The Coordinates of Loss

by Amanda Prowse

  ‘I miss him,’ she managed through her tears.

  It was the sound of James’s gulping sob that caused her to turn. Rachel reached out without too much planning or forethought, and the couple tumbled on to their son’s bed, where they held each other fast, as if the feel of the other were the thing that might help them breathe as they cried. They stayed huddled together on the narrow space where their boy had lain. Rachel pictured Oscar pulling the duvet over his chin as she or Cee-Cee read him stories, tucked him in and soothed him after a bad dream. They lay entwined until sleep claimed them.

  When she woke in Oscar’s room on Oscar’s bed, her limbs felt leaden. She had slept deeper and more soundly than she had in months and it took a while for her to fully come to. With a sense of confusion she felt the shape of her husband against her. Awkwardness fired through her as he stirred into wakefulness.

  ‘I still think sometimes he will come home. I still wait for someone to wake me up and tell me it was all a horrible dream.’ She spoke aloud without thinking.

  James’s lack of comment left her feeling hollow. Embarrassment fuelled the anger that surged inside her; she had wanted him to agree with her, to make her feel like she wasn’t being ridiculous. His silence had quite the opposite effect.

  Sliding her legs from under his, she trod the hallway and walked into their bedroom, and it was as if she had never been away. Her tissue box and tube of hand cream sat by her bedside lamp on the nightstand and her bathrobe hung on the hook on the back of the door. She ran her finger over the counterpane, laundered by Cee-Cee, and again felt the lack of her presence.

  Time had stood still here, and this was a source of further confusion. She felt happy that her presence had lingered here in the house where Oscar had lived, but also a little deflated, because if time had stood still, had she really moved on at all?

  Rachel unlocked the balcony door and stepped out on to the patio that had been her refuge and her prison after Oscar had gone missing. She stood by the glass wall on the far end and ran her hands along the rail, staring out over the wide expanse of blue. And it was as if time had been erased. She let her eyes dart hungrily from the white crest of waves to the dip and roll of the water with its myriad shadows, each movement in her mind offering up a hundred possibilities. It was like madness, a fixation. And it instantly and powerfully drew her in. She walked backward until her calves felt the steamer chair and sank down on to the cushions, and that was where she sat with her elbows on her knees and her eyes trained on the horizon, watching and praying for the impossible.

  Where are you, my little boy? Where did you go? The questions that she had managed to bury for so many months came flying back into her mind, and this alone made her question whether it had been wise to return.

  She heard James’s soft tread, as he watched her from the doorway.

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Yes?’ she asked without turning her head.

  ‘Are you . . . are you going to stay up here?’

  ‘Yes.’ She nodded and shifted in the seat until she felt more comfortable. ‘Just for a little bit.’

  ‘I’ll go and get some drinks.’

  ‘Sure.’

  James returned and sat in the chair next to her. He handed her a Diet Coke.

  ‘When you were away, I used to sit here and talk to you as if you were sat right there next to me.’

  ‘Did I answer you?’ She took a sip.

  ‘No, Rach, I’m not crazy!’

  They both laughed, settling back in the chairs, and in that second they broke through the crust of grief, and the hands of the people they were before reached up through the darkness. A happy reminder that they lurked, waiting.

  ‘I have quite liked being by myself. The little flat is empty, soulless really, but it’s quiet and sort of cocoons me and that’s what it’s been like for me, hidden away hoping to transform.’ She spoke openly and was glad of the chance to do so.

  ‘Transform into what?’ He took a glug of beer from his bottle.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ She gave it some thought. ‘I know I can’t go back to the person I was. I know too much hurt for that to be possible.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I guess I want to transform into someone who knows how to navigate their life through the fog of grief. Cee-Cee told me that.’

  James leaned over and clinked his bottle against her cold can of pop. ‘To Cee-Cee!’

  ‘To Cee-Cee,’ she echoed, and they both drank.

  ‘Are you transformed yet?’ he asked, sincerely.

  ‘Not yet.’ She kept her voice small. ‘Not yet.’

  It hadn’t been so odd after all. She had simply, when night fell, showered and climbed between the sheets, as she had done thousands of times before. It had been nice to lie next to James once more as tiredness crept over her, company at this the loneliest of hours, reminding her of a time when the world had been less topsy-turvy and how she liked being part of a couple. It had always felt like the two of them against the world – that was, until the world turned on them and took away their happy.

  They lay in the darkness, side by side, and listened to the tree-frog symphony, which she had quite forgotten.

  ‘I bumped into Alison in Lindos. I told her about Cee-Cee and that you were coming home.’

  Rachel pictured the woman who had stood in her hallway with other mums from school and her face reddened at the memory of that day when her mind had surfed on the chaos of loss.

  ‘She sent you her love and said that she would love to see you. She’s called a couple of times, as has Daisy’s mum. I knew you probably wouldn’t want to see her or anyone, but I am passing it on anyway.’

  She noted the ease with which he used the word ‘home’ and felt a flicker of concern that he might not fully understand that this might only be a visit. ‘Home’ might actually be the place where she owned nothing more than a mattress on the floor of a rented flat and a job in a coffee shop.

  ‘Was Hank with her?’ She almost dared not ask, only able to picture the boy, her son’s best friend, laughing with Oscar in the pool or the two of them, chuckling with milk moustaches, snaffling cookies from the plate in the kitchen.

  ‘Yes. He’s getting tall, I thought.’ James sounded wistful.

  She reached under the cover and found his hand, knitting her fingers with his, taking comfort from the warmth of his palm as she tried not to get weighed down with thoughts of how Oscar would forever be a little over four feet tall. In every sense, Hank and the rest of his peers would outgrow him.

  ‘She wrote you a lovely letter too; I put it with all the others in the garage. There are lots of them, Rach.’

  ‘You kept them?’

  Throw them away! All of them!

  ‘I did.’ He released her hand and leaned up on his side with his head propped up. ‘I only glanced at them briefly when they first arrived, but a couple of months ago I decided to read them properly and it was . . .’

  ‘It was what?’

  ‘It was really comforting to read all the things that people thought about Oscar, and it made me happy that he had had such an impact on so many people’s lives. It made it feel like less of a waste.’

  Rachel felt the snort of laughter leave her nose. ‘Christ, they must be some bloody letters and cards, because I can’t see his loss as anything but a complete tragedy – a great big waste of all that he could have been. And it’s not fair.’

  ‘No. It’s not fair. I agree. But they helped me, nonetheless.’

  ‘Well, good for you, James.’

  ‘What, that makes you angry now? Listen to your tone! The fact that while you had fucked off to England and I was all alone, I took comfort from the kind words written by people who were trying to help – to reach out to us in our hour of need. That’s a reason to sound a little off with me? Jesus fucking Christ!’

  ‘Why does this have to be about you?’ she cried. ‘Why can’t this be about how bloody unfair it is that my son was taken from me?’
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  ‘From us!’ he corrected. ‘From us! And that’s kind of the problem here, Rachel. Or at least one of them. You are so wrapped up in your own grief, as if you are the only one who loved him and the only one who has had her life ripped apart, but you are not! You are not.’

  ‘I am his mum!’ she shouted.

  ‘And I am his dad.’

  They were quiet for a moment or two, looking at each other, both at a loss as to how to quash the flame of emotion that seemed to coat their interactions. The moonlight painted stripes of light on the bed linen and the cicadas chirped in time to the beat of their fractured hearts.

  The bed felt tiny.

  The room airless.

  ‘There is no one else in the whole wide world who has the power to make me feel this way.’ James spoke into the semi-darkness. ‘I find you infuriating and you make my blood boil and I want to fix you, help you, protect you and run from you, all at once.’

  ‘Which is the strongest feeling?’ she asked with genuine curiosity.

  He sighed and lay back on the pillows. ‘Truthfully? I don’t know, but I do know that whilst I missed you – and I did – I find your anger, your closed-off nature and your judgment almost too hard to deal with.’

  ‘I can’t apologise for that.’ She knew he spoke the truth, but as she had said already, she was not yet transformed.

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘I guess you can’t. But don’t take it out on me, Rachel. Because that’s not fair.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I am. I find it so hard. My reactions are more like reflex than thought-out response.’ Her tears beat the familiar path to her pillowslip.

  Suddenly, James switched on the bedside light and reached for his dressing gown.

  Rachel sat up. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Wait here.’ He spoke as he left the room and she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  By the time he made his way back up, Rachel was agitated. He carried a pale-blue weekend bag with only one handle that she recognised as one she had thrown out some time ago. She wondered if he were packing to leave and felt the rise of panic in her gut at the prospect of him leaving her alone in this house of ghosts. Was this what it felt like for you when I left? She laid her hand flat on her stomach.

  James placed the bulky bag on the mattress and sat behind it. He wasn’t leaving. Instead, he dipped his hand into it and pulled out a handful of white envelopes, loose cards and folded letters. ‘I want you to read some of these. They helped me and I think they will help you.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’ She shook her head and pulled the duvet up to her chin, in the way Oscar used to when he too was trying to keep the monsters at bay.

  ‘Please, Rachel!’

  She shook her head again and sank down on the mattress with a bolt of unease firing through her very core. ‘I don’t want to,’ she whispered.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because.’

  ‘Because what?’ he pushed.

  ‘Because it makes it real! It makes it so real and I am afraid it will drag me back to that moment, that second when you were looking up at me from the galley and you had two mugs of coffee in your hands and—’

  She watched as he balled a fist and punched the leather bag, sending it flying on to the floor as the loose mail scattered where it fell. James stood and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  And just like that, she was once again back to sleeping alone.

  The two tiptoed around each other as they showered and dressed for the day ahead. They were courteous, but it was the civility of strangers. It cut her deeply and disturbed her psyche that they had come to this.

  Where did we go, James? How did we crumble so easily without resistance?

  She found the prospect of being in a church harder than she had imagined. She knew that some people – Cee-Cee included – took comfort from their faith and all that it might offer by way of the promise of reunion. But for her, anger – fanned by recent discord with James – was still crisp in her veins, and if there were a God, her question would be: What kind of God would take her little boy, smash her marriage and leave her feeling like this and why? Why?

  Even the journey there made her heart race; there was something about attending a funeral that she feared – worried that witnessing the act of finality might be more than she could handle. Her legs trembled and as James drove along the South Road she considered asking him to turn left into the Reefs’ car park, where they could sit out on the deck they loved, in a place studded with memories, high above the rocks, and remember Cee-Cee in their own way. But of course she didn’t.

  Today was not about her; it was about paying respects to the woman who had made their lives wonderful and whom Oscar had dearly loved and who had offered wise, wise words in her darkest hour. The woman who had taken up the reins and cared for James when he had needed it most.

  Rachel looked at the bend in the road that came up from Horseshoe Bay and pictured young Cee-Cee walking along the verge in her cotton dress with her hand inside Willard’s, feeling as if the whole wide world lay in her palm. This image alone was enough to make tears spring to her eyes.

  James parked on Church Road, opposite the low, white chapel of St Anne’s, which was simple and stunning. The sun glinted from the walls and it shone like a jewel against the backdrop of turquoise sky. Set on a slight hill with its graveyard snaking out towards the sea, with each plot immaculately tended, she thought it was the most perfect resting place for the woman who had spent every Sunday of her life worshipping here and who would forever rest in a piece of land within sight of the palm trees and the ocean of her island.

  The inside of the building was just as she had imagined it from Cee-Cee’s letters – cool and calming, with whitewashed walls and sweet-smelling cedar-wood pews. A high stained-glass window sat behind the altar, and candles flickered at either end of the sacred table. It was simple and uncluttered and yet no less atmospheric for that. Rachel could picture Grandma Sally in her floppy linen hat and Pastor Raymond standing at the front, preaching his messages of love and forgiveness, and she saw Cee-Cee stealing glimpses at Willard Templeton across the pews.

  Slow organ music was playing and when the choir, dressed in white, began to sway with a low hum of accompaniment, Rachel felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise. Their clear, sweet sound rose up and danced around the rafters, falling like heavenly dust to lie on her shoulders. She and James took seats at the back of the church and watched as family, friends and neighbours of Cee-Cee filed in, the men wearing suits and dark ties and the women in dresses and hats. The floral displays were simple, various white flowers threaded with full-headed blooms of brightly coloured purple and pink hibiscus that looked and smelled wonderful. Hibiscus blooms full of colour quite unlike the ones that had wept away their very shade for the life of a baby boy.

  James leaned over and whispered, ‘Are you okay?’

  She nodded her response, grateful for his attention and aware that she was crying with her eyes fixed on the altar. The priest in long white robes and with his hands pressed together in prayer walked in, and the music changed tempo to a more sombre piece. The choir sang loudly as Cee-Cee’s pale wood coffin was brought in on the shoulders of six men, followed by a small troupe of women. All were crying, but none as loudly as a big-boned woman who walked along behind; she made more noise than all the others put together. She clutched her own single hibiscus bloom and swiped it under her nose, as if it were smelling salts. Rachel watched, fascinated, drawn to the bent old man who walked by the woman’s side, patting her on the back and whispering, ‘There, there, Clara. There, there. Time will heal. Time will heal.’

  Rachel stared at the two who had shaped her friend’s life, who had stolen her happiness and her chance of a family. She heard Cee-Cee’s voice in her ear.

  ‘My Clara?’ I knew she was the greater loss, the one whose betrayal hurt me more because she was my best friend . . .

  She took comfort from Jame
s standing so close and found it hard to listen to much of what was being said; her eyes were fixed on the narrow box that sat on the trestle by the altar, decked with white oleander and more bright-toned hibiscus.

  Bones. Just bones.

  Her mind inevitably wandered to the matter of death, and in her head, quite clearly, she heard Cee-Cee’s voice, warm and calming as it always had been: I am sad; sadder than sad and I won’t ever stop. Not till I see him again in heaven. Because that is what I believe – that when you get to heaven, you get to gaze upon the thing you loved the most . . .

  I wish I believed that, Cee-Cee. I wish I believed in your God who could help me make sense of this nightmare in which I live. I wish I thought that one day I might go to a place called heaven and find my boy waiting for me. Because if I believed those things, I might not mind waking up every day. I might not still dream on occasion of jumping from a great height, knowing that peace awaits me at the bottom . . .

  Only when James reached over and held her hand tightly did she realise that violent, gulping sobs had left her body, drawn from a place beyond her consciousness.

  The service drew to a close and the family and loved ones made their way out to the churchyard. Rachel blinked as her eyes adjusted to the bright, blue day, in contrast to the dark interior of St Anne’s. She was loitering on the dusty path of the graveyard when Clara and Willard walked out of the church, part of the wider crowd that moved slowly, and came to a standstill in front of her.

  Rachel swallowed the many, many things she wanted to say to the woman whose image she had held in her mind for so long. This old lady, however, with tears streaking her skin, bore very little resemblance to the flighty, loud young thing that she had imagined.

  Rachel smiled and caught her eye. ‘I was Cee-Cee’s friend,’ she began.

  Clara looked at her. ‘She was my friend too,’ she managed through a mouth contorted with sadness. Rachel saw Willard reach for her hand.