Category: Charlie’s Room

Charlie’s Room: The Toy Box

Isaac was walking to his car after work and saw a toy box in the window of an antique shop. It looked like an old-fashioned treasure chest and was probably large enough for Charlie to fit inside. It was perfect. Charlie’s old toy box was overflowing.

Isaac hurried inside to check it out. It was made of wood and sturdy, but surprisingly lightweight. The price was absurdly low. How strange. When he brought it up to the counter, the clerk looked nervous.

“All sales are final,” he said as he rang up the purchase.

“But the sign by the register says…” Isaac began to say, pointing to a sign that said, “Full refunds for all purchases returned within 30 days.”

“It’s a new policy,” the man interrupted. “You can’t bring it back now. Here you go. Thank you for your purchase.”

Isaac took his receipt and the toy box and left feeling a little confused.   As he carefully slid it into the back seat, his excitement returned. Charlie was going to love it! Maybe they could play pirates this weekend and have a scavenger hunt or something.   A treasure chest like this was just begging to be part of some sort of pirate game, at least once.

The house was empty when he got home. Marianne and Charlie must have already left for swimming lessons. Isaac hurried into Charlie’s room with the new toy box.

He dumped out the old one, leaving a mound of toys in the middle of the floor.   The toys Charlie didn’t play with anymore were all on the top of the pile. There were rattles and raggedy teddies and teething rings and books that had been colored all over with crayons and cars missing their wheels.

He put the new toy box next to the bookshelf. It fit perfectly. He looked at the pile dubiously. Perhaps all the things from the bottom of the old box didn’t need to go into the new one. However, it might be better if Charlie was the one to sort through everything.

He picked up a blue cow that he remembered Charlie hated because it was the wrong color and dropped it in the new box. There was a strange sound. He looked into the toy box. It was empty.

He looked a little closer. There was a scrap of blue fur stuck to a little line of ridges that ran in a line along one side. There was a matching stripe of ridges along the bottom of the other side of the box.   He reached in to retrieve the scrap of blue fur. As he reached towards it, the ridges darted together to meet in the middle, attached to boards that came from nowhere.

They met like teeth and chomped together twice more. Then there was a brief thumping sound, like rocks being tossed together in a small wooden box. The boards separated and slid back into place. The bottom of the box looked sound, but Isaac was afraid to touch it. He felt along the outside.

There was nowhere for those sliding boards to go. There was nowhere for the cow to go. This made no sense. He picked up an ugly little snow globe filled with poorly painted candy. He tossed it in. Crunch, crunch, crunch. There was the sound of rocks and breaking glass. The bottom of the box wasn’t even wet.

This was not a safe toy box. He could try to take it apart or store it in the garage, but that might kill it.   That didn’t seem fair. If it was eating things it was alive, right? Or was it some sort of magical garbage disposal?

Who could he call for advice? Great-Aunt Bethyl seemed to know all about strange things like this. He found her phone number and called. She picked up on the seventh ring.

“Hello?” she said.

“Great-Aunt Bethyl,” Isaac said. “It’s Isaac, Marianne’s husband. I was hoping you could give me advice.”

“What do you need help with?” she asked.

“I bought a toy chest at the antique shop, but it eats things. It chews them up and swallows them. Do you know who I should call?” Isaac asked.

“I think I still have some of my old contacts. Someone will be by shortly,” Great-Aunt Bethyl said. Then she hung up.

Twenty minutes later, a man in black pants and a green polo shirt was at the door. “Hello,” he said, smiling widely, “agent –I mean your great-aunt –called and said you had a box for me to look at?”

Isaac showed him the box, and the man seemed delighted as it crunched up a cheap plastic rattle. “Where did you get this?” He asked.

“The antique store on Hawthorne road,” Isaac said.

“Wonderful. Now, don’t tell anybody about this. Just pretend you never saw it,” the man said. He took the box and left.

Isaac looked at the pile of toys. He slid the old toy box back into place. If Charlie sorted through things and they donated what he didn’t want, it would probably all fit fine. They could work on it together right after dinner. That was better than getting a new toy box anyway, wasn’t it?

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Charlie’s Room: The Plant

One day, when Marianne was with Charlie at swim practice, Isaac couldn’t find his trusty dictionary. He’d used it to steady a chair he was gluing back together, but it wasn’t where he’d left it. Maybe some helpful person had put it on a shelf somewhere.

Isaac checked the bookshelf in the living room, and the bookshelf in the kitchen, and the bookshelf in the hallway, and the bookshelf in his bedroom.   Next on his list was Charlie’s bookshelf. Isaac crossed the room and paused.

There was a plant he’d never seen before sitting on Charlie’s bookshelf.   It had light green tendrils like a soft aloe plant or a droopy spring fern. He brushed his fingers across it and it almost seemed to cling to them.   Huh. Isaac checked the shelves and found his dictionary.

Isaac left to glue together the next wobbly kitchen chair. He could only fix one chair at a time so that there were still enough chairs to sit on at meal times.

At dinner he asked Marianne and Charlie about the plant. “What plant?” Marianne asked.

“I found it on the doorstep when I got home,” Charlie said.

“Bring it out and put it by my orchids,” Marianne said. The kitchen window gets the best sun.” Charlie brought it out and Marianne admired it and set it in a sunny spot.

“I wonder what it is,” Charlie said. “Do you think it’ll bloom?”

“I think most plants do, dear,” Marianne said. “It really is a pretty plant. I wonder who left it for us. Was there a note?”

“Nope,” Charlie said.

“I’m sure we’ll figure it out,” Marianne said.

That night, Isaac woke in the middle of the night. He couldn’t remember his dream or what woke him, but he was wide-awake. He decided to get a drink of water.

Outside, a streetlight glowed. Inside, so did the open refrigerator. The empty crisper drawer was on the floor. A thin trail of dirt led from the new plant to the refrigerator. A thicker trail of dirt led to the open back door. The new plant was sitting noticeably lower in its pot.

Isaac put the crisper drawer back in its spot and closed the refrigerator.   He followed the dirt to the back door.   The fruit bowl that they kept on the counter by the door was empty and on the floor. He picked it up and then stepped outside.

There was a fresh mound of earth next to the flowerbed. Isaac stepped back in and closed the door. He swept up the dirt and tipped it into the new plant’s pot. “I don’t think most plants are sentient you know, so I don’t think they suffered. I don’t know if that makes you feel any better.”

The new plant’s tendrils shuffled, just a little.

“Honestly, I’m very fond of plants. Would you like a drink of water before I go to bed?” Isaac checked the soil, but it seemed fairly moist. “No?   Well, I’ll see you in the morning,” he said.

In the morning, the new plant and all of Marianne’s orchids were gone.   Marianne looked around the room in shock. “Where are they?” she asked.

“I think they’ve gone to a better place. So has all of our fresh produce,” Isaac said.

“Honestly, Isaac,” Marianne said. “Just tell me where you put them. The orchids won’t do well outside for very long.”

“Have you ever wondered if some plants are sentient?” Isaac asked.

“Never mind,” Marianne said. “I imagine you knocked them down or something, and you’re too afraid to tell me.   Just go out and replace them.   And the food too.”

“I’ll make a list,” Isaac said.

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Charlie’s Room: The Radio

“Cousin Reginald needs a ride to the dentist’s office tomorrow. He’s having a consultation about elective dental work and his minivan is in the shop,” Isaac said one evening. “I’ll take him on my lunch break.”

“I guess he is in his seventies,” Marianne said.   “Is he getting dentures?”

“No, he said he’s hoping for shark teeth implants or maybe teeth carved in the shape of hawks or something. At the very least, he wants his canines sharpened,” Isaac said.

Marianne sighed. “More rebellion?”

“Yep,” Isaac said.

“We’ll see you when you get home,” Marianne said.   “If he is still experimenting with that awful-smelling homemade cologne, keep the windows open on the way home.   I refuse to ride in a car that smells like raw onions and stinky cheese.”

“Yucky,” Charlie said.

“I can do that,” Isaac said.

When he got home from work the next evening, Marianne was rushing out the door to take Charlie to swimming lessons. “Does Cousin Reginald have weird teeth now?” She asked.

“No, to his disgust they said it wasn’t possible.   He stormed out when they offered him caps,” Isaac said. Marianne laughed and then rushed Charlie out to the car.

Isaac was home alone. He opened his bag and pulled out the radio that Cousin Reginald had given him. Reginald said he was using it to communicate with aliens, but that didn’t seem likely.   It would be just perfect for Charlie’s room. The classical radio station had the most ingenious piano puzzlers. Charlie was sure to love it.

Isaac found a clear space on Charlie’s desk and plugged it in. He turned on the radio and prepared to tune it. “Are you there?” A strange voice asked. It was high and sputtered a little, like a whistle with some water in it.

“Who are you?” Isaac asked. “Are you looking for Cousin Reginald?”

“I spent hours studying your primitive language so that I could tell him exactly what I think of him, and then he’s not even there,” the voice said. It sounded angry. “He may be the leader of the Free Enlightened Thinkers, but I don’t care how well hidden he thinks his people are, if we blow up your planet they’ll all die too.”

Obviously Cousin Reginald really had been communicating with aliens. What had he been saying? No wonder he was so eager to give up the radio. “That would just be playing into his hands,” Isaac said. He tried to sound confident.

“Who are you and what do you mean?” The voice asked.

“I am the person in charge of cleaning up the mess Reginald left behind when he fled. He is a radical terrorist. He fights against authority of any kind,” Isaac said.

“That does seem consistent with his character,” the voice said.

“He probably would be happy to die if it meant taking everyone down with him,” Isaac said. Unfortunately, this was probably somewhat true. Reginald’s rebellious phase had been a bit difficult at times.

“We don’t support terrorists,” the voice said.

“Of course not. You sound like a civilized being. I’m sorry that we weren’t aware sooner that Reginald had seized this communication device and was using it to insult you and your people. I will personally ensure that it is kept in a more secure place,” Isaac said.

“See that you do. When you catch that criminal, tell him I said his arguments are flawed, and single-cell organisms are more intelligent than he is,” the voice said.

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Isaac said. There was a click and then static. Isaac unplugged the radio. He put it in a shoebox and taped it shut. He wrote on it in marker, “Newspaper Articles about Municipal Utility Funding.” No one would touch that. He put it on the top shelf of his closet, in the far corner.

It was time to make dinner so that it was ready when Marianne and Charlie came home. Spaghetti sounded nice and easy, and that’s just what his nerves needed. He hoped Cousin Reginald would grow out of this phase soon. It was a little stressful.

 

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Charlie’s Room: The Loft Bed

“Cousin Reginald says that he found a loft bed for Charlie’s room,” Isaac told Marianne after breakfast.

“One of those beds on stilts?” Charlie asked.   He stopped poking at his oatmeal.

“Yes,” Isaac said.

“Is Cousin Reginald the one who smells like raw onions and stinky cheese?” Marianne asked, wrinkling up her nose. “And uses really long words so that no one can understand a thing he says?”

“Yes,” Isaac said. “He’s going through a rebellious phase, and he says that tattoos and piercings are too mainstream.”

“He’s in his seventies,” Marianne said.

“And before retirement he was a very well-behaved accountant,” Isaac said. “He’s just entering the adolescence of his retirement years, that’s all. It will pass.”

“Well, I think Charlie and I are going to the bug museum today,” Marianne said.

“Really?” Charlie asked. He pushed away his bowl. “I love the bug museum!”

“What better way to spend a Saturday?” Marianne asked. “Now eat three more bites.” She grinned at Isaac. “Too bad we won’t be here when Cousin Reginald comes.”

“You’re missing out. He tells the best jokes,” Isaac said.

“If you can even understand what he’s saying,” Marianne said. “Come on, Charlie, let’s go get ready. It’s Daddy’s turn to do the dishes.”

Isaac did the dishes and moved Charlie’s bed out to the garage. Cousin Reginald arrived soon after. “What tangible object appears to bear the hues ivory, ebony, and crimson over the entirety of its epidermis?” He asked, when Isaac answered the door.

“Hmmm. So many things could fit that particular situation,” Isaac said.

“Indeed. However, on this occasion, it happens to be a Sheniscidae suffering from Erythema,” Cousin Reginald said.

“Oooh. Let me get my phone so that I can be enlightened,” Isaac said.

“I’d settle for a manifestation of mirth, but then I am currently experimenting with gelotology,” Cousin Reginald said.

The visit was pleasant, especially once Isaac had gotten used to the smell and didn’t have to breathe through his mouth. Isaac carried in the pieces from the mustard-yellow minivan, and Cousin Reginald put them together. He pointed a piece and Isaac held it in place while Reginald attached it. Then he pointed to the next piece. Within a half hour, it was done and he was gone.

Isaac was in the living room opening some windows, when he heard something bump against Charlie’s door. Had it blown closed? He’d better see what happened.

He tried to open the door, but at first it seemed stuck. Then, it flew open and he stumbled inside.

The new bed was in the middle of the room instead of standing against the wall where he’d left it. It shoved past him and rushed out of the room. He followed it down the hall. As it slowed down, it seemed to be limping.

Isaac managed to corner it in the living room behind the couch. Luckily, he hadn’t opened the front window yet, or it might have tried to jump out.   “Hey, big guy, it’s going to be okay.   Calm down. That’s right.” Isaac held his hands out in front of him to show he wasn’t holding any tools. “Is there something wrong with your foot?   Can I take a look and see if I can help?”

The bed trembled for a bit, then slowly held out a long wooden leg. On the bottom of its foot, there was a shiny silver tack. “Let me see if I can get that off without a knife or a screwdriver or something,” Isaac said.

He slowly reached out his hand. The bed flinched, but held still. Isaac managed to pry out the tack. The hole it left was small and shallow. It would be fine to leave it like that. “There you go,” Isaac said. “Now do you think you can go back to your spot and sleep, like the rest of the furniture?”

The bed rubbed up against him once and then returned to Isaac’s room. Isaac sung it some lullabies in case that helped. By the time Marianne and Charlie returned, it was as asleep as anything else in the house and didn’t move. “This bed is awesome,” Charlie said.

“And the house smells fine,” Marianne said. “How did the visit go?”

“It was great, you missed out,” Isaac said. He patted the bed. Did it just purr? He looked at it. No, probably not.

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Charlie’s Room: The Closet Door

When they first moved into their little house, Charlie’s room was missing the closet door. “We don’t need a closet door,” Marianne said. “He’ll just pinch his fingers.   Leave it be.”

But Isaac liked to finish things, and so that unfinished closet door bothered him, just a little. Not all the time or even all that often, but sometimes he’d look into Charlie’s room and see straight into his closet, and then he’d think that maybe they did need a closet door after all.

One rather nice Saturday, Charlie was invited to a birthday party. “It’s at a pizza place,” he said. “With games. So I need to bring lots and lots of quarters for the games.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take him,” Marianne said.   “I want to talk to Joey’s mom about a playdate next week, and she’ll be there.”

The party would take hours, and Isaac was home alone again. He decided to go on a walk.   It seemed to be yard sale season, and every so often Isaac would come across a table full of books or baby clothes, or a row of kitchen chairs.

Two blocks away, on the corner, someone had left a closet door at the curb with a sign taped to it that said, “free.” It was just the right size for Charlie’s room.   Isaac picked it up and carried it home, with several stops to readjust his necessarily awkward handholds. At least it was lightweight.

It didn’t take long to prop it on the wall next to Charlie’s closet. Luckily it still had its hinges, and he somehow happened to have the right size screws in his toolbox. Were those from when he took apart the crib or from the cabinet remodel? It didn’t really matter.

He plugged in his power drill and got to work. He used chairs and a shelf of books to hold the door in place and zip, ziiiiiiiiiip-zip, it was done. He swung the door open and closed a few times, admiring his work.

On its seventh swing open, he noticed that something was odd inside the closet. There was a strange shadow behind Charlie’s neat row of shirts and coats and superhero dress-ups. Isaac pushed his hand through to see if the wall felt damp. He really didn’t want to try to deal with plumbing issues ever, if he could help it.

Nothing was there. There was no dampness and no wall. He pushed his entire arm through the hanging curtain of clothes and there was nothing there. He pushed his way through with both hands and the clothes brushed along the sides of his arms and face for an absurdly long time.

And then he realized he was pushing through pine tree branches. “Aren’t I too old to go to Narnia?” he thought. But he felt a little giddy. He’d always sort of hoped he’d find his way to Narnia, even now that he was grown up.   “I just need to be very careful who I talk to, and it will all be fine,” he told himself.

He kept pushing forward, hoping for a glimpse of a lamp post, but it felt like he’d been walking for hours through the forest, and he hadn’t seen anything out of place. Just when he was considering turning around, he smelled something peculiar.   Gingerbread? He walked a little more quickly. Licorice? Mint? He entered a clearing, and there at its center was a little house, covered in candy.

“Nope, I know this story,” he thought. He turned around and began to push his way home.   He hadn’t gone too far when giant chicken legs barred his path. He looked up to see a ramshackle hut perched on top of the legs.

“I know this story too.” He darted around the legs and started to run. He burst through the closet and tripped over his drill.   Ouch. He sat up stiffly. “That was not Narnia,” he said out loud. He allowed himself to feel sad for a moment. Then he picked up the drill and took down the door. There was no weird shadow at the back of the closet.   He patted it to be certain. All solid.

He put away the chairs and books and screws and drill.   Then he reattached the note to the closet door and carried it back two blocks to the corner where he found it.   When he got home, Marianne and Isaac were pulling into the driveway. “Did you have a nice walk?” she asked.

“It was okay,” Isaac said.

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Charlie’s Room: The Light

The morning Charlie left for his camping trip with his cousins, he raced around the house trying to find everything he needed.   “Where’s the flashlight? What’s a mess kit? Why would I want a compass?” Marianne was out meeting with a client or sponsor or something, so Isaac tried to follow behind Charlie and help him out.

In the end, he left with a lumpy backpack, a sleeping bag and pillow, and a smile. ‘Thanks, dad!” he called over his shoulder. “Oh, by the way, my light’s out. I think it needs a new light bulb.”

“Wait!” Isaac said. Charlie paused, halfway into Marianne’s sister’s minivan. “You didn’t give me a hug.” Charlie rolled his eyes and ran back.

“I love you, Dad,” he said, but it was all muffled in Isaac’s shirt.

Isaac understood anyway. “I love you too, Charlie,” he said. He waved until the car turned the corner. He waited a little longer, because maybe they’d come back for something Charlie forgot, or maybe Charlie would decide not to go after all.

But they didn’t come right back, and Isaac went back inside. It was the start of a four-day weekend. The house was a mess and the weather was beautiful.   Isaac forgot all about the light bulb.   He did get the house picked up before Marianne got home, though.

The next evening, Marianne had some sort of conference to go to. Isaac puttered around the house, looking for something to do, when he remembered the light bulb. He grabbed a box of light bulbs and a stepladder and had to juggle them a bit to open Charlie’s door.

He left the new light bulbs on the bed and struggled a bit with the ladder.   “It’s too bad Charlie’s not here,” he thought. “I could ask him how many dads it takes to change a light bulb.”

He paused. “Just one because we’re awesome like that.” Isaac laughed out loud and reached for the bulb. It made a strange shuffling sound as he unscrewed it. It was surprisingly heavy. Was there something inside? He shook it gently and it shuffled some more.

He set it on the bed and put in a new bulb. The light worked fine. He held up the old bulb. There was a lumpy shape inside, as big as a golf ball. Hmmm. Time to perform surgery.

He found a hammer and chisel and set the bulb in a pie plate on the table.   With one big swing of the hammer, the end of the light bulb was gone, leaving a round glass ball with a slightly splintered end. He picked it up and looked inside.

It looked like there was a funny-shaped gray rock inside. He tipped it out into his hand. Some bits of wire hit his hand first, and then he caught what looked like a lizard statue. It was cold and hard.

He held it closer to his face. It twitched. He nearly dropped it. How had a lizard ended up in the light bulb?   How had it survived the heat inside without drying up into lizard jerky?

Perhaps it was some sort of fire lizard. Isaac was pretty sure he’d read about something like that. They lived in volcanoes or something. He turned on his desk lamp and made the little lizard a bed out of foil. He pushed the lamp as close as he could and left a dish of water nearby.

He watched for a bit, but nothing happened, so he left to make dinner.   When he came back, the lizard had somehow crawled into the lamp and curled around the bulb. “That hardly looks comfortable. I’d offer you the oven, but we can’t keep it on all the time.”   The lizard squeezed the bulb a little tighter.

Should he call the zoo? Were fire lizards common? What did they eat? Moths and bugs attracted to the light probably. “Do you need me to find you some moths?” he asked the lizard. “You know, to help you get your strength back up?”

The lizard squeezed itself even tighter around the bulb and suddenly, pop!, it was inside. “Oh, that’s how you do it!” Isaac said. “That’s amazing. I really should learn more about lizards sometime.” But, he had other projects planned for the evening.   By the time Charlie and Marianne were home, he’d forgotten all about the little lizard. Until months later when his desk lamp needed a new bulb.

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