‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Well, I guess he would get a fairly consistent theme.’
‘What theme?’
‘Abandonment. Like I run from my problems, or something, and leave other people behind to deal.’
‘What’s in the letters?’
‘I just told you. And, kind of, I guess, apologies. Or explanations. Or something. Only I didn’t send any of them, because I don’t like to …’
‘You don’t like to share?’
‘Yeah, you get to laugh at me, Alex. Good for you. But the truth is that I get ashamed, and I try to explain, and what I have to say sounds so lame, that I can’t. And yeah, I get that it’s laughable.’
‘I’m not laughing at you.’
‘And then I try to explain myself, and I even suck at that. And because of that I have no one left except you and Max. And Arla. Arla has pretty consistently refused to let me abandon her. I don’t deserve her as a sister, and I don’t deserve you as a husband.’
I reached out towards her. She shook her head.
‘You and Arla sure exacted your revenge on me, didn’t you? I get it. I’m laughable.’
‘You aren’t,’ I said.
‘Oh, I am. And I can’t even send her away, because right now she’s the most stable family member Max has.’
Voices in the street. Max and Arla. I picked up the gloves and the letters, and was already at the top of the stairs when I heard the key in the lock. I tossed the letters and the gloves on to the bed with the other letters, then pulled the bedroom door closed behind me and stepped back on to the landing.
‘Hey,’ said everyone, all at the same time.
The next half hour was excruciating. Millicent and I made hot chocolate for Max and Arla, and saw them both safely into bed, smiling all the while. When we were sure they were both safely asleep, we stopped smiling. We spent the next half hour sitting on the sofa, not daring to speak. You killed him, I thought. You killed him. Yet I said nothing, and nor did Millicent.
At length we went out, leaving a note in case Arla or Max woke up again. We found an all-night café that served undrinkable coffee in Styrofoam cups. Millicent took a mouthful and spat it out into her palm. Then she reached for a serviette and knocked over her cup. We apologised to the man behind the counter, borrowed a cloth, ordered large mugs of tea instead.
At a table by an open fire escape, a young couple sat smoking cigarettes and French kissing. Like us, I thought. Like us before it all went wrong. Millicent watched them for a while, then turned to face me.
‘Are we always going to make each other unhappy, Alex,’ she said.
‘We don’t,’ I said. ‘Not normally.’
We ordered full English breakfasts and more mugs of tea, then watched each other as we ate in silence. The couple by the fire escape paid and left, laughing.
‘Millicent,’ I said, ‘Arla told me this weird story about you giving birth in a beetroot field.’
‘There was no beet field,’ she said. ‘There was a miscarriage, though. Quite a late miscarriage, it turned out.’
She let me take her hand.
‘Sarah wasn’t the first,’ she said. ‘I suck at getting pregnant. Or I suck at staying pregnant. Max was the exception. Sarah was the rule.’
The lightness of the words.
‘It happened at high school. At ten thirty a.m. on a Tuesday. During English class.’
‘Not prom night?’
‘That was the night I skipped town. The miscarriage happened the week before.’
She had not known she was pregnant. The stomach cramps had continued all morning. They had started on the way to school. The bleeding had begun as she stood at her desk reading out an essay. The class had gone very quiet, and it had taken her some time to realise. Then she had run from her class to the girls’ toilet block, knowing only that something was badly wrong. She had scooped that tiny, rigid body into her sweater and carried it to the school nurse, humiliated and fearful, desperate for help.
‘I guess I thought there must be procedures. But she took it next door, and it sounded like she dropped it into some sort of metal container.’ Her voice became very small. ‘I think she incinerated it, Alex.’
Word had got out. There had been blood on the floor of the English classroom; she suspected the nurse had said something careless. She had skipped the last few days of school, but they let her graduate all the same. She really had planned to go to the prom, but her nerves had overcome her.
‘And if I read the letters that you wrote to your parents?’ I said.
‘I guess those letters were kind of angry. Like I thought they thought it was all my fault. Not that they ever said it.’
‘And to your boyfriend?’
‘I thought you could write letters to the dead. Did you never do that?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, I never did.’
‘You would have hated the eighteen-year-old version of me,’ she said. ‘Real superstitious. I sucked.’
‘You could post those letters,’ I said. ‘It might give you …’
‘What? Closure?’ she said. ‘You don’t believe in closure, Alex. There’s no such thing. I wrote those letters when I was eighteen. What does an eighteen-year-old girl know about anything? How do you even send a letter to a guy who took his own life?’
She looked so small, sitting there on the other side of the table from me, arms folded angrily across her chest.
‘Why did you never tell me, at least?’ I said, after a time.
‘It was an earlier version of me. I mean, I thought it was. Maybe it’s still me.’
I sat back in my chair, and took a long, hard look at my wife. ‘Millicent,’ I said, ‘were you pregnant again this time?’
‘Briefly.’
‘And Bryce knew?’
She nodded. Christ.
‘Was it his?’
She made a helpless little gesture. ‘He decided it was.’
‘And you lost the baby?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, Alex, this time I took measures.’
‘You had …’
‘… a termination,’ she said, in words I could hardly hear. ‘Eight weeks.’
The man behind the counter glanced up at us. Leave us alone. I stared at him and he stared back. Let us be.
‘Were you going to leave with him?’
‘He was crazy,’ she said.
‘Is that a no?’
‘That would be a no, Alex. A very firm no.’
I was scared, sitting there. I was trying so hard not to judge; trying so hard to keep my own anger from bursting through.
‘Just how much money did he steal, Millicent? For your new life together?’
Millicent sat there, shaking her head slowly from side to side.
‘It was thousands, wasn’t it? Tens of thousands?’
‘I never wanted any of that, Alex. Look, I know you think I’m a bolter. And I know I cemented that by talking about divorce. And sure, part of me still wants to bolt. But I know I can’t this time. I always knew that. There’s Max. And there’s you.’
‘I believe you, Millicent.’ I looked over at the man behind the counter. He was pretending to read a magazine now, still listening to our conversation. ‘What about the gloves?’
We stared at each other. Millicent’s eyes registered something like shock. I leaned in towards her again.
‘I know you went to get the gloves, along with the letters. And that weird little piece of tape.’
This time she looked puzzled. She leaned forward, and I turned my ear towards her mouth.
‘I don’t know how he came to have my gloves, Alex. I never once wore them. But yes, I found them in a drawer beside my letters, and yes, I took them back.’
‘And the piece of tape?’ I said.
‘I don’t know anything about a piece of tape.’
We sat back in our chairs. Millicent looked tiny, and exhausted. But there was an angry defiance to her, as well.
‘Was he in our ho
use? Is that how he got them?’
‘No, Alex, I swear to you – he was never in our house. Please give me a little credit. I maintained some boundaries.’
The man at the counter pretended not to hear. I could see him react. But we were just another couple arguing over an affair; the police already knew about the affair.
I leaned over and spoke directly into her ear again. ‘So, what were you doing in his house, when I was in Edinburgh?’
She pressed her fingers hard against her temples for a moment, then blinked twice. Then she brought her mouth close to my ear.
‘I wanted to be less strongly linked to him, Alex, nothing more.’
‘You should have handed the gloves and the tape to the police.’
‘No, Alex,’ she said, her voice a tiny whisper, ‘I really should not.’
I leaned in, closer still. ‘You killed him,’ I said.
Millicent stiffened. I straightened up a little. Millicent’s eyes blazed – anger, and something that looked almost like insolence. The bravado of the eighteen-year-old girl.
‘Didn’t you?’ I said.
She leaned her mouth towards me, and I turned my ear to meet it.
‘No, Alex, I did not kill him.’
Again we looked at each other. I leaned in towards her, again brought my mouth very close to her ear.
‘I know why you did it now.’ I sat back in my seat. ‘Rose told me.’
‘What, Alex? What did Rose tell you?’
‘About Lana.’
‘What about her?’
‘Come on, Millicent. I know.’
‘What about Lana, Alex?’
‘She wasn’t Bryce’s daughter. Bryce never had a child.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, Alex, you are mistaken.’ That same matter-of-fact tone as the night I told her Bryce was dead. As if she were refuting a badly constructed argument.
‘It’s true. Rose had a daughter called Lana, who died.’
‘No,’ she said again, but I could see that she believed me.
‘You didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘No, Alex,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know.’
Relief flooded my body. ‘You didn’t do it. Thank God. Thank God, Millicent. Thank God.’
I tried to take her in my arms but she pushed back her chair and stood up, walked to the counter. She exchanged words with the man behind the counter, and he showed her to a room in the back. I heard taps running. I heard water in the pipes. And I heard Millicent’s keening sobs, loud above the running of the water. Neither of us spoke. The man behind the counter could hear Millicent crying too. I could feel his eyes upon me, but I avoided eye contact. I couldn’t bear one of those conversations.
Women, eh?
Ah, yeah. Women!
Bryce had fooled Millicent, as he had fooled so many other people. My beautiful Millicent, so sharp, so funny and so clever. And he had duped her; even she had been seduced by the lies of the lonely little man in the next-door house.
From the counter the man came to the table with two more mugs of tea.
‘I didn’t order this,’ I said.
‘Sounds like you need it, though.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes we do. Thanks.’
‘Are you two all right?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I really don’t know.’
The sun was up, and already you could feel the heat building in the dirty streets. It was six o’clock.
The neighbour’s house had been emptied. The blinds were gone from the windows, the furniture cleared from the front room. ‘Huh,’ said Millicent, her forehead pressed against the glass. ‘Looks smaller.’
Is that all you have to say? I thought, but did not ask.
Her footprints would be gone, more or less, hidden amongst the prints of the removal men. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d never see them now. Would the police rearrest her if I rang and told them what to look for? Or were they done with us?
Why did she go back into his house? Why was she lying to me? Why the gloves? Why the tape?
Let it go, I thought. Millicent was telling the truth about the most important fact: she didn’t kill Bryce, I was sure of that now. Let it go. I put my hand on the small of Millicent’s back and guided her towards our little house.
Forgive.
Still, though: the gloves; the tape.
27
Max’s book was on our bed again, on the hollow where a few hours before Millicent’s letters had lain.
‘We have to talk about this with the shrink, don’t we?’ said Millicent.
‘The drawings?’ I said. ‘Probably.’
I opened the door to Max’s bedroom, and we stood there on the threshold for a moment, watching him. Calm rise and fall of his chest; body completely given over to sleep.
‘Max,’ I said, experimentally; he did not react.
Millicent put a hand on my chest. ‘I noticed something weird through my embarrassment and shame and humiliation,’ she said. ‘Because I did read Max’s book pretty thoroughly, hard though that was. And the sex stuff, it’s a description of what he heard, right?’
How small our son looked, and how perfect, arms thrown outwards, pyjamaed legs kicking away the covers: bare-chested, brave and very small.
‘I don’t want to have this discussion here,’ I said.
‘Sure.’ She closed Max’s door; we went back into our own room and pulled the door shut behind us.
‘Sorry,’ said Millicent. ‘Super-strung out.’
‘Yeah.’
‘But you know, Alex, the last description he wrote was the day before you guys found Bryce. How come he didn’t write any description of finding him?’
‘The pictures are the description,’ I said. ‘And he was dead, so he didn’t make any noise.’
‘Then how come he didn’t date the last two pictures?’
‘He’s eleven,’ I said.
‘You keep saying that. You’d think he would draw the erection.’
‘He’s an eleven-year-old boy who’s trying to understand your affair, and Bryce’s suicide, and why everything in his life got turned over by that. He’s like someone who’s read the instruction manual but has never actually seen a car.’
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I guess.’ She was not convinced. ‘He lifted the rest of the pages out. Look.’
It was true. The last four or five sheets of paper had been cut from the book with a scalpel. Almost invisible.
‘What do you think?’ she said.
‘I think Max has a sense of drama. Anything he wrote or drew after this would be an anti-climax.’
‘I guess,’ she said. ‘Yeah, you’re probably right.’
At six fifteen Millicent mailed Dr Å from her phone asking for an appointment. The cat appeared from nowhere, lay beside us on the bed, purring musically. Eventually the purring stopped and the cat slept.
At seven thirty Millicent woke me in panic. Dr Å had sent an SMS. She would see us at eight thirty.
We arrived seven minutes late for our appointment. The door to Dr Å’s consulting room was open. She had placed coffee cups on the floor by two of the chairs, and on the floor beside Max’s chair was a glass of water.
Some slight imbalance as I sat down. I ran my hand across the top of my right thigh. Something about my wallet was wrong, I thought. The weight, perhaps. Strange that you even notice.
‘Can I have juice, Dr No?’ said Max.
‘You have water, Max,’ she said simply.
‘OK,’ he said. He sat on his chair and smiled. I was surprised at how lightly he took being summoned to see the shrink, how willingly he deferred to her.
‘You asked to see me urgently,’ said Dr Å. ‘And here we are.’
‘Yes,’ said Millicent. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to see us so soon.’
‘Max, did you feel the same sense of urgency about this session?’
‘Not really.’
‘So,’ said Dr Å brig
htly, ‘something couldn’t wait.’ She looked at me. I looked at Millicent. Millicent looked at Dr Å, then at Max, then at me.
The clock marked time: almost ten minutes down, and nothing to show for it. Max picked up his glass and blew bubbles into his water.
‘Max, don’t,’ I said.
‘I can do what I like in here,’ said Max. He put down his water. ‘Can’t I, Dr No?’
All three of us looked at Dr Å.
‘And I would only say that such behaviour is unusual from you in my experience, Max. Are you trying to provoke a reaction in your parents?’
‘Sorry, Dr Å.’
‘We’re all a little frazzled,’ said Millicent.
‘I’m not,’ said Max. ‘Not really.’
‘Perhaps I can ask you, Millicent,’ said Dr Å. ‘Why are we here?’
‘Max has a notebook,’ she said.
‘His diary?’
‘He told you about it?’ she said.
‘I am familiar with it. He left it with me at the start of his course of therapy.’
Of course, I thought. That’s why the police didn’t find it.
‘Well, I don’t think I understood how much my son hates me until I read it.’
‘It’s not about you,’ said Max. ‘It’s about him. The neighbour.’
Millicent got up; she drew her chair across the floor away from Max and towards Dr Å.
‘So,’ said Dr Å, ‘what is it about Max’s diary that brings you all here?’
Millicent carried on speaking very quietly. ‘There’s such hatred in those drawings. They’re like a sort of revenge fantasy of all the things that Max wanted to happen to Bryce. I never thought my son would be capable of such hate.’
‘You interpret this as hate,’ said Dr Å simply. ‘I’m not certain that it is.’
‘It is a little bit, though,’ said Max. ‘Because it’s like, when you’re at school, and someone says “your mother” and there’s a fight, because it means your mum lets other men do her. Can I go in the garden?’
‘I’m agreeable to that,’ said Dr Å. ‘If your parents are. Perhaps Max could come back in twenty minutes?’
Millicent nodded. Dr Å looked at me. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Fine.’
A Line of Blood Page 32