life. So does he. Hide them well. He may come looking for them."

Allison is unsure what to do next. They look at each other, then Allison grabs her hand, squeezes it and hurries to the phone.

This time, Bender finds them, hidden in plain sight in the garbage can. He retrieves them without a hitch. He sends up a note reporting success in getting the paintings to his house.

Then Allison begins the long wait until school starts, in two weeks.

She is surprised to find that without the ability to express herself visually she is so anxious she can barely catch her breath at times. She's not allowed out, not even to walk to the stream, so she listens to music and sleeps.

Her mother has decided to ignore Allison's eight am phone calls, so she speaks to Bender for a few minutes every day before he leaves for classes.

All things come to an end and eventually the first day of school arrives. Last year she was in agonies over the betrayal of the breakfast club members. Now that seems far away and childish. The first day all the students sit in the auditorium while their schedules are ironed out. Finally her name is called and she is handed a schedule, but it can't be hers because it has choir instead of art. She double checks it, then returns to the table.

"Vice Principle Vernon made a special note, you are not to have art classes." Seeing her distress, the teacher offers, "You can switch to cooking or shop if you don't like choir."

Allison shakes her head and retreats to the girl's bathroom. She doesn't care if people see her crying. She had been hanging onto the idea that school would improve her situation. No art class.

Two girls enter the bathroom, Claire and Tricia, Claire's new best friend of the week.

"Jesus, it's that freak crying again," Claire's companion exclaims with disgust. Claire has the decency to look ashamed. When Tricia enters a stall, Claire tentatively approaches Allison. Allison looks up out of the depths of her agony. Claire opens her mouth but nothing comes out.

"You can't help me, Claire. Go away." She says this with complete detachment.

Some time later the gym teacher, Miss Sanderson, comes in. Bells have been ringing. Allison doesn't know what time it is or what class she's supposed to go to. She doesn't care.

"Allison, honey, are you okay? Are you sick?"

"No." She feels no need to explain. They can do whatever they like with her. It doesn't matter anymore.

"Come on, Allison, let's go see Dr. Hashimoto." Miss Sanderson leads her by the hand through empty corridors.

All her previous defensive anger and desperate attempts at self protection are gone. She dully slumps in the chair provided. She is aware of Miss Sanderson and Dr. Hashimoto talking, then she is alone with Hashimoto.

"Allison, can you tell me what's wrong?"

She would construct elaborate lies for him in the past, and do her best to frustrate all his attempts to establish a rapport. Today she simply doesn't speak. He asks more questions but she sees no point in responding. Time passes and she is distantly aware of more people coming and going, Hashimoto on the phone, the word "catatonia." She is uninterested to find herself being gently guided to an ambulance by paramedics. She is finally left alone in a hospital room and she lays down and closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, she sees Bender.

"Al." He says her name with such compassion.

"Bender, they won't let me have my art." The distance is gone, she feels again, all the pain comes crashing down and she begins sobbing.

"Al, your mother wants to talk to you."

Her mother gives her a sketchbook, the one in which she'd drawn her sketch of the street under the El. "Allison, I'm sorry. I knew what he was doing to you and I let him do it anyway. It's over."

Bender sits next to her, puts his arm around her while she cries.

She stays a few more days in the hospital. It turns out she was gone, oblivious, unresponsive for three days. She remembers nothing of it. With her sketchbook returned to her, she draws deep abysses, dark mountains, thunderous skies and one very detailed human heart. At one point they ask her to draw a tree, a house and a person. She buries them all under a mudslide.

Bender visits her every day and she discovers how he ended up there in the first place.

"Your mother checked caller ID this summer, when you started calling me every morning. She thought I was your boyfriend. When the shit hit the fan, she called me."

Her mother visits also. Her parents are getting a divorce. She doesn't say so directly, but Allison understands being hit was the last straw in an unhappy marriage. When Allison leaves the hospital, she'll be living in an apartment with her mother. That sounds rather strange, but OK. Her mother has grudgingly accepted Bender. Allison suspects she only does so because she saw Bender bring her back when no one else could.

It is decided that Allison will pursue a GED while taking Jeanette's painting class. Bender has enrolled in the welding program. They eat lunch together in the cafeteria every day.

One day over lunch, Bender asks her about the Japanese combs she put in her hair the night of the opening.

"Yes, I still have them. Why?"

"Al, I think you should put your hair up Friday night and come with me to Patrice's new show. Then we can have dinner."

"Sure, that sounds like fun. But why the combs?"

"Because you look beautiful in them."

Allison gives him a sly smile.

"Yes, I'll go out on a date with you, Bender."