Page 67 of The Perfect Son
He aimed straight for me, and he was damn close too. The plate missed me and hit the cupboard with a clonk before bouncing off the worktop and smashing on the tiles.
“I wish Shelley was my mum,” he shouted, disappearing into the garden before I could respond.
Shards of china covered the kitchen. Splinters of white lodged in the grout between tiles, larger chunks shot under the oven, and one piece jumped up and fell inside my slipper.
I dropped to my knees and cried gut-wrenching sobs, angry, loathsome tears. We’d been doing so much better, Mark. I haven’t been snapping over every little thing. I thought we were OK, but we’re not. Nowhere close.
I hated myself in those minutes. I hated who I’d become—a mother who screams at her child over nothing. I hated you too, just so you know.
Oh, Tessie. I’m sorry.
His final words turned over and over in my head. He didn’t mean it, I told myself. He only said it to hurt me. Mission accomplished.
I didn’t understand until I was on all fours sweeping up the last of the plate and the crumbs and the mud how bad things were between Jamie and me. I thought back over the past weeks of our lives. The times we cried together on the sofa, the time on the walk back from school when he shouted and I almost hit him. Almost. Then there are the snippets of normal when I tried really hard, when we played Parcheesi and jumped in puddles and Jamie was OK.
I realized then that I needed to do something fun no matter how much it hurt, no matter how exhausted I felt. I had to do it for Jamie. He was feeding off my mood. When I was sad, so was he. When I was angry, he lashed out.
He needed to laugh; we both did. So later, after I’d pulled out the fridge and swept up the decades of dust and dirt and the last bits of china, after I’d pushed it back without finding Jamie’s magnet photo, after dinner when Jamie had disappeared into his bedroom, I flicked on the TV and called upstairs. “Jamie?”
“Go away,” he shouted back.
“You’ve Been Framed!is on. I’m doing the ironing if you want to come down?”
There was a silence before I heard the creak of his bedroom door and the thud of his footsteps on the stairs.
I didn’t say anything about the plate. I didn’t say anything at all. I just moved your mother’s old standard lamp from the parlor to the living room. The lampshade is straight out of Miss Marple’s era—burgundy with a fringe dangling down over a twisted, dark wood stand—but it gives a nice light to iron by.
Then I scooped up the pile of ironing from the utility room. Godknows when I last touched the ironing. It’s been weeks and weeks. Almost ten weeks, in fact, but I don’t want to think about that right now. Like I won’t think about how creased Jamie’s school uniform must have been over the last few months. It didn’t even cross my mind to iron his shirts. Thankfully it’s been so cold he’ll have kept his jumper on.
With the living room door shut and the rest of the dark, cold house forgotten, the soft lamplight makes the room feel cozy for the first time, but maybe that has more to do with Jamie’s howling, boyish laughter bouncing off the walls.
Remember that laugh, Mark? The one with gasping breaths and sighs and giggles before something sets him off again.
“Oh no.” Jamie giggles, covering his eyes and splaying his fingers to peek through. “Why would anyone do that?”
I look at the TV and watch someone climb onto a low roof during a windstorm. Tinny canned laughter echoes in the room. It’s obvious what’s about to happen, but still Jamie’s body is shaking with giggles.
There is something awful about a seven-year-old boy laughing at other people’s misfortune, but I don’t care. I didn’t know I missed Jamie’s laugh and the joy it unleashes inside of me, like warm summer evenings, like seeing old friends. I didn’t know I missed it. You’re the one who’s gone and yet so much of Jamie and I were lost that day.
Then something moves in the corner of my eye. It’s brief. A flash of light from the garden when it should only be darkness. But it’s enough for a shiver to run over my skin and my smile to disappear. I move away from the ironing board and step to the window.
Chilly air creeps through the single panes. It’s pitch-black, like I’m standing nose to nose with a black mirror. I can see the reflection of the light from the lamp and the sofa and Jamie watching TV. I can see my face—jutting cheekbones I don’t recognize and hollow eyes staring out.
A shudder takes hold of my body and I step quickly away.
I’m almost back behind the ironing board when I see it again—another flicker, a split second of white light like a torch or a phone, illuminating the rope ladder that leads up to Jamie’s tree house and the silhouette of a figure standing below it.
Then the phone rings.
CHAPTER 40
Ifreeze, not daring to breathe. The phone cuts dead on the fourth ring just before the answerphone would’ve picked it up.
The only part of my body moving is my eyes, straining to one side to get a better look, to verify what my pounding heart already knows—there is someone in my garden, someone watching us.
The thought spurs me into action and I race through the hall with my slippers slapping on the floor. The house is as dark as the night outside and my hip knocks painfully against the side of the table but I don’t stop. My sole focus is on the side door that I’m sure at any moment is going to burst open and the man in the black baseball cap will be in our house.
I reach for the lock with shaking hands. It’s locked. I locked it. Relief floods my body. I gasp for air and will my heart to stop beating so quickly so I can figure out what to do now.
