“Let me see you without this silly thing for a second.”
Ma pulls her mask down, smiling and smiling.
The woman’s staring at me now. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe any of this.”
“Jack,” says Ma, “this is your grandma.”
So I really have one.
“What a treasure.” The woman opens her arms like she’s going to wave them but she doesn’t. She walks over at me. I get behind the chair.
“He’s very affectionate,” says Ma, “he’s just not used to anyone but me.”
“Of course, of course.” The Grandma comes a bit closer. “Oh, Jack, you’ve been the bravest little guy in the world, you’ve brought my baby back.” What baby?
“Lift up your mask for a second,” Ma tells me.
I do then snap it back.
“He’s got your jaw,” the Grandma says.
“You think so?”
“Of course you were always wild about kids, you’d babysit for free . . .”
They talk and talk. I look under my Band-Aid to see if my finger’s going to fall off still. The red dots are scaly now.
Air coming in. There’s a face in the door, a face with beard all over it on the cheeks and the chin and under the nose but none on the head.
“I told the nurse we didn’t want to be disturbed,” says Ma.
“Actually, this is Leo,” says Grandma.
“Hey,” he says, he wiggles his fingers.
“Who’s Leo?” asks Ma, not smiling.
“He was meant to stay in the corridor.”
“No problemo,” says Leo, then he’s not there anymore.
“Where’s Dad?” asks Ma.
“In Canberra right now, but he’s on his way,” says Grandma. “There’s been a lot of changes, sweetheart.”
“Canberra?”
“Oh, honey, it’s probably too much for you to take in . . .”
It turns out the hairy Leo person isn’t my real Grandpa, the real one went back to live in Australia after he thought Ma was dead and had a funeral for her, Grandma was mad at him because she never stopped hoping. She always told herself their precious girl must have had her reasons for disappearing and one fine day she’d get in touch again.
Ma is staring at her. “One fine day?”
“Well, isn’t it?” Grandma waves at the window.
“What kind of reasons would I—?”
“Oh, we racked our brains. A social worker told us kids your age sometimes just take off out of the blue. Drugs, possibly, I scoured your room —” “I had a three-point-seven grade average.”
“Yes you did, you were our pride and joy.”
“I was snatched off the street.”
“Well I know that now. We stuck up posters all over the city, Paul made a website. The police talked to everyone you knew from college and high school too, to find out who else you might have been hanging around with that we didn’t know. I kept thinking I saw you, it was torture,” says Grandma. “I used to pull up beside girls and slam on my horn, but they’d turn out to be strangers. For your birthday I always baked your favorite just in case you walked in, remember my banana chocolate cake?” Ma nods. She’s got tears all down her face.
“I couldn’t sleep without pills. The not knowing was eating me up, it really wasn’t fair to your brother. Did you know — well, how could you? — Paul’s got a little girl, she’s almost three and potty-trained already. His partner’s lovely, a radiologist.”
They talk a lot more, my ears get tired listening. Then Noreen comes in with pills for us and a glass of juice that’s not orange, it’s apple and the best I ever drunk.
Grandma’s going to her house now. I wonder if she sleeps in the hammock. “Will I–Leo could pop in for a quick hello,” she says when she’s at the door.
Ma says nothing. Then, “Maybe next time.”
“Whatever you like. The doctors say to take it slow.”
“Take what slow?”
“Everything.” Grandma turns to me. “So. Jack. Do you know the word bye-bye?”
“Actually I know all the words,” I tell her.
That makes her laugh and laugh.
She kisses her own hand and blows it at me. “Catch?”
I think she wants me to play like I’m catching the kiss, so I do it and she’s glad, she has more tears.
“Why did she laugh about me knowing all the words when I wasn’t making a joke?” I ask Ma after.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter, it’s always good to make people laugh.”
At 06:12 Noreen brings another whole different tray that’s dinner, we can have dinner at five something or six something or even seven something, Ma says. There’s green crunchy stuff called arugula that tastes too sharp, I like the potatoes with crispy edges and meats with stripes all on them. The bread has bits that scratch my throat, I try to pick them out but then there’s holes, Ma says to just leave it. There’s strawberries she says taste like Heaven, how does she know what Heaven tastes like? We can’t eat it all. Ma says most people stuff themselves too much anyway, we should just eat what we like and leave the rest.
My favorite bit of Outside is the window. It’s different every time. A bird goes right by zoom, I don’t know what it was. The shadows are all long again now, mine waves right across our room on the green wall. I watch God’s face falling slow slow, even orangier and the clouds are all colors, then after there’s streaks and dark coming up so bit-at-a-time I don’t see it till it’s done.
Ma and me keep knocking into each other in the night. The third time I wake up I’m wanting Jeep and Remote but they’re not here.
No one’s in Room now, just things, everything lying extra still with dust falling, because Ma and me are at the Clinic and Old Nick is in the jail. He has to stay forever locked in.
I remember I’m in the pajamas with the astronauts. I touch my leg through the cloth, it doesn’t feel like mine. All our stuff that was ours is locked in Room except my T-shirt that Ma threw in the trash here and it’s gone now, I looked at bedtime, a cleaner must have took it away. I thought that meant a person cleaner than everybody else, but Ma says it’s one who does the cleaning. I think they’re invisible like elves. I wish the cleaner would bring back my old T-shirt but Ma would only get cranky again.
We have to be in the world, we’re not ever going back to Room, Ma says that’s how it is and I should be glad. I don’t know why we can’t go back just to sleep even. I wonder do we have to stay always in the Clinic bit or can we go in others of Outside like the house with the hammock, except the real Grandpa’s in Australia that’s too far away. “Ma?”
She groans. “Jack, I was finally dropping off . . .”
“How long are we here?”
“It’s only been twenty-four hours. It just feels longer.”
“No, but — how long do we still be here after now? How many days and nights?”
“I don’t actually know.”
But Ma always knows things. “Tell me.”
“Shh.”
“But how long?”
“Just a while,” she says. “Now shush, there’s other people next door, remember, and you’re disturbing them.”
I don’t see the persons but they’re there anyway, they’re the ones from the dining room. In Room I was never disturbing anybody only sometimes Ma if Tooth was really bad. She says the persons are here at the Cumberland because they’re a bit sick in the head, but not very. They can’t sleep maybe from worrying, or they can’t eat, or they wash their hands too much, I didn’t know washing could be too much. Some of them have hit their heads and don’t know themselves anymore, and some are sad all the time or scratch their arms with knives even, I don’t know why. The doctors and nurses and Pilar and the invisible cleaners aren’t sick, they’re here to help. Ma and me aren’t sick either, we’re just here for a rest, also we don’t want to be bugged by the paparazzi which is the vultures with their cameras and microphones, because we’re famous now, like rap stars but we didn’t do it on purpose. Ma says basically we just need a bit of help while we sort things out. I don’t know which things.