Suburbia

By the time I get home, the sky is a stubborn black and all the houses peer at me with their identical glass eyes. I would never have been able to tell my driveway from all the rest of the perfect picket fences stood in their perfectly parallel rows if my feet didn’t know exactly where they were going after years of the same, endless routine.

I fumble with my keys in the shadow of the doorway and they clatter to the tarmac beneath me. I pause to scoop them up again and it is because of this momentary lapse of noise and movement that I hear it: my parents shouting.

My parents never shout. That is the rule. They can spit cruel words and silently loathe each other, but they never shout. Even now, as I slowly inch the front door open so they don’t hear me, they’re voices sound constricted as if they’re fighting against themselves to raise their voices.

“I can’t believe you didn’t know where your own goddamn son was!”

“I can’t have my eye on him all the time, George, he called! We know he’s at his friend’s house!”

I carefully click the door closed behind me, my eyes on the kitchen door straight ahead, its halo of light a picturesque contradiction to what lies inside.

“You didn’t notice Rory was even gone until I got home! That’s your only job, to look after the damn kids!”

I slowly take careful steps down the carpeted hall as my mum’s voice rises a few decibels, dodging the creaking corner by the stairs.

“My job? Why is it my job? They’re your kids too, George, not that anyone would think that given the amount of time you spend with them!”

“I work, Martha! I work to put a roof over our heads and food on the damn table!”

I reach the end of the hallway and I lean against the doorframe as the tiny sliver of light from the kitchen is cast upon my shadowed body. I peer through with one eye and see my mum pacing in and out my sight, my dad standing his ground behind the counter.

“Oh and who cooks that food, George? Who washes the dishes, tidies the rooms, cleans the house, day in, day out? Whose going mad, holed up here in suburban hell all day to wait on husband who comes home to do what? Hole up writing psychobabble textbooks on how to make everything better?”

“Do you want me to apologise? Our son’s best friend has committed suicide and I’m trying
to make sure he doesn’t wind up an even bigger nutjob than he already is!”

I squeeze my eyes shut as his words slice through the air in my lungs. There it is. What everyone has been thinking but no one has been saying. Clean cut, like glass shards.
Burrowing out of sight. It’s strange how words can sound different depending who they come from.

“Oh don’t lie, George! You know full well the only reason you’re forcing this therapy crap down his throat is so your practice doesn’t look bad. That would be a nice shiny new book for you wouldn’t it: ‘Dr. George Matthews: Renown Therapist and Father of a Psycho”.

I stumble backwards towards the cupboard under the stairs as my dad storms towards the door I am drifting behind like a marionette with my strings cut. I manage to slip inside just as he steps out to where I was standing a single moment before.

“I don’t have to listen to this, I’m going out.”

“Running away from problems again, George, sweeping them under the rug? My, doesn’t that sound familiar!”

The front door slams and the cold breeze locked behind it swirls towards the kitchen where my mum’s cries are beginning to echo out. I watch the disturbed dust in the hallway begin to settle once more as I try to get my breathing to even out in the dark enclosed space. I imagine each breath I let out to be filling up the space around me, cocooning me in a veil of soft air as my mother sobs alone, only board and plaster separating her from a son she doesn't know is there.

My heartbeat slows and fades until the frantic thudding leaves behind the sticky remains of a tepid thump. The air thickens and I am beginning to wonder if the slight constancy of the clock would be enough for me to slip upstairs unnoticed when the doorbell rings.

I hear my mum jump out of her chair, sniffling still as she attempts to clean herself up before she comes out of the kitchen, giving herself a brief little shake over before briskly heading to the door, her chin raised once more.

I creak open the cupboard door a fraction to give me the faintest slice to see through as my mum opens the front door.

“Oh, hi Claire, what can I do for you?”

It’s Mrs Harris, Craig’s mum. The first time I’ve seen her since the day. Her perfume wafts ahead of her and I imagine tendrils of it snaking around my neck and choking me.

“Hi Martha, I actually only popped over for something very small.”

“Why don’t you come on in anyway? It’s no trouble”

“No really, this won’t take long. It’s just, well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since Craig-” Mrs Harris pauses as if confused, as if she has already forgotten what he did “Since Craig left. And I just thought I’d come by to tell you - to tell you I don’t blame you or even Leland for his death, anymore.”

There is a moment of silence as the petticoat soft perfume tightened around me. I can almost feel my mum attempting to formulate a response.

“Well, I do appreciate that Claire, but can I just ask why you would think to blame us in the first place?”

Mrs. Harris lets out the faintest of laughs as if it is a puerile question and not something I was dying to understand.

“Well, I think we both know the answer to that question, don’t we?”

My mum’s voice hardens along with the atmosphere, “Actually, Claire, I have no idea what you’re talking about, it was an awful thing that happened with Craig but it was nobody’s fault.”

“Oh you can’t really believe that!” Mrs Harris scoffs at my mum’s strained compassion.

“Well I most certainly don’t see how it could be mine or my son’s fault.”

“Well, maybe not you directly Martha, but you did raise that boy and it does always come down to the parents after all. I have always had my doubts about your boy but I’ve kept them to myself because this is a respectable neighbourhood.” Mrs Harris looks about her as if to check it really was as respectable as she proclaimed.

“Claire, if you’ll let me put this bluntly I’d appreciate it if you would spit out whatever accusation you are tiptoeing around about my son.” I take a deep breath of what I can only describe as nerves. I desperately don’t want to hear any more of the conversation but I’m trapped in this wooden coffin, surrounded by the rosy scent of the scene where my life collapsed.

Mrs Harris’ voice begins to edge towards hysterical as she continues, “Well, I would have thought it was obvious, Martha. I mean, Leland was meant to be Craig’s best friend, he was the one out of everyone who could have stopped him – should have stopped him. So I can’t help but think that if he was so incapable of stopping something which should have come so naturally to him then maybe he was actually…”

“Actually what, Claire?” I silently beg my mum to not ask the question, to take it back and to just walk away but of course Mrs Harris delivers the final heart-stopping blow before I have even enough time to prepare.

“In favour of it! There I said it! In favour of what Craig did, egged him on, gave him tips, gave him the whole damn idea! Who knows what the hell he’d been whispering into my son’s ear all those years but the boy I knew wouldn’t do what he did, not the boy I knew. Your son is sick and he passed it on to mine, and I’ve been trying to keep quiet about it but you need to know, ‘cause you need to stamp it out of him before he does what he did to my boy to anyone else!”

The air is so solid and so silent I wonder if my heart had stopped, if everything that has been packed inside it for so long has finally exploded out before my heart could even give one last shuddering beat. But no, my mother’s wavering voice pushes through the ice block of the air and forces my heart to keep going, to beat through this last moment.

“You listen close to me now, Claire, I am sorry about what happened to your son, I really am, but if you ever, and I mean ever, say anything like that again about my son, I will make sure you won’t be able to stand on your own two feet ever again and that is a promise.”

Then the air echoes and falls as the door slams shut as my mum marches back down the hall taking deep shuddering breaths.

I listen to Mrs. Harris’ heels clatter back down the driveway as her perfume, and her choke-hold along with it, dissolve into the air. I wait until my mum is clattering pots around the kitchen before I creep out of the cupboard and stumble up the stairs, holding a fist over my heart, incredulous that the beating is still there.