The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B Read online

  His mother was fierce.

  Until she wasn’t.

  Adam picked his way up the stairs. Without even seeing them, he shoved some puzzle boxes closer to the wall. The chaos ended abruptly at his room. Adam’s room looked like it was occupied by a prissy monk with a soft spot for Warhammer miniatures and angelfish. He walked over to his perfect thirty-five-gallon tank. All three of his angels, Burt, Peter and Steven, immediately swam up to welcome him.

  “Hi, guys!” He reached for the fish food and crumbled a teeny amount over the water as a treat for the boys. Well, maybe not all boys—Steven had given birth to babies last spring, but Burt and Peter ate them. Adam was going to wait to see if it happened again before doing anything as drastic as changing anybody’s name.

  The aquarium often calmed him, what with the fish zipping around and the bubbles and the soothing whirr of the water filter. Not today, though. Adam’s heart was still prickly. “Love hurts, man,” he whispered to Steven, who had returned to him after nibbling some fish flakes. Steven nodded.

  Adam had finished his homework at school, as he did on most Mondays or Group days, and he wasn’t on dinner duty tonight, so he had loads of free time looming in front of him. He was considering cleaning out his clean fish tank when he heard his mom come home.

  “Adam? Hi, honey! Are you up there?”

  “Hey, Mom!” Adam waved to the boys and raced down the ever-narrowing stairway.

  Mrs. Ross kissed the top of his head, then stepped back and looked at him. “You growing?” Before he could answer, she proudly pointed to a brown shopping bag.

  “Look, I braved the elements—this beautiful autumn day, in other words—and went clear across the city to bring us this!”

  Adam recognized the bag. “You went to the Hungarian restaurant!”

  Mrs. Ross reached into the bag and retrieved a large aluminum takeout container. “Ta-da! Mrs. Novak’s world-famous Hungarian goulash and buttered egg noodles. Nothing’s too good for my favourite son!” she said, as she always said.

  “Hey, lady, I’m your only son!” he said, as he always said.

  Mother and son went to the kitchen, which was still almost normal. They whipped out the necessary plates and cups and cutlery, and tucked into their feast. He poured her a glass of red wine, and she poured him a glass of Tropicana orange juice, pulp-free. She talked about work; he talked about school. Carmella mentioned that she might be up for a promotion by the end of the year, and Adam said that Group, in the end, might work out after all. And during that whole time, they told each other everything except for the parts that they didn’t. Mother and son were as honest as two people lying to each other could be.

  And then the phone rang.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “Yes, hello, Brenda.” His mom sighed and leaned against the wall. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “Yes, he is, but I just got in and we haven’t even …”

  “Yes, yes, I appreciate that—more than most, as you well realize—but today was his Group day and …” Mrs. Ross turned to Adam while nodding into the phone.

  I already did my homework, he mouthed.

  His mom’s shoulders slumped. The fight was lost. “Brenda, you know I love Sweetie …”

  “Okay, I can’t stand the thought of him suffering like that. If Adam agrees, let us finish dinner and then you can come and pick him up. Hang on.” She put her hand over the receiver. “You okay with that?”

  Adam nodded.

  “Do you have anything you’ve got to be in early for tomorrow?”

  He thought for a moment. He and Eric Yashinsky, an almost-friend, were due in the physics lab at 7:45 a.m., sharp. Both boys had been offered a special opportunity to take Advanced Placement Physics in grade 10, but because of scheduling difficulties it had to be at that unholy hour twice a week, and the days were never fixed.

  “Physics,” he said.

  His mom smiled and years fell away. “Lucky you, Brenda—it’s a physics day. You’ll have to drive him in at dawn.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded. “Seven forty-five sharp or Sister Mary-Margaret will come after you with a lecture and rosary in hand. We can’t have Adam squandering God-given opportunities.”

  His mom glanced at the wall clock. “Okay, give us another thirty or forty minutes to finish up dinner. Yeah. Okay. No, it’s okay … Yeah, I know.” More nodding. “Believe me, I know.” Sigh. “Bye.”

  Adam opened up the containers. “Sweetie’s in a state?”

  His mother ladled out the goulash. “Yeah, and like I said, I get it. Well, not whatever is cranking that little boy—you never got into ‘states’—but I get where she’s at. What I don’t get—” Mrs. Ross plopped some glistening butter noodles on top of the goulash. That’s the way they both liked it. “What I don’t get is what you bring to the party. No offence.”

  Adam frowned and started swirling his noodles. “Is it possible … I mean, does what Sweetie …? Did I make him nuts? Is it because of me, because I’m the way I am?”

  Carmella grabbed her son’s hand with an urgency that surprised them both. “No! Don’t say that! Don’t you dare think that about you or him!” She let go. “Besides, that kid is not nuts—he’s a sweetie! You know that. Look, he’s wired up a little too tight is all, and Brenda frets about him too much. He’ll toughen up, mark my words.”

  “But he could have got the wiring from me.”

  “Right, Einstein. Who’s the science genius in this room? You know how this goes. Same dad, different mother—you don’t enter the picture. You don’t even get to be in the picture, my gorgeous, genius boy. Sweetie doesn’t even have your father’s traits. Your dad’s an ass and the kid is adorable.”

  “Mom.”

  “Well, it’s true.”

  “Which part?”

  “Both.” Carmella smiled. “Not only that, but I’ve never seen one breathing being devoted to another as much that kid of theirs is to you. I guess what you bring to the party, come to think of it, is some kind of weird ‘feel better’ gift for Sweetie.”

  They finished their goulash side by side, in semi-comfortable silence.

  Brenda honked the horn while Adam was throwing socks into his backpack. Because he spent so much time at his father’s house and had a lot of his stuff there already, he could get ready in seconds. He glanced at his watch: twenty-five minutes. It must be a bad one.

  She honked again—politely, though. Brenda was nothing if not well-mannered. The new Mrs. Ross wouldn’t dream of entering the house, because she had been asked not to by the old Mrs. Ross. That had more to do with the state of 97 Chatsworth than any natural hostility between the women, because truth be told, there wasn’t much.

  The two Mrs. Rosses were mirror opposites. It was like his dad went for a total purge, with Brenda being the anti-Carmella. Adam’s stepmother was blonde, pristine and polite against Carmella’s dark and compelling exuberance. Carmella’s house was aggressive chaos. Brenda’s was an homage to Architectural Digest, each room patiently waiting for its photo shoot. He had to hand it to his dad, though: both women were attractive even on their most harried days. Their appearance was noted at every parent function at St. Mary’s. Adam looked very much like his mother, yet also like his father. This meant that he “fit” seamlessly into both houses, and neither.

  What remained exactly the same was that Mr. Ross was ever-absent, off on far-flung engineering projects or holed up in his downtown office. If anything, his absences grew longer as his home life, which now included two complicated sons, grew more … well, complicated. He was not, as Brenda and even his mom on occasion knew, an uncaring man. Just a missing one.

  As soon as Adam set foot outside, the back door to the Mercedes flew open. Wendell “Sweetie” Ross launched himself out of his booster seat and straight into his brother’s arms like a rocket. Even fully braced, Adam was almost knocked over.

  “Adam! Adam! Adam!”

  “Batman,” whispered Adam. “Remember? I’m Batman
now.”

  “Oh yeah! I just forgot, Batman. I won’t ever never forget again, Batman. Okay, Batman?”

  Adam hugged him back. “Okay, little guy. Don’t sweat it.” He felt his brother’s thumping little heart beating way too fast. “It’s cool.”

  Ironically, it was Adam’s mom who was responsible for dubbing Wendell “Sweetie.” Carmella Ross called everyone “sweetie”; it unburdened her from the task of remembering names, especially at work. In Sweetie’s case, however, as she often said, “It pains me to admit it, but that little dumpling really is a Sweetie.” Everyone else agreed, including his pediatrician, nursery school teachers and Sweetie, who began referring to himself as such as soon as he was able to form words. Now, at almost five, there was no disabusing him of it. Sweetie was Sweetie and that’s all there was to it. He clung tightly to Adam as if to secure him until they reached the safety of the car.

  “Hey, Brenda.”

  “Thank you, Adam.”

  “Batman!” corrected Sweetie from the back seat.

  “Moms are exempt,” Adam said.

  “Exempt,” Sweetie parroted, and Adam knew he would store the word away and bring it out for rehearsals until he figured out how to use it correctly.

  “I mean it. Thanks for this,” Brenda said as they drove away. “I know we’re both a pain, but look …” She gestured to the back seat with her head and lowered her voice. “It’s instant. An hour ago, I could barely reach him.”

  Sweetie had launched into a rousing if garbled rendition of “Puff, the Magic Dragon.” Carmella had sung it to Adam as soon as she’d brought him home from the hospital, and Adam had sung it to his brother as soon as Brenda and Dad had brought him home from the hospital. It was their go-to song, the one that Adam would sing when Sweetie was in need of industrial-strength comforting. “A dragon lives forever but not so little boys. Painted wings and la, la, la …”

  “Is Dad home?” Adam asked above the singing.

  Brenda shook her head. “Argentina. But he’ll be back for your double birthdays next week. Your father thought that you would both enjoy the chef’s special magic at La Tourangelle for your birthday dinners. Wait until you see your C-A-K-E-S!”

  Only perfection for the perfectionist, Adam thought but did not say.

  “We’re going to a really, really pretty restaurant! I saw it. I’m going to have oysters! Do you know what oysters are? I’m going to have three. And your mom, Mrs. Carmella Ross, is coming, and Ben too, but that’s a surprise.”

  “Sweetie!” Brenda groaned.

  “Sorry,” came a small voice from the back seat.

  “That’s okay,” said Adam. “You know I’ll forget by the time we get home, uh, your home.”

  “Our home, Adam,” said Brenda.

  Adam tossed his backpack onto one of the twin beds in Sweetie’s room. Adam still had his very own room there, but as soon as Sweetie had learned how to walk, he’d also learned how to sneak into his brother’s double bed, hog all the covers, smoosh them into himself and toss about the whole night long. Sleep was impossible. One day when Sweetie was older, Adam would reclaim that room. Until then, he settled for having a twin bed all to himself.

  Sweetie hopped onto his own bed, folded his hands neatly in his lap and waited. Adam sat across from him, mirroring him exactly—except, of course, that Adam’s feet touched the floor.

  “Okay, so what’s up, little guy?”

  Sweetie took that as his cue to propel himself towards his brother and snuggle into him.

  “Bad, eh?”

  He could feel rather than see Sweetie nod slowly. “The scary bits are biting me.”

  “Got it,” said Adam. None of them could ever figure out what the triggers were. What was it that set Sweetie off? “Right, so let’s think about something awesome, okay?” More nodding, less tentative now. “Let’s bring out the big guns!” He put his arm around his brother. Again, he felt the little heart thumping much too fast. “Only the prime numbers will do in a situation like this. Seventeen is cool, as is thirty-nine, and neither of us much likes going near the two hundreds, right?” Sweetie shook his head. He couldn’t count to the two hundreds, didn’t much know what they were, but if his brother said that they didn’t like them, then they didn’t like them. “Okay, so let’s both of us think about the real beauty in the bunch, one of our favourite truly superior prime numbers. Let’s think about the number eleven! Got it? The one and the one? You love eleven. See it?”

  Sweetie nodded enthusiastically now.

  “Even better, let’s load it up and go for broke. Let’s do one hundred and eleven! That’s a one and a one and a one.”

  “Wow, yeah! That’s an eleven with a friend. Yeah! One, one, one, it’s very pretty. I love one hundred eleven a lot! I can see all those ones.”

  Adam felt Sweetie relax into him, felt his heart slow. It was different with him. Sweetie just liked to pick a number and think about it, but it had to be “pretty.” Adam had tried to teach Dad and Brenda about the numbers. But they couldn’t do it—didn’t get it or maybe didn’t believe.

  But Adam did.

  His brother got lost in all those ones for a while.

  “Better, Sweetie?”

  His brother sighed and melted into him. “I’m all better now. You fixed it.”

  At least he could do this. At least there was this.

  “I’m glad, Sweetie,” Adam whispered, and he hugged the little body even tighter. “I’m glad.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Adam and the climbers sat panting in their chairs for a full five minutes before the rest of Group got there and a full minute and a half before Chuck arrived.

  “Hey, my stair-climbing superheroes, how’s it going?” he asked as he shuffled through the door. “Are there more of you this week?”

  It was true. Green Lantern and Iron Man had joined Wonder Woman, Robyn, Wolverine and Batman in their accidental fitness quest. Snooki had threatened to as well, but couldn’t that day because she was squeezing in an extra tanning appointment before the meeting.

  Chuck took off his faded corduroy jacket and carefully draped it across the back of his chair. He laid down his repurposed file folders just so on the empty chair beside him and painstakingly sorted through them looking for last week’s notes. Chuck did this with a nuclear absorption while the rest of Group dribbled in.

  Adam, meanwhile, tried to settle into inconspicuous gazing at the ravishing Robyn. She had on a new school jacket. It fit better. Still the same skirt, though, and still heart-thumpingly too short. He was numb with emotion.

  “You okay, Dark Knight?” Chuck took off his aviators and squinted at Adam.

  Robyn glanced at Chuck and then resumed examining the floor.

  “Me? Yeah, sure. I mean, still out of shape, but I’m good. Well, you know, for being whack and all.”

  “Cool.” Chuck shook his head. “You guys are something else.”

  Chuck was cool. Adam promised himself that he would talk about Robyn at their next one-on-one. Robyn. She still hadn’t looked up. He was getting uncomfortable again. Just looking at her across the semicircle made him hotter than a match. He counted the ceiling tiles, thought about Sister Mary-Margaret and then returned to the task at hand.

  Chuck’s continuing preoccupation with his notes gave Adam just enough time to sort out his thoughts and start figuring out what to say during Group. He needed some kind of edge. Maybe it was time to talk about the letters. His mom had received yet another one yesterday afternoon. How many was that? They were starting to infiltrate the house somehow. Adam knew it was bad even as she turned her back to him and ripped it up. She couldn’t hide the colour draining from her hands while she shoved the pieces deep into the garbage pail.

  Sick stuff was attached to those paper shreds, and it got sicker each time his mom brushed him off. Whatever was in those letters was scaring the crap out of her and had set off the tripwire to his not-so-free-floating anxiety. Adam had spent all of last night rearrang
ing his Warhammer figures. There was, of course, an exacting ritual to the rearranging. Each Orc had to be in the correct formation on his shelves, and he also had to replace them all in a particular way, circling down from above, counter-clockwise, thirteen times. If he did it wrong, he would have to start again. It was virtually impossible to do right.

  Adam owned almost three hundred miniatures.

  It took hours.

  Adam hadn’t had to “arrange” for months. He was angry with himself, with the situation … with his mom, but he knew he couldn’t talk about the letters here. The letters were like the inside of the house. Secret. There would be consequences. His mom had laid it out hard a couple of years ago. Talking about the house would be a betrayal. If he betrayed her, they would take her away. Period.

  Yes, the compulsions were escalating. But just a bit, nothing to worry about, not yet. And yes, it was annoying that the threshold to the large biology lab had amped up from a negligible clearing to a semi-full ritual. But that was sort of nothing. In fact, maybe he could talk about that. Maybe it would help to get support from his support group, because that’s why one went to a support group, right? Except he would sound way more nuts than he wanted to sound. No one else had a threshold thing as far as he could tell. Everyone in Group seemed shocked by the new uncovering of someone else’s way-weird ritual, each one of which was entirely different from their own way-weird rituals. Thresholds? Too weird. What would Robyn think?

  Adam tapped his right foot on the front leg of his chair for three sets of thirty-seven. He tapped invisibly while everyone settled in and started up. Wolverine whispered something to Robyn. It made her smile, sort of. This called for seven sets up to eleven. One, three, five, seven, nine, eleven. He didn’t have a chance. Even though he’d swear that Peter Kolchak was crazier on his best day than Adam was on his worst, Wolverine had that thing that some guys had, the thing that makes you move as if you’re used to being liked. The way he’d just leaned into Robyn assuming she’d like what he whispered to her.