After
My son hated dirt.
When he was a child, he would complain that the feeling of it on his skin would make his gums ache. He couldn’t stand it until we got chickens at home. He stood in the yard holding handfuls of dirt until he couldn’t anymore. Eventually, his gums stopped aching, and he began to dedicate all of his time to the chickens. He took care of them more than my wife and I did. He was devastated when a fox got to them all.
Now, as I stare down at his too-pale, pock-marked skin lying in the dirt, all I can think about is how sore his gums must be.
The officer who had brought me to ID my son approaches me.
‘We have his personal belongings in an evidence bag We have to hold on to it until we know what happened, but you can have a look at what he had on him if you want.’
I shake my head, my eyes tracing the outer line of the bruises around his throat. Each mark is so angry, so accusing that I can’t look at them for much longer. My chest feels tight, and my eyes sting as I turn away from my son.
~*~
I return to a suffocating heaviness permeating my home. The closer I am to his room, the closer I am to breaking — so I avoid it completely. Instead, I make three cups of tea. I add whiskey to mine and leave the third on the counter.
The heaviness is stronger in our room. Her sadness seems to take on its own gravity, and I am pulled into her orbit, staying just far enough away from her. She doesn’t sit up when I come in or when I set the cup down. She doesn’t seem to sit up for anything. She hasn’t left our bed since the police came with their hats in their hands to tell us our son was dead. She wailed when she saw them. She screamed and cried while I carried her to bed.
I rub her back in figure eights, the way that I used to. Before Sam, before she changed. I wish I knew the right thing to say the way that I used to. I know that she won’t answer any questions — I’ve tried this before. I consider telling her about seeing him, but it seems like too much, too soon. I say, ‘I love you, honey. He loved you so much.’
She rolls over to face me while she glares. ‘This is on you. Don’t talk to me about my son.’
Then, she rolls away from me.
Her gravity seems to hold me in the room a moment longer. From the doorway, I whisper, ‘I lost him, too.’ I close the door.
I swallow the last of my tea, swapping my mug for the new bottle of gin in the cabinet on the way to my office. I take a swig from the bottle while I stare at my desk drawer. The keyhole seems to stare right back, but I don’t give in to the temptation. I sift through my son’s documents, laid out across my desk. Poking out from underneath his therapy plan is a yellow circle with a red chicken in the centre. His very first pay slip.
He had earned it working on the chicken farm where his body was found. The same chickens he would feed every day had pecked into his flesh. The little wounds even ate into his skin where he was bruised. Where I had bruised him.
His mother hasn’t forgiven me for getting him that job. I don’t think she ever will.
As I try to fish the document from the pile, the scab on my arm catches and peels on a piece of paper beneath it. Blood drips onto the papers, and I hold the long line of scab as I make my way to the kitchen.
I run my arm under cold water, reaching under the sink for the first aid kit. It’s hard to look away from the knife block, even as I try to navigate zips and pockets with only one arm. I can’t stop my mind from pulling the memories from last night into focus while I wipe away the blood with a paper towel. As I wrap my arm, my mind plays the night over and over. Watching my son hovering over the knife block while he yelled. His eyes would flicker to it whenever his mother would call him her baby. I know that the knife wasn’t meant for me.
When my arm is wrapped, I take a long gulp from the bottle of gin and sit in my chair in front of the TV. A bright-eyed young man shouts with forced excitement as he explains some revolutionary kitchen appliance. I can’t help the thought when it springs to my mind.
That could have been him.
The tears have come before the thought is finished, and I bury the rest of the afternoon in the bottle of gin and a shouting young man.
~*~
The memories come more violently as the sun sets. No amount of alcohol can stop it as I feel the way that I held my son to the wall, the way that I pressed all my weight into my arm and against his throat. Every time I think of it, I push my fingertips into the cut just below the fresh bandage and I am reminded that he is not here.
I peel myself from the couch sometime late into the night, after her sobbing drowns out the TV and my own thoughts. The gin accompanies me back to my office where I fall into my office chair. I let it hold me while I stare at my locked desk drawer. The key has lived in my pocket since the police came.
I give in to the temptation. It takes a few tries with my drunk hands before I can get the key into the hole, but once I have the drawer open, I am almost afraid to pull out his letter.
When I do, I read over each word carefully, once and then again. My son’s anger, his resentment and his hopelessness scream from each time his mother’s name is scrawled. My name is only mentioned once.
The tears come again. My son will never come home to me; he will never offer me a hug or talk for hours about his latest special interest. As I reread his letter for the third time, I wonder if there was anything I could have done to stop him.
The Son
I can’t believe it has come to this. I can’t believe you wouldn’t listen. I can’t believe you pushed me to this. I’ve tried to understand and make you happy but I’m a grown fucking man who can’t go anywhere without his mum following. I want to be normal. You know that and you won’t fucking let me. Autism isn’t a fucking death sentence, but with you it might as well be. All I ever wanted was for you to love and support me the way I am like any normal fucking parent. I know you think you love me, but whatever it is isn’t love. Love isn’t this suffocating or fucking selfish like whatever the fuck you have.
You don’t love me. You never have. You hate Dad for what he has done for me, but he’s more of a parent to me than you will ever be. I’m done trying to play your sweet little baby.
Before
Samual was my son for twenty-two years before his father poisoned him against me.
‘Why the fuck do you have to ruin everything good I do for myself?’ Sam shouts from the doorway.
I recoil as he swears, the sound still foreign from his mouth. Sam had never spoken to me like this, with the swearing and the shouting, until his father got to him. Now, he’s been yelling at me all day. We’re still screaming well after the sun has set. His father, and co-conspirator, hovers between us with a nervous look in his eyes, as though I don’t already know who is behind Sam’s outburst.
‘You’re my baby! It’s my job to protect you,’ I yell back. ‘Even if I’m protecting you from yourself. I’ve known you your whole life. I know you and I know that you just couldn’t handle that job!’
He laughs, his eyes shifting from side to side. ‘I was handling it just fine! It took you a month to realise I wasn’t even going to group. I don’t need you to fucking protect me anymore!’
My frustration builds at him speaking to me the way he is and the way that my husband just won’t say a damn fucking thing.
‘I was the one who got you diagnosed! I was the one who wouldn’t stop until we got you the right doctor. You wouldn’t have anything if it weren’t for me, and I will not be spoken to like this! I will not have my baby speaking to me like this!’
The magic words fall out of my mouth, and, like a well-rehearsed spell, Sam is pulling the biggest blade from the knife block. There’s a fire in his eyes I’ve never seen as my only child runs at me with the knife over his head. Time doesn’t stop like I expect it to.
My husband is between us in a heartbeat, his hand raised above his head to catch Sam’s wrist — but Sam has already started to bring the knife down. There’s a shout and a flash of red, but I can’t see anything else. My husband has me trapped behind him, pressed into the wall of the kitchen and away from my son. I can’t think of anything to do but sob.
My husband pushes away from me, and I can finally see. Sam, my son, my baby, is pressed against the kitchen wall, my husband’s arm on his neck holding him there. I stand to try to stop him before I realise that they are whispering.
‘She acts like I can’t fucking do anything. I have autism. I’m not a fucking child. Why can’t she see that?’ My baby is crying. I want to comfort him. Then I hear my husband’s response.
‘I know, I know. This isn’t the way, yeah? This isn’t the way.’ His voice is strangled and desperate. It gives me pause.
They look at one another for a moment before they both crumble. They hold each other on the floor, crying into each other’s shoulders. It feels like a moment between father and son, a moment I am not privy to or welcome in. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel natural. It isn’t meant to be happening. It will never happen again.
I pull my husband back and am grateful I do. He falls back easily, letting me check the red stains on Sam’s clothing.
‘Where are you hurt, baby? Are you okay?’ Sam doesn’t look up, just sits and cries. I throw myself into his arms. ‘It’s okay, my baby.’
My husband lets out the breathy grunt-sigh he makes whenever my son and I have a moment together. It’s only once Sam pulls away that I realise it was him. He stands in the doorway, looking down at me.
‘You just don’t fucking get it, do you?’ he yells before leaving, slamming the front door behind him.
I stay seated on the floor, the shock tingling over my entire body. I’m crying again as my body wracks with each sob, and I can’t seem to make it stop. Then, my husband’s arms are wrapping around me. His arm is wet with his own blood, his touch rolling waves of anger through my body until the urge to hit him is overwhelming, as though it’s my only option.
The shock and sadness are quickly replaced as I turn on my husband.
‘Are you fucking happy?’ I scream as my fists pound on his chest. ‘He fucking hates me now! This is what you’ve been working toward for months, isn’t it? Are you fucking proud?’
He doesn’t move or fight back. He doesn’t even try to stop me — and that seems to make it worse.
I give him one final shove and he falls back onto his elbows on the floor.
Standing over him I say, ‘You’re a hopeless fucking father. You always have been. If he gets hurt or killed out there, it’s your own fucking fault.’
He stands. ‘You’ve treated him like he’s a fucking five-year-old his whole life. I really don’t know why you’re so surprised that he’s had enough.’
I don’t acknowledge his tone or him at all after that. I don’t acknowledge him again until he is at the door, ready to look for my son.
‘I’ll take the ute,’ he says from the doorway. ‘I’ll check with his grandparents.’
‘I’ll check Anne’s and that chicken farm.’
He nods on his way out the door, and I watch as he pulls away.
~*~
I get into my sedan with a thermos of noodles and hot water in the cup holder. I don’t turn left at the end of the street toward Anne’s, Sam’s support worker’s, house. Instead, I turn right towards the chicken farm.
I park before I reach the farm, pouring the hot water out of the thermos and sprinkling in the flavour packets – beef, his favourite. I finger the plastic bag in my pocket, the crushed-up pills taunting me, and I wonder if this is the right choice.
A small red smudge on the back of my hand calls my attention. I think of my husband’s cut — the cut meant for me. I think of the look in Sam’s eyes when he brought the knife down as I pour the powdered pills into the thermos and shake it up. This is the only way I can move forward.
~*~
The chicken farm is quiet, save for the soft clucking of the chickens as they scratch around the yard. My Sam sits in the middle of the yard, patting chickens as they wander past. His shoulders jostle occasionally, and I know that he is still crying.
‘What do you want?’ he says with a sniffle. His tone is gruff beneath the sadness. There’s a bitterness to it that I don’t recognise, and I know that my baby is gone. My decision hardens like a stone in my heart.
‘I was worried,’ I say when I’m closer. ‘You’re still my son.’
He groans. ‘I’m not a little kid anymore, Mum. I should be allowed to leave without it being the end of the fucking world.’
I recoil when he swears again. I don’t want to remember him like this. ‘I know, baby.’ I sit beside him.
‘You don’t know anything.’
Apparently not, I think as I pull the thermos into his view. ‘I brought you your favourite.’ He rolls his eyes at me, so I hurry to keep his attention. ‘It’s noodles. No one ate tonight and I don’t want you to go hungry.’ It feels like word vomit, but he seems to believe me.
He sighs and takes the thermos from me. ‘I’ll eat this, but I don’t want you hanging around.’
‘Of course!’ I exclaim. I sound so stupid, so excited, so obvious that I think he’ll throw the thermos. He’ll throw it far away, force me to eat some, or call the police and tell them everything. Maybe he’ll get me before I can get him.
But then he is pulling the fork out of the thermos and shovelling the noodles into his mouth without a care in the world. It doesn’t take him long to eat it all, and when he does, he throws an arm over my shoulder.
‘Thank you, Mum. I love you.’
He starts to lean on me, his words a tired slur. This is how I want to remember him.
‘I love you too, baby.’
He leans on me for a long while until the steady rise and fall of his breathing grows slower and eventually stops. I lay him on his back, his eyes staring up at the night sky, and I let them. I leave him there, my sweet little baby alive and well only in my heart.
That night, as I crawl into bed beside my husband, I am satisfied knowing that he will soon see where his actions have led our son.