Page 41 of Way Down Deep

That’s true. I remember being terrified of a lot of films like this. Terrified, but also preferring their version of these horrid things over the real-life versions. Easier to kill a fantasy wolf than the stuff it represents.

I’m guessingno magic dragons turned up to save you in the nick of time when you were little.

Do they ever?

No, not as far as I can tell. If I’m one for the boy, I showed up pretty fucking late to the party.

You were one for him, believe me.

Maybe. Sometimes I worry the inside of the boy’s head looks just like this bit now. All dark, empty space and drifting fragments.

Mine did. Mine does. But less so now. You make me feel like maybe the dragon has come, so I don’t know why it couldn’t be true for him.

He’s still so little. I don’t remember anything from when I was his age. So I hope maybe he won’t either. I hope he won’t remember a time when I wasn’t there for him.

He might remember a time before. But he’ll remember you coming for him more.

Ihope so. But I don’t feel very heroic. I feel like I’m just fumbling my way through this shit, trying not to make anything worse.

That’sthe way actual heroes always feel. They get up to the window and shout out the name, even though they are sure it’s probably not the right thing to do.

Ihope you’re right. Though I don’t want to be a hero, really. It’s so much harder than owning a liquor store. In case you were trying to choose between the two.

Oops, we missed, like, the entire climax of the movie.

Yeah, but I think we got the point of it.

So, do all the characters remember when the Nothing came through, or did the kid turn back time and hit Undo on all the badness?

I don’t like the idea that he just undid all the bad. I mean, I guess I wish I could do that for the boy’s head, but I can’t, so I’d rather the movie end with everyone moving on with their bad memories but being stronger for it or something.

Isit okay if I do want it undone?

Of course it is. I guess I just want to think there’s a way to fix all the cracks, instead of just going back and not dropping the vase. You know?

Oh yes, I know. I do. I like both of those options … but one of them will always be the winner for me.

Can I ask you something?

You can always ask me.

It’s morerhetorical than anything, because I’m not stupid. I want to ask if you had a traumatic childhood, but I think I already know the answer. But I don’t want to ask what happened to you. That feels like too far. So I don’t know what I want to ask. But if you have anything you’d like to say, I’m ready to hear it.

Isit enough to tell you yes? Yes, I had a traumatic childhood. Though traumatic seems like such a grand word for things that felt so … mundane. Mundanely bad. Like you know in movies when Julia Roberts has a violent husband? And yet it seems so glossy still. Everything is glamorous and works out okay. Nothing happens awkwardly or too suddenly, and once the villain is vanquished everyone goes on into a wonderful, amazing new life.

Ido knowwhat you mean. I wish things here were like a movie. Like, I show up here and everything’s really hard for the first hour of the movie, but then there’s some miraculous breakthrough like when Helen says “water” and I’ve gotten through to the boy and everything’s good and the music swells and the credits roll.

But you’re right. Reality is very mundane. And very un-glossy.

Yes. Yes yes yes yes. Yes. And you KNOW. You know in the movie that someone is coming to save them. The surety is perfect and absolute, and even if it isn’t you can just turn it off before it ever gets to that part. But not here. Here, it’s the opposite. You’re sure no one’s coming, and you can’t turn it off.

You don’t ever haveto tell me about your movie, not unless you decide you want to. But could you tell me how the first one ended? Are you in the sequel yet? It’s better, isn’t it? Safe, if still mundane?

Oh, my Malcolm. Yes, it’s better. It’s been getting better in ways I didn’t fully realise—like a caterpillar in a cocoon, I think, rather than an agoraphobic hermit who doesn’t ever want to face reality. But you’ve made the second act really something.

God knows I don’t want you to feel obligated or like I rely on you, because I don’t. But you have, and you still will have no matter what happens from here.

Am I shoutingdown into your well? That’s what you do for me. And now, after this last week or two, I can even see a little blue way up there. A tiny little circle of blue.

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