Page 3 of The Perfect Son
NOTES: Session suspended due to patient distress.
CHAPTER 3
Monday, February 12
55 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
On the day you died, I lit a bonfire in the garden.
Yes, really. Your born-and-bred city wife finally adapting to village life. It was that pile of bloody sticks smack bang in the middle of the lawn that made me do it. How long ago had you trimmed the hedges along the road and left the debris in a forgotten pile (another job half-finished)?
It was before Christmas, I know that much.
Of course, I didn’t know you were dead. Maybe if I’d stayed in the kitchen, scrubbing the grime from the insides of the cupboards and chatting along to Ken Bruce on BBC Radio 2, then I’d have known before the police knocked on the door. But I didn’t because in that moment, on that morning, the sticks annoyed me more than the grime, and the day was dry—the sky a crystal clear blue—so I marched outside in my slippers with the matches and lighter fuel and the Sunday paper, and whoosh, up it went.
There was a moment of raw thrill. A moment when the crackling of branches and the smell unlocked memories of hot dogs and wobbly-headed Guy Fawkes dummies. A moment when I wished I’d waited for Jamie so he could see it. I had half a mind to dance around it, I was so blinking chuffed with myself.
Then the flames started licking the top of the stack, and gray smoke billowed out in dragon-like puffs. All of a sudden the smell was no longer nostalgic but scratching the back of my throat, and I was standing in soggy slippers in a snowstorm of ash. I dashed back into the house, shaking the ash out of my curls, laughing at myself and the stupidity of my devil-may-care moment, scanning the worktops for my phone so I could send you a photo.
I never did get round to texting you. Not that you’d have seen it. You were dead.
I try to remember what it felt like to laugh like I did that day, but I can’t. The memory is of someone else now. Four Mondays is all it’s been. Four weeks is a lifetime, it turns out. I wonder if you’d recognize me if we passed on the street. The life-of-its-own mass of strawberry blond curls is now limp and hangs scraggily down my back. I finally lost the extra baby weight too. It took only seven years and your death to do it.
Four Mondays. Four weeks without you.
A stream of sunlight finds its way through the lattice pattern of the window, illuminating diamond shapes on the kitchen table and the small box in front of me. I watch the diamonds hit the dark wood of the cupboard doors that hang wonky on their hinges.
I hate this kitchen.
How can a house this big have a kitchen so minuscule and gloomy? I miss the old kitchen. It’s not the same tearing longing I feel when Ithink about our life, but it’s there all the same—a quick tug, a flash of the gleaming white cupboards, smooth floors, and space.
My eyes fall to the box on the table, sitting beside a bowl of two soggy Weetabix I couldn’t eat. The box is small and duck egg blue.Fluoxetineis printed in clear black letters above the rectangular label with my name on it:Mrs. Teresa Clarke. 1 x 20mg tablet per day.
The doctor made it seem so simple.“It’s not uncommon for grief to lead to depression, Mrs. Clarke. From the symptoms you’ve described, I would recommend a course of antidepressants. We’ll start with three months’ worth and then I’d like you to come back and see me. I would also like you to see a bereavement counselor.”
I wanted something to help me sleep, a drug that could pull me into nothingness without the nightmares, but he said I was depressed. I don’t feel depressed. There are a lot of times when all I feel is cold.
You don’t need them, Tessie.
Hearing your voice softens the ache in my chest, but like the playdough Jamie used to love, the ache is putty and stretches across my body. I know you’re dead. I know the voice inside my head isn’t real. It’s just me saying what I know you’d say to me if you were here, but it helps.
You don’t need them.
You said that last time when I could barely get out of bed in the morning to take Jamie to preschool. You told me I could power through it, mind over matter—push the sadness and the emptiness away.
It worked, didn’t it? You did get better.
Eventually.
The space behind my eyes throbs with the threat of tears. My thoughts are running away with me. I focus on the sounds of the house, on what is real. There are plenty of sounds to hear. The hot water pipescreak and bang, the wind in the fireplaces howls ghostlike into the rooms, the windowpanes rattle in the rotting wood. But these sounds are drowned out now by the noises of our son. Thud thud thud—his footsteps, heavy with sleep, make their way to the bathroom.
I imagine Jamie brushing his teeth, skipping over the gap in the middle where his bottom baby teeth used to be. Pushing his tongue against the tooth at the top, testing its wobbliness, and wondering if today is the day it will fall out. I’m sure he’s grown too since you died. Me, I’ve shrunk. I feel so lost, so small, without your arm around me, but nothing can stop our boy from growing up.
Quieter steps now as Jamie moves back to his bedroom to finish getting dressed.
A minute or two ticks by before Jamie appears in the kitchen.
A rush hits me. Our baby boy is here.The relief laps in tiny waves over the pain squeezing my heart. Jamie is here.You are gone and my world has stopped, but Jamie is here. I still have a world.
