Picture Me Gone (16 page)

G
il phones Suzanne and talks for a long time. I am glad not to be included. I want to go back to being a child.

There are hundreds of channels on American TV and I flick through without paying much attention to anything on the screen. It is mostly commercials. I come to the high numbers, where a topless woman rubs her breasts and starts to ask if I want to get to know her better before I click past. I pause on a nature show where a quiet-voiced man admires a beautiful stag in a clearing, saying, Isn’t he a magnificent creature? and then raises his rifle and shoots him through the heart. The animal staggers and falls to his knees. I want to throw up.

A week ago America felt like the friendliest place in the world but I am starting to see darkness everywhere I look. The worst thing is, I don’t think it is America. I think it is me.

Gil phones Marieka next. I don’t hear much of what he’s saying. It’s OK, he says. We’ll be there before you know it.

He’s too worried to lie to anyone now. He’s worried for Matthew, as well he should be—the time I spent in Matthew’s head felt like drowning. Maybe he’s even worried for me.

I slip under Gil’s arm so that he has to hold me close. I wish he could clasp me tight enough to squeeze the images out of my head. They are not real pictures but they are more vivid than any I have ever seen. I do not need to close my eyes to see them.

Gil, I say. Do you think Matthew will be OK? What if he does something desperate? I look intently at my father. Think, I beg him silently. Look at your friend. Figure it out.

Gil tightens his arm round me. Don’t worry, Mila. Matthew will sort himself out. He always does.

I want to tell my father that maybe this time he won’t sort himself out. But at my age, should I be the one to know?

Make him promise to come home with us, I beg.
Please.
Gil looks surprised. Make him
promise.

OK. I’ll make him promise.

Just then my phone rings and Gil reaches over to answer it, fumbling the buttons but eventually hitting the right one. He says hello and then, to my surprise, hands it over.

CAT!!

Dad’s moved to Leeds, she says, with no preamble, not even hello.

No! I say.
Leeds
?

With his girlfriend.

His
what
? Are you kidding?

Ha ha ha, she says grimly. Yes, I are making the funny joke.

That’s awful! Have you met her?

Despite the distance between us, I can see the expression on her face. Yeah, she says. I’ve met her.

I don’t suppose she’s nice?

Evil viper troll-bitch from hell.

Oh, Cat. I’m so sorry.

I don’t care if I never see him again. Mum hates him too. She says she’s damned if she’ll pay for me to visit him. Are you still there?

Yes, I’m here. I’m coming home soon. We’ll make voodoo dolls.

Perfect, she says. How’s my egg?

Oh Christ, her egg. It’s big all right, I say. How’s mine?

I’ve been far too busy having my
life wrecked
to think about chocolate, she says, in her most self-righteous voice.

Neither of us says anything.

Are you having fun in America? Her voice is sulky.

Fun? I say. For some reason this strikes me as hilarious. Fun? I say again, and start to laugh. Not really, Cat. Not really very much actual so-called
fun.
What I’m having is what you might call the
opposite
of fun.
Anti-fun.

Perfect, says Cat, and that’s it, I’m off, laughing so hard I can’t stop.

What do you mean
perfect
? I can barely choke out the words. What kind of friend are you?

The best kind, she says, trying to sound serious but giving way to snorts of hilarity. It would be
unbearable
if you were having the time of your life while I suffered the torments of hell. At the words
torments of hell
she explodes into guffaws, which sets me off even more.

Tears are running down my face and I’m about to answer that the torments of
her
hell are nothing compared to the torments of
mine,
but there’s a click and she’s gone.

Gil comes back into the room and looks at me quizzically but I just groan and dry my eyes on my sleeve.

My sides actually ache from laughing so hard and for a minute I can’t move.

I love you too, Cat, I want to say, even though the phone line is completely silent and my answer is years too late.

W
e drive back to Suzanne’s in silence. Neither of us is looking forward to this reunion.

I don’t know what Gil said to him, but Matthew arrives an hour after we do and Suzanne walks out to the car to greet him. They embrace and she drops her head onto his shoulder. For an instant the flow of emotion between them is powerful, unmistakable. But she pulls away too soon, her lips pursed tight. His eyes search her face but she turns away.

Gabriel flaps his hands up and down like a penguin when he sees me. He starts to laugh and say me-me-me, which could be his version of Mila. I scoop him up, kiss him noisily on his fat neck to make him laugh even more and bounce him up and down. Gabriel B-B-B-Billington! Silly Billy Billing-ton!

But when Matthew appears, Gabriel’s happiness hits a different note. He would fly out of my arms if only it were possible.

Matthew catches him up and the two spin round, gabbling in some private language. Honey watches quietly. When at last they stop, Gabriel reaches over a bit dizzily and grabs my hair with one fist. He holds on to steady the world, then shifts, his face suddenly serious, closes his eyes and lays his head against Matthew’s chest. He is a simple mechanism, like a toy airplane with a twisted-up rubber band to make him fly. When the rubber band untwists, he falls to earth. I remove his hand from my hair, opening each finger softly, but grateful, somehow, for the gesture. He is nearly asleep.

Suzanne comes out of the kitchen and takes him off Matthew, saying it’s time for bed and that she’s made sandwiches for us if we’re hungry. She disappears with Gabriel and we can hear the bath running.

I look at the sandwiches Suzanne has made—cheese and tomato on brown bread—and am suddenly ravenous. We sit on high stools at what she calls the breakfast bar and eat our supper. Gil opens a beer and holds it out to Matthew, who doesn’t take it.

None of us speaks. After a minute or two, Matthew gets up and leaves the room. We hear his tread on the stair. A door closing.

What did we expect to find when we set out? Something nice? Did we imagine Matthew ran away to join the circus? That it was like searching for a lost cat, one you might find up a tree, grateful to be rescued? Frightened cats will claw you to pieces when you try to save them. I glance at Gil. Did he not think any of this through?

A gulf has opened between us and I am angry. I am a child, I want to shout at him.
Protect me.

My head hurts. Despite a greater than average ability to see clearly, I have been conned. The people I have expected to take care of me—the wise ones, with life experience—have got it wrong.

I return to my room (Owen’s room), climb under the covers fully clothed and pull the dark woolen blankets up over my knees and head, like a tent. It’s boring being with messed-up people all the time and after all those hours and days in cars and motel rooms I have a desperate urge to be by myself, to escape the tension in the house and the failure of our trip. (Was it a failure? Or an unhappy success?)

The snow is nearly gone but a wild wind whips the trees against my window. Under the pillow is Suzanne’s (Matthew’s?) Caravanserai book; I slip it out and illuminate the camel’s strange head on the cover with my phone torch. Long red and gold tassels decorate his bridle, which is set with disks of hammered silver. A low building with a teardrop-shaped entrance covers the background. I turn the pages past beautiful photographs of tents and woven rugs and men with burning eyes, and I imagine other journeys, with camels instead of cars and palm dates instead of sandwiches, where messengers move in long slow arcs across empty deserts with news of life and death.

I close my eyes and imagine the cool interior of the rest stop, the whitening sun. After the endless bounce and sway of the camels, the ground feels unsteady beneath my feet. They drink, noses deep in stone troughs. Twenty gallons. Forty. Fifty.

If I were on the Silk Trail I could cross Persia, China, Arabia. Just for a while, I would be happy moving through empty spaces, knowing no one, living a different life.

I close my eyes and think about Jake.

M
atthew and Suzanne speak politely, their faces empty of feeling.

She has moved out of the house, returning with Gabriel so he can see Matthew, who only comes alive when they are together. I am touched by father and son; you don’t have to be a genius to recognize that they are full of love for each other. Honey lies beside them, forming a holy trinity. She does not take her eyes off Matthew, and he, in turn, keeps one hand laid gently on her head or back nearly all of the time. Suzanne is staying, she tells us, with a friend. I think it is probably more than a friend but I’m tired of knowing things.

Down the phone line I hear Marieka’s sharp intake of breath. What sort of friend is she staying with? Who is it?

But this I can’t answer. Age, height, color of eyes? I am not the KGB.

I have barely spoken to Matthew since we returned.

Our last day is sunny and Matthew and Gil work outdoors to keep busy. They dig up the garden, each working a different end, absorbed in different thoughts. Or the same ones, thought separately. Honey lies nearby with her head on her paws, constantly alert. I cannot bring myself to be inside her head.

Our flight is tomorrow. Easter Sunday.

I sit with Gabriel and draw eggs for him in bright crayons and he slaps them triumphantly with his hands and shouts Ek! I get overconfident and try ducks and bunnies, but they don’t look right. He recognizes them though, despite my wobbly pictures, and I wonder how he translates bad drawings of ducks and bunnies into the animals he sees at the zoo or the park. Three dimensions into two, feathers and fur into pink and yellow crayon. An ordinary miracle.

Duck! he says proudly and points. And then, Ek! Has he ever seen a painted egg? Or only the ones his nanny scrambles sometimes for his breakfast? She uses brown ones that look nothing like the ones I’ve drawn. How can he decode the world so expertly?

We are all together for one last night, Gabriel in his pajamas with feet, Suzanne making dinner as if this were still her home. But no one is fooled. She is like a horse whose eyes have turned to the next jump.

Matthew pours wine for his wife and his friend but not for himself. The conversation is stilted and he and Suzanne never address each other directly. When I offer to set the table, she looks grateful and then, instead of simply handing me the cutlery, she places it carefully in my outstretched hands and closes her fingers round mine. I look up into her eyes.

I’m sorry, she says in a soft voice meant only for me. I’m sorry we made such a mess of your holiday . . . and everything else. She tries to smile and clasps my hands tighter for an instant before releasing them. It’s all a mess, she says. A big fucking horrible bloody mess.

Her eyes swim with tears.

It’s OK, I tell her. It’s not your fault.

No? she says, pushing the hair off her face and shaking her head. Thank you for saying that. I don’t know anymore. Maybe it is my fault. She turns away.

I set the table and Suzanne calls everyone in to dinner. We make small talk that no one will ever remember. Directly after dinner, she fetches Gabriel and kisses Gil and me good night.

As she turns to leave, Matthew stops her and takes Gabriel from her arms. The child is more asleep than awake, but he wraps his arms tightly round his father’s neck and Matthew kisses his cheek, pressing his face against Gabriel’s, before gently freeing the child’s arms and giving him up to an impatient Suzanne.

Gil follows her out to the car, leaving me with Matthew. I am desperate to escape, panicked at the thought of another confrontation. But before I can follow Gil, Matthew stops me.

Don’t worry, Mila, he says. It’ll be OK.

I shake my head. No it won’t.

He tilts his head slightly, inquiringly.

What sort of person are you? Anger chokes me. Have you even thought about how Gabriel will feel? Or Honey? It’s not just you. It’s not just your life.

I know that, he says.

Well, if you know then how can you consider
doing it
? I cannot bring myself to say the words:
killing yourself.

It’s complicated, he says. You’ll understand someday.

I understand
now,
I shout at him. I understand that your life is a mess. But I don’t understand how you think doing
that
is going to make it better for anyone but you.

You’re not an ordinary child, Matthew says.

What about what you told Gil? I say, ignoring him. About not lying down in the snow? Gil always remembered. You’re the one who’s forgotten.

I haven’t forgotten, Matt says.

Then
don’t do it.

We stand facing each other, squared off. I’m breathing hard. One minute Matthew is there; the next he has turned inward, as if I am no longer in the room.

I follow Gil out to the car.

Suzanne arranges Gabriel in his car seat and clicks the seat belt, which swings over his head in one piece like the roof of a fighter jet. She circles round to the driver’s side of the little blue car (whose?) and then she and Gil talk about the airport and the times of our flights. I lean in to kiss Gabriel’s fat cheek in the dark, tears dripping from my face onto his. He is fast asleep, his hands grabbed into fists, his eyes screwed up as if battling an unseen foe. He opens his eyes for an instant and blinks and smiles, but he’s not properly awake and a second later he’s out once more. I kiss his damp fist and hope his sleep is not always full of shadows, then shut the car door as quietly as I can.

Over at the front door of the house, Honey and Matthew stand looking out at us, framed in a halo of light, suspended between this world and the next.