by Douglas Young
Winston smiled driving home from his after-school job. Twelfth grade was going well for the eighteen-year-old, and he really liked working at The Cluttered Bookshop, a downtown used bookstore where he mostly read while the free-range cats, led by the seven-toed Mr. Cheshire, climbed bookshelves and rested wherever they pleased.
Arriving home, what first struck Winston was how spotless and orderly his house was, in contrast to the bookstore where, in addition to all the books crammed onto bookshelves, there were stacks of paperbacks on the floor, author posters all over the walls, and bowls of milk and cat food scattered throughout the store. Though he loved the bookstore’s laid-back vibe, he now admired how immaculate his mother kept their home.
Since no one replied when he announced his arrival, he figured the family must be upstairs. After drinking from his refrigerator water bottle, he glanced at the newspaper on the kitchen counter and headed toward his bedroom.
But upon entering the hallway leading to the stairs, Winston was stunned to see a hole in the wall. It clearly pierced the wallpaper and was a few inches in diameter. Having lived in the house for years and walked down that hall many times daily, he figured that he would surely have noticed such an anomaly before, and his parents would never have allowed such to remain. He had walked right by the spot that morning on his way to breakfast and saw nothing unusual. Squinting closer at the opening, he tried to imagine what caused it.
Dumbfounded, he slowly walked to the den where he was surprised to see his mother on the sofa hunched over a magazine. She didn’t hear me when I arrived and said ‘Hello’? he wondered. His mother did not look up but instead appeared absorbed in her reading.
“Hey, Mom,” he said tentatively with a wrinkled brow.
“Hello, dear,” she replied without raising her head. He blinked twice and hesitated before speaking again.
“Ah, Mom, did you know there’s a hole in the wall in the hall?”
There was no response. Winston blinked again and stood uncomprehending. After several seconds his mother quickly turned the page.
“Um,” her elder son began again. “I think there really is a hole in the wall—”
“No there’s not,” came the clipped reply. His mother’s head remained buried in the magazine as she quickly crossed her legs.
After blinking again and wrinkling his brow, her son slowly spoke, carefully planning each word.
“Have you looked just down the hall? I’m pretty sure there’s a decent-sized hole in the wall. I studied it up close and actually have no doubt about it.”
His mother rapidly turned another page and lifted the magazine before plopping it in her lap again, still yet to look up. Winston considered trying to make his case again before deciding to drop it. So he turned toward the stairs, being careful to confirm there really was a hole in the wall before heading up to his room.
He ascended the stairs much slower than usual trying to make sense of the hole, his mother’s denial of its existence, and her strange demeanor. Could I really have failed to notice such a thing after all the years we’ve lived here? he asked himself. No! Of course not, and what’s with Mom not initially greeting or looking at me and denying the hole’s even there? And just how did it get there? he wondered.
Thoroughly weirded out and not wanting to face his mother again, he fought off disturbing thoughts by doing his homework. Finishing it early and realizing dinner was still a ways off, he read some in the novel assigned by his English teacher, George Orwell’s 1984.
Concluding his mother had now had time to check out the hole for herself, Winston headed back downstairs. But, entering the downstairs hall, he was astonished to see no hole, for now a framed painting of a parrot whose bright colors matched the wallpaper hung where the hole had been.
Amazed, with his mouth ajar, Winston blinked, widened his eyes, and stared at the painting to conclude, Either that painting was not there less than an hour ago, I’m losing touch with reality, or I’ve entered Wonderland, Oz, Narnia, or the Twilight Zone.
Now even more perplexed and starting to question his sanity and that of his mother, he gradually turned around and went back upstairs, this time to his fifteen-year-old brother’s room. Outside his door could be heard loud heavy metal music. Winston wondered why hard rockers always seemed so angry. With all their fame, fortune, and gorgeous gals, what did they have to be upset about?
After knocking on the door, his unusually subdued brother opened it, looking distinctly distant but not angry. Curious what had draped such a pall over the house, Winston spoke.
“Do you know anything about that hole in the wall downstairs? Have you seen it?”
Lying back on his bed, Dayton looked at the ceiling before answering in a low voice.
“I punched it.”
With widened eyes, a barely comprehending Winston at last responded.
“Why?”
“I wanted to go out with Fletcher and Arnold, but Momma wouldn’t let me on account of they’re three grades ahead of me and supposedly smoking dope.”
“Ah,” his elder sibling replied, as if a Kafkaesque kaleidoscope had suddenly metamorphosed into a mirror. “Well, kudos for only hitting a wall. Is your hand okay?”
“Just some bruised and swollen knuckles,” Dayton answered showing his scraped red knuckles.
“Don’t sulk too much,” his big brother advised. “Thanks to you, there’s now a beautiful new painting hanging in the hall.” His brother could not help chuckling.
Winston never heard of the matter again, for the hole in the wall had been quietly thrown down the family’s memory hole where it would forever remain a non-event.