Never Ever Tell

by Kirsty Ferguson

  Those few seconds must have felt like years to him. The agony he must have been in.

  Vanessa laid down, hollow-eyed from grief. She couldn’t cry anymore; her tears were trapped behind a wall made of glass. Billy opened the door quietly and sat on the edge of the bed.

  ‘Ness? We need to tell Ty what’s going on. Please, he needs his mom there too.’ Billy didn’t often beg but he was now.

  It was the last thing she wanted to do. Talk about Wren’s death. It was so fucking raw and she was exhausted. It was the longest night of her life and it stretched before her like an eternal highway of hell. Billy put his arm behind her back and lifted her up.

  ‘I can’t,’ she whispered.

  ‘You still have another son to take care of,’ he said quietly. Vanessa thought it insensitive and she glared at him. If he noticed, he didn’t react.

  ‘I can’t, you’ll have to… tell him. I just can’t, Billy.’

  He looked down at his lap for a moment. ‘He’s going to be devastated. He idolizes Wren.’

  Vanessa didn’t reply, she couldn’t form any more words. It was like she had used up her daily allotment of speech, and that was it. No more.

  Billy stood, tugging her with him into a standing position. He wrapped his arms around her, trying to give her a centering hug like he’d done a hundred times before, Her arms hung limp at her sides. He let go, then opened the door, ushering her out.

  Maggie and Ty were waiting for them at the kitchen table. Maggie stood up when she saw her, throwing her arms around her best friend. Maggie was whispering words that didn’t make sense into her ear, patting her back like she was a child.

  ‘Mom?’ A small voice cut through the tension and Vanessa’s heart. She would never again hear Wren call her Mom. She swallowed her tears, not wanting to fall to pieces in front of Ty. She looked over at Ty, but instead of looking at him, her gaze settled on a point above him. She could see Billy and Maggie staring at her from the corner of her eye.

  Billy pulled out a chair across from Ty, which scraped across the floor. Vanessa winced at the sound; it grated on her already frayed nerves. She felt like a stone; she couldn’t move, yet she wished more than anything to run. From this conversation, from this situation, from this life.

  ‘Ness? Want to sit down?’ Maggie whispered.

  Vanessa looked at Ty.

  He looked so small, sitting at the table that he’d sat at thousands of times before, opposite from Wren. Billy was sitting in Wren’s chair and she wanted to scream at him to move, but she didn’t have the energy to.

  ‘Buddy,’ Billy began, Maggie hiccupping slightly. Vanessa glared at her; she caught the glare and covered her mouth. ‘We need to talk to you.’

  Vanessa looked at her youngest son – her only son – and wondered if she could even be in the same room as him when he heard what Billy was about to say.

  Billy grabbed his hand gently and bowed his head. Vanessa stared at them, almost removed from the situation yet dreading the words that came next. She didn’t know how to act, what to do with her hands, so they fluttered up to her neck, danced around her collarbone before dropping to her sides again.

  ‘You may have seen that Wren isn’t with us this morning,’ Billy began. He looked over at Maggie, then up at his wife. Vanessa met his eyes, but what Billy saw in them made him turn away quickly.

  ‘Where is he? Where’s Wren?’ Ty’s little voice went up an octave as he asked the question, he looked around frantically as if maybe Wren was just misplaced. ‘Is he OK?’ He gripped onto Billy’s hand tighter. Vanessa watched as Ty’s small fingers flexed around Billy’s large ones, turning white, the tears already building in his little eyes as if he knew what was coming. Maybe he did. Vanessa thought back to the whispered words to Wren when he found out that Olivia was dead. Sometimes Vanessa thought Ty really could see the future.

  ‘He’s not coming back, is he?’ He began to cry, tiny little sobs that escaped lips that tried to hold them back. ‘He’s dead, isn’t he?’ This time, he sobbed louder, and Billy moved around the table, picked him up and put him on his lap, wrapping his huge arms around him.

  ‘Yeah, buddy. I’m so sorry.’ Tears rolled down Billy’s face as he stared up at his expressionless wife, frowning. Maggie reached over and gripped Ty’s hand, Billy put his hand over the top of hers, the three of them crying.

  She couldn’t handle it, Ty’s face, their faces; she was numb. A veil had been thrown over her emotions, but she knew it wouldn’t last, although maybe it was a better state to be in rather than abject pain and heartbreak. She walked from the room, no one stopping her, and went to the safety of her bedroom.

  She could hear Ty. She covered her ears, but it didn’t block out his gut-wrenching sobs. Vanessa heard the knock on the front door. So it had begun.

  She heard her dad’s voice. Quiet, yet still overpowering, filling the small space of her kitchen and leaking its way down the hallway to reach her ears. He knocked on her door.

  ‘Ness? It’s Dad, honey. I’m coming in.’ Not a question, a statement. Would people always make decisions for her from now on?

  ‘Hi Dad,’ she said quietly in the still room.

  ‘Ness.’ He sat on the edge of her bed and picked up her hand, patting it gently. ‘I’m so sorry. You… I… I have no words, honey. Your mom would have known what to say. All I can do is tell you that I love you.’ Vanessa watched as he shed his tears. Vanessa felt herself welling up. Her dad hadn’t cried since her mom had died, and it hurt her. He stood up. ‘I’ll leave you be, I just wanted to come by and, I don’t know, see you.’ He gave her a kiss on the forehead and closed the door gently on his way out.

  She heard him murmuring, no doubt to Billy. She’d overheard that Maggie was going to stay for a little while and help take care of Ty since Vanessa was in no fit state to do so. She hadn’t even been able to hug him when he’d found out that his big brother, whom he adored, had died. What kind of mother did that?

  ‘Ness?’ Maggie poked her head through the door. She rolled over to face toward the window, away from Maggie. She felt her hovering by the door, wanting to speak but not knowing how to. ‘Billy…’ She cleared her throat. ‘Billy wants to call Mark. You know, before Wren… before he’s on the news.’

  Vanessa didn’t roll over, but she did nod in agreement. Mark. Wren’s dad in name only. A drunk, wife-abusing bastard who hadn’t ever been interested in his sons. Would he even care that Wren was dead? Let them call, she didn’t care. She stared at the wall, but all she saw was Wren’s face.

  23

  Vanessa dressed with care. She rolled on her pantyhose, smoothing them up her long legs. She pulled on her black dress and zipped it up slowly. She watched herself in the full-length mirror mounted on the wall opposite their bed. Beyond the safety of her bedroom walls, she could hear Billy talking with Ty. Maggie and Billy were probably getting Ty fed, dressed and ready. Moving into the bathroom, Vanessa began applying layers of war paint. She put on her foundation, smoothing out her blotchy complexion, hiding her grief. She finished off by adding a thick layer of waterproof mascara. She had no idea why she was putting on makeup when she rarely wore it, but she guessed she felt she owed it to Wren to look her best. It made no sense, but it was what she needed right now, what she clung to. Tears filled her eyes as she looked at herself in the mirror. She ran her fingers underneath the bottom of her eyelids, removing the droplets of tears that decorated her lower lashes, hanging like tiny crystals. Her eyes were vacant: she knew that nothing would ever be the same again.

  Vanessa pulled her hair back into a tidy bun, securing it with pins. Vanessa changed her everyday small gold earrings to her more formal silver studs. She studied herself. She was dressed for the part of the grieving mother, but she was so much more than just a mother. She was a best friend, a confidant, something… more. She would never be ready for this day, but the knock at the door told her it was time to go anyway.

  She was scared. Scared of a future without
Wren in it. Scared of how she could live without him. Scared of how she could have failed him like that. She hadn’t given him what he needed these past few weeks before he’d died. She had known something was wrong with him, and she had failed to get it out of him.

  Billy opened the door. ‘It’s time to go now, honey. The car has arrived to take us to the church.’ He spoke slowly, as if she didn’t understand what he was saying and in that moment, she wanted to slap him. She had all this anger and nowhere for it to go. Wren’s death was an accident, a terrible tragedy. Who could she blame for that?

  Standing in front of the coffin, sliding her hand along the warm polished wood, she imagined she was touching Wren’s face. Billy had promised her that Wren would get only the best. She hadn’t really been listening, she rarely did these days; one foot in a fading reality, one foot in a world of longing. She turned and saw Ty sitting in between Maggie and her dad. He looked as lost as she felt. Their eyes met briefly, and she gave him a sort of sad half-smile, then she had to look away. She couldn’t stand the look of pain in his face, the face that looked so much like Wren’s did when he was that age.

  It was like everything had come into sharp focus, in high definition with the volume turned right up. She could hear people from the back row whispering, the minister turning pages, preparing for his sermon. She even imagined that she could hear the falling of Ty’s tears. She couldn’t move; she was rooted to the spot, touching Wren’s coffin until Billy came and grabbed her hand, one arm around her waist, and sat her down next to him.

  She could hear people crying and sniffing throughout the service. Billy put his hand on her stockinged knee. She looked at it like it was a giant bug that had crawled up her leg and settled there. She brushed his hand away. She didn’t want to be touched. It hurt too much to have someone else do something that her son would never do again – comfort her. She knew in her pain-numbed mind that she should touch Ty, say something soothing to him, but she just couldn’t. Her world kept jumping from crystal-clear focus, to blurry again. A funfair mirror, distorting the truth. She was no good to him like this; better that Billy and Maggie took care of him.

  She heard snippets of the minister reading passages from the Bible. She wondered why when no one in their family were churchgoers, or indeed even believed in God. She hadn’t organized the service – Maggie and Billy had done that, done everything. She was in no condition to do anything but stare at Wren’s photo and cry, disconnected from reality.

  She lost time. Vanessa had been sitting in the front pew staring at a photo of her Wren. He was smiling and happy, two things he hadn’t been when he died. It had seemed like the whole town had tried to pack into the church. She had actually seen people lining up. Lining up to get into a funeral. How disgusting. Who did that? She wanted to slap each one of them, not thinking that they were there for Wren; no, just to be ghouls, she suspected.

  Then she was at the gravesite with no clear memory of how she got there. She remembered Billy’s arm around her shoulders and the desire to shake the heavy cloak that was his presence off her.

  There was a man handing out colored roses to everyone that came near the coffin. People were taking them with thanks and a small smile. Didn’t they know that Wren’s favorite flower was the sunflower, just like hers? He’d loved them ever since he was a boy and had grown his first one in a pot. She remembered fondly a young Wren with his oversized watering can, sprinkling the budding flowers with water. She also remembered his tears when one day Mark had ripped the heads off them all and kicked the pots over, dirt and sunflower stems spilling out onto the ground. She wondered if Mark had dared to show his face here today.

  She had wanted to see Wren one last time before the funeral, even though it was a closed-coffin service, but Billy had put his foot down, saying it wasn’t good for him to be remembered that way. She needed to remember him as he was in that photo: smiling and happy.

  Billy handed her a rose that should have been a sunflower. She looked at it, unsure what she should be doing with it. As they lowered Wren into the ground, she began to sob, feeling arms slide around her again. Billy. As he descended, music played. ‘Stairway to Heaven’. It played softly in the background, the sound of collective crying almost drowning it out. As she listened to the haunting music, she watched as people walked forward and threw their roses into the hole where her baby now lay.

  She wanted to throw herself in after him. Her husband, as if reading her thoughts, grasped her arm firmly. ‘Ness,’ he whispered close to her ear. ‘Put your rose in, honey – people are staring.’

  Let them fucking stare.

  She brought the fragrance-less rose up to her lips and kissed it gently, as if she were kissing Wren’s cheek for the last time. She couldn’t look at the gaping hole, so she threw her not-sunflower in blindly where it would forever lay on top of Wren, the two of them decomposing together.

  Two familiar faces were missing from the crowd of mourners. Justin and Wade. Both still in hospital. She’d hadn’t been fit to go and see either one of them yet; she wasn’t ready to see the survivors of the crash that had taken her boy from her. Why hadn’t Justin just hit the fucking deer? Why did he have to swerve? Why didn’t Wren have a seatbelt on and why didn’t the airbag go off? Why was he depressed? Did they even notice? What had happened with Olivia? So many questions, but still no answers.

  Vanessa noticed that neither of their moms showed up either to represent the boys. Joan, she hadn’t expected to see, but Phillipa? Yeah. Had the roles been reversed, Vanessa would have been there to support them.

  She turned to walk away, her back to Wren, when she saw him. He was standing there, hands by his sides, a haunted look in his eyes. Their eyes connected. She shrugged Billy’s hand off her shoulder and walked quickly over to the man.

  ‘Mrs Wright, Vanessa,’ he said, before slipping his arms around her. She finally gave herself permission to cry. This man, arms wrapped around her, understood her completely. She was touched that Principal Holmes had come at all, given how hard this must be for him. She had been told that Olivia would be buried in two days’ time. There had to be an inquest as she had died at home and due to the circumstances surrounding her death. Vanessa had decided to attend the funeral, no matter how difficult it would be for her. They hadn’t been in town long. He had no wife and now no daughter and no answers. She hugged him tighter.

  She had no idea how long they stood there, wrapped in their bubble of disconnection, but eventually she became aware of eyes on them. She stepped back and turned her head slightly. Only her family remained, Billy watching them intently. With a hoarse voice she said, ‘Thank you for coming, Principal Holmes. I know how hard this is for you to be here.’

  ‘Please call me Ryan.’

  They were bonded by their grief now, and Vanessa knew that they would help each other through their shared tragedies.

  She walked away from Ryan and back toward Billy. ‘Time to go back home to the wake, love. Just hang in there a little longer. Maggie is already at the house taking care of people, but we really should go.’

  Can’t be late for her own son’s wake.

  She didn’t speak until they were close to home. ‘Can’t we just keep driving?’

  He looked at her with pity in his eyes. Pity. ‘No, love, we have to go inside.’

  They pulled up at the curb because her dad and Maggie had parked in the driveway. Just another reason to be angry. She felt like she was going to explode if one more thing happened to her. She got out of the car and was about to head into the house when someone stepped out in front of her. She gasped.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mark?’ demanded Billy.

  ‘I’m not here to cause trouble. My son died too,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to mourn with my family.’

  ‘Oh, now he’s your son and they’re your family? Well, they’re not your family anymore, Mark,’ said Billy furiously. ’Go home and sleep it off.’

  Mark looked at Vanessa. ‘I haven’t touch
ed a drop since I found out about Wren. I’m done with that stuff.’ He stepped forward to touch her, but Billy put out a hand, preventing him.

  ‘I just want to give the mother of my children a hug on the day that we bury our eldest son. You wouldn’t stop a father from doing that, would you?’ Vanessa hadn’t even bothered looking for Mark at the funeral.

  ‘It’s OK, Billy,’ she said quietly. She opened up her arms and her ex-husband walked into her embrace, touching her for the first time in years. She folded her arms around him.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he wept, ‘for everything. I was a terrible person, an awful father and an even worse husband. I made your life hell. Can you forgive me?’

  She thought about all the things that he had put her and the boys through. ‘No, I can’t forgive you, but I will let you grieve with us.’

  Billy looked at her with confusion and disbelief, but Vanessa felt it was the right thing to do. No one should be alone today. The three of them walked up the path to the house and watched the looks of surprise on people’s faces when they saw Mark with Vanessa. Those of them who knew about Mark and his violent nature toward her and the boys, her dad and Maggie especially, wore identical looks: something akin to horror.

  She left Billy and Mark in an uneasy stand-off and walked down to Wren’s room. She closed the door behind her with a quiet click. She didn’t want to see or hear any more people. Why were they all talking in hushed tones when all she wanted was them to scream as she wanted to? She didn’t want silence and hushed tones anymore. She needed something else. She wanted Wren and his noise. The best she could do was plug in his phone into the docking station and press play. She had no idea what the song was called, but it was one of Wren’s favorites. She turned it up. Loud. She knew from experience that those in the lounge room and kitchen would have felt the bass thumping through the walls. She just wanted a moment of normalcy among the madness. She lay down on Wren’s unmade bed, vowing never to make it again. His pillow still smelled like him and she touched it, feeling just a little closer to him. Everything in his room was waiting for him as if this was all a huge mistake and any moment now, he would come strolling back through the front door like nothing had happened. But she knew that would never happen.