What the Light Hides (10 page)

There was no one in the reception as we walked into the police station.

Vera went up to the desk and called out, ‘Hello?'

A constable came over. He was in his thirties, with tired eyes and the bleached hair of a surfer. He was a younger version of my friend Shaggy.

‘Yes?' he said.

‘Our son,' I said, then had to clear my voice. ‘Our son is…'

‘Missing,' said Vera.

‘We think he is missing,' I added.

‘He was supposed to start uni last week,' said Vera. ‘I spoke to the faculty, he hasn't been to classes.'

The constable reached for a pen. ‘What's your son's name?'

‘Ben Oliver.'

The constable wrote it down. ‘Age?'

‘Twenty-three.'

‘Date of birth?'

I gave him the date.

‘And the address?'

I gave it to him, while glancing at the grey filing cabinets behind him. How many unsolved cases did they contain?

‘Does he live by himself?'

‘Yes,' said Vera.

‘And when did you last speak to him?'

‘Ten days ago,' I said, and thought of the mouldy Weet-Bix on his kitchen bench.

‘We're going to stay at his place until he comes back,' said Vera.

Half an hour later we were ready to leave. By then the constable had been joined by a sergeant. We had supplied them with a photo and Ben's bank account details. And we had listed contact numbers for his three friends in the mountains as well as for our family dentist in Springwood.

We walked back out into the hot summer evening and standing outside the police station Vera opened the pamphlet we had been given from the missing persons unit. She took one look at the long list of phone numbers and names of support services, then spun around and walked back inside.

The sergeant was still finishing our paperwork.

‘Please,' she said to him, ‘please find my son.'

The sergeant put his pen down. ‘Ma'am,' he said, ‘people go missing all the time, and for all sorts of reasons. Normally it's just a trip somewhere, something spontaneous.'

‘Ben wouldn't leave without telling us. He never has. We talk.'

‘I'm sure you do,' said the sergeant. ‘But I can give you more than a hundred examples of parents coming in here saying the exact same thing. They think the worst has happened and then a couple of days later their son or daughter turns up.'

We felt better after that. Much better. We had heard the voice of reason and our frantic search just moments before now seemed a silly overreaction.

‘More than a hundred examples,' Vera said, shaking her head as we walked to King Street. ‘Those crazy kids. The things they put us through.'

We bought some takeaway Thai food and took it back to Ben's place. The curries were sweet and tangy and, comforted by the sergeant's words, we chatted during dinner.

‘Remember how he once talked about working on a mango plantation?' said Vera.

‘He needs a break,' I nodded.

‘The surfboard is gone, did you notice?'

‘He's been studying hard, got a high distinction the last time we spoke to him, remember?'

But later that night our conversation shifted: ‘Maybe he's had an accident—leaving like that isn't like him.'

We couldn't sleep even though we tried. Now I think that we both somehow thought that if we slept it would prove that everything was not as bad as it seemed.

The police knocked on the door at four in the morning.

A body had been found in the ocean two days earlier. A fisherman had caught it in his net. And with our information the dentist confirmed a match.

‘I want to see him,' said Vera. ‘I want to make sure it's my boy.'

‘He's too far gone,' one of the constables said. ‘He was in the ocean for more than a week, and at this time of year…'

All I could think about was our dentist, Mr Thompson.

‘Our dentist is old,' I said. ‘He could have made a mistake.'

One of the officers said, ‘We will be running a DNA test, but, sir, we have the dental X-rays. There is no mistake.

We're very sorry for your loss.'

Standing alone in Ben's quiet flat I still don't believe it. I would feel it if he were dead. I know I would.

I find a glass in Ben's cupboard and pour myself some water. Despite the cold I feel like I'm burning up. I open the balcony door. Fog has fallen over the city and muted the traffic noises.

It's only when I'm about to close the door that I see a ceramic gnome with a bright green hat on the floor of the balcony. It has big sad eyes like the dwarves in the cartoon version of
Snow White
. Did I check the balcony last time I was here? I can't remember. I'm almost certain that I would have opened the door to let some air in, but did I actually walk out onto the balcony?

I bring the gnome inside and put it on the table.

Who has been in Ben's flat? Besides the fact that there has never been a gnome on his balcony it's hardly his style. He was never into kitsch and he never went for colour. He always wore black, except for one time a couple of years ago when Vera and I picked him up for dinner.

‘But darling,' Vera had said as he opened the door for us. She didn't finish the sentence, but instead leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. During dinner neither Vera nor I mentioned the pink shirt he was wearing, but we spent the entire trip home talking about it.

‘It's the colour of the roses at the back of the garden,' said Vera as we were driving.

And she was right. Ben's shirt was made of pink cotton with white stitching, matching the exact colour of our roses.

‘He must be helplessly in love,' she chuckled. ‘Do you think we should ask him who it is?'

The time when Ben would confide in me was long over and I had no hope it would ever return. ‘No,' I said. ‘He'll tell us when he's ready.'

I check that the shirt is still in the cupboard. Holding it close to my chest I turn off the light and walk over to Ben's bed. I lie down with the shirt next to me. It has turned pale in the darkness. Night has drawn the colour out of it. I pull the doona cover over me without bothering to take off my shoes. Then I lie still, hand on the shirt sleeve, and stare at the dark ceiling.

Later the police showed us the pair of black jeans that Ben had supposedly been wearing. They were the right size, but otherwise nondescript, and neither of us recognised them. And then, after a week, the DNA results came through.

The body was cremated. Only Vera and I were present. We didn't speak. I held her hand while she cried. A few days later we drove back home. The ashes sat in a small cardboard box between Vera's legs. My driving was jerky. At one stage I lost control of the wheel and swerved into the grass onto the side of the road, but Vera didn't seem to notice.

When we got home I went into the kitchen and made a plate of food for us to share. My hands were shaking as I cut the bread and I couldn't think of what to get from the fridge. I walked back and forth from the kitchen to the living room so many times I lost count. I kept thinking of things I could add to the table. Vera had put a CD on and started to light a fire despite it being a warm summer's night.

Outside stars were emerging.

‘Springsteen?' I asked.

‘It' cold, don't you think?' She wiped her hands on her pants. ‘It won't be long.' She bent down to adjust a larger log so the kindling could breathe. When she stood back up she almost lost her balance.

I am not the only one, I thought. I am not the only one who doesn't know my body any longer.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Springsteen seemed right.'

‘He didn't like Springsteen,' I said, looking at all the food I had put on the table.

‘No, but I like him,' she said. ‘And so do you.'

I nodded.

‘And it's us here, now.' She stood at the fireplace looking at me as if she didn't know what to do next.

I walked over and took her hand and we started swaying to ‘Born in the USA'. It was more of a hanging onto each other than actual dancing, but for some reason it was a beautiful moment, a good moment.

We held the funeral in our garden a week later. Vera wore a green skirt and purple gumboots. It had been raining for days, heavy tropical summer rain. We dragged our long kitchen table out onto the lawn. I had covered the legs with plastic bags, wearing work boots and my suit.

‘Are you sure you want this?' I asked Vera. ‘We could have it inside.'

She stood, white as a ghost, rubbing her arms.

‘He didn't really like the garden,' I said.

‘I can't bear being inside,' she said. ‘I don't want this memory in the house. Everything else about him, but not this.'

We carried plates to the table and platters with roasted vegetables and five slow-roasted chickens that we bought from a neighbour. There were bowls of crème fraîche, green leaves with dressing, jars of honey, cold butter and bread rolls. I had baked the rolls that morning before dawn. Kneading the dough in the quiet kitchen I had still expected him to arrive home, to walk into the kitchen and tell me that it was all a mistake.

The gums swayed, the oaks groaned and, standing in front of the table, I realised that the spread was reminiscent of our wedding feast in the same garden. We had re-created it without realising.

People started to arrive. Vera's mum and her husband, Bob, who had promised to say a few words. He shook my hand with a formality that was normally never present between us. But his watery blue eyes were kind and offered me a moment of solace. Then a cousin came, and a friend, and then another friend. My mother arrived with Neil and Maria. I never asked where Jared was that day, but I was grateful he didn't come. People were wearing light shirts and summer dresses, everyone but me, strictly following Vera's wish for us all to wear something colourful.

Everyone helped themselves to the food and chatted politely, and it was only after a little while that I realised my mother wasn't in the yard. I went to look for her. The sounds from the garden followed me inside. It wasn't a happy sound, nor was it sad; it was the sound of people trying to be present and polite and at that moment I thought decorum wasn't such a bad thing. Sometimes the air needs to be filled with the sound of good will. Sometimes it's all we have.

I found her in the living room.

‘Mum,' I said. ‘We're starting now.'

She didn't look at me, just shook her head and began to cry.

I wanted to comfort her, but the early morning, the baking of the rolls, the setting up and the sheer effort of being present had taken everything out of me. ‘Please,' I said. ‘Could you please do this for me? Mum? I need you out there.'

‘Why would he do this to me? Why?' she sobbed.

I stood there wishing I never had to see her again. Then I left the room.

Outside people were wiping hands on serviettes, taking last swigs of red wine, before forming a sombre circle around the large oak where we had decided to bury the ashes.

I should have dug the hole before they arrived. I thought it was going to be easy after all the rain, but instead the soil had turned to clay. I dug and dug. My suit felt too tight and I was sweating in the cold air. No one moved, no one spoke. The sky hung dark and heavy and I could hear my own laboured breathing. It felt like the digging would never end, but finally the hole was deep enough. Vera bent down and put the box into it. She used her hands to push the soil on top of it. She left a handful of dirt and looked at me. ‘Do you want to?' she asked, eyes red, cheeks blotchy. I shook my head. She pushed the last bit of soil on top of the box and patted it with her hand. And then she started crying helplessly.

Vera's mum kneeled next to Vera and embraced her. Bob came forwards to speak. I just stood there, holding onto the shovel, wishing I could run into the bush and disappear for good.

Bob said, ‘I am not a man of big words. All I will say today is that it's a day of mourning and that my heart is heavy. I am going to read a psalm and then I will pray.'

I remember the words from the psalm: ‘Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.' The words fell in strange and awkward shapes; they fell on me and into me, and I was surprised how soothing they were.

When Bob finished people started to leave. Some came over to say goodbye, others just nodded at me as they left. I was still holding the shovel and Vera continued to cry.

My mother didn't say goodbye, but Neil hugged me and said with a broken voice, ‘Anything you need, anything at all and you ring me.' And I nodded into his shirt, thinking that he smelled of thyme and red wine and that I might never feel happy again. He let me go and looked at me. His curly mane of hair caught the bleak light and for a moment I thought he looked like a prince, like something out of Narnia.

Ben's apartment is quiet; the whole building is quiet. Time passes through me, moving in waves from past to present. Before and after. Vera, Ben and me. I watch the night become brittle. The liquid morning touches the room and Ben's shirt turns pink again. I bring a sleeve to my face and inhale. And in a supernatural effort, like an experienced perfumer, I separate the smells: one part cupboard, one part winter, one part Sydney traffic that must have snuck in through the crevices of the flat and one part—of this I am sure—Ben. I single that part out and inhale deeply and then I fall asleep.

I wake in the afternoon feeling hung-over. It's drizzling again. Light moves on the white wall, dances across the face of Karl Marx. The place is freezing. I climb out of bed, head pounding, and find my phone. There are two texts from Vera. The first says, ‘Coming in this afternoon at 4.30. See you after the meeting. Dinner?' The next was sent half an hour later: ‘Meeting postponed, but already on train. Pick me up at the station? x.'