A River of Silence

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  * * *

  Bryce had been six years old. His mother shook him awake. “What’s wrong, Mama?”

  She sat on the edge of the mattress and turned on the light so he could read her lips. “Put these clothes on, Cale.” She handed him the plaid shirt and pressed blue pants he usually wore for church or special occasions. “We’re taking a little trip.” She bustled around his bedroom, packing a small suitcase.

  “What about Jason and Dad?”

  She lifted her index finger to her lips. Through the flowered fragrance of her perfume, he detected the funny smell on his mother’s breath that meant she was drinking. “They’ll be okay. Jason will be leaving for the army in less than a week. Now get your clothes on and be quick about it.”

  When he finished dressing, she led him into the kitchen, ran water over a comb and parted his dark hair, carefully arranging it as if he were going to Sunday school.

  “You look pretty, Mama.” His gaze traveled over the dress, stockings and high heels she usually saved for weddings and holidays. His mother was tall and slender, with long hair that fell in shiny copper waves over her shoulders. Cale could tell men thought she was beautiful by the way they stopped to talk with her on the street, her laughter rising like a bright yellow ribbon in front of her.

  She took his hand and they stepped outside into the crisp, November air, then hurried past all the other houses on their street. They passed Clemson’s barn and the old brick schoolhouse nobody used anymore and headed toward the Robertson Inn. Like most everything else around Wheatley, Utah, the Robertsons owned the house his family lived in as well as the mineral rights to the mine where Isaiah Bryce and the other local men dug.

  At the edge of the Inn’s wooded drive, Cale and his mother waited, hands stuffed in their pockets, until the lights of an oncoming car washed over them.

  “Here he comes.” She brushed Bryce’s hair off his forehead with her fingertips and straightened the collar of his jacket.

  A car jerked to a stop and the passenger door opened. His mother pulled the seat forward and he climbed in back. The car still had that new leather smell and the seats were as soft as the fur on his pet lamb. He watched as she slid all the way across the front seat until her shoulder brushed against the arm of a tweed jacket. Then she flung herself into the man’s arms and kissed him on the lips.

  The man had black hair, and when he broke away from her embrace, he pivoted in the seat and stared at Cale over his shoulder for what seemed like a long time. Then he leaned forward, started the car and pulled out of Wheatley toward Route 40 and the big city of Salt Lake.

  A few minutes later, the man picked up a bottle from the floor at his feet, unscrewed the top and swallowed several times, shaking his head as he finished. When he passed it to Cale’s mother, she took a long pull, trying to make it look like a sip. They chattered in low, comforting voices that sounded like humming as they passed the bottle back and forth between them. Eventually, Cale curled into the corner of the back seat and drifted into sleep.

  When he awakened, the man was carrying him toward a big bed with a puffy flowered cover and a pastel mural of a country landscape painted on the wall above it. A television set on brackets hung just under the ceiling.

  “You have your own room, big guy.” He untied Cale’s shoes, then slipped them off, along with his socks. He bounced him on the bed, tickled him under his arms for a moment, then pointed to a door in the wall next to the television. “Your mother and I are right over there. So, you don’t have to be afraid.”

  He paused and looked at Cale’s mother. “Does the big guy talk?”

  “Sure. And he can read, too. He’s not even in first grade yet. He’s a little shy, but real smart, and he has eyes just like his daddy.” She giggled, tilted her head and looked up at the man from beneath her eyelashes. “He knows his numbers all the way to a hundred.”

  The man picked up a tablet from the table next to the bed. “I’ll write these numbers down for you. Tomorrow morning when you wake up hungry, dial zero for the front desk. Tell them you want room service and that you are in room 840. Then order whatever you want—eggs and bacon, a hamburger, fries, even a milkshake. They’ll bring it right up to you.” He smiled and patted Cale on the top of his head.

  He tried to concentrate on the man’s lips, but he kept thinking about the bright blue color of Isaiah’s eyes. They were nothing like Cale’s dark brown eyes. He tried to figure out what his mother had meant.

  “It’s like magic,” the man said. “Presto—all the food you can eat appears on a cart in front of you.” He snapped his fingers and his happy dark eyes sparkled.

  His mother showed Cale the bathroom, then helped him out of his shirt and pants. When she tucked him into the fancy hotel bed, she called him precious and sweetheart, her love child. She hugged and kissed him on both cheeks the way she used to before all the fighting with his father began. “Now, be a good boy and don’t leave the room,” she said, squeezing his nose with her thumb and forefinger.

  He breathed in the sunshine smell of the starched white sheets as she disappeared through the door, the man’s right arm wrapped around her waist, holding her up.

  Pulling the covers around his neck, he turned on his side, floated into sleep, and the night passed.

  When sunlight streaming through the east window awakened him, he padded across the room wearing only his underwear. His bare toes sank into the thick blue fibers of the carpet as he tapped on the door connecting the two rooms.

  No one answered.

  He gradually increased the intensity of his knocking until he finally pounded with both fists.

  Still, no one answered.

  He tried to turn the knob. The door was locked.

  The world dropped away. The walls, even the floor itself, tumbled and he was drowning in an infinite ocean of empty space, the size and shape of his fear. He slipped into his clothes, and sat on the edge of the bed. His gaze darted around the room and landed on the numbers the man wrote out for him.

  He dialed zero, ordered scrambled eggs, toast, and bacon, a large Coke and a bowl of Frosted Flakes. And just as the man promised, about a half hour later someone tapped on his door and wheeled in the magic cart with more breakfast food than Cale ever saw before.

  The waiter spread a blue linen cloth over the small round table in front of the window, then positioned a single rosebud in a polished silver vase at the table’s center. He pulled out the chair for Cale and once the boy squirmed into place, he lifted a silver dome from the steaming plate of eggs and bacon. “Is there anything else I can get you, sir?”

  Cale grinned back. “No, thank you, sir. This is just great.”

  He spent the day watching television game shows, soap operas, and The Andy Griffith Show. He turned the volume real high so he could hear it because he liked the whistling music as Opie and his pa walked down the road together at the beginning and end of the show.

  When darkness fell again, he adjusted the volume of the television even louder and waited. He thought about his pet lamb, Oscar, and hoped Jason would remember to feed him. Bored and hungry again, he picked up the telephone, ordered another Coke, French fries, and a hamburger. He ate, waited some more, then fell asleep.

  The next day, the front desk called. Cale whimpered into the phone. “I don’t know where Mama is. I keep knocking on the door to their room, but no one answers.”

  They said something, but he couldn’t hear. A few minutes later, one of the hotel clerks joined Cale in the room, asked the boy his name and some questions about his mother. “Why don’t you come downstairs with me?” he finally said. “You can be my helper behind the front desk.”

  “No,” Cale cried. “I can’t. Mama said for me to wait here, she said not to leave the room.”

  “Okay, calm down,” the hotel clerk said. “It’s all right. You lock the door behind me and wait here. I’m going to get help. Will you be okay?”

  Cale nodded.

  An hour or more later, an
other knock rattled the door. Thinking his mother and the man had returned, he smiled, leaped from his perch on the bed, pulled the desk chair over and stood on it so he could slide the dead bolt to the left. He thrust open the door.

  A tall lady in a blue suit with a small hat balanced on top of her wavy, brown hair stood before him.

  Cale moved aside and she stepped into the room, her eyes surveying every corner from behind her round, wire-rimmed glasses.

  She bent down so close to his face that he could smell coffee, and see the golden flecks in her brown eyes. “I’m Corinne from the Child Welfare Department. You don’t have to be afraid, Caleb, we’re going to help you.”

  He later learned his father shot himself in the head after discovering his wife was gone. Less than a week after their father’s funeral, his big brother Jason left for the army.

  After two stays in foster homes where he refused to utter a single word, the state of Utah did some testing and discovered the extent of Bryce’s hearing deficit and the many ways in which he was gifted. Two months later he was placed in the Lake Institute for the Deaf and Blind.

  He never heard from his mother again.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  After almost thirty years, Rachael Bryce sat in front of him. “I’m so sorry, Cale,” she said. “I know I hurt you. And I’m ashamed of the mother I was. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me.”

  For a moment, Bryce said nothing. “I go by Bryce now,” he said, attempting to keep the hurt and anger out of his voice. “I don’t like to remember what it was like to be Cale.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help you? Do you need money? I got married again to a really a fine man. His name is Theodore Clark. He said to tell you he’ll hire a good lawyer, do anything he can to help.” Rachael spoke rapidly, as if she feared this might be her only chance.

  “I have a very good lawyer.” He nodded toward Radhauser. “And a detective who is on my side, too.”

  Radhauser cleared his throat. “I feel like I should leave and give you two time alone. I can wait in the car.”

  “No,” Bryce said. “Please. I need you to stay.”

  Rachael wiped her face with her free hand. “I wish things were different. I wish I gave you the family you deserved.”

  Bryce stared at her thin lips, watched the movement of her tongue behind her teeth, trying to connect the words with his life, with what he remembered of this mother and his childhood. He swallowed hard against the anger and hurt that kept rising. He had been a little boy, barely older than Scott, and it had all been so unfair. But fairness was for happy people who’ve been fortunate enough to live a life defined by love and certainty. Not the abuse, hate, and ambiguities he’d suffered.

  “You were such a sweet boy,” his mother said. “After I joined AA, I wanted to find you and make amends, I swear to God I did.” Her gaze shifted to the back wall, but she kept talking as if she had practiced her speech and now recited the words by heart. “I eventually found out you’d been placed in that school, but when I called they told me you’d gone to college. When I tried the University of Utah they said you’d withdrawn. I kept telling myself you were better off without me and I wanted to believe people loved you...took care of you.” She paused, studied her son. “I used to imagine a woman with soft hands and a kind voice tucking you into bed at night.”

  Rage flared hot in his chest. No woman with soft hands tucked him into bed at night or offered him any kindness or comfort. The one woman who was supposed to love him, loved her vodka more. Words were lost to him and he stared at her in disbelief.

  As if privy to his thoughts, she shook her head and raised her trembling hand again to touch her cheek. “Alcoholism is a disease.”

  He shut his eyes. Under his closed lids, Bryce was at the mercy of the throbbing sound of his own pulse. He felt it in the sides of his neck and the tips of his fingers.

  Then, disgusted with himself, Bryce opened his eyes and tried to clear his thoughts, tried to stop the clock from racing backward toward the boundless possibilities of another childhood. The air around him filled with blame. Without any help from this woman who was supposed to love and guide him, he had made some kind of life for himself.

  Or had he made even more a mess of his life than she had hers?

  His mother, as far as he knew, had never been arrested for child abuse and murder. How unfair was that? She was more responsible for Isaiah Bryce’s suicide than he was for Skyler’s death. Did he really want this woman back in his life?

  “...it’s a 12-step program.” His mother hadn’t stopped talking, but her voice entered his consciousness again. “The 9th step says the alcoholic needs to make direct amends to the people we’ve hurt except when to do so would injure them or others. I contacted Jason to apologize and ask his forgiveness. And even though he’d been dead for years, I wrote a letter to Isaiah. But you...I just...”

  She turned her head, tears streaming, then turned back, as if remembering he couldn’t hear her if she weren’t looking at him. “I couldn’t find you, but even if I could, I didn’t know how to begin. None of it was your fault,” she sobbed. “You were just a little boy and well...forgiving me...it’s so much to ask.”

  Something inside Bryce softened. He’d fought so hard to forget his past, forget who he once was and where he came from that his childhood felt more like fiction than truth. He could have won an Olympic gold medal in the sport of being silent. But what good had it done him? He hadn’t really run away from his past. Hiding from a monster in the living room doesn’t make it go away.

  When he glanced up, his mother had flattened her hand, fingers spread, against the window between them. And, instantly understanding what she wanted, part of him yearned to accommodate her, to raise his own hand and press it against the glass, matching finger for finger the hand of his mother. The depth of sadness in her eyes startled Bryce, but his arm hung limp, too heavy to lift. He stared at the lines in Rachael’s palm until she pulled it away, tucked it into her lap. But the moist print on the glass lingered for a long moment before it slowly lightened and disappeared.

  “Would you rather I left?” Again, she lowered her gaze, avoiding his eyes. “I don’t want to intrude and make anything worse right now. I know what a hard time this has to be for you.”

  Bryce found his voice. “I thought about seeing you again so many times. I thought about what it would feel like to face you. My mother. The woman who abandoned me at six years old.”

  Her mouth remained open for a moment, as if the full implication of that was hitting her for the first time.

  “And believe me,” he said. “No woman with soft hands ever tucked me into bed at night.” His eyes started to well up. Her reappearance was an array of contradictions. Of light and air infused with something darker, like thunder. “It’s just that I didn’t know seeing you again would be so confusing.”

  She looked into his eyes. “It’s not easy for me either. I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am...”

  The word forgiveness grazed his mind like a bullet. It sped by him, slowed, then speeded up as if it had no idea of its target. Over the years, he thought about forgiveness many times. Thought about forgiving the man he believed was his father. The man who hated Bryce because he was betrayed by his wife. Could he forgive this mother who took so much from him? Forgiveness. The word meandered down long and convoluted paths, but never found its mark.

  “I would do anything if I could go back in time and change what happened,” his mother said.

  “Why did you leave me in that hotel room?”

  “I was a selfish drunk who put myself above the welfare of my own child. I’m so sorry, Cale.”

  With the sincerity in her voice, pity rose inside Bryce. After all, his life had hardly been perfect—he made his own set of mistakes and in spite of good intentions ended up divorced from Valerie and now in jail.

  Radhauser hung up his receiver and Bryce understood this was too personal for him, and that
he wanted to give them some privacy.

  “Please stop apologizing,” Bryce said.

  “I’ll try,” she said.

  “We can’t change the past. I mean, I’m glad you stopped drinking and put your life back together. I’m glad you found someone to love. Do you still see my father?”

  She looked at him as if seeing a ghost, someone once significant, but now gone. Unable to meet his gaze, she finally answered, talking into her lap. “He’s dead. You know that.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time we stopped pretending that Isaiah Bryce was my father? We both know he wasn’t.”

  Bryce hadn’t meant to sound cruel and was startled by the heartlessness of his words. He merely wanted to face the truth about his life. A relationship with his mother was impossible so long as that huge lie lay between them.

  She sucked in a breath. “Your birth father had a wife and three children in Salt Lake. They moved to the east coast just before I joined AA and I never saw or heard from him again.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Elliott Cummings. He was an administrator at Kennecott Copper in Salt Lake and used to visit the Wheatley mine when I worked at the Robertson Inn.”

  “Did Isaiah know about him?”

  “Not at first. But later, after you were born, he suspected. No Bryce ever had brown eyes.”

  Bryce shook his head. Shades of Reggie Sterling and little Skyler. “So that’s why he hated me so much?”

  “He didn’t hate you. He was hurt and angry with me. It was entirely my fault, not yours. We didn’t have much money and he did the best he could. No matter how many times I got drunk, made a fool out of myself, and ran off, he took me back. It’s not easy to live with an alcoholic and most men would have kicked me out the door without a cent.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “I was young and stupid and I used him as a ticket to get away from my own messed-up family, but I wasn’t in love with him.”