Room: A Novel

“Jack, sweetheart, this one belongs to the store.” Deana’s pulling the book out of my hand.

I hold even harder again and push him up my shirt. “I’m from somewhere else,” I tell the man. “Old Nick kept me and Ma locked up and he’s in jail now with his truck but the angel won’t burst him out because he’s a bad guy. We’re famous and if you take our picture we’ll kill you.”

The man blinks.

“Ah, how much is the book?” says Paul.

The man says, “I’ll need to scan it—”

Paul puts out his hand, I curl up on the floor around Dylan.

“Why don’t I get another copy for you to scan,” says Paul and he runs back into the store.

Deana’s looking all around shouting, “Bronwyn? Honey?” She rushes over to the fountain and looks in all along it. “Bronwyn?” Actually Bronwyn’s behind a window with dresses putting her tongue at the glass.

“Bronwyn?” Deana’s screaming.

I put my tongue out too, Bronwyn laughs behind the glass.

• • •

I nearly fall asleep in the green van but not really.

Noreen says my Dora bag is magnificent and the shiny heart too and Dylan the Digger looks like a great read. “How were the dinosaurs?” “We didn’t have time to see them.”

“Oh, that’s a pity.” Noreen gets me a Band-Aid for my wrist but there’s no pictures on it. “Your ma’s been snoozing the day away, she’ll be thrilled to see you.” She taps and opens the Door Number Seven.

I take off my shoes but not my clothes, I get in with Ma at last. She’s warmy soft, I snuggle up but carefully. The pillow smells bad.

“See you guys at dinnertime,” whispers Noreen and shuts the door.

The bad is vomit, I remember from our Great Escape. “Wake up,” I say to Ma, “you did sick on the pillow.”

She doesn’t switch on, she doesn’t groan even or roll over, she’s not moving when I pull her. This is the most Gone she’s ever.

“Ma, Ma, Ma.”

She’s a zombie, I think.

“Noreen?” I shout, I run at the door. I’m not meant to disturb the persons but—“Noreen!” She’s at the end of the corridor, she turns around. “Ma did a vomit.”

“Not a bother, we’ll have that cleaned up in two ticks. Let me just get the cart—”

“No, but come now.”

“OK, OK.”

When she switches on the light and looks at Ma she doesn’t say OK, she picks up the phone and says, “Code blue, room seven, code blue—” I don’t know what’s — Then I see Ma’s pill bottles open on the table, they look mostly empty. Never more than two, that’s the rule, how could they be mostly empty, where did the pills go? Noreen’s pressing on the side of Ma’s throat and saying her other name and “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?” But I don’t think Ma can hear, I don’t think she can see. I shout, “Bad idea bad idea bad idea.”

Lots of persons run in, one of them pulls me outside in the corridor. I’m screaming “Ma” as loud as I can but it’s not loud enough to wake her.

Living

I’m in the house with the hammock. I’m looking out the window for it, but Grandma says it would be in the backyard, not the front, anyway it’s not hung up yet because it’s only the tenth of April. There’s bushes and flowers and the sidewalk and the street and the other front yards and the other houses, I count eleven of bits of them, that’s where neighbors live like Beggar My Neighbor. I suck to feel Tooth, he’s right in the middle of my tongue. The white car is outside not moving, I rode in it from the Clinic even though there was no booster, Dr. Clay wanted me to stay for continuity and therapeutic isolation but Grandma shouted that he wasn’t allowed keep me like a prisoner when I do have a family. My family is Grandma Steppa Bronwyn Uncle Paul Deana and Grandpa, only he shudders at me. Also Ma. I move Tooth into my cheek. “Is she dead?”

“No, I keep telling you. Definitely not.” Grandma rests her head on the wood around the glass.

Sometimes when persons say definitely it sounds actually less true. “Are you just playing she’s alive?” I ask Grandma. “Because if she’s not, I don’t want to be either.”

There’s all tears running all down her face again. “I don’t — I can’t tell you any more than I know, sweetie. They said they’d call as soon as they had an update.”

“What’s an update?”

“How she is, right this minute.”

“How is she?”

“Well, she’s not well because she took too much of the bad medicine, like I told you, but they’ve probably pumped it all out of her stomach by now, or most of it.” “But why she—?”

“Because she’s not well. In her head. She’s being taken care of,” says Grandma, “you don’t need to worry.” “Why?”

“Well, it doesn’t do any good to.”

God’s face is all red and stuck on a chimney. It’s getting darker. Tooth is digging into my gum, he’s a bad hurting tooth.

“You didn’t touch your lasagna,” Grandma says, “would you like a glass of juice or something?”

I shake my head.

“Are you tired? You must be tired, Jack. Lord knows I am. Come downstairs and see the spare room.”

“Why is it spare?”

“That means we don’t use it.”

“Why you have a room you don’t use?”

Grandma shrugs. “You never know when we might need it.” She waits while I do the stairs down on my butt because there’s no banister to hold. I pull my Dora bag behind me bumpity bump. We go through the room that’s called the living room, I don’t know why because Grandma and Steppa are living in all the rooms, except not the spare.

An awful waah waah starts, I cover my ears. “I’d better get that,” says Grandma.

She comes back in a minute and brings me into a room. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To go to bed, honey.”

“Not here.”

She presses around her mouth where the little cracks are. “I know you’re missing your ma, but just for now you need to sleep on your own. You’ll be fine, Steppa and I will be just upstairs. You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”

It depends on the monster, if it’s a real one or not and if it’s where I am.

“Hmm. Your ma’s old room is beside ours,” says Grandma, “but we’ve converted it into a fitness suite, I don’t know if there’d be space for a blow-up. .”

I go up the stairs with my feet this time, just pressing onto the walls, Grandma carries my Dora bag. There’s blue squishy mats and dumbbells and abs crunchers like I saw in TV. “Her bed was here, right where her crib was when she was a baby,” says Grandma, pointing to a bicycle but stuck to the ground. “The walls were covered in posters, you know, bands she liked, a giant fan and a dreamcatcher. .”

“Why it catched her dreams?”

“What’s that?”

“The fan.”