The Other Hand

led me outside. I observed myself standing in a graveyard beside a deep hole in the ground. Six suited undertakers were lowering a coffin on thick green silky ropes with tasseled ends. I recognized it as the coffin that had been standing on trestles at the front of the church. The coffin came to rest. The undertakers retrieved the ropes, each with a deft flick of the wrist. I remember thinking, I bet they do this all the time, as if it was some brilliant insight. Someone thrust a lump of clay into my hand. I realized I was being invited—urged, even—to throw it into the hole. I stepped up to the edge. Neat, clean greengrocer’s grass had been laid around the border of the grave. I looked down and saw the coffin glowing palely in the depths.Batman held tight to my leg and peered down into the gloom with me.
    “Mummy, why did the Bruce Wayne men putted that box down in the hole?”
    “Let’s not think about that now, darling.”
    I’d spent so many hours explaining heaven to Charlie that week—every room and bookshelf and sandpit of it—that I’d never really dealt with the issue of Andrew’s physical body at all. I thought it would be too much to ask of my son, at four, to understand the separation between body and soul. Looking back on it now, I think I underestimated a boy who could live simultaneously in Kingston-upon-Thames and Gotham City. I think if I’d managed to sit him down and explain it to him gently, he would have been perfectly happy with the duality.
    I knelt and put my arm around my son’s shoulders. I did it to be tender, but my head was swimming and I realized that perhaps it was only Charlie who was stopping me from falling down the hole. I held on tighter. Charlie put his mouth to my ear and whispered.
    “Where’s mine daddy right now?”
    I whispered back.
    “Your daddy is in the heaven hills, Charlie. Very popular at this time of year. I think he’s very happy there.”
    “Mmm. Is mine daddy coming back soon?”
    “No, Charlie. People don’t come back from heaven. We talked about that.”
    Charlie pursed his lips.
    “Mummy,” he said again, “why did they put that box down there?”
    “I suppose they want to keep it safe.”
    “Oh. Is they going to come and get it later?”
    “No Charlie, I don’t think so.”
    Charlie blinked. Under his bat mask he screwed up his face with the effort of trying to understand.
    “Where is heaven, Mummy?”
    “Please, Charlie. Not now.”
    “What’s in that box?”
    “Let’s talk about this later, darling, all right? Mummy is feeling rather dizzy.”
    Charlie stared at me.
    “Is mine daddy in that box?”
    “Your daddy is in heaven, Charlie.”
    “IS THAT BOX HEAVEN?” said Charlie, loudly.
    Everyone was watching us. I couldn’t speak. My son stared into the hole. Then he looked up at me in absolute alarm.
    “Mummy! Get him OUT! Get mine daddy out of heaven!”
    I held tightly on to his shoulders.
    “Oh Charlie, please, you don’t understand!”
    “GET HIM OUT! GET HIM OUT!”
    My son squirmed in my grip and broke free. It happened very quickly. He stood at the very edge of the hole. He looked back at me and then he turned and inched forward, but the greengrocer’s grass overlapped the edge of the hole and it yielded under his feet and he fell, with his bat cape flying behind him, down into the grave. He landed with a thump on top of Andrew’s coffin. There was a single, urgent scream from one of the other mourners. I think it was the first sound, since Andrew died, that really broke the silence.
    The scream ran on and on in my mind. I felt nauseous, and the horizon lurched insanely. Still kneeling, I leaned out over the edge of the pit. Down below, in the dark shadow, my son was banging on the coffin and screaming Daddy, Daddy, get OUT! He clung to the coffin lid, and planted his bat shoes against the sidewall of the grave, and heaved against the screws that held the lid closed. I hung my arms down over the edge of the hole. I implored Charlie to take my hands so I could pull him back up. I don’t think he heard me at all.
    At first, my son moved with a breathless confidence. Batman was undefeated, after all, that spring. He had overcome the Penguin, the Puffin, and Mr. Freeze. It was simply not a possibility in my son’s mind that he might not overcome this new challenge. He screamedin rage and fury. He wouldn’t give up, but if I am strict and force myself now to decide upon the precise moment in this whole story