The Birthday Room Read Free Page A

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.
    â€œStupid 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.
    â€œI can see that.”
    â€œWill 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.
    â€œDon’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.

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    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.
    â€œIt’s gorgeous,” his mother had said, tipping her head and craning her neck to study the brushwork. She smiled.
    â€œIt’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