Page 69 of Rhymes with Metaphor
“That cost more than I spent on textbooks last semester,” said Joel.
“Don’t worry about money.I’ll take care of you now, if you’ll let me.”
“I’ll try.But it’s too expensive—I can’t accept.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t do anything to deserve it.”
“Joel, I derive more pleasure from giving you things than you ever could by accepting them.Take it, with my blessing.”
Joel still looked uncertain.
Reg handed Joel the journal with the Argyle cover.“That’s for keeping your thoughts in.Have you ever tried writing anything aside from schoolwork?”
“No.”
“Try.Maybe you have a hidden talent.”
“That man knew we were together,” said Joel.
“And?”
“It bothered him.”
“You can’t live your life waiting for everyone to approve of you, or you won’t have any fun at all.When I was your age, I hadn’t had a good day until at least eight people had disapproved of me by bedtime.Let’s go and get some food.”
Reg took him to the market and bought laverbread and bacon and prawns in the shell and fresh pastries, then they drove for half an hour to the house.When they arrived, they carried their luggage inside, and Reg showed Joel upstairs to the small front bedroom with its twin bed.
“This is for you,” said Reg, pulling the curtains open.“It’s got a view of the channel.You can sit up in bed every morning drinking your coffee and watching the boats and the fairground on the island.”
“Whose house is this?”
“Mine,” said Reg.“I inherited it from my grandmother.”
“Then whose is this?”said Joel, picking up a small teddy bear from the bureau.
“That was my mother’s when she was little,” said Reg.“She died when I was three.”
“I’m sorry,” said Joel, looking at the bear, and he seemed genuinely upset.
“I don’t remember her.Feel sorry for my father.He loved her.He never came back here after she died, but I’d come in the holidays and stay with my grandmother.This was my mother’s old room.My grandmother kept everything just as it was when she was alive.”
Joel set the bear back exactly where it had been, then he became fascinated with the other objects ranged along the top of the bureau.
Reg said, “You can touch them if you like.They were mine when I was a boy.”
Joel examined each one with curiosity and delight: The little wooden goat that would collapse if you pressed the bottom of the stump it stood on, the tiny wooden figures of a mother cat and her kitten and their bowl of milk, and the little acrobat who flipped around the parallel bar when you squeezed the upright bars.Alongside them was the Mason jar full of seashells and sea glass, blue and green and amber, that Reg and Martin had gathered on the beach when they were children, added to the ones his mother had gathered as a child.Last was the wooden toy soldier.
Joel peered at its leg.
“It broke when Martin chucked it off the balcony attached to a parachute made of a plastic bag and string,” said Reg.“I glued it back on, but you can still see the crack.”
Joel replaced everything carefully, as though they were his toys and his childhood memories.
Joel looked at the twin bed.“Where are you sleeping?”
“Next door.”Reg opened the connecting door between their bedrooms.His room had a king-size bed with a bay window overlooking the channel.
