Sometimes, when the dark feels thick and too cold, I don’t want to go down the stairs. But if I turn on the light, the TV is down there, down in the rec room, and the laundry room is down there too, the warm white place and Mom in there folding things and singing soft songs. I ask her who she’s singing for. You and me, she says, and she keeps on folding, singing for both of us. She sings by herself when she thinks I’m not around. Mom does everything.
And the friendly comfy beanbag chair is down there, in front of the TV, and so is the big red couch with the funny rough feel to its cushions. Dad’s wine cellar is down there too. The laundry room is on one side of the TV and the wine cellar and Dad’s workshop on the other side. Dad’s workshop is cluttered and smells sweet and smooth, like sawdust and what makes things shiny. Varnish he says. He showed me the can and let me spread the varnish with a little paintbrush onto wood and it made the wood shiny. Behind the workshop is Dad’s wine cellar, where it’s dark the most, even with the lights on. There’s a wooden door with bars like a jail door but sometimes I open it and go in and play monsters. It’s good in there because it’s scary and there’s cobwebs. But I almost never go in anymore because once when I was in there I saw how dusty all the bottles were and I just wanted to clean one but it dropped and got wrecked all over the floor. Then, when we were going to the hospital so the doctor could fix my foot that I cut on the broken bottle, Mom shouted at me but Dad said not to shout. Then he told me not to ever go in his wine cellar ever again. So I hardly ever. And when I do I never touch the bottles, no matter how dusty they are.
The rec room is big and rectangular. Rec for rectangular, maybe. Christmas is in that room every year, with the big green spiky tree that Dad takes out of the box and puts together, the blue and green and red lights and shiny tinsel and candy canes and little ornaments we all put on, and the angel, white and pink plastic, scraping the ceiling. Dad is the only one tall enough to put it on. Every year there’s lots of presents, big and small and waiting. I wish they were all for me. I got a magician set once and a Light Bright and a yellow Tonka bulldozer and a Bearenstein Bears book and a soldier puzzle and a wooden block set and other stuff too. I hate getting clothes. I always get socks and underwear. I thought I would get new Star Wars men, so I burned all my old ones like they were in battle, but I never got new ones. I stole one from my friend because he had so many and I didn’t think he’d miss only one. It was one of the ones I burned. Maybe Santa found out I stole and that’s why I didn’t get any for Christmas.
Easter is also in the rec room, and there are chocolate eggs in pink and baby blue foil hidden under the red couch. I had baby blue jammies a long time ago, and I was wearing them and I saw a V shadow on the wood panel wall, long thin antenna things. The Easter Bunny’s ears! But it was dark down there. How could I see a shadow in the dark? Maybe it wants me to see. Maybe it’s lonely. I bet the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus get lonely. The Tooth Fairy too. No one ever gets to see them because they always come so late at night. They must not have a bedtime or else their mom is really nice and lets them stay up. Sometimes Mom lets me stay up and watch TV with her in her bed when it’s dark way down in the rec room and Dad is still in the hospital. She says he helps people there, so it’s OK if he’s late. She says I’m good company. She says if I go to bed right when she says it’s time to go to bed she’ll bring me ice cream from the kitchen. I like when she goes to the kitchen because I get to change the channels and watch what I want. I love to push the buttons. I can push them really fast and change the channels really fast. And when she comes back with my ice cream I love that too. Dad never gives me ice cream except once in the rec room, and I got sick.
I like to watch TV in Mom’s room at night, but I like it in the rec room too, because of the beanbag chair. I can curl up right in it and fall asleep. But I wouldn’t sleep down there for a whole night. No way. Maybe with the lights on. In the dark I always think there’s eyes watching me. Maybe because in one corner, beside the red couch, where the Christmas tree goes up at Christmas time, there’s a knothole at eye level, a little hole filled with dark. I can look into that dark because it’s behind the wall. It can’t get me from behind the wall. I like to stick my finger in, hoping it won’t get chopped off. Dad will bend down and put his finger in there but when he pulls it out, his finger’s gone! But then he puts his hand behind his back, and when he shows it to me again, his finger’s back! Dad likes to play with the hole. He’s a good trickster. But Mom gets mad. She says the hole is dirty and I shouldn’t stick anything where it doesn’t belong. She says that to Dad and she gives him a look.
The thick green carpet in the rec room is different from the thin brown stuff padding the stairs. I like to drag my feet when I walk through the rec room. It tickles, but not too much. Just enough to feel good. The carpet is soft and deep and hides things. Once, way past Easter, I found an Easter egg still in its foil hidden in the carpet. It must have been hidden there and no one ever found it until I stepped on it. It was squishy, but it still tasted good and chocolaty. I love chocolate, especially when it’s a surprise.
Mom doesn’t like surprises. When I brought home the salamander that Dad showed me up at the cottage, Mom said get rid of it. I was going to keep it in the rec room because the carpet was so thick and deep, like grass. The salamander would’ve been happy, just like if he lived in the grass up at the cottage. But Mom didn’t like that idea. She made me open the jar and let the salamander go in the back yard. She said salamanders aren’t supposed to live in rec rooms, that rec rooms are proper family rooms, not wild jungles, and that little boys shouldn’t keep salamanders as pets, and then she made me wash my hands not just once but twice. Dad said Mom was absolutely right, but when he said it he winked at me. That means he doesn’t think Mom’s right, but he doesn’t want her to know that. Dad says it’s sometimes better to make someone think something, even if it’s not true, just for their own protection. What Mom doesn’t know won’t hurt her, he says. But I shouldn’t tell Mom that, because Dad says if I did it would complicate things, and I wouldn’t be doing him any favours. A favour is a good thing, Dad said. Favours teach trust and cooperation, he said. If you do someone a favour then one day they’ll do you one. It’s kind of like Christmas, only every day, and not just in the rec room. Sometimes Mom says to Dad, Do me a favour and piss off. I bet Mom and Dad do favours with each other all the time.
Mom is being busy at home doing everything. Busy like hell, she says when she doesn’t see me. If she isn’t busy in the laundry room, she’s busy in the kitchen, or outside in the garden, or upstairs in the bedroom. Dad is being busy at the hospital, not coming home. Busy like hell, Mom says. Do me a favour, she says because she’s so very busy. Go up to your room and play there until I’m done cleaning.
I think I want to go down to the rec room instead, where the TV is, and the beanbag chair, and the tickly carpet. That’s where my feet really want to go. But Mom grabs me before I can go down the stairs.
I said go up to your room, she says.
But—
You heard me.
Mom is always mad now, ever since she came home from the cottage and saw what was in the rec room.
My room is upstairs, beside the bathroom. There’s games and books and stuff, but I feel like just lying on my bed. My ceiling has glow-in-the-dark stickers of stars and planets and outer space stuff, but you can only see them at nighttime, in the dark. They make the dark less scary and more fun. I can see out the window from my bed, but it’s raining. Rain in summertime is stupid because it wrecks going outside because rains makes the sky get dark, but summertime is supposed to be bright. But rain makes things grow, so I guess it’s good. But still it’s stupid because you can’t go out and play.
I rub my bare feet over the floor, but it doesn’t tickle. It just feels rough and hot and yucky. I wish there was a knothole in my room to play with. Maybe there is. Mom won’t know, which is good, because what she knows hurts her. I start to feel around my wall for a knothole hiding under the wallpaper. It’s Bugs Bunny wallpaper. I wanted Spice Girls, but Mom wouldn’t let me get Spice Girls. She said they’re floozies. I think that’s what she said. When I asked what’s a floozy she said never mind, you’re not getting Spice Girls wallpaper. So Bugs Bunny’s OK, I guess. Maybe Bugs Bunny knows the Easter Bunny. Then the Easter Bunny won’t be so lonely.
Wait. What’s that in Elmer Fudd’s eye? I can fit my finger in. It feels cool and dusty and secret. I wonder if it bothers Elmer Fudd that my finger is all the way in his eye. I can wiggle it around. There’s lots of room in there behind the wall. It feels like a whole other room in there. I have to look. I have to see.
Elmer Fudd is just as tall as me. I can stand as tall as I am and look into his eye. I can see something through the hole, and I know what it is. It’s the rec room. It’s not dark. I can see myself with ice cream. Dad is in there too, and the lady from the hospital. Dad brought her home and said he’s entertaining her, and he gave me ice cream. I can eat as much as I want, right from the container. But soon I get sick. I don’t want to look anymore. I can see myself sitting on the very end of the couch. There’s no Christmas tree, no Easter eggs, just me and ice cream and Dad and his lady from the hospital. Then Mom comes home early from the cottage and finds Dad and his lady. Then I get sick on the red cushions and Mom and Dad get mad and start fighting and the lady from the hospital looks like she wants to be sick too. I run all the way to the upstairs bathroom because it’s right beside my room. I can hear them shouting and screaming from all the way in my room. I won’t go back to the rec room. I’ll just look at it through Elmer Fudd’s eye. It’s not dark in there but I wish it was. I wish I couldn’t see Mom and Dad getting wrecked.
