The Boy in the Photo

by Nicole Trope

  This is supposed to get easier. But it only gets worse. Sometimes a terrible, stray thought makes itself known: ‘if he had died’. If he had died, there would be no chance of him coming back. She would not do a double-take every time she saw a little boy with brown curly hair. She would not google her ex-husband’s name and her son’s name every day. She would not still be posting updates on her blog and Facebook. She would had to have found a way to move forward or die. If he had died, she is sure she would have had no choice except to die too, but he is still alive, still somewhere out in the world growing up without her. So she’s stuck here in this horrific limbo.

  On Wednesday afternoons, she has an art class filled with teenage girls. Last week they were working on a portrait of a family member, and one girl was drawing her little brother. ‘He’s beautiful,’ Megan had told her when she’d looked at the picture of him. He had fine blond hair and bright blue eyes.

  ‘He looks cute but he’s a complete pain in the arse. You wouldn’t believe how difficult a nine-year-old can be,’ the girl had replied.

  Megan had opened her mouth to tell her that her own son was nine years old, and then she had realised that the girl had no idea Megan had a child. And even worse than this routinely stunning revelation that floored her each time she had it was the fact that she had no experience with a nine-year-old boy at all.

  Megan feels the sun on her face as she runs. She can smell the fruity, soft fragrance of honeysuckle everywhere she runs. It’s the warmest autumn ever recorded and Megan is enjoying the fact that the early mornings aren’t too cold yet.

  She is getting tired now, but not tired enough. She needs to force her body to feel so depleted that all she can think about is a hot shower and some rest, sending her into oblivion. She looks left as she runs past a house where she can hear a baby crying. I will never hold my baby again, she thinks.

  Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.

  Today she has her class from the retirement village. Right now, they’re working on landscapes, and in class last week, Megan had stood behind a woman named Jean, who was painting a little boy just off to the side of the picture. ‘Perhaps save the little boy for when we do portraits,’ Megan had said.

  ‘Oh no, my dear,’ Jean had replied. ‘That’s my little Raymond. He died when he was five years old and he’s in every picture I ever do,’ and then she’d smiled at Megan.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she’d said, and she could feel the tears coming. How are you still here? How are you able to get up every day and continue living?

  ‘Now don’t you worry yourself, love,’ Jean had said, touching her arm. ‘It was many, many years ago. I miss him still but time has made it easier to bear.’

  Megan doesn’t know if this will ever be possible for her. She had bitten down on her lip to stop herself from telling Jean about Daniel. She prefers the art studio to be a place where she is just Megan the teacher, not Megan the mother whose ex-husband stole her son. There is an expression her mother has worn for the last three years. It is pity and concern and love all mixed together, and sometimes Megan wants to yell at Susanna to stop looking at her like that. She wants Connor and James to stop looking at her like that as well. She would like to have just one conversation where they don’t ask her how she is in the anxious tone they have all taken to using with her. It’s not going to happen. She is never going to be fine.

  Megan feels her legs burn as she pushes herself up a hill. At the top she turns around. It is time to go home. Tomorrow she will spend the day with Lucy, who at five is tall and beautiful. Spending the day with her five-year-old niece makes Megan feel like a mother again.

  ‘You’re still a mother,’ Susanna had said when Megan had told her this.

  ‘Are you still a mother if you have no child?’

  ‘He is somewhere in the world, Megan, and once you’ve had a child, you’re a mother forever. That cannot be taken from you.’

  Megan pushes herself into a final sprint to her building. The streets are filling up with traffic, other runners and cyclists. The day has begun.

  In her flat Megan returns her missed calls. She had felt her phone buzz over and over as she ran, despite the early hour.

  She thanks her brother and James for thinking of her but ends the call quickly.

  She calls her mother and confirms where they will meet for breakfast.

  ‘How are you?’ asks Susanna.

  Megan laughs. ‘I’ll see you in a bit, Mum.’

  The truth is she has no idea how she is. She is functioning so she must be relatively okay, but that is only because she is creating an ever-increasing emotional distance between herself and the world. She runs instead of shedding tears or getting angry.

  As she is getting ready to leave for breakfast, her phone rings again. ‘Hello,’ she says, impatient to be out the door.

  ‘Hi, Megan, it’s Detective Michael Kade, just checking in, no actual news from our side.’

  Megan laughs. Despite the day, she laughs. ‘I like the way you get that said so quickly I don’t even have time to ask the question.’

  ‘Yeah, I, well… I didn’t want to let you down but I did want to see how you were doing.’

  ‘I’m going to breakfast with my mother and lunch with my friend Olivia, and then after work, I’m going to watch television and try with all my might to pretend that today is not today.’

  ‘That sounds like a good way to get through. Whatever works for you is a good way to get through the day. The case is still active, just so you know.’

  ‘I know,’ Megan says and then there is silence. They listen to each other breathe, and even though Megan opens her mouth to say goodbye and thank you, those aren’t the words that come out. Instead she asks something she has wanted to ask someone for months: ‘Every night I go into his bedroom and I say goodnight to him. Is that weird?’

  ‘No, it’s not weird.’

  ‘Last week I went in there to clean and I noticed a poster had fallen off the wall. It was a poster of Cookie Monster and I went to put it back up, and then I thought that a nine-year-old boy probably wouldn’t have a poster of Cookie Monster on his wall. I think I cried for an hour after that, and I’d managed to not cry for months.’ The words have tripped out without Megan thinking. She has not wanted to share this with anyone in her family, but she has wanted to tell someone. Michael Kade will have to do.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Megan. I’m so deeply sorry that we have not managed to find your son for you.’

  ‘Do you have kids?’

  ‘No, I was married for a few years but she didn’t want children and I did. In the end it was easier to go our separate ways.’

  Megan feels like they have stumbled into a real conversation, and she is not sure how she feels about it. ‘I have to go,’ she mumbles. ‘I’m going to be late for breakfast.’

  ‘Okay, I hope the day is peaceful.’

  ‘Thanks…’

  ‘Oh, Megan…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What are you going to watch on television?’

  They speak for another ten minutes, discussing television programmes they like and books they’ve enjoyed reading.

  ‘Can we maybe meet for coffee?’ he finally asks.

  ‘I… no… no, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Okay, that’s okay…’

  ‘But, Detective Kade—’

  ‘Michael, please.’

  ‘Michael…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks so much for calling.’

  ‘My pleasure, Megan, my pleasure.’

  Twenty-Four

  Daniel – nine years old

  Daniel watches his father sand back the old piece of timber that he says he’s going to use to make a new bookcase for his room.

  ‘Feel this,’ he says, and Daniel runs his hand along the patch he’s just finished.

  ‘Feels good,’ he says.

  ‘What’s up, mate? You’re a bit quiet today?’ his father says.

 
; Daniel shakes his head a little. His dad shrugs his shoulders and goes back to sanding the wood.

  Daniel would like to tell him what’s wrong but he knows that his dad doesn’t want to hear that anything is wrong. He never does. He gets angry if Daniel says something is wrong. He yells and yells about how ungrateful Daniel is and how he’s given up everything for him, to save him. And once, once he shoved Daniel because he got so mad. He said sorry afterwards, he said sorry a lot. He doesn’t mean to get so angry; he can’t help it because he loves Daniel so much and he wants to keep him safe.

  Daniel doesn’t like his new bedroom. It smells weird and even though this house is better than the shitty flat they were in before, he doesn’t know why they have to keep moving. He understands about Mum wanting to find him and give him to a foster family, although sometimes he wonders why, if she doesn’t want him, she cares if he’s with Dad at all.

  ‘She just wants to punish me, Daniel,’ Dad says when he asks this question. ‘It’s all about hurting me and I don’t like to say it but hurting you as well.’

  Daniel sometimes finds it hard to understand this about Mum. She had never acted like she didn’t like him; sometimes she got angry, sometimes she shouted, but she always told him she loved him, she told him all the time.

  He tries not to think about Mum and about Nana and Pop and Connor and James and Lucy. He wonders what Lucy looks like now that she’s bigger. Sometimes he forgets a little bit what his mum looks like and that makes him want to cry because even if she doesn’t love him, he can’t stop loving her, and he’s really trying to stop.

  Daniel goes back to his small, musty bedroom and lies on the bed with the weird pink sheets. This town is called Balnarring and it’s in Victoria. It’s an hour away from Melbourne, and Melbourne is a twelve-hour drive to Sydney. It’s much shorter by aeroplane. He wonders how long it would take to walk to Sydney. If he left today, how long would it take?

  He turns over on his bed and looks at the wall. If Mum and the police really wanted him back – even to just put him into foster care – she would have looked for him, wouldn’t she? There would have been something on the news or on the computer. He’s allowed to use the computer now, but only when Dad is watching him and only for a short time at night to do research; that’s how he knows how far away from Sydney he is. He had looked that up when Dad went to the bathroom. He also tried to look up his name, but all the results about him were blocked. He’s not sure what that means, but maybe it means that there are no results about him because no one cares where he is?

  Dad takes the computer with him when he leaves the house. He sleeps with it next to him as well. Daniel knows that his Mum has Facebook. If he could get onto the computer without Dad watching him, maybe he could find her Facebook page. If he could find his mother on the internet, he would ask her why she didn’t want him, just ask.

  ‘Daniel, what are you doing in there?’ his dad calls.

  ‘Nothing,’ he says. Dad is always checking on him, always asking him what he’s doing. Dad never leaves him alone.

  Twenty-Five

  Sixteen days since Daniel’s return

  Megan opens her eyes to Evie babbling in her cot. It’s 6 a.m. and the house is cold. She stretches, wondering how long her daughter will be happy in her cot. She looks over at the monitor. Evie is sitting up, holding her arm through the bars. Daniel is on the floor next to her, showing her his old mobile phone. Megan sits up quickly and grabs the monitor. It’s still dark in Evie’s room so she can’t see exactly what Daniel is showing her but it can only be pictures of him and Greg. She watches for a minute as he pushes buttons on the phone and then turns the screen around to show Evie, who keeps trying to reach for it.

  ‘Da, da, da, da!’ Evie finally shouts, frustrated.

  Megan puts the monitor down to go and get her. She pushes her feet into slippers and wraps herself in her warm gown, thinking that she will compliment Daniel on his attempts to bond with his sister. As she goes to leave the room, she hears him speak over the monitor. ‘That’s why some people shouldn’t be parents, Evie,’ he says.

  She shakes her head. He didn’t just say that, did he? When she gets to her daughter’s room he’s not there. She looks into his room to see him curled up in bed, his eyes closed as though he has yet to wake up.

  She opens her mouth to say something, to tell him that she knows he’s awake, but then she simply closes the door quietly. Maybe she misheard? She’s starting to feel a little crazy.

  That afternoon she stands anxiously at the school gates and waits for Daniel to come out. She stands alone. He’s only been at school for a week and Megan has been too consumed with how he is doing to relax enough to even smile at another mother. She watches students stream past her, identifying the ones she thinks may also be in Daniel’s year. She finds herself holding her breath as she waits for Daniel to appear, unable to stop a creeping fear from eating away at her. She cannot prevent the flashbacks that haunt her every afternoon, to the day he disappeared, to how she stood calm and blithely unconcerned when he failed to appear. Each time he appears, she feels herself let go of the breath she is holding. Greg may be gone but she wonders if the idea that her son will not be there will ever leave her. He has a new mobile phone now with a location app that she’s told him he always has to keep turned on, but he leaves it at home most days. Only the old phone goes everywhere with him, as though he is taking Greg along with him, keeping his images and memories close.

  She finally spots him on his way out of the school. His head is down and his hands are jammed in his pockets, and Megan experiences a twinge of unease at the idea that he may have had a bad day. A boy who looks about his age runs past him and slaps him on the back, making Megan flinch, but then he calls, ‘Bye, Daniel – friend me on Skype so we can talk.’

  Daniel’s head shoots up and he grins back. ‘See you, Amit, I will.’ The smile remains on his face until he catches sight of Megan, and then his head drops again and his hands slide back into his pockets.

  So, it’s only me who makes him unhappy, thinks Megan, and she feels self-pitying tears threaten to fall. She swipes quickly at her face.

  She has not brought up the picture on his phone with him again or his denial that it even existed. She has not asked him about being in Evie’s room either, and every now and again it occurs to her that she is avoiding asking him questions she doesn’t want the answers to. Did Dad hit you, Daniel? What are you saying to Evie? Did you light a fire? Did someone who likes fires help you? She is waiting until his appointment with Eliza, hoping that the therapist will have some insight, that she will be able to find the answers to all these questions.

  In the meantime, she watches her son all the time, waiting for him to relinquish his phone for even a minute so she can look through the pictures, but so far, he takes it with him everywhere, even into the bathroom. She knows that she and Michael can force him to give it to them, but she fears that any strides they are making with him would be set back.

  ‘Do you have any homework?’ she asks once they are in the car.

  He doesn’t reply.

  ‘Daniel, do you have any homework?’ she repeats, thinking with agony that if this had been six years ago, she would have said, ‘Earth to Daniel, can you hear me, Daniel?’ and he would have responded, ‘Daniel to Mum, reading you loud and clear.’

  ‘Yes,’ he finally says. ‘I have to do a project on my family. I have to trace my relatives back to when they first arrived in Australia. I have to talk about the immigrant or the convict experience. I have to speak to Nana and Pop and then I have to call Granny Audrey and Grandpa William. Do you have their number in England?’

  Megan feels her voice catch in her throat. Such a simple question and yet she has a feeling her answer will determine how the rest of today or this week will play out with her son.

  ‘I think I have their number,’ she says to him, ‘but I don’t know if you should contact them. I am sure they are very, very sad about Dad.’
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  ‘Why?’ asks Daniel.

  She sighs. It’s such a strange question, as though he cannot understand his grandparents’ grief over the death of their son.

  Eliza has told her, ‘We all grieve in our own ways, Megan. You cannot assume that what is or would be right for you is right for him. He’s processing his grief. It will take time. He is protecting himself by not allowing himself to feel the full force of this loss. He will eventually have to deal with it but it will have to be on his own terms.’

  Megan is sick of being told that everything will take time. She waited for six years’ worth of time to have her son back. And she worries, she worries all the time since his interview with Detective Wardell that his inability to fully express how he feels is because he’s concealing something more terrible than she can imagine. Something else she will discuss with Eliza; something else that the psychologist may dismiss. At least, she hopes this will be the case.

  ‘I think Granny Audrey and Grandpa William would be sad because they can never see Dad again because he died in the fire,’ she says gently.

  ‘I know that,’ spits Daniel.

  ‘So, then you understand why they would be sad.’

  ‘I don’t think they feel sad. I think they’re angry,’ says Daniel.

  ‘Angry?’

  ‘Yeah, I think they must be really mad at you.’

  ‘At me? Why?’ Megan turns to look at Daniel while she waits for the garage door to open.

  Daniel smiles at her. ‘Because if it hadn’t been for you, Dad wouldn’t have burned in the fire. This all happened because of you. Just like the divorce, just like him having to take me to keep me safe, just like us running out of money. It’s all your fault.’

  Megan shakes her head and pulls into the garage.

  ‘And do you know what?’ he asks.

  ‘What?’ she replies, feeling her skin grow cold.