I breathed deep, trying to decide how to say what I had to say. From the look of Millicent, Max had told her nothing of what we’d seen. I wondered where the police were. Maybe bathroom suicides were a common event around here. What do you say?
‘What is it, Alex?’
From upstairs I heard Max flush the toilet. I thought of the bathroom in the house next door, of the bath five metres from where he was now.
‘Alex?’
‘OK.’ I took Millicent’s hand in mine, looked her in the eye. ‘OK.’
‘You’re scaring me a little, Alex. What’s going on?’
Three sentences, I thought. Anything can be said in three sentences. You need to find three sentences.
‘OK. This is what I need to tell you.’
‘Yes?’
‘The neighbour killed himself. I found him. Max saw.’ Nine words. Not bad.
‘No,’ she said. Very quiet, almost matter-of-fact, as if refuting a badly phrased proposition. ‘No, Alex, he isn’t. He can’t be.’
‘I found him. Max saw.’ Five words.
She stared at me. Said nothing.
‘I should have stopped him from seeing. I didn’t.’
Still she stared at me. She brought her right hand up to her face, rubbing the bridge of her nose in the way she does when she’s buying time in an argument.
‘I haven’t talked to him yet about what he saw. I know I have to, but I wanted to talk to you first.’ Because you’re better at this than me. Because I don’t know what to say.
Still Millicent said nothing.
The doorbell rang. Millicent did not move. I did not move. It rang again. We sat there, staring at each other. Only when I heard footsteps on the stairs did I stand up and go to the front room. Max had the door open. He stood there in his lion pyjamas, looking up at the two policemen.
‘Upstairs, Max,’ I said, trying to smile at the policemen, aware suddenly of the papers strewn across the floor, of Millicent’s pizza carton and my beer cans on the side table. ‘I’ll be up in a minute, Max,’ I said, guiding him towards the stair.
‘It’s OK. Night, Dad.’ He kissed me and slipped away from my hand and up the stairs. I nodded at the policemen and was surprised by the warmth of their smiles.
We agreed that it would be easiest for them to enter the neighbour’s property through our back garden. Save breaking down the front door and causing unnecessary drama. Better to keep the other neighbours in the dark for the time being.
The policemen weren’t interested in explanations; they didn’t care what Max and I had been doing in the neighbour’s house, seemed completely unconcerned with what we had seen. That would come later, I guessed. They said no to a cup of tea, nodded politely to Millicent, who still hadn’t moved from her chair, and disappeared into our back garden. I went upstairs, and found Max in the bathroom, standing on the bath and looking out of the window as the policemen scaled the wall.
‘Bed, Max.’
‘OK, Dad.’
When he was tucked up, I drew up a chair beside the bed.
‘What are you doing, Dad?’
‘I thought I’d sit here while you go to sleep.’
‘I’m fine, Dad. Really.’
Three heavy knocks at the front door. A dream, perhaps?
Millicent’s side of the bed was empty. We had lain for hours without speaking, neither of us finding sleep. Then she had reached across for my hand, encircled my legs with hers, and held me very tightly. I had felt her breasts against my back, her pubic bone against the base of my spine, and I’d wondered why we rarely lay like this any more.
After some time, Millicent’s breathing had slowed and her grip loosened into a subtler embrace. I became more and more aware of her pubic bone, still gently pressing against me. But at the first stirring in my penis I remembered the neighbour’s half-erection in the bath. I stretched away from her, and she went back to her side of the bed.
‘Millicent?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Can we talk?’
‘Tomorrow,’ she had said.
Now I got up and dressed in yesterday’s clothes. I opened the door to Max’s room for long enough to see the calm rise and fall of his chest. Asleep. Clothes folded. Toys in their place. I watched him for a while, then went downstairs. Three minutes past six.
The cat tripped into the living room, tail high, limbs taut. She danced around my feet, and I reached down to her.
‘Hello, Foxxa.’ She sniffed approvingly at the tips of my fingers; then she pushed on to her hind legs, running her back upwards against the palm of my hand, forcing me to stroke her. For a moment she stood, unsteady, looking up, eyes bright and wide, as if surprised to find herself on two feet. Then she lowered herself on to all fours and wove a figure-of-eight around my calves, catlike again.
A mug on the living-room table: Millicent had drunk coffee in front of the television. I saw that the front door was unlocked, and found the kitchen empty. The cat followed me in, ate dried food from her bowl.
Millicent had left a folded note.
Alex,
We need to
talk Max (3)
talk school (1)
talk shrink (2)
talk police (?)
But please, none of this before we speak.
M
The coffee-maker was on the stove, still half-full. I checked the temperature with my hand. Warm enough to drink. I stood on the countertop and felt around on top of the cupboard, just below the plaster of the ceiling. Marlboro ten-pack. I took one and replaced the packet.
We had started hiding cigarettes from Max. He didn’t smoke them, as far as we could tell, but a pack left lying on the kitchen table would disappear. Millicent was certain that he sold them, but Max disapproved of our smoking with such puritanical disdain that I was sure he destroyed them.
In the garden I pulled the love seat away from the wall and drank my coffee, smoked my cigarette. On a morning like this, Crappy wasn’t so bad. No dogs barked, no one shouted in the street, no police helicopters watched from above. We should sort out the garden though. The garden was a state.
I stood on the love seat, looked back over the wall. Poor man, with his trimmed lawn, his verdant bower and his successful suicide attempt. From here there was nothing – nothing – that betrayed our neighbour’s sad, lonely death.
I pushed the love seat back against the wall and stood up, finished my cigarette, tried to plan the day. Quiet word with the teacher. Phone calls to the shrink. The police, I imagined, would make contact with us.
What had Max seen? When he had climbed the stairs behind me, what had he seen? That jolt, that first image, that’s what stays with you, isn’t it? Contorted face or pitiful erection? Rictus or dick? Which would be more traumatic for a boy of his age?
I