The Outcast Son

by Jacobo Priegue

  But the dream had vanished. The reality was striking, and something needed to be done. He kept smiling at me. More playful than defiant. He knew it was wrong. He had done good and bad things before and knew the difference. But he was still eight years old. He couldn’t even begin to understand how much pain he was causing, how nervous Mark and I were. He kept playing. Waving the knife. Apathetic. Detached.

  “Jaime!” I repeated. “Drop the knife! This is no joke!”

  “Why?” he asked, and he smiled again and resumed his game. “Are you scared, Mum? You too?”

  “Jaime!” My voice shivered. “Drop it! Now!”

  “No!” He shouted. “He’s all right!”

  Doubt took over. He had gone too far. But he was just a boy. He wouldn’t harm his little brother. He wouldn’t. My body had already taken its decision. It moved forward. Violently. The air combed my hair as it followed me. I wouldn’t take any chances. My feet thrust, hitting the floor through the living room. My arms accompanied. Very swift. Very steady. It happened very quickly. It felt as if I were seeing the scene from the air. Unable to stop the woman underneath. The clash was inevitable, and a horrible shockwave would follow.

  My right hand shot over the sofa and found Jaime’s head. It didn’t slap it. It grabbed it so aggressively that I found my son and myself flying through the room and the sofa falling after us and Marcus’s pushchair shifting and scarcely keeping its balance. He released an incredulous groan. He wasn’t expecting it. His mum wouldn’t do this to him. His mum was always on his side, looking after him, supporting him no matter what. But something had been broken.

  The rampage of the attack made Jaime’s arms involuntarily whip in the air. They were just following his body, too stunned to react. We both fell, stuck in a violent hug. Marcus was safe. A dry noise made me aware that something had hit the table. Jaime’s head. He was unconscious and bleeding. I tried to stand up to help him, but I couldn’t. My body wouldn’t react. My feet wouldn’t move. I was losing my strength. I was sleepy. I wanted to close my eyes and let go, but I noticed something wet was soaking my belly. I tried to dry it away with my left hand. It was warm. When I saw my hand coloured in red, I bowed my head to inspect my abdomen. The knife was still there, stuck to the end, and a constant stream of blood was coming out.

  “Laura!” Mark’s voice sounded too distant.

  It didn’t matter. My life was abandoning me, and Jaime didn’t wake up. I thought about our death. It’d be almost poetic to go with him in this way. My beloved one. My sweet Incan angel. I was perplexed for a moment when I thought I saw him move his head in the middle of all that blood and confusion. But it couldn’t be possible. The blow had been too strong. He couldn’t be awake.

  “Laura!” Mark was even farther away.

  My head was on the floor. Motionless. Waiting for everything to be over. It was the end. Would I have a third chance? Or would I go for good this time? I’d rather be dead. I had failed. To Jaime and to myself. It didn’t matter now as I lay there, on our living room floor, staring at Jaime, bleeding to death.

  “Laura.” It was just a faint echo now. Like a dim memory floating in the darkness.

  I didn’t fight to come back. Squashed by my sorrow. I just closed my eyes and waited until I felt I didn’t have any single drop of blood left, until my gasps couldn’t bring any fresh air into my lungs, until I could see or hear or sense no more.

  Chapter 21

  The white room

  Jaime held my hand and looked at me. He was happy and smiling, and a peaceful light emanated from his face. His hair had grown long and black, and it was tied up in a ponytail spread along his back. He was twenty. A gorgeous six-foot man with powerful arms and a strong jaw. I didn’t know why I was there with him. I didn’t care. I was proud. He was my boy. I had saved him. Many years ago. In Cusco. And now I was seeing what he had become. Healthy, good looking and kind. It surprised me how kind he looked. Serenity in his eyes. His grinning lips moving up and down and trying to say something. I couldn’t hear him, but it didn’t matter. It was a charming moment. Warm. Comfortable. My grateful son giving me some minutes of the purest plenitude. Somebody was with him. It was a girl in her twenties. Very pretty. I noticed she was holding hands with my son. He was introducing her to me. "Laura!” I heard. But I didn’t care about my name anymore. I just wanted to look at my boy. And her. She was his girlfriend. No, she was more than that. A partner? The two of them were speaking. They were trying to say something. They looked so happy. “Laura!” The voice had become more intense. But the girl grabbed my hand and put it on her belly. She was pregnant! I cried. I dried my tears and found out Marcus was there, too. He was a teenager. So like me. He had my eyes and my lips.

  “Laura!” A powerful light flashed in front of my eyes and washed my dream away. I couldn’t see anything, only a white, dense ocean blinding out my reality, whatever this was. My eyes didn’t attempt to open. I wanted to go back. I belonged there. With my boys. That was the only place that mattered, the only reality I’d acknowledge.

  “Laura, wake up.” I saw Mark. He wouldn’t leave my side. He was surrounded by people in white coats. Strangers. They were grave and busy. Working. Everything was white and pale around me. Even Mark. I felt warm and cold again, and I tried to open my eyes a bit wider, but it hurt and made me want to go back once more to the sweet dream I was having.

  Jaime. A flash stunned my brain. “Jaime!” I shouted.

  Mark bowed his head. What was that supposed to mean? “Jaime!” I shouted again. “Where is my boy? Where-is-my-boy!” I shouted louder and louder. Until Mark grabbed my wrist and stroked it with his thumb.

  “Laura, you need to calm down.”

  “I don’t want to calm down! I want my son! Bring me my son! Bring me my son!”

  I tried to sit up, but it was too painful. My belly felt like the blade was still inside me, even though I had barely noticed it when it actually was. Enraged as I felt, I couldn’t even move. I was in a bed. In a hospital. In an unknown white room. “What’s going on? Mark? Why don’t they bring my son to me?”

  “I’m sorry, Laura,” he said.

  “What? What’s the meaning of this? What is this?”

  “You…Jaime…”

  “Speak out, for fuck’s sake!”

  “Don’t you remember anything?”

  No. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t a memory. It hadn’t happened. It hadn’t happened at all. I was with Jaime and his partner, and I’d be a happy granny. I’d spoiled Jaime’s child with my treats, and I’d look after her or him when their parents were away. This was the place where I wanted to be. Not there. Not in that room. Not listening to whatever Mark had to say to me. “There’s nothing to remember!” I said. “Nothing to remember, do you hear me?”

  “Laura,” Mark said. “Jaime hit his head and…”

  I couldn’t fight the truth. It had happened. I hadn’t dreamed of it. Fear bit me as a cold snake twisting around my body and rubbing every scale against my skin. I was poisoned. I tasted poison. I smelled it. It was everywhere.

  “No!” I said. “Where is he? I need to see him!”

  I tried to move again. It was useless. I tried harder, but a thick, wet bloodstain soaked my bandage. My vision quivered. All my strength faded away. I was so tired and scared, and I wanted to see my little boy. But I couldn’t help falling unconscious with all my questions unanswered.

  Mark’s voice on the phone woke me up again in the morning. I couldn’t hear the beginning of the conversation, but I realised he was speaking to a friend.

  “She’s all right. She’ll live,” I guessed he was saying, although his voice sounded weak and low as if he were in another room. “Nah, just a hell of a shock…yeah, she’ll be fine…she doesn’t seem to remember very well…it was very traumatic, I’m still shaking myself.”

  “Mark,” I said.

  “Oh, she’s awake…okay, I’ll call you back,” he said while hanging up the phone. “You woke up. How are y
ou feeling?”

  “Like crap,” I said. He smiled. “What is this, Mark? Where is Jaime? What happened?”

  “Oh, Laura, this is awful. You don’t remember, do you?”

  “No. Well, I remember some things. I don’t know.”

  “He’s gone, baby. Jaime. Our boy’s dead.”

  “No. That’s not possible. He was okay, it was only a little blow, he was just sleeping. Why are you joking about this?”

  “He died from the trauma. The injuries he suffered were too critical. You hit him badly.”

  “What? I did what?” I wasn’t even processing what he was saying, drowned in a pool of negation.

  “He didn’t survive, honey.”

  A curtain of tears blinded me. Mark was a blurry spectre, and his voice couldn’t reach my soul. It had happened. I had killed him. I had killed my son, the boy I would’ve given my life for without a second thought. My heart was banging against my ribs. The only sound in the room was my violent breath exhausting all the oxygen and making the air heavy and saturated. The sharp ache in my belly didn’t let me think.

  “Laura,” Mark said, “are you all right?” But I wouldn’t answer. What for?

  “Laura,” he insisted, “I need you.” As if I cared at all. “Your son needs you.” My son. Marcus. Poor Marcus. He didn’t even realise what had just happened. He was too young. Scarcely a newborn. He couldn’t probably see what happened three feet away from his little eyes.

  “Marcus,” I mumbled. The shock had made me forget about my boy. How could I?

  “He’s going to need you. He’s going to need both of us.”

  “Where is he?” I asked, embarrassed.

  “He’s safe. They’ve got a nursery in the hospital. They’re looking after him.”

  He did need his mum, and I wasn’t there for him. One more failure to add to the list. The only thing I could do was make sure I recovered as fast as possible and take care of my son. I ignored whether the grief would allow me to be a good mother. I wasn’t a good mother anyway. I was the kind of mother who kills her son. A neurotic, after all.

  “What happened to me? When am I going to be able to go home?”

  “The doctors said you were very lucky. The knife sectioned several minor veins, but it missed the iliac artery by less than an inch. You would’ve died in minutes.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “You lost a lot of blood, but no organ was damaged. You’ll be able to leave the hospital today.”

  “You don’t seem very cheerful about that,” I said. Mark didn’t answer. Instead, he looked at the door. I moved my head to see why. Even my neck hurt. It was as if I had been beaten with bats. There wasn’t anything there. Wait. Something caught my eye. Somebody. A man. In his forties. Wearing a jacket. A blue jacket. It was a uniform. A police uniform. Of course. A boy had just died. My boy. From a blow to his head. I tried not to get nervous. I told myself it was normal. When somebody dies, they have to investigate. They’d want to get some answers. But I couldn’t keep calm, and the worst case scenarios came to my mind.

  “They came asking questions,” Mark said when he saw I noticed the policeman at the door, “about what happened.”

  “Oh, Mark,” I said, crying like a baby, “how could this happen?” My voice was trembling. “I’m devastated. I want to die. I can’t live with it. I just can’t. It’s too horrible.”

  “Don’t say that! It is horrible, but you have to move on. For Marcus, and for me. For us!”

  “How can you ask me to move on? How? This is a nightmare. This is the worst. There can’t be anything as painful.”

  “I know. I know you feel you won’t recover. But you will. With time.”

  “I don’t want to recover! I want to die!”

  “Laura, please. Try to be strong. Marcus needs you. What are we going to do without you? Please.”

  Marcus was the only thought that kept me sane. Mark was right. I had to be strong. I had a family, and they needed me. But I just couldn’t look ahead. All I could see was my hands covered in blood. Murderer. The word came to my mind over and over. Murderer. Harshly pronounced. A dry, deep voice reverberated as it uttered this cursed word. Murderer. I imagined a choir of a thousand mouths saying it. Shouting it. Only mouths with no bodies in a red paint of skinned muscles and cartilages. Murderer.

  The sound of the door opening drew my eyes to the man in the uniform. He came near. Firm and calm. His eyes despising me. He didn’t like me. He tried to look into me, and he seemed mad and impatient. That person didn’t know me, he hadn’t ever seen me, and yet I felt I was been jugded. Behind him, a woman in her fifties entered the room and scanned my body. I didn’t realise until she was in front of me. She wore a black skirt and a blazer. Her expression was grave and curious.

  “How are you feeling?”

  “Who are you?”

  “Sorry, I’m Detective Hassan,” she answered. “I hope the officer here hasn’t scared you. He can be a little…tactless.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Oh, I just want to know you better, Mrs Johnson.” I looked at Mark. Puzzled. Not knowing what to say or how to act. “I’m sure your husband has told you everything about what happened.”

  “Actually, we were catching up right now,” Mark said.

  “Good!” she said. “We’ll catch up together, then.” She walked around the bed and sat in an armchair next to me, very close to the window. “So,” she carried on, “you don’t remember me at all, do you?”

  “Mark,” I said, confused, “what is she talking about?”

  “I was the first person who reached the house after the incident. You were in shock. Talking nonsense.”

  “I thought I had passed out.”

  “You did. After raving for a while. What’s the last thing you remember?” Detective Hassan asked.

  “My son. Jaime. He was…well, I thought he was unconscious. I thought I saw him move…and blood in my belly and on the floor. My blood. I lost consciousness right away.”

  “Well, you were awake when I first saw you. Delirious but awake. I tried to get some answers, but nothing you said made any sense, so I was hoping to get them now.”

  “Can I ask what I was saying?”

  Detective Hassan nodded. “Yes. You were saying something about ‘the dogs’. Do you have any dogs, Mrs Johnson?”

  I looked at Mark. He nodded. “We did. Once.”

  “I see. It might not be related to what you were saying at all, but I’d like to know more about this dog of yours.”

  Mark stood still this time.

  “Look at me, Mrs Johnson. I need you to help me understand what has happened.”

  “My son, Jaime. He…” I couldn’t gather the strength to say it.

  “Yes?”

  “Jaime killed him.”

  “Interesting,” she said, a look of fascination in her eyes.

  “Interesting?” I said. “I’m telling you my son killed our poor dog!”

  “Sorry, Mrs Johnson, I didn’t mean to offend you. Do you have any idea at all about why he might’ve done that?”

  “He…Jaime tripped and fell to the floor, and he probably blamed Happy for that.”

  “Happy!” she repeated. “Such a lovely name for a dog. Carry on, please.”

  “Jaime twisted an ankle. Nothing serious, but he cried and screamed in pain.”

  “Did he say anything about the dog?”

  “Not that I know. My husband took him to the hospital when it happened. I stayed behind to pick up our things. We were on a picnic, you know.”

  “Did he do anything to the dog or exhibit disruptive behaviour? Any sign he was upset with him?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “You can’t remember, or there weren’t any?”

  “No, there probably weren’t any signs he was upset,” I said, frowning and shrinking my lips.

  “Going back to your house…oh, I’m so sorry for your loss,” she said, bowing her head and pretending sh
e was embarrassed. “I do apologise for my lack of tact. This job makes me sometimes forget all my manners.”

  “Thank you,” I said. The scene was getting grotesque. I didn’t know what to say or how to act. I was just led by that woman’s questions. Willing to help in all I could.

  “I can see you’re still in shock, so I won’t keep you long,” she said. “Could you please describe what happened?”

  “Of course,” I answered right away. “The week had been difficult for us: several arguments, fights, my son Jaime being violent at school… On that Saturday, we were going to fix things. We were meant to spend the day together and catch up and focus only on the positive things. But when the day came, we were too tired, or too angry, or fed up. It was tense. I went to the toilet to recover my breath and wash my face in cold water, and when I came back, Jaime was holding a knife.”

  “A knife?” Detective Hassan interrupted me. “What kind of knife?”

  “A kitchen knife. Around four inches long.”

  “Well, that’s a big blade. What happened next?”

  “He started playing with it very near Marcus, my other son.” I paused, but she didn’t intervene, so I continued. “I didn’t even think. I just ran and…” My voice trembled. I felt as if I had swallowed embers and they were burning my guts.

  “What happened next?” she insisted, nodding and doing her best to look sympathetic.

  “I pushed his head with the palm of my hand.”

  “You pushed him?”

  “No! I just…well, I pushed his head away to separate him from Marcus.”

  “I understand,” she said and stood by, waiting for me to continue.

  “His head. I heard his head hitting the table.”

  “How many times?”

  “Pardon?”

  “How many times did his head hit the table?”

  “What do you mean, ‘how many times’?” I said. “Once! He hit the table once!”