by Nicole Trope
A week ago there had been a story on television about a man who had a gun and when the police caught up with him he had waved it in their direction and now he was dead. The police didn’t fuck around when a gun was in the picture. Liz liked the idea of Alex getting shot by the police. She liked the idea of him dying in a car crash or jumping off a bridge. She just wanted him gone. Right now she didn’t care that his child would grow up without a father, she just needed him to be gone and her little boy to be here eating fish sticks with too much tomato sauce or pulling olives off his pizza so he could eat those first.
As long as Luke came home safe she liked the idea of Alex’s death more with each passing minute.
Her world felt tilted. If she stood up she got dizzy so she was staying put in the chair. Everything was out of kilter. Her child couldn’t be locked in a car with someone who had a gun, could he? It was not her reality. It could not be her reality, she could not bear it.
She had written down all the places Alex might have taken Luke. She had called all Alex’s friends and some work colleagues that were listed in her contacts on her phone. She had called a few of the mothers from Luke’s old playgroup even though Luke no longer attended because he was at preschool.
‘Oh, Liz,’ said Melissa. ‘We haven’t heard from you in an age.’ Liz hadn’t the patience to keep talking so she threw in her question about Alex and Luke and then Melissa got all emotional and started crying. Liz wanted to reach through the phone and strangle her. The impulse left her shaking and nauseous.
The gun had changed everything. Now he was on the wrong side of the law. The man who threw his daughter off a bridge had been doing nothing wrong until the moment he stepped out of his car and hurled the small child to her death. By then it was too late of course. She supposed she should be grateful that the police had even listened to her when she first called. It must be the hardest part of the job, figuring out what to take seriously and what to dismiss.
After she had called everyone she could think of she had detailed every abusive incident for Robert so he could try to figure out a pattern of triggers for Alex’s anger. He wanted to know about every bruise, every put-down and every tear she had shed.
They had sat in the dining room, away from the others, and Liz had been grateful for the small measure of privacy. She had felt stripped naked and the words had come while she twisted her hands and studied her mother’s rose embroidered table cloth as she went over the events of the night before again and again, repeating every word she had said, every move she had made.
She had no idea what Robert was listening for but she kept talking.
But now there was nothing left to say. The television was on the news channel but the volume was too low for anyone to hear anything. Running at the bottom of the screen was a continuous loop of text.
If anyone has seen or sees a blue Toyota sedan licence plate WVX217 contact police immediately. Do not approach the vehicle.
If anyone has seen or sees a blue Toyota sedan licence plate WVX217 contact police immediately. Do not approach the vehicle.
If anyone has seen or sees a blue Toyota sedan licence plate WVX217 contact police immediately. Do not approach the vehicle.
The whole state was now looking for Alex and Luke. The whole state and still they’d heard nothing in the last twenty minutes. How could that be?
Robert said that the media would arrive soon so she could make a plea to Alex to come home. He could be somewhere and see a television.
‘You never know,’ Robert had said.
‘No,’ agreed Liz. ‘You never do.’
Liz felt her skin crawl at the thought of having to go on television and bare her soul for people tucking into their takeaway food. She would look shocking. Her face was pale and blotchy and her hair was greasy because she couldn’t stop running her hands through it. She wondered at herself for even thinking about the way she looked but vanity would not be silenced by her distress. She would stand naked on television if it meant Luke would come home safe. She would stand naked or she would let Alex shoot her. Could she say that on television? Could she say, ‘Alex, if you just bring Luke home I will stand in the front yard of my mother’s house and let you shoot me or I will let you beat me until you cannot lift your arms anymore. If you just bring him home safe I will let you do whatever you want.’
She tried to swallow the churning emotions because she was afraid she would burst into flames.
She thought about the cake she had eaten this morning and regretted not having cream with it.
Rhonda and Rebecca were leafing through old magazines or taking it in turns to make tea and coffee so they could all drown their sorrows.
Liz wanted them to leave—all of them. She wanted to be alone so she could find the thread and unravel how she had got herself here.
Every mistake she had made, starting with the first cup of coffee she had ever shared with Alex, lined up and marched towards her. She closed her eyes and wished them away but still they came and she knew that at every turn she could have prevented this from happening.
If she had told him ‘no’ she couldn’t go out with him, this wouldn’t have happened.
If she had left after he threw the socks at her, this wouldn’t have happened.
If she had never agreed to marry him, this wouldn’t have happened.
If she had left after the first time he shoved her, this wouldn’t have happened.
If she had said ‘no’ he couldn’t come over last night, this wouldn’t have happened.
One night, after Alex had hit her on her side so hard Liz thought he might have broken a rib, she sat up all night in pain, trying to breathe and thinking about ways to kill him. She was sure that her father would know someone who knew someone who could do it for her, although she didn’t really want to get her father involved. She had gone down to the kitchen and studied the knives, wondering which one would be strong enough to push through his ribs and into his heart. She had looked under the sink and wondered which poison would be undetectable in coffee and she had wondered if she had the courage to hold a pillow over his face if she’d hit him with something heavy first.
She had watched the sun come up without doing anything, of course, and in the morning he had been completely devastated that she had not been able to sleep. He had taken the day off and looked after Luke and cooked and cleaned and allowed her to rest. There was nothing to be done for a broken rib anyway except rest but even if there had been there was no possibility of a visit to the doctor. By the end of the week Liz was feeling better and Alex was firmly entrenched in the loving phase and she forgot about her urge to end his life.
But as she sat now and thought about cake she knew that if she had gone through with her impulse that night, if she had managed to end his life or even hurt him enough to cripple him, this would not have happened.
She curled her body up into the old leather armchair her father had left behind when he moved out. Her mother had tried to throw it out but it was the one thing Liz got hysterical about. The chair smelled of her father. He had seeped into the leather. It was the one chair in the house in which she was completely comfortable. Her mother had tried to make Liz take it to her own house but Alex hated the chair for the very reason that Liz loved it. It was a large wingback with metal studs on the body and a soft cushion on the seat. Alex looked small in the chair. He had only ever sat in it once, making Ellen laugh. Jack filled the chair, as did Liz.
Her father had come back about ten minutes after they had heard from Frank. She had watched his fist curl when her mother told him about the gun. His face had coloured and she could see him counting in his head, trying to hold back his fury.
Her mother had taken him off to the kitchen and Liz knew she was telling him the tale of his daughter’s marriage. Liz knew her mother would start at the beginning, but it was not the real beginning. Ellen only knew what Liz had allowed her to know but it was enough for her father to get the picture. Enough to devastate him.
Now he sat on the couch trying to fill in the silence that he usually loved. He sounded awkward and suddenly, in the face of what was about to happen, he looked very small. He couldn’t save her from this. No one could save her from this. She had let her baby go and now she was going to lose him. The knowledge of that loss filled her body with acid. She was never going to see him again.
‘Sorry . . . ?’ she said, realising Dave was speaking.
‘I asked if I could get you a drink, Mrs Harrow. Um, some tea or something.’
Liz smiled up at him. His face was twisted into a sad smile and he was slouching slightly like he was trying to fit his tall, skinny frame into the room. Liz felt his awkwardness as her own. ‘Please call me Liz,’ she said.
‘Liz, can I get you anything?’ said Dave.
‘Thanks, yeah, that would be nice.’ She didn’t think she could swallow any more liquid.
Dave nodded and Liz could see that he was glad to have something to do. His partner Robert was in charge of taking calls and Liz knew there were uniformed police out looking for Alex and Luke. It could have been her imagination but she had also heard a helicopter hover over the house for a few minutes before moving off. She had to resist the urge to get in her car and go and look for them herself.
All the activity seemed a comfort to her parents, who were sitting together on the sofa swapping memories of Luke.
Liz wanted to tell them to stop because their talk was lapsing into the past tense. She needed them to believe he was coming home. She couldn’t force herself to think that later tonight Luke would be lying in his bed and this terrible time would just be a memory but she needed someone to think it, someone to believe it.
Alex could be five minutes away from the house. He could have been lying about the gun and he would just walk through the door and wonder what all the fuss was about.
She didn’t know what would happen then. You couldn’t charge someone with bringing a child home late. But maybe it was time to get a lawyer and to get the system involved. She wouldn’t let this happen again. She bent her head and said a small prayer that she would get the chance to make that choice.
She watched Robert writing in his notebook. Suddenly this was very serious. Now no one would say to her, ‘You’re being hysterical and we’re all going home.’ She wanted them to take it seriously because the prickles along the back of her neck were sending her messages she didn’t want to hear, but she also wanted them to fob her off. If they would just laugh at her she could relax, but here sat the two policemen like they had nothing better to do.
Dave came out of the kitchen and handed her a cup of hot sweet tea and Liz sipped at it. She hated sweet tea.
‘Have you been a senior constable a long time?’ she asked politely, as if they were at some social gathering.
Dave played along. ‘Not long, only a couple of years now.’
Liz nodded and searched her brain for more questions to ask the nice-looking police officer with green eyes.
‘Do you . . . do you have a family?’
‘Well, no—I mean, yeah, I’ve got two sisters and my mum and dad, but I’m not married. I don’t really get much time to, you know . . . date.’
Dave flushed and Liz felt a laugh coming on that she burned away with the tea.
Robert’s phone rang again and Dave moved over to stand next to him while he had a whispered conversation without looking at Liz or her parents.
Liz felt her stomach contract as she watched Robert’s face but then he ended the call and sat down again without saying anything. He wouldn’t look at her. He looked at his shoes and Liz wondered what it was he had just heard.
There was no way he would keep news from her, would he? Not unless it was so bad they had to make sure they were right. Not unless . . . Liz took another sip of tea. She needed to think about cake. Luke liked sponge cake with chocolate icing. Her mother and Luke liked to bake together. Every time they baked Luke would end up covered from head to toe in cake batter and icing. Once he had even put the bowl on his head so he could lick out the last little bit. Ellen had had to sit down she was laughing so much.
If she had never had Luke Liz could see that she and her mother would have drifted to opposite ends of the world even though they lived only ten minutes apart. Each year she spent with Alex she had seen her mother less and less, and when she thought about it now she saw that Alex had encouraged her to hold on to childhood grievances. He had compared her mother checking out and into a whisky bottle for a few years to his mother leaving him. Liz had nodded during these discussions, feeling only a little disloyal to her mother. Her mother had never spent her time on the couch in an alcoholic stupor—well, not never. Mostly she had just never quite been there. Liz had been nursing her own issues with her father and the two of them had turned away from each other instead of towards healing together.
But when Luke had arrived Liz had needed her mother. Whatever her failings Ellen had seemed to know how to hold the baby and how to comfort him and when to worry enough to take him to the doctor. At first their conversations had only circled around Luke but eventually they had discussed other things. They still chafed at each other but Liz had known when she packed a bag that whatever her mother said, she would never say no to them staying.
Now whole evenings could pass where they just chatted without the edge of history. Luke had done that.
Luke, who liked to sing Bob the Builder songs and eat exactly one and a half slices of toast every morning. Luke, who put his arms around her and still smelled of baby shampoo. Luke, who was her baby boy and who might never come home again. Liz couldn’t deal with the enormity of that fact. It wouldn’t allow her to contain it. She was going mad trying to prepare herself.
She chewed on a nail again, despite the fact that at least three of her fingers were already bleeding.
‘Look,’ said Ellen, appearing in front of her, ‘I think you need this, so just drink it.’ She was holding a glass of whisky. In deference to Liz’s taste she had added a touch of Coke. Liz took the drink and drank it down, enjoying the calming warmth. She held the glass out for a repeat.
‘No,’ said Ellen. ‘Not now.’
Liz nodded, happy to have someone else in charge.
She looked at her watch. Alex was two hours and forty-seven minutes late. His phone had gone straight to voicemail the last few times she had called. The last twenty times she had called to be exact. The last call had been made from somewhere in this area but they couldn’t find him and now his phone had been off for nearly an hour. He had been so close. If she had left the house and run to one of the nearby parks would she have found him? Where was he now? Where did you go with your son and a gun and your own fury?
The people in the house were starting to get jumpy. Rhonda had even cleaned up the kitchen with her mother. There was a sense of time passing more swiftly now. A sense that every minute counted. Alex was not standing on top of a building with the gun in one hand and Luke in the other but that was how it felt.
Robert didn’t offer anyone tea. He didn’t try to talk to any of them either, beyond asking questions that needed answers. He kept himself separate from them, unlike Dave, but Liz could see they had clearly defined roles in a situation like this. Robert’s way of rubbing at the stubble on his chin and the knowing look that flicked across his face every time Alex’s name was mentioned gave him the air of a seasoned professional. Dave was obviously much younger and Liz wondered how long he had been with the police. She imagined that in most situations Dave was probably the ‘good cop’.
Liz had chewed all her fingernails and now she just felt numb. The situation was surreal. She remembered Molly telling her what it had been like to sit beside her dying mother a few months ago.
She had run into Molly when Luke was about a year old and they had taken a few steps towards each other and then just dropped back into their university friendship. They were giggling first-years again. They didn’t discuss Alex. They talked about everything else but they never mentioned Alex. Molly never called her. Liz had never said anything but Molly seemed to understand. If she needed to get hold of Liz to change an arrangement she called Ellen and left a message. Ellen knew that Alex didn’t like Molly and she also knew that Liz didn’t like to make Alex angry.
‘It’s not normal to have to hide a friendship with a girlfriend, Liz. It’s not like you’re cheating on him,’ said Ellen.
‘Leave it alone, Mum,’ said Liz as she had done so many times. As she had done so many, many times. ‘It’s just easier this way.’
She saw Molly during the day and she took care never to call her by her name when Luke began using words.
Molly had tried to explain to Liz what it was like to lose her mother and Liz had listened but she hadn’t understood.
‘It’s like I’m sitting next to her bed and I know she’s dying and I feel like I should be thinking all these profound things about how life is short and how much I love her and about all the wonderful things she has done for me, but all I’m thinking about is what to make for dinner and whether or not I watered the plants at home and fed the cat.’
Liz understood what she was saying now. The human mind had trouble coping with the big-picture stuff. Her son was missing and her husband was likely to do . . . what? But she couldn’t think about that. She was thinking about mud cake and asking polite questions.