When the children ask about colors in the sky, we tell them about the rainbow-giver.  A person of distinction, he goes about his business, quietly, like every man.  And everywhere he goes, he spreads the joy of rainbows.  He is a gentle and kind soul, loving and selfless.  He is humble, and doesn’t even wear bright colors or a tag or anything.  He makes rainbows, but he doesn’t flaunt it.
That is the story my mother told me, and the story that I croon to my children as they lie in bed.  They dream of sunlight and colors and a smiling man with a secret twinkling in his eye.  I didn’t believe it, any more than I believe that the tooth fairy is a plump lady that likes to pay for used teeth.  But, like all legends, the story of the Rainbow Man has its roots, however faint, in the truth.
My suspicion is that other mothers like myself have encountered him, and it is they who keep his story as true as it is – and keep the consistent lie.  There are some things that tiny children don’t need to understand.
It did happen.  It happened like this.

Our city is not a bright one, or vibrant.  The smoke blanches even our sunsets.  We are too professional for gaudy florals, or for anything more colorful than white diamond.  The most color we see is when, with a properly-arranged rainstorm (we get plenty of the improper kind) a rainbow graces the sky.  So I tell stories about the rainbow man to Lanny, my toddler, and Faith, my four-year-old.
It was grey every morning when I left for work.  Having installed the sitter in her chair in front of the television, I walked into dawn half-light, eleven blocks to a high-rise building where I was, in fact, a design consultant.  This means that I spend all day listening to people say that we don’t want bright colors so we’re catchy; we want our advertisements to be in modest darks to appeal to professionalism in potential clients.
Faith likes yellow, and Lanny likes green, especially the lime variety.  I give it to them, perhaps with more enthusiasm than I ought.  I don’t know if that’s why I got to meet him.  Maybe it really was just chance.  But I could have been riding with my friend Emily in her little volkswagen; it was a rainy morning.  I could have skipped a block over to get coffee.  I could have left a moment sooner, or a moment later.
In the half-light, I spotted a man slumped in the door of a shop for rent.  I had my pocket-change but didn’t feel much like coffee, seeing as the weather was damp enough by itself.  His pants had been blue denim, his shirt some warm brown, but they were discolored with soil, and there were holes worn in knees and elbows.  His skin was pallid and streaked with ugly grey dirt, and even his lips were white.  He looked dead or close to it, with his eyes half-shut and his body fit awkwardly in the corner between the brick wall and peeling paint of the door.  His scraggly hair was back in a loose tie, with only a few threads over his face.
He stopped me with an attempt at speech that came out as a hoarse cough, and when he’d finished hacking into a threadbare arm he addressed me politely.  “Ma’am?”
When he spoke, it was extraordinary.
The lidded eyes widened a little – stunning azure – and from his lips flowed a faint stream of colored light, tracing predictable arcs through the air as it bounced away to vanish into the tarred street.
I, predictably, stuttered.
“You’re a mother, aren’t you?”  Again with the light – all seven colors, in their perfect rows.  Red orange yellow green blue indigo violet.
“Yes.”  That much did not shift with changes in the fundamental nature of reality.  “I have two.  Faith is four and Lanny . . . he’ll be three next January.”
“They like rainbows.”  The only thing to suggest that to be a question was that all social dictates declared it to be so.  But it wasn’t.  It was a radiant stream of knowledge that flickered and jumped over the cobbles.  He grimaced as it left his mouth.
“They love rainbows.”  I watched the last bouncing of his words as they faded into the grey of a packed old city street in dawn light.  “It’s the only color we have around here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and tried hard not to grimace, but he was getting paler.
“Please, take this.”  I gave him three dollars even, which was enough for plain coffee (no cream) and a few cents to spare for a tip.  Twelve quarters, some crusted with a little play-doh, all of them quite usable.
He let the coins fall into his hands and tried to express, silently, that he didn’t want them, but that was a lie.  His bright eyes told me the full truth – his eyes and the torn parts of his old rags.
“Please, don’t try to be altruistic.  There’s plenty of quarters, and I have no appetite for coffee.  Get something to eat?”
He shook his head, the grimace returning without any words to prompt it.
“You don’t feel well.  And it hurts to speak, I imagine.”
“It’s worth it.”  A slow breath, to rally himself.  “You said your children love rainbows?”
“Especially Faith.”
“Faith and Lanny.”  He closed his eyes when he said the names, like cats do in sunlight, and the ensuing colored streamer of light was broad and bright.
“I wish you could meet them.”
He shook his head, firmly.  No, that’s not allowed.
“It’s like Santa, isn’t it?  They can’t see him, or it’s all ruined.  He doesn’t come if you stay up all night.”  I was trying to say his sentences before him, so he didn’t have to speak.  The light was beautiful, but to watch him wince . . .
This time the rainbow man nodded gratefully.
“Can I tell them I met you?”
“There aren’t rules about what you say.”  He gasped a little.  “Tell Lanny and Faith a story that will make them smile.  I do so like children to smile.”
“But you won’t be there to see it.”  My eyes were brimming.
“I can tell.”  Weakly, with a faint rainbow, and then he coughed into his arm for a long time.
All I could do was stand and watch.  I didn’t want to ask, afterwards, if he was all right, for fear he’d answer me.
“Are you late?”
I checked my watch, and still had three minutes to walk.  We’d been talking away my coffee time; no loss.  “Not yet, I’m not.”
He started to speak.
“I’ll go.  Please don’t hurt yourself any more.”
“But then who will make rainbows?”
No one, I suppose.  If he didn’t live like that, there would be no rainbows.  Probably Faith would like white, and Lanny would have gone for a lighter grey.  But there’s a man on a bland street somewhere, speaking to strangers until he can hardly breathe for the pain, letting color flash into the world and across our sky.
I told the story of the Rainbow Man to Lanny and Faith that night.   I told them that I met him on the street, and it was just like the fairy tale.  He’s a sweet kind-hearted man who doesn’t even wear bright colors.  He makes rainbows, but he’s far too humble to take the credit.
The story did not need correction.  There are some things a child does not need to understand.