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I reread it here, with his bard-like voice resounding in my head, the laughs and comic gestures and theatrics he employed that night inextricably linked to the words.

"You still have hope for me, honey, and sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. Find someone who can give."

“What is hell? I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love.” I almost left it in the carriage for him to read.

After we returned from the Black Rose, after he helped me up the stairs to his house, he whispered, Maybe you can save me.

I began picking out the titles I had given him, Ballad of the Sad Café, Jude the Obscure, and put them in my work knapsack.  

Martin’s Room

By Beth Pratt

SPINNING, SPINNING, MY arms outstretched and eyes tightly closed. Amorphous colored shapes in my eyelids twirl amid a black void. I stop, my eyes remaining closed, the earth moving without me. Eyes open, I stare at writhing walls. My head clears and motion ceases. Again, spinning, spinning. Again, spinning, spinning. Last time. I turn my head up to the ceiling. A swirling white ceiling, no lumps, no streaks, just a plain smooth white. A light fixture with some sort of molding lies dead center. Right on, dead center—synonyms for dead run through my head—I imagine a corpse in the center of the ceiling. I fall to the bed as the room moves around me.

His bed, a double bed, with a wooden country headboard. The bedclothes are all unmatched: a plaid flannel sheet, a thin yellow blanket with a rough texture from little balls of fabric that cling to it and an old quilt with patches. One sheet is supposed to represent the Milky Way. The bottom sheet is black. He stores the extra blankets in a green garbage bag under the bed. In the winter months the bed has four or five quilts covering it. I curl under all the blankets in wintertime and listen for the heat blowing from the black vent on the worn hardwood floor. I usually sleep alone in this bed and when I awaken the blankets’ deep folds and contours have enveloped me in a cocoon. I emerge unchanged, yet amazed I did not suffocate in the depths of the blankets.

Only the sheet that is supposed to look like the Milky Way covered us one night. Must have been the humid summertime in New England when the night never cools off. An old fan rattled and blew sticky air. I listened to the rhythm of his breathing accompanied by the rattling fan and the occasional drone of a car driving by under the open window. The night hid the room in gray shadows. In his restless sleep he eventually tossed the sheet off us. Even though his body covered mine, I thought of those quilts with the mismatched colors inside the green garbage bag under the bed.

The first night I met Martin he brought me to this room during a party. He handed me a drink and leaned against the bed while holding a beer. While we were talking, his brother played the fiddle in the next room. Martin, someone yelled, play some guitar. Instead he shut the bedroom door. He pulled his electric guitar out of a black case and played for me. The strings rang false without the amplifier to enhance them.

We rejoined the others and for the remainder of the evening I sat at Martin’s feet, enchanted, listening to his lyrical voice as he recited a poem of Yeats and a few passages from Joyce’s short story “The Dead.” When Martin reached the scene of the dinner toast, he sang with an overemphasized Irish accent, “For they are jolly gay fellows.” The rest of the room joined him, raising their glasses in a toast, unconsciously or consciously mirroring the dinner guests in the tale.

‘For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

For they are jolly gay fellows,

Which nobody can deny.

Unless he tells a lie,

Unless he tells a lie.’

I remember every book I read in his bedroom, waiting, usually with the pillows scrunched behind my back. The first book was Joyce’s Dubliners. After the song began, Martin had never finished The Dead. I reread it here, with his bard-like voice resounding in my head, the laughs and comic gestures and theatrics he employed that night inextricably linked to the words.

There is no bookcase in his bedroom; the books stand on the floor stacked against the left wall. One year I put the books in alphabetical order by author, the next year I arranged the books by subject. Most of the books that he keeps in his room I gave him. Two years ago I bought him Jude the Obscure; last year I purchased a first edition of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe for his birthday. While he works, painting houses in the city, I turn the pages of the books he bought: Belfast Diary, How to Invest Wisely, The IRA, and wait for the jangle of his key in the front door. This year I am reading How to Be Successful at Anything. Sometimes, when I find myself only glancing over the sentences, I spread the book upside down on my lap and study the walls.

The wallpaper. I wonder about the wallpaper. Decorating a tan paper are daisies with either strawberries or rosebuds. I cannot make the distinction. When I decide that they are strawberries, I suddenly notice some feature characteristic of a rosebud. For six years, during my infrequent stays in this room, I have been trying to figure out whether the red ovals are strawberries or rosebuds. I also wonder who pasted the wallpaper up, who picked out the ambiguous design, if a woman ordered a pattern from an old catalog, a pattern with a title like, ‘Red Rose Bouquets’ or ‘Strawberry Harvest’. I also wonder what design Martin would have chosen.

Posters decorate the wall in no discernible pattern. Hanging in front of the bed was a pastel drawing of a human that he took down (along with a medieval tapestry) a few years ago. When he returned to school, a UMASS Boston schedule on a blue piece of paper hung in that space, but now that’s gone as well. One photo has always been here, a picture of him hugging his niece and nephew and wearing a straw hat, glasses and a smile. The smile and the strawberry/rosebud wallpaper.

On the slanted wall behind the bed, the windows are placed like the top of a stop sign, with one window dead center. The view reveals only another house across the street. On either side of the window two black and white postcards of James Dean are tacked to the wall. One of the photos has James Dean with his head up to his nose hidden beneath his sweater. Above the left window are his puppets; I think they are from Jamaica. He vacationed there after the woman left him. Next to the puppet’s legs hangs a Shakespearean stamp in a wooden frame.

Under the tiny stamp is a simple black and white portrait of his father and mother. Blood, he said, blood on the white linoleum floor in our house in Chicago. I must have been six or seven. A postman had made some remark to my ma and when he returned the next day, someone beat him up quite badly. I don’t remember if it was my father or one of his friends. Da yelled at me to clean up the blood as his friend carried away the postman. The blood had spread under the radiator to where I couldn’t reach the stain underneath. The rest I cleaned up and tossed the rags in the dumpster as I ran down to the park to play.

Two side walls are also sparsely decorated as if in afterthought. A poster of Irish surnames displayed in old fashioned Irish Pub signs. He usually visits his sister in Ireland every other year. I always want to ask him to take me, but never dare to pose the question to him. I see him in Ireland though. I imagine him drinking a pint at one of those pubs listed on the wall. I see him leaning on a barstool, wiping the foam off his lips and discussing the plight of the Irishman in the U.S. The other way I see him in Ireland is dressed in a white knit fisherman’s sweater, a black longcoat and a fine workman’s cap on his head, standing on a rocky shore, the waves loudly crashing and thundering against the rocks on the beach. A lonely tragic figure, Lord Byron or any other doomed literary hero. Martin the Obscure.

A couple of outdated calendars. A bulletin board with business cards and a striking photo of him, his eyes dark and engaging, a glare that draws you in. Brooding. No smile. When I first saw the photograph, I thought it was another postcard of James Dean. A fence lies behind him in the background, blurred. The setting of this photograph is indistinguishable; no features mark the place or time. I cannot look at this photograph long before his eyes touch me. He laughed when I asked him about the photo and told me it was just an old picture from his theater days.

Underneath the bulletin board is his desk. Actually the desk is no more than an old table with heavy iron legs that have scuffed the floor. He has pencils and a couple of baskets filled with paper clips, change, pictures and a postcard from me. I sent it to him from Oregon. I have also sent him postcards from California, Arizona, Iowa, Wyoming, Washington and Colorado. I cannot find the others. An old Smith Corona manual typewriter, heavier than a concrete block, sits on the floor beside his desk. I typed on it only once. I typed a quote from Dostoyevsky I thought was appropriate. “What is hell? I maintain it is the suffering of being unable to love.” I almost left it in the carriage for him to read.

I’m a cold bastard he told me once. We lay side by side in his bed and he looked up at the ceiling as he talked. For a few minutes I watched his profile as he spoke a sort of benediction, then I turned over on my side and faced the wall. Last night . . . I always hesitate to get involved with you. You would have liked Sarah. We lived on a farm; she made her own clothes and grew vegetables. I kept holding out and didn’t marry her. Everyone wants the poet, the rogue, my sister married one when she was young, then she married a stable dentist who provides for her. You’ll see. So Sarah, she left and married someone else, I told you. Hard feelings, what are hard feelings? My sister wrote that Sarah missed hanging out with me, missed my laughter, but thought that I had hard feelings. You still have hope for me, honey, and sometimes it makes me uncomfortable. Find someone who can give.

The drawers of his black file cabinet are stuffed with files. The top drawer contains documents for his business. The letterhead I designed for him is in a file marked “Stationery.” The personal files in the bottom drawer are unmarked. I found a few of my letters in one of the folders, but I did not want to reread them. Over the years I have found old playbills with Martin listed as a cast member, old brilliant essays he wrote, most of them focusing on the problem in Northern Ireland. Some of these essays he has read to me over the years, depending on his mood when I visit.

“What most Americans cannot conceptualize or care not to is the condition of living that is accepted as ‘normal’ by most of Northern Ireland’s population. Soldiers toting guns walk the streets, fires constantly scour the community, and violent riots occur weekly. Civil rights is not a term that most of Northern Ireland could define . . .” Our discussion of the problems in Northern Ireland continued that night, two years ago, at the Black Rose, where an Irish folk band played ballads and reels on a fiddle, an octave Mandola and a flute.

We joined in the last chorus of the Queen of Argyll, and drunkenly swayed back and forth as we sang: “And if you could have seen her there/Boys if you could have just been there/The swan was in the movement and the morning in her smile/All the roses in the garden they bowed to ask her pardon/For no one could match the beauty of the Queen of all Argyll.” After we returned from the Black Rose, after he helped me up the stairs to his house, he whispered, Maybe you can save me. As he spoke my head rested on his chest with my eyes clenched shut as the room began to spin, as my head swam, as if I were waking from a dream of falling. Through the entire night his arms clung to me. Not once did I think of the extra blankets under the bed.

The closet door stands about an inch open. I don’t think it can close all the way. In the back of the closet in the shadows is a brown box with worn edges marked ‘old house’. Bluebeard’s last room and I am left alone with the key. No blood on my hands; so far I have resisted the urge to open it. I think about what I would find. I learned the story of the old house, the farmhouse, on the second night of our relationship, with the noise of the Celtic’s game in the background. I also learned about the IRA, the plight of the Irish immigrant in the United Sates, the PLO, the Kennedy family and Mickey Rourke’s best film role. I listened attentively as he spoke, sipping my first taste of a strong Guinness pint and trying not to cough through the heavy layer of bar smoke.

Seriously man, do you like this place? Mayor Flynn pops in often and buys a few brews for himself. This is a workingman’s pub, most of the people who come here are Irish immigrants. The unemployment rate in Ireland is phenomenal compared to the U.S. and most can do better over here, even illegally. I help some of them out from time to time. He ran his fingers through his disheveled hair in what I interpreted that night as a nervous gesture. He leaned back, glanced sideways and turned his penetrating gaze back to me.

On the top shelf of the closet stands the charcoal sketch of him I drew for his birthday: penetrating gaze, no smile. I never asked him why he doesn’t hang the sketch up on the wallpaper. I sat in my room three thousand miles away, and sketched this dark drawing from memory. His eyes took form on the soft paper and at first I drew his eyes staring directly outward. Then I erased my work, the image of him at Foley’s Pub that night surfaced, and instead I drew him in that sideways glance, looking over his shoulder at some unknown. When I finished the drawing I had a sudden urge to draw a cartoon balloon next to his mouth and write in his diatribe on some topic.

On the floor of the closet hidden under bags of clothes is a framed color photograph of him balancing on a fence, with a mischievous grin and taunting eyes. This photo was taken ten years ago. I know this because I once took the photo out of the frame and looked at the developer’s mark. Behind him is the ocean, a bay of some city I have never known. Probably some coastal city in Ireland. I do not know this Martin. When he is out, I sit on the floor near the closet and look at the photograph. Every year I have to blow off the dust.

I begin to spin again, whirring faster around the room, twirling around and around to make myself dizzy like children do. I jump off the bed and think of my visit here last year. Marooned in the house, I read until I heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs. He walked into the bedroom and remained silent as he tossed his coat on the bed and pulled off his paint splattered work clothes. The lines in his face were pronounced, his eyes weary and bloodshot and for the first time he appeared old to me. He opened the closet door to find a sweater and sighed. I have to go out tonight, meet a few people for a brew. I’ll leave you a twenty and you can go out and get some dinner. Listen, we’ll hook up before you leave. He left the room and I continued to read “How to Invest Wisely.”

After the front door banged shut, I walked from the bed over to the books on the floor and began picking out the titles I had given him—Ballad of the Sad Cafe, Jude the Obscure—and put them in my worn knapsack. I then went to the closet, opened the door, and picked an oversized tan sweater off the shelf and put it on. I pushed hanging clothes off to one side and glanced again at the actor in the photo. I let the clothes fall back into place. I stood on my toes to reach the top shelf and grabbed my sketch. I walked over to the desk and tugged at the postcard and placed this in my bag also. I made the bed up, first the black bottom sheet, then the sheet that is supposed to represent the Milky Way, then the yellow blanket with rough balls of fabric clinging to it and the multi-colored country quilt. I put on my coat, my mittens and boots and closed the bedroom door.

I made it halfway down Mass Ave before I turned around. I passed Mass General Hospital, the Symphony T-Station and the Berkeley Performing Arts Center. At the light just before the MIT Bridge that crosses the river to Cambridge, my stomach did a quick roll and my head spun. Dizzy and lightheaded, I opened the car door hoping the cold air would clear my head, calm my twisting stomach. Strawberries or rosebuds? Rosebuds or strawberries? When the light turned green I pulled the car in an illegal U-turn and drove back the way I came. My body stopped the reaction and the nausea passed, replaced with the calm of my return to stasis, to normal functioning. I walked back up the stairs to his house, entered his bedroom and returned the books, the sketch and my postcard. The sweater I kept on.

Four or five Guinnesses I drank later that night with him. Probably five. When I kissed him in the bedroom, I could taste the cigarettes he smokes when he drinks. After his fifth Guinness he became the Martin in the photograph, balancing on a fence, but not falling, his arms outstretched playfully, his smile open and true. He danced with me up the stairs and kissed me in the doorway of his bedroom. The picture Martin released, I had an urge to look under those bags of clothes in the closet and see if the picture had become sullen and brooding, the eyes tinged with failure and despair. Instead I kissed him, knowing that after the drink had worn off tomorrow, I would wait until he left for work and sit with the picture in the closet again.

I stop my circular motion and return to the bed once again. The room spins around me again in a skewed perspective. Tomorrow I leave for home, return to my room where the wallpaper doesn’t bother me, the closet door firmly closes and there are no extra blankets stored in a green garbage bag under the bed.

Sometimes, in my own bed, when I dream about his room, the picture of him on the fence smiling, balanced, is hung on the wall.

Beth Pratt is a longtime friend of the Harbinger, and by extension, Brushwood. If you enjoyed Martin’s Room, check out her first novel, entitled The Idea of Forever (ISBN:0-595-23214-0). For a synopsis of the book, go to www.bethpratt.com.

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