The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  He was aware of the awkwardness between them that occurred whenever they spoke of Robin – his own shame and her low, simmering anger at the mention of this other woman. But that evening, there were no recriminations, no cool silences between them. Outside, the city was on fire. Sirens screamed all night. But inside their hotel room, he felt the tightening of a bond, each of them drawing towards the other, towards the unexpected thing that had presented itself to them.

  She asked him about Harry, and he gave her a broad outline of his character, as he had perceived it during that time when he and Harry had been on friendly, if somewhat distant, terms.

  ‘He’s not a bad guy, I guess. Just a bit caught up in himself.’

  ‘Hmm. Sounds like a real gem.’

  Encouraged by her sarcasm, by her implicit refusal to see Harry as anything but the bad guy, he began to tell her of his distrust, his niggling doubts about the man who was raising his son. Not that there was anything he could have done about it. Just little things.

  ‘Like what?’ she asked.

  In the dimness of the room, her eyes were sharp and glinting. They were observing him closely, hungry for all he was telling her, the idea being nourished by every character flaw, every little mistake and misdemeanour he could summon about Harry.

  Neither of them had given voice to the idea yet, but it was there between them. Already it was taking shape.

  After a while, he told her she should get some sleep. The truth was, he was so overwhelmed that the room seemed to tip and veer about him. The enormity of what they were contemplating disoriented him; he was afraid that if he stood up, he might fall over. He told her to sleep in the bed with the boy, while he stretched out on the couch. It was not long before sleep took them, but just before it did, he observed his wife nestling up against the small, curled shape in the bed, her arm briefly suspended over the boy, a hesitation there lest the weight of her arm about him wake him up. Instead, her hand rested briefly on his little shoulder, tracing down to the crook of his arm and then silently withdrawing.

  He didn’t know how long he slept. But when he woke, she was standing over him.

  ‘What?’ he asked, for he sensed the tension in her, a slow uncertainty about her face. ‘Is something wrong?’

  She was wearing one of his T-shirts over her underwear, and his eyes passed down her long, slim body, and then he saw that there was something in her hand.

  ‘Here,’ she said, giving it to him.

  He sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. There were serious aches in three places along his spine, as if his body had been folded up like a piece of cardboard and was now trying to unfold itself. He looked down at the passport in his hand.

  She was biting her lip, a kind of wild anxiety in her eyes as she watched him open the passport. Felix’s photograph stared out at him from the pages. Eva turned away and slunk back to the bed.

  He had taken the photograph himself. Remembering it now, he flinched at his irritation, his growing frustration with the child, who had refused to sit still for him, who wouldn’t face the camera or, when he did, could not keep his face expressionless; that impish grin kept returning and spoiling the shot.

  ‘Goddamn it, Felix!’ he had shouted at the boy.

  He thought of that and flushed with shame and remorse. He would give anything to have that moment back.

  Eva was sitting, now, on the bed by the boy, whose little chest was rising and falling with his steady breathing.

  ‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ she said to him. ‘How alike they look.’

  The passport was in his hand. He checked. It was still valid.

  In the bed, the boy was stirring. Garrick held his breath as he watched the boy’s eyes opening, his little body drawing up, his fists rubbing the sleep from his face. And when he looked about himself at the unfamiliar room, and then at Eva and Garrick, the sleep fell away, and his expression became fearful.

  ‘Where’s my mummy?’ he asked, and something plunged within Garrick at the little voice emerging hoarse with sleep and panic.

  If Eva felt any such misgivings, she hid them well beneath a blanket of composure.

  ‘Your mummy and daddy can’t be here right now,’ she said, her voice soft yet firm with reassurance. ‘They’ve asked us to mind you for a little while.’

  The lie was delivered so gently, so easily, it left Garrick breathless.

  She told him their names, and Garrick watched as the boy drew his legs up under the sheet, hugging his knees to his chest – a defensive gesture. He looked out at them beneath a fringe of brown hair, his eyes large and watchful. His chin trembled, and tears sprang suddenly within his eyes, and Garrick felt something sharp in his chest. Eva moved closer to the boy, her voice bright with cheerful reassurance.

  ‘Are you hungry, Dillon? What would you like for breakfast? Do you like croissants? Toast?’

  He stared at her with suspicion, but the trembling in his chin seemed to have stopped – for now, at least.

  ‘How about a glass of milk and a nice sticky bun?’

  He gave a little nod and hugged his knees in closer to his chest. She went to reach for him and he drew back instantly, and Garrick watched as his wife’s hands fell back into her lap, but her face held that same brightness, that sunny optimism.

  ‘Do you like boats, Dillon?’ she asked. The boy didn’t answer, just squirmed a little under the sheet and stared hard at the little hump that was his bent legs. Eva continued: ‘Later today, we might take a little trip on a boat – just the three of us. Would you enjoy that? And if you like, we can sit up on deck and watch all the other boats and the gulls and the waves. Wouldn’t that be fun?’

  Then she looked up at Garrick, and the fullness of her unspoken proposal struck him forcibly. He didn’t think of the consequences. Not then. Neither of them did. They told themselves that it was in the boy’s best interests. He would be better off with them, away from his parents and their negligence, their recklessness. They could give him a better life than the one he’d had, living in a hovel, a death trap, surrounded by hippies and potheads. They would love and cherish him and never take him for granted. With them, his life would be full of opportunities; he could achieve his potential, and nothing would be beyond his grasp. That was what they told themselves. But beneath all that was the knowledge of their own pain, of how they had been at rock bottom, and now there was this opportunity, this most unexpected way that they could be rescued.

  How do you explain it to someone – the way to go about rebuilding your life around such a grand deception? Were he to read it himself in a paper – a shocking headline: couple steals child to replace dead son – he would imagine it as a sordid affair, both plotted and calculating. But it wasn’t like that. It was more the slow and steady accumulation of several small deceptions, one leading to another, until you became accustomed to it. A trickle of lies, each one told not out of any malice but out of an overwhelming need to protect the boy, to shield him from further pain. A period of grieving, of readjustment, until they could start on the serious yet joyful work of building their lives together – that little unit of three.

  At first, there were tears. They came regularly. Garrick learned to read the signs. That watchful look that came over the boy, the stony silence that would suddenly grow up around him, and then a frown line would appear and his lower lip would turn out, his face rapidly becoming liquid as the crying took over. Questions about his mother, about his father, about his home. The insistent tone, the tantrums. Flailing limbs lashing out, bursts of shocking violence. Every time it erupted, they would wait it out. Eva was better at it than he was. She would stay there, murmuring words of comfort, soft noises to calm him, purring terms of endearment, pet names that she had, until then, reserved for Felix. Often, Garrick found that he couldn’t stay and listen to it. He had to walk away. But not Eva. Never once did she crack. Her resolve was stronger. The tenacity she showed in the face of such overwhelming grief, anger, and confusion was fascinating. He watched
her with a kind of frightened awe, ashamed of his bouts of cold feet, his trembling admissions of doubt. But all she had to do was remind him of that night in Tangier to pull him back to her.

  ‘He left the boy alone,’ she would say coldly, and all at once he was back there in that room, the walls quaking and crumbling about him, looking down at the small shape of the boy, drugged and abandoned, alone as the earth fell. He remembered it and sucked in his breath. It was as if some other force were at work, as if there were a reason why he’d been in Tangier that night, a design that had brought him back to Cozimo’s, that had drawn him up the stairs like a thief in the night and sent him running through the crazed streets clutching the sleeping child in his arms.

  They answered Dillon’s questions patiently. His mum and dad were not well, and they had asked Eva and Garrick to mind him. No, they did not know when he would see them again. No, they couldn’t call on the telephone – it was not possible. And then they waited for the crying to abate, and they would shower him with affection and spoil him with gifts, a tremendous effort to fight the tide of his grief and confusion. They were in too deep now to go back.

  ‘Remember the holiday we had in Oregon?’ Eva said to Garrick one night.

  It had been a bad day. The boy’s tears had erupted several times, and Garrick had felt all day on the verge of giving in and surrendering Dillon to the authorities, confessing to his crime, ending it all there and then.

  ‘The last one,’ she said, clarifying.

  He nodded. Of course he remembered. The last holiday before Felix got sick.

  ‘Remember how we were in the car, on the road three or four hours already, when Felix started to wail in the backseat? He had forgotten Bo.’

  He smiled at the memory. A sad, nostalgic smile. Bo, that grubby, greasy, mangy-looking stuffed cat that Felix had inexplicably formed a passionate attachment to.

  ‘The panic that came over us – don’t you remember?’

  ‘I remember. I nearly crashed the damn car.’

  ‘Right! We were both so freaked! What were we going to do without Bo? How the hell were we going to handle Felix for a whole month without his beloved Bo?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘And it was hell at first, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘All that sobbing and wailing. The sulks and tantrums.’

  ‘He got over it, though.’

  ‘He did. And quickly too,’ she said, with a brightness in her eyes. ‘After the second week of the holiday, he didn’t even mention him. And by the time we got home, it was as if he had never had Bo. He was clean forgotten.’

  ‘Eva,’ Garrick said, serious now, keeping his voice quiet, and yet the warning was still there. ‘This isn’t some stuffed toy we’re dealing with. They’re his parents.’

  ‘You’re his parent,’ she replied, quick as a flash.

  Just as quickly, she looked away.

  He reached for her hand, held it in his, and let the silence drift in around them.

  It was understood between them, anyway. As time passed, memory would fade, and those thoughts the boy had for his parents would diminish. He was only three years old. He would forget.

  Weeks passed. They moved on. Every time they crossed a border, he felt his hands grow sweaty, a narrow band of tension tightened about his skull. They were careful not to use Dillon’s name when addressing him. They never slipped up.

  Their house in the States was put on the market, the decision made: they were not going back. A distance had crept in between them and their families, their friends. They had held themselves apart in their grief after Felix. Now they had to explain the boy. Letters were written, carefully worded e-mails, quiet phone calls late at night, when Dillon was asleep. They’d agreed upon a story: Dillon’s mother had died in the Tangier earthquake. It had fallen to Garrick, the boy’s father, to take care of him. There would be raised eyebrows at that, gossip, speculation, the calculation of dates. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out Garrick’s infidelity. But Eva was prepared to live with the humiliation. And he could live with the shame. They had suffered through far worse. And at least, in this instance, there was a point to their pain, something they could both accept, if it meant they could keep Dillon.

  A wet afternoon some months after they had taken him. Newly arrived in Canada, where they had chosen to settle in a quiet suburb of Toronto, a place where no one knew them, where they could begin again. In the rental house, Garrick and Dillon sat on the couch, watching a movie they had both seen before, Finding Nemo. It was the boy’s favourite. Sitting side by side, unspeaking, an amicable silence gathering around them, they watched. And then Dillon turned to him, a solemn look coming over his face, and asked in a quiet voice:

  ‘Is my mum dead?’

  His heart had seized with sudden fright, and he’d tried to keep his features still and calm as he looked into the boy’s pale and watchful face.

  The boy hardly blinked.

  Garrick nodded slowly.

  ‘And my dad?’

  ‘Yes.’ His mouth dry as dust.

  The boy held him there for a moment with that solemn gaze, and Garrick found that he was holding his breath, waiting for the tears to come. But instead, the boy turned back to the movie, and they watched it together on the couch, in silence.

  The worst lie he had told. How easily he had done it. It frightened him, in a way – the enormity of it, the untold consequences. And yet, once it was done, he felt lighter somehow, as if the way ahead had suddenly been cleared of a giant obstacle.

  The questions dried up after that. Dillon still grieved for them, but it was different now, as if his moods were tempered by an understanding. Slowly, almost without them noticing, a calm seemed to come over their home. Weeks became months. Months grew into years. The steady accumulation of time bringing them closer together, tightening their bond, fixing it so that it was just the three of them against the world. They had no need of any others.

  How long might it have continued like that? Who can say? The writing was on the wall from the moment they learned that Eva’s mother was seriously ill. He remembers the night clearly. Eva pacing the floor, her face wet with tears, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, torn between grief and indecision.

  ‘You’ve got to go back,’ he told her. ‘She’s your mom. You’ll regret it if you don’t.’

  ‘Will you come with me?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s a risk.’

  ‘After all this time? You still think that?’

  ‘What if someone sees him? What if someone recognizes him?’

  ‘What are the chances? And besides, he’s changed. It’s been five years. He looks different. He’s like you now. Not her.’

  He let that pass, but he felt the cold, hard silence that slipped between them whenever Robin was mentioned. He gave in to her after that. He had to. His guilt, her grief and the promise they had made each other when first they had taken him: to stay together. The three of them were a family. They would not be separated.

  Going through passport control at Dublin Airport, he felt the sweat breaking out all over his body, a prickle of nerves running over his skin. Not until they were sitting in a taxi bound for Wicklow did he begin to relax a little.

  Eva’s mother was in the hospital in Dublin, and they spent those weeks shuttling back and forth between the Wicklow Hills and the city. Eva liked to take the boy with her when she visited, but Garrick rarely joined them. His aversion to hospitals, honed during the long season of Felix’s illness, held fast. At first, their excursions into the city made him nervous, but in time he relaxed, let his guard down. They seemed to exist in a sort of limbo – waiting for the woman to die. They knew it would not be long.

  A morning in November. He remembered it clearly. Snow piled up on the verges of the roads as they made their way north, towards the city. Slow traffic on a Saturday morning held up by the road closures and diversions. A protest march. It had taken time to find parking. Then t
here was the long walk to the hospital. On that day, the old woman was barely lucid, slipping in and out of consciousness. She didn’t seem to recognize any of them, and Garrick’s presence alarmed her.

  In the corridor, Eva squeezed his arm.

  ‘Don’t take it personally,’ she told him. ‘She’s confused, that’s all.’

  ‘I’ll go get the car,’ Garrick said.

  He had planned to pick them up at the entrance, but when he reached the car, he realized that it would take at least an hour for him to drive back to the hospital. The march had moved south, towards the quays, blocking the roads that led to his destination. It would be quicker for Eva and Dillon to walk towards him, and he could pick them up halfway.

  And so he called his wife’s cell phone and made the arrangements. One phone call. One snap decision.

  In the time it took them to reach him, the damage was done. The slip-up made. After five careful years, all it took was a phone call, and the whole plan came undone.

  ‘If you believe nothing else, believe this: we didn’t go to Tangier with the intention of taking Dillon,’ he said. ‘That was not what we had intended, however bad it looks.’

  A chance came, and they took it.

  That was what he told them, when he reached that part of the story.

  19. Harry

  His voice as he told us his story seemed distant, the tone almost private, as he brought us down the meandering route that led to his terrible act. I tried to listen, Dillon. I tried hard to concentrate, to fix my attention on the story, for it was important to me to know what had happened to you. But the words just fluttered past me, barely brushing against me. In no way did they penetrate the surface of my thoughts. The truth was, I couldn’t take my gaze off you. My eyes feasted on your very being. To see you again, Dillon, to know that you were alive – I felt overcome. You stood next to him – Garrick – with a stillness I found admirable in such a young boy. A grave look had taken hold of your face, and the wariness in your stare pained me, Dillon. I could hardly wait for a time when all of this would be behind you, the healing done. For now, his arm was around you, and I saw your pyjama bottoms peeking out from under your jeans.