by Carrie Elks
Yes, he was my exception.
He still is.
* * *
Tina's fiftieth birthday falls on a Saturday, a month into Alex's tour. She phones me early in the morning, gushing about the flowers he's sent her, and I hold my tongue, unwilling to divulge that it was me who arranged their delivery.
He called me on Thursday night from a dingy motel in Oregon, panicking, and even though I tried, I couldn't hide the smugness in my tone when I told him I'd already ordered the flowers and bought a silver bracelet to give her on the day.
“Thanks, babe.” His voice sounded hoarse. It was no surprise after all the gigs they'd been doing. But there was something else, as well. An underlying exhaustion that coated his words. My smugness disappeared then, replaced by concern.
“Are you okay?”
“Shouldn't I be asking you that?”
“I'm fine.” My voice was gentle. “We've got into a bit of a routine. Max slept until four last night.”
“I miss you. Both of you.”
Then come home, I wanted to say. Get on a plane and come back to us.
“We miss you, too. Did I tell you Max is trying to crawl? When we went to the park with David last week, he almost dragged himself across the picnic rug.”
Silence. All I could hear was Alex's regular breaths.
“You went out with David?”
My stomach dropped. “It's not that way. You know it isn't.”
David's one of the few people keeping me sane. Him and Beth. I don't know what I'd do without them.
Alex sighed. “Whatever. I've got to go, the bus leaves in ten minutes and Stu wants to call his girl. Give Max a kiss from me, okay?”
The bitter taste in my mouth seemed to spread throughout my body. Churning up everything. “Yeah. Speak to you soon.”
“Love you, babe.”
“Love you, too.”
Each time he calls it feels more of a reflex response, a tap of the knee, a leg kicking out. The words spill out of my mouth like a well-rehearsed speech. We blink, we breathe, and we love. But when reflex replaces emotion, where does that leave us?
I'm still thinking about it as I push Max's buggy up a grassy hill in King Edward's Park, where Tina has decided to hold her birthday picnic. Although her friends are taking her out on the town tonight, she's decided she wants to spend the day with her family. Especially her baby grandson.
Max, of course, is oblivious to everything. Wearing a cute little pair of short dungarees, his bare legs kick out as he spots birds flying in the sky. He's already learned to point, which apparently is advanced for his age, and his finger follows the contrails of an airplane as it crosses the horizon.
I love the way small things delight him so much. He sees the beauty in everything, helping me see it, too. A car horn is remarkable, a police siren something to laugh about. He's learning so much every day.
And Alex is missing it all.
The Cartwrights have set up camp beneath an old oak tree. Tina has spread out a motley collection of rugs and is laying food out on plastic plates when we arrive. She abandons her task readily, scooping Max in her arms, holding him to her ample bosom.
“Oh, my goodness he's grown, I can't believe it. He looks so much like his daddy.” She's always said he's the spitting image of Alex, but I've never really seen it until now. In the last few weeks his downy baby hair has been replaced by, thicker, darker strands. Add that to the way his face is starting to take shape and I'm beginning to see what Tina means.
“He's losing some baby fat. I miss his chubby cheeks.” I give a mock pout.
“He's beautiful. Aren't you, gorgeous?”
While Tina occupies Max, I glance over at the other blanket. Amy is here, accompanied by Luke, her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Those two have had more breakups than I've had hot dinners. They first started going out at school, when Amy was fifteen, and their relationship has been volatile, to say the least. Luke is a typical wide boy, swaggering about, flashing the cash he earns from his electrician business, treating Amy as if she's some kind of doormat.
Needless to say, Alex can't stand him. I'm guessing the only reason Luke's even here is because Alex isn't. He rarely shows his face when his girlfriend’s big brother is around.
“Hi Amy, Luke.” I join them on the lilac checked blanket. “Is Andrea coming?”
“She's gone to pick up some booze,” Amy replies. “Luke forgot to bring the champagne.”
Her pointed look is totally wasted on him. He has his head bent over his phone, his fingers tapping furiously. He doesn't even look up to say hello.
Yeah. I don’t like him much either.
“How are the applications going?” I ask, remembering our last conversation. “Have you found an internship yet?”
Her face lights up. “Yeah, actually. I've been offered a position at Richards and Morgan.”
“That's amazing. Congratulations.” I lean across and hug her. Everybody who's worked in the city have heard of Richards and Morgan. They're one of the top management consultants in London. All shiny buildings, tailored suits and massive expense accounts. Landing an internship there is a huge coup. “Isn't that great, Luke?”
“Uh?” Finally, he looks up from his iPhone.
“Amy's job. It's good news, isn't it?”
He holds my gaze for less than a second. “Whatever.” Shrugging, he starts tapping away again. I flash a sympathetic smile at Amy.
Seriously, she's a beautiful girl. Long, black hair that glistens in the midday sun. Warm chocolate eyes as big as dish plates. She could do so much better than Mr Charisma.
“When do you start?” I decide to ignore him, turning my attention back on Amy. She glances at Luke and her lip trembles.
“September. My induction day's on the fourth.”
“You'll do really well with your brains. They'll be lucky to have you.”
I want to hug her again. In all my time with Alex, not once has he made me feel worthless. Angry, maybe. Definitely frustrated. But never has he treated me the way Luke treats Amy. I want to shake some sense into her, can’t she see what he’s like?
She must sense my mood, because she hurriedly changes the subject. “Have you heard from Alex?”
From the corner of my eye I see Tina put Max onto the picnic rug. He immediately turns over onto his belly, putting his hands out to push himself up. “Yeah, every now and again. He forgot to set up data roaming so he has to call me on a borrowed phone. Half the time I can't work out what city they're in.”
“I've been following them on Facebook,” Amy says. “Did you see the pictures from Seattle?”
“On Facebook?”
“Yeah, their band has a page.” She looks surprised that I don't know this. But Alex has never used Facebook, reckons it's a huge time waster. I'm guessing Stuart or Alfie has decided to bring the band kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century.
To be honest, I'm a little embarrassed Alex never told me. All this time I've been wondering what they're up to, and all I had to do was log on. It seems like their fans know more about my husband than I do.
“I'll have to take a look when I get home.”
A gurgle comes from behind me. Max has managed to manoeuvre himself onto all fours. Though he looks a bit wobbly, there's a big grin on his face, as if he can't believe his luck.
“Look at him,” Tina calls out, as delighted as her grandson. “He's going to start crawling on my birthday.”
We watch with baited breath as Max moves his right hand forward, his face screwed up with concentration. Amy leans across and grabs onto my arm tightly, as excited as I am.
“Come on, Max,” Tina encourages. “Do it for Nanny.”
Slowly, tentatively, he shuffles his left knee forward, making the top half of his body lunge ahead.
Silently, we wait for him to do it again. And he does, managing three shuffles before he collapses in a heap on the rug, clearly exhausted from all the effort. We break out in loud cheers
, clapping loudly, Amy whooping as she captures a picture of him on her phone. I lift him up, grinning, kissing his sticky face.
“You did it!”
“He did! The best birthday present ever.”
Max gurgles and makes a grab for me, then he starts laughing wildly. Amy snaps away, while Tina squeals, and Luke ignores us all, muttering at his phone.
Every once in a while there are moments like these. I hold my son close as he slobbers on my shoulder, and ignore the one dark thought that tries to make itself heard.
Max crawled for the first time and Alex missed it.
16
On Tuesdays at the clinic I run a group session for parents of addicts. Dragging our chairs into a makeshift circle, the eight of us sit down, and I take a moment to look at each one of them. The longest-serving member is Jackie Clack. She’s been coming to these meetings for five years, ever since she found her son injecting himself in their downstairs bathroom. Though Seth’s fallen on and off the wagon more times than a drunken cowboy, Jackie has remained consistent throughout that time.
She’s like everybody’s grandma. When a new member joins, she takes them under her wings, coddling them, telling them that though things may not ever get better, they will definitely become more bearable.
Next to Jackie is Peter Stanhope. He’s only been with us a few weeks. His daughter, Kate, is a meth addict and her two children have been taken into foster care. Every time Pete comes to a meeting he shows us their photos, holding them with a shaking hand, telling us that this week he hopes he’ll get to see them.
The saddest member of all is Carla Dean. She’s not that much older than me, though the furrowed lines that have made a home across her brow make her look at least a decade more advanced than she is. She had her only son—Connor—at the age of seventeen. He’s now fifteen and addicted to smack. She hasn’t seen him for three months; the last she heard, he was seen in a drug den in Wandsworth. Since then, she’s been walking the streets every night, questioning the homeless, searching for a sign of him.
It’s as if the streets have swallowed him whole. It never fails to amaze me how a fifteen-year-old can disappear into thin air. In this day and age, it’s still possible to lose a child.
“I thought I saw him last week,” Carla tells us. She won’t catch any of our eyes, and simply stares down at the floor. From my position opposite her, I can see the grey roots of her hair have grown in, giving her a pale white stripe across her parting line. “But it wasn’t him. It was some kid with bleached blond hair. I tried to get him to come home with me for a decent meal but he told me to fuck off.” She wrings her hands nervously together. “I told him that his mum must be worried sick, as I am. But he told me his mum chucked him out.” Finally, she looks up. “I mean, who would do that? Throw their kid out?”
“I threw Kate out when I found out about her drugs,” Pete says, with a thin smile. “Fat lot of good that did. She shacked up with her deadbeat boyfriend instead. The one who got her hooked in the first place.”
“You did what you thought was right.” Jackie pats his hand. “None of this is your fault.”
There’s silence for a minute, and I turn my attention on our newest member. Laurence Baines is fifty-something and a headmaster of an up-and-coming school in East London. In the past two weeks that he’s attended the group he’s been nothing but perfectly turned out. Suit jacket still on, not a single hair out of place; he looks like the ultimate professional.
“How’s your week been, Laurence?” I ask.
“I visited Tom yesterday. He cried for an hour.” Laurence catches my eye. “I cried, too. For the first time since my mother died twenty years ago.”
Tom was convicted for dealing while studying at Oxford University. Unlike many others, he had everything going for him from the start. Wealthy parents, a middle-class upbringing, an education people would kill to get, and yet now he’s serving time in a prison surrounded by thieves and murderers. A different type of education altogether.
“How are you feeling today?” I ask him.
“Exhausted. Depleted. I spent most of the night holding Julie while she cried herself to sleep.” Julie is Laurence’s wife. She’s taken her son’s incarceration badly. Understandably so. “All she kept asking me was ‘why’? I couldn’t tell her I want to know that, too. That I don’t have the answers.”
“Do you find not having the answers difficult?” Jackie asks that question.
Laurence turns to look at her. “I’ve never felt this helpless before. I’m always the one with the answers. At home I’ve looked after the money and the house. Julie relies on me to keep things straight. It’s the same at school. I’m the one who gets to make all the decisions. The one people look up to. But now I’ve no idea what to do. I hate feeling so bloody useless.”
“Sometimes there isn’t an answer,” I point out, gently. “Life throws a curveball and we either duck or get hit.”
These sessions are always tough. It’s hard enough when it’s one on one. But in a group setting there are so many desperately sad stories, they never fail to touch me. The worst thing about them is the inevitability of it all. Even when one of their children has finally kicked the habit, we all know that around 90% of them will return to drugs within the next twelve months. That’s why so few of them stop coming even during a sober period.
I think of Max and the way he actually waved me goodbye this morning when I dropped him off at nursery, lifting up his tiny hand and flapping his fingers as I left him playing with Holly. I can’t imagine going through what these people have endured. To see the child they love stolen away by an addiction so cruel nobody can escape from it.
Once, Laurence watched Tom learn to crawl. Saw his first tiny wave with a chubby little fist. I can’t imagine he ever thought that one day that baby would grow up and be a convicted criminal, imprisoned at the age of twenty.
What happened to these kids? Were there a series of tiny choices that led to their addictions, or were they doomed from the start. I find myself listening closer, looking for answers, hoping to avoid making the same mistakes they did.
If only I could shelter Max from harm. Wrap him up in cotton wool and chase the world away. I hate the thought he’s going to experience sadness. Heartache and rejection. Perhaps that’s the cruellest part of being a parent. Knowing as hard as you try, you can’t protect them from everything.
“It isn’t your fault,” Jackie joins in. I can tell by the way she’s wriggling on her seat that she’s desperate to get up and give Laurence a hug. Not that he looks like the hugging type. I expect he’d endure it politely, trying desperately not to look at Jackie’s more than ample bosom, but I don’t think it would give him much comfort.
At this point I’m not even sure there’s comfort to be had.
“We’ve reached the end of our hour,” I say, reluctantly. It took us all a while to warm up today, and the first twenty minutes were filled with pointed silence and quiet mumbles. It’s always a shame when we get only forty minutes of quality discussion time. “I’ll see you here the same time next week?”
A few nods, a couple of thanks, and the loud noise of chairs scraping against the floor fill the air. I start to stack them in the corner and Laurence comes over to help me, working silently beside me as everybody else troops out.
“Thank you for today,” he says quietly. “It’s good to know I’m not alone out there.”
Now I’m the one who wants to hug him. I dig my fingernails into the palms of my hands, reminding myself I’m a therapist, not a cuddler.
“I’m glad you came. I know we don’t have all the answers, but we do want to listen. And everybody wants to help.”
“Even Jackie,” Laurence says, and the ghost of a smile crosses his lips.
“Especially Jackie.”
After Laurence leaves, I take a moment to grab my phone from my bag. I’ve been trying to call Alex since yesterday, desperate to tell him about Max’s first crawl. I left a voicemail fi
rst thing this morning, asking Stuart to get Alex to call me back, but I’ve heard nothing since. Of course, I haven’t had a chance to try again since I got to work.
Predictably, there’s a missed call and a voicemail. I press on the icon, then listen to the automated voice as she tells me I have one new message.
“Hey, I can’t believe I’ve missed you again. The reception out here’s crap. We’re about to get on a bus to Chicago in five minutes, but you can try and call me when you get the message. Or I’ll call you when we get to the hotel some time tonight. Love you, babe.”
Frustrated, I delete the message and try the number again, but all I hear is Stuart’s recorded voice. I leave a low-key message, telling Alex I’ll try him again later, wishing him luck in tomorrow’s concert. Then I go back to my office, ready for my final counselling session of the day, hoping at some point this week, I’ll actually get a chance to talk to my husband.
* * *
Max goes to sleep quickly this evening. It's as if he knows I've had a hard day and wants to make my life easy. I stand and watch him for a while, as his bow-lips pucker in his sleep, looking like his daddy when he sings softly into a microphone.
Pouring myself a cup of tea, I call Beth, needing to hear a friendly voice. If I'm brutally honest, as nice as it is to get some peace and quiet, I can't help but feel lonely on nights like this. There's an Alex-shaped hole in the flat, his absence making everything seem a bit less vibrant.
“Hello, stranger.” As soon as I hear her voice it makes me smile. “How's things?”
I can't tell you how good it is to hear her voice. All the frustrations of the day seem to quieten inside me. Beth has a way of bringing inner peace.
“Different day, same problems,” I say. “It's been a long week.”
“It's only Monday.” Her laugh is soft. “What's up?”
Where do I start? Taking a sip of my lukewarm tea, I lean back in my chair, letting my eyes fall shut. “Ugh, I don't know. I've been playing voicemail tennis with Alex for days, and he missed Max's first crawl yesterday. I haven't even had a chance to tell him.”