Story Two: Smile

Nathan woke up in a bed with all-white sheets, in a room with all white walls. The walls had no posters, the bed had no pillows, and Nathan had no idea where he was.

High on the wall, across from the bed was a single, small window the size of Nathan's head and little tiny bars the size of his fingers. He couldn't see out the window from the bed, so Nathan stood up and leaned his head against the cold bars. His shorts were blue like the sky; his t-shirt, a little too small. He didn't recognize those, either.

Outside the window, Nathan could see two things under a boundless sky: a parking lot and a corn field. The corn field was massive, terrifyingly unquestionable, as open as the sky itself. The parking lot was small and gray, ugly and empty, half-darkened by the shadow of the building. The white lines on the pavement were faded from many long hours under a blistering sun. He didn't know why the lines were there, or why the parking lot was there at all. It didn't connect to any roads.

Sighing, Nathan returned to sit on his bed. Every morning was the same: he awoke confused, and then he went to the window. And then he remembered where he was and where he had been for these last two years- or was it three? He sighed again, tucking at the neckline of his too-small white shirt. Sometimes, he remembered blandly, sometimes it really hurt.

The nurse came into the room then, spouting a rush of empty words and ready to rush Nathan down to breakfast. Nathan didn't turn to look at her short, plump frame or her dyed red hair. Nathan never looked at her, not even when he knew she wasn't looking. He had nothing against the nurse. Marcy, her name might have been- he just didn't see any point in looking at her.

"You know, your mother's coming today."

Nathan's eyes widened. No, he hadn't known that she was coming today. And it was not a major holiday, nor his birthday. Something must be wrong.

"Aren't you excited?"

"Why?" Nathan asked, staring out the window. His thoughts were racing circles around his room. He wondered which shirt he should wear.

"Well, because she's your mo-"

"Why is she coming? That's what I meant to say." Nathan thought his blue, button-down shirt was in his laundry basket. He wondered if it was too dirty to wear.

"Well, because she's your mother. She loves you, Nathan. Of course."

Of course, Nathan thought to himself. Of course, Nathan sneered. She said it with such conviction, without question or doubt. Of course.

But it was his mother who had woken him up on his birthday three years ago- or was it four? She brought him here and left him here. She slapped him, and he had cried, and she had turned away. He had watched her leave from a big, wide window on the first floor; he had pounded on the glass and she had never looked back. She would visit him sometimes, and he would ask to go home. The answer was always no, and after awhile, he didn't ask anymore.

Nathan was silent, thinking, as he ate his breakfast at a small white table in the white-walled cafeteria. When he finished, he set the white cereal bowl on top of the white plate and returned to his room to get dressed. The blue shirt was too dirty to wear, he decided. He wore a white shirt instead.

While he was finishing his buttons, his door flew open and a girl ran in. She had wild brown hair and wore a long white night gown that hung past her knees. And her eyes were big, much too big for her head. Her eyes were blue like the sky and big like the sky; her eyes were like the sky and they were so, so beautiful....

"Why is everything so white?"

Nathan shrugged and smiled. He knew many things but he didn't know this. He hated the white. He knew how she felt. But he didn't say any of this, because a nurse ran in- not his nurse, a different one- and took the girl by the hand.

"Now Becky, you can't just do things like that." The nurse was leading Becky back through the door. Becky smiled at Nathan, and Nathan smiled back.

You can't do things like that, the nurse had said. But she did do it, didn't she? She could. Words didn't stop her. She could.

"You look very handsome today." Becky stood in his doorway for a last, significant moment before she was led away.

.....


Nathan sat stiffly with his mother while she sipped a dull tea. She wore jeans and a gray sweatshirt with a scarf hiding her messy blond hair. She was incognito, his mother; he knew she didn’t like to be seen here, even by people she didn’t know. She seemed to have aged a great deal since he had last seen her: only her eyes were the same. It was like she hadn’t aged at all when you looked at her eyes. But then she smiled sadly, her face creasing with thousands of tiny wrinkles, and she was a total stranger to him. It had been a long time since he had seen her smile.

"It's time for you to come home, Nate."

Nathan stared at her, nonplused. The words meant nothing to him- come home? It was gibberish, falling out of her mouth like shards of broken glass. It wasn't possible. She was saying it- saying it now, sure, and making it sound so easy. She was deluded, even after all this time! He wanted to laugh, because he knew the truth, and he recognized how completely backwards his life had become. Nathan knew the truth; there was no going home.

Nathan remembered the first Christmas he had spent in this place, in this prison, in this sanctuary, in this hell. The nurses hung holly from the walls and put up a giant Christmas tree with white lights in the middle of the dining hall. All of the people that lived there sat down and wrote letters to Santa Claus, even the man at the end of the hall who looked old enough to be Santa himself. Nathan didn't believe in Santa Claus, but he wrote a letter anyway, and sent it to his mother. He hadn't asked for toys or candy- he just wanted to go home. His mother didn't visit him on Christmas that year.

He had considered government conspiracies, alien take-over, and the mafia, but as Nathan grew up, he had learned the simple truth of his new existence. There was no going home. Not just because she had said so. He hadn't been home in four, or maybe five years, anyway. He didn't really know what home was, or where, and he certainly didn't want to go there. Nathan didn't say this to his mother, knowing the words meant nothing. Just like the nurses' words earlier, Nathan thought rationally. It was just like the nurse who had pulled Becky from his room. Becky. Becky made him smile.

"I don't think I should go home with you," Nathan said quietly. "My doctor still thinks I have a lot of work to do.”

Nathan's mother stared at him blankly. He could see in her face that she didn't understand, that maybe she wasn't capable of understanding. And Nathan didn't know what to say.

"But, sweetheart- my little baby- you're all better now, aren't you? I mean, well... Aren't you?"

Nathan cocked his head and smiled sadly. He said nothing. He felt fine- he had always felt fine. Had he ever felt the least bit unwell? Was that why she had brought him here? He thought back, trying to remember a time when he had felt sick. Nathan thought there might have been one time....

Yes, Nathan thought. He had felt sick one time: the day she left. It wasn't like the tummy-aches that had kept him home from school or the kind that made him throw-up in the toilet. But it was like feeling sick: his stomach had sunk deeply into some unknown part of him, his throat had closed up so that he couldn't breathe, and his heart had stopped beating. He had sucked in breath, fighting to survive, pounding on the glass, pounding and pounding and pounding out what his heart couldn't beat. A woman had dragged him away, and made him take some medicine that made him feel sleepy. She had told him that when he woke up, he wouldn't remember anything- but she had been wrong. Nathan remembered everything.

Nathan hadn't felt sick since then. He was surprised that his mother knew that he had been sick that day; he had always supposed that she didn't care. And yet here she was, asking him the wrong questions and telling him lies.

"The color white is the reflection of all colors, and the white object is a void of nothingness. Whiteness is a void. A void." The words tumbled out of Nathan's mouth like the tumbleweed that blows across an empty field in the movies. There were many movies with tumbleweeds here at the home, all in black and white. Nathan didn’t care much for the movies, but sometimes the nurse made him go. It mattered very little to him anyway. His mother sat rigidly in front of him, holding him- painfully, it seemed- in her eyes.

"We could paint the walls of your room blue, baby. Wouldn't you like a blue room?"

"I would like some markers," Nathan replied carefully. He sat with his mother a while longer, but found he didn't have anything more to say. He listened as she pleaded with him, quietly, to come home, to see sense, to say yes.

"Well honestly Nathan, I just don’t understand you. All the parenting magazines say that children need to express themselves and if this is how you’re going to be, well I just don’t know. Maybe you deserve this place, Nathan. I only brought you here because they said that so many children have disorders that go undiagnosed.”

He watched her emotionlessly as she sprung from her chair and backed away from him, slowly, as if he were a monster. His mother had brought him here because of- what? Words? She could not have known, in saying that, how much she would hurt him, how much Nathan would hate her afterwards. He could see her in the next room still, standing with his doctor, gesturing wildly, checkbook in hand. She always had her checkbook in her hand, Nathan thought.

He had seen other patients in that place go after the people, the outsiders that came in, just like they were monsters. But Nathan saw no reason to run after his mother; she was out the door, her back turned to him. Nathan would only run to her if she looked back.

The next morning, Nathan woke up in a bed with all white sheets, in a room with all white walls. The walls had no posters, the bed had no pillows, and for the first time in five years (or was it six?), he knew exactly where he was. Better still, the nurse brought in a packet of markers and a big white drawing book after he had eaten his breakfast. Nathan tried very hard not to look at her, but he could see them from the corner of his eye, and he couldn’t help but smile. He waited, and waited- so long! And once she was gone, Nathan knew exactly what to do.

Grabbing the brown marker, Nathan drew a towering pirate ship with a black flag and little holes in the side for cannons. He drew the ocean deep and blue beneath the ship, and a tiny green island off to the side. Nathan drew an army of tiny men along the deck in orange and red and purple shirts, and Nathan drew a yellow sun in the sky. Next to the sun, Nathan drew a bright red hot air balloon, with a pair of tiny, waving people grinning out from the tiny floating basket. In the water of the ocean, Nathan drew a hundred fish, all different sizes and shapes and colors, and Nathan drew a pink octopus that shot through the water like air.

Next, Nathan drew a tall, tall building with a hundred windows that disappeared into a silver-gray sky. Nathan drew lightning in the clouds and people in the windows, all smiling and waving a silent “Hello!” Nathan drew a street before the building with a school bus and a shiny red car, and Nathan drew a police-car with red and blue lights and a tiny, blue-uniformed officer. On one side of the building, Nathan drew a bright orange tractor digging a dark, black hole into the city street. And above the clouds of the sky, Nathan drew a purple moon, and stars.

And Nathan also drew a bright, red house with shutters on the windows and a smoking chimney rising from the roof. The house that Nathan drew sat on a big green hill, which had grass and pink flowers growing from the sides. There was a car next to the house, colored deep blue, and a shining yellow sun in the sky. On this picture, Nathan drew himself, and Nathan drew Becky with her big, beautiful eyes. He drew their skin with an orange marker; Nathan drew himself blue pants and a shirt, and for Becky, a flowing purple dress. In Nathan’s picture, Becky and Nathan were holding hands. Nathan worked long and hard on this picture, and when it was finished, Nathan set down his markers and ran from the room.

He ran down the hall until he found Becky. She was sitting on the floor in her long white dress, talking to the General as he tugged on his long, white beard. Entering the room, Nathan saluted and bowed, and then without waiting for permission, he took Becky by the hand and pulled her from the room.

“Fight hard man! Never surrender!” The General shouted as they ran from the room, and he continued to shout boisterously until Nathan and Becky reached Nathan’s room.

When they were inside, Nathan showed Becky his pictures. He showed her his pirates, and the hot air balloon; he showed her the building from the big city, and all the happy people that lived there. And Nathan showed Becky the picture he had drawn of them together, beside the big red house. Becky looked at this picture for a long time, and a tear rolled down her cheek, but she was smiling, so Nathan was pretty sure that she liked it. While she stared at the picture, she took his hand in hers, and they stood silently together until the nurse walked in.

“Oh my goodness, Nathan Brown! We do NOT draw on the walls!” She shrieked again and again, and soon there were other nurses, all making a fuss together. He accepted their chastisement and horror emotionlessly; he was content to stare at the picture he made. And Becky stayed with him, holding his hand and looking at all the color that he had put on the wall. Becky had stayed with him the way his mother never could, and she was with him still. Becky made him smile.