Tom is Dead (3 page)

We're in the corridor. Somebody gives me a bag; I have a bag in my hands. Maybe somebody gave it to me before, maybe I've been holding it for a long time. It's a plastic bag from Coles containing Winnie, a Spiderman T-shirt and a pair of striped
Petit Bateau
underpants that I bought for Vince in France. I gasp because these are Tom's things, the ones that he was wearing not long ago, not long ago for his nap. Not exactly a gasp, but I inhale so forcefully that my vocal chords vibrate. I retrace my steps. Over there, somewhere over there, at the end of the corridor, Tom has to get dressed. He can't stay like that. Yet I know, I know that he's dead. I remember the whiteness, Tom laid out, and those blotches under his eyes. Ten years later, the memory hasn't altered. The memory is intact. I don't open this drawer often. I remember the whiteness, the hair, the grey and the purple. Writing it almost stops me from seeing it. Does writing it keep it intact? In the end, will everything be worn away?

I have the bag in my hand—at the end of the corridor, there's Tom; somehow I will find my way there. Stuart holds me back, he says something to me. At the end of the corridor, there's Tom. Stuart shouts and, as I'm struggling, he shouts once more, ‘He's dead, now.' He pauses between the last two words, a stressed comma, and I ask myself why he added
now
. Tom has always been dead. Laid out, purple and white, between us. Everything is clear. Everything is clear-cut and understandable.

I discover that Stuart has organised everything. For example, as soon as we get home, he's the one who prepares a meal. That same night, or that same afternoon, even today I don't know—had one night passed since Tom's nap?—that same day, he prepares a meal. I can see the place—it's empty— but I can't see the time. I can see, in the apartment in Sydney, the window, the bedroom, and the kitchen where Stuart is preparing a meal. Stella and Vince are sitting in their chairs, the small one and the large one. In the middle chair there's nobody. Stuart went to pick up the children from where they were. From where they were stored, as it were. Safe. Waiting to see us again. I remember Stuart saying: ‘They should be here.' I'd uttered exactly the same words when Stella was born. Her brothers should be here. My two sons, by my side. When Tom was born we kept Vince at a distance, at my mother's house, as if it was important to keep the eldest away from Mysteries. Fear of fatigue, I suppose. And I'd regretted it later—what don't you regret. But I was right: fatigue kills.

Stuart had arranged everything. That meal, for example. Had he been shopping? When? I'm sitting on my chair. I watch this man who is frying frozen hamburgers. We've been living in this apartment for three weeks. There's nothing there. Chairs, a table. In the rooms, beds. Boxes set down in each room, with
kitchen
written on those ones there, before my eyes. I watch Stuart and it's now, as I write, that I see him, alone in the supermarket aisles, pushing a trolley around the frozen food section. Asking himself, somehow or other, what he will buy. Because you must eat. Because the children must eat.

I don't know how long the effect of the injection lasted—or, shall we call it, the
shock
—I confuse them; no doubt only a few minutes apart, my brain received the
shock
then the injection. I think the ambulancemen who came to get Tom gave me an injection straight away, so maybe I screamed all the way there from the house,
home sweet home
, right from that apartment in Sydney.

I discover that Stuart has arranged everything. He doesn't look at me, he organises. I watch the performance. He feeds Stella in her highchair. Stella doesn't take her eyes off me. Later, it's the opposite; she won't look at me anymore. Stuart looks for clean cutlery. He wipes Stella's mouth. He makes comments out loud, he talks to himself, or Vince speaks, maybe. Vince doesn't take his eyes off me. It's as if they already knew, as if they'd known even before me. I see Stuart, I see him only now, this man who's just lost his son, alone in the supermarket aisles buying food for the children who are alive. For the children who eat, who chew, who swallow, who have a living digestive system. He looks in the boxes for clean cutlery, a mute rage slapped across his face. Like the octopus in
Aliens
, the octopus stuck onto faces, the first stage of death.
My mummy always said there were no monsters
. Tom was afraid of the dark, like Vince, like Stella, like everybody. Wherever we went he had to have his night-light, which was also Vince's, but Vince had the good excuse of a frightened little brother.

I remember the sentences that went through my mind better than the events. The event had already taken place. Stuart is standing in front of Tom's body, I see him from behind, I see Tom all white except for the blotches. Stuart hands me a bag full of Tom's things. Stuart feeds Stella. Minced meat and chips. Tom is totally absent. They gave me an injection but I no longer know why. Tom is sitting in front of me and is eating minced meat in a highchair; he's eighteen months old. He doesn't take his eyes off me. I'm sitting behind Stuart, in a funeral parlour. In English, they say
funeral parlour
, it's written out the front. ‘Let's go,' I say to Stuart, but no sound comes out of my mouth.

In the Montparnasse cemetery, in Paris, among the graves of dead children, there's a tombstone. In the nineteenth century, children often died. This tombstone was sculpted by the father, a sculptor we call ‘pompier'—as in
art pompier
—I don't remember his name anymore. He made statues for the Jardin du Luxembourg, one was an allegory of winter. The child is two-and-a-half. He is depicted standing, dressed like a little lord amongst his toys. A harlequin doll lies at his feet. Maybe there's also a ball, or a little rocking horse? I only saw this tombstone once, a long time ago. After that I could never find it again in the maze of graves. As I stood in front of the tombstone, I imagined this father, designing, drawing, freeing the form from the marble and, little by little, finding his son's features. Alone in his studio with his chisel and graver. How long did it take? And what was the mother doing?
Doing
is not the right verb. Where was she, how was she
coping
? Once the injection wore off, the moment that followed was impossible to bear. Every moment that followed. Sixty times an hour. What did the mother do to keep her head and her hands busy? Was she laid down all higgledy-piggledy, like the harlequin? Or was she standing in the studio with the father, advising, sculpting with him? I'm sure she wasn't. That day, standing before the grave, I sensed the waves of her disapproval, across the centuries. And maybe this disapproval kept her busy. Maybe the tombstone, as well as the solitary work of the man, served this purpose: to sustain the mother's fury.

We are not alone; this is what I tell myself. That there are men capable of loving to such a degree the creatures that come from women's wombs—I think about this and I feel like crying. We're both sitting on our chairs in front of a table; on the other side there's someone. I know, rationally, that it's the funeral parlour employee. A part of my brain is even interested to see how this guy will proceed. Does he have any training in psychology? Or only training in sales? Stuart has arranged everything. It's a matter of handles. The man opens a photo album and, all of a sudden, I don't want to see photos of dead children. I say it again: let's go. But I can't form the sound at the base of my throat; though I shape the words, everything seems separated and disjointed.

It's a handle catalogue. I hear Stuart name materials and colours. Everything that happens, that exists, the words, the sounds, Stuart's body, the employee on the other side of the table, the pages of the catalogue, the golden handles, everything floats, scattered around me. It was Stuart who got us into this. It was Stuart who left me alone with the children, one time too many, because he had better things to do, because it was a matter of great urgency that this shitty city be fitted out with street furniture. It was Stuart who left it to me to find an apartment, to move house, to move us in; it was Stuart who first neglected Tom. And neglected me. Took us both into his negligence, into the tremendous pull of his negligence, into this stupor, into this permanent jet lag, Tom and I numb to death, dead, Tom and I, beneath Stuart's negligent gaze.

I'm in the funeral parlour sitting just behind my husband. I'm in the white room. I register that Stuart has organised everything, that he must have even organised the
meeting
with this employee to decide the manner of Tom's burial. I know we're not easy clients for this guy to deal with. I also know that I must appear exotic to him, but under the circumstances he doesn't dare ask me where I'm from. A grieving mother. A particular breed of his clientele. Supposedly, there's no name for it, like ‘widow' or ‘orphan', but
grieving mother
says it well— that's what I am, here, in this funeral parlour. And if that's what I am then it means that one of my children is dead, at least one of my children, in this case Tom. And I'm going to watch how this guy tries to sell me a coffin and coffin handles. Every situation is a good opportunity to learn—
there's treasure everywhere
, it's Winnie the Pooh's motto. This guy must be used to being hated. Or completely ignored. And presumably there's worse than him, more sententious, more soothing, or not as good at acting. A part of my brain plays with Tom's death as if with a cold, hard ball. Nothing matters anymore about Tom's death, including Tom's death.

He says a word. He asks a question that I don't understand and Stuart turns to me. Both of them look at my hands. They seem focused on my hands, so I look at them too. There's nothing special about them. It's a word that means ‘padding', I understood then. What colour and what kind of material would we like the padding of our son's coffin to be? They're going to bury him, close him up in a metre-long box with padding. If I let them. The last time we measured Tom in Vancouver, he was one metre tall. We made a mark on the door, one mark each, even for Stuart and me who have stopped growing, but you never know. We had fun, in this family. We had fun, we invented games. We loved each other too, Stuart and I. How can I talk about this? He looks at me. We're in the street, in front of the shop, the minute before I said,
let's go
. My voice was hoarse, but I managed to hold everything together, everything that was needed, will power, sound, meaning, muscles, air, vocal chords. Stuart uttered my name, annoyed—are you allowed to have a fight in a funeral parlour? ‘It's an understandable reaction,' says the employee. He gets up in turn and I think he wants to touch my arm. I push him away with all my strength, and he's crowned with a wreath of artificial flowers.

Below, there's the sea. Stuart looks at me. I'd already been past this funeral place several times while doing the shopping. The sun. The birds. The tourists in bathing costumes. The absurd sea, thin and blue like a line at the bottom of the hill. I will take care of my son's body. I will accompany him and cherish him as long as possible. It's my turn to arrange everything.

The first few nights I don't give it a thought—the first few times, when it's time to sleep: I swallow the sleeping pill prescribed by the hospital. I look at Vince and Stella. Vince goes to school. Business as usual. I look at them, my children, the little boy and the very little girl. I didn't protect them from their brother's death.

As I write, ten years on, I still don't know: who told them? When? And even: were they told? Did the words pass our lips? Have we gone ten years without uttering this sentence to them,
Tom is dead
? Leaving them to come to terms with this fact alone, to go alone to this dark place? Tom Thumb in the ogre's house. Did Vince wait, and for how long, for his brother to return? With Stella, I knew what to do: I carried her constantly in my arms. As for everything else, I stuck to one rule, a sort of routine: I never cried in the presence of the children. Or in front of Stuart. I cried alone. Though not straight away. There was no consolation in it. We were all, each one of us, alone, like an abandoned child sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth.

That Tom, one metre tall, weighing sixteen kilos, had been able to throw the whole family into such a state seemed phenomenal to me, truly incredible; of course he was going to come back, collecting one by one the white pebbles left along the path, and everything would go back to how it was before.

So I take Vince to school. It's morning, must be around eight-thirty. Now's the time for breaking the news, I realise this as I write: yes, that time has begun. Tom's death begins here. I say to the teacher, ‘Tom is dead.' I say it in front of Vince, Stella in my arms. Maybe that's where they hear it, the sentence, the sentence that says what's been happening for the last one, two, maybe three days. Hamburgers and chips and chaos. I don't pay attention to the teacher's reaction—I don't remember anymore. She may well have said nothing at all. To those who knew not to add anything to Tom's death, I can be grateful, I guess. To those who knew not to throw in their two-cent's worth. This teacher knew how to be discreet. Not to scar us further. I leave, Stella in my arms. I've done my duty for Vince; his teacher has been warned. She won't tell him off today, or in the coming days and weeks, according to her view on the duration of a child's mourning. Maybe she'll find a way to let his classmates know, his fucking classmates in this fucking Australian school, and Tom's teacher too (because that I won't do, or if I did, I can't remember, I have no memory of having taken this
measure
). And Vince will find himself surrounded by a quarantine line, people will move back a couple of metres, and he'll get twice as many invitations to birthday parties. Good deeds from some and ostracism by others. Our house is plague-stricken. In a circle of ash, from which we will emerge, vampires, to haunt them.