The Boy in the Park: The gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by A J Grayson

  So no coffee, but I have my notebook and my pencil – the productive equipment, and the food and the drink, of the poet. Which is what I consider myself and what I am, despite the fact of my rather more worldly employment. And the absence of a single published poem. A badge of honour, I’m convinced. True poets never publish. To publish a poem is to sell one’s soul, to befoul and dirty one’s words with consumerism and industrial approval-seeking. This is a realization almost all real poets come to, generally after their thirtieth or fortieth rejection letter. And however it may sound, it’s not hypocrisy, this: it’s the fruit borne of a slow evolution of genuine understanding. The kind of understanding I am proud to call my own, after many years of careful refinement.

  Since I’ve been sitting here I’ve jotted down two lines of my latest poetic effort.

  The tree-bough leans, its leaves an applause

  Cheering in the wind

  It’s what I’ve managed so far. And I’m not one to be too precious: it’s a bit shit. The muses have yet to find me at the pond today. No flashes of inspiration illumine me, no sudden bursts of creativity. That can be a frustrating thing; it’s driven some poets to madness. But today there are ducks in the water – a mother with three children paddling after her from one small bay to the next, seeking what only ducks know is there to be sought. That’s enough. I’ve learned that poems come when they will, they’re not things that can be forced. Being a poet is mostly about the waiting. Waiting for the right thought to take the right shape, then capturing it in words like pixels capture sights for a camera. And there are rice yeast tablets and kale extract drinks to sell in between, so I’m not going to find myself homeless.

  Then, clockwork: he’s there again. The little boy. One of those once-surprises that’s become a predictable repetition of the good and welcome sort. I like that I see him every day, visiting this place just like me. I like his kiddish overalls. The white shirt that’s become a dusty brown is on display again, the armpits stained. His hair is dirtier than before. The stick again is in his hand, the tip piercing the water.

  He seems to gaze vacantly out over the tiny expanse of our miniature sea. He doesn’t notice the ducks.

  He never notices the ducks.

  I squint my eyes. It looks like there’s a spot of blood on his arm, poor thing. Happens to kids.

  It glistens in the midday light. Blood on the arm of the little boy. And like the ducks, like the wind, he doesn’t seem to notice.

  3

  The Boy in the Park, Stanza 2

  The evening is coming,

  The morning is gone;

  Little boy with his playful heart

  And castle and crozier and soldier.

  Leaps, not knowing

  where they shall land –

  How little boys do play until

  The day of youth is done.

  4

  Wednesday Afternoon

  I’ve gone back to the shop and taken up my dutiful post. A steady stream of customers, none of them terribly interesting. None of them offensive. I ate a sprout and beancurd wrap for a bite, taken from our refrigerator in the back. Why pack a lunch when you work at a health food shop? I wouldn’t take the tablets if they were free (and Lord knows they aren’t), but the food’s a nice perk; at least, once you convince yourself that terms like ‘curdled’ and ‘fermented’ are actually positives and not the repellent horrors the words more obviously suggest.

  I’ve developed the habit of eating when I return to work, after my outings, in the last five minutes of my lunch break (though my boss, Michael, doesn’t really mind if I nibble at the counter once my shift resumes). Eating at the pond always seems a touch vulgar. A cup of coffee, that’s different. Sip and watch and enjoy. But gnawing into a sandwich or wrap, face smothered in the cellophane wrapping with bits of lettuce and mayonnaise clinging to your chin … it seems like the trees, if they had voices, would snicker down and say, ‘All well and good that you visit like this, but honestly, couldn’t you do that sort of thing at home?’

  So it’s here in the store that I’m chewing on my sprouts and former beans, and here that I’m pondering what came before. I am, I realize, a touch confused by what I saw in the park. It didn’t hit me then, but it’s stuck with me since. This boy and I have been sharing the pond for a year and a half, and I’ve never seen him injured before today. Not a bump, never even an obvious scratch. Then today, that bloodied arm … it’s troubled me more than it really should.

  I think I’m most disturbed that he didn’t notice it. Or at least, he gave no visible signs of having noticed. There was blood that descended from a patch of raw skin above his left elbow, emerging just beneath the tattered hem of a short sleeve, which isn’t something a person simply stands oblivious too. Especially a child. I’m left wondering what caused it. A bad scrape from a fall? Rough play? In any case, what I’d seen was too much blood for a little child – the amount of blood you expect to draw tears. But there were no tears.

  There was no expression on his shadow-hidden face. None that I could make out. The blood dripped a little, but his attention remained at the tip of his stick, tracing figure eights in the algae at the surface of the water. He appeared unfazed and unemotional.

  I’m plucked back into the present by a woman who wants to know about dietary supplements. ‘The kind for losing weight.’ I walk her over to a whole shelf we have cunningly dedicated to this particular myth. HEALTHY RAPID WEIGHT LOSS is the sign we’ve affixed to the top of the section: words so oxymoronic that I’m surprised we’ve never been sued for deception.

  The woman gasps, mystified at the array of bottles. It’s the gasp that comes with a look of excited enthusiasm I’ve seen many times before.

  ‘Which would you recommend?’ she asks. There are so many! Clearly, these are going to change my life!

  She’s in her mid thirties, pudgy but not fat. Not as fat as the men who usually come to browse this section, who absolutely never want to talk to anybody about their options (if caught gazing at the weight-loss shelf, they usually swerve just to the right, where we’ve cleverly placed the Protein Muscle Bulk powders so as to save them the embarrassment of admitting what they were really looking for). The whipped cream of the woman’s mocha Frappuccino is piled high beneath a domed plastic lid, a crowning chocolate-covered coffee bean beginning to sink into its sugary pillow. She seems entirely oblivious to the irony.

  ‘A lot of people are going for the cinnamon extract,’ I say non-judgementally, pointing to a green bottle. ‘But others swear by the basic fibre capsules. They fill up the stomach with harmless bulk.’ A brown bottle. ‘Keeps you from wanting so much when you eat. So the theory goes.’

  And they’ll each do you about as much good as closing your eyes, clicking your heels three times and hoping the fat will make a pilgrimage to Oz.

  I artfully keep that last bit to myself. My job is to get her to pick a bottle, any bottle, and politely charge her the 450 per cent mark-up we make on what is mostly encapsulated sawdust with a token sprinkling of your favourite herb. I smile warmly, something I’ve practised. She goes for the brown bottle and I nod in knowing approval. A wise choice, ma’am. That’s the one I would have suggested all along. A few minutes later I have gratefully relieved her of $39.50. If she loses a pound from a fistful of fibre capsules three times a day, I’ll personally double back her money. But at least she won’t be suffering from irregularity.

  My mind is back in the park. He remained a few minutes, there, the boy. Standing motionless on the far side of the pond like he always did, though not for quite as long, I think, as usual. When I saw his wound I felt the urge to say something. Are you all right? Did you fall? Do you need that looking at? But I sat quietly, instead, and I wished I’d had a coffee. Maybe that was selfish. I’m not used to looking after other people’s children. And after all, it’s just a scrape.

  A few moments later, the boy plucked up his stick, turned and walked back into the greenery, into the depth of the
park.

  Tough breaks, kid. Everybody falls. Given the calmness of his demeanour, it was a lesson he seemed to have learned with grace and dignity.

  Once he’d gone I closed my notebook. The muses had still not come and there was no more time to wait for them. My two lines remained an unaccompanied duo. I rose from my bench, said farewell to Margaret’s ghost, and walked away.

  That was hours ago. I must really be bored to have spent the afternoon dwelling on it as I have. The clock on the wall says 5.49 p.m. and I can’t imagine anyone is coming supplement shopping between now and six, so I flip the sign to ‘Closed’ and lock up. It’s enough for today. There’s a bus ride ahead. Home, and diamonds, and memories.

  5

  Taped Recording Cassette #014A

  Interviewer: P. Lavrentis

  The recording hisses slightly as it begins, but she is content. The sound quality overall is good.

  A rustle of papers before the dialogue ensues. When the voices emerge, their interactions pick up mid-stream; a continued recording from a continuing conversation. Not the first Pauline Lavrentis had had with him, and far from what would be the last.

  ‘I want us to return to yesterday.’ Her voice creeps out of the small speakers. In recordings she hears what always sounds an odd echo of herself. Her voice emerges as that of a woman of indeterminate age, though certainly without the lilt of youth she’d once had. It’s free of the humour she likes to feel she possesses, and the emotion by which her husband has always characterized her. That dispassion is intentional now, of course – speaking in just this way, in just this tone, has become a crafted skill – but it still sounds odd to her in the recordings, and she assumes it probably always will.

  A pause.

  ‘What about yesterday?’ The voice that responds is a male’s, its own ambiguous qualities creeping through. Definitely not a child’s tones, but not an old man’s either. Somewhere in the vast expanse in between.

  ‘You said you killed your wife.’

  A far longer pause. Plastic squeaks: the back of a chair bending under readjusting weight. Pauline leans towards the small recorder in its playback, straining to catch every sound.

  ‘I had to admit it eventually,’ the male voice finally responds. ‘Can’t keep everything bottled up. That’s what you’re always telling me, isn’t it?’ More fidgeting.

  ‘It’s good to talk,’ she answers with words she’d spoken a hundred times before, ‘to open up about ourselves.’ But not everything about this interview is usual. Some of her words are rarer, less customary on her lips. ‘I’ve been troubled by what you said.’

  ‘No shit.’ The male voice is flippant, now. The change happens quickly, seamlessly. ‘Can’t say I’m not troubled by it myself, lady. Terrible. Just a terrible, terrible thing. A man shouldn’t kill his wife.’

  ‘It’s not the killing that’s troubling me, Joseph.’

  A hesitation.

  ‘You’re … not bothered I killed my wife?’ Genuine confusion sounds in the man’s voice. The cassette captures a different, halting rhythm to his speech. ‘That’s just sick.’

  ‘Killing is very—’

  ‘No, seriously,’ his words slice across hers. ‘You ought to be fucking revolted. I told you I killed my goddamned wife! Held a pillow over her head till she stopped breathing.’

  ‘I remember what you told m—’

  ‘What sort of callous bitch are you?’ His voice is angry now. Pauline recalls how swiftly it had changed, the features of his face altering along with it. ‘You’re always doing this! Playing with me. Finally getting me to open up, then you toy around.’ A pause. His breathing is heavy and angry. ‘Bitch.’

  On the cassette, Pauline allows a silence to linger. The man’s breath continues to resonate. Several seconds pass. When Pauline begins to speak again, her voice has a different tone to it. A deliberate strategy, and on hearing it now on tape, Pauline is certain it was the right one.

  ‘Perhaps that isn’t where we should begin, today. Perhaps it’s too much.’ She’d let her focus remain vague, unclear whether she was speaking to the man or to herself. But then, more definitively, ‘Did you love her? Your wife?’

  The question provokes a hesitation, captured on the miniaturized magnetic tape. ‘That’s … that’s a ridiculous thing to ask. Of course I loved my wife.’

  ‘And you remember that – that love?’

  The pauses grow longer and more frequent. ‘You ask foolish questions. How could I not remember being in love? Obviously I remember it. We were head over heels. Full of romance. All that.’

  ‘It sounds very lovely,’ Pauline answers. Now, as then, his initial response provoked images of perfection. The kind of perfection she’d felt when she’d first met her husband, on those first dates when romance was everything and the world slipped away from her attention. For a time. And that was the key: for a time. Reality always steps back in. Pure romance is meant to give way to the sturdier, though sometimes less flattering, realities of genuine love.

  ‘Always been a traditional man,’ the male’s voice continues, ‘loving the lovely. She was the traditional woman, too, the kind any guy would want.’

  A silence lingers between them. Finally, the sound of Pauline leaning in towards the recorder.

  ‘I told you before that something was troubling me about your recollection of the murder.’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten. Your reaction was just … sick. Most people, normal people, would be horrified. But you, you’re “troubled”.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t find killing repulsive, Joseph,’ she continues. ‘I do.’

  ‘Then are you going to get to just what it is that’s “troubling” you?’ Sarcasm clings to his syllables.

  There are more sounds of bodily readjustment. When Pauline’s voice returns, it comes from a place closer to the microphone. She’d positioned her body carefully, the memory still fresh in her mind. She’d brought her face closer to his, lined it up directly with his eyes.

  ‘I’m troubled, Joseph, because there’s a fact of this case that simply doesn’t mesh with what you’ve confessed.’

  ‘There’s lots of details. Not everything “meshes” in real life, and murder isn’t an everyday occurrence that follows ordinary rules.’

  ‘No, but usually the pieces fit together, once we look at them. The details of the crime, and of the criminal.’

  ‘You can’t expect me to remember every little detail perfectly.’

  ‘It’s not a little detail, Joseph.’ Her instinct, Pauline recalled, had been to offer a compassionate smile, something almost maternal. She’d forced herself to hold it back.

  The man’s voice grunts in impatient displeasure.

  ‘Just get to the point, would you?’

  ‘Joseph,’ she answers, slowly, ‘the simple fact of the matter is, you didn’t kill your wife.’

  Thirty-seven seconds of sustained silence. Not even the sound of breathing. As if the microphone has dropped out.

  Then, the last word recorded on cassette #014A.

  ‘Bitch.’

  6

  Thursday Lunchtime

  I’ve chosen a frou-frou coffee for my lunch break today: double latte with caramel syrup and whipped cream. There’s no particular reason I’ve switched from my usual black filter selection; perhaps it’s the slightly overcast sky, the nip of a chill in the air. Some days are bright on their own. Some need to be brightened up and sweetened, however artificial the sweetener.

  I walk towards the park along my usual route. I have a full hour for lunch today – an extra fifteen minutes occasioned by the manager training in a new employee. ‘I’ll stay in and watch the counter with her for a bit,’ he said. ‘She can use the practice on the till. Have a good walk.’ That’s Michael. Not a bad man. Looks like death warmed over: pale, gaunt, waxy eyes and a head of hair so sparse that at a polite distance you can make out individual strands emerging like sprouts from a desert dry scalp. And he still manages to run a
successful shop that sells health supplements and vegetable-based ‘miracle’ hair products.

  Today is a ‘Free Day’ in the SF Botanical Gardens, meaning that as I approach I see larger than usual crowds strolling over the Great Meadow. They have these, every so often: days in which there is no entrance fee, even for non-residents – so the throngs of tourists ambling through Golden Gate Park have a chance to see one of the finer places in the city. A noble, civil attitude. I support it wholeheartedly. As long as it doesn’t become everyday and we locals get entirely run out.

  Cindy is in the entrance booth, the one marked Tickets. ‘Good morning, Dylan,’ she says with a broad smile as I walk by. Cindy volunteers Tuesdays and Thursdays, and normally checks my driver’s licence each and every time I arrive, even though she’s known me for two years now. She’s a law student up the hill – a career that makes for that kind of attitude, I suppose. But she’s delightful in every other way. I smile back as I pass by, noting her kind eyes behind the massive orange plastic rims of her eyeglasses and the nod as she beckons me onwards. No IDs required today. Not on a Free Day.

  It takes two left turns, a brief jaunt down a main pathway (today covered in people), and then a right onto a short, planked path into the trees before I arrive at the dirt walkway that leads to my pond. All in all, no more than five minutes from the entrance. Five minutes, and I’m in another world.

  I set the caramel latte on the bench beside me, bid hello and a pleasant afternoon to the memory of Margaret, and pull out my notebook. Its home in my back pocket has left an indelible imprint on my khakis, every pair of them; and the shape of my ass has left the notebooks slightly bent. Every one of them. There are stacks, piled up at home. A lifetime of poetry, thus far read only by me.

  I am not alone this afternoon. Free access and not-too-miserable weather have brought others into what is normally a rather secluded area. A group of children plays with stones off to my left, down at the water’s edge, their parents chatting idly behind them, visibly relieved that for the moment their offspring don’t require active observation. Further in the distance, a clutch of tourists with enormous cameras stops and starts along the beds by the water. I’ve never understood the fascination with taking pictures of plants, but these kinds of visitors are the standard, not the exception. The kind that take photos of flowers rather than actually see them – smell them, feel the way they reflect the light into your eyes, standing before their simple, unadorned magnificence. Surely this is a far greater thing than converting them to pixels. But I suppose there’s a whole generation, now, who simply do not know how to encounter anything directly. Human experience is mediated by a small screen held up between face and reality. Only what it captures is truly real. The memories of life have become confined to a span of 2.5 x 5 in (3.5 x 6 if you’ve got the latest model). On the periphery, nothing truly exists.