Stepping Stone Boy by Catherine Kay

‘Meet in the woodland then…in an hour say?’ I try to keep the tone of begging from my voice.

It’s too hot and the prickles in our conversation persuade me that a pause in this fragile reunion might be what is needed to save it.

After I had called yesterday, you’d agreed to meet me ‘just once.’

‘I know the place’ you had replied without emotion when I suggested here. Your voice was so unexpectedly deep and so reminiscent of your father’s I felt myself blush and stutter.

Wandering the gardens since noon, you and I are hungover and over-tired, respectively.

‘On our last visit here, it was the reverse,’ I muse in silence, my mind returning to a day twenty years ago, wrestling to block out the intervening decades.

On this sweltering afternoon—our first together in so very long—we found no shade in the overpriced, understaffed café. The sophistication of the ice cream failed to compensate for the rudeness of the service. We have left the refreshments area less than refreshed and somewhat tetchy.

You mumble something about perusing the gift shop. I can tell by the clouds in your no longer blue eyes that you need a fix of whatever it is you are into these days. I recognise the longing in you and I long to replace it with something truer. But I lost the right to parental advice eons ago.

I begin to feel undone, fractured. I can’t be out of control of the situation again. I just can’t. Sensing I am about to blow my last chance, I suggest we take a break from each other. A break perhaps from ourselves, from our stories and the shadows of lost days clinging to us like sodden sea-washed clothes.

‘See you down there then - the old stepping stones?’ You jerk your chin in that direction, rough stubble looking patchy and immature. I swallow, nodding silent agreement. Can you have remembered?

#

This week had started badly. Though who knows how it could have started well? How were your grandparents, Jean Luc’s parents, to know he had been back in contact with me? It was no real surprise that they had refused my request to attend his funeral.They protect you as they did your father.

‘That served them well!’ I had thought, bitterness building in my mouth. Jean Luc’s bloated body had been pulled from the River Cesse the week before. The toxicology report had been conclusive.

After the service, the reception was in Le Cheval Blanc. Maybe I shouldn’t have booked my room there. I did try to keep out of the way, managing to avoid the gathering completely until late into the evening. After the pissed Parisian artists had departed, only a few well-lunched dignitaries had remained. Skulking into the dining room, I hoped to order a quick Croque Monsieur. Hoped too for a chance glimpse of you; my fully grown adult boy. What if the grief of losing one parent could change your heart towards the other?

A glance round the room revealed there was no one under the age of fifty left. Disappointed I considered abandoning the sandwich then in swept your grandmother, all Chanel and Chardonnay.

‘Is there more champagne to be had? I know Jean Luc would simply have insisted,’ her voice—sharp, cold and still familiar—broke imperceptibly when she said his name. Pretending not to see me at first, she eventually found some manners. Accepting my condolences, she wished me well for my future, making it clear I would have no part in hers.

I had watched realisation build, her mouth twisting from pretend pleasantries to disgusted resignation. About four minutes in, she had discovered why I’d come. It had nothing to do with respect for her own beloved man-child lying cold in the pretty nearby cemetery. I was here to fulfil my promise to you. A promise made into the ether through all those years.

‘If you ever need me, if he can’t help, won’t help, I’ll come get you. I’ll take you home. You will always still be mine.’

Surveying my high street suit and cheap, impractical stilettos, your grandmother, suspicious and cynical, asked me for details. Watching me grovel first, she at last accepted my request.

‘Have you changed at all?’ she shook her exasperated, coiffured head.

‘More than you’ll ever believe, Marie Claire’ I snapped, snatching the napkin she had rushed to write your number on.

‘He’s vulnerable you know- he couldn't cope with another loss.’

‘Neither could I, Marie- Claire, neither could I.’ Avoiding her stare and stopping my own indignant glower reach her face, I had folded the napkin with gentle care.

#

I make it to the enchanted woodland with too much time to spare. Planting my espadrilles firm and solid on the shingle below, I breathe in. I remind myself of the present moment my therapist loves so much. But, the past, like a bad boy lover, refuses to be forgotten.

Sourness clags my mouth as I remember the various rosé sessions late into the night at your grandparents’ home. My life has crashed, stuttered and crawled by since then and yet I can still picture those days with such sad clarity.

Reaching out to touch the damp furled ferns cascading over fencing, the pain and love of it all still needles me with vivid sharpness.

#

It was just a two-bed farmhouse, held up with ivy and dreams, stranded in the loneliest portion of the Languedoc. But for me, my northside terrace background barely skin deep, it was everything I doubted I could ever have.

Whichever Easter or Summer reprieve it was, there’d always be promises, especially after the surprise of pregnancy and your untimely arrival. But before that too. Yes, the promises had started long before you.

After you, your father (barely passed childhood himself) would snake charm me with hope each and every holiday. On the flight over he would tenderly kiss my ear, tickle your chin and bolster me up with optimism and promises. Talk of new beginnings, another 'this time' story would seduce me yet again. Making me believe our love was enough to overcome everything was his forte.

Always by the end of the first evening though, there would be too many bottles on the table, too few used wine glasses; sad faces and crushed hopes. All too often there’d be the stagger and sway to your attic bunk to check on you.

Hot shame colours my cheeks now, thinking back to how often I’d wobbled through the low splintered doorway to your cupboard bed, pressing my hand firmly on your sleeping rump. I’d try to stir you into the safety of drowsy wakefulness whilst steadying myself and my spinning head against the rough wall, managing, just, not to topple onto your sleeping form.

In the mornings, with delicate head and fur-coated tongue, I would try anew to be the parent you deserved. Planning and promising an adventure, we’d leave the slumbering house, knowing no-one would surface for hours. A changing bag thrown over one shoulder and you, delicately balanced, nuzzling into my other. Tiptoeing to their old Citroen I would manhandle you into the borrowed car seat. Lurching and tenuous, we’d make our way over the French countryside. Sunglasses fixed and head throbbing, I would sweep us through swathes of sunflowers rotting on their stalks. Random switchbacks along quiet rural roads bolstering my confidence and keeping me safe from gendarmes with breathalyzers.

These chateau gardens had been your favourite. Your fat toddler legs, pink- kneed with sunburn, would swing and pump faster as the tyres crackled on the familiar gravel. Nylon straps digging into baby skin, as you strained in anticipation. I’d watch your enthusiasm grow through the rear view mirror, all shouts and shiny eyes as, at last, you would spy the magical sign. An incongruous broken stegosaurus, half-hidden by over enthusiastic leylandii. Growing pride in my ability to arrive somewhere would soar through me and I’d toss my shades onto cracked crimson leather. Your beautiful grin grew, exposing tiny pearls of baby teeth framed by two kissable dimples. Eyes as blue as the Chateau shutters would meet mine in the mirror. A simple connection in mottled glass and chrome, overflowing with trust. I’d believe in myself again, for a few short hours.

Those daytrip days always took a familiar pattern. As the hours drove on and my hangover subsided, I’d begin to trust in my maternal abilities. An hour of adventuring in the playground would usually do. Each visit you became stronger, braver, bigger. By that last time you whizzed by me on the junior zip wire. Squealing with glee as I puffed behind you, trying with all my useless might to somehow keep you safe. It was too late of course. I see that now. Even then, the safe hour had passed. Tiring of the playground, your flagging energy would be renewed as we got closer to the woodland. In the swampy dark lushness of the ancient forest we would feel secure again.

How slippery time can be, collapsing like this all of sudden. In front of me now all I see in this shadowy darkness of the greenery, is you- tiny, confident, trusting you. A pair of stocky, tanned legs appearing from dinosaur print shorts. Those fat feet, slippy from sweat and suncream, clad loosely in Clarks’ tan leather. That day we ventured all the way down to the bubbling floor of the valley. The stream gurgling, a perfect accompaniment to your excited yelps. Your chubby legs tried to negotiate the slipperiness of the stepping stones.

‘Mummy do it, mummy help,’ you pleaded, hands outstretched. I had grabbed tight then, thrown you up in an arc. Shafts of light cascaded and refracted around your

beautiful four-year-old form, your chuckles echoing throughout the silent steamy woodland.

Those ‘last day’ memories are closer to the surface than I realise and always shot through with pain. That final summer day, my anxiety had momentarily abated. The feeling that I could do it, this parenting thing, had lasted until we were back at the farmhouse.

But by the time I’d bathed you and swathed you in toweling, I was already feeling like a foolish mistake. Jean Luc with his drunken jibes had not helped, but I didn’t need encouragement, never had. People like us never need excuses. What had ensued had been messy, so messy that all this time later my heart sickens thinking of it.

Holding the gate, I attempt to push back those memories. They swirl through my head regardless. The uncontrollable crying, the antique glass shards, the rattling ambulance ride to the nearest emergency room. The long, claustrophobic stay in the ward.

Then there was the disgust on your grandmother’s face that sticky August night and the deafening sadness accompanying your grandfather and me on the long ride to the airport. How my scabs stung as I picked at them, in the pokey office, barely a month later. Jean Luc’s lawyer was not known for his compassion. Looking out through the ancient rippled glass to the dull and lifeless river beyond, I knew I had lost.

Thrumming starts in my head today as I picture myself sprinting up the stairs of the farmhouse later. Your cosy bunk stripped, the gingham changing bag gone.

#

Checking my watch, I race down the slippery slate path towards our agreed rendezvous spot. Panic builds from sick stomach to constricted throat. I curse myself for forgetting our exact meeting time. What if wasting time replaying yesterday’s failures has ruined any chance of reconnection with you today? Puffing again, I stumble a little as I rush to be with you.

Will everything be too different, too difficult? Will each trauma we navigated have imprinted themselves too deep into you?

Will the stepping stones still be there, slippery and precarious? Will you?