Room: A Novel

I stick my finger into a yellow bit, then there’s some in my nail and I don’t like it to be yellow.

“You never got Play-Doh for one of your Sunday treats?” he asks.

“It dries out.” That’s Ma butting in. “Ever think of that? Even if you put it back in the tub, like, religiously, after a while it starts going leathery.” “I guess it would,” says Dr. Clay.

“That’s the same reason I asked for crayons and pencils, not markers, and cloth diapers, and — whatever would last, so I wouldn’t have to ask again a week later.” He keeps nodding.

“We made flour dough, but it was always white.” Ma’s sounding mad. “You think I wouldn’t have given Jack a different color of Play-Doh every day if I could have?”

Dr. Clay says Ma’s other name. “Nobody’s expressing any judgment about your choices and strategies.”

“Noreen says it works better if you add as much salt as flour, did you know that? I didn’t know that, how would I? I never thought to ask for food coloring, even. If I’d only had the first freakin’ clue—”

She keeps telling Dr. Clay she’s fine but she doesn’t sound fine. She and him talk about cognitive distortions, they do a breathing exercise, I play with the puppets. Then our time’s up because he has to go play with Hugo.

“Was he in a shed too?” I ask.

Dr. Clay shakes his head.

“What happened to him?”

“Everyone’s got a different story.”

When we go back to our room Ma and I get into the bed and I have lots. She still smells wrong from the conditioner, too silky.

• • •

Even after the nap I’m still tired. My nose keeps dripping and my eyes too, like they’re melting inside. Ma says I’ve picked up my first cold, that’s all.

“But I wore my mask.”

“Still, germs just sneak in. I’ll probably catch it from you by tomorrow.”

I’m crying. “We’re not done playing.”

She’s holding me.

“I don’t want to go to Heaven yet.”

“Sweetie—” Ma never called me that before. “It’s OK, if we get sick the doctors will make us better.”

“I want it.”

“You want what?”

“I want Dr. Clay making me better now.”

“Well, actually, he can’t cure a cold.” Ma chews her mouth. “But it’ll be all gone in a few days, I promise. Hey, would you like to learn to blow your nose?”

It takes me just four tries, when I get all the snot out in the tissue, she claps.

Noreen brings up lunch that’s soups and kebabs and a rice that’s not real called quinoa. For after there’s a salad of fruits and I guess all them, apple and orange and the ones I don’t know are pineapple and mango and blueberry and kiwi and watermelon, that’s two right and five wrong, that’s minus three. There’s no banana.

I want to see the fish again so we go down in the bit called Reception. They’ve got stripes. “Are they sick?”

“They look lively enough to me,” says Ma. “Especially that big, bossy one in the seaweed.”

“No, but in the head? Are they crazy fish?”

She laughs. “I don’t think so.”

“Are they just resting for a little while because they’re famous?”

“These ones were born here, actually, right in this tank.” It’s the Pilar woman.

I jump, I didn’t see her coming out of her desk. “Why?”

She stares at me still smiling. “Ah—”

“Why are they here?”

“For us all to look at, I guess. Aren’t they pretty?”

“Come on, Jack,” says Ma, “I’m sure she’s got work to do.”

In Outside the time’s all mixed up. Ma keeps saying, “Slow down, Jack,” and “Hang on,” and “Finish up now,” and “Hurry up, Jack,” she says Jack a lot so I’ll know it’s me she’s talking to not persons else. I can hardly ever guess what time it is, there’s clocks but they have pointy hands, I don’t know the secret and Watch isn’t here with her numbers so I have to ask Ma and she gets tired of me asking. “You know what time it is, it’s time to go outside.” I don’t want to but she keeps saying, “Let’s try, just try. Right now, why not?”

I have to put my shoes back on first. Also we have to have jackets and hats and sticky stuff on faces under our masks and on our hands, the sun might burn our skin off because we’re from Room. Dr. Clay and Noreen are coming with us, they don’t have any cool shades or anything.

The way to out isn’t a door, it’s like an airlock on a spaceship. Ma can’t remember the word, Dr. Clay says, “Revolving door.” “Oh yeah,” I say, “I know it in TV.” I like the going around bit but then we’re outside and the light hurts my shades all dark, the wind smacks my face and I have to get back in.

“It’s OK,” Ma keeps saying.

“I don’t like it.” The revolving’s stuck, it won’t revolve, it’s squeezing me out.

“Hold my hand.”

“The wind’s going to rip us.”

“It’s only a breeze,” says Ma.

The light’s not like in a window, it’s coming all ways around the sides of my cool shades, it wasn’t like this on our Great Escape. Too much horrible shine and air freshing. “My skin’s burning off.”

“You’re grand,” says Noreen. “Big, slow breaths, that’s a boy.”

Why is that a boy? There aren’t any breaths out here. There’s spots on my shades, my chest’s going bang bang bang and the wind’s so loud I can’t hear anything.

Noreen’s doing something strange, she’s pulling off my mask and putting a different paper on my face. I push it away with my sticky hands.

Dr. Clay says, “I’m not sure this is such a—”

“Breathe in the bag,” Noreen tells me.

I do, it’s warm, all I do is suck it in and suck it in.

Ma’s holding my shoulders, she says, “Let’s go back in.”

Back in Room Number Seven I have some on the bed, still with my shoes on and the stickiness.

Later Grandma comes, I know her face this time. She’s brung books from her hammock house, three for Ma with no pictures that she gets all excited and five for me with pictures, Grandma didn’t even know five was my best best number. She says these ones were Ma’s and my Uncle Paul’s when they were kids, I don’t think she’s lying but it’s hard for it to be true that Ma was ever a kid. “Would you like to sit in Grandma’s lap and I’ll read you one?”

“No, thanks.”

There’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar and The Giving Tree and Go, Dog, Go and The Lorax and The Tale of Peter Rabbit, I look at all the pictures.

“I mean it, every detail,” Grandma’s saying to Ma really quiet, “I can take it.”

“I doubt that.”

“I’m ready.”

Ma keeps shaking her head. “What’s the point, Mom? It’s over now, I’m out the other side.”

“But, honey—”

“I’d actually rather not have you thinking about that stuff every time you look at me, OK?”

There’s more tears rolling down Grandma. “Sweetie,” she says, “all I think when I look at you is hallelujah.”

When she’s gone Ma reads me the rabbit one, he’s a Peter but not the Saint. He wears old-fashioned clothes and gets chased by a gardener, I don’t know why he bothers swiping vegetables. Swiping’s bad but if I was a swiper I’d swipe good stuff like cars and chocolates. It’s not a very excellent book but it’s excellent to have so many new ones. In Room I had five but now it’s plus five, that equals ten. Actually I don’t have the old five books now so I guess I just have the new five. The ones in Room, maybe they don’t belong to anyone anymore.