The Boy in the Moon

‘Jesus Christ.’ Julia cast him a contemptuous look and whirled around. Her feet pounded the floor away from him. She returned within seconds, breaking into a run as she approached. Brian frowned and sipped again; he knew he should be doing something but he was overcome by the peculiar sensation of being grounded that he experienced whenever Julia charged into action. ‘He’s not there.’

‘Don’t panic. He’s probably in one of the shops.’

‘Well? Are you going to stand there drinking coffee all morning or are you going to help me look?’

Brian drained the last of his coffee and observed over the rim the whitening of her face and the clenching of her left fist. ‘Take it easy,’ he said, deliberately drawing his words out slowly. ‘C’mon, you check that one there’ – he nodded toward the newsagents behind her – ‘I’ll check the Gents.’

As he headed for the Gents he saw her running up and down the aisles in the shop. They met by the window again. ‘Not there,’ he said with his mouth pursed, jerking his head back toward the male toilets.

‘Jesus – Jesus Christ – Jesus Jesus Jesus.’ Julia was frantically looking around her. ‘Run around, quick,’ she shouted over her shoulder.

‘Julia, it’s …’ he called out, fixing a smile on his lips for the people who had begun to stare at them. He shoved a hand into a trouser pocket, formed his mouth into a whistle and broke into a trot after her.

‘Sa-am!’ Julia was calling. She stopped suddenly and turned. ‘Not after me, you fool. You check upstairs.’

Brian veered toward the escalator; he took the steps two at a time. There were probably video games up there, that’s where Sam would be. He started to run to the left, stopped, turned and walked to the right, his mouth still silently whistling. He checked the upstairs grill room, the toilets, the shops. His palms were sweaty by the time he returned to the escalators. Then he whistled aloud and descended with both hands in his pockets. There was no sign of Julia at the bottom. He raised his eyebrows and gazed around.

She came running from the area behind the shop. Her skin was stretched tightly over her face, her blue eyes opened wide and unblinking. She stopped stock-still when she saw him. Her mouth opened. ‘You’re sure he’s not upstairs?’ She panted.

Brian shrugged and his forehead creased into a frown. He gazed out toward the carpark.

‘The carpark?’ She was screaming now, people were beginning to stop and edge toward them, attracted perhaps by the almost palpable scent of her fear.

‘Sam would never leave the building on his own,’ Brian offered. He could feel the skin on his own face begin to tighten and stretch.

‘On his own?’ she shrieked. ‘But what if someone told him that we were there?’

He fervently wished she had not said that. ‘He’s here somewhere, let’s look together,’ he said, brushing past her outstretched arm. ‘Where are the video games in this place?’ he called over her shoulder.

She ran after him. ‘At the back there,’ she pointed.

They looked around. A boy not much older than Sam pulled and hauled at a lever and stared into the flickering screen. ‘He’s not here.’ Julia’s voice sustained a quavery note that set Brian’s teeth on edge. ‘I’m going to the carpark – you stay here in case he appears,’ she said.

He watched her from the glass doorway. Her hair was matted to her scalp by rain as she ran up and down the labyrinth of parked cars. He saw her stop for a moment to catch her breath with her torso bent forward and her hands resting on her knees. She glanced up and he could feel her eyes sear him from the distance. He looked around for a security guard. Julia burst through the doors, blinking rapidly. ‘Jesus. Jesus,’ she said.

‘I’ve been looking for a security guard,’ he said.

‘And?’ She looked around hopefully.

‘Haven’t seen one yet,’ he said.

‘He’s got to be here,’ she said. It was a question, he realized too late. She brushed past him and ran up the escalator.

‘He’s not –’ he began but she was gone. Brian started to run around the downstairs shops and eateries. He ran in circles. Around and around. He kept ending up by the video games. That was where Sam should be. The boy was still there, staring at a blank screen now. He gazed up at Brian.

‘A boy,’ Brian gasped, ‘about this high – dark wavy hair, freckles, brown eyes, red raincoat. Have you seen him?’

The boy looked around for his parents. He shrugged. Brian ran back to the escalators. Julia was pulling her wet hair back with two hands and shouting at some man in a uniform. Brian heaved a sigh of relief. A uniform. At last. But the uniform was not looking very reassuring; his face wore a decidedly worried expression as Julia gesticulated at it. Then the uniform turned and ran up the escalator, speaking into a radio at the same time. Brian’s heart beat twice, then seemed to stop; he had to remember to breathe. Julia’s expression was dazed when she turned to him. She staggered backwards with her hand over her mouth. Brian approached slowly but her other hand began to make a waving motion, a film clouded the blue of her eyes. Brian remembered to breathe again. He took another step but she ran sideways and crashed through the door of the Ladies.

She was blacking out. Little sparks of light erupted then vanished on the periphery of her vision. Her heart felt like a huge dysfunctional machine within her chest. It hammered down on her ribcage. Beads of sweat solidified on her forehead. She ran to a sink and splashed cold water on her face. A long, slow moan erupted from the pit of her stomach; she felt it carry up, through her gut, into her lungs, strum silently on her vocal chords for a moment, until it broke free and the sound made her body shudder. She saw little fat legs kicking, she heard the muffled sound of his terrified screams, she saw his exposed, vulnerable white belly, she heard him call her name … She splashed water again. Her legs could not sustain her weight. They buckled. She hunkered down and from some unknown corner of her consciousness she saw, beneath the cubicle door which skirted the floor by a foot, a pair of white sneakers, standing perfectly still, perfectly aligned, and perfectly familiar. She dry heaved and called his name. The lock on the cubicle slid back. A brown eye peered through the crack.

‘Mum?’

‘Oh, Jesus. Jesus. Sam. Sam darling – Sam darling …’

He ran to her. She clutched at him. And had to turn her head away to stifle the dry heaves. Sam was crying. He shook her shoulders. ‘I only went to the video things,’ he said, ‘then I couldn’t see you or Dad so I came in here in case the bad men … like you told me …’

She had to swallow a mouthful of saliva. ‘It’s OK now. I’m here. Mummy’s here. It’s OK, darling …’

They rocked together for some minutes. A woman entered the toilet area and stood staring indecisively at them. A drunken mother perhaps? One of those drug addicts? Julia gazed up at her and laughed. She had to force her grip to loosen on Sam’s shoulders. He would show bruises tomorrow. When his crying subsided, she staggered to her feet, reached down and scooped him up. He clung to her. She covered his face with kisses and carried him out to his father.

Brian was standing beside the security guard. As Julia approached with Sam’s head nestled between her cocked head and her shoulder, a cry went up from the surrounding onlookers. She ignored them, she ignored the visible double take of the guard. She ignored the woman to her left who repeatedly made the sign of the cross over her breast. Gimleteyed, she approached Brian, who did not move, did not emit a sound or display a single, solitary show of emotion. He stood motionless, his hands by his sides, his face white and taut-looking. Sam turned and reached out his arms.

‘Dad,’ he said.

‘Sam.’

Julia felt life itself drain from her arms as she surrendered her grail to the outstretched arms before her. People clapped. The security guard moved to disperse them just like on the television. Sam was nuzzling the side of Brian’s face. Brian’s eyes met hers for an instant, then he hooded them and whispered something to his son. Julia swung past the dispersing crowd, the newly officious security guard, the glass doors, and as she headed for the car, she felt her shoulder bag slap against her waist in a rhythmical, rain-drenched adagio. She reached the navy blue estate and slumped against it. Inside, she could see the meticulously packed suitcases, the crates of wine, the well-concealed Santa boxes – Sam’s new bike, his puzzles, his stocking-fillers – and she felt entirely alone for a moment. As if in a way Sam had really been taken from her. She lifted her head and gazed at the approaching sight of Brian with his arms wrapped protectively around Sam. Even at this distance, she could see the tremors still quake through Sam’s otherwise limp body. She wrenched at the door, then remembered that Brian had taken the keys from her.

Julia was silent for so long that Brian instinctively knew that she was mouthing to herself first, the familiar litany of his past transgressions. He could feel little waves of sympathy emanate from Sam in the back. Brian stared blankly ahead. The trick with Julia was to keep apologizing, over and over again, in the same modulated tone and never to flinch or show her a wound, because if she saw a gash or suspected one, she would tear at it with her teeth. Brian cleared his throat, it was difficult to get the timing right in these matters. ‘I’m very sorry,’ he said.

He could see her shoulders stiffen. Her palms clapped together silently. ‘It is one thing to try and bring up your son as best you can,’ she began, enunciating each word as if speaking to someone learning English, ‘but it is quite another to have to do so in direct competition with a father who would appear to have some sort of a death wish for his son …’

‘I am really sorry,’ Brian said.

‘What is it with you? Is this a macho thing between fathers and sons that I haven’t been told about – or are you just inconceivably stupid?’

‘I thought he was with you.’

‘Did you think he was with me the time you took him up the loft ladder in your arms?’ She flexed her lips. ‘You walked down that ladder – frontways – with a two-year-old child in your arms. A week later, you fell from that ladder yourself and broke your arm …’ Her foot was tapping. ‘Did you think he was with me the day I caught him running around the garden with a secateurs pointing up at his throat? Or the day I just happened upon you chopping wood in your father’s shed with your three-year-old son behind you, swinging – swinging, I say – an axe over his head? Hmm?… I didn’t hear you …’

Brian rubbed his jaw. This was a two-hour job, easily. He longed for Pembroke. Sam had covered his ears in the back.

‘This is going to be a bad one,’ Sam said.

‘Of course I have only myself to blame really,’ Julia continued. ‘I mean, you’d think I’d know by now that I must not under any circumstances, not even for one lousy fucking second of the day, allow my son out of my sight when his kamifuckingkaze father is around –’

‘Mum, you used the fu word. Twice,’ Sam interjected.

‘I know, Sam, and I apologize. Forget everything I’ve ever told you – you may, from now on, occasionally use the fu word. All right?’

‘I do already in the playground sometimes,’ Sam confessed soberly.

Brian observed from the corner of his eye the double tic of Julia’s features as she digested that bit of information. He felt a sharp spasm of love for his son, aware of what he was trying to do. But Julia was in mid-flow and would not be appeased until she had tasted blood. She was working herself into a frenzy, fisting the glove compartment and crashing her knees together.

‘… And another thing,’ Julia continued. ‘Sam is seven now. Old enough to notice things. I won’t have your father drinking from his saucer like he does, do you hear me? He can bloody well use a cup like the rest of us, at least while we’re there … And that dog – that dog is not to come inside the house while I’m in it – filthy, flea-ridden creature …’ She continued, without stopping for a breath, saying all the things she had vowed to herself that she would not say.

Brian adjusted the windscreen wipers to accommodate the sweeps of rain which made visibility almost negligible. He stuck his tongue in his cheek and tried to wander in his mind to a safer place. Instead, he thought of last Christmas. He had rarely been so miserable. A misery he could see etched on the faces of Julia’s parents and her sister also. Carol, Julia’s only sibling, younger by six years, had spent her time slipping into the kitchen after Brian, lighting surreptitious cigarettes and downing extra stiff measures of her Canadian rye so that she could fix a smile on her face before she returned to the living-room for yet another of Julia’s party games. Charades, Happy Families, What’s My Line … Evening after interminable evening. Julia had collapsed into bed each night, exhausted from entertaining. Brian had almost felt sorry for her, but he felt sorry for Richard and Jennifer too when he saw them put aside their newspapers with weary sighs and teeth-gritted smiles when Julia’s exhortations for them to join in grew steadily sharper and more demanding. There was something so desperate about the way Julia entertained, as if, in a way, she were following a manual, some guide to happy families, only she had missed out on a whole slew of the rules and could not allow for a moment’s silence.

It would not be such a bad thing, Brian always thought, to end up like Julia’s parents. They were mild, easygoing people, comfortable in company, comfortable with one another. While they took on. the forms of a cauliflower and a tortoise separately, together he saw them as a gentle sudsy lather, the kind his hands made when he rubbed them with those half-cleanser, half-moisturizer bars of soap. A dissonant note had struck him one evening when he tasted those suds in the bath. They looked so creamy, so enticing, but the reality was just like soap, bitter and harsh as any disinfectant.

Sometimes, he saw their eyes narrow in wonderment as they gazed at their eldest daughter, as if they could not quite figure out where she had come from. She was impatient with them. When her mother clapped her knees and said: ‘Shall we have some tea?’ Julia invariably snapped: ‘You want tea? Then make it – Just make it. It’s your decision.’ And Jennifer would flush most miserably, move to rise but Julia would be in the kitchen already, flicking the kettle on and crashing cups on to saucers, in an access of guilt, Brian understood. Once, Jennifer had whispered to Brian: ‘We should have called her Matilda,’ but that was the closest she ever came to a direct criticism.

‘Sometimes I think you do these things just to hurt me,’ Julia was saying.

‘Mum, leave Dad alone now, he’s said he’s sorry,’ Sam said.

The gurgle was out. Brian bit his lower lip. But it was too late. She had caught it.

‘What?’ she spat. ‘What did you say?’

‘I didn’t say a thing.’

‘Yes, you did. You went “hmmph” – I heard you.’

‘I feel sick,’ Sam said.

Julia craned around. ‘Sam, stop whingeing.’

‘I’m not whingeing. I really do feel sick.’

‘Do you want me to stop?’ Brian asked.

‘Roll your window down a bit and take deep breaths, Sam,’ Julia ordered.

Sam fumbled with the window. He breathed in and out in an exaggerated fashion.

‘Better now?’ Julia asked. Her voice had softened.

Sam nodded his head. Brian looked in the rearview mirror. He met Sam’s eyes and crinkled a smile with the corner of his own eyes. Sam beamed.

They drove on in silence for the rest of the journey, Julia pressing an imaginary accelerator to overtake other cars on the single-laned, winding road which took them the rest of the way to Pembroke. Theirs was the second last car on to the ferry. The roll of the vessel was almost immediate. Julia craned back to check on the sprawled, white-faced figures on the Pullman seats behind. Sam was moaning softly.

‘The rest of my natural,’ she cackled, just loud enough for Brian to hear.

They were going to break the journey in County Waterford to spend the night with Brian’s brother, Edward: a two-and-a-half hour drive still ahead of them once the ferry docked.

It seemed to Brian that a million years had passed since they had left London by the time Julia indicated into the close of houses on the outskirts of the town where Edward lived. He had to admire the unerring way she had arrived there having only ever visited once before. She drew the car up to the correct house. Edward opened the front door. He had a brush and pan in his hands. Julia got out and hauled Sam from the back seat. Edward made for Brian’s side of the car. Brian rolled the window down and they slapped one another on their forearms. Edward leaned against the car murmuring his greeting. His clothes were soaked in an instant. Julia lunged at the front door, prodding Sam in front of her. She called over her shoulder: ‘It’s raining, for Christ’s sake …’

Brian and Edward followed her in. She was already by the fire in the living-room, stripping off Sam’s vomit- and cola-stained clothes from the ferry trip. Sam hugged his body, his knees trembled, his teeth chattered.

‘Hi, Edward,’ Julia continued to address him over her shoulder, ‘listen, run a hot bath for Sam, will you please? He’s frozen … And Brian? Check the fridge – Sam needs something hot to eat, it doesn’t matter what. Are there eggs? Fine. Scrambled eggs and toast. If there’s any bacon there, bacon too –’ She suddenly checked herself and cast Edward a cheek-splitting smile. ‘Sorry, Edward, we’ve just had the most horrendous journey.’

Edward, who was looking slightly dazed, shrugged and moved a step closer to his older brother. ‘No p-p-problem,’ he said.

Julia’s shoulders lifted. She’d forgotten his stutter. Brian thought that it should be inscribed on her tombstone the day she first met Edward and he asked her what she d-d-did and with a perfectly straight face, without so much as a blink, she had responded that she was a speech therapist.

Edward shot upstairs to run the bath. Brian headed for the kitchen. Sam began to slowly defrost by the fire. The welcome smell of frying bacon made him lick his lips in anticipation. Julia smiled and moved to help him to the bathroom.

‘I can walk,’ Sam said haughtily.

She squidged his naked bottom as he passed and he squealed. Brian smiled and began to hum in the kitchen. Edward rejoined him and opened a couple of beers. They talked about the rain, the journey, Edward’s house, his new job as an accountant for the local sugar factory. Although his clothes still stank and his hair still plastered itself across his scalp, Brian felt a warmth, an ease permeate through his sodden body. This was a nothing conversation in which he could participate. It carried no hidden messages, meandered toward no hidden agenda. It was complete in itself. A circle of nothingness yet within that circumference, somewhere in the vacuum, lay mutual childhoods, shared remembrances, secrets told in trust – lifetimes. For a moment, he felt happy and secure. He always felt like this around his siblings: Edward, younger by two years; the twins in Australia, who called every month and, despite a gap of fifteen years since he had seen them, Brian still felt that familiar sense of ease when one or other of the slightly Australianized accents greeted him on the phone. Then there was another brother, Cormac, the second youngest, in Edinburgh: Brian rarely met him these days but they stayed in touch; and finally the baby of the family, Teresa, married in Dublin with six children of her own. She had visited him in London a couple of times but did not care much for Julia, although she had never said as much. Two children had died apart from his twin Noel: a stillborn girl before Brian and an older boy, of meningitis, when Brian was three. A couple of miscarriages as well. Their mother had lasted long enough to bear the others and succumbed to breast cancer not long after Teresa was born. Now, Brian was the eldest. He saw the gleam of admiration in Edward’s eyes as he watched his brother deftly flick the bacon over. Brian pointed at the fridge and Edward intuitively understood that butter was required.

Sam and Julia came downstairs. Julia still looked exhausted but Sam’s cheeks glowed, his dark hair was slaked to the side and he looked renewed and cosy in his Batman pyjamas. He sat by the table and held his fork and knife up. Brian dished out the food and rumpled Sam’s hair. Julia was feeling guilty so she rattled on at length about the new kitchen decor, to make up for her earlier surliness. Edward stood with his hands by his sides, unsure where to place himself amidst this admiration. He showed her the new washing machine. She oohed appreciatively.

During the meal, Brian noticed that Edward never stuttered when he was addressing Sam. He inscribed the notation on a part of his brain, certain that Julia would comment on the same thing tomorrow. Sam was kind to Edward, Brian further noticed, in a way that children could be kind to elders who were somehow different. He felt proud of his son and, sitting there, mopping up the bacon grease from his plate with a swatch of bread, proud of his wife too. She looked so ethereal, so pale and almost vulnerable-looking. He longed to touch her. She lifted her gaze from her plate and cast him a smile. He could see the complex vein patterns stand out, throbbing and bluish on the sides of her smooth milky forehead. Instinctively, he reached out and wiped a speck of food from the corner of her mouth. He saw her smile again, and saw Edward’s look of wonderment, and he realized, a little sadly, that his action had not been so instinctive after all.

Edward suggested that he might take them for a little tour in the morning, if they agreed, of course, and weather permitting, of course.

‘We’d love to, wouldn’t we?’ Julia said, her gaze taking in Sam and Brian, ‘but it’s bound to be terrible, isn’t it? … The weather I mean …’

Julia took Sam to bed. Brian had to go to the toilet upstairs. He stood outside Sam’s bedroom door and listened to them. He loved the sound of Julia’s voice when it crooned and coaxed Sam to sleep. She could be so gentle, so irresistible; he could feel his own lids heavying, his breathing decelerate.

‘… Beyond all measure of space and time and …’

‘… Everything.’

He heard.

‘Sorry I was so cross with Daddy.’

‘’S’ OK.’

‘I’ll be the nice mummy tomorrow, I promise.’

‘OK.’ A loud yawn.

‘Sam?’

‘What?’

‘It’s not really OK to use the fu word.’

‘I know.’

‘Am I a horrible mother?’

‘No. You’re lovely.’

Brian smiled and crept downstairs. Later, when Edward had gone to bed having poured two enormous brandies for his guests, Brian turned to Julia. ‘You are lovely,’ he said.

‘Am I?’ She flushed prettily.

‘I’m sorry about … earlier today. And all the other times. You’re quite right, I am careless with Sam sometimes.’ He sighed and swallowed a mouthful of brandy. It left a pleasant little sting on his tonsils. ‘It’s just that – well – I just don’t want him to be afraid all the time –’ Brian broke off and smiled sheepishly. ‘Maybe it’s a father thing …’

‘But why should he be afraid?’

‘Like I say, maybe it’s a …’ Brian shrugged, he reached for her hand. ‘Anyway … Forgiven?’

‘Yes.’ Julia smiled. She cast him a sidelong glance, unsure if she was picking up the right vibes. The steady gleam of his blue eyes told her that she was. He stared meaningfully at the rug beside the still blazing fire.

‘Here? Now?’ she asked, a giggle catching at the back of her throat.

Brian raised his eyebrows. Julia drained her glass and shunted toward him on her knees. As they made love with their ears straining for any creaks on the stairs, she thought about the absurd revolutions within an ordinary married day. The pendulum swings through every contrasting emotion – five minutes – the difference between anger and reconciliation, love and hate.