When I get home I find Lloydie has left and those visitors are gone. Though it is still fairly early, I make myself a vodka, drink it, pour another, sip the second one more slowly. I do not want people around me, yet my life is so full of space I hardly know how to fill it. I want something to do, to discover Ryan’s mess somewhere. I want to find the milk for his cereal boiled over onto the plate inside the microwave, solid lumps of toothpaste cemented to the bathroom sink. I want my son, not just those moments that were so glorious but all of it, the upsets and frustrations and angst, everything that came as part and parcel of being his mother, his being alive. It is an impossible wish, and so I go to his room.
Sheba is already in there, curled up on the center of the bed. She looks up at me when I enter, is unimpressed, puts her head back down again, and drifts off. It is bright enough outside to see but still I draw my son’s curtains, inhaling deeply while I do it because Ryan’s room is losing his scent. At some point it will be completely gone and this room will smell exactly like what it is; unoccupied. For the time being, however, I can still raise faint traces of the old smell through a couple of means, one of which is drawing the curtains, shifting them so they trap a pocket of air and billow. It is really hard to describe how I feel as I inhale and catch that scent. It is purely emotional and concentrated in the heart. There is a sweet sharp joy, piercing, exquisite. In equal measure there is an excruciating sadness that is physical, like the pain behind the eyes when you stare directly into the sun. The moment lasts a few seconds only, two or three at the most, then is gone.
I turn on Ryan’s bedside lamp. It casts a feeble circle of light a meter in diameter against the darkness. I lie on his bed carefully, arranging myself around Sheba as he did, so she is not disturbed. I lie on my side facing her, put my hand onto her soft warm back, and stroke. She unfurls beneath my fingers lazily, tries to rub the side of her face against my hand, purring like a diesel engine. She was always Ryan’s cat, slept in here with him every night. Ryan wasn’t a tough guy, a macho man in the making, he was soft and gentle and feely. Wherever he was in the house, Sheba would invariably be close by because she was guaranteed his time, attention, and affection. Even though he is no longer here, she still sleeps in his room, and sometimes I think she is the only living creature who remembers him with the same intensity that I do.
There was a day, about a fortnight after the event, when I had some laundry on the kitchen floor that I had finally sorted into piles after weeks of inactivity. I had run out of soap powder and walked to the corner shop to pick up some more. When I returned, Sheba was lying on one of the piles of washing. There was a pair of Ryan’s boxer shorts in that pile and she was rubbing the side of her face into the crotch and purring as blissfully as if it were catnip. I just sat down on the floor beside her and cried as I watched. I could understand it so completely, the way his absence amplified her need to connect with him, even if it was only through inhaling his scent; in fact, I was jealous. Propriety stopped me, but I wanted to do it too, lie on the floor, push her out of the way, rub my face into his pants in her place, deeply inhale.
Those were mad weeks. All I could think about was connecting with him. I read his schoolbooks, every word of every essay and answer and sentence he wrote, searching for his essence. I listened to the same boog-a-boog house music I’d spent years asking him to turn down, please! I watched the programs he’d loved that I had told him were polluting his mind, spent time in his room, sat at his desk, lay on his bed, pored over his image in photographs. I even went up into the attic, brought down boxes of memorabilia; an envelope containing every baby tooth he ever lost, bar one which he swallowed accidentally and cried because he worried his carelessness had cost him the hard cash the tooth fairy would have left for it (it didn’t, still earned him in its absence two pounds); fingered the blue baby band placed on his wrist within an hour of birth, the wretched dried stump of his umbilical cord and peg, all the things I had collected that I imagined I would one day present to him, maybe when he was twenty-one or when he had a child of his own, or that he might discover in the attic after I had died, never dreamed I would need these worthless precious items so badly, that they would be all I had left of him, all I had left, otherwise I would have collected more, videoed every moment, recorded every word, bubble-wrapped every item he ever touched if I’d thought for a second that he would be taken from me so early and they would be all I’d have to console me for the rest of my life.
I want my son. Want him so badly it hurts. Remembering him is not enough. Being in his room is not enough. Catching his scent is not enough. I want my son.
Lloydie returns earlier than he did last night and cooks. It is easier to eat the dinner he has prepared on trays on our laps in the living room rather than at the kitchen table, so we can both stare at the TV screen as though deeply immersed, taking the pressure off the silence between us and creating the appearance of being a normal married couple spending a regular evening at home.
I am angry with myself for wanting more from Lloydie, not because it is unreasonable to want more from him under the circumstances, but because my expectations are unfair. He cannot speak of feelings, never has been able to. It’s part of his psyche. His father was a hard man, brutal with Lloydie and his sister. Their mother died when he was six and he grew up with a man who clothed and fed and disciplined them, nothing more. He never had a mother cuddle him when he was ten or twelve or twenty, never spoke while he was growing up with his father about feelings or emotions or life. One of the first things he told me when we were courting was that when he had children he intended to be better than his father was, that he would never lay a hand on them in anger, and he never did. He threw out those things from his own upbringing that were the worst and unacceptable, but he didn’t replace them with positives, maybe he didn’t know how, and I always accepted it, accepted every shortcoming for better or worse.
How he is sitting here this evening is how he would have sat here eating dinner a year ago. What made the difference was that Ryan and I would have filled the silence. This barrier is not of his making, it is mine; I’m the one who has changed. Impotence has closed down the one channel of emotional communication that was open to him before, and that he cannot communicate with me and cannot cope with listening to me talk about Ryan, when the only thing I want to talk about is Ryan, has meant I have stopped communicating as well. But how can I? How do I talk about those things that mean nothing to me? What do I do with all the other words stuck in my throat, my stomach, my heart? How do I ignore or simply bypass them?
I leave him downstairs afterward to watch TV on his own till he thinks I’ve fallen asleep, go up to my bedroom, and phone my sister. She is back home now and fills me in with the details of her day, the seven-bedroom student flat my niece now shares, the disaster of Leah’s first attempts to cook unsupervised, the breadth of the campus, the drama of its autumn landscape, its beauty, how safe it makes you feel when you are there, and I love her for this as I listen to the subtext, know she is trying to reduce my anxieties, to allay my neuroses around rapists and killers and people who slip into the world of those you love most when least expected, to destroy everything you thought you had with but a thrust. I tell her to come tomorrow and have dinner with me and Lloydie, and she reminds me about tomorrow afternoon’s Family Day. I had completely forgotten about it. She asks if Lloydie is going with me.
“I told him about it weeks ago,” I say. “He hasn’t mentioned it. He’s probably forgot.”
“You should try to convince him to go with you. It’d be good for him.”
There is much that would be good for him, but he’s just not interested in any of it. I say, “I’ll try.”
“I’m gonna be here,” she says. “Phone me if he’s not going and I’ll come with you.”
I say, “Okay. Thanks.”
“But try him first. Try your best to convince him.”
I say, “I will.”
“Don’t go in all gun
s blazing. Be gentle with him, okay?”
I say, “Okay.”
I wake up when Lloydie turns the shower on, drift back off, and wake again when he comes out and goes downstairs. Once again he must have taken everything with him to the bathroom to avoid returning, being here alone with me in our room, yet another new routine to chip away at the supporting foundations of our marriage. A few more and it will be impossible to distinguish what remains of us two beyond the rising cloud of dust.
I remember the Family Day. It is an event organized by a charity that works with people who have lost someone close to violence. It was Nipa who put me in contact with them. I want to go to it, want us both to go, but I know he will be reluctant. I need to time it perfectly, warm him up in advance. I begin by smiling at him when he brings me my cup of tea. He says he’s popping out to the supermarket for some bits for us and also Rose and Dan. I say if he’ll wait, I’ll go with him. I can see he is surprised. He agrees to wait. I have a wash and get ready quickly. He’s standing by the front door with his coat on by the time I get downstairs.
We take the bus to the supermarket, passing our car, parked outside the house in the same spot it’s been in for months. Despite my sister’s advice that every woman should be able to drive, I’ve never learned, was happy to be dropped off and collected, and Lloydie was happy to add the chauffeuring around of me and Ryan to the job description of husband and father that he has always kept in his head. But he can’t drive now, like he can’t talk or come to court or go to work. He’s been on sick leave from his job as an estate manager for over six months now. He can’t concentrate for long on single tasks, except those that can be carried out on autopilot or involve his allotment. I think the best thing he could do for himself is to go back, bring some structure to his day, force himself into everyday discussions and conversations, begin the process of normalizing his life again, but he won’t. He has opted out of every part of the life he had before, and unless something inside him shifts, unless something happens to make him want to, he will remain as stagnant as the Audi sitting on the curbside outside our home, lacking purpose.
There was an incident one day when he nearly knocked down a child on a zebra crossing. That’s how he tells it, as if the incident involved emergency braking, wild swerving, the black burn of locked wheels across the tarmac, a hairline miss. But he didn’t so much nearly knock her down as simply fail to notice her patiently waiting to cross. He didn’t see her till he was on the crossing itself driving past. How many drivers have had similar experiences and are still in their cars on the road? Probably all of them. But in Lloydie’s mind, this single event has come to symbolize the danger to society he represents behind the wheel, so he no longer drives. He washes it though, polishes it regularly, and vacuums the inside. He makes sure the tax disc and insurance are up to date. He went down last month from half pay to statutory sick pay. If he does not return to work before his SSP runs out, when money gets even tighter, that car will be the first thing to be sold.
We pass the car and catch the bus, and it is a bit like watching TV together over dinner, each of us staring with fascination through the window as the bus drives through streets we know as intimately as the backs of our hands, and I try to find the words to gently remind him about the Family Day, and fail. The supermarket is much easier. We speak of the things we need, quantities and brands and prices. We talk about how expensive staple items are, the disconnectedness of our government with the people, especially those who have the least and need help the most. We act our parts to perfection, just a regular married couple doing the usual things they do. The conversation winds down after we have paid, comes to an end by the time we board the bus to take us back home.
I help him unpack the bags, separating out the things that need to go next door. Almost the entire morning has passed without my saying a word. This is ridiculous. How bad have things gotten that it should be such a struggle to simply speak?
Finally, I go for it. “Have you remembered about the Family Day?” I ask. “It’s this afternoon. I want to go. I really want you to come with me.”
He says, “You go. It’s not my kinda thing.”
“You don’t have to speak to anyone. Just be with me. That’s all.”
“It’s not for me.”
“You’re not doing anything to help yourself.”
“I don’t need that kinda help.”
I am remembering my sister’s words of advice, to go in gently, but it doesn’t help. I hear myself shout, “What do you need, Lloyd? ’Cause I don’t know anymore. What is it? Me? Do you even need me?”
He doesn’t answer, won’t now that I’ve shouted. Instead he continues unpacking the shopping without looking at me, moving more slowly, hoping, I’m sure, to drag the job out till the conversation’s done. And I should stop, I know this clearly, I should back off now, but I can’t. I snatch the bag from his hands, hurl it across the room, hear the cans inside it spill out and roll across the floor as I screech, “Are you still my husband or not?”
Still there is no answer. Maybe that’s a good thing. He isn’t coming and nothing he can say to me is going to make me feel any better about it. He is collecting the cans from the floor as I leave the kitchen, go upstairs, and phone my sister.
I’m not sure quite what I was expecting of the Family Day, only that when we enter the community center hall and I look around, I know it wasn’t this. There are French windows running the length of one wall, opening up onto the grounds outside where there are children playing, shrieking and hanging from a climbing frame, screaming and soaring across a bouncy castle. There is a barbeque going, people queuing for food, people and buggies gathered around a seating area beside it; families having fun. Inside, the hall is packed, a large space filled with activities; a table at which adults and children sit making chimes, a corner where head-and-shoulder massages are being carried out, a canteen area where there are cakes and cookies, tea and coffee. There is hair braiding, a henna stall, manicures being carried out at the table beside it, a long slow queue of children patiently waiting for their faces to be painted. Perhaps it was a more somber event I was expecting, something along the lines of a memorial service. This event has the ambience of a fair.
A woman with a kind face comes over, introduces herself as June, the woman who runs the charity. She tells us to relax, have a wander, meet some of the other families, asks if we brought along a photograph of Ryan, suggests we begin by adding it to the board. The board is exactly what it sounds like and occupies a corner of the room with eight chairs in two rows in front of it like pews. This quiet corner is closer to how I imagined the event would be. There are lit candles on one side of the board, a tall and beautiful vase of elegant flowers on the other. Pinned to it are photographs, so many of them, and so many of the subjects so young and full of life. In the entrance hall at Ryan’s school, his old school, there was a wall filled with hundreds of pictures of pupils and staff. I loved the energy of it, all those faces covering that space, the immediate recognition you were in a place concerned with people, children, life. Standing here, the energy is completely different; sad and also shocking. I take my time, move my eyes across the images slowly, consciously examining each face, trying to feel the people they were from the images that are all that remains of them, so many people—how many? thirty-five? forty?—all these healthy happy people smiling for the cameras, posing, every single one of them wiped from the face of this earth, violently. It is the sum of all these images assembled here together in one place that is shocking. What I am looking at is sad and shocking and something else besides that I feel but cannot identify or articulate.
Lorna says, “I’m gonna get a cup of tea, you want one?”
“Please.”
“You gonna come with me?”
I say, “I’ll wait here.”
She goes off and I stand there, still trying to understand my feelings. It is sadness and it is shock and it is something else that is uplifting, and that puz
zles me.
“Which one’s yours?” a woman asks. I look up at her, older than I am, early to mid-fifties perhaps, of African descent, tall and dark and slim. I point to Ryan’s photo. “Your son?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“He is handsome. What is his name?”
“Ryan. Which one’s yours?”
She points to a picture of a boy who looks even younger than Ryan, maybe fourteen or fifteen, all teeth and exuberance, grinning into the camera.
“I love his eyes. They look full of mischief,” I say.
She laughs, a proper laugh, full, deeply tickled. “Ahh, Patrice, he was full of mischief, ach, used to drive me mad, always up to something, used to make me laugh, that boy.”
“When did he die?” I ask.
“In December will be eight years. And you?”
Not when did he die? but when did this happen to you? “Nearly eight months ago.”
“This time is hard, but it will get better. You do not think it can but it will. Believe me, I know.”
“Thank you for that,” I say, and I mean those thanks with a depth of emotion that makes me tearful. And suddenly I am able to identify that positive feeling. Since Ryan’s death, I have heard every uttering of sympathy, every cliché, been told by so many people that they know what I’m going through, that life goes on, time is the great healer, that in fact there are things to be thankful for; that my son was not suffering illness, his was a quick death instead of a painful one dragged out slowly over time. Lloydie’s father came to visit us after Lloydie phoned and told him. It was always going to be a difficult visit anyway because he had so little to do with his grandson throughout his too short life, never really got to know him or spend time with him, but he came as people do when something this tragic occurs, a visit dictated by protocol, and he said, which I will never forgive him for, how lucky I was to be young enough to have another, as if Ryan was nothing more than a car or a winter coat or a boiler. I was too devastated by his insensitivity to reply, but I have replied to others and sometimes thanked them, while at the same time rejecting their condolences and sympathy because, actually, they haven’t a clue. This is the first time I have met someone who has lost a child through violence, who has experienced what I have experienced, who has been through what I am going through, who has truly, genuinely felt it. It is the first time in seven months that I have not felt isolated because of my experience, but part of something, in the same way that the photo of Ryan on the board has gone from representing an individual loss to forming part of a collective issue.
The Mother Page 6