Rooms(6)

Trenton flushes. Water runs; pipes shudder; the system pulses. Rhythm and flow; ingestion, excretion. Input, output. These are laws of the universe.

He pounds down the central staircase—(the feeling of a doctor knocking on a kneecap, testing for reflexes; painless and unsettling)—and slouches against the kitchen door frame.

“Trenton!” Caroline says, extending her arms to him, although he makes no move to go toward her and she stays where she is. “How was your drive?”

“What happened to you?” he responds.

“What do you mean?” Caroline’s voice is the same as it always was—high, shot through with nervous laughter, as though someone has just told a joke whose punch line she hasn’t completely understood.

“I mean you left just after us.” Trenton goes to the Spider and slumps into a chair, tilting his head back to lean against the dark stone walls of the fireplace. He seems exhausted by the energy required to cross the room.

“Traffic,” Caroline replies shortly. “Terrible traffic.”

“Bullshit,” Sandra says.

“Sandra, please.” I’ve never been able to abide her mouth; she’s worse than Ed was.

“It’s bullshit. She was in a bar having a tall one. Ten to one. I’ll bet you.”

“It was smooth sailing for us,” Trenton says neutrally. He watches his mother through half-narrowed eyes. She moves around the kitchen, picking things up and replacing them: an empty vase, whose glass is crusted with a thin film of brown; a balled-up napkin; a bottle of vitamins, cap removed. Even though she’s heavy now, she still manages to give the impression of a moth: fluttering and fragile.

“How strange,” she says. “There must have been an accident. It was a parking lot on I-80.”

“You made it,” Minna says. She, too, has come downstairs. Her bra and the contours of her spine are visible through her T-shirt.

Caroline looks from Minna to Trenton. Her voice turns shriller. “Well, of course I made it. For God’s sake. Anyone would think I had . . . ” She turns to Minna. “And you were probably speeding the whole way.”

“Did you see it?” Trenton asks.

“Did I see what?” Caroline snaps.

“The accident,” he says. The more agitated his mom gets, the further he sinks into stillness. Only his eyes are moving. “Did you see it?”

“No, I didn’t . . . ” She breaks off, setting down a coaster with a bang. “What are you saying?”

He lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. Thought there might have been a fire. A head lying in the road or something.”

Minna snorts.

“Trenton. How can you—?” Caroline shakes her head. “I really don’t know what’s wrong with you. How could you even say that?”

“It’s a normal question,” Minna says. She peels herself away from the wall and is across the room in a flash. She sits in a chair across from Trenton and draws her knees to her chest. For a second, she looks just like the old Minna.

“Normal,” Caroline repeats. “It’s morbid, that’s what it is. It’s horrible. I didn’t come here to be attacked.” She’s opening and shutting each cabinet now. Each time she slams a door, it sends a tiny shiver through me.

“The liquor’s in the dining room now,” Minna says.

Sandra says, “I told you she was drunk.”

Caroline shoots Minna a dirty look and stalks out of the kitchen. The lights are off in the hall. For a moment Caroline stands, disoriented, and I feel almost bad for her: this new hulk of a woman, changed and old, in a space she no longer recognizes.

Trenton and Minna sit for a moment in silence.

Minna says, “You shouldn’t tease her. You’re the one who told me to be nice.”

“I wasn’t teasing,” Trenton replies.

“It is morbid, you know. I don’t know why you’re so fixated on accidents all of a sudden. What’s that game on your iPhone?”

Trenton sighs deeply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do so. Crash, or whatever. Where you’re always sending characters over cliffs or into fireballs. There’s no goal to it, is there? Except to kill them, I mean.”

In the dining room, Caroline has located the liquor cabinet. She removes a tumbler and pours a half glass of vodka, straight. She downs it in one go, then pours another and does the same.

“Points,” Trenton says. His eyelids flutter.

Minna stares at him. “What?”

“Points,” Trenton repeats. “You get points for killing them. That’s the goal.”

In the dining room, Caroline wipes out the glass with a tissue and then replaces it. She takes a wineglass next and selects a bottle of red wine. She is much calmer now.

“Well, I think it’s idiotic,” Minna says. I’m reminded of the way she used to stand in the dining room, telling Trenton where to place the candlesticks when they were playing Roll-Your-Ball. There, she would say, in a tone of exasperation, pointing. No, there. That’s slanted. Don’t be stupid, Trenton. It will make the ball go crooked.

Trenton mutters something. What he says is: Like the Heliotrope’s any better. When I was alive, I doubt I would have understood him. But now we are dispersed among the sound. We are the waves; we carry the crests of his voice to her mouth, and her voice back to him, and so on. We are the endless swells.