What Mattered Was Sleep by Patrick O’Leary

After the long drive the uncertain father unpacked the suitcase on the bed where his blonde son was already belly down and going through the TV channels, his thumb a dizzy blur on the remote’s buttons. Bikini Contest, Soufflé, Tank, Courtroom, Firing Squad. The father thought: How can he watch it that fast? Where’d he get that from? Not me.

Unfortunately there was no distraction from the flashing screen or the task at hand. Their motel room was anonymous. It could have been anybody’s room. White walls. White towels. Noisy AC. A painting of a nude hoisting a beach umbrella, coyly hiding her best parts. The brown paisley bed spread covered a mattress where strangers had made love and were disappointed, teens had made love and were disappointed, lovers had made love.

And were disappointed.

The father said, “Don’t you feel strange sleeping on other people’s beds?”

“They’re not other people’s beds,” his son replied without looking up from the TV. “They’re not here yet.”

The kid always could make him laugh. If worse came to worse, he would miss that. He hoped his mother would too. He hoped she would miss it bunches.

On the way to the clinic, he said, “It’s a simple screening procedure. Nothing to worry about.”

“Who’s worried?” his son replied.

The doctor drew the blood himself. He had a goatee and the hint of a French accent. He bandaided a cotton ball to the crook of the boy’s elbow. He had taken it like a man.

“You’ve got the check?”

The father handed it over. “Nobody covers anything anymore.”

The check disappeared into the inside pocket of the doctor’s white jacket. “Now you,” he said.

The father rolled up his sleeve. The boy watched. The doctor handed both purple vials to a nurse, saying, “Hop to it.”

The father and the son compared bandages. The boy’s legs dangled off the edge of the examination table, swung to and fro.

“I should have brought my game box,” said the boy.

The doctor seemed glad to stop talking shop. “You play Momma Sniper?”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too. What’s your rank?”

“Kahuna,” the boy replied.

“Kids,” the doctor chuckled. “They got reflexes we can’t even touch.”

The father nodded.

“My favorite’s Teacher Strip,” the boy said.

“You’re a little young for that, aren’t you?”

“I—We don’t believe in protecting children from reality. I know that’s a little—”

“—I was just teasing,” the doctor said. “My kids play it, too.”

“No sense in blurring the facts,” his father said.

“Of course not,” the doctor agreed.

“We can’t live in a culture of denial.”

The doctor nodded.

The nurse returned quietly with two slips of paper. She did not look at the boy who stared at her bracelet of white pearls.

The doctor peered down his nose through his glasses. He asked the boy to wait just a moment; there was something he had to discuss with his father. They stepped into the hall.

“I’m sorry,” said the doctor.

The man closed his eyes and breathed out slowly through puckered lips. His buddies had told him it would help. It did.

“You’ll be wondering how best to break the news.”

After a moment the man said, “I’m sorry?”

“To the boy.”

The man nodded.

“Frankness causes the least discomfort in the long run. Like pulling a tooth.”

The man nodded. The doctor touched his arm and pulled a black bracelet of pearls from his bulging pocket. It laid down in the man’s open palm like a cobra in reverse.

Natural logical consequences, he thought. That’s what the books called it when they were young parents. Not punishment. Not even discipline. Consequences.

In fact he might even use that word when he gave her the pearls. See what her face did with it.

He spotted the nurse down the hall watching them while pretending to write on a notepad. “What are you looking at?” he barked. She lowered her eyes.

The door handle was cold as he reentered the screening room and saw the boy sitting on the paper-covered table, his hand in one of his big pockets. He sat beside him and said, “It was positive.”

The boy said nothing.

He said nothing on the car ride back to the motel though he thought how everything could look exactly the same as it did on the way there, but it wasn’t. And if you weren’t careful you wouldn’t see the difference.

Back in their room the boy said, “I don’t like that doctor.”

“Why?”

“He’s a liar.”

The man nodded, packed up his change of clothes, and left with the suitcase.

The boy looked at the door a long time after the man had shut it.

He was speed-moting through the TV channels when he became hungry. Discovered a pizza emblem on one of the phone’s buttons. “Room service.” Punched it and ordered a small cheese and pepperoni. The bellman came and when he saw the boy alone he called the manager. A few questions and when he answered “Clinic” and “Blood,” he was led to the lobby. Told to sit. Told to wait.

It got darker.

He thought about the pizza. Why hadn’t he grabbed a slice when the bellman was on the phone? It was right there.

And the stupid TV high on the wall played only sports. He hated sports. He liked cartoons. They used to have sports mostly on the weekends. Now it was every night. Wrestling. Football. Boxing. Judo.

Some time after the men had left, the quiet woman behind the check-in counter gave him a donut and touched his golden hair. Her bracelet of pearls was white.

Later he fell asleep in the big chair.

He was awakened by two policemen who put him in the back of the squad car. There was a screen between them. It was cold to the touch.

Are they somebody’s dad? He wondered.

At the station he answered questions. His answers were put into a computer and he gave them his card. They did not give it back.

He was driven out of town to a large old school that was lit up against the night like a floating castle.

Two men led him down many hallways until his legs were tired.

“Last of the batch?”

“Yup.”

“Tally?”

“Seventy-two.”

“Slow day.”

He was put into a long room full of children gathered closely in the dark. There were steel screens on the tall windows which let the moonlight in. Some of the children were in the shadows, some were in the light. Some were crying. Most were not.

The door clanked shut behind him. It had a screen on the window. When the blonde boy could no longer hear the footsteps someone in the dark said, “When do we eat?”

“Shuttup.”

“I’m cold,” a small girl said in a sliver of moonlight.

“Cry baby.”

“I am not. I’m six.”

“Me, too.”

“Me, too.”

The number was repeated in many whispers throughout the gym until a very small boy with a lisp said, “I’m six and a half.”

There was a silence.

“I want my Momma,” one kid cried and someone hit him.

“She’s a liar,” the blonde boy said and everyone stopped to listen to him. “They all are.”

The children parted before him as he walked to the window. He kept his hands in his pockets. He’d been told: “If you can’t keep your hands to yourself, put them in your pockets.” It was one of the many wrong things. Cheating on a test. Taking Dad’s change. Listening to Mom on the upstairs phone. Lying.

It wasn’t fair. Nobody could remember them all.

A man was standing in the doorway, a black silhouette. He did not look like a policeman. And when he spoke it was obvious: he was nobody’s dad. “Children? I need you to pay close attention. I know most of you are tired and could use a good rest. I am going to give each of you a pill. It is a sleeping pill. It will help you sleep. If you are hungry it will help you, too. Now I need you to form a line. No pushing, please. You will each get the same pill so there’s no need to rush. Very good. Take your pill and swallow it. If you can’t swallow it put it under your tongue and it will dissolve. Like candy. Or chew it, if you must. That would be best. Then find yourself a comfortable spot and lay down and you will feel much better in the morning. I promise you. In the morning there will be games.”

It went quickly: the lines, the distribution.

The very small boy with the lisp asked to use the bathroom and was taken down the hall. This seemed to settle the room of children. And, walking away, he saw through the open door that most of them were chewing. A basketball hoop hung over their heads. No net. A few of the boys and girls were imitating him and laughing: “Youth the bathroom! Youth the bathroom!” But he was used to that.

When he returned he was told to take his pill before entering the gym. It tasted sweet and the flavor seemed to last.

The floor was covered with children. Some resting their heads on the bellies of others.

The door closed behind him and a man looked at him through the glass behind the screen. There was talking but he couldn’t make out any words. He clearly heard, though, the snap of rubber gloves.

The boy played a sort of game. He stepped over and between the bodies of the boys and girls and not once did he touch them. He arrived finally at one of the tall screen windows that looked out into the night. The steel grid was cold on his fingers. He held up both his arms and said the opposite of what he was feeling. “I didn’t do it!”

Nobody stirred.

A black bird flew by, then flew back. It landed on the window ledge that overlooked the long green lawn lit by floodlights. It was a very big bird and its feathers seemed wet. Its big eye turned to stare at him. Behind the screen it looked as though the bird was in a very big cage. After a moment the boy felt as if the bird was going to eat him. He had read about birds like that. That robbed nests of eggs. Or ate fledglings before they had learned to fly.

Turning from the window he sat down and noticed that the other children were quieter than they had been all day. Nobody whining, nobody crying. That was better, he concluded. He touched the ankle of the blonde boy lying on his belly, his head resting on one arm. In his hand he held a remote control. His thumb was still on the buttons.

We are in the cage, he thought. The screen doesn’t keep the bird out; it keeps us in.

And then everything changed.

He was very sleepy. The night, the bird and the cage no longer mattered. There was only a sweet blankness that seemed to welcome him. And after the shouting in his house, the trip, the strange motel, the shots, the goodbye hug and the children, it was quite a relief.

He closed his eyes and in his mind he saw the bracelet of black pearls a certain man would be putting on his mother’s wrist. Only in his mind the pearls were tiny black birds that formed a circle by biting the tails of the birds in front of them.

It didn’t matter any more.

It didn’t even matter that he was not his father’s son.

What mattered was sleep.

The End

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