Keepsakes
by Robert J Boland

Mary was fifty-eight when her youngest moved out, leaving her with an empty house and an emptier life. She wandered ghost-like, quiet as longing, haunting each room.

 

She’d hollowed herself out like an embalmer removing the organs, packing the cavity with her children instead – their dinners, after school homework and social engagements, with Sarah’s 3 a.m. breastfeeds, Ryan’s many trips to Emergency and Jack’s interminable cricket matches.

Mary bought a cat to fill the void, sleek and grey but aloof, prone to wandering. One day it too left and never returned, leaving her alone, again.

 

She returned to the crafts she’d enjoyed in youth. The house filled with paint brushes, clay and bags of yarn but it wasn’t the right kind of full, just a different kind of empty, and at night it was too quiet.

 

The children's visits dried up like desiccated skin. Jack was always working, Ryan travelling god knows where and Sarah with a new girl every other week.

 

One afternoon, as the sun died over the yard, she sat in the shade of the gumtree she'd fertilised with her late husband’s ashes, fifteen years gone. There she opened her box of keepsakes – first clothes; locks of hair; every baby tooth. It occurred to her that if she had made her children before, spun them whole from nothing, then she could do it again.

 

Night and day she worked, cutting and stitching fabric, wool and bark from the gumtree for the batting, buttons for eyes. From the keepsake box the hair and finally, the teeth – so hard to get right but worth it in the end.

 

When they were done, Mary took the doll children to their beds and tucked them in, read them a story and gave each a kiss, whispering, ‘Good night, my loves.’

That night Mary slept, content, and thought nothing of the creak of floorboards settling in the old house.

 

Next morning, her angels were waiting in their beds, so well-behaved, such beautiful smiles. They went everywhere with her, day after day, kitchen, lounge room and yard. Such good listeners, so patient and kind. She told them everything about the other three, the first ones, every scrape, adventure and fight. But some nights she remembered they weren’t her children, not really, and she wept.

 

Don’t you love us? They asked.

 

'Of course,' she answered. ‘It’s just, you aren't them.’

 

But we have their hair, their smiles. Is that not enough?

 

Mary shook her head sadly. 'A child is more than that, my loves.'

 

What more? They asked.

 

'Hearts and brains,' she said, 'to love and live and even sometimes to forget.'

 

We understand, They said.

 

That night Mary slept. The floorboards creaked but she did not stir.

 

Later, in their own homes, Mary’s first children awoke, hair at nape on end. Had that been children giggling? The patter of tiny footsteps? Surely just a nightmare, nothing more.

First Jack, then Sarah, then Ryan saw their smiles, and there were so many teeth.