The Parable of the Mustard Seed Page 6

  Might as well take a knife and slice open Caleb’s wrists himself.

  All these years John had made a strange deal with the voice in the back of his head. It was okay to love Caleb. It was okay to need him like oxygen. It was okay to want him in a way that could never happen. All of that was okay, as long as Caleb didn’t know. Love like that, you carried like a burden. You wore it like a hair shirt. You hid it like a secret. You didn’t let it out in the open, because it was too dangerous. Love like that, it could destroy everything.

  It could destroy Caleb.

  John didn’t give a fuck about his own heart, not really, but he couldn’t risk Caleb’s.

  John stared out at the trees. It was too dark to see them, but he could hear the rosellas squawking in the branches. They were like bad neighbours, coming home late, drunk and obnoxious, screaming and laughing until they finally settled down.

  “Another beer?” Darren asked, standing up.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  What he had with Caleb was enough. It was more than he could ever have hoped for when he’d seen that broken kid in the tank. He would never have thought that one day he’d be grown, one day they’d be friends, that Caleb would even survive. John had been there for every painstaking step. He’d seen how far Caleb had come, and how easy it was for him to stumble. He had no right to want more.

  Darren came back with the beers, and John shook his mood away. They sat together in the darkness, and planned in low voices how to break it to Caleb that his tormentors were being released on parole.

  Chapter Five

  “What happened next, Naomi?”

  The girl shrugged her skinny shoulders and twisted her fingers in her lap. “Caleb and Simon were wicked, so Ethan put them in the tank. That’s where you go when you’re bad.”

  “Did you ever have to go there?” Brian exchanged a glance with John.

  “I’m not wicked,” Naomi said.

  “I know you’re not.” Brian’s voice was calm. “But maybe someone made a mistake?”

  Naomi leaned forward across the desk and lowered her voice. “Once, I took some bread from the kitchen, and Brother Ben put me in the tank. It wasn’t nice in there. I had to stay the whole night.”

  “Is that what happened to Caleb and Simon? Did they have to stay the whole night?”

  Naomi drew circles on the desk with her finger. “No, they were there a long time. I could hear them crying.”

  “Did you hear anything else?”

  Naomi wrinkled her nose. “Screaming. I heard them screaming. But then I could only hear Caleb.”

  John arrived early for Caleb’s birthday party, ostensibly to give Darren a hand setting up, but mostly to catch up with Caleb and see how he was going. He hadn’t even made it halfway up the front stairs before the door was flung open and Caleb stood there, smiling.

  “How do I look?” Caleb asked. Gave him a twirl, even.

  John felt a smile spreading across his face. “Not bad, for a skinny white boy.”

  Dress pants, a shirt and tie. Black shoes polished to a shine.

  “I feel underdressed,” John said, in his jeans and a T-shirt.

  Caleb’s gaze raked him up and down. “You look good.” A blush crept over his face, and he turned away quickly. “Anyway, I’m not wearing this for the party. This is for work.”

  He stepped back from the door to let John in.

  John closed the door behind himself. “Is anyone else here yet?”

  “No. Dad’s gone to get some ice,” Caleb said. “Do you want to see the rest of my work clothes?”

  “Okay.” John followed Caleb through to his bedroom.

  Caleb showed him his wardrobe: dress pants and different shirts, and at least eight different ties. A suit jacket for winter, as though Caleb would still be working there then.

  No harm in planning for the best, John chastised himself as he admired it. “These look good. You’re not turning into a yuppie, are you?”

  Caleb snorted, and raked his fingers through his hair. “No! Besides, that’s so outdated!”

  John laughed and rearranged one of the ties on the rack. “Yeah, well, I’m old, remember?”

  “You’re not old,” Caleb said.

  John became aware that their shoulders were touching as they stood together in front of the open closet. He stepped away and pulled the wrapped present out of his bag. “No, you are, aren’t you? Twenty-three today.”

  Caleb smiled shyly and took the present. “Thanks, John.”

  He sat on his bed and unwrapped it.

  DVDs, a book voucher, and the necklace. A small boar’s tusk necklace, with a traditional design cut into it. Caleb picked it up and looked at John inquiringly.

  “That was my dad’s,” John said.

  Caleb’s eyes widened. “John...I think...” He sucked in a nervous breath. “I think maybe this should stay in your family.”

  O le fogavaʻa e tasi.

  One family.

  Because you’re my family too, Caleb.

  John forced a smile. “Hey, you never refuse a gift from a Samoan. That’s bad manners, you know.”

  Caleb clamped his mouth shut. He closed his hand around the necklace and stood, abruptly stepping forward to embrace John. “Thank you. I’ll look after it, promise.”

  John held him back. It felt good to hold Caleb so close, to splay his fingers on his back, to have him breathing against John’s throat. “I know you will, mate.”

  A perfect quiet moment. If they could stay like this forever, it would be okay. Caleb would be okay.

  John wasn’t sure which of them became aware of it first: the press of Caleb’s hardening cock against John’s thigh. But then Caleb was wheeling away, red-faced, rifling through the shirts in his closet again, pretending nothing had happened. John pretended too. Pretended that for just a second he hadn’t felt a jolt of want go through him. Of need. Of sheer fucking wonder. That in that second he hadn’t suddenly seen what he could have with Caleb. What they could both have, if only it hadn’t been the most dangerous idea in the world.

  “I like the green,” he said as Caleb pulled out a shirt. “That will look good on you.”

  Caleb couldn’t look him in the eye.

  A few minutes later John heard Darren’s car, and escaped to help him set up.

  By dusk, all the guests had arrived. John didn’t know many of them—friends and colleagues of Darren’s. The small circle of people who knew enough about Caleb’s history not to say the wrong thing. Not that Caleb got close enough to offer them the opportunity. He retreated to the veranda as soon as people began to arrive.

  John joined him there, and Caleb pointed out a few different people. The architect he was going to work for, his wife, Darren’s foreman with his arm in a cast.

  For a while it was okay.

  And then it wasn’t.

  “See that woman down there?” Caleb leaned his elbows on the veranda rail, dangling his hands into space. “The one in the blue dress?”

  John saw the woman. She was in her forties, maybe, with brunette curls and a nice figure. If you went for that sort of thing. “Yeah.”

  “I’m ruining her life,” Caleb said.

  John turned his head to look at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “That’s Emily,” Caleb said. “Emily Corrigan. She works at the council, in the planning department, and Dad goes in to see her at least once a week to lodge plans. They’ve known each other for years. She’s divorced, and she has two kids.” He lifted a hand and pointed. “That’s them. Alex and Kate. Twelve and ten. I’m ruining their lives as well.”

  “How are you doing that?”

  Caleb withdrew a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. He lit one, inhaled, and then held it loosely between his dangling fingers. The smoke curled off it and vanished. “Dad’s been dating her for six months. She likes him, her kids like him, and he’s put everything on fucking ice because of me.”

  “What your dad does with his relat
ionships has nothing to do with you,” John said.

  “Of course it fucking does,” Caleb said.

  Of course it did.

  “You smoking again?”

  Caleb shrugged, and inhaled again. “So?”

  So don’t be such a brat.

  So less of the attitude.

  So I’m worried.

  John didn’t say anything.

  Caleb shook his head. “Just him and me, and this big fucking house that was built for a fucking family, and they could all live here and be happy if it wasn’t for me.”

  The cigarette fell from his fingers and onto the boards of the veranda. John stepped forward and crushed it under his shoe.

  “That’s not true.”

  Caleb reeled back from the rail. “Of course it’s fucking true!” he shouted.

  From the yard, people turned and looked. John saw Darren hurrying toward the house, the barbecue fork still in his hand. Emily in the blue dress stepped forward to say something, and Darren brushed her off.

  Of course it was fucking true.

  They were all stuck in limbo with Caleb.

  “Look at this house, John! Look at this fucking house!” Caleb kicked at the rails, turned, stalked to the door into the kitchen, and smacked the wall with his fist. “Could put a pool in. A treehouse. Are they too old for that? I don’t know. Doesn’t matter. It’s a fucking waste.”

  “Take a breath, Caleb.”

  Caleb stared at the sliding glass door, and raised his fist again.

  “Enough!” No way in hell was John going to watch him put himself in hospital. He was behind Caleb in a heartbeat, catching his fist, getting his other arm back, and restraining him just like he’d done countless times to angry drunks in the Valley on a Friday night back when he was in uniform.

  Caleb struggled at first—they always did—but John was a wall of solid muscle behind him. Like any skinny white boy had a hope in hell of winning this fight.

  “Okay, now take that breath.” John stepped forward, sandwiching Caleb between his chest and the wall. Caleb whimpered, swore, but the fight was gone. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”

  Caleb sucked in a shaking breath. “Let me go, John.”

  “In a minute, mate.”

  Caleb tensed at that, but there was nowhere to go. After a moment his shoulders sagged again and he leaned his forehead against the wall.

  John held him there, turning his head as Darren reached the top of the steps.

  “I’ll get his meds,” Darren said.

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb whispered to the wall.

  “I know you are,” John said.

  Caleb was still saying it a few minutes later as John walked him inside to his bedroom. The blinds were closed, the room sunk into comfortable gloom.

  “I’m sorry. I ruined the barbecue.”

  “No, you didn’t.” John slid his hands down Caleb’s arms. “Take your shoes off.”

  Caleb toed them off.

  “You okay to sleep in those jeans?”

  Caleb fumbled with the fly and pushed the jeans down his legs. He kicked them off and sat heavily on his bed. His shoulders slumped and he picked at a thread in his boxer briefs. “I’m sorry.”

  John squatted in front of him, the way he did when he was talking to small kids who found his size intimidating. “You’ve got nothing to apologise for, okay? Have a rest, and I’ll save you a piece of steak.”

  Darren entered the room. He held out a cup of water to Caleb, and a pill. Caleb took the pill, made a face, and put it in his mouth. He swallowed it down with the water.

  John rose to his feet.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I ruined it. I ruined everything.”

  “Caleb, it’s okay.” Darren helped Caleb settle, and pulled the covers over him. “I love you.”

  “It would be easier if you didn’t.” Caleb’s gaze flicked to John as he said it, then back to Darren.

  “Don’t say that,” Darren said, his voice cracking on the words. “Don’t ever say that, Caleb.”

  John’s throat ached.

  “Dad,” Caleb whispered as he slipped away into sleep, “I’m sorry. Do I still get my dog?”

  “Yeah,” Darren said, his voice tight. “Yeah, you do.”

  They sat with him until he was gone.

  A party without the guest of honour—there had been a few of those for Caleb over the years, because he so often got overwhelmed. So often stumbled. The guests ate and left early. The birthday cake was left in the fridge. The candles sat unopened in their packet on the kitchen bench.

  Darren rinsed the dishes and John loaded them into the dishwasher.

  “So, now Frank’s seen it,” Darren said.

  The architect, John remembered. “He knew, though?”

  “Knowing and seeing aren’t the same.” Darren scrubbed at a plate. He sighed. “What if...what if Analise finds us? What is she turns up on our doorstep one day?”

  “She’s not allowed to contact you,” John said. “If she breaches her parole, she’ll be back inside. You said yourself that she wiped you.”

  No letters from prison. She hadn’t even turned and faced her husband at her trial. The only contact they’d had, from what John knew, was the divorce papers sent through their respective solicitors.

  “I know,” Darren said. “I look at her picture sometimes. Wonder how the fuck it got like that. She was never...” He frowned, as though searching for the right word. “Religious. But she was spiritual, I guess. She was always looking for something. When she started talking about this Christian group she’d met, I was glad for her. She was a bit lost, I think, home alone with Ja—with Caleb.”

  John had seen the photo album before. Darren had showed it to him. The son he used to have, the one he had now, and the unbridgeable fucking gap between them.

  A baby photo. A little baby, new and tiny, red and wrinkled, so damn ugly, was lying cradled in his dad’s arms. Darren was young, ecstatic, shell-shocked, and full of pride. Caleb had a face like one of those troll dolls.

  Except underneath the photograph it said Daddy and Jason, not Daddy and Caleb. Every single photograph in the album was of Jason Fletcher, before he was broken. Before he became Caleb.

  “Jason’s never coming home,” Darren had said once. “I’ve got Caleb now.”

  There were photographs of Analise and the baby as well: Mummy and Jason.

  Fuck, John hated that bitch Analise Fletcher. It was so hard to look at her and see just what the photograph showed: a beaming new mother, exhausted but elated. John wondered what that woman would say, if he could have told her what she would do to her precious son. Bitch.

  John sometimes wondered what Caleb thought of her. If he thought of her at all.

  “She was so happy after she met them,” Darren said, staring out of the window behind the sink and into the darkness outside. “I never even saw it coming. Just came home that night to an empty house.”

  “How could you see it coming?”

  “I know.” Darren sighed and rolled his shoulders. “Did you see that program on TV last night? It was about Downs Syndrome.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “About the people with it, and their parents,” Darren said. “This one woman, she was old. Like in her seventies. And frail. And she kept saying she wouldn’t live forever, and worrying about what her daughter would do when she was gone. And that’s me, isn’t it? There’s gonna come a time when he’s alone. How’s he going to manage then?”

  What was there to say to that? That it was a long time away. No counting on it. That Caleb would be stronger then. No counting on that either. Sometimes John thought that both he and Darren were too close to see Caleb’s progress objectively. Sometimes when his psychiatrist said Caleb was progressing, it felt like they were all going backwards instead. And sometimes when the psychiatrist warned Caleb was at the top of a downward spiral, they didn’t see that either. They lived every pitch and trough with him. Didn’t see the pattern of the t
ides when they were struggling against every fucking wave.

  There was nothing to say, so John didn’t say it. Instead, he said, “I’m off tomorrow. I’ll take him to the beach if he’s up for it.”

  “The animal shelter opens at nine,” Darren said. “You can go and collect the dog if you want. I was going to do it on the way home from work.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll find you the paperwork,” Darren said. For a moment he froze, hands held above the dishwater, droplets raining down into the suds. When he spoke, his voice wavered between hope and caution. “Maybe the dog will help.”

  John reached over and fished a plate out of the sink. “Maybe it will.”

  But, of course, dogs didn’t live forever either.

  Lights slid up the windscreen as John drove toward home. He was tired, and worried about Caleb. Worried about Ma and Jess as well. He’d intended to go straight to his place, but instead he found himself heading for the Beenleigh Cemetery. It was closed, but John hopped the fence. If anyone called it in, he’d flash his badge to whoever responded and say he’d followed some kids over the fence or something.

  The night was quiet and cool.

  John hadn’t been here since his dad’s funeral, and everything looked different at night. It took him a while to find the headstone. Took him even longer to stand in front of it and get out the words that were stuck in his throat.

  “I miss you, Tama,” he said. “We’re falling apart without you.”

  His eyes stung.

  “I gave Caleb his present tonight,” he said. He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine his dad’s careworn face, his easy smile and those dark eyes that always saw more than he let on. “Your ula nifu pua’a. It’s for strength, you told me once. The best hunters wear them. And Caleb is the strongest person I know, but he’s hurting so much, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. And soon we have to tell him that they’re getting out of prison, and I’m so scared for him.”

  He wiped his eyes and cleared his throat.

  “Ma misses you. I don’t think she’s sleeping. And Jessie is going off the rails. She’s sneaking out at night, and not coming home when she’s told.” He huffed out a bitter laugh. “And I haven’t seen Mary in weeks. All we do these days is text about Jess. I think David’s the only one of us keeping his shit together since we lost you, Tama.”