The Birthday Room (2 page)

I'm sure it's a surprise to receive this letter out of the blue. I don't know how much you know about me, how much your mother has told you. But that doesn't really matter. For now, I'd just like to extend an invitation for you to visit before school begins again in the fall. The invitation is extended to your parents as well, of course. I live in the country near Eugene, Oregon. I think you'd all enjoy it out here—the hills are golden this time of year and I'm surrounded by orchards. A bonus—an escape from the Wisconsin humidity and mosquitoes.

I'll call in a week or so to discuss details after you've all had a chance to think about and talk about my invitation. Too much time has passed, and I want to change that. I want to see you and know you again.

P.S. I will pay for the plane tickets.

Ben replaced the letter in the envelope, folded the envelope in half, and shoved it into his back pants pocket. Then he rode his bicycle to his parents' store as fast as he could. He pedaled relentlessly, unaware of the muggy air, or traffic, or the sounds of the city. At one point, he nearly collided with a small dog on a long leash. The dog's yelps and its owner's warnings seemed to be filtered through layers of cotton, separate from his world. In that moment, he felt as though his world were breaking open, and that twelve would be an adventure.

 

2

W
HEN BENJAMIN HUNTER
was two and a half years old, the little finger on his left hand was cut off in an accident. The accident happened while his uncle was baby-sitting him. They were in his uncle's basement workshop. His uncle had dropped out of college, traveled for a couple of years, and had been teaching himself how to build furniture. On that bleak January day, his uncle was finishing a chair for Ben.

Perhaps it was foolish to have Ben in the workshop, but the legs on the chair were several inches too long and his uncle wanted to make the chair perfect and he didn't want to wait because he was excited about it and so was Ben, who jumped up and down like a toy and shouted: “I like my chair! I want my chair!” Perhaps it was the sound of the saw that drew Ben in, the way it hummed and screeched. Perhaps it was the movement. Perhaps he leaned closer to watch his uncle more carefully, to see better; after all, it was his chair. Perhaps it had to do with his age and his desire to touch, touch, touch, exploring anything that glinted or shone or spun or ticked, exploring everything that even fleetingly captured his attention.

Perhaps his uncle only looked up for a split second, or blinked too long, or turned away to sneeze. But that was all it took.

Although Ben didn't remember the day, he was told the story long ago—the facts of it—and maybe he made part of it up, too, so that what he knew about the accident he recalled as in a silver dream. But it was not discussed, and it was not something he thought about often or dwelled on. Of course, he received occasional stares from strangers, and for a brief time he was fondly known as Alien Boy to his best friends, but because he had grown up with nine fingers, the space on his hand was just a space, no more, no less, like the hole left after a tooth is pulled.

Ben could not remember the last time Uncle Ian's name had been mentioned, or when he had even been indirectly referred to. With the arrival of the letter, it occurred to Ben that the silence about Uncle Ian was a real thing, the absence was a presence. His uncle was a cloistered part of their lives, but Ben sensed that changing forever as he watched his mother read the letter.

Her eyebrows rose and dropped like a twitch, then her face shifted and fell to blankness. She continued to read and when she had finished, she sighed, looking down and to the side.

Ben waited. He knew when not to say anything. Because he was still out of breath from rushing to his parents' store, his chest heaved.

“We can't afford the time to go,” she said finally. “You know, the store.” Her tone was cautious. “And I don't want you to go alone.”

“Why?” he asked quietly.

After a moment she shrugged. “I really don't want to talk about it right now. I'm just sorry this happened on your birthday.”

“I'm not.”

She seemed stung by this comment, and Ben tried to choose his words carefully, but he had a hard time holding back. “Mom, this is my only uncle, my long-lost fugitive uncle, my only relative except for you guys and Gramma Lu. . . .” His voice cracked, excited, then trailed off as he saw her eyes rest on his left hand. Nonchalantly, he slid his left hand behind his right. “Don't even worry about the finger thing. If
I'm
not mad about it, you shouldn't be.”

The bell on the front door rang, announcing someone coming or going.

“It's a free vacation,” Ben joked, trying to make his mother laugh, something he was usually very good at.

“You can't understand,” she said simply, oblivious to his attempt at lightheartedness. “And I don't expect you to.”

The letter lay open between them on the ancient, wavy pine table at the far end of the store office. The paint on the table was robin's-egg blue and blistering. When Ben was little, he often amused himself while his parents worked by pretending that the tabletop was a great sea, the deck of cards stored inside the table's one drawer was his personal fleet of fifty-two ships, and he was an admiral. Kneeling on a chair piled with oversize books, he guided the ships through dangerous waters infested with sleek paper-clip sharks and translucent cough-drop stingrays.

All at once, Ben's mother grabbed the letter. “Wait here,” she said, holding the letter away from her body. “I'll be right back. I'll see if your father's done up front. I want him to read this.”

“Okay.”

She moved purposefully through the office, negotiating the maze of book cartons.

With his thumbnail, Ben broke open a cracking bubble of paint on the table. He blew the paint chips aside to reveal a honey-colored patch of wood. He wondered how much he didn't know about his uncle, how much his mother did. He decided that his mother was a bottle of secrets, and he wanted to know everything he deserved to know.

About ten minutes later, Ben's father entered the office alone, tapping the folded letter against his thigh.

“Where's Mom?” Ben asked.

“With a customer,” his father answered. “Someone looking for a cookbook who did not want to be waited on by a man. Weird,” he added, shaking his head in disbelief.

Ben was still at the table, sitting now. He had been counting the money in his wallet again for something to do while he waited. Jerkily, he flipped the wallet shut and replaced it in his pocket. He gulped before he spoke. “Well, what do you think?”

His father slid the letter across the table to Ben. “Yours,” he said. “What do I think—I think this is a pretty emotional thing for your mother. It was all so sudden. Give her some time.”

“But what do
you
think?”

“It's not up to me. Ian's your mother's brother.”

“Dad, you can still
think
something.”

“Oh, I don't know.” One corner of his father's mouth curved up toward a smile. “I suppose I'd like to see him again,” he said with an aimless wave. “After all, he is family. And there aren't very many of us, that's for sure. But you and I don't know what it's like to have a brother or sister, so—” He broke off as though a new thought had come to him, making him forget what he was about to say.

“But it should be up to
me
,” Ben said. “I mean, the envelope has
my
name on it.”

His father drew in his shoulders. “Well, actually, that's part of the problem. Your mother thinks Ian should have written to
her
.”

The air conditioner kicked in loudly, causing both their heads to turn. The roar filled the room, sounding to Ben as if they were under the hood of a speeding car. The initial blast quieted to a low murmur. Outside, drips from the old machine were forming a small pond that had begun to creep under the back door.

“Stupid thing,” his father muttered, sneering at the air conditioner. “I wish one of us was a mechanical wizard and could fix that damn contraption.” He puffed up his cheeks, exhaled noisily. “Really, though . . .” he said, looking directly at his son, then pausing. “It's more than the accident, you know. Your mother and Ian have never been close. They've had a lot of issues over the years. Long before you were born. The accident just tipped the scales.”

Ben straightened a little in his chair. None of that mattered to him. “I think I want to go to Oregon,” he told his father.

“I can see that.”

“Will you help me? With Mom?”

Ben's father's eyes flashed and he moved his head. Almost a nod.

Why did he want to go so badly? He had never wanted it before. But he hadn't even finished reading the letter when that started to change. Things kept changing all day long. He looked at his hand differently. Was it ugly? He looked at his mother differently. Rarely did he think of her as someone's sister.

He tried to remember anything connected to the accident, but came up with little.

“Don't worry, Mama. It'll grow back.” He knew those words, but he must have been told them as part of the story of the accident.

He remembered wanting to be a cartoonist after discovering with great joy that a good number of cartoon characters—Mickey Mouse included—had only four fingers on each hand. But his character, his own creation, would have nine fingers. Four on one hand, five on the other.

He remembered his parents taking him to a Diego Rivera show at a museum in Chicago. Or was it Milwaukee? In one of the rooms, mural studies were displayed. Pages and pages of charcoal drawings of hands. Solid, broad, perfect hands as big as suitcases. It had made him dizzy.

His thoughts kept returning to his uncle. Who wouldn't want to meet the person responsible? Wasn't it more weird not to think about it?

After all those years, Ben found himself curious. He couldn't ignore the feeling. It was like a tiny ache blooming behind his ears and spreading slowly throughout his head.

Maybe by morning it would be gone. But it wasn't. It layered his dreams and fell heavily across his mind the next day.

 

3

T
HE PAINTING
was simple. The picture plane was divided in half. The top half was sky—creamy yellow, the color of butter. The bottom half was dark green, almost black, interrupted by an oval the same color as the sky: a small pond. Ben had painted a single leafless tree breaking the horizon. The branches were ragged and angular, tapering off into sharp points. Dissatisfied with the tree, Ben instinctively painted over it with dark green, feathering the edges out. It ended up a mound like a large haystack or a tiny hill, backlit, at dusk or dawn, a time of change.

Ben had known it was a success as soon as he had finished, and he was pleased, the way he was pleased after acing a test in math class or sinking nine out of ten free throws in gym.

“It's gorgeous,” his mother had said, tipping her head and craning her neck to study the brushwork. She smiled.

“It's one of the nicest paintings I've ever seen,” his father had ventured to say. He rested his hands on Ben's shoulders, his chin on Ben's head. “I like the way the shape of the hill echoes the shape of the pond. You're good. You are very good.”

Ben had painted
Yellow Sky
at the kitchen table, last October, for extra credit for art class. His teacher, Ms. Temple, was so impressed by it, she entered it in a competition. Ben won first prize for the city, then the region, and finally for the entire state. In April, he had his photograph taken with the governor at the capitol, where he was awarded a blue satin ribbon, a certificate with his name written in fancy script, and a savings bond for fifty dollars. The photograph appeared in newspapers all over Wisconsin. Even Gramma Lu's newspaper carried it.

Afterward his parents framed
Yellow Sky
and hung it above the fireplace, replacing a weaving that Ben's mother had done in college. Many times a day Ben passed it, sometimes noticing it, sometimes not.

Ben's mother had even tried to arrange for private lessons for him with a painting professor at the university, a professor whose work she particularly admired. She made an appointment with the man and showed him a portfolio of Ben's work. Ben was relieved to hear that the professor had politely declined, stating that his busy schedule wouldn't allow it.

“But he said you were extremely talented.” His mother had glowed as she reported that bit of information. “Gifted.”

“Whatever,” was Ben's weak response.

During the first days that followed Ben's birthday, the idea of a studio of his own became more and more of a burden to him. He didn't want the room. He didn't want to feel pressured into being an artist. Although Ben liked art, he had no real desire to “be” anything, much less an artist. What about a basketball player? Or a journalist? Or some kind of professional traveler, if there was such a thing? Occasionally he imagined taking over his parents' bookstore one day. But there were too many choices for him to be narrowed down so soon. And if it took as long as it had to reach age twelve, it would be forever until he needed to decide what he wanted to do with his life.

Ben wished he had never painted
Yellow Sky
.

Another blank white day had become a still, hot night, continuing the endless pattern. The moon was nearly full with a blurred halo—a dandelion gone to seed. Ben and his mother were sitting out on the front steps. Ben's father was up in his new studio; jazz from his CD player drifted down to them, a comfort to Ben, the next best thing to having his father right there.

Ben ran a sweaty can of cream soda along his calf until he shivered. He wiggled around and settled himself on the concrete stoop. Already, Ben had gone back inside the house three times. Once to turn off the porch light that was drawing so many bugs it looked like a prop for a horror movie. Once to get another can of cream soda for himself and the bottle of red wine from the kitchen counter for his mother. And lastly to search for insect repellent to ward off the mosquitoes. They bothered Ben much more than his parents. Itchy red bites dotted his arms and legs.