Red Room Where the Writers Are

Web Links

            When Ralphie was eight years old and his parents were killed in a car crash, he was sent to live with his Aunt Brenda who refused to allow him to play with his 23 Troll dolls, all of which had names and pedigrees that he could recite in intimate detail.  At first Brenda insisted that they be destroyed or at least be given to the poor, because she said only derelicts could appreciate toys with such hideous accoutrements.  She finally relented and allowed them to be put at the top of the Biedermeier armoire in his room, a good three feet out of his reach where they peered down at Ralphie in his bed as he smiled back at their faces dimly lit by the TV screen in the adjacent room where Brenda and her son Scooter would watch shows like “The Governor and J.J.” and “Apartment on a Rooftop”.

            Even as an adult, the faint sound of audible but indistinguishable dialog from a television set in the next room brought Ralphie great reassurance.  Just knowing that there were lives clattering away a few feet away from him gave Ralphie great comfort and squelched his frequent bedtime phobia that silence he heard was an indication that all forms of life on earth had been squashed and he was the last mammal on the planet.

            Sometimes Brenda would peer into his room as she heard Ralphie’s voice as he sang songs to the Trolls so they would not be scared, and she would ask, “Is there a problem?”, her tone clearly indicating that she was not checking in to help solve any problem that might have arisen but to make certain that Ralphie was not causing a problem.

            “No problem,” Ralphie would say, “I was just talking to Rushplume and her tribe.” 

            After a moment of incredulous silence, Brenda would look up at the Trolls, roll her eyes and return to watching television with Scooter, whose curfew was an hour later than Ralphie’s since he was six months older.

            Rushplume, with her lavender and cream hair was about a quarter of an inch taller than the other Trolls and the first one that had been given to Ralphie on his sixth birthday by Cindy Cosgrove, the neighbor girl with licorice colored ringlets that always smelled of moldy cabbage.  Then there was Gemma who had lost an eye in a fight with the baby sitter’s Pekinese-Dachshund mix puppy.  Cammi and Vorxtraine were the twins that Ralphie said were refugees from Kiev who had crossed the Atlantic in a Tupperware bowl and stuck to themselves, refusing to learn English and gabbing with each other in their eastern European dialect that Ralphie had learned to understand and in which he spoke to them regularly.  Sometimes at the dinner table, while Scooter and Brenda talked about their favorite episode of “My Three Sons”, Ralphie’s attention would drift and he would turn his head calling out, “Vravoota n’eer nyet Vakfa!” to the next room.

            “What is wrong with you!” Brenda would cackle, dangling her fork over her Waldorf salad and pursing her lips shellacked in amber-peach lip gloss.

            “Nothing,” Ralphie said. “I just wanted to make sure the twins weren’t scared in the dark.”

            Brenda glared at Ralphie’s room and said, “I may need to do something about…those things.”

            Before his parents died, Ralphie admired Aunt Brenda and saw her as being glamorous and mysterious with her white Impala convertible, Chanel scarves and porcelain lamps that were a stark contrast to those his parents acquired with S&H Green Stamps. Everyone in Kalamozoo remarked about Brenda’s remarkably perfect posture and gracious gait, as if she has a spring of ice water slivering up her spine to ensure she never slouched. She could speak endlessly about Impressionistic art, her college graduation trip to Lake Como and how she had taught herself to play the harpsichord at age nine.  As a small child, Ralphie longed to be a part of that rambling Tudor house with its marble tables, Berber carpets and copies of the art magazine Horizon, the only periodical he had ever known that was so exclusive that it was published in hardback. Only now had Ralphie come to understand his mother’s old adage warning him to not wish too hard for something lest it come true.  He had come to see Brenda for what she was -- selfish, stingy and not that interesting.

            Nobody in the family cried when Ralphie’s parents were killed that rainy night on Route 38 by an Ethan Allen delivery truck filled with faux Chippendale armchairs and acorn-poster beds.   It was nearly an hour before the rescue workers were able to pry his parents’ mangled bodies from the mass of broken mahogany and cherry stained oak strewn across the damp asphalt.  But as usual, the family faced the tragedy with the sober-faced, stoic resolve that was fitting of a bloodline noted for impeccable manners and perfect posture.

            Brenda put her cold palm on Ralphie’s shoulder at the funeral, the only time up until then or since that she had touched him, and said, “Life is mainly a progression of losses.  You have to keep track of priorities and protect what will be snatched from you next.”

            Loss seemed to engulf Brenda even more than Ralphie.  She had lost her once brilliant head of auburn hair due to a rare genetic skin disorder just after she turned 28 and had taken to wearing expensive wigs made from a new synthetic fiber that she later learned was the source of her constant migraines.   Her increasingly artificial appearance and advancing irritability led to her husband Mervin abandoning her and Scooter for the manager of a Merle Norman salon in Craigmont Plaza who had been advanced to the position of a regional manager in Grand Rapids.  Mervin left a curt note on the back of a Michigan Gas and Light bill that said he’d had enough and would send child support once he had relocated.  He never did.

            But Aunt Brenda credited the main source of her unhappiness to the death of her first son Stewart, born two years before Scooter.  There was still a locked room at the end of the hall that was filled with Stewart’s baby furniture and clothes, and she still bought birthday presents and Christmas gifts for Stewart that she locked away in the room that no one was allowed to enter.  Some nights Ralphie would resent Stewart who died before he was even born since Ralphie’s own room was actually the utility and crafts room with furnishings that had been added to accommodate his unexpected arrival in the household.

            Although Ralphie felt little affection for Scooter, he knew that his cousin craved the attention Brenda lavished on Stewart’s memory.   Every afternoon at precisely 2 p.m., Brenda drove to Stewart’s grave across town and sat for an hour in silent meditation, perhaps thinking of all that was left unfulfilled as a result of his sudden demise.   Although he had never seen Brenda cry, Ralphie could always notice the redness around her eyes once she came back from the cemetery. Ralphie found it odd but never outwardly questioned why Brenda invested so much time and detail in this daily ritual but had never been to one of Scooter’s little league games and could not free herself from her daily vigil at Stewart’s graveside to attend a performance when Scooter was cast in the lead of the school play “The Hucklebees of Braggle Junction”. 

            Often at dinner, she would mutter that Scooter had been a constant disappointment to her and that she could only imagine how Stewart would have behaved in similar situations.  She would end her litany of complaints hurled at Scooter and then glare in silence at Ralphie as she buttered a crescent roll, and he imagined the judgments racing through her expensively coiffed head.

            It was during the visits to Stewart’s grave that Ralphie would take a chair and place it next to the armoire, reaching for the Trolls that were just out of reach even on his tiptoes and with four volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica added for height.  One afternoon he waited too late for this routine.. Brenda entered his room and caught him with his hands outstretched to Rushplume, as if she might jump to him and offer the consoling he so desperately longed for.

            Brenda said nothing, closed the door and did not mention it over their dinner of chipped beef and glazed carrots.  Over dessert of apple crisp and Neapolitan ice cream, she even apologized for her sudden, unannounced intrusion that afternoon.  “I respect the privacy of every individual in this home,” Brenda assured Ralphie as she scooped the tiny helping of ice cream that nonetheless managed to grab a perfectly proportioned measure of each of the three flavors.

            When Ralphie rose the next morning, all of the Trolls were gone.

            Slinking into breakfast, Ralphie could not hold back his tears and finally leaned over his bowl of Captain Crunch, wailing, “It’s not fair.  It’s just not fair.”

            To his shock, Brenda placed her palm on his shoulder, the first time she had touched him since his parents died nine months earlier.  “I know, I know.  But most of the time life is not fair.   Life is a perpetual continuum of loss.  Nobody knows that more than I.”

            Her voice cooed with an oddly comforting aura that Ralphie knew was not real.  He tried to summon up his memory of the advice his mother used to give him when he encountered a cheat or a bully at school. “Treat them with the kindness and concern they refuse to give to you,” his mother would say.  “It’s always the strongest secret weapon.”

            Ralphie tried to swallow his tears and took a few deep breaths.  “I know, Aunt Brenda.  You’ve been through so many horrible things.”

            His mother was right.   He had to hide his pleasure as he saw the shock on Brenda’s face his unexpected sympathy caused as her painted eyebrows almost threatened to fly off her face.   But too wily to let her mask drop for more than an instant, Brenda was soon composed again and cooing with mock sincerity.  “Yes, Ralphie, it has been a difficult patch I’ve been through.”  She seemed to be about to shed a synthetic tear, as if to show Ralphie that she could outdo him on any of the theatrics he might resort to.  She held back her head with regal resolve and said, “But I manage to soldier through despite it all. We simply have no choice.”

            Ralphie took a few bites of Captain Crunch, and then, unable to hold back a nagging curiosity that had been eating him for the longest time, he blurted out, “How old was Stewart when he…” The words were too hard for Ralphie to say.

            Brenda beat him to the punch, “When he died?” she asked, wearing her badge of suffering with great zeal.  “Six hours.  He never left the hospital.”