by Mick McCoy
He poured another inch of milk into the cup and stood the jar back on the windowsill. On a shelf beneath the bench he found the sugar bowl. ‘Why didn’t you tell me I was adopted?’
Ruby had asked herself the same thing so many times. When Alex had arrived so unexpectedly, she’d thought there could be no greater love a mother could feel for her child. He was hers, it didn’t matter how he’d come to be. She loved him, immediately and unconditionally. But carrying Peter inside her, giving birth to him, changed things in ways she couldn’t have known before she’d experienced her pregnancy.
If something happened to Peter, I would die. There was never any doubt about that. If something happened to Alex, I’d be devastated, but I wouldn’t die. She was just as sure about that too.
It had shocked her at first to realise that her love could be coded, measured by degrees. But soon enough she got used to the idea that while she loved them both, her love was not equal. That didn’t make it easier to tell Alex he was adopted; it made it harder. Telling him he was different would be like admitting she’d made a choice. She had a favourite.
Yet when something had happened to Peter, she didn’t die. Did that mean she didn’t love him as much as she thought?
Her clumsy, half-hearted efforts to tell Alex he was as loved as Peter confirmed that he wasn’t. She’d tried because she thought she should, not because she’d believed it. She loved Alex less than Peter and she loved Peter less than enough. Did she hold Alex and Conrad responsible for Peter’s death? Or just Alex? She knew he’d been driving the car. She might have blamed Alex alone, and she was afraid of that.
‘I wanted to tell you but I didn’t know how to explain it,’ she said.
‘What is there to explain?’
‘The difference.’
He sat next to her at the table. ‘What difference?’
‘I knew Peter before he was born,’ she said. ‘I had nine months with him, just the two of us.’ She swallowed to moisten her dry throat. ‘We wanted to make up for what you’d lost.’
‘But what had I lost? What needed making up for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He grew inside you. You gave birth to him. Is that the difference? Is that what you think I lost?’
‘Alex, we took you in. You’ve been loved from that day. By us.’
‘You took me in?’ he said. ‘You’re happy to push me further away if it protects your memory of Peter, aren’t you?’
‘No,’ she said, his insight sparking panic in her.
‘After the accident, by the side of the road in the rain, when Dad lifted Peter up and cradled him, I was right next to him and it was like my arms were around Peter, too.’
The kettle boiled. He got up from the table to pull it from the heat.
‘But at the funeral, when you stood beside Peter’s coffin and I watched you reach in and touch his face, you talked to him as gently as if he was little again and had grazed his knee. And you didn’t want to share him with me. You shut me out.’
‘I didn’t mean to do that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know I had.’ She had to steer the talk away. ‘I haven’t told your father yet,’ she said. ‘That you know you’re adopted. And I’m not planning to.’ Why was that all she could think of?
‘Dad doesn’t know?’
She shook her head. ‘So don’t tell him.’ Where had these words come from? ‘Please don’t tell him. It would make it worse if he knew. Please just let him die with at least that secret untold.’ How could she say that?
Alex gathered his cup from the table but retreated straight back to the kitchen. ‘You’ve never said that before.’
‘Said what?’
‘That Dad is going to die.’
She paused. ‘But you knew, didn’t you? I thought you knew.’
CONRAD
The first sound he heard that morning was a man whistling to his dog, out on the street in front of the hospital. It was the first sound he heard most mornings. The whistling man and his dog – a brown and white Russian Spaniel with ears the size of cabbage leaves – had become Conrad’s alarm clock over the last seven weeks, not that he had any need of being woken at a given hour. Rising up through the layers of sleep to the man’s whistled notes and his dog’s bark was a fine way to start the day. When nothing but the general clang and clamour of the hospital greeted his first conscious moments, Conrad felt less well disposed to his lot, and for all but the last ten days of his confinement he’d lifted himself from under the blankets, regardless of the chill, and stood at the glass of his first-floor window to watch them pass.
But as the days shortened and Christmas approached, Conrad’s health had deteriorated quickly. His body was weak and decrepit and septic and dysfunctional. Life was wintery. Each night he slept with the respirator doing the work his lungs once did. It tethered him to the bed while the paraldehyde tethered him to a hypnotic sleep, so even if he was conscious he could only glance towards the welcome sounds that washed in through his dawn-lit window.
That morning though, he felt atypically well. His illness appeared to have allowed him a yuletide reprieve, more important because it was the first of Peter's birthdays their son wouldn't be there to share, and a decrepit and sedated Conrad would be of no use to Ruby. But an oxygen-starved brain has no time for empathy and he spent the next hours as he usually did: in semiconsciousness, slipping in and out of sleep. He could’ve sworn no more than ten minutes had passed before he was roused by the soft landing of Ruby’s lips on his cheek.
‘Merry Christmas,’ she said, so quietly he thought she was part of a dream.
Sensibility no more than flickering, Conrad smiled vaguely at her. His eyes felt deeper in their sockets, as if he were observing the world outside his skull through a pair of small portholes that forced him to lean forward and crane his neck left and right to peer around the inside corners of his head. He roused himself, stretched out his hands to receive hers and squeezed them tight. Her nearness was something to relish. No painkiller worked nearly so well.
‘You’re early,’ he said.
‘Only a little. You don’t mind, do you?’
‘Not in the least. You can move in if you like.’
‘I wish we could,’ she said. ‘I really do.’
Alex hung back at the end of the bed, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. If it weren’t Christmas Day, if Conrad didn’t think there were gifts in the bag, he’d have guessed Alex had enough packed inside to move out of home. The set of his face was a better fit with that.
‘Merry Christmas, Dad,’ he said.
‘It is a merry Christmas,’ he said, his voice no more than a murmur.
Ruby retrieved her basket from the doorway. ‘I brought a picnic. I believe it will taste so good you’d think it was summertime in Australia.’
‘Oh, a summer Christmas,’ he said. ‘What would you give?’
Ruby set down the picnic basket beside his bed.
‘If by some miracle I get out of here,’ Conrad said, ‘you are to take me home in time for next Christmas.’
‘Drag you out screaming?’ Ruby said, unsmiling.
‘I may not be up to screaming, but yes, drag me out.’ His agreement to go home and being alive to do it were the only Christmas presents he had to give.
‘Alex is my witness.’ They both stayed anchored at the end of the bed. ‘But presents first,’ she said, ‘before the picnic.’ She reached for Alex’s elbow. ‘What do you have?’
He took a parcel, wrapped in brown paper, from his bag. ‘This is from Peter.’
No sooner had Conrad taken the gift than it dropped from his hands onto the bed. He stared at it a moment. ‘I’m sorry I’m so bloody feeble.’
‘I’ll open it for you,’ Alex said. He slipped off the bow and peeled away the brown paper to reveal a handcrafted wooden box.
Great care had been taken and skill exercised in its construction, its top and base cleanly and precisely patterned with alternating squares of light and da
rk wood. Perhaps pine and red gum, Conrad guessed, although it would’ve been impossible to find red gum in Moscow. ‘A chess set?’
Alex rested the small box on Conrad’s thighs. Conrad closed his eyes and rubbed the pads of his fingers across the polished surfaces and straight edges, feeling the faint but precise transitions from one veneered square to the next. He felt deep pride at Peter’s craftsmanship, but deeper regret. With the corner of a thumbnail he managed to unfasten the latch and fold out the halves of the box. Inside, two teams of pieces rolled across a green felt lining, a few spilling over the side onto the blanket.
Alex gathered them up. ‘He made it at school. It took him six months.’ He stared at the black pawn and white queen resting in his open palm. ‘And I thought maybe we could play a game later, if you wanted to.’
Conrad adjusted the respirator tubing in his nose. ‘Peter did all this? Carved the pieces? And did the inlays on the box?’
Alex smiled as he returned the two pieces. ‘He did.’
Conrad reached out for his shoulders and hugged him with all the strength he had left. ‘It’s magnificent.’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ Alex said.
‘Of course you did.’
A wave of nausea swept up his throat, hot and burning, his stomach cramping enough to throw his head back against the pillows. Ruby had seen it before. She collected the kidney dish from under his bed as Alex jumped out of the way. She had it ready when Conrad leaned forward with his mouth wide, a low cry as he retched, but nothing else coming up. His eyes had filled with tears as the next spasm bent him forward and made him howl again. He was sweating and a chill spread across his shoulders. He drank from the water Ruby passed him and it stayed down. His stomach unknotted and he relaxed, sipped breath-by-sipped breath, into the pillows.
He watched his silent wife and son. They were already mourning him. A life not yet departed, but no longer worth the effort of continuing, that’s what they saw. The expectation of a tomorrow, gone.
ALEX
‘I’m all right now,’ his father said. ‘I’m all right.’
‘Do you need to rest?’ Alex said. ‘Should we go?’
Conrad shook his head. ‘No. We’re going to play that game of chess.’ His smile looked like a plea. He swallowed a few times. ‘What’s next?’
Ruby put the kidney dish on the floor and stepped away from the bed. Alex stood in front of his father, shuffling his feet. Had the window been open he’d have flung out his own Christmas gift and jumped after it. When he’d started work on the photo album it had been an innocent gift, like Peter’s chess set. But as soon as his father unwrapped it and saw all those old pictures, he’d realise they’d come from the biscuit tin stashed away on top of the wardrobe behind his Gladstone bag. He’d remember what else was in there, hidden away, kept secret, and he’d know Alex had found the birth certificates. He’d know the gift was an accusation.
‘Alex,’ Ruby said, ‘are you going to give that to your father?’
What did she want from him? One moment she pleaded with him to keep his discovery secret, the next she was urging him to reveal it. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it. The coldness of the room couldn’t prevent sweat pasting his fingers to the brown wrapping paper.
Conrad reached for his sleeve and drew him in. ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ he whispered, urgency in his voice. ‘You should feel no guilt. The fault is mine.’ He paused. ‘Do you hear me? Don’t blame yourself, because the fault is all mine.’
‘Yes,’ Alex said. ‘I hear you.’ But it wouldn’t change anything if he was forced to hide the truth.
Conrad loosened his grip, allowing Alex to pull back in time to see his father’s eyes flick towards Ruby. She stared back knowingly, like she’d been waiting, like they were playing out roles they’d rehearsed.
‘Enough of your secrets,’ Ruby said. ‘Open Alex’s gift, Conrad. I can’t wait to see what it is.’
‘You don’t know?’ Conrad asked, scratching at the paper until he tore open a hole. Alex watched as Ruby shrugged her shoulders.
The paper peeled away to reveal a loosely bound folio with a plain black face and rear cover, both made of reinforced compressed cardboard. Inside, coarse black sheets of card were uniformly notched with diagonal slits to accept the corners of each photograph. For binding, there were two slender brass bolts locked at the spine with small flat-wing nuts, which still allowed the front cover to fold open along its crease. From an engineering perspective, it all worked perfectly in its simplicity. Alex hoped his father would appreciate that.
‘This is beautiful,’ Conrad said. ‘Did you make it at university?’
‘Partly,’ Alex replied, clearing his throat. ‘But at home on weekends, mostly. And after dinner.’
‘You’ve done a wonderful job.’ He began to cough.
Alex took the album and exhaled noisily. ‘Let’s see what’s inside.’ The first page showed Alex and Peter playing chess.
‘I took that,’ his father said. ‘I thought these were your photos?’
‘There’s a mix. But rest your lungs. Don’t talk.’
Conrad lingered over the picture of the chess game, taken the weekend before everything turned to shit. Peter was making a move, his hand a blur of action as it reached for the black knight to launch another attack. Alex held one hand defensively in mid-air, as if expecting Peter’s knight to rear up from the board and plunge a lance into his heart. His eyebrows were pinched in concentration. Most of his pieces were still in their rows, too few having advanced beyond his line to defend against Peter’s marauding army.
‘You won that game, Alex,’ Ruby said. ‘Remember?’
‘I don’t.’
‘You did. Easily,’ she said. ‘Look at that worried face, though. There’s no need for it, is there?’
‘I suppose not,’ Alex said.
‘Can I?’ Conrad asked, holding his hands out for the album.
He took in the pages unhurriedly, smiling with Ruby at shots of Peter with his hockey gear, as if he wasn’t burnt to ashes; laughing at others of Conrad and Valentin standing by the Moskvich, as if it hadn’t flung their lives against a dead stop. There were pictures of Conrad, Ruby and Peter inside Metro stations, a picnic in Gorky Park, the previous summer’s holiday at Odessa, and portraits of their life in different parts of Moscow. In almost all of them Alex was absent, taking the photo rather than posing for it.
Conrad reached a page with a picture of them all standing outside their flat, snow on the ground, the day after they’d moved in. Alex was in this one, not behind the camera. It was the first in the album to have come from the biscuit tin.
‘You’ve found some old photographs?’ he said, like it was a surprise.
‘Yep,’ Alex said.
Conrad flicked through a couple of pages, but quickly, distractedly. He slapped the album shut. ‘Your mother told me about what else you found in the tin.’
Ruby stood close beside Alex. He could feel her body grow tense.
‘When?’
‘Yesterday,’ Ruby said.
‘We made a terrible, terrible mistake not telling you, Alex,’ Conrad said, his voice stronger than Alex had heard it at any time since he’d been in hospital. ‘And I’m so sorry about it.’
Alex couldn’t speak or raise his head. He wanted his mother to move further away from him, to take her hand from his shoulder. He wanted his father to take back those words he’d whispered in his ear. You should feel no guilt. The words he’d said weeks ago before anyone knew he was going to die. It’s our secret. She need never know. He did feel guilt. She does need to know and he wanted his father to say it was okay to tell the truth. He didn’t want to end up the only one living with it.
‘Come here, please,’ he said to Alex, cupping a hand behind his neck. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘No.’ He couldn’t talk about it. Not with his father so sick. And not with his mother so close.
‘Are you su
re?’
He nodded.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too, Dad.’
Conrad kissed Alex’s forehead and smiled at Ruby.
‘All I have is the picnic lunch,’ Ruby said, retrieving the basket she’d moved aside earlier. ‘I hope it’s enough, because there’s nothing else.’
‘It’ll do,’ Conrad said, all frailty and lightness.
Was that it, Alex wondered? No shouting loud enough to bring people running. No tears of relief. Ruby unfurled a grey blanket intended to pass for a picnic rug. Alex squatted down beside her to help. This was not what he wanted, or was it? Maybe it was. Blood thundered in his ears; his hands trembled enough to rattle the plates and cups and cutlery as he laid them out. Ruby sat on the blanket as Alex continued to unpack. There was a loaf of rye bread, potato and mushroom pancakes, boiled eggs, and Conrad’s favourite, pelmeni meatballs. Christmas lunch. They were going to eat Christmas lunch like any other year, as if Peter weren’t dead and his father weren’t dying and he weren’t adopted and nobody had kept any secrets. No secrets were still being kept.
‘You two won’t starve,’ Conrad said.
‘You won’t eat?’ Alex said.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘But I’ll taste it all through you.’
What mattered, Alex thought? The secret of his adoption? Cancer was killing his father, he’d already killed his brother. So do secrets matter?
‘Hospital food doesn’t smell of anything,’ Conrad said. ‘Or maybe it just smells like the hospital. But this,’ he continued, ‘this smells magnificent.’ He lay back against the pillows and twisted the tubing in his nose.
Ruby reached into the basket and pulled out a bottle. ‘I haven’t forgotten you, either.’
Conrad raised his eyebrows.
‘Whisky,’ Ruby added. ‘A little Christmas treat.’
‘My God!’
‘Can you guess who conjured this for you?’
‘Valentin,’ he said, ‘no doubt.’
‘Johnny Walker Black,’ she said, showing him the label. ‘I assume that’s good?’