Tom is Dead

by Marie Darrieussecq

  Below, there’s the sea. Stuart looks at me. I’d already been past this funeral place several times while doing the shopping. The sun. The birds. The tourists in bathing costumes. The absurd sea, thin and blue like a line at the bottom of the hill. I will take care of my son’s body. I will accompany him and cherish him as long as possible. It’s my turn to arrange everything.

  The first few nights I don’t give it a thought—the first few times, when it’s time to sleep: I swallow the sleeping pill prescribed by the hospital. I look at Vince and Stella. Vince goes to school. Business as usual. I look at them, my children, the little boy and the very little girl. I didn’t protect them from their brother’s death.

  As I write, ten years on, I still don’t know: who told them? When? And even: were they told? Did the words pass our lips? Have we gone ten years without uttering this sentence to them, Tom is dead? Leaving them to come to terms with this fact alone, to go alone to this dark place? Tom Thumb in the ogre’s house. Did Vince wait, and for how long, for his brother to return? With Stella, I knew what to do: I carried her constantly in my arms. As for everything else, I stuck to one rule, a sort of routine: I never cried in the presence of the children. Or in front of Stuart. I cried alone. Though not straight away. There was no consolation in it. We were all, each one of us, alone, like an abandoned child sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth.

  That Tom, one metre tall, weighing sixteen kilos, had been able to throw the whole family into such a state seemed phenomenal to me, truly incredible; of course he was going to come back, collecting one by one the white pebbles left along the path, and everything would go back to how it was before.

  So I take Vince to school. It’s morning, must be around eight-thirty. Now’s the time for breaking the news, I realise this as I write: yes, that time has begun. Tom’s death begins here. I say to the teacher, ‘Tom is dead.’ I say it in front of Vince, Stella in my arms. Maybe that’s where they hear it, the sentence, the sentence that says what’s been happening for the last one, two, maybe three days. Hamburgers and chips and chaos. I don’t pay attention to the teacher’s reaction—I don’t remember anymore. She may well have said nothing at all. To those who knew not to add anything to Tom’s death, I can be grateful, I guess. To those who knew not to throw in their two-cent’s worth. This teacher knew how to be discreet. Not to scar us further. I leave, Stella in my arms. I’ve done my duty for Vince; his teacher has been warned. She won’t tell him off today, or in the coming days and weeks, according to her view on the duration of a child’s mourning. Maybe she’ll find a way to let his classmates know, his fucking classmates in this fucking Australian school, and Tom’s teacher too (because that I won’t do, or if I did, I can’t remember, I have no memory of having taken this measure). And Vince will find himself surrounded by a quarantine line, people will move back a couple of metres, and he’ll get twice as many invitations to birthday parties. Good deeds from some and ostracism by others. Our house is plague-stricken. In a circle of ash, from which we will emerge, vampires, to haunt them.

  Strangely, I already know all this. Stella in my arms, Vince at school, I enter a zone where I find myself equipped with a knowledge of death beyond memory. What to do, what to think, what to expect. But the announcements. Telling my parents about it. I’m completely preoccupied by this idea. It’s the one thing I don’t know how to do: how to tell my parents that my son is dead? I say to Stuart: you tell yours, then I’ll tell mine. Stuart has taken two days off, he’s entitled to at his work; we discover our rights. I listen as hard as I can. Stuart’s on the phone, I’m in the kitchen. He says (from the tone of his voice I know he’s talking to his father), he says: Listen. Something’s happened. Tom’s had an accident. Yes, tell Mum. Tell everybody. Tom is dead. And then he hangs up, straight away.

  I learn. I admire the technique. I appreciate the template. I’m in the kitchen, in the red zone: Stuart and I, forever announcing Tom’s death to our parents. We pick up the receiver, we dial the number, and we engage in contests of savoirfaire, of in-flight demonstrations. A quick warm-up, an instruction, and then the facts. The fact. Hang up before the screams and the tears, before being overwhelmed. I wait. I have something to do. I’m busy. Stella sleeps in my arms. I have no idea what time it is. But somewhere in my mind, there’s a programme working away using very little memory, like a computer on standby: tell my parents. And another little programme: don’t forget Vince at school. The telephone doesn’t ring. Stuart’s parents don’t ring back. For that matter, since Tom died, strangely, the phone doesn’t ring. As if those close to us, those who still keep up with our moves, had in fact sensed it, and given up. The plague. We carry the plague. We were carriers of the plague when we landed in this country. Marked on the forehead. A child to throw to the wolves. A beginning.

  I’m in the kitchen at Victoria Road, listening to Stuart telling his father that Tom is dead. His voice is lifeless. It’s Stuart’s voice, but amputated from what makes Stuart Stuart, from what Stuart is. Listen. There’s been an accident. Tom. Yes. I’m in the kitchen and I know it will soon be my turn. It’s time. We can’t put it off till later. Indefinitely. Executioners take good care of their victim before the execution. A professional compassion, an impersonal tenderness. Nannies for when the sentence is carried out. I’m in the arms of the nanny and she’s rocking me. It’s time. It’s my turn. I’m being taken care of. Carried. The collar of my shirt is cut, where the blade will fall. ‘Maman,’ I say. Straight away she knows it’s serious and it comes out all awkward. ‘Une chose grave est arrivée.’ A thing terrible has happened. I no longer know how to speak, how to speak French; I no longer know any language between Vancouver and Sydney. My mother doesn’t say anything. She waits. What is the language of Tom’s death? It must be dark over there, in Europe. I don’t know, I didn’t work it out. I only know that it’s time, now, that there must be no delay. Now, after Stuart. Between the hospital morgue and this blurred unthinkable thing: what-we-will-do-with-the-body. My mother waits, suspended in the dark. It’s time. My mother waits for me to say the sentence. Three names are going around in her head, at this very instant, whatever time it is, day, night, I hear the juggling in the dark, the dangling syllables: Vince, Tom or Stella? Not Stuart. After all, Stuart is only her son-in-law, and the tone of my voice indicates mothers and children. Indicates the worst, and my mother waits, hearing the worst. Tom, Stella, Vince. I hesitate. Which one? Which one of the three? I have to leave one behind—but which one? Which one of the three is not now sleeping in his bed, in the little room next to the sunroom? I say, ‘Tom’s in hospital.’ The image is clear now. Stella in her cot, Vince up on the top bunk, and the bottom bunk, empty.

  We still weren’t accustomed to things. The bunk beds were something new. We weren’t accustomed to them, we were naive, like first thing in the morning, scarcely born, scarcely arrived, a terrible misfortune, we were terribly unaccustomed to things…I explained this, later, to whoever wanted to hear it, whatever, to the support groups, flat out, so nobody could cut me off, as many words as possible, emptied of their sense, like chickens, like ducks that run around with blood spurting out where once there was a head. In Vancouver, I’d lean over the twin beds, on one side to the left for Tom, on the other to the right for Vince; in Vancouver their bedroom was bigger, we had more room in Vancouver. And I’d say: good night, and Vince would reply, ‘night Ma’, and Tom would reply, ‘nuit m’man’, because that’s how it was, how it was at our house, Tom never wanted to speak English, it was a problem, and the problem, all of sudden, disappeared.

  ‘Tom,’ my mother says. We’re in the darkness between Europe and Australia. Her on one side, me on the other, dawn or dusk, we are two fixed points and the Earth slowly rotates. Sophisticated equipment has been put in place, rockets launched, packed with satellites, so that I can tell my mother that my son is dead. But she’s always suspected I was incapable— I didn’t even know how to do the bare minimum, didn’t even know how to keep th
em alive. I begin. I say, ‘Maman.’ And I burst into tears. It’s the word maman that makes me cry, not the rest, not the words I can’t bring myself to say, but that she hears anyway, Tom, Tom is dead. I don’t cry, and I’ve never cried uttering this sentence. This sentence is the still eye of the storm—while the wrenching sobs rage around it.

  My mother says nothing. Other voices speak on the line. There haven’t been any actual lines for ages, not since boats stopped dropping kilometres of cables at sea. Voices dart through space, bouncing off satellites, heading off in a straight line, elsewhere. Trivial. Chatty. Technological. The cables are rotting at the bottom of the seas. I see the boats, the seas, the stars. The voices speak to us in whispers. They murmur, in every language. They carry Tom’s voice with them, in a motherly way. I will never hear his voice again—it’s at that moment that I think this; it’s my first attempt at thinking this.

  ‘Are you there?’ my mother whispers. When the children were on holiday at her place, I’d phone them. They’d each take turns, even Stella, even when she was three months old, and Tom too when he was three months old, I wanted to hear his breath, even at three months of age, and for him to hear my voice, hello Tom, hello little man. Both of us rotate with the satellites. Magnetised. Tom’s voice must be among all these voices, in the Esperanto of the dead, because where would the voices of the dead be if not between the satellites, inscribed in the invisible channels of the modern world? Gathered like run-off, like rain. It’s raining, my reason is raining like the voices. Signs speak to me from everywhere and my mother on the other end of this non-existent line is one voice amongst the others, and the first voice. I didn’t know that you needed your mother when you lost your own child. I’m learning.

  From the outset, my mother was opposed to Sydney. Too far, too expensive. In two years they only managed to come to Vancouver once, and Sydney is even further away: les Antipodes. ‘The Antipodes’—I’d corrected—‘are New Zealand.’ My mother hadn’t seemed convinced by my geographical precision. She criticised me for following Stuart without sticking up for myself, without sticking to one place. She brought up the school year, the language problem, that Tom spoke neither language well—I’d protested. And the summer which, over there, becomes winter. The climate. She didn’t have a good feeling about this new country. And my tiredness, she said to me: how do you cope with all these moves? And my career, my ambitions? My mother was opposed to Sydney. But normally, after two remote assignments, Stuart is entitled to a post in Europe. We’ve already been offered Beijing as our next move, and I’m tempted by the idea of China, but I don’t say that to my mother. She’d worry too much about the children. Hygiene, health, food. Sydney, a civilised city, where Tom will die in three weeks’ time.

  I scout around. I learn about this city in guidebooks first, and through various internet sites. Stuart is in London, at his company’s headquarters, and the three children are at my mother’s in Étretat. It’s party time, before the big departure. I’m in Sydney, in a hotel on the beach at Bondi Beach. I treat myself. Given the price of the room, I need to find a place quickly—anyway, Stuart will be arriving in a week, and in two weeks’ time school will start. It’s Christmas. The heart of summer. Climate lag, and jet lag. The first morning, I wake to birdsong. I’m in rainforest. It’s not a song—these are shrieks, catcalls, moos: monkey-birds, panther-birds, buffalo-birds. And the sea underneath. It’s very hot. I open the window. It’s my first Australian window. The sun is coming up over the sea. This sea, the South Pacific, is new to me. I stretch; yesterday went on for thirty-six hours, in economy class. A morning sea, deserted and relaxing. Blue, yellow, white. A big fresh breath.

  Shortly after, city people in fluoro bathing costumes run along the promenade and, on the beach, creatures in Zen clothing do tai chi like herons. And behind the hill, Sydney—I can’t see it but I sense it, like a great mass that governs gravity, the hot, heavy spot around which space revolves. Skyscrapers, harbour, Opera House, suburbs. Snapshots and a map I swotted up on during the flight. White ibises quarrel around a rubbish bag, dozens of ibises, as numerous as pigeons, with cries from the bank of the Nile. Below the window there’s screeching from the trees, their leaves red and unfamiliar. Parrots? Monkeys? Extraordinary, urban animal noises—the world is staggeringly rich. It’s an antipodean racket, another Genesis. Pale sun still low, I think of Vince, Tom and Stella—for them the sky is at dusk, sun plunged beneath the horizon and gushing out here. The world is reliable, coherent, logical. The world is a cosmos, it rotates, the east here, the west over there, Coriolis in one direction, and in the other. I brush my teeth, I play with the water, the sink empties anticlockwise. This is the world before Tom. This is the world before Tom’s death.

  I’m in Sydney. I’m living in a hotel. I visit apartments. I’m airborne. I dissolve into condensation, steam. From time to time, my molecules regroup in the handshake of a real estate agent. I’m paying a visit. I lift the carpets, I repaint, I pull down a dividing wall, I move another: I move us in. I see us there. Stuart, Vince, Tom, Stella and me. An hour later, I start all over again in another apartment. The real estate agent recognises the professional in me. My English is limited but I know how to say double-glazing, security door, boiler, underfloor heating in Vancouver and air conditioning in Sydney, sockets and pay TV. These apartments are our homes. From one place to another, map in hand, B4, C5, I’m determined to find our home.

  I dope myself up on iced coffee, in big paper cups—everybody here walks around with cups in their hands. For hours, thongs on my feet, I jump on buses, I learn the routes. I think parks, supermarkets, schools. But I’ve never had children. I lose weight, my body becomes youthful again. I buy dresses, summer dresses, Australian dresses. At lunchtime, I eat bagels in organic cafés, at night, I eat in bars. The city flirts with me, I flirt with the city. I go up, I go down, San Francisco, Rio, Cape Town, a big one-bedroom or a small four-roomed place. Old wooden houses, one hundred years old, which I know at first glance are unaffordable. Glass palaces by the harbour—I cruise past Nicole Kidman. This gem of an Opera House, so beautiful, so far from the world. I sift and rake my way through the city.

  I opt for the same suburb as the hotel, Bondi Beach, a long way from the centre but so pretty—Bondi, the bourgeois in surfie clothing, Bondi as my social class. An expensive area too. Working overseas, being the wife of a man who works overseas, this is the kind of information you end up being weighed down with: real estate in Sydney, particularly in Bondi, was in extremely high demand in the years after 2000. I soon realise that, even with Stuart’s salary, we’ll have to look for a place a little further up the hill. Street by street, the sea grows more distant. In New Street, next to the service station, I find a small two-bedroom flat that’s not too bad, the rent at the very limit of what we can afford. The biggest bedroom has sea views. I imagine Stuart and I opening the windows onto this blue triangle, while the children squeeze into the small bedroom— that’ll do for them. But the bond is a year’s rent, and by the time Stuart manages to get the money from his company, with the time zone ten hours behind over there, the apartment has already been let.

  Would this have changed everything? Forty-eight hours later I receive the keys to 2301 Victoria Road, on Bellevue Hill. It’s not exactly in the suburb of Bondi; it’s at the top of the hill. Less chic, less seaside, less fun, less surfie, Victoria Road is a sort of urban highway, but at the end, not far from the apartment (our new home), there’s a park with a stunning view—on one side the open sea, on the other, the harbour, the Opera House, the skyscrapers.

  We will only go once to this park. When Tom sets foot in Australia, he’ll only have three weeks to live. ‘Sydney,’ he’ll say when he arrives, ‘like in Nemo.’ The cartoon city, the city where the orphan fish and his father, the sad clown, find each other again. After his death, everything will be a sign, everything and anything will become a horoscope, I will go mad, overcome by the memory of the signs, by their implacable logic, by the
warnings, everywhere, that I didn’t know how to read.

  Stuart is disappointed with the apartment. Vancouver was a more affordable city. But he likes the area—it’s only twenty minutes from his office, and we have a parking space and two bus lines that go to the centre of town. Shops, post office, hospital. The French school is not too far away. The apartment is a corridor: kitchen, big living room, bathroom, and the two bedrooms. There aren’t really any windows. Sydney’s like Manhattan and Hong Kong in that respect—outside, urban beauty, inside, no view. Space is so expensive that all our windows, apart from one, open onto an alley between two buildings. But we’re on the seventh floor, the top floor, you can see the sky, and the rooms aren’t as dark as they first seemed. ‘In Manhattan,’ I say to Stuart, ‘you wouldn’t have any windows at all.’ And here, at the front of the apartment, there’s a bay window, in a narrow sunroom that opens out onto Victoria Road. From the bay window, leaning forward a little, you can see the blue sparkle of Sydney Harbour.

  For two days, Stuart and I are very happy. If happiness is having all your children alive and healthy, then of course, in general, we’re happy. But I married a man with whom I really enjoyed making love, and I don’t know if it was a good idea to have had children together. We wait for the furniture to be delivered. Jet-lagged, we make love on the floor at dawn. Pelicans perch on the bus shelter in Victoria Road and hammer the corrugated iron with their huge feet. They dry out in the sun, wings spread, bickering and shoving each other. From six o’clock, we’re hungry—we eat crayfish, squid and sushi in restaurants meant for young single people. The children’s plane has left, yet we’re still drinking margaritas on the beach. I recall those two days as several evenings, a beautiful slice of life and a lingering memory, but whose colour shifted, like water shifts, a secretly radioactive lagoon.