“Great,” he says. “Again.”
“No, you,” I say.
Paul does a huge kick, the ball bounces off the building and away in some bushes. “Go for it,” he shouts.
When I kick, the ball goes in the pond and I cry.
Paul gets it out with a branch. He kicks it far far. “Want to show me how fast you can run?”
“We had Track around Bed,” I tell him. “I can, I did a there-and-back in sixteen steps.”
“Wow. I bet you can go even faster now.”
I shake my head. “I’ll fall over.”
“I don’t think so,” says Paul.
“I always do these days, the world is trippy-uppy.”
“Yeah, but this grass is really soft, so even if you do fall, you won’t hurt yourself.”
There’s Bronwyn and Deana coming, I spot them with my sharp eyes.
• • •
It’s a bit hotter every day, Ma says it’s unbelievable for April.
Then it rains. She says it might be fun to buy two umbrellas and go out with the rain bouncing off the umbrellas and not wetting us at all, but I don’t think so.
The next day it’s dry again so we go out, there’s puddles but I’m not scared of them, I go in my spongy shoes and my feet get splashed through the holes, that’s OK.
Me and Ma have a deal, we’re going to try everything one time so we know what we like.
I already like going to the park with my soccer ball and feeding the ducks. I really like the playground now except when that boy came down the slide right after me and kicked me in the back. I like the Natural History Museum except the dinosaurs are just dead ones with bones.
In the bathroom I hear people talking Spanish only Ma says the word for it is Chinese. There’s hundreds of different foreign ways to talk, that makes me dizzy.
We look in another museum that’s paintings, a bit like our masterpieces that came with the oatmeal but way way bigger, also we can see the stickiness of the paint. I like walking past the whole room of them, but then there’s lots of other rooms and I lie down on the bench and the man in the uniform comes over with a not-friendly face so I run away.
Steppa comes to the Independent Living with a super thing for me, a bike they were saving for Bronwyn but I get it first because I’m bigger. It’s got shiny faces in the spokes of the wheels. I have to wear a helmet and knee pads and wrist pads when I ride it in the park for if I fall off, but I don’t fall off, I’ve got balance, Steppa says I’m a natural. The third time we go, Ma lets me not wear the pads and in a couple of weeks she’s going to take off the stabilizers because I won’t need them anymore.
Ma finds a concert that’s in a park, not our near park but one where we have to get a bus. I like going on the bus a lot, we look down on people’s different hairy heads in the street. At the concert the rule is that the music persons get to make all the noise and we aren’t allowed make even one squeak except clapping at the end.
Grandma says why doesn’t Ma take me to the zoo but Ma says she couldn’t stand the cages.
We go to two different churches. I like the one with the multicolored windows but the organ is too loud.
Also we go to a play, that’s when adults dress up and play like kids and everybody else watches. It’s in another park, it’s called Midsummer Night. I’m sitting on the grass with my fingers on my mouth to remember it to stay shut. Some fairies are fighting over a little boy, they say so many words they all smoosh together. Sometimes the fairies disappear and persons all in black move the furniture around. “Like we did in Room,” I whisper to Ma, she nearly laughs.
But then the persons sitting near us start calling out, “How now spirit,” and “All hail Titania,” I get mad and say shush, then I really shout at them to be quiet. Ma pulls me by the hand all the way back to the trees bit and tells me that was called audience participation, it’s allowed, it’s a special case.
When we get home to the Independent Living we write everything down that we tried, the list’s getting long. Then there’s things we might try when we’re braver.
Going up in an airplane
Having some of Ma’s old friends over for dinner
Driving a car
Going to the North Pole
Going to school (me) and college (Ma)
Finding our really own apartment that’s not an Independent
Living Inventing something Making new friends Living in another country not America Having a playdate at another kid’s house like Baby Jesus and John the Baptist Taking swimming lessons Ma going out dancing in the night and me staying at Steppa and Grandma’s on the blow-up. Having jobs Going to the moon
Most important there’s getting a dog called Lucky, every day I’m ready but Ma says she’s got enough on her plate at the moment, maybe when I’m six.
“When I’ll have a cake with candles?”
“Six candles,” she says, “I swear.”
In the night in our bed that’s not Bed, I rub the duvet, it’s puffed-upper than Duvet was. When I was four I didn’t know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I’m in the world all the time, I actually don’t know much, I’m always confused.
“Ma?”
“Yeah?”
She still smells like her, but not her breasts, they’re just breasts now.
“Do you sometimes wish we didn’t escape?”
I don’t hear anything. Then she says, “No, I never wish that.”
• • •
“It’s perverse,” Ma is telling Dr. Clay, “all those years, I was craving company. But now I don’t seem up to it.” He’s nodding, they’re sipping their steamy coffee, Ma drinks it now like adults do to keep going. I still drink milk but sometimes it’s chocolate milk, it tastes like chocolate but it’s allowed. I’m on the floor doing a jigsaw with Noreen, it’s super hard with twenty-four pieces of a train.
“Most days. . Jack’s enough for me.”
“ ‘The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door—’ ” That’s his poem voice.
Ma nods. “Yeah, but it’s not how I remember myself.”
“You had to change to survive.”
Noreen looks up. “Don’t forget, you’d have changed anyway. Moving into your twenties, having a child — you wouldn’t have stayed the same.” Ma just drinks her coffee.
• • •
One day I wonder if the windows open. I try the bathroom one, I figure out the handle and push the glass. I’m scared of the air but I’m being scave, I lean out and put my hands through it. I’m half in half out, it’s the most amazing—
“Jack!” Ma pulls me all in by the back of my T-shirt.
“Ow.”
“It’s a six-story drop, if you fell you’d smash your skull.”
“I wasn’t falling,” I tell her, “I was being in and out at the same time.”
“You were being a nutcase at the same time,” she tells me, but she’s nearly smiling.
I go after her into the kitchen. She’s beating eggs in a bowl for French toast. The shells are smashed, we just throw them in the trash, bye-bye. I wonder if they turn into the new eggs. “Do we come back after Heaven?”
I think Ma doesn’t hear me.
“Do we grow in tummies again?”
“That’s called reincarnation.” She cutting the bread. “Some people think we might come back as donkeys or snails.” “No, humans in the same tummies. If I grow in you again—”
Ma lights the flame. “What’s your question?”
“Will you still call me Jack?”
She looks at me. “OK.”
“Promise?”
“I’ll always call you Jack.”
Tomorrow is May Day, that means summer’s coming and there’s going to be a parade. We might go just to look. “Is it only May Day in the world?” I ask.
We’re having granola in our bowls on the sofa not spilling. “What do you m
ean?” says Ma.
“Is it May Day in Room too?”
“I suppose so, but nobody’s there to celebrate it.”
“We could go there.”
She clangs her spoon into her bowl. “Jack.”
“Can we?”
“Do you really, really want to?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“Don’t you like it outside?”
“Yeah. Not everything.”
“Well, no, but mostly? You like it more than Room?”
“Mostly.” I eat all the rest of my granola and the bit of Ma’s that she left in her bowl. “Can we go back sometime?” “Not to live.”
I shake my head. “Just to visit for one minute.”
Ma leans her mouth on her hand. “I don’t think I can.”
“Yeah, you can.” I wait. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, but just the idea of it, it makes me feel like. .”
She doesn’t say like what. “I’d hold your hand.”
Ma stares at me. “What about going on your own, maybe?”
“No.”
“With someone, I mean. With Noreen?”
“No.”
“Or Grandma?”
“With you.”
“I can’t—”
“I’m choosing for both of us,” I tell her.
She gets up, I think she’s mad. She takes the phone in MA’S ROOM and talks to somebody.
Later in the morning the doorman buzzes and says there’s a police car here for us.
“Are you still Officer Oh?”
“I sure am,” says Officer Oh. “Long time no see.”
There’s tiny dots on the windows of the police car, I think it’s rain. Ma’s chewing her thumb. “Bad idea,” I tell her, pulling her hand away.
“Yeah.” She takes her thumb back and nibbles it again. “I wish he was dead.” She’s nearly whispering.
I know who she means. “But not in Heaven.”
“No, outside it.”
“Knock knock knock, but he can’t come in.”
“Yeah.”
“Ha ha.”
Two fire trucks go by with sirens. “Grandma says there’s more of him.”
“What?”
“Persons like him, in the world.”
“Ah,” says Ma.
“Is it true?”
“Yeah. But the tricky thing is, there’s far more people in the middle.”
“Where?”
Ma’s staring out the window but I don’t know at what. “Somewhere between good and bad,” she says. “Bits of both stuck together.” The dots on the window join up into little rivers.
When we stop, I only know we’re there because Officer Oh says “Here we are.” I don’t remember which house Ma came out of, the night of our Great Escape, the houses all have garages. None of them looks especially like a secret.
Officer Oh says, “I should have brought umbrellas.”
“It’s only sprinkling,” says Ma. She gets out and holds out her hand to me.
I don’t undo my seat belt. “The rain will fall on us—”
“Let’s get this over with, Jack, because I am not coming back again.”
I click it open. I put my head down and squeeze my eyes half shut, Ma leads me along. The rain is on me, my face is wetting, my jacket, my hands a bit. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird.
When we get up close to the door of the house, I know it’s Old Nick’s house because there’s a yellow ribbon that says in black letters CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. A big sticker with a scary wolf face that says BEWARE OF THE DOG. I point to it, but Ma says, “That’s only pretend.” Oh, yeah, the trick dog that was having the fit the day Ma was nineteen.
A man police I don’t know opens the door inside, Ma and Officer Oh duck under the yellow ribbon, I only have to go a bit sideways.
The house has lots of rooms with all stuff like fat chairs and the hugest TV I ever saw. But we go right through, there’s another door at the back and then it’s grass. The rain’s still falling but my eyes stay open.
“Fifteen-foot hedge all the way around,” Officer Oh is saying to Ma, “neighbors thought nothing of it. ‘A man’s entitled to his privacy,’ et cetera.”
There’s bushes and a hole with more yellow tape on sticks all around it. I remember something. “Ma. Is that where—?” She stands and stares. “I don’t think I can do this.”
But I’m walking over to the hole. There’s brown things in the mud. “Are they worms?” I ask Officer Oh, my chest is thump thump thumping.
“Just tree roots.”
“Where’s the baby?”
Ma’s beside me, she makes a sound.
“We dug her up,” says Officer Oh.
“I didn’t want her to be here anymore,” Ma says, her voice is all scratchy. She clears her throat and asks Officer Oh, “How did you find where—?” “We’ve got soil-sensitive probes.”
“We’ll put her somewhere better,” Ma tells me.
“Grandma’s garden?”
“Tell you what, we could — we could turn her bones into ash and sprinkle it under the hammock.”
“Will she grow again then and be my sister?”
Ma shakes her head. Her face is all stripey wet.
There’s more rain on me. It’s not like a shower, softer.
Ma’s turned around, she’s looking at a gray shed in the corner of the yard. “That’s it,” she says.
“What?”
“Room.”
“Nah.”
“It is, Jack, you’ve just never seen it from the outside.”
We follow Officer Oh, we step over more yellow tape. “Notice the central air unit is concealed in these bushes,” she tells Ma. “And the entrance is at the back, out of any sight lines.”
I see silvery metal, it’s Door I think but the side of him I never saw, he’s halfway open already.
“Will I come in with you?” says Officer Oh.
“No,” I shout.
“OK.”
“Just me and Ma.”
But Ma’s dropped my hand and she’s bending over, she makes a strange noise. There’s stuff on the grass, on her mouth, it’s vomit I can smell. Is she poisoned again? “Ma, Ma—”
“I’m OK.” She wipes her mouth with a tissue Officer Oh gives her.
“Would you prefer—?” says Officer Oh.
“No,” says Ma and she takes my hand again. “Come on.”
We step in through Door and it’s all wrong. Smaller than Room and emptier and it smells weird. Floor’s bare, that’s because there’s no Rug, she’s in my wardrobe in our Independent Living, I forgot she couldn’t be here at the same time. Bed’s here but there’s no sheets or Duvet on her. Rocker’s here and Table and Sink and Bath and Cabinet but no plates and cutlery on top, and Dresser and TV and Bunny with the purple bow on him, and Shelf but nothing on her, and our chairs folded up but they’re all different. Nothing says anything to me. “I don’t think this is it,” I whisper to Ma.
“Yeah, it is.”
Our voices sound not like us. “Has it got shrunk?”
“No, it was always like this.”
Spaghetti Mobile’s gone, and my octopus picture, and the masterpieces, and all the toys and Fort and Labyrinth. I look under Table but there’s no web. “It’s gone darker.”
“Well, it’s a rainy day. You could put the light on.” Ma points to Lamp.
But I don’t want to touch. I look closer, I’m trying to see it how it was. I find my birthday numbers marked beside Door, I stand against them and put my hand flat at the top of my head and I’m taller than the black 5. There’s thin dark on everything. “Is that the dust of our skins?” I ask.
“Fingerprinting powder,” says Officer Oh.
I bend and look in Under Bed for Eggsnake curled up like he’s sleeping. I can’t see his tongue, I reach down all careful till I feel the little prick of the needle.
I
straighten up. “Where did Plant be?”
“You’ve forgotten already? Right here,” says Ma, tapping the middle of Dresser and I see a circle that’s more coloredy than the rest.
There’s the mark of Track around Bed. The little hole rubbed in Floor where our feet used to go under Table. I guess this really was Room one time. “But not anymore,” I tell Ma.
“What?”
“It’s not Room now.”
“You don’t think so?” She sniffs. “It used to smell even staler. The door’s open now, of course.”
Maybe that’s it. “Maybe it’s not Room if Door’s open.”
Ma does a tiny smile. “Do you—?” She clears her throat. “Would you like the door closed for a minute?” “No.”
“OK. I need to go now.”
I walk to Bed Wall and touch it with one finger, the cork doesn’t feel like anything. “Is good night in the day?” “Huh?”
“Can we say good night when it’s not night?”
“I think it would be good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Wall.” Then I say it to the three other walls, then “Good-bye, Floor.” I pat Bed, “Good-bye, Bed.” I put my head down in Under Bed to say “Good-bye, Eggsnake.” In Wardrobe I whisper, “Good-bye, Wardrobe.” In the dark there’s the picture of me Ma did for my birthday, I look very small. I wave her over and point to it.
I kiss her face where the tears are, that’s how the sea tastes.
I pull the me picture down and zip it into my jacket. Ma’s nearly at Door, I go over. “Lift me up?”
“Jack—”
“Please.”
Ma sits me up on her hip, I reach up.
“Higher.”
She holds me by my ribs and lifts me up up up, I touch the start of Roof. I say, “Good-bye, Roof.”
Ma puts me down thump.
“Good-bye, Room.” I wave up at Skylight. “Say good-bye,” I tell Ma. “Good-bye, Room.”
Ma says it but on mute.
I look back one more time. It’s like a crater, a hole where something happened. Then we go out the door.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my beloved Chris Roulston and my agent, Caroline Davidson, for their responses to the first draft, as well as Caroline (aided by Victoria X. Kwee and Laura Macdougall) and my U.S. agent, Kathy Anderson, for their exuberant commitment to this novel from day one. Judy Clain at Little, Brown, Sam Humphreys at Picador, and Iris Tupholme at HarperCollins Canada for their intelligent editing. Also my friends Debra Westgate, Liz Veecock, Arja Vainio-Mattila, Tamara Sugunasiri, Hélène Roulston, Andrea Plumb, Chantal Phillips, Ann Patty, Sinéad McBrearty, and Ali Dover for their suggestions about everything from child development to plot development. Above all, my brother-in-law Jeff Miles for his unnervingly insightful advice on the practicalities of Room.
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