Appear Missing

Tonight, we inspect a flat our son might call his own. It is hidden up five floors in a block that protrudes from the ground like an unfixed nail. Deb and I leave the elevator to find the Agent already waiting outside the door to the flat which is open a few inches.

The Agent, who is wearing a cheap black suit, takes my hand and smiles into my face. He greets Deb, still beaming in my direction. He goes to place a hand on my shoulder but pauses, thinking better of it. Deb regards the scene—my unyielding form and the Agent’s floating hand. I stare back at the Agent whose smile falters upon contact with my uniform expression. There is an interval of frozen silence as I carefully watch the Agent’s smile diminish.

He shivers, then invites us inside, leading us into the flat and down a narrow windowless hallway. I follow close behind, the back of the Agent’s head wavering in the dim light. There is a knot of pressure beneath my eyes—like a seal of turbid air. We arrive at the living room door and the Agent sends a worried glance over his shoulder.

The second we enter it is clear everything is wrong.

The space is in complete disorder. Everywhere, there are scuffed cardboard boxes, their tops clumsily taped. A battered couch is pressed into the corner next to a half-emptied bookshelf. A few stained curtains lie, curled and limp, on the floor. A dusty lightbulb fixture hangs a couple of feet from the ceiling.

We just stand there and look, agape. Deb releases a ghostly sigh. The Agent wipes away a few beads of sweat and then fiddles inside the breast of his suit, which shines in the glare of the bulb.

Deb is the first to speak. When she asks the Agent to explain it is with a voice that is quietly hostile.

The Agent arranges his face into an image of concern. From inside his suit, he removes a few small, wrinkled squares of paper and begins to read in fumbling pieces.

We deeply regret the present state of affairs—

He breaks from the script and nods to the room, as if to punctuate what he is talking about.

—a difficult decision was made to sell the unit following the sudden, and disorderly, termination of the previous rental contract. An unpredicted situation. Payments missing. Broken communication. A mess leftover. We apologise for any inconvenience.

The Agent pauses, looking up from his squares, and for a moment everyone is silent. Deb’s expression darkens. The Agent sends a furtive look in my direction. It is clear he will have to try harder.

He skims his papers again, looking from the squares to us then back again. The Agent makes a theatrical gesture, then, with great levity, announces:

We invite you to look beyond. To take in this space—all this space. Imagine the room empty.

The Agent actually closes his eyes.

When he re-opens them, a sly grin creeps back onto his face. I turn sharply and the smile immediately dies. The pressure behind my eyes thickens. From somewhere outside the building a car alarm shrieks.

Time is slipping, he senses it. Sweat runs freely down the Agent’s face, and he emits a noise like a dying balloon. The Agent delivers up his performance and I just stand and watch, unmoved. In truth, I feel something like enjoyment. It is like a game.

At last, he throws a limp signal to the room and adds, in a timid voice:

One day there is a person. But then they appear missing.

At the edge of my vision, I catch Deb’s nettled reaction. She asks the Agent to repeat himself.

The Agent—a little harder this time—speaks.

I hang on those three words. We look again upon the jumbled room. The Agent returns the squares to his suit pocket and exhales.

Deb advances, as if in half motion, upon the Agent who is still recovering from his working over.

She starts to explain our situation, its irregularities, her voice glassy and unsettled. How we are not here for ourselves—rather, we are acting on behalf of our son who cannot be here today.

A few words in, she stops and looks in my direction, shady and a little penitent.

I do not make a sound. Instead, I break from my position. The Agent practically leaps out of his skin. I move through the mess to a window in the far corner of the room. This window overlooks a cleared path that leads to a tiny, abandoned playground. Overhead is the dusky outline of a city. I examine the watermark of my reflection in the glass and, for a second, it is like I am watching both forwards and backwards.

I stand, impassive, as Deb continues to speak, telling the Agent everything he wishes to know.

It is a father’s right to take the measure of his son, to search his face, isolate the man he is becoming.

Most nights, I wait outside my son’s bedroom door. Stuck in the belief that he will not show himself to me.

On those late nights I climb the stairs, treading like a spider up to see him. When I arrive at the door, I hear muttering from inside. It almost sounds like there is another person in the room along with him, two hushed voices.

Silent, I fix my vision on the door, knowing well not to give away that I am about to enter. I twist the handle and push. But when I open the door, there is nobody inside, just my son’s dead, cluttered things. The muttering is replaced by the sound of my own deep breaths.

Night after night, I repeat this sequence.

Sometimes, I bring my face to the keyhole, but when I look through the opening all I see is a dark circle. I pretend that, at the same moment, my son is pressed against the opening, blocking out the light and staring back at me. But, as always, when I finally go to enter, there is nobody on the other side.

Often, I do not wait but storm through, monstrously. I obliterate the room—break open the cupboard, scour underneath the bed—leaving a greater mess than I found.

Drowned in obscurity, I head back down the stairs and go to find Deb.

Without fail she comes in from the backyard—I have to wonder what she is up to, outside under the blank sky, so late? Perhaps she was gazing up at our son’s window? Keeping watch so that she might also be regarded through stained glass.

Deb is always startled to find me already waiting as she opens the door to come inside. One turn and there I am. Looking into my expression, she will know what I want without a need to utter a single word.

She will tell me what she now tells the Agent. Fitfully, she will describe our son.

His white hair, sloping face, narrow build, arms like rubber bands. At first only tiny, he soon fills the bedroom, its interior coated in the blush of his personality, implicit in the objects themselves. All eighteen years. That began with us and ended somewhere I can’t see.

I listen as she delivers a picture of our son. The wait outside, the muttering, the crashing through, all lead to this moment.

As Deb finishes, there is a further increase of pressure behind my eyes. The Agent reaches again for his papers as if a satisfactory answer might be found there.

But I know what I must do. What I need is to give my son space—on this point, I will not be moved.

His walls have overflowed. What he needs is space to grow, to exist consistently. Only then, will he show himself to me. I imagine fixing my son in view, if only faintly. I consider clearing the room and finding parts of him between some torn boxes.

From the flat’s window, I spot a pair of ant-like figures making their way across the path outside the building. I lower my sight to catch the instant they fall from view.

Deb murmurs something to the Agent, too low for me to make out. I loudly clear my throat and all sound is sucked out of the room. For a second, it is like the flat has entered into my mouth, and I am holding my breath.

When I turn around, I know what I will find.

Gradually, I face the others who already stand nervous in my direction. I find a little pleasure noticing how the Agent now avoids looking directly at me.

I glance past the abandoned furniture, across the dog-eared cardboard boxes, and suppress a callow laugh. It turns out the Agent was right after all.

It is remarkably easy to imagine the room empty.

The Agent continues his tour of the flat and we walk down another hallway leading to a series of dismal rooms. I deliberately follow a few steps behind.

After leading us in silence for some time the Agent turns to the door of the kitchen. More boxes litter the worktops, a stack of unusable cooking utensils, cutlery damaged with thick crust. A damp smell pervades the room. Before the Agent has a chance to speak, Deb starts jerking open cabinet doors. She peers under the sink and gasps.

Neither notices when I leave.

I continue down the hallway to its far end where a door has been left cracked open. I reach forward for its handle but find the cloud behind my eyes growing dense, my movements become grinding and slow.

I push the handle with the heel of my palm and enter a cramped bedroom, filled with murky air. A ladder of mould travels up and down the walls and onto a porthole window, blocking all but a tiny smear of light.

I step inside, sensing a fault in the room. My footsteps land like a tired finger against a dry surface. From across the hallway, I hear the Agent’s muffled attempts to pacify Deb.

I continue into the centre of the space, towards the mattress. It takes a moment for me to realise that I am being observed.

Someone is watching from the bed.

A remarkably small man is lodged in the corner, stuck in the hollow between the mattress and the wall. He peers from the edge. If he were any smaller, he might fall into the gap and underneath the bed. He is dressed for sleep: a grey t-shirt, pyjama trousers. It would be easy to miss his presence were it not for the glint of his eyes.

A soft sound comes from him and I move closer to hear what he is saying. I stop a short distance from the mattress and the small man squints up at me.

I take a step forward.

I lean towards him now, close enough that I should fill his entire circle of vision. Wherever he looks he will find my face.

He smiles, meek—my silence does not upset him. With a slightly embarrassed voice, he continues.

I don’t mean to alarm you. And I’m sorry you found me this way. You’re calm—that’s good.

He gazes up at me and from his small, twisted smile it is clear he wishes to divulge more.

I lived here. Happily, for a time. Long enough for the room to get dressed around me. Paid rent to a very tall man. Tall and calm, like you.

His smile turns into a wide grin revealing an incomplete set of tiny, yellow teeth.

Then one day he came back—no longer calm. The money had run out and he told me to leave. But when he looked at me, it felt like another person was staring out from inside him.

The small man returns to his present dilemma, lodged as he is between the wall and mattress. He beseeches me with a frail smile.

I am sorry… I would go but I can’t find a way out. I’m stuck. Nor can I properly stay either. If someone else were to live here, it is possible that I won’t be noticed. You could lie here, on top of me. Impress my body into the mattress. If I ever fall into the gap, you might not even feel me, breathing there.

I listen to his story, unable to soothe the itch that it is this man who shows himself, and not my son. Without any change in my outward temperature, I step away from the mattress and turn for the door.

Let him carry on pleading.

The second I exit, I am set upon by Deb and the Agent. They obstruct my path, and the dank air of the bedroom leaks into the hallway. The Agent wears a treacly expression.

I look to Deb, whose face is torqued with a frown—one look tells me everything I need to know. She will head into this room, whether I like it or not. Maybe there will be nobody, and it will be down to me to describe what I have seen to her. She pushes past me, the Agent trailing soundlessly behind.

The door closes and I am left alone, a strange, anonymous quiet overtaking the flat.

As I wait, I turn over questions in my mind.

How will Deb respond if she beholds the small man? What will happen if he tells her everything that he told me?

And what about our son? Should I beckon him to this flat? How can I be certain that it is not the small man—trapped between the mattress and the wall—who will appear to me? The image of his imploring smile is fixed into my mind.

The pressure behind my eyes has grown complex, and I feel ready to leave.

I move away from the bedroom door and go past the kitchen, the damaged cutlery, the gaping cabinets. I weave around taped boxes and clutter. I proceed down the narrow, windowless hallway until I arrive at the front door.

The door to the flat is still ajar, exactly how we left it. I allow a moment for my frustration to recede and then step outside. Here, I will finish waiting for Deb and the Agent. Soon, I am confident, I will hear their voices floating down the hallway and through to where I am standing. A few moments tick by without a sound while I consider everything that has happened to me. In sum, the Agent has proved himself quite useless. Deb and I will leave this place and carry a message back to our son. Ready, at least, for a time when he might appear to me.

Finally, I hear them—voices, although too far away to make out any detail. I listen, but they do not come any closer and remain muted. If I join Deb and the Agent perhaps we can exit together.

I go to enter, but I find myself held back. I try to step forwards but cannot move. Since arriving at the flat, my body has grown stiff, the cloud behind my eyes clotted and metallic.

More violently, I try to move but my body is frozen in place.

I am breathing heavily now. Over and again, I try to enter the flat but remain stuck. The more effort I exert to cross the threshold the more any movement at all seems impossible and I wonder if I will ever move again.

I actually smile.

The voices are approaching, a little closer. Maybe not.

I try again.

Until there is no longer any difference between starting and stopping.

Until even my breath grows leaden and fails.