Room: A Novel

act together in a while,” she says.

“What’s his act?”

She sort of laughs. “I mean he’ll behave better. More like a real grandpa.”

Like Steppa, only he’s not a real one.

I go asleep really easy, but I wake up crying.

“It’s OK, it’s OK.” That’s Ma, kissing my head.

“Why they don’t cuddle the monkeys?”

“Who?”

“The scientists, why don’t they cuddle the baby monkeys?”

“Oh.” After a second she says, “Maybe they do. Maybe the baby monkeys learn to like the human cuddles.”

“No, but you said they’re weird and biting themselves.”

Ma doesn’t say anything.

“Why don’t the scientists bring the mother monkeys back and say sorry?”

“I don’t know why I told you that old story, it all happened ages ago, before I was born.”

I’m coughing and there’s nothing to blow my nose on.

“Don’t think about the baby monkeys anymore, OK? They’re OK now.”

“I don’t think they’re OK.”

Ma holds me so tight my neck hurts.

“Ow.”

She moves. “Jack, there’s a lot of things in the world.”

“Zillions?”

“Zillions and zillions. If you try to fit them all in your head, it’ll just burst.”

“But the baby monkeys?”

I can hear her breathing funny. “Yeah, some of the things are bad things.”

“Like the monkeys.”

“And worse than that,” says Ma.

“What worse?” I try to think of a thing worse.

“Not tonight.”

“Maybe when I’m six?”

“Maybe.”

She spoons me.

I listen to her breaths, I count them to ten, then ten of mine. “Ma?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think about the worse things?”

“Sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes I have to.”

“Me too.”

“But then I put them out of my head and I go to sleep.”

I count our breaths again. I try biting myself, my shoulder, it hurts. Instead of thinking about the monkeys I think about all the kids in the world, how they’re not TV they’re real, they eat and sleep nd pee and poo like me. If I had something sharp and pricked them they’d bleed, if I tickled them they’d laugh. I’d like to see them but it makes me dizzy that there’s so many and I’m only one.

• • •

“So, you’ve got it?” asks Ma.

I’m lying in our bed in Room Number Seven but she’s only sitting on the edge. “Me here having my nap, you in TV.”

“Actually, the real me will be downstairs in Dr. Clay’s office talking to the TV people,” she says. “Just the picture of me will be in the video camera, then later tonight it’ll be on TV.”

“Why you want to talk to the vultures?”

“Believe me, I don’t,” she says. “I just need to answer their questions once and for all, so they’ll stop asking. Back before you know it, OK? By the time you wake up, almost definitely.”

“OK.”

“And then tomorrow we’re goingonanadventure,doyou remember where Paul and Deana and Bronwyn are going to take us?”

“Natural History Museum to see the dinosaurs.”

“That’s right.” She stands up.

“One song.”

Ma sits down and does “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” but it’s too fast and she’s still hoarse from our cold. She pulls my wrist to look at my watch with the numbers.

“Another one.”

“They’ll be waiting. .”

“I want to come too.” I sit up and wrap around Ma.

“No, I don’t want them to see you,” she says, putting me back down on the pillow. “Go to sleep now.”

“I’m not sleepy on my own.”

“You’ll be exhausted if you don’t have a nap. Let go of me, please.” Ma’s taking my hands off her. I knot them around her tighter so she can’t. “Jack!”

“Stay.”

I put my legs around her too.

“Get off me. I’m late already.” Her hands are pressing my shoulders but I hold on even more. “You’re not a baby. I said get off—” Ma’s shoving so hard, I suddenly come loose, her shove hits my head on little table craaaaaack.

She has her hand on her mouth.

I’m screaming.

“Oh,” she says, “oh, Jack, oh, Jack, I’m so—”

“How’s it going?” Dr. Clay’s head, in the door. “The crew are all set up and ready for you.”

I cry louder than I ever, I hold my broken head.

“I don’t think this is going to work,” says Ma, she’s stroking my wetted face.

“You can still pull out,” says Dr. Clay, coming near.

“No I can’t, it’s for Jack’s college fund.”

He twists his mouth. “We talked about whether that’s a good enough reason—”

“I don’t want to go to college,” I say, “I want to go in TV with you.”

Ma puffs a long breath. “Change of plan. You can come down just to watch if you stay absolutely quiet, OK?”

“OK.”

“Not a word.”

Dr. Clay’s saying to Ma, “Do you really think that’s a good idea?”

But I’m getting my stretchy shoes on quick quick, my head’s still wobbly.

His office is all changed around full of persons and lights and machines. Ma puts me on a chair in the corner, she kisses me the bashed bit of my head and whispers something I can’t hear. She goes to a bigger chair and a man person clips a little black bug on her jacket. A woman comes over with a box of colors and starts painting Ma’s face.

I recognize Morris our lawyer, he’s reading pages. “We need to see the cutdown as well as the rough cut,” he’s telling someone. He stares at me, then he waves his fingers. “People?” He says it louder. “Excuse me? The boy is in the room, but is not to be shown on camera, no stills, snapshots for personal use, nothing, are we clear?”

Then everybody looks at me, I shut my eyes.

When I open them a different person is shaking Ma’s hand, wow, it’s the woman with the puffy hair from the red couch. The couch is not here, though. I never saw an actual person from TV before, I wish it was Dora instead. “The lead’s your AVO over aerial footage of the shed, yeah,” a man is telling her, “then we’ll dissolve to a close-up on her, then the two-shot.” The woman with puffy hair smiles at me extra wide. There’s everybody talking and