Small Silent Things

by Robin Page

  When Lucy seems unconvinced, Jocelyn tries a different strategy. “Nothing is bothering you at school, right? You can always tell Mama anything.”

  This line of questioning seems to confuse Lucy, and she doesn’t answer. Instead she tells Jocelyn the contents of her dream—hiding in the green leaves of a dark bush, a riot of children surrounding her. There’s a boy and his friend, both with long, dirty fingernails. She has a ball in her hand, and as if the boys have planned it together, they set upon her and take it away.

  Jocelyn tries to assure her. She reads to her, wanting to change her daughter’s focus. She dozes without meaning to and is wakened by Lucy’s intense, “Mama! You’re not sleeping are you?”

  “No,” she says. “You’re all right, sweetheart. I’m here.”

  When her daughter finally finds sleep again, Jocelyn goes to her own bed, but she’s slept just enough on the couch in Lucy’s room to make it hard to sleep in her own room. She tosses and turns and tries to think of good things. She tries to press away the pictures that come to her in her own dark night. Not even Conrad, lying next to her, can protect her from the memories that come. She tells herself, I am good. I am good. I am good, at least fifty times before her eyes fly open, and she’s in a kind of state, remembering what it is to be helpless, to need Ycidra, to want to escape from the things in the bunk above her.

  It was like this: A head covered with a pillow. A prayer not to hear. Counting. What channel now? What instead of right now? Please. No. And then another kind of please, not from that moment. One she can understand only now, because she is an adult.

  The ceiling in her room is gray. She will turn on the light, try to sleep with it on. Conrad doesn’t wake for anything. She should have the men come, paint the ceiling white. White is soothing. If she sleeps at all, she will wake in the morning and wonder why the light is on for a half a second. She will have forgotten her fear, but then the light will remind her, and then the pictures will be back and she will wonder if it will ever end, or if it will always be a life of deferring, a life lived outside now, energy exerted in the pushing away. Lucy is bleary-eyed in the morning and Jocelyn thinks, We are twins. Afraid of the dark. Still children. It is okay, she says to herself as much as to her child when she comes into her room and they hug a good morning. My little lamb and I.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Claudette

  1

  SHE PICKS ART BAR, A MODERN RESTAURANT WITH AN OUTDOOR PATIO and a view of the Charles River. It is appropriate for their first meeting. They shake hands as if they are colleagues at a convention. She knows that she does not look overly large even at this late stage of pregnancy. He looks at her belly immediately, but does not say anything. They sit. They are together for minutes, but neither of them speaks. Even though she is not looking at him, she can feel him staring at her, holding himself still, studying her. It is unlike anything she has experienced before. His eyes dig into her, excavating, trying to unearth something.

  “I would like to call you Simon,” she says, quietly.

  “Of course,” he says.

  The waiter comes. They order.

  “You look just like your mother,” he says. “It is strange for me. I always thought you would look like me, but you don’t. It is as if you are her ghost come to dinner. When I last saw her, she was about your age.”

  “Really?” she says, but it means nothing to her. She cannot remember her mother, would not know her if she walked up to her in the street.

  The lobster rolls come, the heavy white bread buns. She must focus on getting the food down, keeping it down, so she eats very slowly. In the end, she gives up on the bread and rinses each piece of buttery lobster in her water glass before ingesting it. Simon notices. She thinks he will say something, but he doesn’t. They are as distant as strangers. Besides, she doesn’t care what he thinks.

  They eat in silence. Her birthmark a touchstone between bites. She sees him look at it, finding it on her collarbone. Evidence, she supposes. She glances at him. She has questions, but is unsure of what to ask, and in what order to ask them. What can she tread on? She clears her throat.

  “Did my biological mother die in the war?” she asks. “‘Biological mother’ sounds space age, she thinks. I am an alien.”

  He pauses. “She did,” he says.

  “And my father, Abrahm?” she asks. He is my father, she thinks. I will claim him in front of this imposter. “How did you know each other?”

  She leans back in the contemporary chair, testing its support. On the Charles River, kayakers skim. She can see them over Simon’s shoulder. The yacht club is just in view. The beauty of Boston is on the other side of the river.

  “He was my best friend,” he says. “We grew up together. Like brothers were we.”

  2

  SHE SHAKES HIS HAND WHEN THEY LEAVE EACH OTHER. THERE AREN’T any more questions to be asked tonight. They will get to know each other slowly. It is an unsaid agreement. They are both wary of one another, not knowing what to expect. Why this is the case for him, she doesn’t understand. There can be no doubt now that she is his own blood. The Q-tip does not lie. Science is. There is no ambiguity.

  She walks along the river by herself. The weather beacon is a steady red. Storms ahead, she thinks, and her father is there with her even though it isn’t possible, and they are looking at the old John Hancock building, which will always be the old John Hancock building to her and to him, no matter what the citizens of Boston call it now.

  Every summer, they vacationed in Boston or Cambridge. They rented a room in a better hotel. Her father called it cultural. Every night of vacation, for as long as she can remember, the two of them would look out the window, in search of the light pattern. Her mother was always asleep already, always gone from their world.

  “What is it, Claudette?” her father would ask, and she’d tell him the colors. Together as if they were the same person, in stereo, they’d say the rhyme: “Steady blue, clear view. Flashing blue, clouds due. Steady red, storms ahead. Flashing red, snow instead.”

  He teaches her so many things in her lifetime. When to plant, when to sow. Mathematics. Literature. He is self-taught, learning most of what he knows at the local libraries. Her acceptance at Harvard hadn’t moved her mother at all, but her father came each weekend to walk the square with her. They went for coffee, the Museum of Science. She has a picture of herself, at twenty-two, in front of a moose diorama. He posed her so the two antlers came out of her own head. He is there with her at the river now. The cormorants duck and dive and disappear. How could he not be her father? So much of her is him.

  “A farmer’s daughter at Harvard,” he says in the weeks after she gets her acceptance letter. He is more perplexed than proud. As if the moon on a morning, instead of the sun, has decided to shine.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Jocelyn

  1

  THE GIRLS ON THE TEAM ARE PLANNING FOR PALM DESERT. SHE HAS visions of Merv Griffin and Frank Sinatra, acres of green in the middle of the desert. Hotels are booked. Babysitters reserved. Nannies shared and discussed for the tennis hours. Maud tells her she is buying matching outfits for them.

  “Stella McCartney,” Maud says. “Are you a size six?”

  Jocelyn has reservations about going. She has never left her daughter before.

  “All of it will be fine, babe,” Conrad says, hoping to soothe her. “Lucy loves being with me. It’s really just one, well, two days. Then we’ll come up. Then we’ll be together.”

  She and Conrad have sex the night before she leaves. She is distracted, unable to come. She senses that something terrible will happen while she’s away. She shouldn’t go. She shouldn’t leave her child. It is what she promised herself when she was finally able to get pregnant, that she would be the best mother in the world. She would not leave her child when her child needed her. Only mothers can protect their children from the villains that are hard to see. She is aware that she is breaking that promise.
/>   “It’s all going to be okay,” Conrad says. “You have to let go of us sometimes.”

  2

  THE PLAN SHE MAKES WITH KATE HAS HER ARRIVING THE NIGHT BEFORE, rather than the day of. Conrad assumes all the women will arrive on Thursday for the Friday retreat, and it is true that some of the other women will come early. They will want to be rested for endless days of tennis. They will want some alone time if their families are coming later. They will book a facial or a massage, get a good night’s rest, for the fun they’ve planned, but Jocelyn is coming only to spend the night with Kate.

  KATE: Were you able to work out 3 nights in Palm Desert?

  She is in her bathroom, filling up her toiletries bag.

  JOCELYN: Yes.

  KATE: I’ll be there at 4 after I teach. I can’t wait. Delete, delete, delete.

  As if Jocelyn would ever forget to delete her messages.

  She drives up the 10 freeway in her fast car, and into the dry city of Palm Desert. She calculates a fourish arrival, not wanting to be at the resort early or alone. In the last half hour of the drive, she finally lets herself relax. What’s done is done, she thinks. No turning back now, and there is a jolt of excitement and letting go. She listens to music, loud and blaring, a bit of rap, some old-school James Brown. She even dances a bit in her seat. Maybe she will go dancing. Probably not with Kate, but maybe with Maud. Maud seems as if she might be a white girl who can dance. Jocelyn hasn’t gone dancing since her twenties.

  When she gets there, it is as she’s expected. A series of streets named after singers, an oasis of lush and green in spite of the California drought. It is perfect for rich ladies, she thinks. An affirmation of what for them is a truth: almost anything can be made more tolerable, more beautiful, with money.

  Lucy flashes in Jocelyn’s mind, but she forces herself to have rational thoughts. She is with her father, she tells herself. You have already gone. Her father loves her. He will not let anything happen to her.

  As she parks her car, she is aware of the line that she is crossing: spending the night, sharing a bed. These are the things I do with my husband, she thinks. The thought of it makes her afraid. She tries to repress the fear, but before she can stop herself, she thinks, These are the things I do with someone I love.

  THERE IS THE BRIGHT LIGHT OF THE SUN AS SHE STEPS OUT OF HER CAR with her tennis bag, her small Longchamp travel bag. Her luggage is whisked away. The doorman opens the door of the hotel lobby for her. The lobby is dark after the blinking-bright light of the desert sun. It is like walking into a cave—cool and air conditioned. She takes a few minutes to allow her eyes to adjust. She walks forward, pushing through, not allowing herself to lose her nerve. There is a line at the check-in desk, and even as her eyes adjust, she sees her. The hair is down, unbraided, thick and bright—transparent as the sun’s rays. There is the lushness of the hips, the thick thighs. Jocelyn starts to walk toward her to touch her, to surprise her with hello, but then there is a hand in her line of vision, a hand and a finger where hers should be, and they begin to wrap and twirl the hair, and Jocelyn has the feeling of being submerged in a viscous liquid, and of not being able to breathe, and of not being able to see or understand. She stops walking.

  She follows the twirling fingers, the arm, the torso, the shoulder, the neck, to a face, and her eyes find a woman. The wife, she thinks. Who else could it be? And Jocelyn watches them for a minute. What do they look like unawares? There is playfulness. There is happiness, and for Jocelyn there is just shock and confusion and shame.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Simon

  1

  THE DOG IS THERE WHEN HE RETURNS FROM CAMBRIDGE. SIMON SITS cross-legged beside the bush, not hiding anymore. He has named the dog, Lion. He watches the dog eat. The dog allows it now. If Simon stands, Lion growls. Simon tells the dog about his daughter. He says, “I have found my daughter. I am afraid. You have lost your master. You are afraid.”

  Beneath the dirt and the muck and the grease of its life in the streets, Simon can see that Lion must have been a golden brown at one time. There are dingy white spots around its muzzle, and a puddle-shaped white patch on its chest. When the dog drinks water there is the pink of its lolling tongue. The dog eats and Simon watches. It does not fill out, not even a bit. A parasite, maybe. He remembers his brother’s diaper when he was just a child. A night’s sleep, the heavy warmth of it. He remembers opening it and finding a tapeworm as long as his forearm inside.

  “That is how it was when I was a child,” he says to Lion. “I had many brothers and two sisters. I had a best friend . . .” He cannot finish.

  At three o’clock, he stands up, dusts the dirt off his tailored pants. He admonishes himself for staying so long. He hears the crack of his knees.

  “Goodbye, Lion. I have to go, so I can beat traffic,” he says, and the dog looks at him. It doesn’t take a single step toward him. It just stares and growls.

  “You are welcome,” Simon says, as if the dog has thanked him. As if the dog were his friend.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Jocelyn

  1

  SHE CANNOT FIGURE OUT THE TRICK OF IT. WHY WOULD KATE BE THIS mean? Why hasn’t she called her, warned her? Has she checked her phone? Not in some time.

  Kate pushes the hand away, signs something the desk clerk is giving her. A boy stands between the two women. He is maybe three or four. Jocelyn watches, but hopes not to be seen: there is the couple, there is the child. She studies the boy, who is handsome, more like the wife than like Kate. Dark, with eyes like chocolate and tiny white teeth. He holds on to the edge of Kate’s tennis skirt as she checks in. He leans into her as a tired lover would. I am in love with her, she wants to say in his ear, but that isn’t exactly right. I can’t stay away from her. That is more exact, but still not fully true.

  The wife is maybe thirty. Thirty at most. Looking at her makes Jocelyn feel ancient. She has the complexion of youth. Everything about her body is slim, maybe too skinny. She has the body of an Italian model who smokes rather than eats. Did the boy come out of her body? It makes Jocelyn wonder what Kate has possibly desired in a body like hers. Not bad for forty-five, but forty-five nonetheless. The wife’s hair is long and chestnut brown, almost down to her ass. She has so much of it that Jocelyn wonders if it is real, but then thinks, Of course it’s real. She wants to put her fingers in it and pull.

  In a moment of splintering shame, she sees that Kate has seen her. Her own head snaps down, but the wife sees recognition between them.

  “Hi,” Kate says. It’s uncomfortable.

  “Hi,” Jocelyn says. A pause then.

  “I’m Leilah,” the wife says, putting her hand out. “Are you here for the weekend retreat?”

  Jocelyn feels herself blinking, but knows she needs to say something. She looks over at Kate, who has turned away. She is getting the key cards to the room now. Her son is in her arms. She has picked him up and he is settled. Kate keeps her eyes trained on the desk person. It seems as if time is passing very slowly. What does she expect? They are two people who barely know one another, after all. That is the agreement. She tells herself to get it together. The boy is gripping Kate’s hair in his fingers. Jocelyn has the irrational thought that it is her hair. That the light, bright gold of it should not be shared.

  “Yes,” Jocelyn says. “I’m here for the weekend. It should be fun.”

  Leilah smiles. She has a little chip in her front tooth, so slight that it is sexy.

  “It’s great to meet you,” Leilah says. She leans closer to Jocelyn when she says it, a hostess now to a lovely weekend, and there, just at the edge, under an Altoid or a stick of Doublemint gum, Jocelyn smells it. It is Gladys all over again. Deep in the breath, alive there, is the smell—light and sure—of alcohol. Jocelyn wonders if she and Kate have celebrated before leaving, if they’ve had bloody marys together for lunch.

  “See you later,” Kate says. Her voice is brittle as ice. “Great to have you here for the weekend
.”

  Jocelyn watches them leave—the lovely family. Business, Jocelyn reminds herself. She lifts this idea out of herself from some point in her history, from that other girl whom she has always been able to count on when she has needed to go away. The solid one. She exhales. She steps aside, letting that girl in. That girl will keep her steady. That girl will make it so she does not cry. That girl is always just under the surface, on the lower bunk with her. She is a more capable self.

  It’s business, the girl reminds her. You had an agreement. Things come up. You can’t take it personally.

  “Bye,” she says, but Kate and her family have already walked away. She turns to the lady behind the desk. Bye? Why did I say bye?

  “May I have your name, please?” the woman asks.

  “Yes. Thank you. Mrs. Morrow. I’m here for three nights.”

  2

  SHE SITS IN HER ROOM, TRYING TO FIND DISTANCE. NAIL UP WALLS. SHE hangs her clothes. She makes folded piles of the others and puts them in drawers. She checks her phone, but there’s nothing. Fuck her, she thinks. I hate her. What was I thinking? Why? I have such a good life. I have Conrad. I have Lucy. Am I insane? I have left my child for this? Not even the decency to text.

  She tries to read a local magazine, but can’t. She calls Conrad, but he doesn’t pick up. She is angry. Irate. She feels dirty from the long drive. She looks at the room service menu, but there is nothing. She resents the expense of bad hotel food but doesn’t know if she can get herself out of the room. She should drive home, she thinks. She should get in her car. She begins taking off her clothes, just trying to separate herself from everything. She decides to take a shower. She can try to get clean. The girl inside her exerts herself more strongly, tells her a shower is good, a new Jocelyn. Draw a line from here forward and emerge. As with all the lines before, she takes this step.

  The water from the shower runs hot and prickly. The soap is mint. The girl inside her is armor to pull on. She is the girl who gets her through beatings, through baths she does not want to take, line after line of cocaine, through her sister dead, the smell of bile in the air. They haven’t seen each other in a while, but she will always be there, familiar. Jocelyn is an old house, with new paint, but the same house nevertheless. The water warms her. She allows herself to have other ideas. Ideas that will banish the mortification she feels after the lobby.