Silent Girl

by Tricia Dower

  “Why make contracts you know will cause pain?” Angel asked.

  “Pain, schmain. We’re not talking root canal or childbirth, right? So he leaves. An actor exits the stage when he runs out of lines. You forget you are eternal. You create the idea of death – and it is only an idea – to move things along. It’s not for nothing you wrote this script.”

  “What I want to know is if marriage is part of the script, part of the contract I’ve made with Charles.”

  “Look for the story you’re telling each other and you’ll have your answer. Who’s next?”

  Angel flopped back in her chair, clearly exasperated. The others brought up problems at work, problems at home, mysterious aches and pains.

  “People!” Rhonda said. “You’re such vinegar pusses tonight. Life is supposed to be fun. These plays you’ve written for yourselves? Get into them. Go for an Oscar.”

  “It annoys the heck out of me when she won’t give you the answer,” Angel said on the way home.

  “Don’t you find her Yiddish accent a bit odd?” Mira asked.

  “Not at all. She said her last planting – well, last in the way we think of last – was in Jewish soil. Isn’t that wonderful? She’s role playing like she says we all do. The other channellers I tried all spoke like Polish counts.”

  In Mira’s opinion, Rhonda hadn’t said anything Jackie couldn’t have made up. It didn’t make sense that Angel would spend ten bucks a week on so-called study group yet drive with a broken muffler. “Has Jackie been tested?”

  “For what?”

  “There must be some voice test. She sounds different as Rhonda but maybe she’s just a good actress. And that talk about scripts. I don’t want to piss you off, but it’s hard to believe.”

  Angel reached over and lightly touched Mira’s arm, her touch like a secret passing between them. “You won’t offend me by speaking your mind, Sweetie.”

  Mira had never thought of herself as a Sweetie. She liked it.

  “As far as I know,” Angel said, “God hasn’t been tested, either, and look how many people believe in him or it or her. All I know is God doesn’t talk to me. Rhonda does. She’s helping me discover my soul’s mission. There’s nothing more important than that. If I knew for sure marrying Charles was part of that mission, I wouldn’t hesitate. But I don’t, and I can’t afford another mistake.”

  Mira had never spent two minutes thinking about her soul, much less its mission. “Did she tell you where your parents are?” She wondered for a crazy moment if Rhonda could reach Marko.

  “No. If I wanted her to find anyone, it would be my ex so I could sue for support. But she needs a location. Heck, if I had that, I could find him.”

  Angel’s ex didn’t see the kids, didn’t have a clue what Matty even looked like. He’d won a bunch of money gambling and didn’t want to share it.

  “What a sleaze,” Mira said. She and Marko had “won” a decent inheritance and shared it freely until it was gone.

  “Fine for Rhonda to say, ‘people come, people go.’ I have to think about the boys. What if they get attached to Charles and he dies before they’re grown? Anthony was a mess for two years after his father left. I wish someone would just tell me what to do. Not having to worry about money would be heaven. Is it terrible to want more than I have?”

  “I’d still be in Edina if I could afford it.”

  “I wondered about that.”

  “My brother and I were living together and he died. I couldn’t handle the rent on my own.” There. She’d said it without getting weepy.

  “Oh, Mira. How? When?”

  “April. A fish bone in his esophagus. He couldn’t turn his neck that night without it hurting but he was too macho to go to emergency. He went to bed and never woke up.”

  Angel sucked in her breath. “An infection that went to his lungs.”

  “Yes.” Mira swallowed hard and turned her head towards the window, watched the stars play hide-and-seek between the buildings rushing by. When she could speak again, she said, “You know that restaurant on the corner of Fourth and Seventh?”

  “No, is it any good?”

  “I don’t recommend the stuffed trout.”

  Angel shook her head. “Oh, Sweetie, I’d like to give you a big hug right now.”

  Mira sniffed the apartment air that night for Marko’s scent: a mix of Brut and garlic pickles. She tried to imagine him lurking in the wings like some celestial Peeping Tom, waiting for new lines. If the couches and tables were merely props in a play they’d written, it wasn’t fair that the set had a longer life than he did. It looked like a doctor’s waiting room now. Nothing personal about it at all. “Curse you, Red Baron,” she said, raising a fist to the ceiling. “Even if we did have a contract.” Without cash to replace the furniture, she wondered how she could change the set.

  She unpacked a few cartons, looking for inspiration. Their baseball equipment, her sketch-books, the pastel and watercolour pencils. In a book box she found the dictionary. Disengage: to detach, free, loosen or separate. Animus: in Jungian psychology, the masculine aspect of a woman’s personality.

  She had taken a psychology course in university but all she retained from it was an image of the professor rocking back and forth in front of the class, rubbing himself against a hard-backed chair. It occurred to her she might have wasted those years, helping Marko with his exams and papers, spending only enough time on her own to pass. Angel was on a quest for her soul’s mission. What could Mira claim to be doing? She’d gone after her new job simply because it paid more. Nothing creative about it. She didn’t even get to write the commercials. If she could stick it out long enough to put some money aside, she’d take an art class or two. She felt a surge of new ambition.

  The program from a play she and Marko had seen at the Guthrie turned up in one of the boxes. Cyrano. She had loved everything about it but he’d called it a big yawn. There was a balcony in that play. She had a balcony.

  “Just macaroni and cheese,” Angel had said when she called, “but I’d love some grown-up company.” As the elevator was on the fritz, Mira took the fire stairs and made her way down the dimly lit hallway to 103. A pack of kids nearly knocked her over. Marko would’ve insisted on an adults-only place.

  Angel opened the door wearing black leggings, a billowy white blouse and no makeup. Could anyone be that pure?

  Mira had lugged along two gloves, a bat, a couple of balls. “I thought we could give the boys a work-out after supper, help you release some of that animus.”

  Angel laughed then made a face. “I’m hopeless at baseball.”

  “I’ll help you.”

  Angel’s apartment was laid out like Mira’s except it had a second bedroom and a small concrete slab patio. She led Mira through the galley kitchen into the dining area. “Come sit with me. We’ll eat when their show’s over.” The boys were on the living room floor in front of the TV, stuffing potato chips into their mouths. Their little hunched backs looked harmless enough.

  Angel cleared a pile of mail off a chair for Mira. “I only open the ones that say Final Notice on the envelope.”

  Her living room looked like a set from South Pacific: white wicker furniture with rose and beige cushions, pictures of pink and white shells on the walls. “Is that real?” Mira asked, pointing to a six-foot palm tree next to the patio door.

  “Doesn’t it just look it? It’s silk. A gift from Charles. He’d pay my bills if I let him, but I won’t, so he surprises me with things I’d never buy: a leather dress, of all things, a huge box of walnuts – like I bake. There’s a carousel horse in my bedroom.” She walked to the tree as if on springs. “Have you ever noticed that a gift carries the electromagnetic energy of the person who gave it to you?”

  “Can’t say I have.” An image of Charles was coming to her: Mr. Moneybags i
n top hat and spats, dancing around a Monopoly board.

  “I tried it in several different places before it worked. Same as a real plant. A plant’s consciousness responds better to one area than another even if conditions are the same.” She moved her hand slowly around the tree, not touching the fronds. “I feel little bubbles of carbonation. Little bubbles of Charles’s subconscious.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “Connection. One soul essence connecting with another. Connection is everything.” She twirled around like a child with her arms out then leaned down and hugged the boys.

  “Hey!” Anthony said. “You’re making me miss the best part.”

  “Well, excuse me,” Angel said. She came back to the table, flushed – from motherly connection, Mira supposed. Mira didn’t know the first thing about plants or children.

  They talked about Charles. His parents were diplomats who’d left him so well off he’d never had to do anything except keep himself busy. They died when Charles was in his twenties. When he wasn’t travelling, he played piano until his fingers ached.

  “He’s had a stutter for as long as I’ve known him,” Angel said, “but when he plays, I could weep for what his fingers are able to say.”

  Mr. Moneybags, flipping his tux tails up and over the bench, sitting down to play something staccato. “Do you love him?”

  “Love’s one of those vague words. I’m enormously fond of him. He’s fun. Always on, always performing. Trying to distract everyone from the stuttering. Sad, really, but also endearing. He says I’m the only woman who’s never treated him as if he’s brain damaged.”

  “You wouldn’t marry him because of that, would you?”

  “I’m never quite sure what I’ll do. I try to stay away from cliffs for that reason.”

  Mira laughed because Angel did, but she wasn’t sure Angel was kidding.

  Angel and the boys saw Charles three or four times a year. “He’s coming for Thanksgiving. You must meet him. He stays in a hotel when he’s here, proper to a fault. Flies us out to his place when I can take the time off. His house, you should see his house! Overlooking the ocean. I have such longing there.”

  “For what?’

  “To be a drop in that ocean, hugging all the other drops as we crash onto the shore. If I didn’t have the boys, I would find a deserted island and do nothing but meditate, become a wave in my mind. Let me show you something.” She took down a picture that was taped to the refrigerator and brought it back to the table. A townhouse development. “Look at all the land around it. In the winter you can cross-country ski right outside your front door. I’d have to sell tons more than I do now for a place like that. Put more hours into it than I can manage with the boys.”

  Mira felt dizzy trying to fathom what Angel truly wanted. “Having that house would make you feel like a wave?”

  “I never thought of that. Aren’t you clever? Maybe. A powerful wave. Powerful enough to provide for my boys.”

  “I’m off work at four Tuesdays and Thursdays,” Mira said. “I could pick them up and feed them those days. You could work as late as you wanted.”

  Angel put her hands over Mira’s. “What a treasure you are.”

  “I’m hungry,” Matty wailed. Their show was over.

  At dinner, Anthony was quiet and watchful. The moody one, like Marko. Then Matty made farting sounds with the ketchup bottle and got Anthony laughing so hard, food came out his nose. Angel lifted up her hands in mock despair and said, “Boys. What can you do?”

  “Don’t let them bamboozle you,” Mira said.

  “What’s boozle?” Matty asked.

  “Tricking people. I had a boozler brother. I know all the tricks.”

  Anthony blew on his fist and studied Mira.

  “I don’t want any more,” Matty said, pushing his plate away.

  “How ’bout I make you spaghetti and meat balls on Tuesday?” Mira said.

  “I don’t like meatballs,” he said.

  “I’ll put them on the side.”

  Anthony took his fist away from his mouth. “Can you cook it here? Nothing to do at your place.”

  “How do you know? I might have every set of baseball cards since 1957.”

  “Do you?” Anthony’s expression hovered between mistrust and hopefulness.

  “You’ll have to come up and find out.”

  Mira felt a weird and wonderful sense of purpose. If her soul had had a mission before, it could only have been to watch over Marko and she’d blown that. She’d been given a second chance with Angel – the boys, too, even though she had no maternal stirrings. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she ferried them home from the sitter’s in the Mustang, the top down, smiling at the sight of them in the rear view mirror, hair whipping around their faces. She filled their tummies. She recruited them in transforming her living room into a set for Cyrano. Draped the furniture with sheets and covered the carpet with drop sheets; covered the boys with Marko’s work shirts; set paint, brushes, and water jars on the big glass coffee table. A forest began to form on either side of the sliding glass door to the balcony. She had sketched floor-to-ceiling trees on the wall and let the boys loose to fill them in with green leaves and blue leaves or no leaves at all. Trees with funny faces and scary faces. Trees bearing squirrels, apples, and birds.

  “You’re looney,” Angel said. “The management will have your hide.”

  “I can always paint over it,” Mira said. “Or maybe I’ll tell them what Rhonda would say: the trees are there and not there at the same time.”

  Mira told Anthony and Matty the story of the large-nosed poet who courted the beautiful Roxane on another’s behalf, even though the poet, himself, was secretly in love with Roxane. Except for the part about the duel, the story bored them until Mira bought them rubber noses to wear while they painted.

  Angel said she’d never felt so supported, that Mira was what she imagined a sister would be. Mira wondered if Angel was what a best friend was supposed to be. She’d only ever had Marko, never a close girlfriend. They started eating most suppers together, pooling their grocery money, amazed at how cheaply they could eat with imagination and planning. To save even more, Mira gave up study group – not a big sacrifice – and Angel limited herself to every other week.

  After Anthony and Matty were in bed each night, they’d sit side by side on Angel’s floor, their backs against the couch, keeping their voices low. Angel would talk about her dreams for the boys. How her desire to do right by them was almost a physical ache. Mira told Angel about the paintings that formed in her sleep and scribbled their way onto notepads and blotters at work. All that marred Mira’s happiness was the spectre of Charles’s visit and that was a long way off. He called Angel every Wednesday night at seven but the calls were short.

  Three weeks before Thanksgiving, Angel showed up early at Mira’s, her green eyes puffy from crying. “I could hardly see the road for my tears,” she said at the door. “Where are they?”

  “In the living room playing Parcheesi.”

  “I don’t want them to see me upset, don’t want them asking questions.”

  Mira took Angel in her room and quietly closed the door.

  “They’ve changed the commission structure,” Angel said. “The top ten percent will make twenty percent more, the rest twenty percent less. It’s heartless, Mira, so heartless.” The change was effective December first. Her regional manager had handed out motivational cassette tapes the sales reps were supposed to play in their cars to and from appointments. Angel’s car didn’t have a cassette player.

  Mira gave Angel a consoling hug, but hopeful ideas were afloat in her head. “Take the Mustang,” she said. “And we can rent a three-bedroom together. Only forty dollars a month more than what you’re paying all by yourself.”

  Angel lifted her eyebrows in sur
prise.

  “I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” Mira said. “I checked it out.”

  Angel smiled weakly. “You’re so sweet, you really are, but this must be the sign. I drove out to the river today, walked the path. The wind was bitter, already, and we’re still weeks from winter. I thought about how warm California is all year. And how meaningless my work is: trying to interest busy doctors in a brand. Charles will need a nurse one day. It’s the least I can do for him. I called him before I came upstairs. He’s flying out this weekend to talk it over.”

  Mira sat down hard on the edge of her bed. “Why didn’t you ask me first?”

  “Your permission? You’re kidding, right?”

  “For help. Why didn’t you ask me for help?”

  “You’re as poor as I am. Where’s the percentage in that?”

  Mira got up and opened the door. “I’ll tell the boys you’re here. And wrap up the leftovers for you. We had Meat-za Pie. I hid mushrooms under the cheese and Matty ate them.”

  She sat in the dark for hours that night, passing a flashlight beam back and forth across Cyrano and Roxane’s forest. It had brought tears to Angel’s eyes when it was finished. “Their little souls are all over that wall,” she had said. Mira replayed other conversations, looking for where she’d read too much into Angel’s words. The next day she booked a private session with Rhonda. Seventy-five dollars on her credit card for advice from what was probably only Jackie’s imagination.

  “What do you believe you deserve?” Rhonda said. “What you believe is what you’ll get.”

  Mira had to think about whether she felt herself deserving of anything. “More time, I guess. To show Angel she has options. She’s giving up too soon.”

  “What is she giving up, exactly?”

  Mira had to think again. “Me,” she said softly.

  “So schlep yourself out to California, continue your friendship there.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same. I’d have to share her with Charles.”

  “Aha, okay, the heart of the matter. Listen. Here comes a clue. It’s not a coincidence you three have come together. A play you wrote in another life is having a revival in this one.”