The Place That Didn't Exist

by Mark Watson

  I got a job that gave me half a day off a week and went to a group called Thursday Moms, where we sat with our kids on our knees and sang songs and drank coffee. A couple of years ago it would have sounded appalling, but now I needed it. Most of the moms had good hair and nice dresses and they brought in healthy homemade snacks and knew all the words to the songs. They had taken time off from graphic design jobs or magazine columns and were easing back into work. They all knew my situation and they were studious in not mentioning it, generally by not talking to me. But there was a mother called Martha who looked almost as shitty as me. Her husband had gone off with a dancer. We became friends. She worked for a film producer.

  ‘You should be a runner,’ she said.

  ‘Are you kidding? I’m too tired to even walk.’

  ‘No. Like, a runner on set.’

  One day, when Owen was two and we were taking him around the park, Mam reached out and touched his red cheek. ‘He’s a good boy, isn’t he, now?’

  ‘He’s wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll be away to Ireland soon, I think,’ said Mam, as if it were a whimsical idea, something she’d just come up with. ‘Da thinks it’s time to go back. They’re opening up a big new place in Dublin, his company. And your grandmother’s not been well.’

  ‘But I . . . I mean, he’s so small,’ I said. ‘It would be a hell of an upheaval. Just when he’s starting to know what’s what.’

  ‘Well, that’s right,’ Mam agreed.

  A plane roared overhead and we both glanced up. When our eyes came to meet again, we both looked away.

  ‘You know you can always come over, you can always bring him over,’ she added, slipping her arm through mine for a second.

  It was a relief to her, I thought; maybe it was a relief to both of us.

  I enrolled Owen in preschool. He yelled and tugged my elbow and pleaded not to be left. I showed up at a shiny office for my first day as a runner with snot smeared down the sleeve of a twenty-dollar dress, the best thing I had to wear. My new boss asked me to get him a coffee. Then he asked me to go tell someone he’d see them in ten minutes. Then I had to get him another coffee, and then a bagel. That was all that happened on my first morning. I couldn’t believe this was a job. I earned $2.30 an hour more than I used to at the 7-Eleven.

  After two weeks I got a babysitter and went to a movie with Martha. She bought me a beer afterwards: my first drink in three years. When I got home, the babysitter said Owen had slept all the way through. I took Martha into his bedroom. He had Lloyd the panda clasped to his chest and he was smiling a little.

  ‘He’s freakin’ lovely,’ said Martha, beer on her breath. She squeezed my hand. I thought: I can do this. I have a life; not the life I imagined, but a life all the same.

  I worked hard for the film producer. His name was Solomon Katz and all he generally wanted was for me to make him coffee, or pick up the phone and say he wasn’t there. None of his various projects was ever likely to be made; his business was to secure funding for possible films which he then allowed to be shelved in order to pitch something else for more funding. He had the contacts to live as a movie producer without producing movies. I was a runner without having to do much running. It began to dawn on me that a lot of people’s jobs consisted of nothing more than convincing someone else they were doing a job.

  How do we get from here to Dubai? It’s all the same story. Every story is somehow part of every other one.

  About a month in, I picked up the phone and was halfway through explaining that Katz was away when I realized the call was for me. There was a problem at kindergarten. Owen was having trouble breathing. I ran in a daze to the subway, sprinted five blocks plastered in cold sweat. There was a doctor there. Owen was lying in a makeshift sickroom with an oxygen mask on. He looked like an evacuee child from one of those British war movies. His brown eyes asked me to help him: it was the first time ever I hadn’t been able to. The doctor looked wryly at me.

  ‘He’s a lucky guy,’ he said. ‘He’s had a bad allergic reaction.’

  It was an anaphylactic shock, he said. Normally caused by traces of nut. The kindergarten’s principal, Mandy, kept saying they’d never had anything like this, as if somehow that would comfort me. All I wanted was to take Owen home, but when I was alone with him, I was terrified in case it happened again. He slept in my bed and I held him next to me, putting a hand in front of his mouth every few minutes to feel his breath. I kept my eyes open all night and the night after that.

  ‘I don’t want to be sick like that again, Mom,’ he said once.

  ‘You won’t be. You won’t be.’

  I took him to a doctor. I got every leaflet ever printed about nut allergy and intolerance. I became militant about checking ingredients. I cooked him the same four meals on rotation. Gradually it became normal. You can make almost anything seem normal through repetition.

  He turned four, then five. Katz loaned me out to a buddy; I spent three days on an actual shoot, a TV movie about a contract killing. I learned the roles of a shoot: the hierarchy. The director, AD, producer, AP. The DOP. I loved it, talking in these codes like someone in the White House. I started looking for more freelance work on shoots, any shoot, anyplace. New York was crawling with them. At any given moment in the city, people were pretending to make love, hold up banks, die. If it was a weekend, I’d take Owen with me, set him up in a corner with his toy train. People would admire his big eyes and long eyelashes and say, ‘Is he yours? He’s a cutie! He’s so beautiful!’ Yes, I’d say, he’s mine, and sure you can play with him, but please don’t give him any snacks. Owen would solemnly explain the rules of the train game. I would watch from across the room, with that feeling in my chest, the willing surrender to love, to the slavery of it.

  On one job I met a producer called Crawford Henry. A backwards name, as he said when introducing himself: it felt like a line he’d used a lot. I didn’t mind. He was a little older than me; his parents were from the Caribbean. He had a loud, infectious laugh and his aftershave had a delicious smell which I instantly came to think of being his own. We went for a drink and he sat Owen on his lap and told him about how steam engines worked; we took Owen to the premiere of a kids’ movie about penguins and Crawford arranged for Owen to meet one of the cast and try on a penguin costume. We saw each other for a few months. Nobody had touched me since that night of the party four years earlier. Crawford was gentle and he made me laugh. He was the one who pointed out how often I said ‘erm’ in the middle of a sentence. He and Owen called each other ‘dude’.

  One day he asked to see me on my own. It was winter and well below freezing. I got a babysitter. We walked across Brooklyn Bridge. There was a silver fuzz of skyscraper-light in the frozen water below us, and the buildings loomed like friendly listeners. In my memory it’s just like the poster scene on the walls of the Ropers’ apartment.

  ‘I have to stop doing this,’ said Crawford.

  ‘Stop . . .?’

  ‘Stop seeing you. I’m so sorry, Ruth, I really am.’

  He was married; he lived upstate with his family. I was too numb to be angry. I allowed him to hold me at the entrance to the subway, with a panhandler cursing us for encroaching on his patch. Crawford walked away in his big tan coat. I went home in the cold and in the morning I told Owen that Crawford wouldn’t be coming any more.

  ‘Did he not want to be my dad?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I thought he was going to be my dad.’

  I was trying to get ready for work, make-up half on, clothes half on. ‘It’s not like that, honey. Your dad . . . we talked about this. Your dad went away, and—’

  ‘But we could get a new one. I thought Crawford was the new one.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Did I do something wrong?’

  After that, I did no more dating. If I met someone and we slept together, or even started talking like we might sleep together, I would make a performance of saying that I had a child, so
nothing serious could ever happen. That was generally enough to sabotage the romance. There were a couple of nice men who persisted, saying that they’d love to meet him, maybe we could all hang out together. But the more someone tried to accommodate the idea of Owen, the more prickly and impossible I became. His father had left, Crawford had left, even my parents had left. I wouldn’t give anyone else the chance.

  Owen was tall and freckled like me, with a fair mop of thick, loose hair which I never liked to let people cut. He was good at school, without standing out. At parent–teacher interviews I got favourable reports, and they never asked about his dad: a third of his class were from single-parent homes. Actually, the longer I went on, the less isolated I felt. I took Owen to friends’ houses and met moms who were on their own, literally or effectively (because their husbands worked such long hours) or emotionally (because they hated their husbands). I was OK leaving Owen at his buddies’. Nowhere near thirty, I was assistant producer, once even producer, and my botched early years of adult life began to look like they could invert themselves into a kind of head-start.

  Owen went away for a weekend with his friend’s family – the O’Neills, good Irish blood – and then one summer on a four-day activity camp. I was left rattling around the apartment and yearning for my boy in a way that felt embarrassingly close to lovesickness. I called the camp two of the three nights and could sense his eye-rolling as I went through the questions neurotic mothers ask in TV movies: are you eating enough, who are you hanging out with, did you remember to tell them about the nut thing, even though I already sent a letter and called to make sure they got it?

  Nine, ten, eleven. He was getting big enough that I could bring him on location shoots. He’d sit in the corner and read a Stephen King novel or beaver away on his own screenplays, writing in biro on A4 pads: The Baker Who Went Crazy, The Little Leaguers Find Pirate Treasure. Sometimes he’d run errands for the director and everyone would say what a cool kid he was. At night he slept in my bed and I would feel the warmth of his breath, admire his gangly limbs, manliness stealing across the still-childish features.

  You’ll be thinking: so what next? Why am I even hearing about this, unless there’s a bitter end? Do me a favour and suspend that thought for a second. Leave me lying alongside the boy, already threatening to grow as tall as me, smelling a little like me, his long eyelashes fastening down his eyelids, his breath on my neck.

  In 2000, Owen was fourteen. I was a seasoned producer with a long résumé, features and sitcoms mingled with infomercials. I could work on a studio floor or a film set. I had a cellphone. Martha had moved to LA; most of my other friends I barely saw. I was absorbed by the work and all my spare time was spent with Owen. We went to see the Yankees and got caught on the roving camera, flashed up on the big screen; I tried to make him hug me and got a play-punch instead. He was in a high-school production of The Crucible, playing the old judge, with pantyhose on and talcum powder to whiten his hair. He called me Hillary after Clinton, because he thought I spoke like her when I was trying to be authoritative; he left notes written in the style of a political aide.

  H.

  Gone to baseball practice and may check out a movie.

  Will return circa 23:00 hours.

  O.

  I knew there would be girlfriends, or there already were. I rehearsed my cool-mom smile, my cooking of fun meals, my nonchalant attitude. I was confident of making a good impression on any girl I had to power-share with. I was a lot younger than they’d expect a mom to be. I could identify any Nirvana song; I had crushes on the male cast of Friends.

  There was a job in LA that part-overlapped with spring break. I decided to take Owen out of school for the remaining days and we planned the trip like two sophomores. West Hollywood, Beverly Hills, the beach. We were going to stay with Martha and her kids while I was working. They got tickets to a Dodgers game; Martha even talked about driving them down to San Francisco and I started planning to extend the trip so I could go along.

  It was United Airlines. I got us upgraded. Owen reclined his seat and sighed. ‘Wow, your job is hard work.’

  I said something sarcastic. Flying never really agreed with me, plus my period was due; I felt scratchy and on edge. I was planning to knock myself out with a Valium. An hour in, I took the pill and was halfway into the embrace of sleep – that warm feeling, like being wrapped up – when Owen nudged me.

  ‘Hillary. Can I borrow a hundred bucks?’

  ‘What?’

  He was leafing through a catalogue of goods available at LAX. ‘When we land, I want to buy this.’

  The face of the watch was indigo, with silver hands and a button to switch to digital display; its design was ‘ergonomic’, a word I recognized from publicity materials, meaning pretty much nothing.

  ‘That’s a watch for . . . that’s too old for you.’

  ‘It’s amazing.’

  ‘I don’t have three hundred dollars to spend on a watch. And you certainly do not need to spend three hundred dollars on a watch.’

  ‘Fucking hell,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t talk to me like that.’

  His lip curled, on the verge of some insolent comeback.

  ‘And don’t argue with me, Owen, I’m not in the mood.’

  ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, shaking his head and angling himself away. I did the same, arching my body towards the window. We lay there, self-consciously sulking, and then the tablet kicked in and sent me to sleep.

  Hands wrenched me out of darkness: urgent, clammy hands. I blinked a couple of times and the world was a sickly, over-colourful horror. People were standing in the aisle, looking worried. An air hostess was shaking me urgently. I felt a little sick. That was the order in which I logged my first impressions. Then, with a plunge of my stomach, Owen himself. His face was white; he was clinging to the handrest. I went cold.

  ‘Owen, Jesus Christ.’

  ‘He’s having some kind of reaction . . .’ the hostess began.

  ‘He’s allergic,’ I said, or shouted; I could hear heads turning, activity stalling. ‘He was meant to have the nut-free option.’

  ‘We have him down for vegetarian,’ said the hostess, straightening her skirt.

  ‘He’s nut-free,’ I yelled, taking Owen’s hand. It was limp as a handkerchief. Waves of panic tore at me. I wanted to rip off my clothes; I was hot as hell. I took him by the shoulder. With my other hand I was throwing things out of my handbag: my own medication, a pocket mirror, anything in the way of the antihistamines. I got one and crammed it into Owen’s mouth. His lips puckered and he spat it out. I forced it back in.

  ‘We need a doctor,’ I screamed at the woman.

  A doctor was already on the way, she said, from first class. Owen’s face was going slack.

  ‘Honey,’ I shouted, ‘just keep breathing, just keep breathing.’

  ‘Help me, Mom,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. His eyes were glazing over. I felt as if everything below chest level had been hollowed out and replaced with ice. I stood up, even though the seatbelt sign was on; I thought I was going to vomit or shit myself.

  ‘WE NEED A FUCKING DOCTOR.’

  ‘A doctor will be right with you,’ said the woman, as if I’d asked for a brandy.

  Owen was gasping, clinging to the armrests.

  ‘Why the fuck did you give him something with nuts in? Didn’t he say?’

  ‘He did say,’ the air hostess told me, ‘and I told him the vegetarian meal should be fine.’

  ‘But it’s not fine, is it? It’s not fine!’

  ‘A doctor will be right here,’ she said again.

  ‘Help me, Mom,’ Owen begged again, barely audible. I squeezed his hands in mine. I kissed him on his damp cheek. Scenes from his fourteen years ran through my mind, not in the life-flashing-before-you way of movie sequences, but in a jumbled montage. He was filling the bathtub in one of our vacation motels, but the shower setting was on, and he soaked the room. He swung for a basebal
l, sent it flying out of the diamond, trotted around the bases and gave high-fives to the whole team. The little notes on the kitchen table, the Chinese takeouts, the sound of his voice on the phone from camp, the graduation day, wedding day, all the stuff that was ahead. And then the argument that had been the last conversation we held.

  The doctor came. I had to get out of my seat. People were huddled in the gangways, where business met economy, watching furtively through the curtain. I was crying. The air hostess put a hand on my shoulder. The doctor was bent over Owen. He asked a crew member about releasing an oxygen mask. He asked if I was the mother.

  ‘Help him!’ I shrieked.

  ‘I am trying to help him, ma’am.’

  I stood in the aisle, my hands in my boy’s hair, as the doctor leant over him, sweat collecting on his bare forehead. It flashed across my mind that you heard about stuff like this happening, but normally as a great escape, a turning point. I swore to unknown gods that I would do anything if they’d save him. Owen tried to say something to me, his eyes rolling back to meet mine. He couldn’t get any words out. The doctor was taking my arm. I shook it off. These are the events as they probably happened. Nothing is ever more accurate than ‘probably’. When the really big stuff happens, we have to make up stories: the brain shrinks away from the details, like someone beaten back by a fire.

  He was gone.

  My parents flew over. Martha came to New York and stayed two weeks. The school held a fundraising concert. I received cards in the post from people I barely knew. It was in the Times and the Post. Lawyers made contact and offered their services. Could I prove I had registered him as nut-allergic? Yes, I could. One told me I could sue for hundreds of thousands. But I couldn’t face courts, processes; I couldn’t get out of bed. I settled out of court for a tenth of what we should have gotten. I didn’t care. Money meant very little to me. What was I going to spend it on? No number corresponded to a version of reality in which my boy was alive. Nothing overruled the reality, the coldness of moving out of the apartment, Martha loading things into boxes and asking me to say yes or no to each item. She offered to move back to New York and be my roommate. I wanted her to, but couldn’t accept: she had a husband, her own children. I moved into a one-room place. I kept working. As soon as I got home, I took a sleeping pill; as soon as I woke up, I went out. I automated myself. A doctor prescribed anti-depressants and I drove a wedge between myself and my feelings.