Room: A Novel

job.”

“You’re very modest.”

“No, what I am is irritated, actually.”

The puffy-hair woman blinks twice.

“All this reverential — I’m not a saint.” Ma’s voice is getting loud again. “I wish people would stop treating us like we’re the only ones who ever lived through something terrible. I’ve been finding stuff on the Internet you wouldn’t believe.”

“Other cases like yours?”

“Yeah, but not just — I mean, of course when I woke up in that shed, I thought nobody’d ever had it as bad as me. But the thing is, slavery’s not a new invention. And solitary confinement — did you know, in America we’ve got more than twenty-five thousand prisoners in isolation cells? Some of them for more than twenty years.” Her hand is pointing at the puffy-hair woman. “As for kids — there’s places where babies lie in orphanages five to a cot with pacifiers taped into their mouths, kids getting raped by Daddy every night, kids in prisons, whatever, making carpets till they go blind—”

It’s really quiet for a minute. The woman says, “Your experiences have given you, ah, enormous empathy with the suffering children of the world.” “Not just children,” says Ma. “People are locked up in all sorts of ways.”

The woman clears her throat and looks at the paper in her lap. “You say did, you did a ‘pretty good job’ of raising Jack, although of course the job is far from over. But now you have lots of help from your family as well as many dedicated professionals.”

“It’s actually harder.” Ma’s looking down. “When our world was eleven foot square it was easier to control. Lots of things are freaking Jack out right now. But I hate the way the media call him a freak, or an idiot savant, or feral, that word—”

“Well, he’s a very special boy.”

Ma shrugs. “He’s just spent his first five years in a strange place, that’s all.”

“You don’t think he’s been shaped — damaged — by his ordeal?”

“It wasn’t an ordeal to Jack, it was just how things were. And, yeah, maybe, but everybody’s damaged by something.”

“He certainly seems to be taking giant steps toward recovery,” says the puffy-hair woman. “Now, you said just now it was ‘easier to control’ Jack when you were in captivity—”

“No, control things.”

“You must feel an almost pathological need — understandably — to stand guard between your son and the world.”

“Yeah, it’s called being a mother.” Ma nearly snarls it.

“Is there a sense in which you miss being behind a locked door?”

Ma turns to Morris. “Is she allowed to ask me such stupid questions?”

The puffy-hair woman holds out her hand and another person puts a bottle of water into it, she takes a sip.

Dr. Clay holds his hand up. “If I may — I think we’re all getting the sense that my patient is at her limit, in fact past it.” “If you need a break, we could resume taping later,” the woman tells Ma.

Ma shakes her head. “Let’s just get it done.”

“OK, then,” says the woman, with another of her wide smiles that’s fake like a robot’s. “There’s something I’d like to return to, if I may. When Jack was born — some of our viewers have been wondering whether it ever for a moment occurred to you to. .”

“What, put a pillow over his head?”

Is that me Ma means? But pillows go under heads.

The woman waves her hand side to side. “Heaven forbid. But did you ever consider asking your captor to take Jack away?” “Away?”

“To leave him outside a hospital, say, so he could be adopted. As you yourself were, very happily, I believe.”

I can see Ma swallow. “Why would I have done that?”

“Well, so he could be free.”

“Free away from me?”

“It would have been a sacrifice, of course — the ultimate sacrifice — but if Jack could have had a normal, happy childhood with a loving family?” “He had me.” Ma says it one word at a time. “He had a childhood with me, whether you’d call it normal or not.” “But you knew what he was missing,” says the woman. “Every day he needed a wider world, and the only one you could give him got narrower. You must have been tortured by the memory of everything Jack didn’t even know to want. Friends, school, grass, swimming, rides at the fair. .”

“Why does everyone go on about fairs?” Ma’s voice is all hoarse. “When I was a kid I hated fairs.”

The woman does a little laugh.

Ma’s got tears coming down her face, she puts up her hands to catch them. I’m off my chair and running at her, something falls over smaaaaaaash, I get to Ma and wrap her all up, and Morris is shouting, “The boy is not to be shown—”

• • •

When I wake up in the morning Ma’s Gone.

I didn’t know she’d have days like this in the world. I shake her arm but she only does a little groan and puts her head under the pillow. I’m so thirsty, I wriggle near to try and have some but she won’t turn and let me. I stay curled beside her for hundreds of hours.

I don’t know what to do. In Room if Ma was being Gone I could get up on my own and make breakfast and watch TV.

I sniff, there’s nothing in my nose, I think I’ve lost my cold.

I go pull the cord to make the blind open a bit. It’s bright, the light’s bouncing off a car window. A crow goes by and scares me. I don’t think Ma likes the light so I do the cord back. My tummy goes yawrrrrrrr.

Then I remember the buzzer by the bed. I press it, nothing happens. But after a minute the door goes tap tap.

I open it just a bit, it’s Noreen.

“Hi, pet, how are you doing today?”

“Hungry. Ma’s Gone,” I whisper.

“Well, let’s find her, will we? I’m sure she just slipped out for a minute.”

“No, she’s here but she’s not really.”

Noreen’s face goes all confused.

“Look.” I point at the bed. “It’s a day she doesn’t get up.”

Noreen calls Ma by her other name and asks if she’s OK.

I whisper, “Don’t talk to her.” She says to Ma even louder, “Anything I can get you?”

“Let me sleep.” I never heard Ma say anything when she’s Gone before, her voice is like some monster.

Noreen goes over to the dresser and gets clothes for me. It’s hard in the mostly dark, I get both legs in one pant leg for a second and I have to lean on her. It’s not so bad touching people on purpose, it’s worse when it’s them touching me, like electric shocks. “Shoes,” she whispers. I find them and squeeze them on and do the Velcro, they’re not the stretchies I like. “Good lad.” Noreen’s at the door, she waves her hand to make me come with her. I tight my ponytail that was coming out. I find Tooth and my rock and my maple key to put in my pocket.

“Your ma must be worn out after that interview,” says Noreen in the corridor. “Your uncle’s been in Reception for half an hour already, waiting for you guys to wake up.”

The adventure! But no we can’t because Ma’s Gone.

There’s Dr. Clay on the stairs, he talks to Noreen. I’m holding on tight to the rail with two hands, I do one foot down then another, I slide my hands down, I don’t fall, there’s just a second when it feels fally then I’m standing on the next foot. “Noreen.”

“Just a tick.”