going to e-mail a couple of friends.” “Who of the nineteen?”
“Ah, old friends of mine, actually, you don’t know them yet.”
She sits and goes tap tap on the letters bit for a while, I watch. She’s frowning at the screen. “Can’t remember my password.” “What’s—?”
“I’m such a—” She covers her mouth. She does a scratchy breath through her nose. “Never mind. Hey, Jack, let’s find something fun for you, will we?” “Where?”
She moves the mouse a bit and suddenly there’s a picture of Dora. I go close to watch, she shows me bits to click with the little arrow so I can do the game myself. I put all the pieces of the magic saucer back together and Dora and Boots clap and sing a thank-you song. It’s better than TV even.
Ma’s with the other computer looking up a book of faces she says is a new invention, she types in the names and it shows them smiling. “Are they really, really old?” I ask.
“Mostly twenty-six, like me.”
“But you said they’re old friends.”
“That just means I knew them a long time ago. They look so different. .” She puts her eyes nearer the pictures, she mutters things like “South Korea” or “Divorced already, no way—”
There’s another new website she finds with videos of songs and things, she shows me two cats dancing in ballet shoes that’s funny. Then she goes to other sites with only words like
There’s a somebody standing in the door, I jump. It’s Hugo, he’s not smiling. “I Skype at two.”
“Huh?” says Ma.
“I Skype at two.”
“Sorry, I have no idea what—”
“I Skype my mother every day at two p.m., she’ll have been expecting me two minutes ago, it’s written down in the schedule right here on the door.” Back in our room on the bed there’s a little machine with a note from Paul, Ma says it’s like the one she was listening to when Old Nick stole her, only this one’s got pictures you can move with your fingers and not just a thousand songs but millions. She’s put the bud things in her ears, she’s nodding to a music I don’t hear and singing in a little voice about being a million different people from one day to the next.
“Let me.”
“It’s called ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony,’ when I was thirteen I listened to it all the time.” She puts one bud in my ear.
“Too loud.” I yank it out.
“Be gentle with it, Jack, it’s my present from Paul.”
I didn’t know it was hers-not-mine. In Room everything was ours.
“Hang on, here’s the Beatles, there’s an oldie you might like from about fifty years ago,” she says, “ ‘All You Need Is Love.’ ” I’m confused. “Don’t persons need food and stuff?”
“Yeah, but all that’s no good if you don’t have somebody to love as well,” says Ma, she’s too loud, she’s still flicking through the names with her finger. “Like, there’s this experiment with baby monkeys, a scientist took them away from their mothers and kept each one all alone in a cage — and you know what, they didn’t grow up right.”
“Why they didn’t grow?”
“No, they got bigger but they were weird, from not getting cuddles.”
“What kind of weird?”
She clicks her machine off. “Actually, sorry, Jack, I don’t know why I brought it up.”
“What kind of weird?”
Ma chews her lip. “Sick in their heads.”
“Like the crazies?”
She nods. “Biting themselves and stuff.”
Hugo cuts his arms but I don’t think he bites himself. “Why?”
Ma puffs her breath. “See, if their mothers were there, they’d have cuddled the baby monkeys, but because the milk just came from pipes, they — It turns out they needed the love as much as the milk.”
“This is a bad story.”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, you should,” I say.
“But—”
“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.”
Ma holds me tight. “Jack,” she says, “I’m a bit strange this week, aren’t I?”
I don’t know, because everything’s strange.
“I keep messing up. I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well at the same time and it’s. .” But I thought the her and the Ma were the same.
I want to go Outside again but Ma’s too tired.
• • •
“What day is this morning?”
“Thursday,” says Ma.
“When is Sunday?”
“Friday, Saturday, Sunday. .”
“Three away, like in Room?”
“Yeah, a week’s seven days everywhere.”
“What’ll we ask for Sundaytreat?”
Ma shakes her head.
In the afternoon we’re going in the van that says
“Just the dentist and an assistant,” says Ma. “They’ve sent everybody else away, it’s a special visit just for us.”
We have our hats and our cool shades on, but not the sunblock because the bad rays bounce off glass. I get to keep my stretchy shoes on. In the van there’s a driver with a cap, I think he’s on mute. There’s a special booster seat on the seat that makes me higher so the belt won’t squish my throat if we brake suddenly. I don’t like the tight of the belt. I watch out the window and blow my nose, it’s greener today.
Lots and lots of hes and shes on the sidewalks, I never saw so many, I wonder are they all real for real or just some. “Some of the women grow long hair like us,” I tell Ma, “but the men don’t.”
“Oh, a few do, rock stars. It’s not a rule, just a convention.”
“What’s a—?”
“A silly habit everybody has. Would you like a haircut?” asks Ma.
“No.”
“It doesn’t hurt. I had short hair before — back when I was nineteen.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to lose my strong.”
“Your what?”
“My muscles, like Samson in the story.”
That makes her laugh.
“Look, Ma, a man putting himself on fire!”
“Just lighting his cigarette,” she says. “I used to smoke.”
I stare at her. “Why?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Look, look.”
“Don’t shout.”
I’m pointing where there’s all littles walking along the street. “Kids tied together.”
“They’re not tied, I don’t think.” Ma puts her face more against the window. “Nah, they’re just holding on to the string so they don’t get lost. And see, the really small ones are in those wagons, six in each. They must be a
