We got some lovely cards, Anna said, in the car on the way back to the house. I flicked through them, in pastels, light blues, mauves, the colors of an old woman’s cardigan. In the messages, they all called Jack a fighter, a warrior. An angel in heaven. A living saint. They said he touched people’s hearts. Bits of folded paper bought for 1 pound 20 from Smiths.
Oh, they loved to make it about them, didn’t they? Did they think we didn’t see their Facebook posts? Hug your children tonight, they wrote, spend a few extra minutes before bed. And then they posted pictures of Jack. Our Jack.
It makes you realize, they said, just how precious life is, how we have to cherish what we have. Did they not think about the implications of what they were saying? That their children were still very much alive, and they would hug them tonight and breathe them in and listen to them sing as they woke. Poor little Jack, they said. He was in a better place now. He wasn’t, though. A better place was here with us. Jack was just gone. There were no playdates in heaven. He was no warrior, no angel, watching over us all. Jack did what he could and never once complained. He bore his illness quietly with a type of stoicism I had never associated with a child.
Back at the house, there were perhaps twenty or thirty people in all, family, friends, a few older children. Anna made some of Jack’s favorite things and there was cake. A few others brought nibbles. Photos of Jack cycled through on the big TV screen.
When it came to balloon time, it was raining and the wind had picked up. After the adults had written their messages and the children had drawn their pictures, we counted down and then released the balloons into the sky. With black marker, I wrote:
Jack, we will never forget you, Love, Daddy.
The coldness, the brusqueness of my message was an act of defiance, so angry was I about the idea that I was being told how I should remember my son. I didn’t know what Anna wrote, and I didn’t want to look.
I stood next to Anna, close but not touching. Someone, not me, had put a coat around her shoulders because she was shivering. The balloons didn’t go very far. A few of them never even made it off the ground and just bobbled around the backyard. Some got lodged in the eaves under the garage roof. One of them popped on the branches of the apple tree and, at that, I couldn’t help smiling. Jack would have liked that.
* * *
I liked to think of Jack’s death another way. In Greece, I would sometimes go for a walk with him after lunch. We walked away from the hotel, down a hidden path through the tall grass, which meandered toward the sea like a stream, until we got to the second beach, the beach with the boats and the fishmonger who always made Jack laugh.
One day, the promenade was deserted and the sun was relentless, so we took shelter under a lone tree and drank water from a plastic bottle. Jack was beginning to feel sleepy and rested his head on my shoulder.
We sat like that for a while, listening to the sounds beyond the wind. Cicadas, the rattle and chirp of a yacht’s mast in the distance. New smells. Jasmine grass. Hot dust. Lamb being grilled on an open flame. Eventually Jack started to fall asleep. His eyes went, then his head slowly slid to the side. That was how I liked to imagine his death. A slow, gentle sleep. The kiss of the wind. The sound of the sea.
19
It was not wise to be a childless man around a children’s playground. So I was careful about choosing my positions. A bench at an indirect angle, partially blocked by trees. A seating area in Camden where office workers ate sandwiches, directly across from some trampolines and a death slide.
My favorite spot, though, was the Parliament Hill playground, not just because I used to come here with Jack, but there was a café and it didn’t seem strange to sit here, alone, without kids. With Anna now back at work, my days were empty. They offered her compassionate leave, but she said she needed something to occupy her mind.
I sat with my laptop in front of me and watched a boy, around five years old, playing on the swings. His father was leaning on a tree, one eye on his son, one eye on his phone. There was a gangly boy, tall for his age, perhaps about ten or eleven, with a shyness in his face that reminded me of Jack. He was playing with a football, occasionally smashing the ball into a wall.
I always drank Diet Coke at the café. I would buy a bottle at the counter, and then switch it with the one in my bag—the one I had already prepared, the one half-full with vodka. I started drinking more because I couldn’t sleep. I would lie awake next to Anna, annoyed by the quiet symmetry of her breathing, the apparent ease with which she slept. I watched the tree branches dancing in the lamplight; I listened to the mournful howls of the neighbor’s dog. So I started getting up and going downstairs, tiptoeing around in my bathrobe, stepping over the creaky stair, silently opening the latch on the drinks’ cabinet. At first a few large whiskeys were enough, but then it became four or five. Soon I was taking sips from the drinks’ cabinet during the day, as I had done as a teenager, taking nips from my parents’ sideboard before a night out.
It had started to spit with rain, and people were leaving the playground. I needed to buy more vodka, so I walked down
