My ex-husband pulled his lips into a little purse-shaped gathering.
‘Hush, Poppy Lee darling,’ he said softly. ‘I must consider Rosemary’s feelings in this. She is his mother.’
‘Was,’ I murmur and walk away. ‘Only was his mother.’
So as my ex-husband agreed to the short simple ceremony, his wife interpreted it to mean that he had lost some kind of battle to me. She was seeing me as the desolate victor in this whole process because I had been able to win in the small matter of the length of the funeral service.
He must have left some enduring trace, surely, even though it may be invisible to human eyes. There must be a part of Benji somewhere that I can keep for my own, that cannot be taken from me by people whose aim is to justify taking him away from me seeing as he could not bear to live in this world.
The ceremony would be short. No matter how long and torturous it could have been it would never have expressed my love for my son, gone before he had really lived.
Now I must wait until my turn. I must survive long enough to wait for my break with this life, hoping meanwhile to be only a spectator in this world’s doings, not a participant. My will to contribute to life is gone from me while I wait to try to figure out how the world’s logic works.
With a paralyzing pain that I have never felt before, I have found out what to expect from the rest of my existence. Having lost the courage of my youth, the audacity of my immortality, I cringe before Benji, he who was young, exposed and unprotected, too easily destroyed. If only I could have that as much conviction as he had.
On the day of his funeral the Senior examinations results were published in the newspaper. Still in a state of suspended shock, nobody cared to look.
The church is filled with young people from his school, disbelief and horror written on their young and beardless faces as they file out of the church behind the coffin towards the hearse. As the pallbearers gently place the coffin into the back of the hearse, Benji’s mate, Shane, shuffles up to the rear door of the vehicle and places a bunch of sweet-smelling lavender on the gleaming cedar. Shane, staggering from exhaustion, pauses briefly beside the coffin, staring at the family wreath of lilies and roses.
‘Go to Hell, Benji,’ he murmurs as he wipes the back of his hand across his eyes, his features thickened by his grief as he shivers with his sense of betrayal. The sensitivity of powerless youth spoken so vividly in their own particular brand of language, the depth of feeling expressed so poignantly.
‘Go to Hell, you bloody coward. Shitty coward.’
I look at Shane with a swift surge of pure, unadulterated dislike. He is still alive while my precious son is not.
We always believe we will live forever. While others fade and fall away we will overcome while they sink into death, descend into oblivion, but we will not. In the derangement of grief we cling to this.
I thought I knew what to expect from Life. It was not this, but somehow I always half-anticipated it, even scheduled it, mentally penciled it in for a moment of particular vulnerability, factored for an expected, unexpected death at a subconscious level. I sought and failed to protect Benji from afar, helpless to control his fate. Now I must survive expressly for the purpose of waiting until it’s my turn. How cruel and useless is that?
The years of burying my sadness, my helplessness under silence have left me with nothing but remorse and ugly dreams of falling, dreams I might have expected, of darkness and shadows and being alone in the midst of a crowd even within my extended family.
Bright promise has gone out of my mornings, taken by the worst thing that could happen to me while I live with my ancient scars, the angel of death my only companion.
My son, my son, would that I had died for thee.
14. The One Night Thand
This was his weekend for access to the boy, her boy, fourteen year old Michael, whom she had persuaded again to participate in access visits with his father after a gap of some years. Quiet, peaceful years, free of the tussle of sending Michael off to stay with him, of settling Michael down when he came home again. Often he was settled just in time to send him off for the weekend on the next access visit.
After bitter complaints and many, many tears, the seven-year-old boy had blankly refused to participate in any further visits to his father and stepmother. The court had upheld his plea as being in the child’s best interests. Peg had known her first years of peace since meeting Mitch at seventeen and being bowed under for thirteen years.
Late-blooming roses fluttered and swayed in the cool autumn breeze, sending out their incense to encircle Peg. Bright birds dipped circled, trilled. The autumn sunshine glistened, gleamed; the breeze whispered, curled the leaves. They rustled, golden brown, drifted to the earth at her feet. Peg didn’t care. She didn’t even see. Mute, wooden, hollow Peg. Dumb, broken, fractured.
Her boy had started to grow up. Twelve one day, thirteen the next, fourteen before you could turn around to watch him grow. Boys need a father if one is available for activities and to go places an adolescent boy doesn’t feel inclined to go with his mother; fishing, camping. Pastimes Mitchell enjoyed and Peg had never experienced, experiences Michael wanted, needed to do, express wishes on her son’s behalf.
Peg had taken hers and Michael’s lives in her hands and invited Mitch to begin again with their son with many hopes for improvement in her ex-husband’s behavior towards the boy. With Mitch’s promises to be reasonable still ringing in her ears, Peg tried to be positive about access to the child by the man she had long disliked and mistrusted.
Leaden, brittle Peg, numb Peg, left standing staring at the spot where Mitch had driven away from her with Michael. Damaged. Crushed. Wounded. Ants crawling through blue couch grass, dusty pebbles dislocated by the wheels of Mitch’s vehicle. Michael’s footprint in the loose dirt of the car track was all she saw. Wooden, numb Peg. Mute, lacerated, shattered, broken.
He had arrived straight after lunch and had taken the boy away. Her boy whom she had treasured and brought up to believe that life was not all about men’s superiority over women. Or about giving others the right to have an opinion even if it differed from one’s own, about treating others as if they had a genuine right to inherit the earth and were not simply placed here as an adjunct to one’s ego.
She looked for a long while at the place where Mitch’s pickup had been parked for the brief interval while he collected Michael and his gear, remembering the man’s short temper, his rude and crude behavior displayed when it suited him, the way he found petty faults with people, his mile-wide smile when he came for their son, the peace she and the boy had found while Mitch was living in absentia, the folly of allowing him into their lives again.
The die was cast and she could only see how the new arrangement played out.
Michael was to play in a football match at 3p.m. Peg usually drove him over to the grounds early and would sit rugged up in her little orange Datsun while Michael hung around with his mates practising with the football until their game started.
She liked to watch them play. She had learned all the terms from Michael— scrum, half-back, five-eights, lock; learned them over the years since he had started playing in the Midget team in Grade One at school.
One o’clock, her watch said. What to do with this afternoon? She dragged herself away from the back gate and went to sit on the steps. Hours stretched before her. Long empty hours. Empty, leaden Peg. Withered. Shriveled. How to get through until Mitch delivered Michael home tomorrow afternoon?
Housework? Not in the mood. Gardening? Too cold and windy out here. Assignment for Uni? No, her mind couldn’t comprehend Freud, Jung et al. this afternoon.
Was this the best for Michael’s needs, to have him going with his father again? Would it work out better than it did when Michael was younger? she wondered as she sat there on the back steps, wondered, remembered, the wind blowing her brown hair around her face and rustling her ankle-length print skirt. The fact that the arrangement wasn’t carved
in stone barely consoled her. What would they have to go through to be free of him again if it didn’t work out this time, she wondered?
She didn’t notice, didn’t care that it was cold outside. Lonely Peg, broken, empty. Wide-eyed and unseeing. Disillusioned from the bright-eyed young woman who had given her love and trust to a man who did not care for either, who had found them to be disposable, superfluous.
‘Get up and get going,’ she said loudly to herself. ‘This defeatist attitude will get you nowhere.’
The dog licked her hand and tried to cheer her up. She fondled its muzzle absent-mindedly. Good Rumpty. Good dog.
The football game started at three o’clock. There was no earthly reason why she shouldn’t drive over as usual, sit in the car and watch the preliminary game like any other Saturday. And then watch the game Michael was playing in. Her son would see her car parked in the customary spot and come to talk to her about the game afterwards. For sure he would see her there in the orange car. Then he could go away with his father and she could come on home.
Immediately brightening, she went indoors to lock the weatherboard house, to get her purse, her keys, her coat, no longer lonely Peg, empty, mute, wooden. The black and tan Daschund at her heels, she ran to the car, opened the passenger door for Rumpty to scramble in onto the floor, then battle onto the seat. The dog was as happy as Peg was.
In a hurry now, Peg backed out of the yard and drove off, enthusiastic, content in the knowledge that she would be at least a little part of Michael’s weekend. Although she did not begrudge the time spent with his father if it was of benefit to him she just wanted to be a tiny part of her son’s afternoon, even if it was from afar.
The two sat in the car, Peg and Rumpty, watching until the Under 14 game came around. There was the team running onto the field. There was Michael. She cheered and blew the car horn, like the other parents, as if it were a normal weekend and she had delivered Michael to the game.
Half-time came and Michael sat in the sidelines with his team mates, eating oranges and getting orders from the coach. Peg and Rumpty knew where Michael was but he hadn’t seen them yet. It was only a matter of time, though.
The referee blew his whistle and the teams ran back onto the field to play the second half. Michael’s team wore black and white jerseys. The oppositions’ were green and yellow. Peg blew the horn and barracked like the other parents when either team scored a try or kicked a goal like she always did. She almost forgot, almost forgot about it all.
Their team won. She shouted loudly right along with all the other mothers...and fathers. Then she remembered Michael would not be coming home with her. Peg waited while the boys went into the locker room to change their clothes and collect their gear.
Michael’s father was parked three cars down from her. Her son probably wouldn’t be expecting to see her there but he would have to pass right by her and surely couldn’t miss seeing her. He would notice and stop for a minute. Surely he must have seen her car at some time during the game. Impossible to miss the little orange car that delivered him to school each morning and took him home in the afternoon. That he practiced driving round the yard at home in and had reversed into the upright strut of the garage leaving a sizable dent.
He was coming from the changing rooms under the grandstand, loping along on those long legs of his. Growing up, my Michael. She wound the window down and called to him as he drew abreast,
‘Michael, hi, Michael!’
He ran by without a glance, climbed into the car beside his father and off they drove, laughing and chatting.
Peg gripped the steering wheel, hung down her head and sobbed as though her heart would break. Rumpty nudged her, whined, tried to comfort Peg.
Finally, Peg wiped her eyes and followed the other cars out of the football grounds. Nothing to do except go home.
Brain-dead Peg. Shattered, smattered Peg. Empty, wooden, hollow. Without him there was no purpose to the evening. For him not to have seen her loomed out of all proportion in her mind. She was almost distraught as she pulled into the garage at her home. Bordering on frantic with sorrow. With an aching heart she traipsed towards the house with Rumpty close on her heels, seemingly aware that all was not well with his beloved mistress.
‘This is the worst day of my life,’ she told Rumpty who wagged his tail and licked her affectionately. They continued inside with Peg discussing the situation with Rumpty as though he could furnish a solution for her.
There was still a considerable slice of afternoon left and a lonely night loomed interminably before her. No one to cook for. No one to watch television with.
As evening drew in and she shut the doors and windows for the night she remembered a party invitation from another mature age student in her course at University. Peg decided she might as well attend the party, as unpromising as it seemed to be. Better than staying at home being a bleeding heart, she told herself.
With a waxy face and shaking hands, she heated a can of baked beans and toasted a slice of bread, bathed and dressed in warm winter clothing and long tan boots.
The night was freezing. She drove the twenty miles to the city, radio blaring a deafening, mind-numbing series of rock songs. Any louder and the noise would blow my head off, she thought.
He had made the boy unhappy before. Would it be any different this time? Surely he would keep a civil tongue in his head. Surely the stepmother would be better to her boy. Why had she decided on this foolish course of action? Would they have learned anything from the long years when they had not had any access to the boy? Would they have garnered the fact that he was averse to constant nagging and would react miserably to tension within the home? Could they be relied upon to let her know if anything went wrong with his health or would they ride it out and hope he would be well before he had to go home to Peg?
‘God, God, where are you,’ she shouted into the black night as she shot along the highway in her little car. It was currently very trendy to believe that God was dead. Her friends at University claimed the veracity of the theory all the time. Peg’s mind could not accept this, but she didn’t know the current whereabouts of God just as He didn’t seem to be at all concerned about her whereabouts.
Perhaps Mitch will be so good to Michael that he will choose to go and live with him? Mitchell had intended to sue for full custody when Michael turned ten, but as matters had turned out he knew that he would never have stood a chance. The boy had wanted nothing at all to do with him at that time. Absolutely nothing.
I must have been crazy to stir Mitch up again, she told herself. Why not let sleeping dogs lie? We were all right the way we were. Sweet Jesus, what have I done now? Financially, Mitch got the cake when the break-up came and I got the crumbs. Can he buy Michael’s love with all his assets and ready cash? Surely my boy wouldn’t fall for that.
On arrival at the student’s apartment she was greeted by the woman’s housemate, who was really quite into trendiness. The young woman wore an embroidered peasant blouse, a long, floral skirt and high boots, her version of the University uniform currently being featured. The hippie-cum-intellectual look was very ‘in’.
‘Do come in,’ said Linda, a tall, blonde girl/woman who wore her hair scooped back from her face and hanging in a lackluster bunch from a knot at the rear of her head. ‘We’ll get going soon and have us a party, I think. Have a drinkie-poo.’
She stretched out her long fingers and took Peg’s coat from her, draping it over the back of a kitchen chair. The room was like being on the inside of an icicle and Peg wished she had the nerve to take her coat and put it back on.
Trendy speech, also. Drinkie-poo. Peg smiled, wondering what would happen when we ‘got going.’
Linda ushered her through to the living area, a tiny spot full of recycled bits and pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac. Is this shabby chic? wondered Peg. Or just out of date?
The mature age student, Carol, was sprawled flat out in her saucer chair, wrapped in a drunken haze. So this was the
party, Peg decided after a further hour of waiting brought no more guests; Carol, Linda and Peg. Wow! This was really worth getting ready and driving into an arctic night for!
Carol drank heavily on, slipping further and further into an alcoholic daze, new bottles of red wine appearing like magic just in time for her to top her glass up constantly.
A knock at the door brought young Linda into an instant, wide-eyed state of anticipation. She jumped up from the pouffe where she had been perched sipping wine and studying record album covers, and dashed to answer the door.
A tall, thin man in an Air Force uniform was ushered in by a very excited Linda, smile beaming from ear to ear.
‘I’d like you to meet my friend, Michael. Michael, these are my fellow students, Carol and Peg. Carol is my housemate. She’s napping at the moment.’ Linda bounced around in front of him hospitably, indicating left and right as she described various matters such as her fellow party-goers.
A loud shore issued from the saucer chair followed by a mumbled, ‘What this shit’s about now?’
Michael, his name is Michael, too. Why does he have to have that name out of all the names in the universe? I care too much. I will crucify myself, thought Peg miserably.
‘How do you do?’ asked Peg with a wan smile.
‘Pleathed to meet you, I’m thure. It’th nith to be inthide out of the cold,’ said he from beneath his blond mustache.
Carol, the hostess with the mostest, snored on. She had woken briefly for several refills in the previous hour and consumed two whole bottles by herself since Peg had arrived. Totally inebriated, she was once more in a state of heavy slumber.
‘What’th the matter with your other friend?’ Michael asked Linda. ‘Lookth thick to me.’
Eloquent Silence Page 25
