Heavy Metal
Laura’s body felt heavy. Heavy was the word her son Jason had used when he could no longer lift his head up or hold the controller to play video games. She sat by his bed reading to him like he was eight, not 16. He’d been dead four months now. She still had trouble getting out of bed. Sometimes she stayed there until noon.
She lay there while stacks of patient charts waited in her office to be coded. 204.00 was more polite than acute lymphoid leukemia without remission. In her darkest hours, Laura thought of getting 204.00 tattooed over her heart. She spent hours drawing the numbers across her chest with her fingertip.
Laura drifted off and woke to the sound of drums pounding in the apartment below. It was 12:15. She pulled on sweatpants and Jason’s flannel shirt and went down to apartment 2D. She knocked on the door. The drumming didn’t stop. She kicked the door, hard. Then she reached down to rub her aching foot.
“F-ing door,” she shouted. The door opened to a boy, about Jason’s age, with stringy jet-black hair and a nose ring.
“What do you want lady?”
“I want you to stop that damn drumming; some of us are trying to sleep.”
“Don’t you have, like, a job or something?” asked the kid with a smirk.
“Shouldn’t you be, like, in school or something?” replied Laura. They glared at each other. A look of recognition crossed the kid’s face.
“Hey, aren’t you the cancer kid’s mom? Jason, right?” It had been so long since anyone had spoken Jason’s name. She savored the sound of it, in spite of his attitude.
“Yeah, I’m Laura.” She held out her hand stiffly.
“I’m Ike,” he said, lightly slapping her palm in greeting.
“Did you know Jason?”
“He lent me a pen once to take a test.”
Laura smiled to herself. She could imagine him handing the pen over, his long, gorgeous fingers holding it out like a prize. Her mother had called them “piano player fingers” when Jason was a baby. His fingers were long even then and so fine that the light shone through them.
“So, like, what did you want?” Ike asked
“What were you playing?”
“Symphony of Destruction, Magadeth, do you know it?”
“No, actually I don’t.”
“Wanna hear me play it?”
“Sure.” She followed Ike into the apartment and down a hallway lined with pictures of him at every age. She hadn’t taken down the pictures at home. She half expected them to come to life, like something out of Harry Potter.
Ike’s bedroom walls were covered with posters of bands. A drum kit filled the corner of the room. Laura sat on the edge of the unmade bed.
“These sticks are new. I’m still getting used to them,” said Ike.
Laura nodded.
One, two, three,” Ike counted off and began drumming.
The noise was fantastic. Laura could feel her heart beating. She nodded her head in time. Ike smiled. His hands flew as he beat the drums. He closed his eyes, lost in the rhythm. The cymbals crashed. Ike raised his arms, sticks in hand, in triumph. Laura laughed for the first time in months.
The music stopped, but she could feel it echoing in her ears, filling up the empty spaces.
“You wanna try it?” asked Ike, holding out the sticks. Laura took the sticks and sat behind the drum kit.
The sticks were light in her hands. Ike gave her the thumbs up and counted, “One, two, three . . .” Laura raised her arms, waiting to feel the drum beats vibrate through her fingertips straight to her heart.
Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls, short stories, and Surrender, a poetry chapbook. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, South Carolina Review, and other journals. She received the Bevel Summers Prize for short fiction. Morris is a recipient of the Al Smith Fellow from the Kentucky Arts Council. Morris has an MFA from Queens University-Charlotte. Learn more at Ellen Birkett Morris.