The Cuckoo's Child (7 page)

Neil tried to keep us going, even managing to joke on occasion with the detectives. He was better at pretence, at keeping a stoic front. I resented him for it.

“How can you smile?” I asked. “Our son's gone. How can you ever laugh again?”

But he wouldn't rise to the bait, wouldn't get angry, wouldn't blame me for my inattention, looking after another woman's child when I should have been looking after my own. Maddeningly, he said, “Depression won't help Daniel, will it?”

I hated him for being right. But I couldn't leave it alone.

“So I'm wrong there too? I feel sad so I'm no use to anybody? I'll tell you, Neil, I'm not going to be any use, ever again, if Daniel isn't found. Smile at that!”

He tried to fold me in his arms, and I wanted to let him, but the demon in me flailed its arms and pushed him away. I pitied his downcast face, but I could not unsay the words, and the moment passed.

The day I had been dreading came too soon. The detective in charge of the investigation sat in front of us, nervously fiddling with his car keys. No results from the most extensive search and inquiry ever held in this province; hundreds of tips, all faithfully followed up, no matter how bizarre, with no progress, thousands of man hours devoted to the case without a single tangible clue unearthed. Time to scale back the inquiry. It would never be closed, he assured us, leaning forward to drive the point home; he would continue to work on it. He would stay in touch. Let us know if anything promising turned up. But for now there was nothing more to be done.

Reason tells you that if children are not found quickly, the likelihood of finding them alive diminishes with every single day. I knew that. I knew that public interest in the case, feverish and suffocating at first, would languish when there were no quick developments. But this was my child, not some pathetic little stranger. The detective's dispirited resignation and Neil's nod of acceptance tore something loose in me and quietly choked it. As if from a great distance I observed Neil shaking the man's hand and accompanying him to the door. As their voices faded, I felt a terrible loneliness and futility settle over me, pure and burning, like a weightless coat of snow.

“Let's go home,” said Neil as he returned.

So we did.

Few of the comforts of home for you here, but you don't seem to mind. I watch the nurses bustling in and out—they must be the only people who can bustle quietly—checking monitors and drips, making notes, adjusting the flow of oxygen. Even their faces are still as they count your heartbeats through their fingertips, busying themselves, keeping you going, and all the while, you lie there oblivious.

And I know that kind of oblivion too, although there were no nurses for me then. Those months after Daniel disappeared are a blank. I was dimly aware there were people around, doing things, saying things, but they were shapes looming in a dense fog that muffled all sound. There were no connections. Despair was easier than struggling through the murk. Tell me that you haven't despaired, even now. Tell me you're letting go because it's time, not because you have no hope. I can't bear to think of you surrendering to the dark, as I did then.

I did try to pick up where I left off. I went back to work, waving aside Ella's doubts, her troubled, kindly face regarding me doubtfully across my kitchen table, still cluttered at five in the afternoon with egg-stained plates from breakfast. Maisie was sitting on her lap, gazing at her adoringly.

“Why don't you take a bit longer?” she said. “The sub's doing a good job—you don't have to worry about that. Give yourself a chance.”

“What's the point of waiting? Nothing's going to change. It'll be better if I have something to do. Something that keeps me so busy I don't have time to think.”

But I was wrong. However busy I had to be, I could never banish the thoughts. Lying in bed at night, watching the shadow branches of the apple tree outside the bedroom window tossing on the ceiling and listening to Neil breathe softly into his pillow, I replayed Daniel's life over and over, always coming at last to the place where the film snaps and slaps futilely in the sprockets, memory stumbles, and speculation takes control.

In those night watches my mind ranged over the land, high as an eagle, searching for the small body in mountain gorges and dense forest, looking for the flash of red at the bottom of rivers and lakes, riding the ocean currents, lodged under wharves or log booms, seeing the gleam of tiny bones in the starshine where they lay in the ferns beside a forgotten logging road.

By day I was more practical but no less obsessed. I looked at the bent heads in the science lab and thought of the boy Daniel would have been. I chewed my lunchtime sandwich and remembered his fondness for peanut butter and honey. Parents queued to see me on Parents' Night, and I wondered what the man who snatched Daniel looked like—it was always a man, in my mind—what he did, what kind of house he lived in, what his neighbours thought of him. I mixed chemicals absentmindedly and worried about Daniel's fear and sadness, if he was still alive and forced to live with someone else, his parents inexplicably failing to come for him. I would load the washing machine and turn away from it, without switching it on, overwhelmed because in all that heap of clothes there was not a single tiny sock, no miniature pants coated with mud at the knees, no T-shirts sticky with honey or pine resin.

If it sounds as if I were alone in this, that is the measure of the monstrous selfishness of grief. Neil suffered too, of course he did. Mum and Dad fluttered about intermittently, their faces pinched and solemn with woe, helpless in their inability to help. Bless your heart, Stephen, you came and went as often as you could get away from your job, silent usually, but quick to see what needed doing and getting on with it.

Did we ever thank you properly? I don't suppose so. You were the one who answered the letters and messages we found waiting for us on our return; you adjusted the brakes on my car, mended the kitchen tap, replaced the filter on the furnace, chopped two cords of firewood. Ella was a constant visitor too, dropping off batches of muffins, jars of homemade salsa, bags of cat food for Maisie when I forgot her. None of this concern registered properly with me. I was like a faulty answering machine, hearing only my own voice saying, “Livvy is not available right now,” then shutting down the recording as the callers start to speak.

All I could feel was the weight. It was as much as I could do to lift a foot at each step, more than I could do at times to raise my fork to my mouth, my comb to my hair. The weight exhausted me. As soon as I came home, I went to bed. I didn't sleep, but at least I couldn't see the worry in Neil's eyes or the silent reproach of Daniel's closed bedroom door. It was exactly like being caught in quicksand; struggling and fighting do no good, so inertly I slid deeper and deeper, waiting for the bog to close over my head.

There are only two things I really remember of that time.

The first happened on a February day, grey cloud blurring the horizon where it met the darker band of sea, straight strings of rain pocking the waves and flinging themselves at the windowpanes. I was alone in the house. Neil had retreated to his studio as he did more and more. I was lying under a quilt on the couch, Maisie curled on my chest, staring me gravely in the eye as she purred.

The phone rang. Jarring. Right beside me on the coffee table. Impossible to ignore.

“Hello.”

“Livvy? It's Jerry. Listen, Liv, I just heard, about Daniel, I mean. Liv, I'm so sorry. You don't get much Canadian news down here, but I just caught one of those
Most Wanted
shows, you know, unsolved crimes and stuff, and there it was. Liv, it's terrible, just terrible, I can't tell you how sorry I am. Has there been any news?”

“Not a thing.”

“Oh, jeez, Liv, what can I say? How are you? Are you okay?”

It was too much effort to tell him.

“I'm okay,” I said. “I'll survive.”

“What about Neil? He okay?”

“About what you'd expect. Sad. Silent.”

“Well, sure, sure. Stupid to ask. Liv, I feel real bad just leaving you guys to it, not getting in touch or nothing. Is there anything I can do for you? I'm supposed to be starting a job down here Monday, but I'll can it if there's something I could do, just say the word and I'm there. How about it?”

“Where are you, Jerry?”

“What? Oh, San Diego, well, not exactly San Diego itself, a little bit north. But, Liv, look, shall I come up? Just say.”

“No, Jerry, there's no point. It's a waiting game now; there's nothing for you to do. Go start your job. What sort of job is it?”

“Oh, marina, fishing trips, that sort of thing. But, Liv . . . you sure I can't do anything? Posters, walking the streets? Bugging the cops?”

“I'm sure.”

“Well, if you're sure, I guess that's it, then. You keep the faith now. You know he's still out there, right? And hey, Liv, give Neil my best, won't you?”

He rang off. The room was utterly quiet. How strange he seemed, how remote, with his life unfolding effortlessly far away. Just like all the others who had steeled themselves to offer their sympathies and their help, he had sounded strained, ill at ease with pain and his own guilt at being untouched and happy. I imagined his relief at putting down the phone, breaking the connection, duty done. Tragedy has much the same effect on those not directly involved as terminal illness.

You must have noticed the same thing. What would he have done, I wondered, if I had said, “Come at once!” Maisie purred and butted her head under my hand to remind me to stroke her. “You're my best buddy, aren't you, old girl?” I said.

And I realized I had not requested, and Jerry had not offered, either his address or his phone number.

The oddness of that made me tingle. I was sufficiently roused to tell Neil about it when he came up from the studio. When I'd finished the story, there was a silence. His hand stole to his face, covered his mouth. We stared at each other, and the thoughts pounded silently between us.

“We never told the police about him,” Neil said finally. “Perhaps we should.”

And there it was. Nothing to back it up. Just the instant flare of suspicion that can never be smothered once it is lit. Not that it came to anything. Neil contacted the police, and we told them all about Jerry and his phone call, feeling treacherous, but having to do it, because there was a chance, however remote and unthinkable. Weeks and weeks later, we heard that the California police had searched and located him at a shabby marina near the Mexican border. South of San Diego.

They found nothing to connect him with Daniel, but how hard did they look, do you suppose? One more chore, following up for some Canadian cop who doesn't even know where the guy is, hasn't got a shred of evidence of anything at all, except some vague suspicion, some possibly, maybe, perhaps. But they're hot on illegal aliens down there and made life miserable for him when they discovered he'd been working without a permit, and he sloped off to Mexico. We didn't hear from him again. Hardly surprising.

The other thing that is branded onto the surface of my brain is raw, even now. I'd never tell you this, normally. Some things you just don't talk about somehow, even though they're important and leave scars.

As each wounded day dragged into night, I had got used to submerging beneath the bedclothes, giving myself up to the narcoleptic warmth of Neil's bulk at my back. He did the same, I thought. It came as a shock, one night, to feel his arm steal possessively around me, pulling me close, insistently gathering up my weight and urging, urging, his penis hard against my buttock, his breath ragged and hot against my ear as he murmured beseechingly, “Liv, Liv, oh Liv, come on, come on, please, it's been so long . . .”

I struggled. All I could think of was escape, away from his hands pulling at my nightdress, away from his mouth roaming the side of my neck, away from his leg riding my hip, away from his force and his need, out of that bed and that room before my revulsion spewed out in the vomit that was heaving its way up. Desperation lent me strength, and Neil, God knows, is no rapist. His grip had already slackened as my feet scissored to the floor; he was just starting to say, “Okay, Liv, calm down, tell me what's wrong . . .” when I felt my flailing elbow connect smartly with his nose.

When I scrambled to my feet and turned, he was sitting up, hunched over, blood dripping between the fingers he had clamped over his face. I raced for a face cloth and ice cubes. Wordlessly, he pressed the makeshift ice pack to his nose. His eyes held mine. His voice was muffled.

“Hell of a way to make a point,” he said. “What was the point, anyway?”

“I'm sorry.” It sounded inadequate even as I said it.

“Well, I know
that
. Still doesn't tell me why we can't make love.”

What was I going to say? I love you, but Daniel is in the way? I know sex is your way of showing love, of taking and giving comfort, but it's also about babies, about making new ones, and I can't think of that, I can't even admit the possibility of that. I blew it; I lost the child we waited so long for. How can I ever imagine replacing him? What sort of betrayal would that be, to give ourselves a substitute, a consolation prize for such unlucky losers? How could I deserve that?

“I'm sorry,” I repeated. “I just can't. I just can't.”

Gingerly, he removed the ice pack. His nose was scarlet and swollen. He wiped blood from his upper lip.

“Feels like hell,” he said. “Must look like a freak. D'you think we could have a clean sheet?”

It was a relief to fetch one and remake the bed. When I'd finished, Neil yawned.

“I'm bushed,” he said. “If you promise not to hit me, I think I'll go to sleep now.”

And as I crawled back in beside him, he spoke once more in the darkness.