Emma Donoghue: Room: A Novel

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 mean?” 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.”