Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [70]
“Jack, he’s asking you a question.”
I blink at Ma.
“So what do you not like so much here?” says Dr. Clay.
“Persons looking.”
“Mmm?”
He says that a lot instead of words.
“Also sudden things.”
“Certain things? Which ones?”
“Sudden things,” I tell him. “That come quick quick.”
“Ah, yes. ‘World is suddener than we fancy it.’ ”
“Huh?”
“Sorry, just a line from a poem.” Dr. Clay grins at Ma. “Jack, can you describe where you were before the clinic?”
He never went to Room, so I tell him all about all the bits of it, what we did every day and stuff, Ma says anything I forget to say. He’s got goo I saw in TV in all colors, he makes it into balls and worms while we’re talking. I stick my finger into a yellow bit, then there’s some in my nail and I don’t like it to be yellow.
“You never got Play-Doh for one of your Sunday treats?” he asks.
“It dries out.” That’s Ma butting in. “Ever think of that? Even if you put it back in the tub, like, religiously, after a while it starts going leathery.”
“I guess it would,” says Dr. Clay.
“That’s the same reason I asked for crayons and pencils, not markers, and cloth diapers, and—whatever would last, so I wouldn’t have to ask again a week later.”
He keeps nodding.
“We made flour dough, but it was always white.” Ma’s sounding mad. “You think I wouldn’t have given Jack a different color of Play-Doh every day if I could have?”
Dr. Clay says Ma’s other name. “Nobody’s expressing any judgment about your choices and strategies.”
“Noreen says it works better if you add as much salt as flour, did you know that? I didn’t know that, how would I? I never thought to ask for food coloring, even. If I’d only had the first freakin’ clue—”
She keeps telling Dr. Clay she’s fine but she doesn’t sound fine. She and him talk about cognitive distortions, they do a breathing exercise, I play with the puppets. Then our time’s up because he has to go play with Hugo.
“Was he in a shed too?” I ask.
Dr. Clay shakes his head.
“What happened to him?”
“Everyone’s got a different story.”
When we go back to our room Ma and I get into the bed and I have lots. She still smells wrong from the conditioner, too silky.
• • •
Even after the nap I’m still tired. My nose keeps dripping and my eyes too, like they’re melting inside. Ma says I’ve picked up my first cold, that’s all.
“But I wore my mask.”
“Still, germs just sneak in. I’ll probably catch it from you by tomorrow.”
I’m crying. “We’re not done playing.”
She’s holding me.
“I don’t want to go to Heaven yet.”
“Sweetie—” Ma never called me that before. “It’s OK, if we get sick the doctors will make us better.”
“I want it.”
“You want what?”
“I want Dr. Clay making me better now.”
“Well, actually, he can’t cure a cold.” Ma chews her mouth. “But it’ll be all gone in a few days, I promise. Hey, would you like to learn to blow your nose?”
It takes me just four tries, when I get all the snot out in the tissue, she claps.
Noreen brings up lunch that’s soups and kebabs and a rice that’s not real called quinoa. For after there’s a salad of fruits and I guess all them, apple and orange and the ones I don’t know are pineapple and mango and blueberry and kiwi and watermelon, that’s two right and five wrong, that’s minus three. There’s no banana.
I want to see the fish again so we go down in the bit called Reception. They’ve got stripes. “Are they sick?”
“They look lively enough to me,” says Ma. “Especially that big, bossy one in the seaweed.”
“No, but in the head? Are they crazy fish?”
She laughs. “I don’t think so.”
“Are they just resting for a little while because they’re famous?”
“These ones were born here, actually, right in this tank.” It’s the Pilar woman.
I jump, I didn’t see her coming out of her desk. “Why?”
She stares at me still smiling. “Ah—”
“Why are they here?”
“For us all to look at, I guess. Aren’t they pretty?”
“Come on, Jack,” says Ma, “I’m sure she’s got work to do.”
In Outside the time’s all mixed up. Ma keeps saying, “Slow down, Jack,” and