A New Room at Twenty-Four

by Lisa Murphy-Lamb

It is my last night in the House of My Father. I sit on a wooden chair between two neatly made beds and look around the room at all that held comfort over the last twenty-four years. Since Jennifer ran, I’ve used her bed for my own secret library, piling books two high under her mattress, bolstering its sagging springs with biography and Russian tales, slipping murder under the canary yellow comforter with its straight stitching, and pushing noir under the pillows, out of sight. My books! All my books! Those I can’t take with me I disposed of in Little Free Libraries along the rise and dip streets of Ramsay. Now, under the bed only dust bunnies tumble where tales once simmered in wait.

The wallpaper will stay, of course. Vertical lines of orange and brown flower-faces have looked down upon me as I slept, as I trembled, as I read by flashlight, in the dark, in secret, and during those times when Father banged out the back door to exchange bullshit stories with neighbourhood men on nearby porches. The wallpaper will stay, of course, chosen by a mother already gone.

On my dresser a porcelain mermaid winks, knowing full well my escape plans. A Ritz cracker tin bursts with a collection of bird feathers, scavenged in fields and bushes, a reminder to take flight, already taken out of hiding from my top drawer and placed beside the shimmery sea-maid. My globe will soon find a new window sill to rotate, and the paint by number mountain scene that leans against the wall ever since Jennifer painted it, is ready to be hung somewhere new. I’ll leave my clock radio until the morning, depending on it one more time in this room to rouse me from my sleep, if I manage to find any. I slip binoculars, usually hung off the closet door handle, into the duffel already crammed with books, as well as the painted rock mushroom diorama made in an Altoid box at Sunday school camp when I was a child and clung only to Bible stories.

Father sits at the kitchen table surrounded by prescription pill bottles, smoking a cigarette and rolling dimes. I say my good nights to him on my way back from the bathroom, toothbrush, soap, and shampoo concealed under my pyjama top, held against my stomach by the elastic of flannel pants. He looks at me, says, ‘turn off the hall light, would ya, Carl,’ and shoots me a look that makes me feel, as it always has, that he wishes to strangle me. In my head I respond, ‘This is your last time to say good night. You may want to change your tone with me.’

I awake at five to voices on QR77. I dress in three sets of clothing, pants upon pants upon pants, shirt over t-shirt topped by a sweater, three underwear, three socks, a pair of ankle high boots, laced tightly at the back door when I leave. I bundle my bedding in the bottom sheet, make a knot. The rest of my takings are stashed in another duffle in the neighbour’s hedge. A note is left on the kitchen table where He will return to sit for his coffee and his pastry. Gone forever with my books, my late-at-night packed objects, I leave His house finally. The note says nothing more than ‘Enjoy your coffee.’

By half past five I sit on a bench on the north side of Fort Calgary, face the river under an arched scarlet sky and stroke my beard. I open my bag, take out the classifieds, and study three rooms I might rent. Looking at my wristwatch, I know it was too early to knock on the first door, so I fold the section, place it in the pocket of my jacket, think of my father putting coffee to lips while cursing me. I pull out a copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes and read while the sky splinters into red and blue shards and my father, no doubt, paces the floors, realizing he is alone.

I am twenty-four, too old to be running away from home, seven years later than Jennifer. Twenty-four is my year, though.

At nine o’clock, I leave the bench and walk along the river pathway, past Billingsgate Fish shop, through the part of town with the sad history. I remember when I broke my leg in three places and He wouldn’t believe me. I remember my first A in English, a ‘sissy subject,’ yet He was the one afraid of books, not me. I feel intoxicated by new-found freedom, if only a few scant blocks way from where I slept last night. To the few pedestrians I pass I know I look like a man wandering without purpose. They are as wrong as my Father has always been. In my pocket I have money for rent and three possible rooms to land in, circled in blue ink.

Crossing through the gravel of the parking lot the blue and red of the condo building bulks before me. A few people walk past on the sidewalk, a car whizzes past, I hear a horn. From my pocket, I pull out the classifieds and confirm the address is the house next to the condo. It looks like a secret.

A woman, dressed in a uniform, her hair undone, a cigarette in her mouth, answers my knock. She directs me to the business entrance at the rear of the house. I ring the bell. Three brass locks and a burglar proof-catch release one at a time and the thick door opens. Within the half hour, the room is mine. It is the seventeenth of July, 2003, and I have found a new room.

I stand at the door of my chamber, drop my duffel to the floor, hear the same ten o’clock train bound for Medicine Hat whistle past as I did from my old bedroom in the House of My Father. The woman in the uniform, now wrapped in a housecoat, walks from her lodging to our shared bathroom and closes the door. Water runs while I sit on the edge of the single bed, feel the springs collapse under my weight. Know a house with a woman is a lucky one, I remember this to be true. I unpack my books, stack them along the floorboards, take care to create a library ordered by author’s last name.

Soon my room—my room!—is tattooed with my pilfered belongings. The mermaid winks from the worn dresser, binoculars hang from the heavy window latch. My globe, I spin on my bedside table, but I do not need to travel any further.

In my new room, my new companion, I think to future meals cooked in the communal kitchen. To me, shuffling off to this room to eat alone. My new companion, keeping me company and my late-night secrets, encouraging me to make mistakes.

I check my life-guide, notes dashed and dotted throughout the years on pages of Moby Dick. On the inside cover, I read the five rules by which to survive on my own:

1. Find enough food to eat and eat it. 2. Find your own books and keep them. 3. Find a dry, warm place to sleep and sleep there. 4. Never let the light go out.

Noises of my housemates snap-crackle from the other rooms under the mermaid’s careful watch. My painting hangs crooked upon its nail, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind one bit. I turn on the radio of my clock, find a station that plays fiddle music, ruffle my beard, open the Altoid box, air out the tiny mushrooms. This room does not frighten me into silence. I turn on my bedside lamp to the sound of the front door closing, dishes rattling in the kitchen sink down the hall. I choose A Clockwork Orange from my floorboard library stacked ten high and leaned back on my headboard, crack open the cover, and read on top of the covers. I am a man now.