Missing Christopher

by Jayne Newling

  I made Nic a chocolate cake for his eighteenth birthday. I was icing it when Nic yelled for Phil and me to come to his computer.

  ‘I want you to see what Mitch wrote about Criddy.’

  I didn’t want to look but he pulled me out of the kitchen. He turned the screen to me and watched me as I slowly read what Mitch had written on his Facebook page.

  ‘My best friend Cricket. You are the one I’ll always look up to. I’ll never forget you mate. You are my hero. RIP.’

  There was a photo of Cricket and Mitch, arms around each other’s shoulders, their snapped faces in mid-laughter. Underneath was another photo of Mitch and another friend named Sam, both wearing T-shirts, their left arms raised in a strong-man pose.

  ‘NEWLS’ was tattooed on their biceps.

  I gasped audibly. I think my heart stopped. I tried hard not to cry in front of Nic.

  ‘It’s a good thing, Mum. They want to honour him forever.’

  I nodded, told him I’d be back soon then ran up the stairs to my bedroom and closed the door behind me. Nic came in and hugged me as though I was a little child. Phil followed and took the other side, forming parentheses around my shaking body.

  ‘She’ll be okay,’ Phil said to Nic. ‘Just give her some time.’

  ‘Want a cup of tea, Mum?’

  Six friends were now marked with indelible ink to remember Christopher.

  chapter 26

  Rain trickled down the dusty panes of Ashleigh’s window, leaving snail trail streaks. It reminded me of the face of a sad and weathered clown whose audience had suddenly grown up.

  Ashleigh sighed and I wondered if she was disappointed I came back.

  ‘I’m glad you came back.’

  ‘I nearly didn’t.’

  ‘I know.’ She smiled warmly. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Horrible. I’m really sorry, Ashleigh, but I don’t think I can do this. It’s too painful.’

  She threw the tassels of her orange shawl tight around her neck and gazed at me with deep understanding. She asked me to describe my pain.

  ‘I feel like I’m in a cage, like everyone is watching me.’

  ‘Does your cage have a door?’

  ‘No! I’m trapped. It’s like a coffin. I can’t breathe.’

  I started to cry again, shocked by my inability to control my emotions in this room. It was as if Ashleigh was holding my heart in the palm of one hand and with the other, unpicking its seams with a darning needle. I didn’t cry at the funeral, the memorial service or even on the night Christopher died. Why now? Why after all this time? Who gave her the key to my soul? She handed me a box of tissues.

  ‘I don’t want to do this anymore, Ashleigh. I don’t want to grieve. It’s much easier to keep it inside.’

  She waited then took a sip of her coffee. She looked at me again but said nothing.

  Time went by so slowly in this little room. There were too many empty moments, seconds, sometimes minutes while Ashleigh waited for me to continue. The silences were excruciating. All I could hear was her slow, steady breath and the clock ticking every second beside me. I’d look at it constantly, willing it to go faster. I knew she didn’t want to interrupt my thoughts but I was loath to express them. She smiled again, a big, open warmth of kindness. She was about thirty, much younger than me, taller and bigger, strong and maternal. I wanted her to wrap me in a blanket, cradle me in her lap while stroking my hair. She possessed everything I may once have had and lost: confidence, warmth and empathy.

  ‘I’m tired,’ I eventually said.

  She nodded and urged me to continue.

  ‘I don’t want to live this life. I’m too tired to be a wife, a friend, a daughter, a sister. I’m tired of pretending.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Pretending I’m okay. Pretending that I want to be a mother again, that I’m capable of being a mother, taking care of Nic. Pretending that I still enjoy making pikelets with homemade raspberry jam.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘That I’ll burn them.’

  ‘Which illustrates what? That you’ll fail?’

  ‘Yes. Again. I don’t want to be responsible. I don’t want to be judged. I don’t want to be watched. I don’t want to take the risk of falling over again. I’m tired of accommodating everyone’s hopes for me.’

  A fresh round of sobbing spewed out of me. It was ten minutes before midday and I begged to be given an early mark. She smiled sadly and made an appointment for 11:00 a.m. the following week.

  From Christopher’s diary: January 20th, 2002

  Be this the whetstone of your sword: let grief Convert to anger; blunt not the heart, enrage it.

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH

  chapter 27

  I woke with a scream on a cold night in our Newport rental. I’d been running in the woods looking for Christopher. He was a little boy dressed in blue shorts and a striped T-shirt. I was yelling his name. I came out of the dank forest and stood before a large dam. A voice boomed out from above: ‘Go back into the woods. You have to find him.’

  It was cold and dark. I saw a tall shadow moving in and out of the tall trees. It was my brother Jim. He smiled at me.

  My breathing was harsh and my pillow soaked through. Phil rubbed my shoulder, sighed then resumed his deep snoring. I was still shaking, the nightmare slow to bleach through my subconscious.

  I stared into the dark, willing blue butterflies to fill our bedroom.

  Something didn’t feel right. I smelt fear and I could hear the dread of my heart. I knew this feeling—heightened panic, senses reeling, skin crawling, guts contracting. The house creaked on its stilts. My heart bashed against its cage. I nudged Phil. His body jerked, then rolled over. In the silence of my terror I knew what this was. A second, a moment when life stopped and death wiped its boots on the welcome mat. Something was very wrong—something had happened to Nic.

  The wooden stairs were cold under my naked feet and although I wanted to run, I tiptoed slowly, counting each rung, pleading before each new step for God not to take another son. The voice in my head was cackling. I stopped at the bottom, stretched my neck around the corner, cocked my good ear to Nic’s open door.

  Nothing.

  It was one o’clock in the morning. I didn’t hear Nic come home from church. I crept down the dark corridor. Lisa meowed. She was on his bed—that was a good sign. Nic always took her to bed with him. I didn’t turn on the light; it would wake him. He had to be there; he was always there, my reliable son. I patted my hands to where his feet should be. It was flat. I slid my hand up along his wrinkled doona. Nothing. Silence except for Lisa’s purring.

  Maybe he was asleep on the couch. Maybe he was on the deck.

  I ran through the house, turning on every light. He was nowhere.

  I ran to the carport. His car was gone. Back in his bedroom I turned on the light. His mobile phone, always glued to the palm of his hand, was on the bedside table.

  I screamed, loud enough to wake Phil who came hurtling down the stairs.

  ‘Nic’s missing. He’s dead, too.’

  Phil hugged me, tried to console me, but as I pulled away I saw the fear in his white eyes.

  Doom has a colour, a smell, a pervasive aura which encircles you and squeezes the breath out of you in dying degrees. It brings you to your knees. It is the steel grey fear of failure that binds you to your predicament but it is instinct which pulls you to your feet. Instinct, the maternal antenna which vibrates on a low hum, screeching when trouble looms.

  Every mother’s child goes missing—sometime. Every parent feels the thud of dread as the hours stretch beyond reason. In my mind’s eye I saw Christopher’s lifeless body under a tree, beaten to death on the Halloween night he went missing. Ben went missing on the day he got his driver’s licence. A quick trip to the local mall to pick up his sailing suit took five hours. In my head I saw his car wrapped around a power pole, his body slumped and lifeless on the passenger floor.r />
  Now, I saw Nic’s body, washed up and bloated, seagulls pecking at his face.

  When Christopher died, instinct told me he would live.

  I called the police. I cleared my throat and swallowed the lump of hysteria.

  ‘My son is missing.’

  ‘How long has he been gone?’ the policeman asked with a distracted, impatient sigh.

  ‘About four hours.’

  Silence. The background was muffled. He had put his hand over the mouthpiece. I knew he was laughing.

  ‘How old is your son?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  Silence again. I felt stupid but he didn’t know Nic. He didn’t know he had bipolar and had been suicidal. He didn’t know his brother killed himself.

  ‘I wouldn’t worry at this point,’ he said. ‘If he hasn’t come home after twenty-four hours, give us another call.’

  ‘But he’s bipolar. He’s never gone missing. Ever.’

  ‘Twenty-four hours, ma’am.’

  I slammed down the phone. Phil dressed and grabbed our car keys. We agreed on our destinations. He turned left out of the driveway and headed south. I went north, past the memories, good and bad, of the small beachside suburb which took our child away.

  The winding road along the shoreline was deserted at this early hour of the morning. The glassed facades of the exclusive beachside houses shimmered in the moonlight, mirroring the ebb and flow of the turbulent surf below. As I careened around each bend, memories flooded back of the life we used to have and as I entered Avalon, I braced myself, knowing I’d see Christopher on every street corner.

  I drove slowly along the main road, squinting left then right—looking for Nic’s car. To the left was the oval where Christopher had his ninth birthday party, played hundreds of matches and where he broke his nose. The skateboard ramp was on the right. Christopher’s friend Troy lived three streets away.

  I rolled down my window, calling out to Nic. Each street was as deserted as the last. I drove up the cul-de-sac where we used to live.

  A dog barked in the distance and a bat swooped down to the lone streetlight where it feasted on a meal of frenzied moths. Christopher used to walk Shadow up and down this street each night.

  I wiped my eyes and continued through the remaining roads.

  I stopped off at the park and shone my headlights through to the play equipment. The swings rocked gently in the night breeze and several possums were having a party on the food scraps left under the seesaw. The large branch of the ghost gum, which played host to a tyre on a rope, creaked loudly.

  I parked outside the birthday cake shop and peered into the window. Cakes were lined on the top shelf ready for pickup the next day. Tom would have a chocolate one, Andrew would have vanilla and Tiffany, pink icing with a ballerina on top. The window clouded with my breath. I wiped it with my shirt sleeve, noticing the clock on the wall said 4.00 a.m.

  I’d been looking for Nic for three hours. I shuffled back to the car—there was nowhere else to look. I was so tired. Up ahead, across the road, I could just see the top of Christopher’s floodlight. It was shining down to the beach below, making daylight of the rugged cliff face. No parent would ever again lose their child on that cliff because it was too dark to see.

  I whispered to the light, to Christopher, to help me find Nic.

  ‘What am I missing, Crick? Where should I be looking? Is it too late? If it’s not, please help him to find his way home.’

  I clasped my hands together and rested my forehead on the steeple. I couldn’t do this again. It would kill me. I looked up to the black sky, the twinkling stars and to the biggest, brightest, yellowest one and begged God to end this nightmare.

  The front door was open as I pulled into the driveway. Phil was home, waiting for me. He was hunched in the chair, his face in his hands. I put my arms around him and he stiffened.

  ‘Drink?’

  He nodded in that way which suggested he’d been crying but didn’t want to admit it. I poured two whiskies and sat down next to him.

  An hour later the black ocean sparkled with arrows of pink as the sun yawned above the horizon. We sat on the deck with a pot of tea, eyes glued to the driveway below. It was going to be a beautiful, clear day. Restless, we took turns to wander through the empty rooms, an ear out for Nic’s clapped-out Volvo. A hungry Lisa meowed. I fed her without love and she glared at me hostilely.

  We heard an engine and ran to the front door. The sight of Nic’s car knocked my legs out from under me. I couldn’t breathe. I got up and rested against the wall. Nic shuffled in and yawned.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Why? What’s the big deal?’

  ‘We were worried,’ Phil yelled. ‘You were supposed to be home after church.’

  ‘I didn’t feel like coming home,’ he said offering less resistance.

  ‘Why didn’t you call us?’ Phil said.

  ‘I left my mobile at home.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard of a pay phone?’

  ‘I thought you and Mum would be asleep.’

  ‘We were!’

  I was so angry I wanted to pummel the pulp out of him. He should have known how scared we would have been. He eyed us impatiently, accusing us with an indifferent flick of his latest hairstyle that we were helicopter parents—hovering and suffocating.

  He turned to walk away.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ I screamed at his back.

  ‘Just because I was a few hours late?

  ‘We thought you were dead,’ I sobbed.

  ‘I’m eighteen. Do I really have to account for every hour? How long are you going to overprotect me?’

  ‘As long as you live with us, we need to know where you are,’ Phil roared.

  ‘I’ll move out then. I can’t handle this pressure.’

  ‘Do you have any idea what you put us through last night?’

  I whispered. ‘You, of all people, should understand.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about me anymore, Mum.’

  ‘Nic! We drove for three hours last night looking for you. For your dad and me it felt like the night Cricket died. We thought you’d . . .’

  ‘I wouldn’t.’

  ‘You tried.’

  ‘That was before.’

  His face finally softened as awareness and guilt washed over him. Tears rolled down his nose as he pulled me, then Phil, into a tight hold.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t realise. It won’t happen again.’

  ‘Where were you, Nic?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘It does. Your dad and I looked everywhere.’

  ‘I was at the headland.’

  My heart stopped. Why didn’t we think of that? Where were my instincts?

  ‘Why there?’

  ‘I was praying to Criddy.’

  chapter 28

  During the next few sessions Ashleigh forced me to unpack more and more of my grief and my feelings of despair. Although it was helpful therapy, I didn’t want to come to this room each week to sob and splutter. I didn’t want to talk about Christopher; it drained me and with each passing week I fell deeper and deeper into grief’s well. I still had no hope; I still wanted to die more than I wanted to live. Christopher’s death was my life’s endgame, Nic’s survival the breadcrumbs to the trap.

  Ashleigh told me I was depressed. She wanted to book me into hospital. I thought she wanted to get rid of me.

  ‘I can’t start all over again with someone else. I don’t even know if I can finish here and I can’t leave Nic.’

  ‘Then we’ll keep going,’ she said. ‘But I want you to see your doctor as soon as possible; you need to be taking antidepressants.’

  I reluctantly agreed. Then we spent the session talking about why I wanted to die.

  I didn’t want to live, didn’t feel I deserved to live because my son was dead and I knew, somehow, I could have prevented it. I told Ashleigh I wished I had been kinder, softer. I wished I had talke
d to him more instead of screaming at him. I wished I had forced him to stay at home instead of letting him live with Ally. She nodded compassionately but I knew she didn’t agree with me.

  The tiny white traveller’s clock read 11:30. Tick, tock.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said with vehemence.

  ‘But you weren’t there. You didn’t see what I did to him.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I yelled and screamed at him, all the time.’

  ‘Because he was a teenager, doing things he shouldn’t be?’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Make me.’

  ‘I said things to him—bad things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I made him feel guilty for causing me more stress. Nic was so sick. I told him he wasn’t being fair to Nic or me. I brought up my childhood, my mother’s alcoholism, my brother’s death. I told him I didn’t deserve all this and he shouldn’t be adding to it.’

  Ashleigh’s face crumpled. Would she now understand? Would she accept that I couldn’t live with this guilt? I was his mother and I put Nic and myself first. I was meant to love, nurture and protect him.

  I didn’t push Christopher off the cliff but I might as well have led him by the hand. Women have died fighting for their children’s lives. Where was I? Knocking back a bottle of wine? Where was I when he was so sad he was starting to formulate the idea of his own death? Why didn’t the warning bells ring? There should have been a deafening peal when his friend jumped off a bridge several months before Christopher’s death.

  I begged him not to go to the funeral but he did anyway.

  That friend’s parents came to our house a few days after Christopher died. We (the mothers) looked at each other for a moment.

  It was as though she was acknowledging I was now a member of her exclusive group, one which no one would ever ask to join. She hugged me briefly and with a deep sigh, let me go. She knew we’d never see each other again. The pain had bleached her eyes opaque, her body was cold and taut, her hands as dry as her future. I knew she recognised the same madness in me.