‘So what’s your story?’ I was impatient. ‘Where were you when it happened? Have you been here all these years? Have you watched us every time we’ve been here?’
He reached down carefully, like he was managing his body with caution, and plucked a blade of grass. He put it between his teeth and leaned back on his hands, both palms flat on the bench, fingers pointing backward.
‘Roy, you’re going to have to trust me. I have a lot to tell you, but before I do I need you to feel me. I mean that literally and metaphorically. You have to feel my presence and realise through it—’
‘Through your presence?’
‘Yes, through my presence.’ He frowned at the interruption. ‘Realise through it, my presence, that you are going to go – for a good while – on a solo journey. You can’t tell your friends about this. Not now, and not for a very long time.’
‘Why?’
He poked a sandalled right foot into the air, parallel to the ground.
‘Are you from another planet?’
He put his foot down. ‘No. I am from this planet. Whatever that means.’
‘Are you human?’
‘My molecular make-up is exactly the same as yours.’
‘So you’re human.’
‘Not really. But Roy, I must tell you.’ He took my hand in his. His skin was hard and leathery and hot. ‘You’re going to have to leave much behind. Do you think you can do that?’
‘If I had any fucking clue what you were talking about, I could answer that.’
‘They’ll see what you show them, Roy. No more, no less.’
‘And you want me to show them what, exactly?’
‘Love. A lot of love.’
‘Jesus, you sound like Oprah.’
He sent me home. ‘When will I see you again?’ I asked, like we were new lovers.
‘When the time is right. First you need to be in the right place mentally.’
‘Now you sound like a cricket coach.’
He waved me to my car. I tried to watch him recede in the rear-view mirror, but in the time it took me to put the key in the ignition and turn it, he had disappeared.
As I pulled into my driveway, Sthembiso stormed across, demanding details of my Eeeyu count. I fobbed him off and headed straight inside with promises of another trip for all of us soon. Very, very soon.
I painted and drew. Black, sandalled feet. A small old man in a blue overall. Grey hair. Hands and arms and fingers and lips. Green and orange and yellow. I couldn’t come close to capturing what I had seen and I was disappointed with the regression in my art, which now looked like the work of a ten-year-old.
I dumped the paints and resorted to sketching, but that too was a failure. It was as if somehow I had thoughtlessly misplaced all the skills I had so recently developed. I put the sketch pad down and stared out again over the black night.
Again I started seeing shapes and forms. Humans moving, buildings filled with people. Malls and parking garages and petrol pumps. The bats flitted between the trees, adding a jerky, broken soundtrack to my imaginings. I found myself playing with various scenarios, adding them up and then subtracting again, toying with each of his words to see if and where it would fit.
‘Imagine a pile of sand, Roy,’ he had said. ‘Imagine you needed to get that pile really high – really, really high. To do it, you have to collapse what you have. Expand the foundation. Build again.’
‘Who’s building? You? Me?’
He peered at me, sceptical. ‘Movies. Please. You need to watch movies. Think about it.’
‘For real? Movies?’
‘Try I, Robot.’
There was a light knock on the door. Beatrice. I knew her triple rap well.
‘You hiding for a specific reason, Roy? Or you just got the glumps?’ She leaned on the inside of the front door, hips beckoning. But this was neither the time nor the place – she was on a family mission.
‘Sthembiso said you were mean to him—’
‘Ag, I’m fine. Sorry. Please tell him sorry. I’ll tell him sorry. When I see him. Just one of those days, you know?’
Beatrice wrinkled the corners of her eyes in an approximation of empathy, but beneath lay confusion. It had been some time since any of us had wigged out. We also generally ate together as a group. No one bailed out of family supper without reason. The kids noticed such things, in detail, which made a quiet absence doubly difficult to pull off.
‘Just tell them I got too much sun and I need to chill out.’
‘And what should I tell myself?’ She remained fixed to the door frame, left hip high.
‘That Roy is taking a break. For his own reasons, which may or may not be revealed in good time.’
‘OK, fair enough, I suppose.’ Beatrice detached from the door frame. ‘Look after yourself, ja?’
I gave her departing ass a fake smile.
I pulled it straight the next morning. Any more reclusive behaviour would have brought the depression police out in full force. It was understood, without it ever having to be verbalised, that Roy was especially vulnerable. Roy only had one pillow, with a single dent in it. They watched me carefully.
I emerged full of the usual. I swung the kids by the arms and made sure I was at school around the right time. I made full eye contact with Sthembiso as I apologised, and I gave Beatrice a small hug and Gerald the right kind of nod and we were back on the level.
The level was everything to everyone.
We needed that level more than we needed each other.
I spent the next four days purposefully wrapped up in life. Some weeks were heavier than others and this was, fortunately, a particularly busy one. It was my school week with the older kids – Roy Jnr, Thabang, Sihle and Sthembiso.
I wrote the word DENOUEMENT in clumsy letters on the blackboard. I stepped back and let the kids consider it.
‘It’s pronounced DAY-nu-mow,’ I explained. ‘It’s a word they used to teach us at university, but I thought I would get it in earlier. The denouement is that moment in a story when everything becomes clear. When all the bits and pieces start to make sense. So, forget the word and how to spell it and stuff like that. Who can give me a simple example of when a story suddenly makes sense? Think of any story you like – a fairy tale, a story someone here has told you or something from your own life.’
Scrunched foreheads. Full focus. A slow arm raise from Thabang. ‘Like, if something happened that would explain to us what happened. Why there are no people left. That would be a day-nu… day-nu…’
‘Denouement. Exactly. That would be a denouement for all of us. In our own lives. Especially the adults. Nice, Thabang. Maybe let’s try a made-up story. Anyone with a made-up story?’
More blank faces.
‘How about… how about…’ I racked my brain for something other than the subject I couldn’t shake off, and that Thabang had so quickly elucidated. In the back of my mind, questions grew around why I was trying to teach them a high-school-level literary concept.
Roy Jnr had his hand in the air, three-quarters raised. ‘Can it be when people get punished?’
‘It can. Tell me more.’
‘Like in ‘The Pied Piper’. When the town people lose the children.’
‘Yes, that’s right. In any fairy tale, there’s that moment at the end when the bad person gets what they deserve, nè?’
The heads bobbed along, cautiously, with me.
‘Well, that moment always happens because something in the story takes place that teaches them the lesson they need to learn. That moment in the story that makes everything clear – that’s the denouement…’