The Outcast Son Page 13

  “Yeah! It’ll be fun! A little brother!”

  “Or sister.”

  “Or sister. I prefer a brother. I’ll teach him how to draw and how to read. And I’ll play video games with him. On my tablet.”

  “Your tablet?”

  He lowered his eyes, and I squeezed him in my arms and kissed his forehead. His warm hands tangled around my neck, and his little lips touched my cheek. I could be like this forever. Feeling his very heart. Lost among smiles and laughter and the love only a child can give to their mother. There’s nothing better. Nothing sweeter. Nothing more mysteriously pleasant.

  I counted the days and the weeks and the months, and I learned how to cross my fingers. My fear would never abandon me. It became my best friend. It woke me up when the tiles on our bedroom floor gleamed in the pale light of a full moon. It kept me from making too much physical effort and giving in to forbidden drinks and food. It spoke to me at night. Better safe than sorry, it used to say. Better safe than sorry. And I was safe. And positive. And optimistic. Every morning was an opportunity. I grew rounded. I didn’t even know how rounded I could become until I saw it there, in my mirror, on the snowman smiling at me. But I felt pretty. There was a sparkle on my face I hadn’t seen before. A silly expression I couldn’t get rid of.

  Even Mark seemed to have cut the crappy attitude and threw himself into the miracle I was carefully nurturing. Not a single word about Jaime. He was nicer than ever. He even spent time with him alone for me to have my own space, and my boy looked so happy. He was always smiling and laughing and speaking out loud. “My brother this, my brother that…” It was pure joy. They were all the support I needed. The nightmares and the insecurity and the fear of the first weeks vanished. It happened so gradually that I didn’t realise until I was completely surrounded by an atmosphere of delight and peace of mind.

  And so the day came.

  Mark was cooking – with Jaime’s invaluable help. I couldn’t even move. I was like a turtle on its shell, unable to reach the floor with my limbs. TV was crap as usual. I was reading. Nothing in particular or that I remember. Probably some article about newborns’ clothes or newborns’ cots or newborns’ food.

  It began like a storm. Something was ripping out of me. My body was being torn apart from the inside. Bit by bit. In speeding-up bursts that wrapped me as a sticky, cold thread of sweat fell down my back and my chest and my whole body. I shouted. Really loud. I scared Jaime. The poor thing didn’t know what was happening, and I shouted and shouted as if I were going to die.

  “Laura! Are you all right?” Mark said.

  “Of course I’m not all right, you moron! My water has broken!”

  “Oh my! Oh my!”

  “Will you shut up and take me to the hospital?”

  Our car felt too small for me. I let Jaime go alone at the back, and my body spread all over the passenger’s seat. The belt oppressed me, but my pain didn’t allow me to notice it too much. A tiny discomfort compared to the sharper punctures in my belly. Every curve made me lose balance and was harder and harder to recover my position. I held on to anything I could reach with my right hand, my left hand too busy trying to keep my weight in its place – the handle over the glass suffered as much as I did at every swing. Dizziness accumulated in my stomach. I felt sick.

  “Crap!” Mark said.

  “Just drive!”

  After an agony of fifteen minutes, we arrived at the hospital. My limbs weren’t responding to my will. I was cold and hot and sweaty, all at the same time. Crying and shouting again. Unable to endure that torture of flints exploding inside me and trying to push their many piercing fragments out of my body. They came to find me at the gates, took me in and made me lay down on a pallet.

  They moved us to a large room, although I didn’t pay much attention to my surroundings, focused on my own pain. They connected me to a number of different sensors to check my blood pressure, the oxygen levels in my blood and both my heart rate and my baby’s. Mark looked absent, but I knew he was in shock. To see me in that situation, wrapped in machines and medical appliances and hospital clothes, must have been a frightening experience.

  It didn’t get any better when our son’s heartbeat slowed down. I couldn’t even look at Mark’s face when the midwife called for a doctor. Something wasn’t okay. A flash of cold lightning flooded my stomach. I wanted to be sick, but I held it. In my mind, my nightmares came to chase me and disturb my calm. After having successfully gone through nine months without incidents, I’d somehow taken for granted everything was going to be all right and nothing would keep me from delivering a beautiful baby. But the doctor came and took Mark out to speak with him in private. It was as if a monster were devouring my reality, one bite at a time, destroying everything and everyone and leaving me alone and in pain and wanting to die. Those were the three longest minutes of my life.

  “What’s wrong? What’s happening?” I asked when Mark came back. He didn’t look as worried as I was, but that didn’t ease me.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said, trying in vain to comfort me.

  “It’s not all right!” I said. “Look at his pulse! We’re losing our son!”

  “The doctor says it’s okay and we don’t have to fear for the baby, but if the heart rate doesn’t come back to normal, they’ll have to perform a C-section.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked with a certain relief. “Is that all?”

  “Yes,” Mark said. “You just focus on delivering the baby, honey.”

  Luckily enough, little Marcus’s heartbeats recovered their normal pace, and after a struggle of thirteen hours, the pulls of our midwife and my titanic effort, it finally happened. Our son had been born. Crying. Eyes closed. Pinked in that beautiful ugliness only babies possess. My eyes found Mark’s. He was by my side, pale and cold and rigid. An uninterrupted stream of tears flowing down his face. He smiled. Nervous. Stunned by a shockwave of awe and amazement.

  “Mark!” I said.

  “He’s so beautiful.”

  “Stay with me! I need you!”

  “I’m here, Laura. Don’t worry.”

  Mark took our baby in his arms, still covered in my own amnion, and moved him closer to me. I studied every feature of his face. I had just met him, and I wanted to know him better. I wanted to sense everything. Every breath. Every gesture. Every sound escaping his thin lips. When I was ready and exhaustion owned my body, a man came and took him to wash his body and check that he was all right with a doctor. It was hard to separate from him on those first hours of his existence; I had created a new life, and I had been amazed by his mighty and fragile presence, and now I had to let him go.

  “How’s Jaime doing?”

  “Oh, he’s all right! He couldn’t be happier!”

  “Did he behave?”

  “You know our boy.”

  “Of course he did.”

  “He still prefers adults’ company rather than children his age.”

  “I’d be exactly the same if I’d had his childhood.”

  “Yeah, I suppose.”

  “When will you bring him here?”

  “Now. I’ll go home to get you clothes and stuff while they have Marcus, and I bet you’d like to use this time to have a nap, wouldn’t you?”

  “I’m drained!”

  I fell asleep while Mark was still leaving the room. The pain was nearly bearable now. I didn’t need any stitches, but I felt as if I had been ripped apart. It hurt almost as much when sleeping, and that’s why the slightest noise or the draft coming from the half-closed window made me uneasy.

  I woke up in less than one hour, craving my newborn. They brought him to me right away. He was sleeping. It was weird to see the band around his wrist with my name on it. It was as if we were in a farm. Almost industrial. But I reckon it’s virtually impossible for the process not to become mechanical when that many thousands of women overflow the rooms of the maternity section of the hospital every month. They need a system, a method to
identify every child and not to lose them in a tide of newborns.

  I didn’t want to wake him up. He was having a well-deserved sleep when the door opened and startled us. It’s hard not to remember Jaime’s face whenever I think about this day. He was thrilled with enthusiasm. His dark eyes fixed on his new brother. He liked him, from the beginning, and when his glowing face filled the room with his joy, I was sure they’d have a very special relationship.

  Jaime would look after him, protect his little brother no matter what, stand up for him and fight for him and be his friend, and our little Marcus would look up to Jaime and he’d love him as much as he’d love us. That was the only possibility for me. That was the only future lying ahead of us. A long life of happiness and the adventure of bringing up two boys and aging with my husband until we both were old and useless and consumed by too much love.

  “Marcus!” Jaime said in the hospital room with his sweet, childlike voice. “It’s Jaime, your older brother!”

  “Oh, look at him, Jaime!” I said. “He likes you!”

  “He smiled!” Jaime said. “He smiled at me!”

  “He did, it’s unbelievable! He knows his older brother will look after him.”

  “Yes, Marcus! I’ll take care of you. We’ll be best friends!”

  Mark was standing behind him, his hands resting on Jaime’s shoulders. A timid smile made his face kind and warm, and his eyes were still humid and trembling. He seemed to have forgotten everything he’d told me about Jaime a few months ago. He seemed to have embraced his life, our life, with all our problems and contradictions and with all our good moments as well, and Jaime never mentioned he was worried about his father again.

  “Jaime, don’t you have anything for Marcus?” Mark said from the back of the room.

  “Yes! This is for you, Marcus!” He revealed what he had been hiding at his back. It was his favourite teddy bear.

  “Oh, my sweet, sweet boy! That’s so generous of you!”

  “I want him to look after Fergus.” Mark had chosen that name for Jaime’s toy.

  “I think that’s an excellent idea. The three of you will make a fab team. But get closer! Give it to him yourself!”

  Jaime moved cautiously as if he were scared of disturbing Marcus’s rest. His feet didn’t make any noise on the floor. He was a curious cat, putting one leg after the other, only one step at a time, making a pause in-between. His gaze was fixed on the baby I was holding. He smiled. I looked at his left hand to find it fidgeting with his shirt. He quivered. I’d say he understood how important that moment was for us, and he acted accordingly, showing a maturity we had never seen before.

  He extended his hand and held the teddy bear near Marcus’s face, but our poor baby wouldn’t react. He was too small. He most likely couldn’t even see Jaime’s hand waving his favourite toy in front of his undeveloped eyes. Too young to discern shapes or faces in the terrifying world which had just emerged around him. But Marcus’s indifference didn’t dissuade Jaime from carrying out this truly selfless act of generosity. He just came a little closer and put Fergus in Marcus’s lapel and smiled.

  “He likes Fergus,” Jaime said.

  “Of course he does. Everybody likes Fergus.”

  “Is it because he’s smooth?”

  “Yes, sweetie, it’s because he’s smooth and fluffy,” I said, smiling to Mark, who couldn’t repress a guffaw.

  Mark came and stood by my side. His hands were still shaking, although he had recovered the colour of his face. He couldn’t stop looking at me and the baby. He seemed to be floating on a cloud of rapture, his eyes browsing my face and Marcus’s with the fascination of a child who discovers something for the first time and whose mind doesn’t know how to best process and give shape to all the new information.

  He held our baby, always followed by my overprotective eyes. It was hard to tell what was crossing his mind, but behind that hermetic grin of his, he couldn’t help revealing his joy and amazement. All I loved was in that room, and I was at the very centre of that special scene, lying almost biblically on an old hospital bed.

  Chapter 18

  End of happiness

  “Give me the fuckin’ keys!” was the first intelligible sentence to come through the single glazed window and wake me up. A brilliant way to start the day.

  “Ain’t no givin’ you shit! You drunk as hell!”

  “I’m all right! I’m all right! Look!” A few seconds of silence followed. Then the other two burst into laughter.

  “Yeah! You’re great, man! You’re fuckin’ great! It’s the ground that’s movin’, ain’t it?”

  “Shut up! Shut the fuck up, and gimme the keys!”

  “You can shout as much as you want, but you’re not drivin’ tonight, you idiot.”

  “Whoa, whoa! Calm down, mate! You’re gonna hurt yourself!” His voice was grave now.

  “He tried to punch you! The motherfucker tried to punch you!” said the other one between guffaws.

  I sat up and covered Jaime’s ears as soon as I realised he was awake. He didn’t need to listen to those three, although I suspected he was already familiar with the vocabulary. The argument went on until the drunkest of them all, the one who wanted to drive, became tired and fell asleep.

  It was a perfectly matching end to an awful night in that B&B room. Too noisy, too warm and too old. Whenever any of us moved in the bed, its base would creak; the cistern made a buzzing roar after flushing, and the furniture was so old, I was afraid it could break at any moment. But it was too late for regrets. I had booked the bloody room, and now we had to make the most of it and enjoy the last few summer days we had left before coming back to reality.

  I opened the window, and a truce of clouds brought the promise of more bearable weather, still torrid by the end of a heat wave that lasted a week. It was the perfect day for a hike. Happy was almost one year old, and he had grown big and beautiful. His fur was around three inches long, and in the summer breeze, the daylight was reflected in waves of white gloss. The only thing I didn’t love about that dog was his strong smell, although I got used to it. It had been a while since the last time I had a dog, and I scarcely remembered how easily their stench attached to everything. We had been at the hotel for only one night, and it had already coated everything at sight. Curtains, carpet, bed, armchairs, the TV table next to the bathroom door, the bathroom; everything was now impregnated with our dog’s personality. Unpleasant as it seems, it became the smell of home, and when we were away, it brought memories of ordinary peace and quietness.

  The name of that town in the countryside has vanished from my memory, although I recall it was in the southeast of England, in Kent or Sussex. It was an hour and a half drive from London, and we really needed to escape and disconnect before the summer was wiped out by the inevitable September.

  A sinuous road had led us to our B&B, almost imperceptible amongst beeches, oaks, willows and bushes. The line of trees had the square outline of a car, and it closed seven feet over the road at some points to shape a perfect tunnel of green and brown and the howling of the wind in the upper leafs.

  The cottage had an entrance of forged iron bars embedded in a wall of white blocks of stone and partially blocked by an uneven hedge. The first floor and the roof were visible over the fence, though, and revealed a forgotten architecture of capricious bricks and aged tiles. When there weren’t any cars on the nearby roads, you could hear the song of the water bubbling among the stones of the spring, but at some point they had built a huge terrace of houses behind the cottage, and now this lovely bit of countryside fell within the limits of the urban core.

  All this, the noise and the ruined landscape, made affordable a B&B that could otherwise be a luxury reserved only for a few lucky ones. Perhaps that was why the owners decided not to refurbish and let moths and woodworms feed on it.

  Affordable didn’t mean cheap, though, and it was annoying to have paid so much for so little, but I was resolved to enjoy the trip no matter what.
Not even a greedy innkeeper could ruin our break.

  The four of us left the cottage and took a narrow footpath into the woods. The morning was quieter now. Not even a dull breeze dared move the trees and disturb the forest life. Apart from the relaxing sound of the stream we were following, the only noises around us were the scared jumps of some squirrels moving away through the undergrowth and the flickering tweet of some birds. Sometimes, the shadow of the higher branches darkened our way in that cloudy morning and weakened our vision until our eyes got accustomed to the faint light and gloomy colours of trees and plants.

  “Jaime, don’t run!” I said.

  “Happy! Come here!” he shouted, ignoring my voice.

  “Leave Happy alone. He’s just enjoying himself,” Mark said.

  “I want him to walk next to me.”

  “He’s a dog, Jaime. He needs to run every once in a while.”

  “But I want him to be with me so I can stroke him whenever I want.”

  “It’s okay. Let him run after the dog if he wants to,” I said. “I suppose he needs to stretch his legs as well.” Mark didn’t even look at me, his eyes focused on the track and the dust he was stepping on, but he nodded and drafted a smile.

  “Mark,” I said, my eyes fixed on Jaime and Happy, “I thought about what you told me last night, and I think it’s too soon.”

  “I understand.”

  “I can’t forget the moment I woke up and saw all the blood.”

  “Wait,” he said, “too soon? Does it mean that you’ll be up for it in the future?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Well, I suppose I will, but Jaime…”

  “Oh, Laura.” A shy vestige of desperation showed up in his eyes. “I thought we’d agreed about that.”

  “We had, and I really get your point. I really do.”

  “But you don’t agree anymore.”

  “It’s not that I don’t agree. It’s just that it doesn’t look right.”

  “But it is right!”

  “It feels like we don’t think about Jaime as our true son.”