Читать книгу Betwixt and Between - Jessica Stilling - Страница 6
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There was something about the silence in the house at nine o’clock, something heavy and final. It wasn’t like most days, when nine o’clock was a time to wind down, letting the house rest as if it too were about to head off to bed after the dishes had been put away, the final clutter shuffled into closets or onto shelves, the sturdy pockets of the house. Preston went to bed at eight fifteen, and Matthew, home from work a couple of hours earlier, would already have eaten dinner—on a weekday something simple, maybe a slice of glazed chicken, spiced rice and green beans—and gone to the study to get some work done. The dishes would have been washed and dried, or Claire might have had her hands in the sink, just finishing up. Nine o’clock was an hour before ten, when she would sit down with a recorded sitcom she hadn’t had time to watch during the day, a cup of tea resting on the coffee table, maybe a low-calorie cookie wedged in the saucer. She’d rest her head against the cushions of the couch as she unwound herself from the knots she’d been tied up in all day.
But tonight wasn’t that kind of quiet; tonight’s quiet raged in Claire’s head like her ears were stuffed up and she could see the mouths moving though they did not make a sound. Matthew had been in and out of the house since returning from work. He’d canvassed the neighborhood and come back with his shoulders hunched as he shook his head “no,” barely meeting Claire’s eyes. That had been at seven and again at eight, after Claire had managed, because her mother on the phone from Chicago had insisted that she eat something, to choke down two slices of flimsy Wonderbread. She’d felt the food in her mouth, squashed between her teeth and never before had it felt so naked, so bare, as if the truth about food had finally come out and it really was only fuel so that she might pace the kitchen for another hour, so she could place phone calls and rush to a ringing receiver or check out the windows to see if anything had moved in the wooded lot they called a yard.
The house was dark; Claire had only remembered to keep a lamp on in the living room and the cooking light above the stove lit as she paced between the rooms. Everything was strange, as if nine o’clock had come at the wrong time, as if this wasn’t the real world, this house with blue curtains and lacey throw pillows, this house that smelled of thin, country dish soap and juniper hand lotion, where all the knickknacks came from antique stores, consignment shops and specialty outlets in West Stockbridge.
She’d just started to allow Preston to play unsupervised around the neighborhood with his friends. It hadn’t been her idea. Cara List had started it with her son Peyton. When Preston had come up to her last March, tugging at her sleeve as she was putting the groceries away, and asked her if he could ride his bike over to Townsend Street, she’d wanted to say no, she might have said no, if he hadn’t have added, “Mrs. List lets Peyton do it.” Peyton had been Preston’s best friend since they were babies. Claire and Cara had had play dates together starting from the time their children, only two months apart, had met at the park as seven and nine month olds. If Cara was allowing Peyton to ride his bike to the playground two streets away, did Claire really have the right to say no to Preston? Did she want to be that mother? And hadn’t she been around Preston’s age, ten years old, when she’d been given her own first tiny taste of freedom? It wasn’t as if this neighborhood was unsafe, very little traffic ever drove down these streets, when there was traffic at all, and she and Matthew had done a good job instilling the rules of the road in their son when it came to bicycle safety. She hadn’t wanted to say yes, but she had, and Preston and Peyton and Eva, a little girl who lived a few doors down, had been riding their bikes around a three to five block radius by themselves for the past three months. And they had done it unscathed. Claire had been proud of herself for giving in to the maternal peer pressure, for not being a helicopter parent. And now it was nine o’clock; Peyton was at home, safe in bed, Eva had been in the bath when Claire had called the Murphy house for the third time, and Preston was nowhere to be found.
Claire paced the length of the kitchen, clearing the space once, twice, three, four times before she realized what she was doing. The blue and white tiles blended, she saw the granite counter, the silver appliances that looked exactly like the ones in her friend Cara’s kitchen. She studied the salmon-colored beams of the house but didn’t see them as the growing pit lodged deep in her stomach caused her arms to shake. A shrill shriek cut through the air and Claire turned around. The sound came from nowhere, a spot she could not place and she thought briefly that aliens had landed before she realized the sound was only the telephone.
She’d been willing it to ring all night. First at five when Preston hadn’t come home, then again at six, seven, eight and now nine. First she’d wanted Preston to call, or maybe the parent of a friend of his might phone to say that he was over at their house, they’d been having so much fun and lost track of time. Then she’d wanted the hospital to call, even the police. They had all been notified. At six o’clock after her son had been missing for an hour Claire had called Massachusetts General and the Brigham Hospital along with Beverly Hospital and the Emergency Care Center two towns over. She’d notified the police that her ten-year-old was missing. No, she was not being crazy, officer. Yes, he hadn’t called; yes, she’d contacted his friends; no, this was not normal, her little boy is ten years old, not a teenaged troublemaker out to scare his parents.
This was the plight of a mother, what all hoped never happened, though as a mother, Claire knew, she was supposed to be prepared for it. The literal waiting by the phone, the hoping it’s not a broken arm, a lost limb—or worse. Claire had heard of this, this pacing the floors, this anxiety, of actually having to be responsible, wholly and completely responsible for another human being, but she’d never thought it would be like this, that the worry would feel like a bright red fire threatening to burn her in the night.
The phone kept ringing, splitting her sinuses as Claire answered it, shaking, though a wash of relief flooded her skin that had been covered in goose bumps since 5:15 exactly. Finally something was happening. Something had to be happening, who called people at 9:07 on a Friday night unless something were happening? “Hello?” Claire asked hopefully into the receiver as if she could already feel Preston in her arms.
“Hello, Mrs. Tumber, this is Katrina Patrick calling from The Boston Animal Search and Rescue Society. We noticed that last year you made a donation to our cause and we were wondering if we could interest you—”a mechanical, though human sounding, voice began on the other end.
“You what?” Claire asked, stomach sinking. “It’s after nine at night and you’re calling for what?”
“This is the Boston Animal Search and Rescue Society,” the woman started again, not seeming to notice the acid dripping from Claire’s voice.
“How dare you call this late?” Claire asked, nearly shouting, though trying to keep her voice down. Claire had been the kind of person, ever since she was a little girl, who tried at all costs to keep her voice down. “Who do you think you are, just because you’re a charity, you’re just as bad as those telemarketers, there should be a law against you, bothering people at night. Children go to bed before nine, don’t you know that?”
“I’m sorry, if you’d like for us to call back,” the woman said still mechanically.
“I do not want you to call back. I want you to take me off your list, if you call again I’ll consider it harassment,” Claire yelled into the receiver. “How dare you call after nine o’clock?” Breathing deeply she hung up before the mechanical voice could say any more.
It sounded like boots traipsing across the wooden floor as the bare night of after nine came in through the large picture windows and Claire turned, having hung up the cordless phone, to see Matthew standing in front of her. He looked wet though he wasn’t, soggy and dripping as his blond hair ran across his forehead, shoulders slumped, eyes at the floor as if someone had just scolded him. Matthew was a big man, muscular without being overly so and to see him sagging like that seemed not so much sad, not so much worrisome, as grotesque.
“I called the police again,” he offered. “I don’t know, they said they’re out looking. I think maybe we should be out there too.”
“They told us to stay put, in case he comes home.”
“I know,” Matthew replied. “But I don’t like just sitting here. I think it would be better if I got into my car, you’d still be here for him.”
“You already got into your car, you looked all the places you can look.”
“I know,” Matthew sighed as Claire went back to pacing. She hadn’t even known she’d been moving, or that she’d stopped, but suddenly she was acutely aware of every tremble of her hands, each turn of her head. She watched her husband’s face as she turned back and forth, back and forth. One, two, three, she counted to herself, believing whole heartedly that each time she hit three Preston would walk through the door. Three was the magic number, it had to be. Something had to be. It was the waiting, the not knowing, everyone said that, but it wasn’t just that, it was the way it was all different now.
“I knew I should have gotten him a cell phone,” Claire cried. “I knew it. At least we’d have something to call, a way to locate him.”
“He’s too young,” Matthew argued. “What if he’s out in the woods where there isn’t any service? That’s probably what happened, he wandered into the woods and got lost. The police will find him huddled next to a tree.”
“It still gets cold at night,” Claire countered. “And what if an animal finds him?” she asked and now it seemed as if that was the only possibility. Of course they’d find him in the woods, where else would a little boy be in a neighborhood like this?
“There aren’t any bears or cougars or whatever in the woods here, only raccoons and chipmunks,” Matthew offered and a net of safety, false or not, was cast around them. Though their son wasn’t home, both of them knew where he was now, he’d be safe soon, he’d be back once they got him out of those woods. She did not consider that a child could come out of the woods in any state other than fine, a little frightened, but fine.
“Raccoons can be very aggressive in their natural habitat,” Claire commented, pacing once again, now because she saw her little boy being mauled by a man-eating masked rodent. “I can’t believe,” Claire fired back, facing Matthew, though both of them knew she was not shouting at anyone in particular. “I can’t believe this! What is wrong with us? And I told myself he was too young to go out with those kids. And they’re fine. They got home safely, they didn’t even notice Preston left, they just went right on playing, didn’t even think to see if he was okay and now…and now…” Claire shook her head, shrugging Matthew off when he approached.
The soft tan carpet seemed to glow, the lamplight was like that of the moon on a barren field as Claire walked toward the plush white couch, past an antique wooden rocking chair and to the mantel by the fireplace. There was her little boy, an array of snapshots on display like wares at an antique shop. There was Preston at his fifth birthday party when Peyton had dropped his slice of cake and tried to scoop it up with his fork as if nothing had happened; Preston on his first two-wheel bike, it had been red with painted gashes on the side that he’d insisted were “fire marks;” Preston at a beach in Florida the year before, excited to see the ocean down south, though he was disappointed when he saw that it was not as bright as he’d thought it’d be, the pictures in magazines, he’d said, made it look “bluer.” The shrieking started once again and Claire closed her eyes as Matthew answered the phone. “If it’s that animal charity again call the police,” Claire shouted as Matthew answered with a fuddled “Hel-hello?” She could just picture her husband, tall and graceful, but somehow still fumbling, barely holding onto the receiver.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” she heard Matthew say. “No, I just…why can’t you just tell me?” Matthew begged into the receiver and Claire closed her eyes. She’d never believed, not for five seconds, that anything so bad as those things she could not consider, could ever happen. It had been fear, only fear, nothing beyond it and she could not imagine five minutes from now, no less five hours, five days, five years. No, at the very worst Preston had broken a leg, he’d fallen and cut a finger, he needed stitches, she’d even go so far as to believe, to concede that perhaps her precious little boy needed an overnight stay at the hospital. But that was all, really that was all and they would get over it, they would work through it. Nothing else could happen to him.
“The police are coming,” Matthew offered as he entered the living room. “A detective is on his way. They have to talk to us, that’s all they said, they wouldn’t say anything else,” he went on, speaking as if he’d stuffed a loaf of bread in his mouth.
When Claire had met Matthew in college he was just a guy, the kind of average that stands out it’s so middle of the road. He played poker and watched sports but never once begrudged his wife a trip to the ballet or a conversation about a book she’d read. He had guy friends; he got along with her girlfriends, though never too well. But here, seeing him with tears in his eyes it was as if this wasn’t happening. Matthew didn’t cry. He’d gotten misty eyed the day Preston was born, he’d broken down at his father’s funeral, but this, these prolonged tears were different, unreal, wrong.
The knock on the door came quickly, too quickly, as if a half hour had become three minutes. There was the first knock, polite and kindly, a knock that seemed to understand that it was after nine o’clock and even if this was official police business there were common codes of decency to follow. When neither Claire nor Matthew answered, both of them standing in the front hall waiting for the other to move the seven steps to the door, the knock grew harsher, so much so that the doorbell was dangerously close to being rung. Claire flinched at the thought of such a wildly intrusive bell at a time like this and marched toward the front door, turning the knob carefully as she was met with a heavyset detective in a brown and beige suit. He was an older man with small eyes and a ring of thin hair around the sides of his head. Behind him stood a tall, slim man, more like a boy, with big eyes and a smooth, clear complexion. His short brown hair was cropped close to his head and he nodded politely as he looked Claire in the eye. They both flashed their badges and the older, heavier one did the talking.
“Hello Ma’am, Mrs. Tumber, I’m Detective Jameson and this is my partner Detective Toby, can we come in?”
“Yes, thank you,” Claire replied. She’d been standing at the door with her hand on the frame, but she moved to the side, indicating that the detectives should enter.
“I’m sorry to have to come see you under these circumstances,” Detective Jameson went on, professionally, though uncomfortably.
“Yes, my husband and I, you can imagine,” Claire started just as uncomfortably, her hands visibly shaking as she led the detectives through the foyer and into the living room. “It’s just that our son hasn’t come home. He went out to play today and wasn’t back at five, when he’s supposed to be, and he’s still…I mean, I called his friends and he’s still not home…” Claire started to shake slightly, fighting back tears as Matthew, who’d bucked up since she’d gone to the door, put his arm protectively around her. Claire wanted to shrug him off, but didn’t have the strength.
“Is there anyone else in the house?” the detective asked. “Any adults, any other children?” he inquired shaking his discomfort as his voice moved toward pure professionalism.
“No, why?” Claire asked. “Why would you ask that, why would you care?”
“We like to have everyone in the house present when we talk to them… especially when things are as sensitive as this,” the detective explained. “Mr. and Mrs. Tumber, we got your call at six oh three and we’ve been searching for your son since then,” the older detective went on. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit down?” he asked, pointing to the stuffed white couch in the corner. Claire shook her head no. “It’s hard to find a boy that age, or at least to ID him because he doesn’t have any form of identification. He doesn’t usually carry a wallet or obviously a driver’s license or sometimes not even a school ID.”
“I understand,” Claire said, wondering why all these technical explanations. “Where is my son?”
The detective blinked for an extra long moment before facing Claire and Matthew. “It’s that we found a boy in the woods about a half hour ago. He was lying near a tree, not breathing. It looked like he’d been dead about two hours, maybe three. We have to get a coroner’s report to find out and to figure out what caused his death.”
“His death? His what?” Claire asked and the word felt cold, like floating in outer space. It was as if she were dangling above her body, as if none of it, absolutely none of it were real. She’d heard the words the detective had said as if she’d been listening to a garbled version, as if the truth of it all had been held under water, the words struggling, flailing, drowning. “No? What?”
“We haven’t been able to ID the boy yet, but we haven’t had any other missing ten year olds and this boy we found matches your description. If you come down to the morgue with us to ID him. . . .”
“What? Come with you?” Claire asked, shaking her head as she backed away. The living room was spinning, salmons and pinks, the soft blue of the curtains, the pictures on the mantle, the way Preston had looked just a few months ago in his school picture. It was all there, it was all real and she couldn’t imagine another reality, as if time and space could alter and there could be no Preston. How was that possible? “What? Are you kidding me? He just went out to play, this doesn’t make any sense, how could he be. . .no. . .I just don’t. . . .ID the body? That’s something they say on TV. This isn’t a crime drama, Matthew, what is he talking about?”
The senior detective stood straight and tall while the younger one looked at the floor. Claire kept pacing until Matthew grasped her arm, looking her in the eye. “Claire, we have to go,” he said. “It might not be him, you never know. But we have to go to the hospital. We have to see,” her husband’s words were slow and sure but very kind.
“No, Matthew, what are you talking about? We can’t go. We have to wait for Preston, Preston will be home.” Claire smiled and all of a sudden it made sense, it made perfect sense and if they just waited Preston would come back.
“Take your time,” the detective interjected considerately as he paced in the direction opposite Claire and Matthew.
“Why aren’t they telling us to stay home? What if Preston comes back? One of us has to wait until Preston comes back. Our little boy…we have to wait for our little boy,” Claire cried, picturing him walking through the door, tousled brown hair, maybe some dirt on his face.
“I think we both have to see him, we both have to ID him,” Matthew explained calmly, “just in case.”
“In case what? What’s going on, I’m not going,” Claire cried, wresting herself from her husband, she marched back toward the kitchen and then out to the dining room where no one had had an appetite tonight.
“Claire,” Matthew said one more time and she could sense the moon outside, the woods only a few feet away. She could feel the blue-black of the night, the way the light cascaded onto the yard with its swing set and under-sized basketball hoop, the bike and roller blades, a bat and ball left over from when Preston and Peyton had played in the yard earlier that morning. That morning. . .and now it was night and it didn’t make any sense, none of it made any sense and how could it all have changed?
“Claire, come on,” Matthew called and she left the dining room, returning to the front hall as the detectives walked toward the door. “We have to go, no matter what, we have to do this.”
“You can ride with us if you like,” Detective Jameson suggested, looking as if he was about to reach out to grasp Claire and her floundering husband, who shook his head at his offer.
“No, that’s all right, we’ll drive ourselves,” Matthew said and Claire nodded as they walked with the detectives toward the door.
It was a short ride to the hospital across town. Claire had been there once before, when Preston had fallen out of a tree and they’d thought he’d broken his arm. It had turned out to only be a hairline fracture and Claire had thought at the time, “We dodged a bullet there, we really dodged a bullet.” They did not park in the front, in the sprawling hospital lot that went a half mile or so back to the road, but hung a right at the entrance and followed the detectives as they drove around back near a large garbage bin and out of the way picnic table, to a smaller, less well lit lot that had a back alley feel to it.
The hospital morgue was no place for a decent person to be, especially so late at night. It was clean, a woman in scrubs sat at a desk near its entrance and a doctor who wore a mask and ID badge was very polite to Claire and Matthew when they came in, but there was something tired, something dingy and subterranean about the basement room. The place was cold, all the furniture matched, identical muted brown chairs and loveseats that looked as if they’d been hijacked from the nineteen eighties, as if only the lowly, only the dregs came down here.
The moment Claire and Matthew stepped in they were met with clipboards containing forms and requests for insurance cards, not that Claire understood what a morgue would need with insurance. She was starting to think that soon you’d need to show your insurance card to grab a coffee at a hospital cafeteria. No one asked them how they were, not even the secretary, no one told them anything about the body they were there to see. They’d been calling it “The Body,” not John Doe, or Child Doe, just The Body, as if to give it a name, any name, would be too callous and might send Claire and Matthew spiraling.
After the paperwork, the secretary very calmly explained that the doctor would be out soon, he had another body in the morgue that needed to be handled. “I’m sorry for the wait,” the girl said kindly but professionally, “this isn’t what usually happens.” The girl at the front desk was young, with fresh green eyes and red hair that accented her royal blue scrubs. “Are you going to be all right?” she’d asked at one point. “Can I get you some water, coffee, a soda from down the hall?”
Claire and Matthew both sat forward, staring at the wall as if to will themselves away, as if to concentrate so hard so as to disappear completely, to make it so none of this was happening. Even a dull formless void would have been better than this.
“Well if you need anything,” the girl said into the void, smiling when they did not respond, “just ask.”
“Thank you,” Claire replied as they waited for the doctor to call them back.
After a wait that could have been five minutes or could have been an hour, Claire could not remember experiencing it she was so distracted, they were finally allowed into the morgue. Detective Jameson, who still seemed even after all this like a total stranger, followed them back. It was cold in the morgue proper and the doctor, a tall, thin man with long arms and skinny fingers came out with a white coat on.
“I’m Dr. Palmer, and if you have any questions, any concerns, please let me know.” He was kind, but Claire could tell he was staying as removed and professional as possible. “We have to keep it cold in here for obvious reasons, but there are jackets in the closet if you want them,” he offered after shaking their hands (his fingers were freezing).
“That’s all right,” Matthew declined the coat and Claire nodded that her husband’s answer came from the both of them. Detective Jameson, who had, one could assume, done this before, though usually the bodies were not those of young children found in the woods, took a jacket, which, although he was a big man, proved to be far too large for him. Nothing fit right here, nothing worked, nothing connected, not here inside nor to the outside world.
“Just follow me,” the doctor said, glancing back at them through his thick-framed glasses. “The Body is on the table. All I ask is that you please not touch anything. Nothing there is going to hurt you, but there’s going to be a police investigation and you shouldn’t touch anything, even the Body.”
“A police investigation?” Claire asked, still staring down at the white tiled floor. She’d been looking at it so hard and for so long that she could see the minute swirls of black and brown, intentional misdirection as she walked with her husband through a pair of double doors into a cold, sterile room, smelling of disinfectant. Most of the room was metal and glass, the epitome of modern medicine, and a humming came from the left side, where a wall of what looked like steel refrigeration units stood.
“I think you should be aware that—” the doctor started.
“Everything is fine,” Matthew interjected and a piece of the old college tennis player came out in the force behind his voice as they arrived at a table covered by a sheet about the size of Claire’s kitchen counter. It was long and rectangular, though there was something cold, something metal and alien (as if it had come from the mother-ship) about it.
“Let me pull this over so you can see the face,” the doctor went on. He pulled the sheet off with gloved hands and Claire thought, literally, Claire thought, figuratively, Claire thought actually and completely that time had stopped, that she had ceased to be, as the red pit, the one that had been building up since six o’clock when it had become painfully obvious that Preston wasn’t merely late coming home, burst inside her and she nearly toppled over.
He was there. She saw him. Claire had thought for sure that even if it were Preston she wouldn’t recognize him, since he was not himself anymore, but had now been transformed into The Body. She was sure that something about his dead form, his lifeless body would be so much less of him that she wouldn’t be able to tell, but there he was and she could see his face. It wasn’t the same face, there was something over it, a translucent film no one else seemed aware of, like his blood had turned to ice. His lips were blue, and the rings around his eyes were dark like swamp water, and yet it was the same face, the same hair, the same eyes, which were open, presumably so that he’d be easier to identify, as if a pair of parents didn’t know what their own child looked like dead or alive.
“Oh my God,” she said, and it had been him. She tried to get to him, to tell them that Preston was okay, that she’d seen him like this before (had she?), he was her little boy and there was no way he was gone, she would have felt it, she would have known. She would have died too. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Claire screamed and she couldn’t remember anything afterward. She would recall his face, she would forever remember that instant whenever she closed her eyes but after that horrific moment it all went black. She could not recall rushing to the body as Detective Jameson held her back, she did not remember running in the opposite direction, tripping over a second table and spilling a bottle of green liquid all over the slippery floor. She could not recall rushing into the wall and the cut down the side of her wrist that it left or Matthew moving off into a corner, crying quietly to himself as he let the doctor and detective deal with his thrashing wife. She wouldn’t remember the doctor or Detective Jameson talking to her, the bandage tied around her wrist, the papers she signed or the permission she gave so they could do an autopsy, sew Preston up and send him to a funeral home of her choosing —as if she had the wherewithal just then to chose a funeral home.
Matthew left and did not return right away but Claire couldn’t recall trying to find him either. She didn’t ask where he was; she didn’t even want him there. After they ID-ed the body, everyone was very careful around her, the detectives, the doctor, the secretary, acting as if she might crack in half, right down the middle, if they looked at her funny (or at all). Back in the waiting room the phone rang and the secretary rushed to answer it, not wanting the sound to bother Claire. She whispered into the receiver, saying to whoever was there that she couldn’t talk just then. No one asked Claire if she was okay. Of course she was not okay, they knew that.
A psychiatrist came in, a short, thin woman with pronounced laugh lines around her mouth and eyes. She had chin length black hair and wore a professional black skirt and blouse; she looked almost Goth, though she was obviously a professional.
“Hello, I’m Doctor Harper, I work in the Psychiatric Department upstairs, the hospital sent me down,” she started sounding friendly and calm, but also very professional, as if she were seven steps removed from the situation. “I want you to know that everyone understands what you’re going through, and no one here is going to tell you that there is a right way or a wrong way to act or feel, but they are concerned and it’s protocol when something like this happens to send us in. Don’t think my coming down is because you reacted to this in the wrong way,” she explained, taking the tan seat next to Claire. She looked as if she wanted to make contact, to touch Claire’s arm or rest a neat hand briefly on her knee, but she just looked at Claire, not daring to crack a smile. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?” she asked, her voice incredibly understanding, as if even with these questions she expected nothing from Claire. When Claire just stared at her, shaking her head “no,” she went on. “That’s okay. But in a few weeks it might be a good idea to see someone, and if you still feel this bad in a few months, I’d definitely suggest getting help. Not that it wouldn’t be completely fair for you to feel this way even in a few months, still, you shouldn’t have to feel this bad if there’s anything anyone can do even just to help a little bit.”
“I don’t feel bad,” Claire said, because she wouldn’t have put it that way. Bad was what happened when she invited a friend for coffee and they said they couldn’t make it, bad was when the dog ran off for a few hours, bad was when Preston hadn’t been home at five-twenty, but they’d passed bad at six o’clock that night and this right here, whatever she was feeling, this wished it were bad, this feeling was to bad what a slum was to a penthouse apartment.
“I understand,” the psychiatrist said. “Look, I’m going to go get you a prescription for something to help you sleep. You need your rest right now and I understand that you’re not going to get it without help. I’m not even going to make you fill it tonight. I’m going to give you a Valium to calm you down for now and prescribe some sleeping pills for when you go to bed tomorrow. You don’t have a history of allergies to medications, do you?”
“No,” Claire answered.
“Any history of dependency?”
“No.”
“Okay, good, then I can prescribe you a couple of pills for the next two days.”
“Why can’t you give me a week’s worth?” Claire asked. “I’m not going to want to come back.”
“I know, but it’s best this way,” the doctor replied, with a sympathetic half-smile. Claire knew the doctor was worried she’d take all the pills at once, that this was not the time to be handing her the keys to an easy and painless suicide. “I’ll be back. I’ll give you the pill and you can stay here and relax. Your husband will be out shortly,” she said and this was the first time Claire had really thought of Matthew since the sheet had been lifted from Preston’s face.
“Where’s my husband?” she demanded of the girl at the desk.
“I’ll call back,” the girl said as the psychiatrist wrote her prescription and silently left. The girl nodded at Claire as she listened to the phone she’d just picked up. “He’s in back talking with Doctor Palmer. Matthew told me to tell you he called his sister and she’ll be picking you up soon to go home.”
“Go home?” Claire asked. She hadn’t even considered that. What was there at home? The prospect of that big house in such a child-friendly neighborhood, the yard with Preston’s toys, the game of Stratego he and Matthew had left out last night for the following day, the one they would have been playing today, it all felt like a gaping wound. If only she stayed here, if she lay down on this cold floor and slept on these tiles, if she never moved from this spot, maybe none of it would be real. “I don’t think I want to go home.”
“Well, not just yet,” the girl said, misunderstanding. “The doctor is going to do his autopsy tomorrow. He needs you to sign one more form.”
“Autopsy?” Claire asked.
“The doctor already talked to you about it, you signed a form,” the girl replied. “It’s only for your son. . .to find whoever. . . .”
“I signed a form?” Claire asked. She shook her head and stared vacantly at the floor, finding it fascinating how the brown and black swirls moved and bent with the light. “I guess I signed a form while I was so. . . upset.”
It took a few minutes for anything more to happen and this time Claire felt the time. She watched the clock, noting that it was almost midnight. Maybe the pumpkin would burst, the clock would strike and she’d hear it, waking up with Preston alive and well, with everything as it had been this morning. She’d go check on her son and he’d be huddled under his Spiderman comforter, one arm hanging over the bed as the sun came through the windows, shining on his exposed left foot and reaching up to his face.
The doctor came out first, followed by Matthew, and it seemed as if they’d been cavorting in there. “Where were you?” Claire demanded of her husband, hugging herself as she shivered, pushing the tears from under her eyes with clenched fists. It wasn’t even that cold in the waiting room, not like inside the morgue, but she had been perpetually shivering since she arrived.
“I was with Doctor Harper,” Matthew explained. “She told me it was best if we both had some time alone and so I took a walk. I called my sister,” he went on, shaking his head as he looked at Doctor Palmer. “That’s where I saw the doctor.” Matthew put his arm around Claire, standing tall next to his wife and she melted into him, feeling weak.
“I want you to know I did a thorough investigation of the body, though of course we won’t know anything for sure until the official autopsy tomorrow,” Doctor Palmer started, and Claire and Matthew turned to look at him. “I did…” He went on citing medical jargon about tests done on the blood, the hair, the skin, information neither Claire nor Matthew could understand. Claire nodded, looking directly at the doctor before glancing up at Matthew, who also didn’t appear to comprehend. “We don’t know anything for sure yet, but you should be aware that there will be an investigation.”
“What for?” Claire asked, her mind blank.
“It’s protocol after a child is found like this to assume—“ the doctor started.
“Someone did this to him?” Claire interrupted. And it only made sense, children who were not sick or the victims of horrible accidents did not just die. It was only logical, someone had caused this, she knew it, and yet it wasn’t until the doctor suggested it that she fully realized the truth. The feelings she was experiencing, what she had just gone through and what was to come (though she couldn’t even begin to think about that), had been done by someone and if that someone had never existed, if that someone had never encountered Preston. . . . If only she had not let him go out with his friend today her son really would be sleeping in his bed, and so would Claire and Matthew and they’d have had dinner with the Smithson’s on Thursday evening and Eva would have come knocking on their door at eleven twenty-two like clockwork the next morning. But instead that person had existed, instead they’d found Preston and nothing, not her life or Matthew’s, not the house, not the world as they knew it, would ever be the same.
“What?” Claire cried, and turning around she sauntered toward the secretary’s desk, grasped the clipboard attached to the sign-in sheet, the first and only object she saw lying out, and threw it onto the floor. It bounced once and Claire stepped on it as if she were extinguishing a fire, as if once it was smashed she’d go on to something else and then something else and something else until the entire world had been trampled.
“Claire,” Matthew called, tears in his voice. “Claire, we have to talk to the doctor.”
She stopped, the tone of her husband’s voice wrapped around her skin and she couldn’t think straight. Matthew stood in front of her; he grasped her shoulders and looking at his face, at his blue eyes, the eyes Preston had inherited, she stopped, took a deep breath and calmed down, turning back to the doctor, who had ignored her fit.
“There’s going to have to be a police investigation after the official autopsy. They’re going to have to look at the body again, are you okay with that?” Doctor Palmer asked.
“Of course, do whatever you need to,” Claire informed the doctor.
“Thank you,” he retorted, turning around to find the psychiatrist walking toward them. She was carrying a paper cup of water in one hand as the other remained in a closed fist.
“Here, I stopped by the pharmacy,” she said, handing something small to both Claire and Matthew. “Since you have a ride coming, I thought I’d give these to you now. They’re Valium, they’ll help you calm down tonight.”
Claire felt the hard, blue pill in her palm and wondered if she should take it. She felt herself sliding down the rabbit hole, the desk was too big, the chair too small, she was ten feet tall, she was the size of a mouse. The world didn’t make sense anymore and if she took this blue pill would it make it worse? Would she lose herself forever? Maybe that was what she wanted and Claire downed the pill, taking a gulp of water before handing the cup to Matthew, who cautiously and carefully swallowed his own.
“You’ll start to feel drowsy in a little while, but you’re not driving so it’s okay,” the psychiatrist offered. “Here’s a prescription for two days’ worth, but only take them as you really need them,” she informed the couple. She smiled kindly then and Claire nodded at her as she took a seat. She was already starting to feel dizzy and sleepy. Matthew took the chair next to her, he draped an arm around her and Claire hoped she’d fall asleep right there. She didn’t want to be here, she didn’t want to move or think and the very act of being awake was too much for her.
Footsteps came from down the hall a few minutes later and when Claire looked up the doctor was there again, along with a familiar face Claire didn’t recognize right away, she only knew it was familiar. “Your ride is here,” the doctor calmly informed them and Keilly, Matthew’s sister, ran up to her brother frantically embracing him. Claire watched her with Matthew; she was tall like him, thin and blond.
“I’m so sorry, I just can’t believe,” Keilly said, holding tight to her brother, letting go, looking at him, and holding tight once more. “I just… and it’s just that…. I came as soon as I could,” she went on. Keilly had never been the type to speak in full sentences. “And Claire, Claire, are you okay?” she asked, reaching for Claire, who shrugged her away. She liked Keilly, she really did, but she just could not be touched, she could barely be talked to right now.
“We should get going,” Matthew suggested, grasping his sister’s hand as they headed out. “Unless you need us for anything else?” he asked, eyeing the doctor.
“No, not at all. I’ll get you the results of the autopsy. I’m truly sorry for your loss and if I have any more information I’ll get it to you.”
“Thank you,” Matthew replied, seeming to have stiffened up.
“Ohmygosh, little brother, I just can’t believe, I mean I just can’t….” Keilly said, teary-eyed as she walked with Matthew down the long hall toward the morgue’s exit. Claire could see the parking lot through the window. It was after midnight and still the coach was a coach and not a pumpkin; the driver, a driver, the glass slipper, a glass slipper. This was the real world and nothing was going to change.
“I just can’t,” Claire said as they reached the door. “I just. . . .I can’t leave him,” she cried, rushing back toward the morgue and at the secretary’s desk. She could tell Matthew was running after her, she could hear his footsteps on the tile, the way his shadow covered the florescent light. She felt his arm around her, nearly tackling her to the ground as she thrashed to get away. And why did she have to go, why did she have to leave him? Preston was there, no matter what, Preston was there and it didn’t seem right that a mother should abandon her little boy in a place like this.
