What the Light Hides (8 page)

‘You're right about that.'

‘No,' he looks up at me. ‘There's something else. I can't put my finger on it. Except that she's started to forget things.' I wait.

‘She forgot Jared's name at the airport. And when I carried her luggage into the house she said, “The cats need feeding right away.” And I said, “Do you mean the pigeons?” And she turned to me and she looked scared, she looked really scared.'

‘I can't help you, Neil. But I will see you tonight, I promise.'

‘Bring a couple of reds,' he shouts after me as I walk down the carpeted hallway.

I attempt to take a shortcut across campus and get lost. So much for having a great sense of direction. Trying to orient myself I realise that the School of Engineering is right in front of me.

Two young men are leaving the building, one wearing a T-shirt, the other in a black coat. They part ways at the corner.

How long before I realise? How long before I recognise his walk and the green canvas backpack with the Che Guevara patch?

A minute, maybe two?

Then I begin to run. ‘Ben,' I shout, ‘Ben!'

A group of workmen in vests and hardhats turn and look at me. Everything stands in relief as I run: the leaves on the pavement, the sun skimming the red-tiled roof ahead, and the smell of cigarettes and Nescafé. I run fast, but when I reach the corner he is gone. I continue down the empty street, past closed faculties and empty bike racks. Everything is quiet. I pull at doors, one after the other, and yell his name into vacant stairwells. But there is no one around.

There is an oval at the end of the street. A young man in a striped jersey is running the track.

‘Hey,' I shout. ‘Please, hey!'

He comes to a halt, his jersey soaked with sweat.

‘Did you see someone walk by just a moment ago? A young man your age, wearing a black coat.'

The runner shakes his head.

‘His name is Ben,' I say. ‘Curly hair. Tall.'

‘No,' says the runner as he takes off again. ‘Sorry.'

Then I do the only thing I can think of: I hurry back to the engineering building and knock hard on the locked entrance door.

A window on the first floor is flung open and a young woman in a grey beanie looks down at me. ‘Hi,' she says. Her nose sounds blocked.

‘I just saw a man come out of this building,' I say. ‘Did you see him?'

‘Was he wearing a T-shirt?'

‘No,' I say.

‘That's Tom, the idiot,' she says. ‘It's ten degrees outside and he's in a T-shirt so we can see how much he works out.'

‘There was someone else,' I say. ‘A man. Dark curly hair, black coat. He has a green backpack with a Che Guevara patch.'

‘Do you know Tom?'

‘No,' I say. ‘It wasn't Tom.' My skin prickles with pins and needles and I feel like I am about to throw up.

‘It sounds like you know him.'

‘There was another boy…man.' I correct myself. I try to talk as slowly and patiently as I can. ‘He was walking out with Tom just a moment ago. He is my son, his name is Ben.'

‘Your son?'

‘Ben Oliver. He's enrolled in the engineering program.'

She shakes her head. ‘There was no one here but Tom and me.'

I head for Ben's flat on shaky legs. The traffic along King Street is dense and smoky. An old truck comes to a squeaky halt at the lights. I glance up at the driver. A clumsy attempt has been made to transform his cabin into a home. The curtain to the sleeping area behind him is held to the side by a red string. A plastic garland hangs on the rear-view mirror and a thermos rests on the dashboard. I am immediately certain that this man has no one in his life—that no one cares about where he is and what he's doing. I see my future self in him. And I know that without Vera I will be floundering, that without her I will be completely lost. And because of that I head back to the house instead of going to Ben's flat.

Back in the house I walk upstairs and sit down on the bed, feeling as if I have narrowly avoided a catastrophe. I reach for the notebook on the bedside table. If I am not going to search for him then at least I have to document what I saw. I write: ‘Ben 2.30 p.m. Electrical engineering, Sydney University.'

As soon as I write the words they feel like a betrayal.

Vera cried for weeks after the funeral. She kept asking, ‘How could this happen?' And I kept saying, ‘I don't know, Vera. I don't know.'

All we knew was that a woman who wanted to remain anonymous had spoken to a young man at the Gap that matched Ben's description. He had seemed agitated and had been pacing near the edge of the cliffs. The woman returned to her car and phoned the police. With them on the line she had walked back to the cliffs, but by then the man was gone.

I couldn't bear hearing Vera cry. A cloud so big, so enormous, had descended upon us and it felt as if we weren't going to make it through. I was in a daze and no matter how many painkillers I took I had a constant headache. Three weeks after the funeral I asked Vera's mum to come and stay with Vera while I went to the city. I spent the whole morning searching Ben's place again. I went through his books, his papers, his computer, but found nothing, not even the tiniest clue as to what might have happened to him.

I headed home early that afternoon. And then, driving down a sun-drenched King Street, I saw Ben's lanky frame walk into a pub. I parked in the middle of a bus zone. I was sure, I was very, very sure. I even went as far as thinking that Ben needed to come home and stay with us for a while so that we could all recover from what had happened. What a comedy, I thought, running across the street. What a gigantic mistake.

The pub was near empty and scorching hot despite the ceiling fans. A few people were sitting at the bar, a couple on stools facing the street. The place smelled of beer and piss. Two women in their sixties sat in front of the poker machines in matching nylon dresses, their bags tucked at the side of their stools.

I ran to the back of the pub, into the kitchen and then out onto the back lane, but he wasn't there. Then I searched the bathrooms.

A man in his twenties, a younger version of Neil with bright red hair and a striped shirt, was smoking a joint at the sink.

I glanced at the cubicles. He followed my look.

‘Are you a spy, bro?' he asked.

‘No,' I said.

‘You're one of them spies,' he insisted.

‘I am not a spy,' I said and felt like punching him.

‘Want a puff?'

‘No, thank you.'

‘No, thank you,' he mimicked.

I could hear him laugh as I left the bathroom and walked out of the pub.

On the drive back to the mountains my certainty grew. I replayed the image of Ben walking into the pub as I raced past cliffs and gums; the dry landscape seemed infused with hope, bursting with wild beauty.

After parking in our driveway I rushed into the house and barely managed a hello to Vera's mum, who was in the laundry pulling clothes out of the dryer. I found Vera in the kitchen. She was pouring water into the coffee plunger and I took notice of the steam hitting the window glass. Vera was wearing a sleeveless blue dress. Her arms were tanned and her feet were bare in her work boots. Her hair hung loose, reaching her lower back.

‘Vera,' I said. ‘Something just happened.'

‘What?' She turned towards me, her eyes red and swollen from crying.

And the words fell out of me. ‘I saw him. Just now. Vera, Ben is alive.' And then it was out—hot, hard and irreversible.

She looked at me. The kitchen was quiet. I couldn't read her.

Then she turned her back to me.

‘I saw him, Vera.'

The border collie two doors down gave a whine, something in between a bark and howl. The light moved, flickering with the tree outside, and licked the hem of her dress.

‘Vera? Did you hear what I said?'

‘Don't.' She stayed with her back towards me. She reached out and picked up a rubber band from the bench. It was purple. It came from a bunch of asparagus that we had bought the day before. She put up her hair, slowly.

‘Vera,' I said and took a step towards her. The floorboards squeaked and I had a sudden image of being in a war hospital talking to someone badly injured. ‘Vera,' I said, ‘we don't know for sure. We don't know that he's dead.'

She grabbed the full coffee plunger and threw it to the floor; it shattered into a thousand pieces and coffee was everywhere. On her, on me.

Then her legs gave way and she slid down against the kitchen cupboard until she sat on the floor. She started to cry.

Her mum appeared in the doorway holding a pair of my workpants.

‘Vera.' I bent down to help her up. ‘Vera, don't sit on the floor, there's glass. Don't.'

She didn't hear me. She kept crying and when I placed a hand on her arm to help her up she scrambled away from me, past her mum and out of the kitchen. I could hear her enter the bathroom and the shower being turned on.

The glass fragments glimmered in the light like stars. I thought for a moment that that was how it was going to be from then on; that somehow I had broken something bigger and that the kitchen would forever be inhabited by coffee grinds and tiny shards of glass.

We didn't talk about it. Vera avoided me for days and none of our movements were in sync. One night several weeks later I found her in the living room watching the video of the swimming races again. I turned the TV off and together we walked through the dark house. She didn't turn away from me when we were back in bed. I moved closer, put a hand on her back and drew her towards me.

‘No,' she said, stiffening against me. ‘Don't.'

I waited for her to say more, thinking how different her voice sounded. Still deep, still warm, but frail somehow.

‘Grief,' she said into the darkness. ‘Grief does different things to people. What you experienced…seeing Ben, it's grief, David. It's nothing but grief.'

I reached out and took her hand.

‘But promise me,' she said, her voice catching, ‘promise me you'll stop this. Ben is dead. He will never come back to us, David. This is it—you and me. This is all there is now.'

I put the notebook back on the bedside table and I lie down. I pull the covers over me and with the wind rattling the windowpane I doze off. I sleep for what feels like hours, deep and undisturbed. But just before I wake I dream of Ben. He is falling through the air. And in the dream I feel the rush of wind and the weight of his fall. I hear him call out for me and wake myself up by shouting, ‘I will find you, Ben. I will find you.'

I sit up in bed, my heart beating unbearably fast. It's almost dark outside and it has started to rain. Then I remember dinner with Neil and stumble into the shower.

It's completely dark by the time I walk up to King Street. Sheets of rain lash onto the footpath and the rush-hour traffic is slow. I buy three bottles of red wine from a bottle shop and wish I had brought an umbrella with me.

The bus is packed. Next to me a woman is checking her phone; no one is talking. The rain hammers against the windows and I am almost lulled back to sleep.

When I get off in Leichhardt the rain has stopped. Norton Street is busy. People are doing their last bit of shopping and I can't help it. Before I turn into Neil's street I quickly scan the crowd for Ben, but he is not there.

The bottles clink in the plastic bag as I walk to Neil and Maria's single-storey house at the end of the road. Neil bought the house, two streets away from our mother, when he was in his mid-twenties. I thought then that he was destined to stay a bachelor forever. He liked women, and as far as I could tell they liked him too. But he never seemed interested in something more permanent. In retrospect I should have picked up on the signs. He spent two years renovating the house inside and out. He painted the walls and restored the floorboards; he even built a brand-new kitchen despite the fact that he doesn't like to cook. I think he was preparing for a family and that he somehow knew Maria and Jared would come along one day.

Vera and I first met Maria eight years ago. We came to visit Neil, but it was Maria who greeted us. She opened the door wearing an apron with small red hearts on it, the strings wrapped twice around her tiny waist. An Italian beauty with a lavish smile and jet-black hair. Neil hadn't told us anything about her and for a moment we thought it was the wrong house. Later we learned that she had already moved in.

Neil beamed at us all night, as if he wanted to shout, ‘Isn't she just wonderful, isn't she just perfect,' and we nodded in silent agreement.

That evening Maria insisted on seeing a photo of Ben. I showed her the one in my wallet: Ben as a four-year-old sitting on the floor in a ray of sunlight with a book in his lap.

‘What is he reading?' asked Maria.

‘A picture book called
Once I Had a Plane
,' said Vera. ‘It was his favourite.'

Putting the photo back in my wallet I joked that Ben had grown just a bit since then and that he, as a matter of fact, was in the middle of hosting a party in our absence. Before leaving for the city Vera and I had made sure to stow away three paintings, some of Vera's favourite glasses and our Alvar Aalto vase.

Maria turned to Neil and said, ‘Promise me that we are going to have a child like this?'

I watched Neil reach for her hand and in that moment I saw his life unfold in a way I could never have predicted.

Tonight Maria greets me at the door once more. I can smell lamb and rosemary as I give her a hug.

‘I don't think I have ever seen you in black,' I say and notice how pale she is.

Neil appears from the living room. ‘Little brother,' he booms and puts an arm around my shoulder.

‘Will I be able to get out of here?' I joke, seeing Maria slot two security chains into place.

‘We had a break-in last week,' says Neil and he leads the way to the living room. Maria disappears into the kitchen.