Big Cold Room
There’s a small skinny boy with too much hair on his head (Don’t worry, it’s me) sitting on a bed. It is not his bed, (Don’t worry, it belongs to his parents) the window is too low, and the ceiling is too high. He wasn’t under the covers; the bed was still made. The boy was wearing his white underwear with the tattered red elastic, and a faded, cracked, and yet still somehow bright purple t-shirt. When he really thought about it, the way the thin cotton rested on his awkward frame, it made him feel like a skeleton. (Actually, I don’t really remember exactly what I was wearing, but I know my legs were exposed because) The boy loved the way it felt to slide them across the faintly chilly surface of the smooth comforter, and to just get lost in the pure emotion of innocent ecstasy. To him, it felt nice when an imperfection of the fabric caught on an imperfection of his skin and suddenly came loose with a slight pop like the sounds a record makes before the first song comes on and the needle is just barely closing in. In this big cold room, nothing mattered to him except (Me). It was somewhere a six-year-old could be alone for hours, with no one checking in, and no reason for him to do anything other than exactly what he wanted to. Earlier, he was watching the light coming through the blinds reflect off the dust from the carpet and wanted to color it. Now, though he didn’t know it, he was watching Adam West and Burt Ward and probably Julie Newmar on TV. (I do now.) He thought it was his neighbors across the street, that they would put on costumes and film the shows that day; that everyone was somehow doing something for (Me and Me) alone. It was dark. Whenever he got bored, he would flip onto his back and stretch like a fossil so his mind would go totally blank except for the vague feeling of the headboard’s treated wood passing across his fingers and the distant sound of his own voice sounding in the backs of his ears. And then, when he was done and (my) muscles relaxed, he would always suck the taste of varnish off his hands, only half knowing what it really was he was doing and only briefly worrying about whether or not he might get sick. (I never did.) To him it had always seemed like a hundred or more episodes of the show came on at a time (It was three.) and since (I) was alone, no one could tell him different. Suddenly, he realized his Dad had come home. He could hear the sounds downstairs of the open door and someone coming through it. The faint bass notes of (my) Dad coming up the stairs told him to pretend he was sleeping. (I never thought it would work. It wasn’t even fun. I don’t know why I ever did it.) His dad came in and sat on the bed. He took off his shoes that smelled so good and took off his tie and took off his shirt, leaving only an apple core in dress pants and a thin, white t-shirt. He wasn’t supposed to, but he tapped his son on the leg. (I wasn’t supposed to,) but he got up and blinked. Yawned. He said Hey, buddy to his son. His son said Hey Dad. He said I need to tell you something about your grandfather. It wasn’t supposed to but a curious thought went through (my) head. It was What’s the matter, is he dead or something that went through his head. It was I’m sorry your grandfather has passed away that came out of Dad’s mouth.
The next few minutes will only ever exist in the actual moment in time they occurred. Something peculiar about them kept them from ever being remembered, and as far as anyone can say, once father informed son of grandfather’s passing, the next thing that happened was that son was sitting alone, under the covers, in his own room now. The ceiling was too low and the window was too high. Father came in quietly, thinking that son was asleep. He stood over him for a while, staring with sadness and overwhelming quiet at the back of son’s head. As he turned to leave, he heard it. He heard it floating through the stuffy red air of that stuffy little red room like the dust illuminated by light coming through the blinds.
Tellhimimsorrytellhimimsorrytellhimimsorrytellhimimsorrytellhimim
sorrytellhimimsorrytellhimimsorrytellhimimsorry…
