Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [80]
“Let me.”
“It’s called ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony,’ when I was thirteen I listened to it all the time.” She puts one bud in my ear.
“Too loud.” I yank it out.
“Be gentle with it, Jack, it’s my present from Paul.”
I didn’t know it was hers-not-mine. In Room everything was ours.
“Hang on, here’s the Beatles, there’s an oldie you might like from about fifty years ago,” she says, “ ‘All You Need Is Love.’ ”
I’m confused. “Don’t persons need food and stuff?”
“Yeah, but all that’s no good if you don’t have somebody to love as well,” says Ma, she’s too loud, she’s still flicking through the names with her finger. “Like, there’s this experiment with baby monkeys, a scientist took them away from their mothers and kept each one all alone in a cage—and you know what, they didn’t grow up right.”
“Why they didn’t grow?”
“No, they got bigger but they were weird, from not getting cuddles.”
“What kind of weird?”
She clicks her machine off. “Actually, sorry, Jack, I don’t know why I brought it up.”
“What kind of weird?”
Ma chews her lip. “Sick in their heads.”
“Like the crazies?”
She nods. “Biting themselves and stuff.”
Hugo cuts his arms but I don’t think he bites himself. “Why?”
Ma puffs her breath. “See, if their mothers were there, they’d have cuddled the baby monkeys, but because the milk just came from pipes, they—It turns out they needed the love as much as the milk.”
“This is a bad story.”
“Sorry. I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No, you should,” I say.
“But—”
“I don’t want there to be bad stories and me not know them.”
Ma holds me tight. “Jack,” she says, “I’m a bit strange this week, aren’t I?”
I don’t know, because everything’s strange.
“I keep messing up. I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well at the same time and it’s . . .”
But I thought the her and the Ma were the same.
I want to go Outside again but Ma’s too tired.
• • •
“What day is this morning?”
“Thursday,” says Ma.
“When is Sunday?”
“Friday, Saturday, Sunday . . .”
“Three away, like in Room?”
“Yeah, a week’s seven days everywhere.”
“What’ll we ask for Sundaytreat?”
Ma shakes her head.
In the afternoon we’re going in the van that says The Cumberland Clinic, we’re driving actually outside the big gates to the rest of the world. I don’t want to, but we have to go show the dentist Ma’s teeth that still hurt. “Will there be persons there not friends of ours?”
“Just the dentist and an assistant,” says Ma. “They’ve sent everybody else away, it’s a special visit just for us.”
We have our hats and our cool shades on, but not the sunblock because the bad rays bounce off glass. I get to keep my stretchy shoes on. In the van there’s a driver with a cap, I think he’s on mute. There’s a special booster seat on the seat that makes me higher so the belt won’t squish my throat if we brake suddenly. I don’t like the tight of the belt. I watch out the window and blow my nose, it’s greener today.
Lots and lots of hes and shes on the sidewalks, I never saw so many, I wonder are they all real for real or just some. “Some of the women grow long hair like us,” I tell Ma, “but the men don’t.”
“Oh, a few do, rock stars. It’s not a rule, just a convention.”
“What’s a—?”
“A silly habit everybody has. Would you like a haircut?” asks Ma.
“No.”
“It doesn’t hurt. I had short hair before—back when I was nineteen.”
I shake my head. “I don’t want to lose my strong.”
“Your what?”
“My muscles, like Samson in the story.”
That makes her laugh.
“Look, Ma, a man putting himself on fire!”
“Just lighting his cigarette,” she says. “I used to smoke.”
I stare at her. “Why?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Look, look.”
“Don’t shout.”
I’m pointing where there’s all littles walking along the street. “Kids tied together.”
“They