A Small Room
BY J.R. MCCONVEY
Photo: Pixabay
I.
It was on a small island, miles from any coast, that I first learned to live in a small room. Late in the year, when the light began to wane and the shadows grew long and the grey rains fell, smelling of fish and winter, I found myself newly alone. I would stare out the window at the mountain in the distance, and think how the apartment was empty even though I was in it. The mountain, with its soft, dusky silhouette, was like a cloud of repose; while the two-bedroom apartment felt huge and untrustworthy, a chasm of space that was both watching and erasing me at once.
The living room was the first to go. The small couch had never been comfortable, and the one chair we’d had was made from a cheap metal frame that cut off circulation in your legs. It was easy to abandon these things.
Although I sat on the floor for longer, it began to feel absurd: the ceiling looming over me like a smothering veil, the walls like stained monoliths, sweating in the damp. What did I want with this room? The plants in it were dead and had been for weeks—ever since she’d left to go home and stand vigil at the hospital where her father was dying, and would die.
I slept in the bed and cooked simple meals in the galley kitchen; otherwise, I moved my life into the spare bedroom. Thin cushions on the floor made a kind of nest. A low wooden table provided a place to work and eat, and served as a tiny cell I could project into, as I slumped next to it and gazed into the space beneath. If only I was small enough, I thought, to fit in there. Then my world would be reordered, everything at a different scale, no longer so tied to the size and shape of the sadness I knew.
On my laptop computer, I ignored emails and watched endless movies. Rather, I put on movies and let them play while I peered out through the crack between window and frame, gazing at the mountain’s peak. It sang to me like a of shimmering droplet of holy dew. Sometimes I felt myself near it, the energy of volcanic rock under my feet. Mostly, though, it remained unreachable. I had kept a single small cup for drinking white liquor, and saluted the mountain in a stream of lonely toasts, one clear shot after another, the numbness a further cushion.
With the contraction of my physical world, I became hypersensitive to time and movement, such that even the spare bedroom with its door closed felt as though it were expanding, unfolding into an amphitheatre. The kitchen felt as distant as a strange horizon, cloaked in murk and doom. I scuttled out, braving it long enough to collect a kettle, a hot plate, some instant noodles, and the pills to take with me into my den. I went back out later, after dark, for a bowl and a spoon to use as a mortar and pestle; the experience left me quaking.
Once, we spoke over video chat. At intervals, the little frame that contained her face would explode into pixelated cubes and freeze for seconds at a time. She couldn’t see it when I hid her face with my browser, calling up the pictures of the mountain that I’d taken through my crack in the window. I couldn’t tell if she was doing something similar on her end. We sat, across from one another and across an ocean, our screens letting us hide, giving over our seeing and feeling to wires and circuitry. Before signing off, I said I love you, like I was putting a coin into a slot. But the screen froze again and I didn’t hear her reply.
The bedroom became cavernous, and I pulled the pillows and comforter into the den along with the space heater. Now I rarely went further than the bathroom, vaulting around the corner so my feet wouldn’t touch the hall floor, a whorl of dread turning in my stomach. With every hour, the expansion of the cosmos infused the walls of the apartment, drawing them farther out, pulling the shadows into a distance I could barely confront. I stared at my screen—movies, white noise, the lulling sway of the screensaver—and ground small wheels of opiate into white dust to stir into water. Lying on my side, bones crushed against thin pillows, I craned my head above the widow frame to get a glimpse of the mountain, terrified it would see me looking and turn away.
For a while, locked in, I subsisted on noodles, chips and dried seaweed. But I didn’t intend to starve—not out here, in this cavernous room. I ordered food, asking the couriers to come into my unlocked apartment and leave the delivery at the closed door to my den, where I would leave an envelope full of money. If they objected, I hung up and tried another. I came to rely on certain regular orders: pizza from the spot downstairs, a galaxy away; sweet and sour chicken from the place around the corner, in a darkness that had receded so far as to become null. When I heard the door close and was sure the courier was gone, I would crack the door to the den and stretch my frame out, spiderlike, reaching into the darkness of the outer apartment, extending until I was almost lying flat on the ground, and grab the plastic-wrapped Styrofoam containers of food to drag them back to the only inside that was left.
One morning I woke up and felt the room standing over me, hunchback, an inquisitive wolf. I uncurled from where I lay on the mattress of thin pillows and got to my feet. As I stood, the wolf lurched backward, as though sucked by a vacuum, and the walls followed after, the room billowing outward like an infinite white balloon ruffling into shadow. I screamed and got into a crouch. There was nothing but terrible space, an expanse I couldn’t fathom, a living fabric woven from the souls of the dead, all the more terrifying for being invisible, a nothing, a non-thing; not real. I crawled over to the table and tried to cram myself in underneath, folding my body into spirals, but I would not fit without dislocating a bone. Huddled in my nest of thin pillows, I stayed coiled like a pill bug for an indeterminate time, shuddering and coming to understand what I would have to do.
The island was not home: this much I knew. The small room was not home. The terrible expansion of these spaces would never abate. What I needed was an inviolable sanctuary, a place inaccessible to the vacuum. No bunker nor tunnel nor cave of stone would do.
Now, on my knees, I would have to ask the mountain for help.
There on the floor, beneath the table, I curled myself tighter and tighter, constricting my bones like a huge mouse bending its ribs inward to fit into an impossible space. Then I called on the mountain, sang its praises in excelsis and begged for its help in finding deliverance—and, with a shudder that came from the deepest veins of molten rock slithering below the ocean floor, I began shedding molecules, my body folding inward like an origami fractal, smaller and smaller with every flip. In this way, and this way alone, could I find the final refuge.
This is how I made my way across the sea: my body, my frame, performing all the necessary actions, showing the correct ID, checking baggage, boarding the flight; while, inside, the tiny me piloted the larger vessel with distraction, contained within my own architecture, subsumed in the warmth and safety of pulsing blood.
II.
I heard the news early in the year, before most people here were paying much attention. A new SARS-type virus had been discovered in China. It was notable or dangerous enough to win a mention on the CBC’s six o’clock radio broadcast. But it was still hardly an emergency, being so far away.
On January 23, the city of Wuhan went into lockdown. I’d passed through Wuhan in my early twenties, when I was traveling around China. Even then it was huge, as vast and sprawling as any North American city. It is home to 11 million people, and an urban centre for many millions more in the surrounding countryside of Hubei province. I knew how ominous it was that a city of that size was being locked down. But in the Western imagination, Wuhan is an interchangeable, anonymous metropolis nestled in China’s belly. (The country is a chicken; look at a map.)
Only if you knew where to look on Twitter would you see the footage of trucks spraying down the streets of Wuhan with chemical disinfectant and people being welded into buildings. Even then, it was hard to concede the reality of it, because it looked so much like what we’d seen in the movies. Humans don’t like believing in things that will drastically inconvenience them.
On February 22, my family and I went to Costco. As I placed cases of canned chickpeas and tomatoes and bulk packages of batteries into the cart, my wife raised an eyebrow and said, “Oh, we’re there?” I just nodded.
That night, I went to see the singer Natasha Khan, who performs as Bat for Lashes, play at the Phoenix Concert Theatre. I told the friend I was with that this would probably be the last concert we’d be at for a while. He asked why. I told him what I knew. The next day, he took his family to Costco to prepare. When they got back, his wife telephoned his mom to say she thought he was going insane.
I’d lied about that concert being the last one for me: on the fourth of March , tense and adrenalized, I went to see the Swedish metal band Cult of Luna play at the Opera House in Toronto’s east end. I remember basking in the noise and the strobing light, savoring the feeling of having live music shake my bones, knowing that before it would happen again, millions of people around the world would likely die.
On March 11, the World Health Organization declared that what was then still just called ‘the novel coronavirus’ had officially become a pandemic. On March 21, Canada closed its border with the US.
By then, my friend who’d called her husband’s mom to say he was crazy had started calling me the ‘Plague Messiah.’
By then, we were all afraid.
One day in the winter of that year—or maybe the next, sometime when we were all inside—I got wondering, again, about life in a small room.
By this point, we were living in a good-sized house, and lucky for it; a lot of people in this city don’t even bother to think about owning a house because the prices are so obscene. In this house, I have an office, a room of my own to work and sometimes to hide in—which, again, I’m privileged to have.
The point is, when we were all inside, I had places to go. In theory, I was comfortable.
But it made no difference on that grey morning when I lifted the blind and saw, instead of our modest yard with the garden gnome in the hydrangea, the mountain staring back at me, a black hump in an impossible distance that looked utterly real.
I lurched backward as though struck. What was the mountain doing here, across the ocean from where it was meant to be? Why had it grafted itself onto the space outside my window?
Then the sky began to recede, a great sucking rush of steaky cloud and black space behind it, and I understood.
There was only one place to be truly safe.
III.
What surprised me most, outside of his presence, was the comfort in which the other, smaller me lived.
I hadn’t, of course, expected to meet another tiny version of me inside the larger me. Yet Other Me seemed quite at home. The nook wherein he’d set up shop—likely somewhere in the pericardial cavity—had been arranged like a comfy den, with various lobes and fatty tissues used for furniture. Other Me moved about the space like an old person tending to a home they’d inhabited for decades, maybe forever.
When I arrived, Other Me looked up and smiled in a bemused way.
“You’re me,” I said.
“Who did you expect?” Other Me said. “Cthulhu?”
It was a very me thing to say.
Other Me fiddled with something I couldn’t see (maybe just his hands, which I also do). “You’re here for the small room,” he said.
“How did you know?” I asked, not thinking.
“Duh,” said Other Me, shrugging and looking around.
I looked around, too, searching for passageways that might lead to other, unoccupied inner chambers. The light shone pink and lustrous, like the inside of a shell.
Other Me noticed what I was doing.
“This is the best spot, I’ve checked” he said. “You know us, always trying to get the lay of the land.”
I nodded, because it was true. At cottages and concerts and dinner tables, I always do a location scout, of sorts, before claiming the best space.
I poked at a big taupe globule that reminded me of foie gras, gauging whether it could support my weight as a sort of divan.
“I’d assumed that you had, uh, come up,” I said to Other Me. “That I was you. Or, you were me.”
“Not the case,” Other Me said, shaking his head. “I’ve been here the whole time. Haven’t left since… what, 2008? Don’t really bother keeping track of the years anymore.”
“Do you know what’s happening outside?” I asked, not sure if the word—outside— meant the same thing down here in the cavity.
“Not all that interested, to be honest,” said Other Me. “I check in when I have to, but otherwise, I have it pretty good in here.” To demonstrate, Other Me picked up a remote, and with a flick of a button, filled the chamber with music. I recognized the tune—it was “Enter Sandman” by Metallica—but the version was weird, off-time and out of tune enough to make it sound like the original had been infected by some warping sickness.
“The library is limited to stuff that’s burned into the mainframe’s Musical Memory Area,” Other Me said. “Earworms, classics, stuff from childhood.”
“Why does it sound like that?”
“Recollection isn’t perfect. It’s a bit like a scratched CD.”
At that point, a ding went off somewhere behind a ridge of muscle. Other Me hurried off towards it and returned a moment later holding a bowl of fragrant roasted nuts. I smelled the sweetness of almonds, the subtle butter of cashews.
“Snack?” Other Me asked, wafting the bowl toward me.
“Where did you get those?”
He mumbled something I couldn’t hear.
I took a step toward Other Me, not wanting to be threatening, per se, but to let him know I could be. I asked, louder: “How?”
Other Me sighed and got an irked look on his face. “So many questions.” The piped-in music switched over to a new tune, some vivisected lullaby from my early childhood, revived from the depths of my lizard brain. Other Me looked around for the remote.
“Listen,” I said. “Things aren’t good. Up there.”
Other Me scratched his chin, which looked younger and firmer than mine. His beard was neater, too, and he had less of a dark cast around his eyes.
“Well, they were never exactly great,” Other Me said, crunching nuts. “I wouldn’t be here if they had been.”
I considered this.
“It’s getting worse,” I said.
“I don’t doubt it,” said Other Me. “What do you expect me to do? I ran away from less.”
I was confused, disoriented. I hadn’t come to ask for help; I hadn’t even known another me was in here. Had I come to stay? What did I want from this sanctum inside my chest, this fleshy, weird nut dispensary soundtracked with haunted Muzak from my past?
“Look,” said Other Me. “Obviously, I don’t want to fuck you over, here. But this? This space? I call it ‘The Lone.’”
“Good name,” I said, a little taken aback at Other Me’s profanity, even though I’m aware of how much I like to curse.
“Thanks. But the thing about it is? It’s a small room. That’s the whole point. As you know.”
For a moment I just stared at him. He stared back, eyes wide under an expectant, take-the-hint smile.
“Bit tight for two, is all I’m saying,” said Other Me. He casually chucked an almond into his mouth, a move I only ever make about half the time.
I felt my face burn hot. I smiled, and I felt his smugness in it, but my smile was spiked with anger, urgent and volatile, the kind I get when I end up yelling at people. There was no avoiding it: I was being booted out of my own pericardial cavity, by this lesser version of myself.
“I know you’re mad,” said Other Me. “I get it, trust me. But I also know that you know that I know how much we hate the idea of ourself as some kind of rage-filled minotaur man. So my bet is that instead of arguing, you’ll just mutter something and walk away in a hemorrhage-inducing huff, then think about better comebacks later, which will tear you up.”
I was coming to be of the opinion that Other Me was an asshole. What gave him the right to be so cocky, so snide? No: I didn’t like his attitude one bit.
“Just be on with it, will you?” Other Me said.
“This,” I said, calf muscles tensed titanium-hard. “Is outrageous! I fully intend to—”
“You’ll do jack shit and you know it,” Other Me said. He flicked the back of his fingers at me in a ta-ta sort of gesture.
I could feel the acid rising in my gorge. I turned away from Other Me and faced the taupe globule. OK, I said to myself. This isn’t worth it. Just breathe.
“Not worth it!” shouted Other Me from over my shoulder, his voice dripping sarcasm.
At that point, I started to panic. If I couldn’t stay here, where could I go? Was there any place, any place at all, where I could go to feel safe, protected? Suddenly the sound of my heart thumping in my ears fused with the sound of my huge outer heart pounding like thunder all around. I had no idea which heartbeat was real, which pulse powered the true me. Looking around like a terrified squirrel, I spotted a protrusion of bone in a wet corner and dove for it, howling for the spirit of the mountain, willing my body to reduce even further and find refuge as a molecule lost in an unknown nook of my own biology.
I landed with a wet thwap and spun out on a smear of slippery mucus, so that my back rammed against the exposed bone nubbin.
“Ow FUCK!” I yelled, rolling onto the vaguely sticky ground.
“Mountain doesn’t work in here,” Other Me said. “Could have told you that.”
“Would you please shut the fuck up for a second?”
Other Me raised an eyebrow and helped me to my feet. I knew where he was coming from, but while my panic had subsided with the onset of physical pain, I was still extremely edgy and in no mood for any high-and-mighty bullshit.
“I just,” I said. “I just—”
“You don’t have to articulate it,” said Other Me. “I get it.”
I let my shoulders hang, took five deep breaths.
“Here’s what I think,” said Other Me. “Fine, it’s tough out there. It’s not perfect in here, either. I have issues, same as any tenant. I won’t bore you with specifics, but suffice it to say all three of us could stand to pay a little more attention to our digestive health, ahem. Anyway, the only point that matters—and that I think maybe you’ve forgotten—is that you have a daughter.”
I felt heat rising to my face again. How dare this shithead of a Me imply that I’d be capable of forgetting our daughter?
“And I don’t,” Other Me said.
“What?” I said.
“I came down here in 2008, bud. She’s six. Do the math.”
Sifting through the dank moss in my brain, I remembered my daughter’s first birthday, the way her face lit up when they brought a cake with candles to the table just for her. I remembered, in a time in between, taking her to the victory parade when the Toronto Raptors won the NBA championship, her sitting on my shoulders in a purple shirt, sparkly cap and pink bow tie, bobbing above the massive crowds to get a glimpse of the gleaming trophy. I remembered the smell of her hair, fresh from the bath, lavender and citrus and some unnameable warmth. It occurred to me that maybe I hadn’t thought about her enough since I’d been down here, after all. I remembered that I wanted to tell her I love her, because it’s a thing that keeps me alive.
Other Me looked at me.
“I have my mountain,” he said. “You have yours. She’ll have hers, too. I bet you could help her manage it. I bet she’ll need you for that.”
This isn’t fair, I thought.
“Dude,” Other Me said. “We know by now that life’s not fair, right? Got nothing to do with it.”
I felt myself starting to pick at my fingers, and stopped. I looked at my hands. I looked around. It was true: this cavity was only big enough for one.
“I have to go,” I said.
“I know,” Other Me said. “Say hi for me.”
IV.
We’re both vaccinated now, my wife and I. Not my daughter, yet—and so it’s not over, not until she gets it, too.
The mountain, or whatever it is, still screams at me some days, ripping open the sky. It takes different forms, different shapes. It feels like shame and it feels like longing and it feels sad and terrifying and irresistible. It throttles outward into a void whose shelter has been torn away. Some days I see it in her eyes, and I whisper to it, I know your tricks, even as my hands tremble.
One day I will tell her about it all—about the mountain and the small room below it; and the pandemic and the small room inside of me; and about how there are so many versions of you, so many selves to steward and grow and protect, and that some will need to stay inside and scrunch themselves up into balls, seeking comfort and solace, but others will be in love and explore strange places and return changed; and that stories are rooms we can build for ourselves to hope in, even when mountains burn.
J.R MCCONVEY ’s debut short story collection, Different Beasts, won the 2020 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for speculative fiction. His stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Thomas Morton Prize, and been published widely in journals and magazines. He sometimes works as a journalist and media producer, and exists on social media as @jrmcconvey and on the web at jrmcconvey.com.