Room: A Novel

He stamps on my foot.

I howl.

“It was on your sock.” He shows me the match all curled up, he rubs my sock where there’s a black bit. “Didn’t your ma ever teach you not to play with fire?”

“There wasn’t.”

“There wasn’t what?”

“Fire.”

He stares at me. “I guess your stove was electric. Go figure.”

“What’s up?” Grandma comes in.

“Jack’s just learning kitchen tools,” says Steppa, stirring the pasta. He holds a thing up and looks at me.

“Grater,” I remember.

Grandma’s setting the table.

“And this?”

“Garlic masher.”

“Garlic crusher. Way more violent than mashing.” He grins at me. He didn’t tell Grandma about the match, that’s kind of lying but not getting me into trouble is a good reason. He’s holding up something else.

“Another grater?”

“Citrus zester. And this?”

“Ah. . a whisk.”

Steppa dangles a long pasta in the air and slurps it. “My elder brother pulled a pot of rice down on himself when he was three, and his arm was always rippled like a chip.” “Oh, yeah, I saw them in TV.”

Grandma stares at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had potato chips?” Then she gets up on the steps and moves things in a cabinet.

“E.T.A. two minutes,” says Steppa.

“Oh, a handful won’t hurt.” Grandma climbs down with a scrunched bag and opens it out.

The chips have got all lines on them, I take one and eat the edge of it. Then I say, “No, thanks,” and put it back in the bag.

Steppa laughs, I don’t know what’s funny. “The boy’s saving himself for my tagliatelle carbonara.”

“Can I see the skin instead?”

“What skin?” asks Grandma.

“The brother’s.”

“Oh, he lives in Mexico. He’s your, I guess, your great-uncle.”

Steppa throws all the water into the sink so it makes a big cloud of wet air.

“Why is he great?”

“It just means he’s Leo’s brother. All our relatives, you’re related to them now too,” says Grandma. “What’s ours is yours.” “LEGO,” says Steppa.

“What?” she says.

“Like LEGO. Bits of families stuck together.”

“I saw that in TV too,” I tell them.

Grandma’s staring at me again. “Growing up without LEGO,” she tells Steppa, “I literally can’t imagine it.” “Bet there’s a couple billion children in the world managing somehow,” says Steppa.

“I guess you’re right.” She’s looking confused. “We must have a box of it kicking around down in the basement, though. .” Steppa cracks an egg with one hand so it plops over the pasta. “Dinner is served.”

• • •

I’m riding lots on the bike that doesn’t move, I can reach the pedals with my toes if I stretch. I zoom it for thousands of hours so my legs will get super strong and I can run away back to Ma and save her again. I lie down on the blue mats, my legs are tired. I lift the free weights, I don’t know what’s free about them. I put one on my tummy, I like how it holds me down so I won’t fall off the spinny world.

Ding-dong, Grandma shouts because it’s a visitor for me, that’s Dr. Clay.

We sit on the deck, he’ll warn me if there’s any bees. Humans and bees should just wave, no touching. No patting a dog unless its human says OK, no running across roads, no touching private parts except mine in private. Then there’s special cases, like police are allowed shoot guns but only at bad guys. There’s too many rules to fit in my head, so we make a list with Dr. Clay’s extra-heavy golden pen. Then another list of all the new things, like free weights and potato chips and birds. “Is it exciting seeing them for real, not just on TV?” he asks.

“Yeah. Except nothing in TV ever stinged me.”

“Good point,” says Dr. Clay, nodding. “ ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ ”

“Is that a poem again?”

“How did you guess?”

“You do a weird voice,” I tell him. “What’s humankind?”

“The human race, all of us.”

“Is that me too?”

“Oh, for sure, you’re one of us.”

“And Ma.”

Dr. Clay nods. “She’s one too.”

But what I actually meant was, maybe I’m a human but I’m a me-and-Ma as well. I don’t know a word for us two. Roomers? “Is she coming to get me soon?” “As soon as she possibly can,” he says. “Would you feel more comfortable staying at the clinic instead of here at your Grandma’s?” “With Ma in Room Number Seven?”

He shakes his head. “She’s in the other wing, she needs to be on her own for a while.”

I think he’s wrong, if I was sick I’d need Ma with me even more.

“But she’s working really hard to get better,” he tells me.

I thought people are just sick or better, I didn’t know it was work.

For good-bye, me and Dr. Clay do high five, low five, back five.

When I’m on the toilet I hear him on the porch with Grandma. Her voice is twice the high of his. “For Pete’s sake, we’re only talking about a minor sunburn and a bee sting,” she says. “I raised two children, don’t give me acceptable standard of care.”

• • •

In the night there’s a million of tiny computers talking to each other about me. Ma’s gone up the beanstalk and I’m down on earth shaking it and shaking it so she’ll fall down—

No. That was only dreaming.

“I’ve had a brainwave,” says Grandma in my ear, she’s leaning down with her bottom half still in her bed. “Let’s drive to the playground before breakfast so there’ll be no other kids there.”

Our shadows are really long and stretchy. I wave my giant fists. Grandma nearly sits on a bench, but there’s wet on it, so she leans against the fence instead. There’s a small wet on everything, she says it’s dew that looks like rain but not out of the sky, it’s a kind of sweat that happens in the night. I draw a face on the slide. “It doesn’t matter if you get your clothes wet, feel free.”

“Actually I feel cold.”

There’s a bit with all sand in, Grandma says I could sit in that and play with it.

“What?”

“Huh?” she says.

“Play what?”

“I don’t know, dig it or scoop it or something.”

I touch it but it’s scratchy, I don’t want it all over me.

“What about the climber, or the swings?” says Grandma.

“Are you going to?”

She does a little laugh, she says she’d probably break something.

“Why you’d—?”

“Oh, not on purpose, just because I’m heavy.”

I go up some steps, standing like a boy not like a monkey, they’re metal with rough orange bits called rust