Life On Standby

     Andrew awoke from the dream, all knowledge of it already fleeting. He doubted he would have wanted to remember it anyway.
     Before opening his eyes, he knew that he was alone in the bed, and that it was cold. He was certain that if he were to peak out from under his heavy lids, in the dim light that must surely be filling the room, he would be able to see his breath hang with every exhale. Why was it so cold?
     He struggled against the need to open his eyes, but he knew that he had to, if only to answer the questions as to why it was cold and why he was alone.
     He stretched his legs and shoulders, and counted backwards from thirty, trying to will himself to open his eyes. Ultimately, it was the knowledge that once he did open them, he wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. He would be up for the day. He would get a head-start on another shitty day. It’s not something that he wanted.
     Still, there were those questions that needed to be answered, and they could only be answered if he were to open his eyes and wake up. Damn the man.
     He completed one last thirty-second countdown, the entire time feeling the comfort of the blanket tempting him back into a wonderful world of slumber, telling him that if he were to cuddle up with them, bring them to his chin and pull his bare feet back beneath them, he would be warm, and he would sleep well, probably for another two or three hours. Warm blankets, the sirens of any man’s bed.
     To hell with it, he thought to himself, and ripped his eyelids open to a dim that he knew existed only in the predawn of December morning.
     The light on the wall was probably a pale blue, but it looked sickly when reflecting off of the paneling. He stared at the wood grain pattern, and the deep, black grooves that simulated different slats. Behind the paneling and in the insulation, he imagined that he could hear mice snoring softly, warm in the pieces of the room that they had stolen away, their normally quick heart slowed to a steady rhythm as they feasted in endless forests of cheese while in their dreams.
     He stared at the wall, thinking of the mice at the front of his mind. Still, the space behind the mice was occupied with rolling over, sitting up, and figuring out why he was alone in the bed and why the room was so cold.
     So cold…
     Andrew exhaled slowly, and, sure enough, he could see the cloud of condensation that was his breath. What was the dew point in the room right now? Maybe forty to fifty degrees? Less?
     That would explain why he could see his breath, what the sweat that was on his bare chest from his dream was so bitter cold, and why the hair on his arms was bristling, giving him goose flesh. Fortunately, his chin wasn’t quivering, though he was certain that if he didn’t have the blankets covering his legs it most certainly would be.
     Now or never, he thought to himself, pushing off of the stained and battered mattress that was little more that a piece of wood made out of cloth and spring at this point. He blinked his eyes, and swayed a little as the blood left his head and travelled down within him. He stayed like that for a moment, propped on one arm, the blankets draped around his legs on the mattress on the floor. During those moments, he didn’t register anything with any of his senses.
     His eyes say only blackness, his ears heard only white noise, and the cold was less than a sensation. For those few moments where he didn’t move, before he was truly awake, Andrew may as well have become catatonic and receded within himself.
     But, as quickly as the lapse in all his senses set in, it was gone, and he was more than half awake, and he knew there was no going back to the false comfort of the bed and pillows, and that now he had to deal with the day.
     Cracking his neck, he looked around the room slowly, not quite meticulously, and soon the answers to both of his questions were answered.
     Andrew looked at the ten year old boy that was staring out the window at the world of white, his body shaky lightly under the thin garments that were his pajamas. He looked almost like an angel child, the way the light caused the pale fabric to glow ever so slightly.
     Andrew wondered what the boy was looking at, if he was truly looking at anything, and what was going through his head. He tried to remember what it was like to be ten. What thoughts raced through his mind? Ten is too young to be interested in girls, so it couldn’t be that. Maybe cartoons? Video games? School? Friends?
     Really, it could be anything, at least for most ten year olds it could be anything. In the case of his nephew, though, Andrew had a strong notion as to what it really could be.
     Andrew climbed off of the mattress that was on the floor gently, careful not to catch himself in the blanket, and slowly made his was over to Nolan, taking with him a blanket to wrap around the shivering child.
     “Hey, buddy,” Andrew said in barely a whisper, putting the blanket on Nolan’s shoulders gingerly, not wanting to scare the boy, but mostly worried that he may break the child that looked so frail in his angel-like state.
     The only response given to Andrew was Nolan pulling the blanket tight and continuing to look out the fourth floor window of the apartment to the frozen courtyard below.
     Andrew looked, too, but he saw the world through the eyes of an adult, and so he doubted he saw what the child was seeing. To Andrew’s eyes, the courtyard consisted of snow and ice, dropped upon barren trees and bushes, surrounded by walls of frosted brick. It was all rather depressing, really. Cold and inhuman. A frozen wasteland if there ever was one.
     What was the boy seeing? The same thing as Andrew, perhaps. Maybe the child wasn’t imagining a world of ice dragons and valiant knight’s fighting them amongst the cold, dead fingers of the forest. Maybe he saw the world for what it was. That would be such a shame though.
     “What are you thinking about, Nolan?” Andrew asked, hoping he would get an answer involving fantasy.
     His nephew was ten years old, and already he had seen more of the real world than most people did by the time they hit forty. Andrew hoped, deep down, that Nolan was taking this early hour to live in a world of dreams where he could be happy.
Such a thing, though, seemed unable to be.
     “Mommy and Daddy,” Nolan said in the soft voice only a child could possess.
     Andrew felt his heart stop beating for a moment, hearing the sadness in the voice that Nolan was still too young to try to hide.
     “What about them?” Andrew knew better than to persist, had been told not to dig, that it was the job of the counselors, but, dammit, he was the boy’s uncle, and, for the time, his guardian. It was his job to be there for Nolan. It was his job to ask these questions and to find out what was on the poor child’s mind. A child could not be expected to only think about the bad things in his life when it as convenient for some counselor. Hell, no adult could even do such a thing.
     “I’m thinking about why they left me,” Nolan said, a little sniffle hidden within the words.
     I’ve been thinking about that, too, Andrew thought quietly, putting his hands on the boy’s shoulders and staring with him out the window.
     “Why did they leave me, Uncle Andy?”
     Andrew had often felt there would times when Nolan would ask him this question. They had broached the subject in the past, when Nolan would ask what Andrew thought his mom and dad might be doing at any given moment, or, more commonly, if they still loved the child, and in those moments of conversation, Andrew had known there would come a time when Nolan would ask the hardest question: why? True, though, it was a fair enough question, and one that anybody, at any age, would ask in the situation.
     So, how does one answer that question? Do they answer truthfully, and possibly bury a knife in the child’s heart, forever making him think that his parents and, very possibly, all adults were wretched beings that should be avoided and never be trusted; or, rather, do they answer with a lie, maybe a white lie or maybe something more, and give the child a sense of truth, a piece of reality, and maybe some hope that one day things could be better, and the world could make sense?
     Andrew was unsure how to answer. He didn’t want to destroy the boy, but he didn’t want to lie to him either.
     “Because,” Andrew started, pausing to swallow and think of the right way to phrase it for the boy. “Because, some people aren’t ready to be parents, even when they become them.”
     There, that should do it. I didn’t lie, Andrew thought, I told him something that is true.
     And it was true enough. It was broad, but it was true, or, at least, it was true enough.
     Andrew’s sister and her brother, they weren’t bad people, or maybe they were, but they certainly weren’t ready to be parents when they had Nolan, and Andrew doubted they ever would be.
     “Someday they’ll be ready, though?”
     Andrew often thought that Nolan could read his mind, considering the questions that the child often asked fit with what was on Andrew’s mind oh so often.
     “Time will tell on that one, buddy, time will tell. Now, you should get back to bed and let me close the window so you don’t get sick,” Andrew said, gently guiding Nolan away from the window before closing and latching it.
     Quickly, warmth began to fill the tiny apartment, by Andrew doubted that the temperature would even reach sixty in the room before noon. Still, every little bit helped.
     He lay Nolan down on the mattress and tucked him in, brushing the hair back from his forehead and telling him to try to get a little more sleep. Andrew, meanwhile, was going to go to the kitchen and make himself some coffee.
     “Aren’t you going to get sleep, too?” Nolan asked.
     “No, I got plenty. I’ll stay awake, keep an eye on things.”
     Andrew left the bedside, and headed to the closed door that separated the bedroom from the rest of the five-hundred dollar a month apartment that should have been condemned the past decade.
     “Even if they weren’t ready, did they still love me?” Nolan asked.
     “Of course they did. They still do,” Andrew said, hoping it wasn’t a lie.