Somewhere Out There

Lump five.

For the first time in years, Taylor flicked through his favourite childhood book. Then he saw something he’d never noticed before. There was a message written on the back of the front cover. The weird thing was, it seemed someone had put liquid paper over the top. What would they want to cover up?

Taylor braced himself – because scratching liquid paper with his nails didn’t sound too appealing. After scraping the lot off, he got the gunk out of from under his those nails and studied his work. Some of the ink had actually come off with the liquid paper but still, he was able to make out what was written.

Dearest baby Zachary,
Welcome to the world!
Love Uncle Daryl.

The boy laughed. Trust my favourite storybook to not even be mine!

Taylor went off looking for his mother, book in hand. He found her sorting through the laundry. “Look what I found, Mom!”

Diana sighed a smile. “I remember, that was your favourite book, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, I… well actually Mac found it for me. He threw it at my head! He has a problem, that boy.”

“Oh, Tay. He’s just going through a stage in his life.”

Taylor rolled his eyes. “Yeah yeah, he probably just gets a kick out of throwing books at people.”

“People? Oh no!! Just you.”

“Har har.”

Diana grinned at her son. “Yeah, there’s just something about you which yells ‘Please! Throw a book at me!!’ ”

“Oh, you’re crackin’ me up.”

“My intentions, exactly.”

Taylor clucked his tongue. “I saw this message on the back of the front cover. Here.” He pointed and showed his Mom. “I had to get rid of some liquid paper someone put on top.”

“Oh.”

“Oh? Is that all you have to say? How come there’s liquid paper on there anyway?”

“Maybe Ike did it, when he was little.”

He shook his head. “Naw, I remember. Ike hates the stuff, he really can’t stand the smell.”

“Oh. How do you know Zac, Jess or someone else didn’t do it?”

“Zac was only a baby and Jess wasn’t even born yet!”

“Who’s to say they had to do it as soon as Zac got the book? It could have been put on years later.”

“Mom, as long as I can remember, we’ve been buying those pen liquid papers not those gunky brush ones. So it must’ve been done AGES ago.”

Diana grinned awkwardly. “Well, looks like we’ve got a Sherlock junior on our hands!” She turned around and started to load the washing machine.

“Mom, don’t change the subject.”

If there was one thing she hated most – Diana hated to be told what to do. She frowned at her son and snapped, “Then what do you want me to do?!”

“Answer me,” Taylor said, a bit withdrawn.

“I don’t hear any question.”

He sighed. “Why did you or Dad put on this liquid paper?”

“Taylor, you don’t know that Daryl didn’t do it himself. Maybe he decided to write a card instead and get rid of his message.”

“Well, did he?”

“You’re just full of questions today, aren’t you Taylor?!” She exclaimed with a bright smile.

“Mo-om…”

She saw that her son was magically trying to get her to co-operate with his eyes. Those eyes… they were splitting images of Daryl’s. The stressed mom sighed, “No. Daryl didn’t do it.”

“I don’t get it,” Taylor slightly cocked his head. “So, why use the liquid paper?”

She was tempted to tell him to go ask his father but decided he had enough things to worry about. Instead, Diana pouted like a kid, “Because.”

Tay rolled his eyes and exclaimed, “Anyway, who is Daryl? I didn’t even know we had an uncle Daryl!”

“You just answered your own question. Daryl is your uncle.”

“Then how come, prior to today, I’d never heard of him before! I don’t even know what he looks like!”

Diana looked sadly at her son. A bit like you Tay. He looks a bit like you. Then she retorted, “Well I’ve never seen you flick through our family photos! The pictures are there, it’s not like we’ve hid him from you!”

“Yeah actually, I think that’s exactly what you’ve done.”

She angrily pointed to Taylor’s face and to his amusement she was holding Mackie’s jocks. “Don’t you talk to me like that!” She threatened.

Suppressing a smile, Taylor did his best to look guilty. The little, blue jocks were just dangling from her bottom two fingers and swaying from when she lashed out her hand. “Okay Mom,” he squeaked.

Nearly a minute of silence passed where Taylor didn’t dare breath to let his mom use this time to calm herself. Finally she heavily inhaled then exhaled and said, “Taylor. I can answer your questions now.”

He let out a sigh of relief. “Okay. Um… what were we talking about again? Major mental block… oh, that’s right. Daryl. How come we never knew about him?”

Diana sighed, shut the washing machine, sat on it and then motioned for Taylor to do the same.

Uh… as long as the lid doesn’t collapse in with our weight. Wouldn’t that make a great media article – Backsides of Hanson boy and Mom stuck in washing machine.

After Taylor convinced himself he wouldn’t be on America’s Funniest Home Videos, he climbed up and waited for his mom to start talking.

“Very soon after Zac was born, Daryl invited all of the family to his place, for tea. We went and somehow the question of how come he knew how to cook so much Chinese food, came up. He said, and yes I remember his exact words to this day, ‘Because I always eat it. In case you were wondering,’ and he smiled at us all, ‘I’m a Buddhist.’ Mother – your granny, that is – turned so pale that she caused me to believe she was about to faint. She didn’t. But, you know how she was,” Taylor sickly noted the word ‘was.’ She passed away the year before last. “… a very strong Christian. Tay, she was the most stubborn Christian I will ever know. Since I bet you can’t remember it, I’d figure you could imagine your granny’s reaction. At first she was quiet – in denial I suppose, maybe waiting for it to sink in. Then there were screams so terrible, I didn’t know who to feel sorry for – Her or Daryl. She disowned him right there and then. Taylor… it was so horrible! I think it was the worst night of my life. Everywhere you looked there was a mixture of tears, pity, anger, confusion and worst of all, shame. I think everyone in the room was ashamed of Daryl. Especially Ma, she even said that he was no longer her son! And prior to that day, he was always her favourite child – you can just tell these things. Ma made us forget about him and pretend there was never any Daryl, at all. So that’s why Tay, that’s why we had to cover his tracks and white out that little bit of evidence of his existence.”

Taylor looked up to see his Mom wiping away a few stray tears. He hugged her tightly and made comforting noises. After a while and even though it would sound kind of insensitive, he asked her, “Then what about the photos? How come you didn’t get rid of them?”

“Walker and I just couldn’t bring ourselves to burn them, like Ma told us to. We figured they wouldn’t do harm, just sitting in the corner to gather dust. So we left them. And it’s a good thing we did, too.”

“Ay? Why?”

“When your granny was dying in the hospital,” Diana had to stop for a sniffle. She felt Taylor hold her hand and rub it. Fingering her eyes, she continued, oblivious her words were being warped from the crying. “When she was dying, your granny started to cry. She said, ‘Daryl.’ ” Diana drew in a deep breath. “She said, ‘I love him. Tell him I love him.’ And I knew Ma was crying out of regret, for everything. And Taylor, those were the last words she said.” Diana whimpered.

Taylor felt his mom pull him into a hug and felt his nose momentarily burn, a sure sign his tears were knocking on the door.

“Mom…” Taylor croaked.

Diana saw the tear trail down her son's cheek. “Don’t you worry Tay. I will NEVER make the same mistake as her,” she harshly whispered. “NEVER,” she repeated and the two sat,... hugging – just not wanting to let go.

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