The Cuckoo's Child

  Daniel had heard it too. He had paused in his game, kneeling among the roots of a cedar, and was staring at the knot of children round the picnic table, just twenty feet away or so. They were running to the far side of the table, looking down at the ground, uncertain.

  “Stay there, Daniel,” I said. “It looks as if someone needs help.”

  I scrambled to my feet and ran. The children at the table were glad to see me; they started to explain what had happened, interrupting one another, arguing over details. I ignored them, concentrating on the small girl huddled on the ground, clutching her left arm. Her face was grey, and she was moaning. No tears, just the dry-eyed keening that comes with great pain.

  “Can you lift your arm?” I asked.

  She looked dolefully at me and shook her head. “Try,” I urged.

  She leaned and tried, but instantly her face collapsed and tears sprang from her eyes.

  “I can’t,” she gasped, “it’s too heavy, it won’t go, and it hurts, it hurts.”

  I looked at the other children. “What’s her name? Do you know who her parents are?”

  A boy spoke up. “That’s Lisa. Her mom’s over there.” He pointed to the crowd on the sideline.

  “Be a pal,” I said, “and run over as fast as you can and tell her Lisa’s hurt. I think her arm’s broken.”

  While I waited for reinforcements, I took off my belt and put it round the little girl’s body, strapping the arm close to her side for support. Her mother and other adults came pounding up. My role was over. No more than five minutes had gone by when I turned back to my book and Daniel.

  No more than five minutes. The book was still lying on the grass. No Daniel.

  I didn’t panic. The trees he’d been playing under were huge; he would be around the other side of the massive trunks, out of sight.

  I called his name as I walked to the trees. The yellow bulldozer and the shabby Hot Wheels car lay in the dirt between the roots. His small footprints were clearly visible in the earth he’d disturbed with his game.

  He wasn’t on the other side of the trunk, nor anywhere else in the stand of trees. I hurried back into the open space, turning wildly to check every point of the compass. Nothing.

  I ran down toward the road, dashed across it to stare up and down the sea wall. There was a group of older boys playing about with bikes; I ran to them, demanding to know if they had seen a little boy, this high, fair hair, wearing jeans and . . . what was he wearing? They shook their heads and shrugged, riding off looking embarrassed. And I couldn’t remember what Daniel was wearing, couldn’t remember what I’d put out for him to wear that morning, a lifetime away. Was it his red turtleneck sweater or the little Aran Mum had made him for his birthday? Did he have sneakers on? Or boots? What colour socks?

  Fear swelled inside me, drumming at my temples. It clutched at my throat, squeezing until I gasped for air, swallowing convulsively and fighting the weight in my chest that threatened to break my ribs from the inside. I heard a distant mewing and realized I was the source. I held my lips shut with a tremulous hand and ran, casting about like a dog on a weak scent, retracing my steps, looking in garbage cans and bushes, accosting everyone I met, leaving behind a trail of shaking heads and blank looks.

  I raced around the pitch, pushing through the spectators, searching every group whose legs might have concealed my child from view. He will have come over to watch Neil, I reasoned, sure he will. But he hadn’t. The Gibsons bunch were all on one side of the field, and I rushed up to them, shouting, “Daniel! Daniel! Have you seen him?” My friend Ella swung round as I passed. I caught the dismay on her face and heard her cry out, “Livvy! Whatever’s the matter?” But I dared not stop. If I am just quick enough, I told myself, I’ll catch up to him and it will be all right.

  “It’s Daniel! He’s gone! I can’t find him!” I howled over my shoulder. Heads turned in my direction; laughter abruptly ended as I pushed past three men, jostling the arm of one so that his beer slopped over his wrist.

  “Watch it!” he shouted. “Crazy chick!”

  As I ran past the Gibsons coach, I heard his startled exclamation, “What the f . . . ?” followed seconds later by “Livvy! Get off the pitch! What the hell d’you think you’re doing? Come off there!”

  But I knew where I was going. I headed straight for the tall figure with the filthy headband round the fair hair, and without a thought for the bodies thundering toward me, the leather boots with their mud-choked cleats, the sodden ball hurtling through the air, I led a trail of anxious women through the melée to Neil. When I got there, I said, “Daniel’s gone, he’s disappeared,” and when Neil’s mouth formed the shape of incomprehension, I beat my fists on his chest, pounding him with my terror, and howled like a dog.

  The game died. Immediately, there were mud-plastered players in shorts and striped jerseys scouring the park, women and children accosting joggers and walkers towed behind their anxious, straining dogs, hands shoving cups of bad coffee into my hands and patting me awkwardly. A mounted policeman rode up on a gleaming bay, a centaur with a radiophone who marshalled bigger forces. The warm smell of the horse unlocked something in my mind: Daniel has blond hair, I said, light blue eyes, a tiny scar at the corner of his mouth where he once jabbed a branch in his face, blue Oshkosh jeans, a red cotton turtleneck sweater with a blue stripe on the collar, navy padded jacket, white socks, white runners with purple stripes down the sides.

  He was there, so complete in my mind I could hear his infectious giggle. Could see him folding and stroking a piece of his hair in the hypnotic way he did when he was tired, feel his small body leaning trustingly against me, his hand tucked in mine. Just as yours is now, Stephen.

  In all the strain of the protracted search and investigation that followed, it seemed more and more important to cling to the images and sensations; I carried the toys he had left under the tree everywhere, just as he had; they were the most real things in a completely surreal world. Certainly the process of searching for Daniel became increasingly isolating as more and more police and volunteers were involved.

  Neil’s arm was always around me, his head against mine, as we talked to the detectives, repeating and repeating the story as far as we knew it, dredging for details, unconsidered snippets, a person, a car glimpsed and not seen again. We racked our brains for motive, a grudge, malice, envy, with the same disbelief you would experience on being told to look for slugs in your underwear drawer.

  By the evening all ferries, major roads, and airports were under surveillance. Customs, police, and coastguards were alerted. Daniel’s disappearance was the lead story on the evening news on radio and television. Neil appeared on TV looking gaunt and dishevelled, appealing for the return of his son. According to the detectives, tips were starting to come in.

  There was no question of us leaving Vancouver. The wife of the captain of the Vancouver Yacht Club team put her basement at our disposal and provided us with house keys. “For as long as you need it,” she said. “Don’t worry about a thing.” I asked Ella, who was the secretary at my school, to tell the principal what was happening and to visit the house and feed Maisie, our cat.

  Two days later, after forty-eight sleepless hours in a police station growing more and more desperate, we found ourselves sitting stiffly side by side on a couch in the basement of a strange house on West 31st. I was clutching a small vial of sleeping tablets some doctor had given me, somewhere. Our hosts had gone to bed. The house made its small settling sounds. Every now and then, the furnace sprang to life with a click and a dull roar. The dim standard lamp in the corner seemed the only light in the world; we huddled in the little yellow puddle it cast, while beyond its range, the darkness pressed, absolute and empty. That was where Daniel was, alone in the dark.

  “I’m scared,” I whispered.

  Neil’s cold hand tightened on mine. “So am I,” he said.

  We stayed for six weeks. It was a seesaw time of hopes and disappointments. The police had hundreds
of tips to follow up, but small, blond, blue-eyed boys in jeans are two a penny. You came, as soon as we phoned to tell Mum and Dad the news. I will always remember how Mum reacted: “How could you let it happen?” she asked, as if it was just some monumental carelessness on my part. We made posters and trudged the streets attaching them to hydro poles and lamp posts, store windows and café menus and laundromat bulletin boards. The police had me make an appeal to the abductor that was aired on all the channels, hoping that the weeping mother would pluck at someone’s heartstrings, but by that time I was numb, too desolate to weep, too tired for any emotion but stony endurance.

  Neil tried to keep us going, even managing to joke on occasion with the detectives. He was better at pretence, at keeping a stoic front. I resented him for it.

  “How can you smile?” I asked. “Our son’s gone. How can you ever laugh again?”

  But he wouldn’t rise to the bait, wouldn’t get angry, wouldn’t blame me for my inattention, looking after another woman’s child when I should have been looking after my own. Maddeningly, he said, “Depression won’t help Daniel, will it?”

  I hated him for being right. But I couldn’t leave it alone.

  “So I’m wrong there too? I feel sad so I’m no use to anybody? I’ll tell you, Neil, I’m not going to be any use, ever again, if Daniel isn’t found. Smile at that!”

  He tried to fold me in his arms, and I wanted to let him, but the demon in me flailed its arms and pushed him away. I pitied his downcast face, but I could not unsay the words, and the moment passed.

  The day I had been dreading came too soon. The detective in charge of the investigation sat in front of us, nervously fiddling with his car keys. No results from the most extensive search and inquiry ever held in this province; hundreds of tips, all faithfully followed up, no matter how bizarre, with no progress, thousands of man hours devoted to the case without a single tangible clue unearthed. Time to scale back the inquiry. It would never be closed, he assured us, leaning forward to drive the point home; he would continue to work on it. He would stay in touch. Let us know if anything promising turned up. But for now there was nothing more to be done.

  Reason tells you that if children are not found quickly, the likelihood of finding them alive diminishes with every single day. I knew that. I knew that public interest in the case, feverish and suffocating at first, would languish when there were no quick developments. But this was my child, not some pathetic little stranger. The detective’s dispirited resignation and Neil’s nod of acceptance tore something loose in me and quietly choked it. As if from a great distance I observed Neil shaking the man’s hand and accompanying him to the door. As their voices faded, I felt a terrible loneliness and futility settle over me, pure and burning, like a weightless coat of snow.

  “Let’s go home,” said Neil as he returned.

  So we did.

  SEVEN

  Few of the comforts of home for you here, but you don’t seem to mind. I watch the nurses bustling in and out—they must be the only people who can bustle quietly—checking monitors and drips, making notes, adjusting the flow of oxygen. Even their faces are still as they count your heartbeats through their fingertips, busying themselves, keeping you going, and all the while, you lie there oblivious.

  And I know that kind of oblivion too, although there were no nurses for me then. Those months after Daniel disappeared are a blank. I was dimly aware there were people around, doing things, saying things, but they were shapes looming in a dense fog that muffled all sound. There were no connections. Despair was easier than struggling through the murk. Tell me that you haven’t despaired, even now. Tell me you’re letting go because it’s time, not because you have no hope. I can’t bear to think of you surrendering to the dark, as I did then.

  I did try to pick up where I left off. I went back to work, waving aside Ella’s doubts, her troubled, kindly face regarding me doubtfully across my kitchen table, still cluttered at five in the afternoon with egg-stained plates from breakfast. Maisie was sitting on her lap, gazing at her adoringly.

  “Why don’t you take a bit longer?” she said. “The sub’s doing a good job—you don’t have to worry about that. Give yourself a chance.”

  “What’s the point of waiting? Nothing’s going to change. It’ll be better if I have something to do. Something that keeps me so busy I don’t have time to think.”

  But I was wrong. However busy I had to be, I could never banish the thoughts. Lying in bed at night, watching the shadow branches of the apple tree outside the bedroom window tossing on the ceiling and listening to Neil breathe softly into his pillow, I replayed Daniel’s life over and over, always coming at last to the place where the film snaps and slaps futilely in the sprockets, memory stumbles, and speculation takes control.

  In those night watches my mind ranged over the land, high as an eagle, searching for the small body in mountain gorges and dense forest, looking for the flash of red at the bottom of rivers and lakes, riding the ocean currents, lodged under wharves or log booms, seeing the gleam of tiny bones in the starshine where they lay in the ferns beside a forgotten logging road.

  By day I was more practical but no less obsessed. I looked at the bent heads in the science lab and thought of the boy Daniel would have been. I chewed my lunchtime sandwich and remembered his fondness for peanut butter and honey. Parents queued to see me on Parents’ Night, and I wondered what the man who snatched Daniel looked like—it was always a man, in my mind—what he did, what kind of house he lived in, what his neighbours thought of him. I mixed chemicals absentmindedly and worried about Daniel’s fear and sadness, if he was still alive and forced to live with someone else, his parents inexplicably failing to come for him. I would load the washing machine and turn away from it, without switching it on, overwhelmed because in all that heap of clothes there was not a single tiny sock, no miniature pants coated with mud at the knees, no T-shirts sticky with honey or pine resin.

  If it sounds as if I were alone in this, that is the measure of the monstrous selfishness of grief. Neil suffered too, of course he did. Mum and Dad fluttered about intermittently, their faces pinched and solemn with woe, helpless in their inability to help. Bless your heart, Stephen, you came and went as often as you could get away from your job, silent usually, but quick to see what needed doing and getting on with it.

  Did we ever thank you properly? I don’t suppose so. You were the one who answered the letters and messages we found waiting for us on our return; you adjusted the brakes on my car, mended the kitchen tap, replaced the filter on the furnace, chopped two cords of firewood. Ella was a constant visitor too, dropping off batches of muffins, jars of homemade salsa, bags of cat food for Maisie when I forgot her. None of this concern registered properly with me. I was like a faulty answering machine, hearing only my own voice saying, “Livvy is not available right now,” then shutting down the recording as the callers start to speak.

  All I could feel was the weight. It was as much as I could do to lift a foot at each step, more than I could do at times to raise my fork to my mouth, my comb to my hair. The weight exhausted me. As soon as I came home, I went to bed. I didn’t sleep, but at least I couldn’t see the worry in Neil’s eyes or the silent reproach of Daniel’s closed bedroom door. It was exactly like being caught in quicksand; struggling and fighting do no good, so inertly I slid deeper and deeper, waiting for the bog to close over my head.

  There are only two things I really remember of that time.

  The first happened on a February day, grey cloud blurring the horizon where it met the darker band of sea, straight strings of rain pocking the waves and flinging themselves at the windowpanes. I was alone in the house. Neil had retreated to his studio as he did more and more. I was lying under a quilt on the couch, Maisie curled on my chest, staring me gravely in the eye as she purred.

  The phone rang. Jarring. Right beside me on the coffee table. Impossible to ignore.

  “Hello.”

  “Livvy? It�
�s Jerry. Listen, Liv, I just heard, about Daniel, I mean. Liv, I’m so sorry. You don’t get much Canadian news down here, but I just caught one of those Most Wanted shows, you know, unsolved crimes and stuff, and there it was. Liv, it’s terrible, just terrible, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Has there been any news?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Oh, jeez, Liv, what can I say? How are you? Are you okay?”

  It was too much effort to tell him.

  “I’m okay,” I said. “I’ll survive.”

  “What about Neil? He okay?”

  “About what you’d expect. Sad. Silent.”

  “Well, sure, sure. Stupid to ask. Liv, I feel real bad just leaving you guys to it, not getting in touch or nothing. Is there anything I can do for you? I’m supposed to be starting a job down here Monday, but I’ll can it if there’s something I could do, just say the word and I’m there. How about it?”

  “Where are you, Jerry?”

  “What? Oh, San Diego, well, not exactly San Diego itself, a little bit north. But, Liv, look, shall I come up? Just say.”

  “No, Jerry, there’s no point. It’s a waiting game now; there’s nothing for you to do. Go start your job. What sort of job is it?”

  “Oh, marina, fishing trips, that sort of thing. But, Liv . . . you sure I can’t do anything? Posters, walking the streets? Bugging the cops?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Well, if you’re sure, I guess that’s it, then. You keep the faith now. You know he’s still out there, right? And hey, Liv, give Neil my best, won’t you?”

  He rang off. The room was utterly quiet. How strange he seemed, how remote, with his life unfolding effortlessly far away. Just like all the others who had steeled themselves to offer their sympathies and their help, he had sounded strained, ill at ease with pain and his own guilt at being untouched and happy. I imagined his relief at putting down the phone, breaking the connection, duty done. Tragedy has much the same effect on those not directly involved as terminal illness.