‘I can’t believe you expect me to make porridge for you.’
‘Your mother does.’
‘My mother is more of a sucker than I am.’
‘She’s not a sucker. She’s generous, kind and caring. Whereas you…’
The light in the room had got a bit brighter. I could see him studying me and felt the childish urge to pull a face. ‘Why are you still in my room?’
‘Which one are you again?’
‘You know which one I am.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I’m Taylor.’
‘And where do you fit in?’
‘You know where I fit in, Ray. Stop trying to make me think you’re senile. I know you’re not.’
‘I’m an old man.’
‘Ancient,’ I agreed.
‘I don’t know how to work the oven.’
‘Because it’s complicated or because you’ve never bothered to learn?’
He shrugged. ‘A little bit of both.’
‘Fine.’ I tried not to feel too resentful, aware that as far as he was concerned, I’d had a full night’s sleep. ‘I’ll get up soon and make you porridge. Will that make you happy?’
‘I’ll be happy when you actually get up. You need to take me into town after breakfast too.’
‘Why?’
‘I have a doctor’s appointment. And I want to go to the grocery store.’
I sighed. ‘Fine.’
‘When are you going to get up?’
‘Soon. Now get out of my room.’
He shuffled off, banging his walker frame against the wall, then paused by the door. ‘Do you really?’
‘Do I really what?’
‘Know karate.’
‘Wake me up like that again and you’ll find out.’
He left, mumbles trailing behind him as he slowly shuffled his way down the hallway. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling, unable to shake the feeling that my life had taken a wrong turn somewhere. Even though I knew this was only temporary, and that in a few weeks’ time I’d be back in my own sleek little house, for now, under this roof, inthisbedroom, I felt… wrong. I didn’t belong here. Not any more.
My room was exactly as I’d left it. Actually, that wasn’t true. I left it in the state in which I lived in it. Messy and cluttered and disorganized. My mother worked her magic and turned it into the room she had always dreamed of it being. It still had my furniture and some of my belongings, but it was clean and tidy and like it was one of those staged photos you see when a real estate company is trying to sell a house. The walls and roof were painted white, just like through the rest of the house, and the carpet was a kind of pale peach color that I’d always hated. A large mirror hung on one wall, with a small, standing wardrobe in the space behind the door. There was a black wing-back chair in the opposite corner where I used to dump all my dirty clothes, and the bed took up pretty much the rest of the room. Except for my favorite part. A long window, almost the width of the room, looked out over the ocean, and in front of that, from wall to wall, was an inbuilt desk. It had a painted white top, with beautiful brown wooden drawers below on each side, with a space for a chair so someone could sit in the middle. My mother had added her own touches, a basket of dried hydrangea flowers in one corner, some seashells she’d no doubt collected from the shore. Bleached white from sitting in the sun. There was a little wooden house, for no apparent reason, and one of the kitschy lobster ornaments she found so endearing and that I hated.
I used to spend hours at that desk, staring out at the ocean for inspiration for my art. It all began in here. My sketches that, at first, were very much for my eyes only. Rough and clumsily drawn, but every single one helped me hone my skills. Sketching had broadened into painting, and now my large, ocean-inspired paintings were slowly becoming more sought after. My Instagram page even had over two hundred thousand followers. Unfortunately, art sales alone weren’t enough to pay the bills, so to help with that, I’d become a tattoo artist as well. Now I was booked out months in advance. I specialized in colorful ocean themes. Waves, sunsets, sea creatures.
