We know you're there

Annie Chang inched her way towards her son’s bedroom, her nightgown swishing across the polished floorboards. She pressed her ear to the door and listened to the oscillating tones of her teenage son snoring. It was nine in the evening and he had been sleeping all day.

Her husband Gilbert, lit by a white light bulb above his head, motioned to his wife from down the hall. She glared back at him and raised her fist to knock. But after a second, she let her hand fall. She walked back towards Gilbert with a shy smile. He squeezed her neck gently as she passed him into their bedroom.

Gilbert switched off the main lights and put the night light on for Annie, casting a white gloom. They were clouded by tiredness and flopped into bed. Yet they were unable to sleep for long. They fidgeted with their pillows and tugged on the duvet. As they turned in bed, they caught each other’s eyes.

The next night, Gilbert and Annie returned home from a lively dinner party, giggling and drunk from bottle after bottle of white wine. They crept past their son’s closed door, stepping on the balls of their feet. Tripping on an uneven floorboard, Gilbert lost his balance and nearly tumbled into the kitchen. They held in hysterical laughter, their faces contorting wildly.

Gilbert boiled some water while trying to tear off the plastic from a new jar of coffee.

He chuckled, ‘We should drink more often.’

But Annie’s reply was brushed aside by the whispering kettle. Strewn across the kitchen table were crumpled notes of money. As the harsh sound of the kettle ground against their ears, Gilbert put the coffee jar down and took a seat. He drew the money towards him, flattened each note, and then slipped them into his black leather wallet. He pushed out a smile for his wife.

‘I feel so drunk,’ she said.

The next afternoon Gilbert and Annie were passing time in their living room. Light seeped sluggishly through the window and fell. The television hissed and laughed. Gilbert flicked through the channels; always stopping for a few seconds on an advert, then moving on.

‘Please settle on something.’ Annie said. So Gilbert turned the TV off and went back to scouring his newspaper.

Suddenly, as if a shout could be heard in the distance, the couple cocked their heads. Their son’s door had opened and footsteps cracked off the floorboards like skipping pebbles. The front door opened, closed, and silence followed.

They remained static for seconds; Annie clutching her glasses that rested on her lap, Gilbert sitting forward on the edge of the couch. If a storm were to have burst through the windows, spraying shards of glass across the white carpet engulfed by sound, they would still not have moved. Gilbert dropped his paper onto the coffee table, and without looking at his wife, made his way to his son’s bedroom.

‘Gilbert,’ Annie murmured, but he ignored her. She placed her spectacles on the side table and followed him.

Annie stood behind Gilbert and tried to peer over his shoulder as he eased the door open. Shades of black were stacked throughout the room. Light slid through the edges of the closed curtains like frayed cotton. The couple kept an ear out for their son, knowing he could return at any moment. And yet, they felt as if he was still in the room, perhaps hidden in a far corner or crouching in the shadows. As they moved into the centre of the bedroom they sensed the weight of his sleep, as if his dreams and his long drawn out breaths still pressed against the walls.

Gilbert tore the curtains open. The grey sky rushed forward into the room and then retreated. The boy’s duvet was in a bundle on the futon and pillows lay at angles. A cigarette was burning slowly, nestling amongst butts in a ceramic ashtray. The white walls were bare, the ceilings high.

Annie flicked through the notepad that lay on the desk. It was old and worn, and yet there was nothing written inside. Gilbert looked at the only other item in the room that seemed worthy of attention, a bulging rucksack. He stood before it as if it were animated. But he didn’t touch or open it. It wasn’t out of respect for his son’s privacy. It was from fear of its potential to contain objects that could define his son in ways he’d never before considered. And in the same way, the room seemed to Mr and Mrs Chang to contain a message which they preferred to remain ignorant of, because it was easier. They carefully replaced the objects they had moved, and left.

The next day, Annie returned home from lunch with an old friend. In a crowded restaurant, she had rambled on about childhood memories and laughed so hard other diners stared. She’d ordered expensive food, making sure to pay the bill. Before going their separate ways her friend clasped Annie’s hands and said, almost with surprise, how great it was to see her doing so well.

As Annie entered her flat, the relaxed smile still playing on her lips, dropped. She found crumpled notes on the side table in the hall. She bundled them into her handbag, pushing the notes deep inside. Annie leant her head close to the small window above the table. People scurried by in the street below, thoughtlessly barging into each other and exchanging forced apologies. It was then that she decided she must confront her son.

She gave three firm knocks. There was no answer. She waited and looked at the gap beneath the door for light or movement. Finally she opened the door and walked into the room. Stale sweat. Smoke. She felt her way forward through the darkness towards the bed. Annie’s eyes began to adjust and vague outlines of objects were revealed; the curtains, the desk, the bookshelf.

She knelt down by the side of his futon, being able to see quite clearly now as the light from the hallway illuminated the back of her son’s head. But his face was buried into his pillow as if he were in tears. She whispered his name twice, but gained no reaction. Annie reached over to grab his shoulder and pulled him round to face her. He rolled over slowly and smoothly. His features were exposed, like a car’s headlights unveiling a night time country road. Finally she saw his eyes. They were open. The deep stunning black irises shone and his face displayed a mournful grin. Annie withdrew her hand. She pushed herself to her feet.

‘Sorry,’ she whispered, and hurried out of the room.

That evening Annie sat upright in bed, swamped by her yellow negligee, applying face and hand creams, pushing white streaks across her skin. Her husband was brushing his teeth in the en suite bathroom.

‘We can’t just take his money,’ Annie said, ‘and not know where it comes from. God forbid he’s into anything dangerous.’

Gilbert spat and rinsed his mouth. Blood threaded through his saliva and clung to the sink.

‘We’ll confront him tomorrow,’ he said, ‘but don’t worry, he wouldn’t do anything silly. I’m sure of it.’

They didn’t challenge their son, however. They continued going out for dinner with friends. They went to the cinema and shopped in town. In quiet moments, they saw themselves from the outside like strangers in their own minds. They analyzed themselves, as if to say, ‘This is me and this is what I’m doing.’ They had strange, vivid nightmares. They saw fires and empty streets, dark caves and piercing wet eyes.

One morning, they found their son sitting at the kitchen table. He was eating some leftover pizza from the greasy cardboard packaging. He wore a navy blue shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and black jeans. He had stubby fingers and a rounded almost feminine jaw line. His pale hands and neck and cheeks clashed with the deep black rings surrounding his eyes.

The boy considered each slice of pizza before he ate it and then chewed with his mouth closed. He didn’t acknowledge his parents’ presence as they entered the room. Gilbert remained by the doorway and Annie stood facing her son, leaning against the washing machine.

There was a slight smirk on the boy’s face, which was playful and aggressive in equal measure. He seemed to be challenging his parents to express the grave fears that, despite their attempts to appear casual, were etched upon their faces.

‘How are you?’ Annie finally said. ‘We haven’t seen you in a long time.’

Their son shrugged and continued eating, taking a sip of his drink. The couple remained still, looking at the boy’s clothes, his shoes and short hair. They were entranced by his chewing and the grease gathering at the side of this mouth. His neatness and unflustered confidence was almost horrifying to the couple.

The boy finished eating, stood up and made to go; leaving pizza crusts and a coke can spread across the table. And, as if an afterthought, he pulled out a roll of notes and flicked a few of them onto the kitchen counter. He brushed past his father by the door and went back to his room.

‘Say something,’ Annie said to her husband.

His eyes searched for something to focus on.

‘Say something,’ she repeated.

She grabbed up some of the boy’s junk and tried to force it into an already full bin. The rubbish pushed back and tipped over the sides. A Coke can crashed off the floor. Annie left the bin in disarray and rushed into the hall. Gilbert grabbed hold of his wife, trying to pull her back by the arm.

‘Let go.’

She tugged herself free of her husband and started knocking on her son’s door. There was no response, so she kept on, gradually getting faster and harder. She could have entered the bedroom and confronted her son, because there was no lock. But after a couple of sharp, fierce knocks, she pulled back from the door as if realising she had made a terrible mistake.

She returned to the kitchen holding her hands against her face, as if trying to push back the tears. Gilbert trailed behind her, staring earnestly at the floor boards. Annie slumped into a chair sniffling, every now and then wiping her nose with the back of her hand. Gilbert reached out and touched her knee, then pulled his hand away.

Annie lifted herself from her chair, put the kettle on and began to clear up her son’s mess. She opened a new bin bag and turned the hot water on. Gilbert approached Annie and put his arm around her as she was scrubbing a glass. She leaned into him, pushing her head into his neck.

Annie and Gilbert Chang never attempted to confront their son again. They accepted his money, scrubbed his dishes and cleaned his clothes that were dumped in the bathroom wash basket. Once in a while they would catch a glimpse of him, but that was all it was, a glimpse.

(make son lock the door, mum knocks, he then opens the lock but she is scared away)