The Waiting Room
by Sherri Turner
Wordcount: 855
Genre: Light Read
Synopsis:
The room is just as he left it. I clean it every day, but I’m not waiting for him to come back. Really, I’m not. That would be foolish, wouldn’t it?
First 500 words:
The model aeroplanes are the hardest to dust. Hanging from the ceiling on threads of various lengths they move away as I try to reach them, avoiding my cloth like a small boy avoids a grandmother’s kiss. Nevertheless I dust them every day. I open the door to the room, my eyes always resting first on the posters, then moving to Ted, standing guard over the chest of drawers.
The aeroplanes are in the corner of the room, so they come next, then the books and the CDs on the small shelf over the bed. I see everything, I touch everything, I dust everything. Then I leave the room and close the door.
I gave up waiting a long time ago. I can’t bear it, you see. I have to live my life, get on with things, accept that what has happened has happened and move forward. I was told this so many times that it must be true. Now I let the room do the waiting for me and I live my life. I have done for the last twelve years.
I can’t really tell you what happened – I don’t know myself. What I do know is that I have stopped going over it in my mind, for if there were an answer I would have found it by now.
What I also know is that it must have been my fault, because I was the grown up and he was only fifteen and although I have stopped blaming myself in the bitter, accusing voice in my head that used to resonate through every moment of every day, still the blame remains as a constant and colours me. I feel like a sinner, a failure, a bad person. I feel that people should shun me, cross the street, point at me and say, “That’s her. That’s the woman who drove her child away.” They don’t do it, of course.
At first they comforted and encouraged, told me it happens all the time, that he would be back. Then they avoided my eyes and stopped asking if I had heard anything. After a while I was supposed to accept and move on. Now it isn’t ever mentioned. What’s the point? He isn’t coming back. I know that, really, I do. But the room doesn’t know it and I don’t have the heart to tell it to get on with its life. So it just waits.
Although I would never let it know this, the room can sometimes be a burden to me. After a few years, after we had all recovered, a move overseas was suggested and then demanded.
“You need a change of scene,” he had said. “I need a change of scene.”
But what was I supposed to do? Who would look after the room if I left? So I had to refuse, of course I did. And of course he had to go. It doesn’t take two of us to look after one room, after all.
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