Steven Watson - Before I Go to Sleep

It did not make sense. What had happened? The child ought to be—how old now? Eighteen? Nineteen? Twenty?

But there is no child, I thought. Where is my son?

I felt my world tip again. That word: son . I had thought it, said it to myself with certainty. Somehow, from somewhere deep within me, I knew that the child I had been carrying was a boy.

I gripped the edge of the chair to try and steady myself, and as I did, another word bubbled to the surface and exploded. Adam . I felt my world slip out of one groove and into another.

I had had the child. We called him Adam.

I stood up and the package containing the novel skidded to the floor. My mind raced like a whirring engine that has at last caught, energy ricocheted within me as if desperate for release. He was absent from the scrapbook in the living room. I knew that. I would have remembered seeing a picture of my own child as I leafed through it this morning. I would have asked Ben who he was. I would have written about it in my journal. I crammed the clipping back into the envelope along with the book and ran upstairs. In the bathroom, I stood in front of the mirror. I did not even glance at my face but looked around it, at the pictures of the past, the photographs that I must use to construct myself when I don’t have memory.

Me and Ben. Me, alone, and Ben, alone. The two of us with another couple, older, who I take to be his parents. Me, much younger, wearing a scarf, petting a dog, smiling happily. But there is no Adam. No baby, no toddler. No photos taken on his first day of school, or at sports day, or on holiday. No pictures of him building castles in the sand. Nothing.

It did not make sense. Surely these are pictures that every parent takes and none discards?

They must be here, I thought. I lifted pictures up to see if there were others taped beneath them, layers of history overlain like strata. There was nothing. Nothing but the pale blue tiles on the wall, the smooth glass of the mirror. A blank.

Adam. The name spun in my head. My eyes closed and more memories hit, each one striking violently, shimmering for a moment before disappearing, triggering the next. I saw Adam, his blond hair that I knew would one day turn brown, the Spiderman T-shirt that he insisted on wearing until it was far too small for him and had to be thrown out. I saw him in a stroller, sleeping, and remembered thinking that he was the most perfect baby, the most perfect thing, I had ever seen. I saw him riding a blue bike—a plastic tricycle—and somehow knew that we had bought it for him on his birthday, and that he would ride it everywhere. I saw him in a park, his head hunched over handlebars, grinning as he flew down an incline toward me and, a second later, tipping forward and slamming to the ground as the bike hit something on the path and twisted beneath him. I saw myself holding him as he cried, mopping blood from his face, finding one of his teeth on the ground next to a still-spinning wheel. I saw him showing me a picture he’d painted—a blue strip for the sky, green for the ground, and between them three blobby figures and a tiny house—and I saw the toy rabbit that he carried everywhere.

I snapped back to the present, to the bathroom in which I stood, but closed my eyes again. I wanted to remember him at school, or as a teenager, or to picture him with me or his father. But I could not. When I tried to organize my memories, they fluttered and vanished, like a feather caught on the wind that changes direction whenever a hand snatches at it. Instead, I saw him holding a dripping ice cream, then with licorice over his face, then sleeping in the backseat of a car. All I could do was watch as these memories came and then went, just as quickly.

It took all my strength not to tear at the photos in front of me. I wanted to rip them from the wall, looking for evidence of my son. Instead, as if fearing that any movement at all might result in my limbs betraying me, I stood perfectly still in front of the mirror, every muscle in my body tensed.

No photographs on the mantelpiece. No teenage bedroom with posters of pop stars on the wall. No T-shirts in the laundry or among the piles of ironing. No tattered sneakers in the cupboard under the stairs. Even if he had left home, there would still be some evidence of his existence, surely? Some trace?

But no, he isn’t in this house. With a chill, I realized it was as if he didn’t exist, and never had.

I don’t know how long I stood there in the bathroom, looking at his absence. Ten minutes? Twenty? An hour? At some point, I heard a key in the front door, the swoosh as Ben wiped his feet on the mat. I did not move. He went into the kitchen, then the dining room, and then called upstairs, asking if I was all right. He sounded anxious, his voice had a nervous fluting to it that I had not heard this morning, but I only mumbled that yes, yes I was. I heard him go into the living room, the television flick on.

Time stopped. My mind emptied of everything. Everything except the need to know what had happened to my son, balanced perfectly with a dread at what I might find out.

I hid my novel in the closet and went downstairs.

I stood outside the living room door. I tried to slow down my breathing but could not; it came in hot gasps. I did not know what to say to Ben: how I could tell him that I knew about Adam? He would ask me how, and what would I say then?

It didn’t matter, though. Nothing did. Nothing other than knowing about my son. I closed my eyes and, when I felt as calm as I thought I would ever feel, gently pushed the door open. I felt it slide against the rough carpet.

Ben did not hear me. He was sitting on the sofa, watching television, a plate balanced on his lap, half a cookie on it. I felt a wave of anger. He looked so relaxed and happy, a smile played across his mouth. He began to laugh. I wanted to rush over, to grab him and shout until he told me everything, told me why he had kept my novel from me, why he had hidden evidence of my son. I wanted to demand he give back to me everything that I had lost.

But I knew that would do no good. Instead, I coughed. A tiny, delicate cough. A cough that said I don’t want to disturb you, but…

He saw me and smiled. “Darling!” he said. “There you are!”

I stepped into the room. “Ben,” I said. My voice was strained. It sounded alien to me. “Ben? I need to talk to you.”

His face melted into anxiety. He stood up and came toward me, the plate sliding to the floor. “What is it, love? Are you all right?”

“No,” I said. He stopped a couple of feet from where I stood. He held out his arms for me to fall into, but I did not.

“Whatever’s wrong?”

I looked at my husband, at his face. He appeared to be in control, as if he had been here before, was used to these moments of hysteria.

I could go no longer without saying the name of my son. “Where’s Adam?” I said. The words came out in a gasp. “Where is he?”

Ben’s expression changed. Surprise? Or shock? He swallowed.

“Tell me!” I said.

He took me in his arms. I wanted to push him away, but did not. “Christine,” he said. “Please. Calm down. I can explain everything. Okay?”

I wanted to tell him that no, things weren’t okay at all, but I said nothing. I hid my face from him, burying it in the folds of his shirt.

I began to shake. “Tell me,” I said. “Please, tell me now.”

We sat on the sofa. Me at one end. Him at the other. It was as close as I wanted us to be.

We’d been talking. For minutes. Hours. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t want him to speak, to say it again, but he did.

“Adam is dead.”

I felt myself clench. Tight as a mollusk. His words, sharp as razor wire.