Daniel Isn’t Talking

‘Just leave him,’ says Stephen. He studies a bill, turns it over, and I can tell from looking at him that he is tallying the numbers. ‘He’ll be fine,’ he says absently.

‘I can’t leave him. He’s not fine.’

Stephen rubs his hand over his mouth, draws a breath. ‘What is at Toys “ᴙ” Us that can possibly cost two hundred pounds?’ he says, holding up the bill.

‘Toys,’ I say. I look at Daniel. ‘This is all wrong.’

‘He’s crying. It’s what kids do – you always tell me that.’

But this is not what kids do. Daniel is pushing his head against my calf, and now dragging his forehead along the floor.

‘I think we should buy shares in Toys “ᴙ” Us,’ Stephen says, picking a new bill from the pile, slitting the envelope with his car key.

‘Stephen –’ I feel myself panicking a little. I know I ought to have some explanation and some sort of … what would you call it? … remedy for what is happening here, but I do not. Daniel seems to be using his head like a floor mop. What would other mothers do? They all seem so capable, so commanding; but it seems to me that all they ever argue about with their children is why the broccoli is left on the plate, or why the child can’t find his shoes. Nothing like this. Daniel is hysterical and I’m feeling not too far behind him. And now, to my horror, he is not only dragging his head across the floor but pushing it down into the carpet, as though trying to hurt himself on purpose, which only makes him cry more. ‘Stephen, look at this!’

But just then Emily appears at the bottom of the stairs, holding up her Mickey Mouse and smiling.

Stephen says, ‘Daniel has a headache, that’s all.’

But I notice he’s looking at Emily when he says this. It’s as though he cannot bring himself to see what I see. In front of me, Daniel is pushing his head into the corner of the room and pressing it there with every ounce of strength that he has.

2 (#u1a50b7e6-746b-5efd-8cb8-6f90f779f9ff)

If Stephen is away – on business, for example – I sleep with Emily on one side of me and Daniel on the other. Like this I can attend to the movements of either of them, can feel the heat of their skin, the stirrings of their dreams. It is the only time I can really sleep, huddled between them, kicked by them, occasionally woken by Daniel who cannot sleep through the night yet. I never complain about the broken night’s sleep. When I wake for those few minutes, the darkness seems a comfort. I feel my heart is a timepiece set in motion by my children’s breathing, and that the bed is our refuge, a place where nobody can touch us. As long as we stay here together, warm beneath the duvet, the darkness is velvet. Thomas the Tank Engine can stay clutched in Daniel’s hand. Dumbo’s family, in their gaudy circus blankets, can watch us from the nightstand.

Because I have been particularly high-strung of late – what Stephen calls unstable and, if I am honest with myself, what I also would call unstable – I slept last night with the children like so, one to my left and one to my right. It’s the only way I could recover after Daniel’s tantrum. I needed him close to me – quiet, peaceful, loving. I needed to feel connected to him. I don’t think Stephen understands this – I don’t think anyone understands – and so I’ve woken this morning feeling slightly ashamed of myself, as though my behaviour makes me feeble and pathetic. Stephen has spent the night in Emily’s bed, which is a proper single bed, quite comfortable, but not where he wants to be. Getting ready for work he is crabby, remote, gathering my attention now as I stretch into this new day, limp in one of his old rugby shirts, not quite able to face the morning.

‘I don’t have a babysitter for tonight, Stephen, I’m really sorry.’

‘Did you call a babysitter?’ he asks, dressing in front of me. He is crisp as a new banknote, his hair springs up from where he’s combed it wet from the shower. He pushes his leg through the elastic of his boxer shorts, gathers his suit trousers at the waist, loops the belt. Bowing his back like a sprinter at the starting block, he turns the laces of his shoes.

‘Of course I did. I called several.’ This isn’t true but I have no other excuse. He wants us to go to some sort of business dinner party thing tonight and there is no way – no way whatsoever – that I’m going with him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I am sorry, too, but not because I don’t want to go out tonight. The truth is I feel self-conscious. I don’t want people to see how fretful I am, how troubled. I used to love to go out, but now it is as though I’ve lost all capacity to speak to other people at such things as dinner parties. They always seem so well adjusted and normal to me, making me feel even weirder. ‘I’m not myself lately,’ I tell Stephen.

Stephen sighs. ‘What I want to know is what this guy is doing for sixty-five pounds an hour.’

‘Who? Jacob? He listens. I talk to him,’ I say. ‘Don’t blame Jacob because I don’t want to go out tonight. It’s not his fault.’

‘See, I knew it. You don’t want to go.’

Oh damn, I’ve blown it. ‘I do,’ I say, trying to smile.

Stephen gives me a long look, then shakes his head. He works his fingers down his stiff, immaculate shirt, weaving the buttons through their holes. ‘You can talk to me for a lot less than sixty-five pounds an hour,’ he says.

‘I’m getting him to prescribe something. Maybe Valium. Maybe Prozac. I haven’t decided. They keep coming up with new drugs, it’s getting harder and harder to choose among them all.’ I try laughing, but it doesn’t work. I’m so exhausted it sounds like a grunt.

Stephen goes to the closet and extracts a tie, flipping the silk through his fingers until it forms a perfect knot. Then he goes down the short flight of stairs to where his coat hangs on the banister. I can hear him now, pushing his hands in and out of the pockets, disrupting his keys which give off tiny, musical notes as he tosses them in the satin lining of his coat. He comes back upstairs with a small brown vial.

‘I told a friend of mine at work what you’re like these days and he gave me these,’ he says, lobbing the vial on to the bedclothes. ‘Antidepressants or something. Now, are you coming out with me tonight or not?’

‘Not,’ I say, but I stash the pills in my nightstand.

The pills are long and thin and white. Just one sends my head into a fuzz and makes it so the radio song I heard five hours ago is still crystal clear across every thought, raining down into my ears. Like this I cannot play My Little Pony correctly because I cannot make up the stories Emily needs in order to use the ponies’ new kitchen and their new glittery tiaras. I keep saying, ‘They are making a pie to take to the party.’ And she keeps saying, ‘But then what?’

‘Then they make the pie?’

Emily’s big eyes turn to me, heavy under her furrowed little brow. ‘Mummmmy!’ she says impatiently.

‘OΚ, it’s not a pie. Give me a moment. It’s a … uh … it’s a cake?’

I wander off to look for Daniel, but discover I cannot find him. In my ears is a terrible girl band and I cannot make them shut up. Not only do I hear them singing, but I also see them dancing. It’s like a sound and light show inside my head. Poking my fingers into my ears makes no difference, nor does covering my eyes with my hands and spinning, which is exactly what Daniel does when he is distressed. I call for Daniel but, of course, he doesn’t answer. He never answers. I am hoping that he will reappear, drawn by my voice, but he does not. I look in my bedroom, in all the closets and cupboards. It feels as though the house has swallowed him. He is Houdini, disappearing before my eyes. Downstairs, I search behind chairs and curtains. With every second that passes my panic rises. I cannot find him. I am searching for open windows, for some part of his body lying on the floor, dead from choking or poison or a sudden, inexplicable collapse. My mind is a kaleidoscope of unspeakable images: small, still limbs; eyes like marble, like glass. He is dying, my baby, and I cannot find him no matter how fast I run through the house or how loud I yell his name.

‘Daniel! DANIEL!’ I still can’t find him, but now it’s Emily who has my attention. She wears an expression as though she’s been scolded, sticks out her lower lip, preparing for tears. I scoop her up, balance her on my hip and keep searching. After many minutes I find Daniel inside the shower, rolling his Thomas the Tank Engine along the ledge of the pan. His face does not register surprise when I fling open the shower door. Parking Emily on the sink ledge, I reach into the shower for Daniel. When I pick him up he does not look at me, but stretches toward the train, his hands clasping and unclasping.

‘You said you’d talk to me, so talk to me!’ I tell Stephen. I’ve sat both children in front of the television to watch Teletubbies, an inane programme that I am sure is not good for them, but Emily likes the way the custard machine flings pink glop, not to mention all those oversized French rabbits. Daniel, on my lap, sits with a fixed expression, staring at the television, often leaning forward so that his face is way too close to the screen. Emily, taking my advice to sit further back, occupies the armchair along with a dozen or more plastic ponies from her collection. Between episodes she sings the Teletubbies theme tune while her ponies dance in her hands.

‘I don’t understand the problem,’ says Stephen, speaking to me from his office. ‘You looked for him, you found him. He was in the shower but there was no water running, so no danger of drowning –’

Among my many fears is that our children will drown in the tiny, ornamental pond in our garden. Before I consented to move into this house I insisted workmen arrive and cover it with three layers of metal wire. They did as I asked, but kept sneaking glances at each other. When I made cups of tea for them they said, ‘This is just tea, right? Nothing in it?’ Similarly, I had the lid for the septic tank in our summer cottage buried under half a dozen paving stones. I was told by the septic tank emptying service that this was not folly on my part. It would take thirty seconds for a child to die in a septic tank, the lid opening easily with one finger. He, the man from the septic tank service, drank his tea without any questions at all.

‘Please,’ I beg Stephen. ‘Come home now. Turn off the computer, get up from your chair, put on your coat.’

My socks don’t match and there’s a split in my jeans, along the seam of the crotch. I haven’t washed my hair in two days and my eyeglasses are so gunged up that the world through them seems to have grown a skin. Meanwhile, Daniel needs a new nappy, but I’ll have to change it in here because if I take him away from Teletubbies now he may not get back into it, which will mean I have to chase him around the house to keep him from endlessly flushing the toilet, which he will only play with like a toy but will not consider sitting on. Then I will have to stop him climbing up the curtains, or stacking the books like a ladder so that he can reach the glass-encased clock on the fireplace mantel. He will not play with me, although every day I try. I get out books in bright colours, push matchbox-sized cars up and down garage ramps, hide from him then appear like a vaudeville clown, leaping before his eyes. He turns from me. His preoccupations are a barrier between us, a sheet of glass through which I cannot reach him.

‘I know how to come home,’ says Stephen.

‘What did you say?’ My head is a sound machine; the singing girls still won’t go away. Daniel is leaning forward, straining in my lap. If I allowed him, he’d have his nose against the screen. ‘I don’t like these pills you gave me,’ I tell Stephen. ‘I don’t like what’s going on here at all.’

* * *

I make him speak to me while he’s standing on the platform at Paddington, while sitting on the train. Even though I cannot hear him and the phone cuts out continually, requiring frantic redialling, I ask him, beg him, plead with him not to go away. As he walks down the road, turning the corner leading to our street, he must speak to me. Good things, I say, please tell me good things.

By the time he reaches our house he is fed up, his face vaguely disapproving as he enters the house. Emily, rushing to his arms, asks if something special is going to happen today. Is this a holiday? Is that why you are here in the daytime, Daddy? Daniel has given up on cartoons and is now staring at the pattern on the carpet, tracing it with his finger.

‘I’ll play ponies with you,’ says Stephen to his daughter. ‘But then I have a very important call.’

‘My ponies are having a nap,’ says Emily. Her eyes move to the sofa cushion where a whole cavalry of plastic ponies sleep beneath a dish towel. ‘And they have a very important call, too. So you will have to play with me.’

Stephen moves across the room to Daniel, who is quietly sitting on the carpet. ‘He seems fine to me,’ he says.

‘He disappeared,’ I say. I am cutting the crusts off a sandwich for Emily. Daniel won’t eat sandwiches. He will eat cookies and crackers and milk and cereal. But no meat and no fruit and no vegetables. I give him vitamins each day and I make cakes with carrots in them or with grated zucchini. ‘I called for him for ages but nothing happened. It was as though he didn’t hear me.’

‘Daniel, were you hiding?’ Stephen teases. Daniel looks up, meets his father’s gaze, but does not smile back at him. ‘He was playing a game, Melanie, why don’t you just calm down?’

‘A game?’ I say, and toss the knife into the sink so hard it makes a dent.

But Stephen isn’t worried about Daniel. He’s worried about Emily because she is four years old and not yet in school.

‘She’s going to be behind,’ he insists now.