Just like the movies, journalists had camped in their yard, waiting for them to step outside and express their private feelings. One didn’t have to answer the telephone. People said time healed all, assuaged grief. She had believed as much and gotten used to Jimmy’s absence … in time … over time. And now, as if no time had lapsed at all, here it was again like a package delivered to her door. The draperies drawn, she dusted the pictures on the mantelpiece, including Jimmy’s high school graduation portrait, his last photo. For a while Herb and she had flipped through the family albums, recalling their son’s childhood and troublesome teens, holding hands and occasionally sobbing to themselves, wondering what went wrong, who was to blame, then deciding one day to look no more and to absolve themselves.
They hadn’t argued, as one of the reporters asked last week when Nell made the mistake of responding to questions on her porch. No matter how often she answered, the journalists asked the same question over and over, using different words, as if they didn’t understand English, dissatisfied with unsensational truth, or they tried to pry out some scoop, some never before revealed piece of information. What was the point of telling reporters anything as they only put words in your mouth, altered emphasis, created implications where none existed, and fabricated their own versions of what they wanted to hear? No, they hadn’t argued … parents had the right to point the way … families discussed things and it was only natural for boys to object.
This, too, like Jimmy himself would pass. Nell sat on her husband’s arm chair covered with the multi-coloured afghan she had knitted, similar to the one she had mailed to Jimmy the Christmas after he left home and they still knew his address. Then he disappeared and they heard nothing, nothing at all. Not on her birthday the following May, or Herb’s in August, or the next Christmas. And their parcel had been returned: Unknown at this address.
“He’s dropped off the edge …” Herb said after flying from Toronto. Like he had never been in their lives at all. That was how she felt, and would have said as much, if Nell cared to reply.
“I feel like nothing at all.” She flicked the pink duster over a figurine on the end table. The lamp wobbled.
“Forty years.”
Herb had warned Nell about the habit of talking to herself. It was all very well when she was alone, but lately she had been blurting out incomplete sentences and exclamations in the supermarket, the church, even on the sidewalk downtown. “Like carrying on a private conversation with someone I don’t even know,” Herb had said, somehow wounded that she excluded him. “For heaven’s sake, can’t you keep your thoughts to yourself or wait at least until we get home?”
He was right, of course. It caused embarrassment in the church pew, especially during a sermon. No one heard anything when the congregation sang hymns. There used to be a television show called Hymn Sing which she and Herb had watched years ago and had tried to get Jimmy interested on Sunday morning, even letting him eat his pancakes and syrup in the living room, at great risk to the furniture and rug, but the sweet voices and piety had had no effect. He became restless and disrupted the magic of the moment by asking to watch cartoons.
At her feet lay several newspapers Herb had brought from the tobacco shop on Spring Garden road which sold the Toronto, Ottawa, and even New York papers. They had read all the stories about the discovery of the remains, mostly skeletal, unidentified for years, and now, at last, his name … their son … whose flesh had rotted in a field under the stupid gaze of cows.
And Nell felt nothing except a kind of wonder over the passage of time and how personal pain and family tragedy became a collection of puzzle pieces for public reconstruction, then a sequence of events, then journalists outside her door, and everyone, friends and strangers alike in Halifax expecting them to say something, to feel something. Forty years ago Jimmy disappeared. Had he lived he would have been 57 years old, and possibly hosting a dinner for his mother’s eightieth-second birthday, as loving sons were wont to do, perhaps his own grown child or children, the grandchildren that might have been, also offering her gifts, and she would have cried out of sheer sentimentality, as she did when she saw Dr. Zhivago … was that also forty years ago?… and, of course, The Titanic … well, really, you just had to cry during that one, if you had a heart. Like Zhivago and Lara and that poor sweet Irish lad in steerage who drowned young, Jimmy had missed so much in life.
Nell examined the corners of the ceiling. Cracked crown moulding, such a big wooden house built by a sea captain, one of Herb’s ancestors in the nineteenth century, much too big to look after. “Jimmy would have inherited the place,” Herb had said once decades ago. Now there was no one to leave anything to. They would have to sell and use the proceeds to pay for a senior’s condo somewhere. Herb wanted to move to Florida, a place she despised, having spent two weeks there shielding her eyes against too much sun, clashing lurid colours and almost-naked bodies, disoriented as if she had stepped onto a Martian beach, unsure of where to place her foot on the ever-shifting sands.
“Oh dear, I’ll never be able to reach those cobwebs in the corner, not with this duster. Maybe Herb can get up there with a step ladder when he comes home. I wish Herb would come home, don’t you?” Hearing her question, Nell remembered Herb’s admonition. Who on earth was she talking to? Someone tapped on the window. Another reporter. If she drew the draperies, cameras would bob and click like giant insects, and her picture would appear in the morning paper under a headline: Grieving Mother, or some such nonsense.
“Forty years!”
Dead that long. Scarcely grown into manhood and his life cut off by a lunatic who preyed on boys. Nell quickly stood up, dropped the duster and leaned against the chair for support. Blood rushing, attenuated blood at that for which she swallowed prescription drugs, to the head of an old person could cause a capillary to burst, then she’d fall, possibly break a hip, or strike her head against the hardwood floor. In need of polishing, even re-sanding, she noted, so it was best to gather her strength before taking a step.
His manner of dying. How her son must have lived after he left home. She really didn’t want to know, but there it was displayed in the papers, seen on the telecasts and heard on the radio: the suggestions, the implications, the probabilities: a man who preyed on teenaged boys …. oh, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what had happened …. the murder …. the body abandoned in a farmer’s field. And yet, that was the horror of it, she could imagine it very well for she had seen enough television to corroborate the most gruesome scenarios.
“Dear me, my Jimmy.”
Then she plunked herself down on the cushion, her heart almost tilting from the sudden action. Nell grabbed her chest and tried to focus on what chores needed to be done today, what she could do without exhausting herself. She wasn’t frail, but Herb, who still mowed their lawn and crawled under their car to change the oil or grease the frame or whatever he felt necessary to do himself, insisted that she perform one relatively minor task in the morning, then rest.
“Amazing what modern science can do,” she said, glancing at crumpled sheets of newsprint and raising an arm as if to accept a cup of tea. Of course Herb was on record, having contacted the police years ago about their missing son. When Herb’s brother Marshall saw the reconstructed face on television and the Web a month ago and recognized a strong resemblance to his nephew, it was only a matter of time before they phoned Jimmy’s home. Then all that confused and breath-taking business of collecting and comparing DNA, which she didn’t entirely understand, but there it was. Marshall had phoned, breathless, demanding Herb log on to the website and examine the face. She didn’t play with the computer, it was Herb’s toy, although she had some notion of the World Wide Web, sometimes fancying it a kind of universal, spider web stretched across the heavens, catching all sorts of riffraff and bits of information in its sticky threads. And because two other young men had recently been found dead in similar circumstances, her son’s story — a cold case, the police called it, never officially closed, remaining unsolved, like that television programme she sometimes watched, never for a moment believing it could ever have anything to do with her life — her son’s story became major news as if he had just been murdered yesterday. Herb emerged shaken and white, scarcely able to repeat, “they found Jimmy at last.” And she had refused to verify the image, wouldn’t even sit in front of the computer.
“Found at last. How many years did we search and wait for news, hoping against hope, do you know?”
The window tapping prevented Nell from slipping into stupor, so she struggled out of the comfortable chair and, lacking her cane, limped down the hall to the kitchen, the back door securely locked, the blinds pulled down. Herb should be home soon. How he’d managed to wade through the muck of newsmongers, she didn’t know. Leaving before sunrise to breakfast with Marshall, see a few old friends who had phoned to offer condolences forty years after the event, gather provisions, speak to the police at the station, he promised to return by noon. The police had warned the reporters to keep their distance after Herb had complained about trespassing and threatened. Perhaps they would part like the Red Sea to let him pass. God was always on the side of the righteous, so she had been told.
Authorities had been unable to recognize the body when found decades ago. Until now when the skeleton, that concatenation of bones, proved to be her own beloved boy: taken, broken, decomposed. And they had asked what she felt? Herb hadn’t stopped bustling about since Toronto police confirmed the identity of the body. He had even taken the family albums out of the closet and talked in a louder voice than normal about what Jimmy used to do: here, look at this, remember that blue tricycle? And the day we drove to Peggy’s Cove and he slipped on the rocks? Once, picking up the graduation photo, he had wondered aloud, “maybe, I shouldn’t’ve bin so hard on him? Things would’ve bin different …” and she patted his shoulder, trying to stop him from travelling down the road of regrets. Oh yes, indeed, she remembered. Nell stared long at the blind over the kitchen sink: beige, opaque enough to keep the light out, utterly devoid of pattern.
By the following week national attention had subsided and she could attend the memorial service at their white clapboard chapel on Quinpool Road without cameras buzzing about their faces. Both the pastor and Herb wished to hold a service…since no formal funeral had ever been conducted and, as Pastor Manning averred, “one needed closure” and “it would do the boy’s soul good to know that he was remembered and being properly laid to rest.” Despite her reservations … such a fuss after all these years … and people talking about Jimmy’s life in Toronto … one needed only connect the dots … don’t even let her think about it … but the thoughts just flitted through her mind like … and besides how could a pile of bones shipped from Toronto have anything at all to do with soul, Herb insisted and she could see it mattered to him.
“He’s our son, Nell. We’ll do him proud.”
What, those bones, our son? Jimmy had disappeared ages ago and would never come back, she had wanted to retort. She had passed forty nights after the last Christmas parcel had been returned, forty nights crying in her pillow, realizing then she would never see Jimmy again because he didn’t wish to be found. Hanging out the laundry in the back yard, she had begged God to bring him back, even agreed to pay for that private detective which just about wiped out their savings, but hope never changed the weather, and all the collective prayers in the chapel became so much mumbling and gas. She stopped crying one night and let go. Describing the proposed service, Herb averted his eyes so she wouldn’t see his tears.
Members of the congregation greeted Nell at the door, assisted her down the aisle to her favourite seat in the front pew, trying to avoid tripping over her black cane, not really paying attention to her insistence that she could manage very well. People gathered around death and brought food as if a real funeral was in progress. Herb had also agreed to a wake to be held in the church hall. She couldn’t bear the thought of a hundred people eating jellied salads and date squares in her home after the service. She wouldn’t have to worry about what to serve for lunch or dinner for days because they would fill the back seat of Herb’s Toyota with plastic bowls of leftovers from the funeral feast.
There it lay on a wheeled bier at the head of the church, a rectangle building that often reminded Nell of a coffin, displayed under the large wooden cross: a simple, unadorned casket with Jimmy’s graduation portrait in a silver frame poised on top a blanket of white roses, paid for by the congregation. She even heard people sniffling and sobbing as if grieving for a dearly beloved relative, some of whom had also whispered in the cloak room and the back pews about Jimmy and what the newspapers accounts of his few months in Toronto implied. Arthritis hadn’t impaired her hearing. Very few even remembered Jimmy. What did they really know? Marshall embraced his brother and kissed her before he sat behind them. Along with five of Herb’s old work buddies from the Barrington docks, he had volunteered to act as a pall bearer. Herb stared at his black shoes, scuffed, for he had forgotten to polish them. She had had the foresight to keep her black dress with the black lace collar always pressed and protected by plastic sheathing in the closet because, well, at their age, she had already worn it more than once, and it was best to be prepared and dress for the occasion.
Scarcely hearing a word of the service and even less of the pastor’s sermon, she struggled to stand during hymn sing, although Herb tried to make her sit,. Nell pulled back her arm when he grabbed it, shrugged his hand when he pressed down on her shoulder, and began to tap her cane loudly on the church floor until Herb desisted and she won the battle. The piano player struck a few chords and the mournful voices began tumbling words out slightly behind the melody, trailing after the music trying to catch up. Her own voice slipped down her throat and perished. Herb’s shouted more than sang.
About a hundred people singing over a box of bones beneath a plain wooden cross, reading the words in their hymn books, occasionally glancing up at the pastor whose own voice, rather a sturdy tenor and not unpleasant to hear, led the way. It wasn’t so long ago when the subject matter of his sermons for three Sundays running had been the sanctity of marriage and the threat to family values posed by radical free thinkers and, a phrase she little understood, “philosophers of perversion.” She hadn’t given the matter much thought because how could any one else’s marriage affect her family one way or another? Neither had philosophy nor perversion played much of a role in her life, so she hadn’t understood what the pastor had been going on about. After the singing, Herb held her elbow as Nell lowered herself on to the hard pew, and the pastor began to speak the last words over the coffin. He quoted from appropriate texts of the Bible, and offered his own interpretation of what they meant and how they applied to present circumstances. Gas coiled in her bowels and her hips thrummed with arthritic pain.
“No matter how hard the times, how difficult our days, how lost and confused our thoughts, the Lord is merciful and there’s a reason for everything,” Pastor Manning proclaimed from his pulpit..
“No, there isn’t,” Nell shouted back from her pew, startling the congregation. Herb grabbed her hand and bowed his head.
“Nell, you must control yourself.” Pastor Manning looked down and smiled that forgiving smile of his and continued with a reading from scripture, something about love and charity. His white surplice needed washing. He should have married long ago before his age and drink reddened his complexion and expanded his paunch, but Nell doubted that any woman of sense would have him now.
“No, there’s no reason, no reason at all.”
“Nell, be quiet.”
“Don’t hush me, I won’t be quiet.”
Which explained why Herb and Nell did not accompany the hearse carting Jimmy, well, not Jimmy exactly, to the cemetery where they interred the coffin of bones, nor appeared in the church hall for sandwiches and squares after the grave site service. Pity, because many church women had prepared their tastiest salads and sweets for community gatherings of this sort. But grief, the pastor explained, took many forms. Poor Nell. Our hearts went out to her. The Lord was merciful. Yes, Pastor. Trying not to show their embarrassment and chagrin over Nell’s public spectacle as they wheeled the bier down the aisle and Herb hustled her towards his car. If it had been crying or even hysterics … what mother wouldn’t have broken down at a time like this?… but some of her comments … pushing Herb away…raising her cane … got scandalously personal and theological. Dear Nell … she must be heart broken. God bless her. Yes, Pastor.
In the car Nell remained silent except to issue driving instructions which Herb ignored.
When they reached home, after changing into her favourite house dress and slippers, she spoke to Herb’s back as he opened the refrigerator.
“I want to see that face.”
“Sure, honey, same ol’ face as always.”
“Not yours, fool, that face you saw on the computer.”
Herb grabbed a pair of scissors from a counter drawer and cut open the package of ham slices.
“I’m hungry. You must be hungry yourself, Nell, what with missing lunch at the church? Wish we had stayed.”
“You can go back but I want you to show me that picture.”
Agreement was better than argument so he booted the computer and found the web page which he had bookmarked.
“You sure you want to do this, Nell? You might get upset.”
“I’m fine now that I’m home. Never wanted that service in the first place, you know that. Don’t you have something to do? The grass needs cutting and I want daffodils planted.”
She sat in front of the computer and clicked the mouse according to Herb’s instructions.
There, logged on to the website which displayed Jimmy’s face, for the first time she perused the reconstructed face appearing on the monitor. Just a light intake of breath and she was fine, if Herb should walk in and ask, she was alright. Based upon his age, the shape of the skull and facial bones, yes, the forensic sculptor came eerily close, but so unlike her son she could have been viewing a wax figure in Madame Tussaud’s museum. Yes, amazed, maybe delighted by the similarity, you knew who the characters were, but you also saw something untrue, unreal.
She understood now why Marshall had phoned Herb. The face devoid of expression, not a smile, no light in the eyes … remember how sunlight brightened and sparkled the blue? … it’s Jimmy, they said … forty years … all those nights crying … Herb called her … he had made tea and a sandwich … she had forgotten to eat today … so very young, not even a wrinkle had formed, the very last picture of her darling boy, no history in his eyes at all, no history left behind at all … a lifeless image on the world wide web.
“It’s not my son,” she said, and shuffled out of the room.
Kenneth Radu lives in Quebec. His stories on-line have appeared in Two Hawks Quarterly (Nov /07), Poor Mojo’s Almanac(k), LWOT, and Forget Magazine. He is currently working on a novel and a series of linked short stories. Penguin of Canada published his last novel, The Purest of Human Pleasures.