The Boy in the Photo

by Nicole Trope

‘We’re going to take it one day at a time. We’re going to get him some help and just take it one day at a time.’

  Megan nods. Michael releases her, and five minutes later he and Evie are gone, Evie strapped tightly into the jogging pram, tucked up under a blanket against the late-afternoon chill.

  She finds Daniel sitting in his bedroom on his new wooden bed. The room is now overfilled with stuff, after he unwrapped all of his presents from the last six years with an almost amused detachment.

  ‘So much stuff,’ he’d said when he was done, seemingly unable to take in the piles of books and art supplies, toys and games.

  ‘It is but you don’t have to keep it all. You can give it away to someone younger or to charity,’ Megan had told him.

  ‘No, no!’ he’d said. ‘They’re mine, it’s mine.’

  ‘It’s yours,’ Megan had repeated, reassuring him, her heart breaking for him. How long since he’s had something that’s just his except for the useless mobile phone and the home-made knife we took away?

  She doesn’t like to think about the knife. ‘He was living fairly rough,’ Michael has said, ‘it’s the kind of thing boys would have done years ago. We had to take it away but I don’t think it’s that big a deal.’

  His eyes are fixed on the screen of his PlayStation, thumbs moving furiously. She can see the mobile phone wedged into the pocket of his jeans.

  She thinks about how to address what has just happened but finds herself struggling for a way to begin. She doesn’t want to upset him any more than he already has been. He seems calm now and she would like him to remain that way.

  ‘Hey, sweetheart,’ she says softly. He doesn’t look at her. ‘I want to talk to you about what’s going to happen tomorrow when we go to school,’ she continues.

  ‘Okay,’ he says but he doesn’t look away from his game.

  ‘Can you put that down, please?’

  He ignores her.

  ‘I mean it, Daniel. Put it down and look at me or I’ll take it away.’ She hates that her tone has changed, that she has had to raise her voice at him.

  He throws the game onto his bed. ‘Fuck, fine.’

  Greg’s words again. Greg’s expression.

  ‘I don’t want to hear that word again,’ she says and then she sighs. She needs to be patient with him. ‘Tomorrow we’ll be going to your new school. You’re not going to do anything there except take some tests so they can see what year you belong in, and I’ll be with you the whole time.’

  He pulls the phone out of his pocket, stroking the screen with his thumb. He’s nervous about tomorrow. The stroking of the phone is the clearest indication of how he’s feeling.

  She remembers him at three when they talked about him starting his first day of preschool. He had used Billy Blanket to comfort himself, winding and unwinding the blanket around his hand.

  ‘But how long will I go there?’ he’d asked at the time.

  ‘Just a few hours, Daniel, but it’ll be fun. Mrs Desmond is going to take care of you, and you like her – you had such fun when you went there last week to play.’

  ‘But when can I come home again?’

  ‘I will fetch you at two o’clock. I will fetch you every day at two o’clock until you’re happy to stay until three o’clock.’

  ‘And what will I eat?’

  ‘I will pack you your lunch – all your favourite things in your Thomas the Tank Engine lunch box that we bought.’

  Round and round his hand the Billy Blanket went.

  Back and forth across the screen of the mobile phone his thumb now goes.

  You’re still my boy. Still the same sensitive little boy.

  ‘So, sweetheart – are you okay with that?’ she asks softly.

  ‘Does it matter how I feel?’ He stares at the black screen of his phone and Megan resists the urge to grab it away from him.

  ‘Of course it matters, Daniel. You need to go to school, that’s the law, but if you don’t like the school maybe we can look at another one. We could wait if you don’t feel ready.’

  ‘You won’t wait and you won’t care if I hate the stupid school you’ve picked.’ His voice is low, menacing, and he still doesn’t look at her.

  ‘I’ve just said I would.’

  ‘He said you always did that, said you would do something and then backed away. He said you told him you would have another baby but then you didn’t want to and that you said you loved him but then you didn’t. He said you told him you wanted to save your marriage but then you just filed for divorce.’

  How do I answer this?

  ‘Daniel, what happens between two people when they’re married is something only they understand. I did want another baby but…’ It was him who didn’t want another child, and why would he have told you this anyway? What was he trying to accomplish? She sighs. ‘I know that the divorce upset your dad but it was the best thing for both of us.’

  ‘It wasn’t the best thing for me.’

  ‘I know, baby, I know, but I didn’t know he was going to take you. I didn’t know what would happen.’

  He shoves the phone back into his pocket.

  Look at me. Please just look at me.

  ‘I didn’t know, Daniel, I just didn’t know he was going to take you from me, and I have spent the last six years blaming myself.’

  ‘Of course you knew.’ The words are spat at Megan and finally he looks directly at her, locking eyes with her, holding her gaze.

  ‘How could I have known, Daniel?’

  ‘You knew because you told him.’

  ‘Told him what?’

  ‘You told him to take me.’

  Later she will wish she had reacted calmly, that she had swallowed her fury and explained that this was not the truth, but the afternoon had worn her down. Her face heats up and she explodes, her voice escalating in decibels with each thing she says. ‘Why would I have said that, Daniel? Why would I ever have said something so awful and stupid? Who says something like that? How could you have ever believed that of me?’

  ‘He told me you asked him to take me away because you were tired of taking care of me, because I made a mess and I didn’t listen, because you stopped loving me like you stopped loving him!’ he screams back, and then shockingly, horrifyingly, he leaps off the bed and shoves her backwards, making her stumble. She steps backwards out of his bedroom.

  ‘I hate you,’ he growls. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.’

  ‘D-Daniel,’ she stutters, too astonished to do anything else.

  He steps forward and slams his bedroom door so hard it trembles in its frame.

  When Michael returns with Evie, Megan is sitting on the sofa, shredding a damp tissue to pieces.

  ‘What happened, what happened?’ he asks, panic in his voice.

  Megan sobs her way through an explanation and Michael sits down next to her and grabs her hand. ‘It’s okay, it’s going to be okay. It was a difficult afternoon. I think we should just leave him alone for a bit. He doesn’t know how or what to feel. He shouldn’t have shoved you, and we will talk to him about that, but don’t confront him now. Let him cool off.’

  ‘It felt… it felt just like it used to feel when Greg got angry. I don’t know what to do, Michael. It’s like he isn’t even my son.’

  Michael sighs, ‘I got an email while I was out. It’s the results of the DNA test you did.’

  ‘The results of the DNA test? Oh yes of course,’ says Megan.

  ‘Do you want to know… I mean we know… you know but…’

  Megan drops her head into her hands. Do I want to know? What if? What if? She looks up at Michael, ‘What does it say?’

  Michael opens up the email, scans the information quickly. ‘You’re a match,’ he says softly.

  ‘We’re a match,’ she says. She had known this would be the case because of course he’s her son. She nods her head, accepting this wonderful news. She doesn’t even want to think about the small part of her, the very small part of her that ex
pected a different result.

  ‘Just give him some space. I think he needs a little quiet time. I’m sure he’s upset about what he’s done. I say we get on with dinner and I will speak to him in the morning.’

  ‘Okay… but, Michael, it was so scary, he was so scary. I’m afraid of him. I think I’m afraid of my own son.’ My own son, my son.

  At two o’clock in the morning Megan gives up on sleep, deciding to make herself a cup of herbal tea.

  As she makes her way down the stairs, she hears a sound coming from the kitchen, a soft grunting noise. She stops and turns to look back to her bedroom, wanting to dash upstairs and wake Michael. The sound of something running across the roof makes her jump. Just a possum, calm down.

  In the kitchen, Daniel is sitting at the counter. He has the leftover cake from afternoon tea in front of him and he is tearing into it with both hands, grunting as he eats, making him seem more animal than boy.

  ‘Daniel,’ she gasps. He immediately stops and stares blankly at her. Megan freezes. ‘Um… if you wanted cake… you can eat it… you just should have used a plate.’

  ‘Sorry,’ he says, his hands curled into claws, bits of cake dropping onto the counter.

  ‘I think it’s time to go back to bed now,’ she says and Daniel nods at her. She grabs a cloth and wipes his hands while he stares at her.

  ‘When I was six, you made me a birthday cake. It was chocolate and white and it had superheroes on top of it. I like superheroes.’ A smile plays on his lips and she can’t help smiling back at the obvious happiness the memory brings him.

  She finishes cleaning his hands. ‘I know you like superheroes, darling. Spiderman was your favourite because he could climb walls.’

  ‘And swing from webs,’ he says, his voice soft.

  ‘And swing from webs,’ she agrees. ‘But now it’s time for sleep. Can you go back to your bedroom and go to sleep?’

  ‘Back to sleep,’ he says and he leaves the kitchen.

  Back in bed, too shaken to think about making herself some tea, she curls herself around Michael, trying to get some comfort from his warmth and bulk. She watches the alarm clock on his bedside table as the numbers turn over and the night fades into day.

  The terrible thought that Greg may have used food as a punishment or a reward with Daniel keeps her anxious and awake. He is thin but not overly so, and yet he treats every mealtime as though it might be his last.

  ‘What kind of things did you eat when you lived with… with Dad?’ she had asked him a few days after he arrived home.

  ‘Whatever we could afford, sometimes nothing,’ he had replied.

  It floors Megan that Greg’s hatred of her ran so deep that he would make not only his son suffer but himself as well.

  Finally, as dawn breaks, she drifts into a light doze, only to hear Evie’s cries twenty minutes later. She stumbles out of bed, exhausted and despairing.

  It shouldn’t be this hard. Surely it shouldn’t be this hard.

  Fifteen

  Eight days since Daniel’s return

  At the local primary school Megan watches anxiously from the back of a classroom as Daniel works his way through English questions and a reading worksheet. The teacher sitting with him is the special needs teacher. Megan has opted to place Daniel in the final year of primary school. Sending him to high school feels like it might be too much for him. She wants a warmer, more nurturing environment.

  ‘Not that we think he has special needs,’ the principal, Mr Gordon, has assured her, ‘it’s just that Mel is best placed to determine which class he should go into so we can start him in the next few days.’

  The primary school closest to Megan’s house is a sprawling campus of low buildings surrounding a large playground filled with climbing frames and swings and slides. It’s a large school and Megan had debated with herself over whether or not to send Daniel here or to try and manage the fees at one of the smaller private schools where he might get more attention and understanding.

  ‘It’s not a problem, we can make it work,’ Michael had assured her, ‘but maybe start with the local primary school and we’ll go private for high school.’ Megan had heard the word ‘we’, feeling the grateful relief once again that she had a partner to navigate her life with.

  ‘What if he’s really unhappy?’

  ‘Then we’ll deal with that then, Megs. He’s not exactly jumping for joy now, is he?’

  ‘No,’ she’d agreed, ‘no, he’s not.’ And then because she couldn’t help herself, she had allowed herself a rueful laugh.

  Mr Gordon had immediately put her mind at rest when she had called to make an appointment.

  ‘We have an excellent on-site psychologist, and his teachers will be fully briefed as to the situation.’

  ‘I don’t want it to be discussed too much,’ Megan had said. ‘I want him to be able to get back to normal life as soon as possible.’

  ‘Of course you do. It will only be discussed in the context of alerting his teachers to give him a little extra attention if he needs it. I don’t think there is any need to have the whole story travelling around the school community. I don’t want you to concern yourself at all, Mrs Kade. We are very adept at dealing with children from difficult family situations.’

  Megan had thought that Mr Gordon probably had little idea of how difficult a situation this was. Even as Daniel’s mother, she cannot quite believe what has happened.

  Mel, the special needs teacher, is an overweight woman who has to sit back frequently to take a deep breath before she continues to speak again. In the hour that Megan has been sitting at the back of the classroom, Daniel has looked directly at the woman just twice. He has instead concentrated on looking just behind her, on looking at the paper in front of her and on staring at his mobile phone.

  ‘Perhaps you can leave that with your mum,’ Mel had said kindly, gesturing to his phone.

  ‘No,’ he’d replied. He hadn’t explained; he’d simply refused. Megan had lifted her shoulders in a silent shrug at Mel, who’d nodded her head as though she understood.

  Megan can hear him sounding out more complicated words. His halting efforts break her heart. In his kindergarten year he was at the top of the class, and when he went into year one Megan had been called in to talk about allowing him to skip a year. She hadn’t thought it was a good idea, and now, as she listens to him struggle, she feels her body constricted by fury. What on earth had Greg been doing with him? How could he not have sent him to school? What did Daniel do all day while he was at work? She has so many questions she would like to ask him, but she knows that everything she wants to know will have to wait. He cannot even tell her what he wants for breakfast without being prompted. They have a long way to go.

  This morning, when she was changing Evie for the day, she had heard Michael speaking to Daniel in his room. She had taken her time in Evie’s room, listening to the conversation.

  ‘Are you sure you want me to be the one to speak to him, Megs? It might make things worse. I’m not his father,’ Michael had said when she’d asked him to speak to Daniel.

  ‘I know but… I hope that one day… I just don’t think he’ll listen to me. He’s so angry with me, and every time he looks at me, I can see all the rubbish Greg said about me going around in his head. If he gets upset you can back off, but give it a try, please.’

  ‘Not acceptable,’ she’d heard Michael say, followed by a sullen, ‘Sorry,’ from Daniel.

  When she’d heard Michael leave the room, she’d taken Evie downstairs quickly, in case Daniel was with him. She hadn’t wanted him to think she’d been listening in.

  ‘I’ve had a chat,’ Michael had told her when he found her in the kitchen. ‘He knows he’s not allowed to lay hands on you or anyone, not ever. I’ve asked him to apologise but if he doesn’t, maybe just leave it. And why don’t you look through those names of psychologists I gave you again? We need to get this sorted out.’

  It all feels like too much. Megan is hopeful th
at school will be a steadying influence on Daniel, but as she listens to him read she is not so sure.

  She worries that Mel will suggest he move down a year or two. She knows that he will feel humiliated by this. He is too tall to be in the years below. He should be halfway through his first year of high school. He will tower over his classmates, and she knows that he will be an easy target for bullies. He will hate it. What child wouldn’t? She drags her mind back to the classroom and watches him nod as Mel speaks quietly to him.

  Finally, Mel stands up and gives Daniel a smile. ‘We’re done for now, young man. I can see you’re going to do really well in this class.’

  He looks down at his shoes.

  ‘Say thank you to Mel,’ says Megan.

  He lifts his head and roams his eyes up and down Mel’s body. ‘Thank… you… Mel,’ he spits. Megan would like to tell the teacher that this is more than she received this morning from her son.

  She watches the teacher blush. ‘Go wait for me outside, Daniel,’ she says, failing to conceal her irritation.

  ‘I’m sorry about him,’ she says when he has left. ‘I don’t know why he’s… Well, you know the history, I’m sure.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Mel, patting her tight blonde curls into place even though her hair hasn’t moved an inch. ‘I’m sure things will improve.’

  ‘Yes, thank… thank you for doing this, I mean for being so patient.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ says Mel, and she picks her things up off the desk and lumbers towards the classroom door. As she goes to open it, she stops and turns around. ‘He’s very clever,’ she says.

  ‘Really? I mean… he was when he was little, but I was listening to him and I’m sure most of the kids in this year can read better than that. I don’t think he’s been to school.’

  ‘Mrs Kade, can I tell you something?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please don’t say anything to Principal Gordon because I’m only speaking to you as a mother, and I know he wouldn’t want me to say anything to you until we have done a little more assessment, but I feel you should know this…’