When she’s gone Ma reads me the rabbit one, he’s a Peter but not the Saint. He wears old-fashioned clothes and gets chased by a gardener, I don’t know why he bothers swiping vegetables. Swiping’s bad but if I was a swiper I’d swipe good stuff like cars and chocolates. It’s not a very excellent book but it’s excellent to have so many new ones. In Room I had five but now it’s plus five, that equals ten. Actually I don’t have the old five books now so I guess I just have the new five. The ones in Room, maybe they don’t belong to anyone anymore.
Grandma only stays a little while because we have another visitor, that’s our lawyer Morris. I didn’t know we had one, like the courtroom planet where people shout and the judge bangs the hammer. We meet him in a room in the not upstairs, there’s a table and a smell like sweet. His hair is extra curly. While he and Ma talk I practice blowing my nose.
“This paper that’s printed your fifth-grade photo, for instance,” he’s saying, “we’d have a strong case for breach of privacy there.” The
“You mean like suing? That’s the last thing on my mind,” she tells him. I show her my tissue with my blowing in it, she does a thumbs-up.
Morris nods a lot. “I’m just saying, you have to consider your future, yours and the boy’s.” That’s me, the boy. “Yeah, the Cumberland’s waiving its fees in the short term, and I’ve set up a fund for your fans, but I have to tell you, sooner or later there’s going to be bills like you wouldn’t believe. Rehab, fancy therapies, housing, educational costs for both of you. .”
Ma rubs her eyes.
“I don’t want to rush you.”
“You said — my fans?”
“Sure,” says Morris. “Donations are pouring in, about a sack a day.”
“A sack of what?”
“You name it. I grabbed some things at random—” He lifts up a big plastic bag from behind his chair and takes parcels out.
“You opened them,” says Ma, looking in the envelopes.
“Believe me, you need this stuff filtered. F-E-C-E-S, and that’s just for starters.”
“Why somebody sent us poo?” I ask Ma.
Morris is staring.
“He’s a good speller,” she tells him.
“Ah, you asked why, Jack? Because there’s a lot of crazies out there.”
I thought the crazies were in here in the Clinic getting helped.
“But most of what you’re receiving is from well-wishers,” he says. “Chocolates, toys, that kind of thing.”
Chocolates!
“I thought I’d bring you the flowers first as they’re giving my PA a migraine.” He’s lifting up lots of flowers in plastic invisible, that’s what the smell.
“What toys are the toys?” I whisper.
“Look, here’s one,” says Ma, pulling it out of an envelope. It’s a little wooden train. “Don’t snatch.”
“Sorry.” I choo-choo it all along the table down the leg and over the floor up the wall that’s blue in this room.
“Intense interest from a number of networks,” Morris is saying, “you might consider doing a book, down the road. .” Ma’s mouth isn’t friendly. “You think we should sell ourselves before somebody else does.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that. I’d imagine you’ve a lot to teach the world. The whole living-on-less thing, it couldn’t be more zeitgeisty.” Ma bursts out laughing.
Morris puts his hands up flat. “But it’s up to you, obviously. One day at a time.”
She’s reading some of the letters. “ ‘Little Jack, you wonderful boy, enjoy every moment because you deserve it because you have been quite literally to Hell and back!’ ”
“Who said that?” I ask.
She turns the page over. “We don’t know her.”
“Why she said I was wonderful?”
“She’s just heard about you on the TV.”
I’m looking in the envelopes that are fattest for more trains.
“Here, these look good,” says Ma, holding up a little box of chocolates.
“There’s more.” I’ve finded a really big box.
“Nah, that’s too many, they’d make us sick.”
I’m sick already with my cold so I wouldn’t mind.
“We’ll give those to someone,” says Ma.
“Who?”
“The nurses, maybe.”
“Toys and so forth, I can pass on to a kids hospital,” says Morris.
“Great idea. Choose some you want to keep,” Ma tells me.
“How many?”
“As many as you like.” She’s reading another letter. “ ‘God bless you and your sweet saint of a son, I pray you discover all the beautiful things this world has to offer all your dreams come true and your path in life is paved with happiness and gold.’ ” She puts it on the table. “How am I going to find the time to answer all these?”
Morris shakes his head. “That bast — the accused, shall we say, he robbed you of the seven best years of your life already. Personally, I wouldn’t waste a second more.” “How do you know they would have been the best years of my life?”
He shrugs. “I just mean — you were nineteen, right?”
There’s super cool stuff, a car with wheels that go
“Wow! That’s loud,” says Morris.
“Too loud,” says Ma.
I do it one more time.
“Jack—”
I put it down. I find a velvety crocodile as long as my leg, a rattle with a bell in it, a clown face when I press the nose it says
