The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  18. Garrick

  They say there are two sides to every story. Sometimes, there are three.

  He held the boy’s hand in his. That is what he remembers. Afterwards, when it was done, when everyone else had left the room, he sat there with the boy’s hand clasped in his own. He stared hard at it and marvelled at how small it seemed. There was a freckle between the knuckles of the index and middle fingers. A small detail. Still – how had he not noticed it before?

  Through the open doorway, he could hear his wife, her voice low and weary, cracked with the effort of imparting the news – an impossible task, but one that she had readily assumed. It wasn’t even discussed between them. She had just leaned down and taken her phone from her bag and then left the room. She was better than he was at handling the situation. Always more in control of her emotions, even now, when they were being tested beyond anything they had imagined. Below her voice, the regular sounds of the hospital filtered through: the screeching of trolleys, the monotone of the voice coming over the speakers, the footfalls and laughter, the whoosh of the swinging doors, the sudden slap of running feet – noises so familiar to him now, after all the time they had spent here. It occurred to him then that he would not hear them again. Once they left here today, they would not return. He thought of this and began to see his future differently. He thought of all the days and weeks and months to come, and it was like peering down a long, dark tunnel.

  Through the window that gave out on to the corridor, between the slatted blinds, he could see his wife bring her hand to her face. She was pressing the back of her hand against her mouth, and her body seemed to shudder. He hadn’t quite got there yet. He hadn’t reached that point. But he would catch up with her soon enough. For now, he sat there with the boy. He didn’t want him to be there alone. The silence that filled in the space around them was like stone – solid and immovable. He felt the heft of finality weighing down on him. His fingers tightened around the boy’s hand, but there was no answering squeeze, no flutter of life. He looked down at the hand and realized that this was the last he would see of it. Already, it was going cold.

  Felix, meaning happiness, joy. Once he was gone, all the joy and happiness in their lives seemed to slip away. The world around them was leached of colour. Felix died as the seasons were changing. All summer, Garrick had spent his time shuttling back and forth between the hospital and home. Such was his state of mind that he hardly noticed the blossoming trees, the lushness of the grass, the burgeoning fruit trees that lined the avenue that led to his house. It was only after the boy had gone that his eyes cast around, looking for something to fix upon other than the gloomy images in his head that fought for his attention. New England in the fall is a sight to behold, but he was impervious to its charms that year. The deep red and fiery orange and brilliant gold of the leaves seemed lurid and showy and overdone. Nature at its most boastful. Rubbing his nose in it. What was it anyway but a gaudy façade to cover up death and decay? He looked at it and felt a new anger stirring inside him. For how could such beauty continue to exist, year after year, now that his son was no longer in the world?

  He didn’t say this to his wife. They said little to each other in the weeks and months that followed. Communication between them existed at the level of necessity. They avoided conversation with each other, each circling the other cautiously, like those who are wary of touching an open wound, although, privately, he talked with other people, opening up to friends, to barely friends, to strangers in a bar about his grief and pain. He did this, and he knew that she did too, and yet still it felt like a betrayal.

  It was nobody’s fault. Felix got sick and he died. There was no clue, no warning. There were no previous instances of the illness within either of their families; it had not been a time bomb lurking in their DNA. He had not died as a result of an accident; there was no negligence involved on either of their parts. And yet Garrick felt responsible. He felt guilty.

  They were naturally quiet people, both of them. With Felix gone, the silence in the house grew eerie. Eva held herself apart from him. Rarely did he see her grief come to the surface. On only a couple of occasions did it erupt, and when it did, it astonished him. It gushed, it spurted and leaped out with a terrible ferocity. Always, after these episodes, she returned to her calm, quiet self, yet the shadow of her furious grief remained, prowling the quiet corners of their home. Their sadness should have brought them together, but he felt, instead, that it divided them. He watched his wife pull away from him, aloof and imperious and alone in her sadness.

  There was a beauty to her solitude. However much it frustrated him, he felt a grudging admiration for her. But in her solitude, he read something else. Blame. She never said it. After all, what was he to blame for? He had loved his son. He had done everything a father could do to save him. What had happened was beyond his control. And yet he read in her silence an unspoken accusation. And he knew it had nothing to do with this. It was because he had another son, and she could not forgive him for it.

  He told her about Dillon when he returned home from his visit to Tangier. There was no reason to do so, only an urge on his part to purge himself of the knowledge. Somehow, he couldn’t bear to think of her existing in the world, living her life as his wife, as the mother of his child, and not knowing. To keep it from her would seem like an insult to her dignity and intelligence. She was a strong woman, quiet and determined and sure of herself. There was something in the quality of her stillness that drew out of him his darkest secrets, his most hidden and shameful fears. With Eva, he always felt the urge to confess and, by confessing, to have her absolve him from whatever misdemeanour he had committed. And so he had told her. He knew it was a risk. At the time, he had worried that it might drive a wedge between them too great to bridge. After her initial fury, there was a long period of frosty silence. He waited for it to thaw, constantly anxious about whether he had made the right decision in telling her. In time, things softened between them, and, perversely, it seemed to renew their interest in each other. He tried hard to be a good husband and father. He looked at his wife and their beautiful son and gave thanks for what he had. They never mentioned the other boy.

  The time that passed was bleak and slow. Winter came, and with the advance of Christmas, they decided to go away. There were invitations from Eva’s family in Ireland, and from his in Oregon – their relatives seeking to draw them in and offer comfort and solace. But both of them resisted. They were both still crawling out from under the chaos of emotions that surrounded Felix’s illness and death. His wife’s face had grown thin and white. She would sit for hours staring out at the garden with deadened eyes, her folded hands held still on her lap. There was a fragility about her that frightened him. She, who’d once been so strong, now seemed threatened by the slightest thing. He couldn’t bear the prospect of an ill-judged remark, or an unwanted display of sympathy that might break her apart and shatter her into little pieces.

  Instead, they drove to New York and checked into a hotel on Madison Avenue. They took long walks in Central Park. They visited the Guggenheim and the Met. He brought her to Tiffany’s and picked out a platinum band studded with diamonds, which she wore alongside her wedding rings. Over glasses of wine in dimly lit restaurants, they held hands and tried to remember what it was like to be just the two of them again, without a child to occupy their attention. They went to Mass on Christmas morning in St Patrick’s Cathedral because that was what she wanted. They exchanged gifts and afterwards lay on the big bed in their hotel room and stared at the Yule log burning on the TV screen. Always, the boy was with them. A shadow at the periphery of their vision. A ghostly form walking quietly behind them.

  The night before they left New York, he was scrolling through his e-mails while Eva was in the shower when he came across one from Robin. In the period since Felix’s death, he had become lax about communications with the outside world, only checking his inbox once a week, at best. This e-mail was five days old. He opened it and rea
d the message there. A brief, almost terse account of how life was for her and Harry and the boy, wishing a merry Christmas to him and Eva and Felix. He read that, and his heart gave a lurch. She did not know. How could she, as he had not told her? He closed his laptop and called through the bathroom door to Eva, telling her that he was popping out for some cigarettes.

  Downstairs, in the lobby, he found a chair in a quiet corner and took out his phone. He never did this. It was one of the unspoken rules between them. No phone calls; no contact unless she initiated it. He keyed in the number and listened to the foreign dial tone, and then she was there on the line, her voice distant and curt.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘It’s me,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I recognized the number.’

  ‘Can you talk?’

  ‘Hang on.’

  The sound of footsteps and a door slamming. When she came back on the line, she seemed closer, calmer.

  ‘There,’ she said, breathing out a small sigh. ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Yeah. I just got your e-mail and I … I dunno. It’s Christmas, so I thought I’d ring and say hi. See how you’re doing. That’s all.’

  He knew then that he wasn’t going to tell her about Felix. Not yet.

  ‘Dave, this isn’t a good idea. What if someone else had picked up the phone? How would I have explained it?’

  He shrugged, although she couldn’t see it. ‘Well, that didn’t happen, so I guess you don’t have to worry about it.’

  A brief pause.

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘So, how are you? How’s Dillon?’

  ‘He’s good. He’s getting big. Tall and gangly.’

  ‘Like me.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said cautiously. ‘Like you.’

  ‘So, what’s he like? Is he a good kid?’

  What was he asking this for? Why was he doing this? He felt her tense up on the line.

  ‘Dave, what’s this about?’

  ‘Nothing. Just, like I said, I wanted to get in touch …’

  ‘You sound strange. Are you sure everything’s all right?’

  The concern in her voice made him stop suddenly. Tears sprang into his eyes without warning. Emotion crowded his throat. He felt a line of sweat running the length of his spine. His hands were shaking. He sat there, taking deep breaths, sucking in the air, trying to regain his composure.

  She must have read something in his silence, for when she began talking again, her voice had changed. It had grown softer, kinder. He felt a seam of compassion opening up within her. She didn’t question him further. Instead, she spoke about Dillon, about how talkative he had become, about the blueness of his eyes and the length of his eyelashes. She described how curious he was about everything, and fearless, too, with a reckless tendency to climb furniture and jump from heights. He was forever getting lost amid the narrow streets, the warrens of houses. She told him it scared her witless. He was animated and sociable, she said, although she worried that he spent too much time among adults. Lately, she had been making an effort to seek out other children his age for him to befriend.

  He listened to her voice and felt himself grow calm. Part of him reasoned that it should upset him to hear her speak of this boy – this second son – that he didn’t know, that he would never know, while Felix lay beneath the frozen New England soil. But there was comfort in the fact that this child was alive and thriving on the other side of the world. The soft timbre of Robin’s voice filtered down the line and soothed him.

  When he asked her about herself, about her own life, he noticed that her voice changed again. A note of tiredness crept into it. She was still working in the bar, she said, and still painting when she had the time, which was not as often as she would like. He had the impression that she was unhappy. Disappointed, perhaps, with the way things had turned out for her. He could sense that the life she was living was not the one she had envisioned for herself, and yet, somehow, to admit that to him would be a betrayal.

  ‘And Harry?’ he asked. ‘How are things with him?’

  ‘He’s fine. He’s working. His painting is going well, although …’

  Her hesitation was momentary, but he felt all the doubt pooling within it.

  ‘Although what?’

  ‘Things are difficult right now.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Harry and I aren’t together any more.’

  The news rocked him. For some reason, he had never considered this a possibility.

  ‘You broke up?’

  She laughed – a brief, flat burst of mirthless laughter. ‘Broke up. When you say it like that, it sounds almost civilized. No, I wouldn’t say we broke up.’

  ‘He left you?’

  ‘More like I threw him out.’

  ‘But why? What happened?’

  And there it was again – the hesitation.

  Curiosity drew him towards it; he sensed a chink in the brave façade, a weak spot.

  ‘Something happened. I found out … he was …’

  He pictured her sitting on a darkened doorstep, biting her lip, jiggling her crossed legs, trying to decide whether to trust him or not. Whether to say the words out loud.

  ‘It’s okay, Robin,’ he said softly. ‘You can tell me. I’m not going to judge you.’

  ‘The thing is, Dillon doesn’t sleep. Not much, at any rate. And we’re so tired, all the time.’

  ‘Really? But he’s, what? Three years old?’

  ‘I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it? I suppose Felix has slept through the night since he was three months old, right?’

  He felt the tightening in his chest again and focused on the pattern of the carpet beneath his feet.

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what that’s like. I’ve forgotten what it means to get more than four hours of sleep at a stretch. That’s if I’m lucky.’

  ‘How come he doesn’t sleep?’

  She sighed then, and began a litany of explanations: colic, sensitivity to noise, some gastric problem that had since been resolved. Now she felt he was waking out of habit. She blamed herself for not being stricter with him, for not leaving him to cry it out while he was still young and pliable enough to get into a routine.

  ‘But?’ he said, softly nudging her toward revealing to him what was really on her mind.

  ‘It was getting too much for Harry – the sleeplessness. I think … I think he was pushed to do something about it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Something sharp gathered in the pit of his stomach. It had a taste to it, acidic, like bile. The taste of an old anxiety stirring up again. He waited for her to continue. When she did, it was in a quiet voice, almost a whisper.

  ‘A couple of times, when I was working late and Harry had people over, well, those nights Dillon slept through. A deep, heavy sleep lasting well into the morning. I can’t tell you how unusual that is for him. At first, I thought that he had turned a corner, that he had finally grown out of his sleeplessness. But then …’

  ‘Then?’

  She gave a defeated sigh and told him.

  ‘I found these pills down the side of the couch. Sleeping pills. He said they were Cozimo’s and they must have slipped out of his pocket.’

  ‘You think he had been giving Dillon sleeping pills?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice level, but a hoarseness crept into it, something akin to an enraged disbelief.

  ‘Maybe. Yes. When I confronted him about it, he denied it, of course, but I didn’t believe him. I was so furious.’

  ‘And the sleeping? How did he explain that?’ He was working hard now to keep the anger from his voice. What had once been mere dislike for Harry was now bubbling over into something darker and more dangerous.

  ‘He said Dillon was up late, playing games with the adults. That he had just exhausted himself, and we should be thankful. But it was just bullshit. You know what they’re like – Harry and Cozimo – when they get together. They probably thought it was harmless. No dou
bt they persuaded themselves that it would actually do Dillon good, or some such bullshit.’

  ‘So you threw him out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did all this happen?’

  She sighed again. ‘A couple of weeks ago.’

  ‘And what are you going to do now?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Harry’s staying at Cozimo’s for now. He wants to come back. Swears he will do anything to make amends if I will just take him back.’

  ‘Are you going to?’

  She gave out a sigh, long and weary, and he felt the indecision within her and also that she was tired of turning it over in her mind, fed up with the swinging doubts.

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t. Anyhow,’ she continued, as if giving herself a shake, and he felt the closing down of that strand of conversation, ‘it isn’t your concern.’

  She had started something, though. That one short conversation planted a seed of anger within him. He carried it around inside him that last night in New York, and when he awoke the next morning in his hotel bed, he found that the seed had swollen in size and had gathered heat in it. On the drive home, he thought about it, and the more he thought about it, the angrier he became. This guy, this jerk, doping his kid without any thought to the possible consequences, just so he could get a few hours to kick back with his friends and drink or smoke weed. It was reckless; no, it was downright criminal. When he thought of how he had kept vigil by Felix’s bed all those days and nights, listening to the bleep bleep of the machines that were keeping his son alive, all the tubes and bags hanging off his son’s small body, when he thought about that and then thought of Harry, his hands tightened around the steering wheel, his knuckles whitening with the strain of containing his indignant rage.

  He and Eva didn’t speak throughout the long journey home. But when he pulled into the driveway and switched off the engine and felt the tension in his arms begin to ease, Eva said to him, ‘I can’t go inside.’