“I don’t want a computer. I don’t want to look at pornographic pictures. All I want is a comfortable chair, a small TV set, a CD player—”
“We can’t afford any of that nonsense.”
“—and all my books. Yes, we can. I’ll buy everything at garage sales or Goodwill.”
“No. I won’t have it.”
“Ruth, please—”
“No!”
The next morning she vacuumed and dusted Katie’s room, closed the blinds and frilly curtains over the window that overlooked the backyard, then made him watch as she locked the door and dropped the key into her pocket — the key she had used to keep Katie locked inside as punishment for real or imagined misbehavior as often as Katie had used it for personal privacy.
“There now,” she said. “That settles it.”
Yes, it did. But not the way she thought.
He had never before gone against Ruth’s wishes, and he was well aware of what was likely to happen if he did. But he was determined to have his den. If not with her permission, then without it, through daring and guile, and damn the consequences. And once he had it, he would keep it no matter what she said or did.
It didn’t take him long to develop a plan of action. What he came to think of as an adventure, a covert one that added a small but spicy element of danger to his quest.
Ruth did all their grocery shopping alone, claiming that he slowed her down by dilly-dallying and bought too many useless food and drug items — a pair of gross exaggerations. The next time she went, he called Katie in the city and told her what he proposed to do. She had no objections to the makeover of her old room, in fact encouraged him in the project. Out of spite for her mother, he thought, not because she cared whether or not he had his den. Katie had inherited some of Ruth’s less than endearing traits, though she would have thrown a fit if this had been suggested to her.
Wyatt’s next step was a search for Katie’s room key. Ruth hadn’t bothered to pick a clever hiding place for it; it took only a few minutes to find it, in the back of a drawer in her sewing table. For the time being he left it where it was.
Saturdays from eleven until five o’clock were reserved for Ruth’s weekly visit with her widowed sister Elaine in Bayport. Wyatt made prior arrangements with a locksmith to come by at noon the following Saturday, fetched the key to unlock the door before the man arrived, and then returned it to the sewing drawer. The locksmith replaced the lock with a similar one, after which Wyatt added its key to his key ring. There was virtually no risk in this maneuver. Ruth would have no reason to try to enter the room again during the next month — one cleaning-and-dusting was always good for at least four weeks. And once she laid down the law, she expected him to obey it implicitly.
Over the next few weeks, whenever Ruth was out shopping or away at her sister’s, he began making Katie’s room over into his. He boxed up the relatively few articles of clothing and other possessions that she’d left behind, added a scattering of toilet articles from the adjacent bathroom, and stored the cartons among others in the garage in case she wanted any of it someday. The bedside lamps and the fuzzy white throw rug also went into concealed storage. With the window blinds closed tight, there was no danger of Ruth happening to look inside while she was out puttering in her rose garden.
Seven days later Wyatt elicited the aid of Charlie Ledbetter, one of his few remaining friends, and together they moved out the remaining items. The bed, nightstands, bureau, and small writing desk went to a Goodwill donation center, the mattress and frilly window curtains to a local recycler. The room was then completely empty. Or it was until he and Charlie carried in the half-dozen boxes of books — travel, Western Americana, a complete set of the classics — that Ruth had made him put in the garage because she refused to have “all those dust catchers cluttering up my house.” Charlie, who understood electrical matters, also found a way to hook up the new TV set to the house cable line.
Wyatt made the rounds of thrift shops and the local flea market the following week. A small portable TV set and roller stand were his first purchases, then a combination radio and CD player that a vendor called a “baby boom box.” He returned home just in time to lock the last of the items in his den before Ruth came back.
The next two Saturdays, again with Charlie’s help, he bought and moved in a chair, two medium-size bookcases, and a small oriental rug. The chair was a brown Naugahyde recliner with a tom but reparable arm that cost him surprisingly little at a hospice thrift store. The bookcases, a matching pair stained a light walnut color that went well with the recliner, came from a garage sale. The rug, which looked expensive but wasn’t, had been an impulse buy at another thrift shop — three by four feet in size, an exotic wine-red color with a blue, green, and yellow design and fringed edges.
When he had everything arranged to his satisfaction, he sat down in the recliner and surveyed his domain. It might not be perfect, but it was his and it pleased him — so much so that he couldn’t stop smiling.
There was nothing more to be gained in keeping it a secret from Ruth, he decided. It wouldn’t be possible anyway if he was going to spend time in there. Might as well unveil it to her as soon as she came home. When she saw how simply and inexpensively furnished it was, how happy it made him, she might not even make a fuss.
He should have known better.
As soon as Ruth stepped into the den, she let out a screech like a wounded parrot. Her heavy body went rigid; she spun around glaring, bared her teeth in a wolfish snarl, and growled, “You deceitful sneak! How could you do a thing like this!”
“Ruth, please don’t be upset—”
“Upset? Furious is more like it. Defying me, skulking around behind my back, turning Katie’s room into a man cave when I told you to leave it be. How dare you!”
“I didn’t want to go behind your back, but you just wouldn’t understand how much a room of my own means to me. Don’t you think it looks nice now that it’s finished?”
“It’s hideous! That disgusting rug... I suppose you paid a fortune for it.”
“No, it only cost—”
“What did you do with Katie’s things?”
“Stored them in the garage, all except the furniture.”
“And I suppose you gave that to Goodwill.”
“Yes. As old and worn as it was, it didn’t seem to be worth keeping...”
She made a sound like a dog’s growl. “You’ve lost your mind, Wyatt Potter. Katie will be irate when she finds out.”
“She already knows. I called her before I started the makeover. She didn’t mind, she gave me her blessing.”
“Blessing! I don’t believe it.”
“It’s the truth,” Wyatt said. “She doesn’t care about any of the things she left behind. She’s never coming home again, we both know that—”
“I know no such thing. All I know is that you’ve deceived and defied me. I want all of this... junk taken out of here immediately. I want Katie’s things, what’s left of them, put back where they were.”
The path of least resistance had always been Wyatt’s choice when Ruth threw one of her tantrums. But not this time. Worms can turn if the stakes are high enough; he had already half turned by creating his den on the sly, and without even thinking about it he went the rest of the way.
“No,” he said.
“...What did you say?”
“I said no. The room is mine now and it’s going to stay the way it is.”
Ruth stared at him as if she had never seen him before. “I won’t stand for it! I won’t have it!”
Wyatt said resolutely, “But I will,” and closed the door between them and locked himself inside.