The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B (5 page)

And still he didn’t understand how.

Other than the two of them, no one had set foot in the place in over a year. His mom discouraged him from bringing over any friends—not that there was a lineup, but it meant that Adam could only go over to Ben’s house, and Ben now lived clear across the city. The journey was epic on public transit, though sometimes he’d guilt Brenda into taking him when he was at his dad’s.

His mom did not drive. Not anymore.

Yet Mrs. Carmella Ross was a highly competent and caring woman. Everyone said so.
She’s decent through and through
, they said. And it was true. Mrs. Ross was a nursesupervisor at the Glen Oaks Hospital, an important position of authority. His mother dealt with all manner of conflicts and crises, from minor scheduling snafus to the manic helplessness of the dispossessed and the dangerous. She was good at all of it. People admired her.
If you want something done, and done right, give it to Carmella
.

That very same competent Carmella sat outside for hours with her son, hustling the neighbors into buying his homemade lemonade and/or mudpies. “Mudpies! Get your fresh mudpies! Three for a buck, get ’em while you can!” Mrs. Polanski, who lived across the street, bought two
dollars’ worth one year. His mom never missed a teacher conference. She clapped too loudly at each of his Christmas pageant performances and cursed out the track officials when he invariably came in fourth in all of his junior marathon events. “You were robbed by that McQuarry kid! Those nuns were looking the other way, I’d swear to it in front of Father Rick and the Pope himself!” And when he was finally diagnosed almost three years ago, Carmella Ross practically lived in the headmaster’s office, advocating for him, and in her bedroom, crying for him. When Adam called her on it, racked with guilt, she blew him off. “Get off it, kid!” she snorted. “Relax! It’s all good. At least you snapped me right out of the divorce dumps. Hell, I gotta thank you!”

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 take-out container. “Ta-da! Mrs. Novak’s world-famous Hungarian goulash and buttered egg noodles. Nothing’s too good for my favorite 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.

“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 offense.”

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 as 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 blond, 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 toward 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 favorite truly superior prime numbers. Let’s think about the number
eleven
! Got it? The one and the one? You love eleven. See it?”