‘It had started out OK,’ Clair began, her voice soft, eyes fixed on the horizon. ‘I mean, our usual tussle. Him on the phone, me doing all the work. I didn’t care that morning. I was so expectant that this day would change all those old patterns. Like an unequal equation. Once I had found the solution, the elements would all fall into place. We just needed a day at the coast, together, as a family, to initiate our new life. You know, spring break, Easter, resurrection. God, how pathetic it all seems now. But, then, well…’
As Clair talked, the day came into sharp focus. She remembered how warm it had been, soft, and breezy. The ocean had earned its name, Pacific. It was glassy and flat. Not the gigantic waves seen in winter. The morning argument, over packing the lunches, beach paraphernalia, loading the car, all so insignificant now, had continued on the drive from their home downriver to the coast. Anger and disappointment had coursed through her, recovering old neural pathways of thought, speech, and action.
‘It’s your turn to watch Devon, I’m going to read,’ she had told him, flipping onto her belly, the striped beach blanket already coated with a fine dusting of sand. Devon’s sand toys littered the area around her. Shovel, bucket, molds for sandcastles.
She had known in her heart that Adam had been talking to his latest girlfriend. Probably the same one from earlier that morning. She had seen him pull his phone out of his vest, as he walked with Devon down to the tidal pools. Part of her had wanted to leave, go home, pretend this variance in their mutual lie of a life had never happened. But the joy on Devon’s face when he saw the ocean, his lightness as he raced across the sand, held her back. Instead, she chose the coward’s way out, hiding her pain behind a cloak of indifference.
‘Oh, how he had loved the creatures in the tidal pools,’ Clair said to Jet, looking towards the low rocky area that bordered the cliffs. ‘He would watch them for so long, his face serious and intent.’ A smile broke across her face like sun behind a thunderhead, and then the thunderhead struck.
‘I had pretended to read. But I was watching Adam walk away.’ Clair raised her head, breathed in deeply, feeling her chest tighten, nausea rising from her gut. ‘I had watched Adam moving away and talking on the phone. I didn’t watch my son. When I looked back, he was gone.’ A cry caught Clair in her throat. Seeing this, telling this was living it again.
‘I ran to the place he had been. I screamed his name over and over. I ran all around looking behind every rock, sand dune, clump of grass. He was gone. I yelled at Adam to call 911. Soon the place was flooded with police, fire, the coast-guard helicopter flying in circles. News people. Gawkers. And then, it was over and we had to go home, without Devon, and the terrible knowledge that I would never hear my name, Mommy, called again.’
She looked up at Jet as though this fact alone was enough to lock her up for life. That she had allowed this to happen. That she had survived this happening was in itself a travesty. Grabbing handfuls of sand, squeezing it between fingers that were trembling with dread, Clair looked down, eyes closed as though seeing was too much to bear.
‘The first time I walked into my house, into his room, that is when I lost my mind. The drive home was a blur. The paramedics had given me a shot of something and wanted to admit me to the hospital, but I refused. I was numb, sedated but awake enough to know how empty the car was. How empty the house was, his room, this space where he always was. My Devon.’Clair broke down here, shuddering sobs rocking her body back and forth. Jet sat quietly, letting her cry.
After a time, Clair raised her head. Above, a coast-guard helicopter flew in wide circles on the horizon. A regular sight as helicopter trainees practiced their skills in calm weather. The sound cast Clair back to that morning. The response, active and optimistic soon shifted to recovery and then, after days without finding a body, the relinquishing of all hope.
Running her hands through her hair, she cried, ‘Oh God, it just never ends, it never ever stops. How can this be real? I’ve always looked outward, towards infinity. Now, having to look inward, to find a way to coexist in this life with pain, finding a way to hope, to believe. I don’t think I can do it. I don’t want to do it, Jet. It just hurts too bad.’
Jet reached over and took Clair’s hands, holding them in her own.
‘It is, Clair. I’m so sorry but it is real. You’re real. And this is what happened. Now we have to find a way for you to live through it and into a future. Healing happens now, in the present moment. This one moment, then the next. That is all any of us have. And for you, it is a journey towards peace. A way to find something more enduring than self.’
‘But why?’ Clair asked. ‘Seriously, I am asking this as a scientist, not as a mournful mother. Why must I live?’
‘Oh shit,’ Jet said, standing up, brushing the sand from her bottom. ‘I was wondering when you would ask this question.’
Clair looked out to sea; her eyes focused on a ship passing through the barrier rock cliffs creating the small cove. Out there, in the vast dark deepness, was her son. His blood, bones, flesh, hair, everything mixed with the salt and water, and all living things. She knew that energy never dies, it just changes form. She turned to Jet. Noticed how her hair, so fair, like light itself, formed a halo around her head. She remembered that hair, that face.
‘You were there, weren’t you? When they brought me in after my suicide attempt?’ Clair asked her, standing up beside her.
Jet turned, eyed Clair. ‘Yes, I was. And I was there before; the first time. After Devon. I saw your pain, Clair, your devastation. I knew you’d be back.’
Neither spoke for a few minutes. The wind had picked up, as it did in the afternoons, when the valley warmed, drawing the cooler air from the ocean, creating wind and fog.
‘What happened to you, Jet?’ Clair asked. ‘Why are you always there, at the hospital? Don’t you have a home to go to? People who care?’
Jet shook her head, smiling. ‘Oh, the patient becomes the therapist, the therapist patient,’ she said, looking at Clair with amusement.
‘Let’s walk. Yes, I do have a home, with Maggie, and a cat named Midnight. I swim laps every morning and teach yoga at a local gym three evenings a week. I also play piano, garden, knit, and read voraciously. I have several women friends with whom I enjoy lunch and an occasional movie. Satisfied?’
‘Hmm, that sounds much like the life I had before Adam and Devon, which means, not much of a life at all. Why not?’
‘You mean, why don’t I have a husband and children? The female dream?’
‘Yes. You’re young, beautiful, smart. Why the fuck not?’
‘I had a twin. Gwendolyn, Gwen. She died of leukemia when we were seventeen, just after graduation from high school. Our parents had been killed in a small plane crash when we were eleven. We lived with our grandmother but it was really just the two of us, together. When Gwen got sick, I contributed bone marrow and it looked like she would beat it, survive. But she got a bug bite, that turned into staph, that turned into sepsis, that killed her. I keep waiting for my turn. You know, my turn to get sick. So, I’m not going to subject any man, or child to that. End of story.’
‘I get it. Some of us are accursed.’
‘No, Clair, that’s not it. Each of us is an infinite number of possibilities. I love my life. I don’t need a husband and children to have meaning and purpose. I am aware, informed, and intentional in my choices, yes. But, cursed, no. My sister was, is, a blessing in my life. I feel her near me always.’
‘Then you understand,’ Clair cried, stopping beside the small stream that ran down through the forest onto the beach. ‘Oh, when I was dead, you know this time, Jet, I saw what it was like. And it was beautiful. Calling me in, not terrifying. I felt such love. He was there, not in his precious little boy form, but vast, ancient, unnamable. I wanted to stay. How I wanted to stay. But I felt a jolt in my chest, in my heart. Pounding, gagging.
Hands, pulling me away from him, from that miracle of a billion lights. The warmth, then cold, so cold. So, you see, my yearning for death isn’t a running away from, it’s a running to.’
The cold fog had rolled in to the cove, shrouding the cliffs overhead. A bell buoy sounded its warning to all ships entering the dangerous waters of the Coos river cut.
‘Let’s go, Clair, it’s getting late.’
Clair tripped over a root stepping onto the forest path. She unconsciously cushioned her left breast with her palm as she righted herself.
‘What’s going on with your left side? It looks like it hurts,’ Jet asked Clair.
‘Oh, just a tender area. It feels like when I had mastitis, while I was breastfeeding. It just sort of started, on the walk down here.’
‘OK, we’ll have Dr Bernstein take a look when we get you back on the unit. You’re going to be OK, Clair. You must be, for him. Won’t you?’ Jet asked.
‘Thank you for this, Jet. For bringing me here. I do feel better.’
‘That’s not the same as telling me you’re going to live. To accept life as it is.’
‘What else can I do, right? Radical acceptance? Come on, let’s get back, I’m freezing and starving,’ Clair said, walking away into the darkening woods.
Chapter 10
Adam
The bright yellow dump truck sat in the grass, parked, as though waiting for the boy to race out into the yard, lay his hands on either side of its sturdy metal bed, and push it over to his beloved sand-box. It had been there since the day he and Clair had returned home, from their wretched day at the beach. Without Devon. Like a talisman, Clair had demanded it remain, a sentry for its lost child. Adam pulled into the driveway, walked over and scooped up the truck. He held it in his hands, uncertain what to do with it. Then he walked around the side of the house, laid it in Devon’s sand-box, along with his dinosaurs, Matchbox cars, and other play things. He stood for a moment, feeling more alone than he had ever felt. Who was he without Clair, without Devon? A failed actor? A poor friend who substituted flirtation for connection? He felt alienated from the human community, as though he had lost so much more than his son and wife. He had lost the very connection to humanity. A father is meant to protect his family. He didn’t. Desperate, he didn’t know what to do or where to go.
Adam walked straight to the drinks table and poured a large whisky. He had been advised not to drink alcohol, the adverse effect of the sedative overdose still in his system, but now he needed it, the burn, the rush, the silencing of his thoughts. He walked into the kitchen, looked out the window onto the leaf strewn yard. August in the north-west was the beginning of fall. Especially after such a long, dry summer. Everywhere, he could see the remnants of months without rain or even much moisture from condensation.
The sand-box drew his eyes, unwillingly. The yellow truck sat in the middle, its small shovel raised like a fist, pummeling the world around it. He felt suddenly exhausted. Without bones, or blood to sustain his upright posture. He fell, more than sat, into a chair, hardbacked, and stiff. The kitchen table before him littered with the crumbs from his poisoned toast. Odd, he thought, that the forensics people didn’t clean that up. He half-heartedly touched one with his index finger, putting it to his nose and sniffing. Enough, he thought. Get on with it. He drank down the last of his whisky and walked slowly through the house, to their bedroom, and into the bathroom. He stripped, turned the shower on. He stepped into the downpour, as hard and hot as he could stand it, letting the water beat on his back, run down his face. Tears, sudden and unwanted, stung his eyes. After a long time, when the water turned cold, he got out of the shower, sat on the edge of the bed, his forearms resting on his knees. The raucous sound of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ blared through the quiet. His ringtone. Devon had picked it out, loving the pounding and power of the voices and drums.
A flashback, cutting straight to his heart. Devon, slick and wet from their shower, his hair, hanging in ringlets around his face, dancing as only a three-year-old can to the thumping beat. The image conjured up another scene, a day at the beach, almost one year before the tragedy.
‘Daddy, look, faces!’ Devon had pointed excitedly at the bobbing heads of two sea-lions, curious and staring. Their big eyes following his and Devon’s movements as they walked across the sand, towards the tidal pools.
‘Those are sea-lions, Dev. They sound like big dogs when they bark.’
‘I hear them,’ he had called out, running ahead. ‘Orff, arff,’ he had mimicked.
‘Be careful, Dev, the rocks can be slippery,’ Adam remembered warning, smiling at the small footprints left in the damp sand, before the next wave washed them away.
He hadn’t seen his son that happy in weeks. They had started him in pre-school for children with autism and other neurological disorders. He resisted the confinement. When allowed to be free of clothes, furniture, expectations, he danced. Adam thought he looked like a tribal warrior just released from captivity, his limbs and torso gyrating and spinning in circles. Adam had laughed so hard, tears formed. And they did again. Now, pooling in the corners of his eyes. No more, he said to himself, I’ll cry no more. I have to do something about this. Something; I don’t know what.
The call had gone to voicemail. He pressed play, and heard his sister-in-law’s voice.
‘Adam, what the hell’s going on. We just got back in the country, talked to Ben’s parents. She’s what? Incarcerated? Are you OK? Call us.’
Adam stood, looked at himself in the full-length mirror on the back of the closet door. Clair had hated it, he remembered, calling him vain for wanting to see so much of himself. Now, as he looked, he had to agree. It was a bad idea. He had lost weight, his skin sagging around his bone structure. He opened the door, pulling out clothes at random. Pants, a long-sleeve tee, wool sweater. He couldn’t get past the chill the hospital had infused into him. Cold crisp white sheets. At home, they slept under flannel year-round. Socks, slip-on loafers, and then maybe he could call them back. But first, another drink.
‘Hello,’ he said, fatigue and uncertainty measuring his usual self-assured tone.
Later, after assuring them that Clair was not in jail, that it was a hospital and she was being cared for by professional medical and nursing staff, arrangements were made for Adam to pick them up at the airport in Eugene. The local airport only served small, commuter traffic. Adam liked his in-laws. He only saw them once or twice a year. It hadn’t been that long ago this time, though. The memorial for Devon. Adam winced inwardly remembering that.
The coast-guard had called off the rescue mission after a few days. Then, it had switched to a recovery mission, if even that were possible, given the elements and natural predators. Adam had wanted a way to acknowledge the loss, and to close this event. Clair had called it staging a scene. ‘You just want to be the star, the grieving father, the wounded hero,’ she had scorned. ‘I won’t have it, and I won’t be there. Have your pity party on your own.’
But it hadn’t been like that. Her parents, stiff and reluctant; Ben and Jodie plus many of their colleagues from the college. He hadn’t invited any of his family. They had never met Devon or Clair. He had arranged for the chorale singers along with their small but talented chamber orchestra to perform. The day had been just like the day Devon disappeared and it almost seemed like a holographic image, except for the fact that Devon wasn’t there. Robin egg blue sky, not even a breath of wind. Adam had invited Devon’s classmates but only a few attended, more out of their parent’s curiosity than caring, he surmised. After a short ceremony, balloons were let loose over Mingus Park, Devon’s favorite playground, and floated over tree-tops, rooftops, and away. Clair refused to come to the park. She had joined in later for drinks at their house, ignoring Adam and spiriting Ben and Jodie away into the study. Their parents had sat like rejected manikins on the couch, itching to leave.
He couldn’t stand being in the house alone. Empty, it felt hollowed out, desolate. Before, coming home was like walking into a minefield, uncertainty guiding each step, each word and action. That last day had felt different, almost like their early days. But that had been just too near perfect, he mused. Like a vine pushing against a wall, there must be tension in a life, in a love, to make it grow. Too little, stagnation, too much, turbulence. Fire or ice. They had not been able to hold a middle ground.
Their house was so far from anywhere. Another thing they had argued about.
‘This is a good twenty miles from town,’ he had complained, when she had driven him out to see it, when Devon’s diagnosis of autism was first confirmed.
‘Yes, but look at the space. He can have animals, a playhouse, fish in the creek. All the things a boy’s world should include. We can let him run free, without worrying about cars, weirdos or other town issues. It will be safe here, and quiet. You know how noise makes him anxious. And look, you can convert that old barn into your acting studio. You’ve always wanted to do that, right?’
And as usual, Clair had gotten her way.
He felt untethered. So many times, he had felt the pull of this, this freedom. He needed to be with people, near noise, laughter, life. There was a bar, the Halfway Bar and Grill, a few miles further upriver. Mostly fishermen, hunters, in season or out. It was a crossroads. Turn left, you went further into the back country. A long, winding mountain path to the end of the road. Turn right, you circled back into town, taking the high road around the mountain. It was halfway to getting lost or halfway to being found. Tonight, he wanted to be found.
Chapter 11
Clair
Clair walked into the cold hall, wrapped in a warm kimono, the heat lying close to her skin, bringing goose pimples to the surface of her arms. She shivered. The attendant, or technician, she wasn’t sure what to call this kind woman, ushered her into the screening room. Large metal objects hung from the ceiling. Women’s magazines about “House Beautiful” and “Coastal Living” placed strategically on love seats aligned along the wall. Imagining herself sitting there, calmly reading about the perfect dinner party made her cringe.
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