by Shannon Savvas

I dream of the beach. Night after night after night.

I dream of that sunset, of standing high on the headland, an Easter Island mother, all head, stony-faced, searching, seeking through the glare filling Nissi Beach, looking for that heart of mine lost. In my dreams, I squint down at the sea where all details are lost to the copper light. As they were that last day. Silhouetted tourists swarm like a herd of seals in the silvered water, under the gleaming metallic sky. As they did that day.

I dream of that beach. Night after night.

I am afraid of sleep.

He wanted ice cream. A lousy, fucking ice cream. The ice cream kiosk was just along the beach.

I in my self-righteous quest to be a good mother, said no more, baby. I knew him. He wouldn’t eat his dinner. Wait, darling, we’re going to that restaurant you like, with the toothy dragons and goldfish tanks.

He pleaded.

Jeff cajoled. Let him go by himself. He’d love that. I’ll watch him from here. He won’t know, Jeff whispered. Let him feel like a big boy.

But he’s not, I said. He’s a little boy. Just watch him, please. Let me have one last swim before we pack up.

Stupid, selfish me. I itched for that swim. Just me. Alone. Free to be neither wife nor mother. Aching for the teenager who swam for her school, her county.

I ran, splashed headfirst into the water warm, salty, freeing. My arms lifted, sliced the water. Over, over, over with metronomic rhythm.

I swam out past parents and kids, past teenagers whacking balls, screeching and diving, past the rocks and the East European girls taking turns to strike calendar poses in itsy-bitsy bikinis, predictable glamour shots posted to dating profiles. I sneered at their vanity. I’d become mean. A woman who had lost control of her body since childbirth. Hence the determined swim, longer each day in the vainglorious hope it would mitigate the creamy yoghurt dips, flatbreads, and grilled meats, washed down with carafes of house wine which tasted finer the further down the level went.

I swam around the point down to the next beach. And while I swam, Jeff who believed he knew fucking better, who wanted his own moments of peace to play chess online with some unknown a continent away, gave our – my boy a fistful of Euro coins saying don’t tell your mum.

He confessed later through great gobs of snotty tears.

Confessed that he’d settled on his lounger under the straw parasol and got so lost in his winning he forgot to look up, to follow the red sunhat weaving between hawking and hooting strangers while I, virtuous with the salty sting of my skin and aching muscles, walked the path at a leisurely pace back along the coast pathway to get my boys, to pack up and head back to the hotel.

In this life, which is no longer a life, I return to the beach. Year after year after year. Three, four, five…do I count them in years, months, days or heartbeats? Tears would be an impossibility.

In truth, I have never left that beach. I return to the island, the beach where my beautiful boy with his amber eyes and tow-coloured hair disappeared.

No one at the kiosk remembered a child in a jaunty red sailor’s hat, his sticky Euros clutched fiercely in hand and a need for strawberry and vanilla push up Calippo ice cream – tasted the second day we arrived and every day after.

No one remembers him now.

Fewer still remember his smiling face filling the tabloids for months, headlines screaming their salacious theories and damning reckons.

One or two old hands, in the taverna, at the minimart, recognise me. Their smiles drop when I walk in. Heads shake as I look away, reaching for milk or menu. Pity or judgment? I don’t want to know. Their hard stares on my back propel me out the door, whispers scurrying in my wake.

No other child had disappeared before. Only one child. My child. That one time. None since. That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it? Other parents not having to grieve, wonder, torture themselves.

After the first couple of years, when neighbours or work colleagues say Again? I tell them I go not out of sadness but to remember him because I’m supposed to have gotten over it, aren’t I? Not true. I go because it is necessary. I go because I am searching; for him, for my mistake. I owe him that.

Mornings, I drive through villages, cross the island seeking out small boys who have colouring not so typical of the island, calculating each year how he might have grown, changed. If I see a boy who has something about him, in truth a something all young boys have – devilment, curiosity, a Calippo in hand, I call his name to see if there is a reaction. There never is.

Late afternoons, I haunt the beach where my child, disappeared. The same girls – but they can’t be – strike glamour poses, the same families of loud, lobster-skinned adults and raucous children heave along the beach, the same thump, thump, thump of music beats the airwaves from the far side of the beach where the party-people gather; the women in tiny bikinis, the men oiled and ripped, most off their heads on alcohol or drugs even before the sun sets.

I never swim.

Sunset. High on the headland, I watch. Search. Hope. A deep dungball of fear in my belly each time.

Déjà vu.

The air is thick with the same heat, the same shouts, the same confusing herd frenzy in the water of that last afternoon. I wear the dread of a loss or death that no one will notice like a penitent’s cloak, forever condemned to find – what? Forgiveness? Atonement? Forgetfulness?

Returning, returning.

I am that mama Orca, escorting her dead baby to the underworld, reluctant to let go, afraid to let go because once I do the grief will drown me.

It is the not knowing. Did he drown – his body was never found, no tiny corpse washed up miles down the coast – or was he taken? Is he somewhere loved, unloved? Does he remember? Does he cry?

You can’t keep doing this Jeff says. You can’t keep doing this, love. The cost – to you, to me, to us.

He says, we can’t afford it.

I say we can’t afford not to. I mean me, I cannot.

He can’t keep doing this is what he’s saying. And sure enough, this year he says, you’ll be going alone.

Jeff rarely talks. He’s given up chess. These days, he loses himself in Minecraft late into the night. Fumbles his way into our bed before dawn reeking of alcohol, sour with regret. I’m not sure why we are still here, together, not together.

Some days, I’m afraid he will beg forgiveness. I see it in his eyes. I hope to God he never does because if he goes down on his knees, I will kick him to a pulp and never, ever stop.

When his fingers caress my shoulder. I recoil at his paltry comfort, his empty apologies, his weak reassurances, his waning declarations of love.

That’s all I do now. Recoil – to words, looks, touch, love.

I long for the time when once again I will lean into his touch, drown in his look and be beguiled by his words.

But as long as my baby boy is gone, I will recoil.

So, I’m pretty much fucked.

About the author:

You can reach her at shannonsavvas@gmail.com or on Twitter or on Instagram.

Photo by Heather McKean on Unsplash