The Parable of the Mustard Seed

by Lisa Henry

  It was tranquil here; close enough to the city that Darren could still commute comfortably to work, but far enough away that it was a sanctuary.

  John thought of Caleb, asleep inside.

  “I don’t like him on the sedatives,” Darren said, leaning on the balustrade and staring out at the view.

  Evidently they were both thinking of Caleb.

  John didn’t answer. He lifted his beer, wondered idly how many he’d drunk on this deck over all the years, and waited to Darren to say something more.

  “He calls them his zombie pills,” Darren said. He sighed, and came back to sit at the table. The canvas chair squeaked as he settled into it. “It’s like he’s not really in there anymore. I almost prefer the tantrums.”

  “It’s been a while since one of those, hasn’t it?” John asked.

  “A long time.” Darren scrubbed his hand over his stubbled chin. “I thought we were finally getting past it all, you know? I want to know that I can go away for a weekend and not have to call him every few hours. I want to let him go out without worrying that he’ll have a drink, or pop a pill, and think it’s a good idea to hurt himself.”

  John nodded.

  “I just want him to be okay,” Darren said in a low voice.

  “Yeah.” John stared out at the light. “Me too.”

  Darren sighed, and rubbed his hands over his face. “Can we…can we hold off telling him until after his birthday?”

  “Yeah,” John said. “Yeah, we can do that.”

  They sat in silence for a while, until Darren’s phone buzzed. He reached for it, and read the message. “That’s all I need.”

  “What is it?”

  “My foreman’s broken his arm on site. There’s a workplace inspector on the way.” Darren rubbed the bridge of his nose. “What time is it?”

  John checked his watch. “Half past five.”

  Darren looked longingly at his beer, and then at John. “I should probably go and meet them.”

  “I’ll stay,” John said, before Darren even asked.

  “There’s steak in the fridge,” Darren said. “I was going to throw some on the barbecue, so you can help yourself.”

  “No problem,” John said. “I’ll keep your beer cold.”

  “Thanks.” Darren stood and went back inside.

  John wasn’t sure when the line had started blurring with him and Darren. Probably sometime very soon after that first official visit to the worksite just off Cavill Avenue: “Senior Sergeant Brian Keller. Constable John Faimu. We’re with the Logan CPIU. Can we come in, please?” That first meeting, Darren had been too shocked to offer John a coffee. The second, at home this time, he had. By the third, John knew where the kettle was. By the end of those first few months, when John kept stopping in to keep Darren appraised on the investigation and see how Caleb was going, he almost felt like a part of this fledgling, awkward family. The linchpin, maybe. Absolutely the cornerstone. And he’d never really stepped away again.

  John walked through the house, glancing at the pictures on the walls. There were no photographs older than a few years. Caleb with his high school Senior Certificate — correspondence school. Caleb on his first day of university. He’d only lasted a few weeks. Caleb at one of Darren’s worksites, grinning out from underneath a hardhat. Darren, an arm around him, beaming. Sometimes John could look at those pictures and imagine Caleb was like that all the time: smiling, happy, normal. And sometimes he was, for months on end.

  John walked down the hallway to Caleb’s room and opened the door quietly.

  Caleb was curled up on his side in bed, facing the door. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open. His left arm hugged a pillow to his chest. His right arm extended below the pillow and beyond the edge of the mattress. His hand, pale in the darkness, hung there. Like Adam’s, John thought, on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, except for the bandages on his wrists. Except there was no hand of God reaching back.

  Caleb’s bedroom was dark and cold. The air conditioner hummed on the wall. Caleb had kicked off his blankets.

  Shaking his head, John moved into the room. He drew the blanket up over Caleb, letting it drop gently over his shoulders. It was crazy how much he loved this guy. Couldn’t even walk past his bedroom without checking he was sleeping comfortably.

  In the beginning it was something fierce and protective. Big, scary John would kill the next fucker who touched a hair on the kid’s head. That was eight long years ago. It was something else altogether now. He loved Caleb. Caleb would break his heart one day, but John would always love him.

  He closed the door again and went to the kitchen. He took the steaks out of the fridge, and headed down the back steps to the barbecue. He lit it, and watched the sunset while he waited for it to heat up. He took a seat at the outdoor table, and checked his phone for messages.

  “Hey, John.”

  John looked up to see Caleb leaning on the veranda rail. He was wearing nothing but his pyjama pants and his bandages. The sunset made his skin glow. His hair stood up at strange angles.

  “Hey, mate. How are you feeling?”

  “M’okay.” Caleb stifled a yawn. “Where’s Dad?”

  “He had to go into work.” John shoved his phone into his pocket and stood. “I’ll put the steaks on. Want to see if you can find some salad or something?”

  “Okay.” Caleb padded back inside.

  John gave the steaks a few minutes on each side then went upstairs to join Caleb. They ate on the back veranda, as the night closed in. It brought with it a cool breeze, and Caleb shivered.

  “You doing okay?” John asked him.

  Caleb’s gaze found his. “You always ask me that.”

  “Is that a problem?”

  “No,” Caleb said. He picked at one of his bandages. “Sometimes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I already feel like shit for doing it.”

  “I don’t mean to make you feel like that.”

  “I know that.” Caleb frowned. “Doesn’t mean it doesn’t.”

  “Okay.” John chased a cherry tomato around his plate with a fork, before he gave up and picked it up in his fingers. “So what do you want to talk about?

  “I dunno.” Caleb shrugged, and then smiled slightly. “How’s work, I guess?”

  John smiled as well. “I could bore you to death if you get me started on work.”

  Caleb’s smile grew. “But it’s okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.” John tried not to think how he’d sat in the lunchroom while Liz had told him exactly who was going to be paroled. “I finished nights this morning, so I’ve got five whole days off.”

  “Any plans?”

  John’s gaze fell on Caleb’s bandaged wrists as he reached for more salad. “Not really. I’ll probably catch a movie later in the week. Interested?”

  “Maybe.” Caleb picked the crust off his bread.

  “What about you?” John asked. “Your dad said something last month about getting you a job with a mate of his.”

  “An architect,” Caleb said. “Just office stuff, I guess. He’s okay. He knows about…about stuff, so it wouldn’t matter so much if I needed time off, you know?”

  “That’s good.” Guilt stabbed John. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought this up, knowing what he did about Ethan Gray and Analise and the others. Because there was no knowing how Caleb would react, and no telling if he’d be ready to step out into the world again once he found out.

  Caleb shrugged again. “I’m thinking about it, but I’ll probably do it.” He flashed another smile. “Dad’s probably sick of me sitting around doing nothing, right? I bet he can’t wait to get rid of me.”

  John froze. “Don’t ever say that.”

  Caleb’s smile faltered. “It was a joke.”

  “Don’t even joke about that, Caleb.” Because the things he laughed about now, John knew, came back to haunt him when he was alone. “You’re the most important thing in his life. You know that, right?”
>
  Mine too.

  “Yeah, I know that.” Caleb dropped his gaze. “I know that.”

  In the yard, a chorus of cicadas chirped and buzzed. The first stars appeared, blinking in the darkening sky.

  “It’s your birthday soon,” John said after a while. “Suppose I’ll have to buy you a present.”

  Caleb’s smile came back, shy and tentative. “You don’t have to.”

  “I probably will though,” John teased. “Any ideas?”

  “Books, I guess.” Caleb’s eyes shone for a moment, and his smile widened. “Guess what? Dad’s getting me a dog!”

  “Is he?” John had been sworn to secrecy for weeks on that, but Darren had obviously caved. “What sort?”

  “We’re going to go to the shelter and pick one out.” Caleb grew more animated. “I went on the website, and there’s one I want. She’s a red kelpie. She’s seven months old and she’s called Cricket.”

  “Sounds good,” John said with a grin.

  Is this what you need, Caleb? Another living thing whose love won’t be enough to keep you from falling?

  “Yeah, it’s good,” Caleb said. His smile vanished and he stared at his plate. “Yeah, maybe. I suppose it is.”

  And just like that the spark was gone.

  “If I don’t—if I don’t wreck it, it would be good.”

  There had been another dog once, John remembered, when Caleb had come home all those years ago. A German shepherd cross, who’d borne the brunt of one of Caleb’s early tantrums. Darren had dragged it, shivering and whimpering, from underneath his bed and driven it to a friend.

  “You won’t wreck it, Caleb,” John said. “You’re different now.”

  “What if I’m not?”

  “You are.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” Caleb wouldn’t look at him. “I think I’ll take my pill now.”

  “You don’t want to watch TV for a while first?”

  Caleb shook his head. “No, I think I’ll take my pill and go to bed.”

  Caleb was almost twenty-three, but he had a bedtime routine like a child’s. This was one of the things that he’d come up with in therapy. He needed his routines. It was when he disregarded them, like he had on Friday night, that it went to shit for him and everyone around him.

  In too many ways it was just like babysitting Jessie when she’d been a little kid.

  Shower first. John helped Caleb wrap his bandages in Glad wrap, hating how practiced he was at this.

  He washed the dishes while Caleb showered, and stacked them neatly in the rack by the sink. Then he sat at the kitchen bench and flicked through a week-old newspaper. Caleb, wrapped in a towel, headed for his bedroom to get changed. Minutes later he was back again, in fresh pyjama pants, heading back into the bathroom to brush his teeth.

  His pills sat on the kitchen bench in front of John.

  John felt the heat of Caleb’s body as he leaned past him to grab the bottle. That pale skin brushed against his arm. Caleb murmured an apology, and John stared down at the newspaper instead of staring at Caleb’s lean torso and the way his nipples pebbled from their brief contact.

  Caleb unscrewed the lid of the bottle and tapped a pill out into his cupped palm. He showed it to John, so John could see he’d only taken one.

  “I’ll get you your water,” John said, standing and putting some distance between them.

  Caleb padded barefoot behind him to the sink.

  John filled a glass from the tap and passed it to him.

  The light reflected on Caleb’s throat and he tilted his head back to swallow.

  It never even occurred to John not to go with him to his bedroom, because this was Caleb’s routine. He leaned in the doorway as Caleb climbed into bed, and watched as he drew a book out from underneath his pillow.

  “Do you want your light out now, or do you want to read for a while?”

  “Read,” Caleb said. “Ten minutes? Be a zombie in ten minutes.”

  “Okay, I’ll come back and turn it off then.”

  “Okay,” Caleb murmured.

  John went back to the kitchen, and flicked through the newspaper again. He stopped at the crossword, recognising Caleb’s handwriting in the answers. He hadn’t finished it. In places the answers had been overwritten several times, and the squares coloured in with black ink. That was Caleb, always not quite managing to make it work. Always not quite fitting.

  John wondered what he was reading. Manga, probably. He devoured the stuff. Once, John had taken him to a comic book shop in the Valley, and Caleb had lit up like Christmas. He’d talked for ages with the guy behind the counter and then, in the car on the way home when John had asked him about what he’d bought, he’d shut down again. Shrugged and mumbled, and stared out of the window.

  “John?”

  John glanced at his watch. It hadn’t been ten minutes yet. Barely five. “Yeah, mate?” he called back.

  “Can you turn my light out now?”

  John wandered back down the hallway. “Are you finished reading?”

  “Yeah.” Caleb ran a hand through his scruffy brown hair. “Do you want to talk a bit though?”

  “Light on or off?”

  “Off,” Caleb said.

  John flicked the switch and sat on the end of Caleb’s bed. “I’m not much good at bedtime stories.”

  Caleb smiled slightly in the gloom. “No, I just wanted to say thanks for the other night. For coming to make sure I was okay, I mean. I know you were working and stuff…”

  “Do you remember what I said at the hospital?” John reached out and took Caleb’s hand, threading those slender fingers through his own. “If you feel like that again, I want you to promise that you’ll call someone. Me, or your dad, or your doctor.”

  “I mean to,” Caleb whispered. “I do, I swear. It’s just stuff gets in the way. Big stuff.”

  John squeezed his hand. “I know.”

  He didn’t, not really. Nobody except Caleb knew why he felt he was alone in the dark those times. Why there was no way out.

  Caleb stared at him. “You won’t give up on me, will you, John?”

  “Never.” It was so easy to say, here in this room. It didn’t feel like a lie. He wasn’t as sleep-deprived like on Friday night, wasn’t as stressed. He wasn’t the same person who’d spilled his guts to Liz in the car.

  “And every time he does something like this, every time he thinks he’d be better off dead, a part of me agrees.”

  Guilt bit at him, and John was glad the light was off. He didn’t want Caleb to see even a hint of it in his face.

  “Good,” Caleb said. He sighed, and his eyes flickered shut for a moment before he opened them again. “That guy, that guy from the other night?”

  “What about him?”

  “We didn’t do anything. I freaked out before we could.” Another sigh, as the drug began to take him. “It was a mistake.”

  “It’s okay to make mistakes,” John told him. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be just some guy,” Caleb said. “Not the first time.”

  John almost smiled at that. Yeah, but it usually was, right?

  “It was supposed to be you,” Caleb whispered, and then sleep took him.

  Jesus.

  John sat there for a long while, staring at Caleb’s face and trying to reconcile it with the fifteen-year-old kid from eight long years ago. He was a grown man now, except when he wasn’t. He was smart and funny and confident, except when he wasn’t.

  Jesus.

  Who’d have thought Caleb would have found a whole new way to break John’s heart?

  He carefully removed Caleb’s hand from his, drew the blankets up, and went back outside.

  “Any problems?” Darren asked a few hours later, finding John sitting outside on the deck.

  Just the one.

  “No,” John said. “We had dinner and he took a pill and went to bed. How’s your foreman?”

  The canvas chair creaked as Darren sat
down. “He’ll be fine. He tripped over the gutter, can you believe that? But at least it’s not a site safety violation. Nothing I can do about council gutters.”

  “I guess not.”

  Darren unwrapped the burger he’d carried in with him. “He went to sleep okay?”

  “Yeah.” John sighed. “Look, you know we don’t have secrets when it comes to Caleb, right?”

  Darren froze with the burger halfway to his mouth. “What?”

  “He said something weird, that’s all.” John shook his head. “He said the guy from the other night, he wished it was me.”

  Silence.

  Darren’s chair creaked again. “Well, that’s not a surprise.”

  John’s heart thumped wildly. “Isn’t it? It was a bloody surprise to me!”

  Was it? Fuck, he didn’t know.

  “He looks up to you,” Darren said. “Jesus, John, he idolises you. You saved him. And you’re both gay. In Caleb’s mind, I guess that adds up, you know?”

  In Caleb’s mind.

  “Yeah,” John said.

  “It’s never that simple though, is it?” Darren said quietly.

  “No.” John wondered if Darren was asking him, or telling him. It didn’t matter. The answer was the same. He didn’t have the right to think of Caleb that way. Because if he started it, and then it ended…

  “I bleed and you’re here.”

  He was Caleb’s cornerstone.

  Maybe it was still night work. He was still tired, his body clock was out of whack, and he wasn’t thinking straight. Couldn’t be, if even in the tiniest corner of his mind he’d added it up the same way as Caleb had. He loved Caleb and Caleb loved him. It should have been perfect, but it wasn’t. There was too much at risk, and not just the friendship and trust he’d cultivated over the years with both Caleb and Darren. Because if he started it, and then it ended…

  Might as well rip Caleb’s heart out and leave him to die.