Cleo

Staggering down the zigzag to the house I couldn’t believe I’d never again feel Sam’s weight on my lap, his arms around my neck. Never was such a finite word. Rata greeted us at the door, her head to one side, gazing up at us, questioning. I flung myself on her neck and wept. Her head drooped, her tail curved under her hind legs and she tumbled to the floor. Sam’s words echoed in my head. Animals understand…

Hands trembling on the receiver, I made the worst phone call of my life. Mum’s voice sounded nonchalant when she answered. There was no way to soften the news. Her cherished grandson was gone. I was the ultimate failure as a parent. I could hear her intake of breath. Her voice deepened. The tiny part of me that remained an observer was surprised by her calm response. She belonged to a more seasoned, tougher generation that through the horrors of World War II had developed strategies to deal with outrageous loss. She brought my yelps and wails to a halt and said she was on her way.

I fastened the Superman watch around Rob’s wrist and flung myself on Sam’s unmade bed, its sheets and blankets still in the shape of his living body. I drank the smell of his clothes, heard his voice in my head. Steve led me to the living room and coaxed a glass of brandy between my lips. Hot alcohol shot through my veins.

An hour or so later, two policemen, young and embarrassed, arrived on the doorstep. They said the pigeon was still alive and asked what we wanted done with it. What had gone wrong with life’s logic? How could a bird have more right to survival than our boy? Steve told them to take the pigeon to the vet as Sam had wanted. The police also needed someone to go to the morgue and identify the body. Steve steeled himself and went.

He arrived home ashen-faced. Sam still looked the same, he said. Beautiful. Nobody would have known anything had happened, except for the gash in the side of his forehead. Just a tiny gash. He’d meant to cut a lock from Sam’s hair, but had forgotten the scissors. I yearned for the lock of hair, anything that was part of Sam, but Steve was stretched like a rubber band about to snap. I could hardly insist he go back to the morgue.

Mum appeared at the door. She seemed weighted with triple quantities of sadness. On top of her own grief I could tell she was carrying concern for the rest of us. She would have been tired, too, after a five-hour drive. I expected her to burst into tears, but she squared her shoulders and raised her head. I’d seen actors do the same thing before stepping onstage.

“I saw the most beautiful sunset just now,” she said. “Glorious streaks of reds and golds. I thought Sam must be part of it.”

My ravaged mind interpreted her words as callousness. How could she surrender her grandchild to a sunset?

A funeral director turned up while she was unpacking. Harbor lights twinkled malevolently behind him as he sat in the corner of the living room asking for Sam’s measurements—height and breadth. Didn’t he have a nine-year-old son of his own to go by? White coffins, he said, were favored for children. There were fashion trends in death? I couldn’t face a church service. Not when there was so much business to discuss with God over this. Someone had recommended the new university chaplain. A short ceremony conducted by him at the graveside would do. The funeral director made no effort to hide his disapproval. While I was stunned by his coldness at the time, I now realize he probably had no idea what to say so was clinging to the framework of his professional training.

Soon after the funeral director strode into the night, the university chaplain stepped cautiously over the shag pile. He was young, barely out of school, and nervous. He told us he’d never buried a child before. We said we were in the same position. When he asked what we’d like I wanted to scream: “Isn’t it obvious? We want our son back!” But he was faced with a daunting task. There was enough sanity left in me to feel sorry for him. I offered to write a poem for him to read at the graveside.

Our family doctor arrived and scribbled a prescription for sleeping pills. Over a mug of coffee she mused that maybe it was a good thing from Sam’s perspective, because the adult world was so hard to survive in.

Steve mentioned he’d taken the Superman watch away from Rob—he hadn’t felt comfortable passing it on so quickly. I protested but he assured me Rob understood. Steve had put the watch away in a box inside his desk.