By Bread Alone

by Sarah-Kate Lynch

  She was gazing at the floor, shaking her head. “And everything goes to pot. I go to pot.”

  A silence, surprisingly lacking in awkwardness, grew between them.

  “It can’t be easy,” the policeman eventually said, “going on with your life when you’ve lost a little one.”

  Esme nodded, miserably. It hadn’t been. Life after Teddy had barely been life at all. It was like pretending to live, really. Why hadn’t she seen it at the time? She’d been so determined for everything to return to normal, for everyone to return to normal, to cover up the hole left by the loss of their little boy, that she had simply gone through the motions, keeping the outside world happy, yet all the while she’d been shriveling up inside, relishing her numbness. The memory of her son had become a hard, dry, nasty little nugget inside her and for some reason, Louis had been able to nourish it. Granny Mac had seen that. But then, she would.

  “Would mess up your head,” the policeman was saying, “make you do mad things, I imagine. Grief does that to a person. I’ve seen it a thousand times.” He stopped and waited for Esme to look at him. “I expect the same goes for Mr. Stack,” he said, with an encouraging raise of his eyebrows.

  “Why are you being so kind to me?” Esme asked him.

  “Because you look like a woman who could do with a break,” the policeman answered, with a smile, and he stood and nodded at the door. “Shall we go?”

  Esme’s future lay cold and harsh and flat in front of her. But could it be worse, she asked herself as she let the policeman lead her out of the gym, than the soft and slushy murk of her fairly recent past?

  Chapter 19

  A very fat man dressed entirely in purple stretch cotton was sitting sprawled on the steps of Alice’s building when Esme arrived, her face streaked with tears and her mind cluttered with possibilities.

  The policeman, whose name, he’d sheepishly told her on the way, was also Ted, had done his best to calm her fears by reminding her that her son, after all, was safe and sound and that was what really mattered.

  But when she had asked why it was that people had affairs all the time and got off scot-free yet hers had not even started before her son was for all intents and purposes kidnapped and her secrets exposed to all and sundry, he had been unable to think of anything to make her feel better.

  “You’ve got to have it out,” he advised, although he had lied to his wife about his poxy Amsterdam whore. He did not like himself for it, though. “Get it all out in the open.”

  “Thank you, Ted,” she said, when he dropped her at the curb.

  “I should come up and make sure the boy is all right, really,” he said. “You go ahead and I’ll park the car and be right up.” He wanted to give her a moment on her own. She had been humiliated enough without turning up on a policeman’s arm.

  The purple vision on Alice’s steps, however, was far from similarly sensitive to her needs. In fact, he seemed not to see her at all.

  She lunged to the left of him before realizing there was not enough room down that side, so then attempted to get past him on the right but it, too, was a squeeze.

  “Could you please excuse me,” she said as politely as she could. “I need to get past.”

  “All right, all right,” the fat man wheezed, wiping at his forehead with a pudgy purple arm but not moving. “No need to get your knickers in a twist.”

  Esme was repelled by the thought of her knickers, which had only a few long hours ago indeed been twisted nearly right off her in that god-awful hotel room. She had never in her life felt so low-down dirty and despicable as she did at that moment.

  “Oh God!” she cried in anguish. All she knew was that she did not want to be looking at the rolling silvery skin that poked out between the fat man’s too-small zip-up top and equally challenged elasticized pants. Turning on the step as much as his bulk would let her, she lifted her knee and kicked him neatly in the side of his arse. “Get out of my bloody way,” she cried.

  The fat man looked at her with surprise and scrunched up his face so all his features landed in the middle. “Steady on,” he said, his sausagelike fingers rubbing the spot where she had booted him but shuffling sideways nonetheless to make enough room for her to pass. “All you had to do was ask, you silly ginger cow.”

  But Esme was past him and already desperately pressing the buzzer to Alice’s apartment.

  “It’s me, it’s me,” she cried into the speaker and the door was buzzed open.

  By the time she reached the third floor she was gasping for breath, her trench coat flapping around her body, her hair stuck to her neck as she pounded on Alice’s door.

  Her friend, her face pinched and unfamiliar, opened it wide and looked toward the front room. Her anger radiated the space between them but Esme’s guilt glands were already full and overflowing.

  She walked into the room and there was Rory, sitting all on his own on the sofa, surrounded by cushions, in perfect health, and pretending to read his favorite book, Madeline, the words of which he knew by heart.

  Stifling a sob, Esme knelt on the floor, feeling, disgustedly, her opaque tights tugging at her crotch where she had failed to pull them up properly. How could she have exposed her family, her little boy, to her sorry, sordid mistakes? How could she live with what she had done? She pulled Rory to her, hugging him close and smelling his innocent little boy smell as she nuzzled his neck and kissed him.

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” was all she could say. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  Rory put up with this for a few moments but then pushed her gently away. “It’s okay, Esme,” he said. “I made a giant panda out of Play-Doh and then Ridge came and got me. We went on the bus and the tube and he bought me some chocolate and an orange drink.” He looked guiltily at her. “I had to do wees again,” he said. “I think it was the drink.”

  Ridge stood by the fireplace fidgeting and looking dangerous in a way she would never have guessed he could. She started to say something but the angry teenager interrupted her.

  “You don’t bloody deserve him,” he cried. “You’ve got everything right in front of your own bloody face and you can’t even see it. You make me sick!”

  Esme was stunned. Ridge was shaking with rage.

  “I’m so sorry,” Esme started to say, even though Ridge was just as much in the wrong as she was, more, possibly, but his anger could not be contained.

  “You have this husband who worships you,” he seethed, “and this little kid who thinks you’re the cat’s pajamas and you’d throw it all away on some stupid lying little French git who just wants to get into your pants. It’s disgusting!”

  “Ridge!” Alice spoke sharply from the door.

  “It’s true, Mum,” her son answered, and he sounded so young and so hurt that Esme could not hold back her tears. That she could damage her own family so badly was one thing but to hurt Alice’s was incomprehensible.

  “You’re out there year after year trying to find someone to love you,” Ridge continued, looking distraughtly at his mother, “going out with all these utter dead-shits and she’s got someone perfect right there and she bloody well craps on him. It’s not fair!”

  “Ridge,” Alice said again, but there was a softness in her voice that made Esme feel even worse. “Don’t. It’s not your business.”

  “You’re my business,” Ridge said to his mother, and his voice cracked, giving way to tears.

  “Please,” Esme bawled at him from the floor, her face awash. “Please forgive me, Ridge. I am so sorry.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe it’s too—”

  “I’ve been stupid,” Esme cried. “But I didn’t mean to hurt you or Alice or anyone. I just—”

  “You just never thought about anyone apart from yourself,” roared Ridge, his embarrassment at crying in front of them fueling his rage. “You’re nothing but a—”

  Thankfully, for everyone in the room, the intercom rudely heralded the arrival of Pog.

  “You don’t deserve him,�
�� Ridge hissed as Alice buzzed him in.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Esme said quietly, sitting up on the sofa next to Rory. How she was going to get through the next few minutes, let alone the rest of her life, she did not know.

  Alice opened the door and Pog walked in, barely acknowledging her as he strode straight toward his wife and son.

  “Oh, Esme,” he said with no trace of rancor and Esme could not even look at him. Pog knelt down and hugged his son to his chest but Rory was sick of being hugged and quickly resisted.

  Pog, then, put his hand on his wife’s knee. “Esme,” he said again, even more gently, which only made her cry.

  “Why are you being so bloody nice to her?” Ridge shouted, his tears making his voice mean and throaty. “She’s only been shagging some slimy little frog behind your back.”

  “That’s enough!” commanded a new voice. Henry’s voice. Esme looked up just long enough to see his miserable face attached to his miserable body, standing by the doorway next to a distraught Alice. Esme’s hands flew up to her face to cover the tears she could not stop and disguise her shame. Why had Henry come?

  “But you’re just—” Ridge started to say.

  “Enough!” It was Pog this time. “Stop it, Ridge. Esme has enough going on without you having a go at her, too.”

  He turned to Esme and put his other hand on her other knee. Still she could not meet his gaze. Rory shifted ever so slightly closer to her on the sofa.

  “But you shouldn’t—” Ridge started again, tears and anger mixing on his face.

  “Please,” begged his mother. “Just stop.”

  “You don’t know everything there is to know, Ridge,” Pog said tiredly. “You don’t know what Esme has been through. Nobody is perfect.”

  “I do know,” insisted Ridgeley. “I’ve known her since I was born, haven’t I? I’ve known her for longer than you have.”

  “Yes, but the past couple of years, the last couple of months, have been hell for her and you’re not—”

  “So her son died and her grandmother—”

  “THAT’S ENOUGH,” Pog roared again. It was such a rare sound, his voice angry and raised. “Let’s not forget the part you have played in all this today, Ridge.”

  A silence so thick with secrets and regret hung over the sad collection of friends and family so suffocatingly that Esme wished Ridge would start shouting again.

  The buzzer rang again, giving them all a fright, and they waited in painful silence until Alice opened the door to Ted, who simply took in Esme and the little boy, asked a simple, “All right?” and excused himself again at her unhappy nod.

  “Alice, why don’t you take Ridge to the pub,” Pog suggested in a bright, sensible voice after the policeman had gone. “I hate to toss you out of your own home but I think we need some time alone here.”

  Alice nodded and looked relieved. Watching her favorite family disintegrate in front of her very eyes was hardly pleasant viewing. And her feelings about Esme were mixing in her stomach like too many cocktails and a late-night kebab. She loved her and felt sorry for her but felt angry and vengeful as well.

  “We’ll take Rory,” Alice said, reaching her hand out for him, but Rory scooted right over so that he was squashed up against his mother and shook his head.

  “I’m staying with Esme,” he said.

  “Do you want him to see all this? Hear all this?” Alice asked Pog.

  “I’m not going,” Rory pouted. “I’m staying with Esme.”

  “He shouldn’t hear all this, Pog,” Alice said gently.

  “Oh, Alice,” Pog said, and he sounded so sad that Alice’s own eyes filled with tears again, “he has to hear it. We all do. Really, it’s time.”

  Alice grabbed her own angry son and hustled him, protesting, out the door of their flat.

  After they left, nobody said anything, and the room was filled only with the sound of Esme’s sobbing. She had no idea how she was going to resurrect her life and knew that it would probably never be the same again, but what she had caused others, she swore as she sat there on the sofa, she was prepared to repair, no matter how hard and no matter what the sacrifice.

  When she could bear to, she raised her eyes to meet Henry’s. He was sitting now on the chair by the window, turned sideways to her.

  “I’m so sorry, Henry,” she said before dissolving into great hiccupping sobs again. “I know I’ve always been a disappointment to you and that this only proves that you were right all along but I really, truly am sorry.”

  To her added distress, she felt a small clammy hand through the fabric of her coat and looked down to see that Rory, who was pretending to read his book again, was rubbing her leg with his milky, soft hand, comforting her.

  She watched the bone-colored fabric grow fat dark dots as her tears fell on it. When the dots got smaller, she looked up at Henry, ready, with the help of her little boy and his chubby caress, to take her punishment.

  To her horror, Henry, far from steaming at the nostrils, was also weeping, his hand, red and purple with his old man’s veins, shaking as he brought it up to wipe a string of mucus from his nose.

  “No,” he said, his voice thick with grief. “It is I who should be sorry.” He sobbed with a shudder that racked his whole body. “I have been cruel,” he said, “and unreasonable. And I have been a coward.” His voice splintered, unable to string words together any further.

  Confusion interrupted Esme’s own unhappiness. “Don’t be silly, Henry,” she said. “A coward? You haven’t been a coward. What do you mean?”

  Henry allowed one more deep, raw sob to shake him, then he took a big breath, drew himself up in his chair and looked at Esme with bloodshot, heartbroken eyes.

  “It was me,” he said. “It was me who pulled the plastic over the fountain.”

  Esme sat completely still.

  “Your grandmother told me to do it first thing in the morning,” Henry continued wretchedly, “when it first started to rain, but I didn’t. Just to be blessed contrary, I didn’t. I did it at lunchtime after she had asked me twice more and by that stage the bowl was already full of water.” His shoulders shook as he fought to keep control. “I should have emptied it out but I thought covering it would keep the boys from harm. I never dreamed that anyone would, that Teddy would—” His lips trembled and his eyes blinked rapidly to ward off fresh tears.

  “If it wasn’t for me, Teddy would be alive,” he exploded, his mouth thick with the glue of grief. “He would be alive and none of this would have happened.”

  Hearing Henry say his name shocked Esme completely tearless. The sound of it ricocheted around the room.

  “Teddy,” she said out loud. Nothing happened. She took Rory’s little hand in her own, and rubbed it. “Teddy,” she said again. Rory looked at her and smiled.

  “Teddy,” he repeated. “Rory and Teddy.”

  Her heart was bleeding but her mind suddenly, strangely calmed. She looked at Pog, whose unfathomable blue eyes were there, ready and waiting, to return her gaze.

  “Why couldn’t I talk about him?” she asked her husband. “Why was it so hard for me to say his name?”

  “It wasn’t just you,” said Pog. “It was all of us.”

  “But I’m his mother,” Esme said. “I’m the one who was opening a test kitchen while he was”—her mouth was as dry as a bone—“at home, in need of me. I’m the one who took too long to find him. Who never thought to check the fountain. Whose idea the bloody wretched fountain was in the first place.”

  “But I was there,” Henry said. “I was there and in control and I could have stopped it happening from the very beginning. It’s my fault and you’ve had every right to hate me for it.”

  “Nobody hates you, Dad,” said Pog. “Even though you often give us reason to and not because of Teddy but because you can be rude to Esme and ungrateful when she is one of the sweetest people alive.”

  “Esme hates me,” Henry said. “She’s blamed me all along an
d she’s been right to. It was my fault.”

  “I’ve done nothing of the sort, Henry,” Esme exclaimed. “Do you think I had a moment spare from blaming myself? It was not your fault. I’m his mother and I should have been there looking after him and I should have found him before it was too late. It’s not about the plastic. Bugger the plastic. It doesn’t matter whose idea it was. It was a good idea to cover the fountain. It was the right thing to do, the sensible thing to do. It was just—”

  “It was just bad luck,” Pog said, getting up off the floor and squeezing in on the other side of Esme on the sofa. He leaned forward and put his head in his hands. “It was just one of those terrible things that happens: that you think will happen to someone else but in this case happened to us.”

  Esme closed her eyes and saw Teddy’s ginger curls floating in a shiny black slick.

  “It’s true, Esme,” Pog said quietly. “I know you think it was bad management on your part, on my part, on our part, but other people work hard and have busy lives in the city and their children don’t die.”

  Behind her closed eyelids, Esme lifted Teddy out of the water and held him to her chest again.

  “I think we did the right thing leaving London, leaving that life behind, moving to the House in the Clouds and starting again up there. I really do. It’s been good for Rory and it was good for Granny Mac, too.”

  Esme’s remaining secrets scrabbled around the corners of the room searching for an escape.

  Henry sniffed in the silence that ensued, and although her eyes were closed and her head was resting back against the sofa cushions, Rory climbed into her lap and snuggled into her neck.

  “Sometimes, Esme,” he said in a matter-of-fact voice, “I talk to Teddy.”

  Tears slid down Esme’s cheeks as she wrapped her arms around him.

  “I know he’s not here,” Rory continued, “but I still talk to him.”

  Pog cleared his throat, for the first time seeming to struggle with his emotions. “Now, now, Ror,” he said.