After Silence

by Jonathan Carroll

  “Done. Who is Lincoln with?”

  “Ibrahim and Gus till the weekend, then Foof and Ky. He’s in heaven—spoiled rotten for six days. Foof and Ky are taking him to a Vietnamese wedding.”

  “You won’t be worried about him?”

  “Sure I’ll be worried, but I gotta get used to it. He’s ten now. God, ten years old. Do you know what he said before I left? ‘Are you going to make love with him, Mom?’ My son’s now asking who I’m having sex with.”

  I laughed. More because of her lips—since I last looked they had turned a pale pink-red.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “I think your lips are funny. They’ve finally changed color.”

  She touched a finger to them and inspected it. “Don’t you want to hear what I said to Lincoln?”

  “That’s a dangerous question.”

  “You know you’re dying to know. I told him yes, I’d be sleeping with you after you’ve had an AIDS test. Lincoln’s very paranoid about me getting AIDS. He watches too much TV.”

  I put a hand on her elbow. “I already did. I had a test when I was in the hospital.”

  “Me too. I did it there one day when we visited you.”

  Five steps ahead of me, she turned. I’d stayed planted, stopped both by the revelation and by the coolness of her answer. Her jaw dropped open comically and she shrugged. “Hey, you can’t have a romantic week without sex. I knew you’d get a test. You’re that kind of person. That’s one of the reasons why I agreed to come. You’re interesting, but you’re not nuts. I don’t need any more nuts in my life. Let’s go. The only other time I was in France, I got hepatitis and had to go to the hospital.”

  People take it for granted that most famous beautiful places are ruined because of today’s tourism, pollution, greed, land developers… but I disagree. If you know beforehand what to expect, they can still be splendid and fulfilling. What our cynical minds ignore is the fact that these spots are famous because of their beauty. Certainly some have been ruined over time, but many others are hearty and resilient and stubborn—they don’t take kindly to change and resist quite nicely the cheap Day-Glo cosmetics of our age.

  After we’d checked in at the hotel I did something I’d rarely done with a woman: as soon as we got to the room and were alone, I took Lily in my arms and brought her to bed. She was willing.

  The first time with anyone is often only so-so, even if the relationship later develops into wonder. The newness and nervousness, the will-I/will-she-be-good? worries make it more of an experiment than an experience. But even considering that, Lily made love so ardently and interestingly our first time that when it was over, I looked at her and said, “Zowie.” She was all opposites—hard and soft, fast and slow, tender then mean. She kept me off balance most of the time, which enhanced the whole experience incredibly. A kiss was suddenly a bite, then a lick, a nip, a long soft kiss. Her mouth pulled abruptly away, came back in for more, pulled away into a slow erotic smile. She made noise but it was quiet and low, noise meant only for us and no one else. I found myself watching her hands. They twisted and curled, became fists or lay helplessly open. They told the whole story. I was mad for those hands and kept putting my face on them or pulling them to me so I could feel their strength and warmth and smell everything on them. Both of us were on them and our smells were sweat and funk and Kouros cologne that had no chance against the other aromas.

  Much later, when we were finished, she went into the bathroom and started the shower. I got up quickly and, going in there, reached around her and turned it off. She dropped her eyebrows and stuck out her bottom lip. “What are you doing?”

  “Don’t shower yet. I love the idea of your walking around out there with our smells on you. That’s one of the best parts, don’t you think? World’s rarest perfume.”

  “Okay. That’s interesting. Most men I know leap for the bath afterward. It’s nice hearing you like the smells, Max. I do too, but I’ve been sort of brainwashed out of it over the years. You and another man are the only ones I’ve ever been with who were like that. I think most guys love pussy so long as it’s used properly. Take it beyond that and a lot of them get real nervous.”

  “Who was the other man?”

  “My ex-huzz, Rick.”

  “Rick the Prick?”

  “The very same. You have a good memory.”

  “Will you tell me about him?”

  “If you want. But it stings, so I can only do it in little bits.”

  One of those bits came while we were eating. Looking at a slice of cucumber, she wiggled it on her fork and smiled. “You want to hear a Rick Aaron story? I’ll tell you one about cucumbers. It just came to me this minute. I haven’t thought about it in years. After Rick and I had moved in together—this was in college—we decided it was time I met his parents. He’d warned me about them for months but I thought he was only being careful—you know, didn’t want to build up my expectations. They lived a few hours from school, so one Sunday we drove over there, all dressed up, looking like Barbie and Ken dolls. I was supposed to ask his father about their garden first chance I got because Dad was gonzo about gardening. We arrived and I was introduced. The family gave me the big once-over, then it was time for Sunday dinner. They put me next to Mr. Aaron, and halfway through soup, I said sweetly, T hear you have a beautiful garden, Mr. Aaron. Can I see it after we eat?’”

  “He says, ‘Wellll, I don’t know. Are you having your period?’ I was twenty years old, Max. I’d never met this jerk before, but the first thing he asked was that. I was speechless. I looked across the table at Rick for help but my hero over there was staring into his soup. But the rest of his family were looking at me how-do-you-do and waiting for my answer! ‘What does that have to do with your garden, Mr. Aaron?’ ‘Hah! Pretty darn obvious you don’t know much about gardening! Only thing I can tell you is when a menstruating woman gets near cucumber plants it is pure death to the cukes. That’s all there is to it.’ ”

  The trees were moving yellow around us. There was a glass of milky-white Pernod on the table next to my black eyeglasses. Plates with crisp salad and soft cheeses. My wallet was full of those marvelously large hundred-franc notes they hand you by the bundle in a bank with a small pin in one corner to hold them together. Soon we’d go back to the room and bathe, then get ready for dinner. What would she wear? No matter what, I knew now what she was like beneath her clothes. I knew I would be there again soon and she seemed as eager as I about it. I believe both of us were so happy that first day that it could have been repeated again and again until it was time for us to leave France and we would still have been fully content.

  It was the perfect land in which to begin our relationship, because the South of France is one long caress to the senses. Much of what you experience there can fuel a fundamental part of the spirit. For it is the earth, physical life, at its absolute best. That is what the beginning of love is too if you are lucky. I told Lily both “places” are where all the greatest ingredients in the world are found.

  I could offer a handful of snapshots or switch on the slide show and bore you with pictures of how happy we were, how much fun we had, but rather than that, there are only two other scenes I must describe.

  She loved open-air markets and we often came across them as we drove around that beautiful countryside. Our rented car was soon filled with perfume essences, old linen dresses, dried Provencal herbs and lavender. I loved standing beside Lily watching her sort through boxes of old French magazines, or rub olive oil on the back of her hand so she could better distinguish the quality. She taught me a great deal about food that week and I was both grateful and eager to learn. She laughed when I told her how her enthusiasm was so invigorating and different from the attitudes of the women I’d recently dated (excepting Norah Silver), who rarely took off their sunglasses to even look at a menu.

  “ ‘Say nothing, act casual,’ huh? I’m not very California in that way, am I? I don’t even own a pair of sunglas
ses.”

  What was the name of the town? I can see it so well in my mind’s eye. The fast brown river running next to it. The restaurant on the water where we ate. A historical plaque announcing that someone like Petrarch had lived there. A big market was being held when we drove in, so we stopped to eat and browse. The river, the market, and the main road all ran parallel to each other. Lily and I separated because she wanted to look at the food, while I discovered a box of old cartoon books that had me rubbing my hands together. We agreed to meet at the car in an hour, big kiss, see you later. Another thing I liked about her—it was no big deal to go your separate ways a while. More often than not, she was the one who suggested it when we were someplace but had our eyes on different directions.

  I was so engrossed in the books, the sound of impact and the howl of the poor animal didn’t penetrate my skull for moments. People started calling to each other and running in the same direction. My French is basic, but I heard “chien” and “accident.” Besides, the screams were hideous and unmistakable. It was clear what had happened. I only hoped it was a dog and nothing else.

  “Oh pauvre—”

  “Il n’est pas mort!”

  “Qui est la dame?”

  “Sais pas.”

  There was a crowd huddled in a semicircle over whatever was on the ground. I came up behind and through their movement saw a blast of shiny blood, entrails, and the beautiful gleaming black coat of a young dog. Its rear quarters were crushed across the pavement. Next to it on the ground was Lily. She was shouting in French for something, loud enough to be heard over the screeching death wails of the puppy. She said later she was asking for string, wire—anything she could use to choke. I pushed through and squatted down next to her. The dog moaned and snapped its jaws in a mad shudder and snarl. It kept trying to twist around to its burst rear. Black fur. White frothing mouth. Red. Half its young blood was over my love.

  “Max, get rope or string. No, give me your belt!”

  I knew what she wanted, why. I slid the belt out but said, “I’ll do it, Lily. Get back—it can still bite. It’s crazy.”

  When the dog turned away again, I whipped the belt around its neck and choked it with all my might. What little life was left, it took only seconds. The noises were soft and very short.

  “Hard, Max. Hard as you can! Kill it fast. Please kill it now.”

  Besides the grimness of the scene, what I found remarkable about it, and what kept coming back to me long after it was over, was how she reacted to what had happened. I remembered how she had run to help the pregnant woman in the parking lot the first day we met. She was unquestionably one of those rare good people whose first impulse is to help whenever it’s needed, but this was different. Helping is one thing, putting a crazed, dangerous animal out of its misery is another. Pragmatic yet moral, self-sacrificing, a firm good mother, funny, and a flame in bed… This was it. Lily Aaron was God’s gift to me. I knew I must do everything in my power to win her.

  There was another scene that happened in France, though the other is a story rather than a scene. A story I told her at the beginning of our flight back to Los Angeles. But on second thought, I will not tell it till later. Let this part end with death and hope. The real possibility of joy. See us looking out a small round airplane window together at the world below. A world that would have been ours, if not for the child.

  PART TWO. CROWS WITH BLUE EYES

  “Why should we import rags and relics into the new hour?”

  —Emerson

  “Mary told me about a couple that went to Thailand for a vacation. They were walking down the street in some town and saw a baby puppy just lying there. It was adorable but had been abandoned and they knew if they didn’t save it, it would die. So they took it and somehow snuck it back home with them. Back to America.

  “It grew up and was a real cutie—affectionate and sweet. It liked to sit on their laps when they were watching TV. But they also had a cat that the dog hated and was always after. One day the cat disappeared and next thing they knew the man found little bones or something near the dog’s bed.”

  “Get out! The dog ate the cat? Fur and all?”

  “Wait, it gets better. The dog ate the cat, fur and all, which made the owners a wee bit suspect. So they took the dog to the vet ‘cause they were afraid it might start eating other things in the neighborhood. The vet took one look at it and said, ‘This isn’t a dog. I don’t know what it is, but it is definitely not a dog.’”

  “What was it? What’d they do?”

  “Took it to a zoo. Know what it was? A rat. It was called something like a Giant Siamese Rat.”

  “THEY KEPT A RAT IN THE HOUSE?”

  “A Giant Siamese Rat.”

  “What’d they do with it?”

  “Put it to sleep.”

  Lincoln turned to his mother and asked, “That means they killed it?”

  “Yes, sweetie. Hey, Max, is that story true?”

  “According to Mary it is.”

  It was a winter Sunday. The three of us were sitting around the kitchen table still in our pajamas, each with his different section of the newspaper.

  Two months after returning from France we moved in together. It was a difficult change for all of us, but Lincoln had it hardest. Lily and I chose to do this because of our hope and new love. There would be difficulties, but there was also the elation that accompanies the possibility of real and long-lasting satisfaction. So, like diplomats negotiating a nuclear test ban treaty, we felt the boy out as delicately as we could and then worked our behavior and our words in such a way that he felt he was involved in our decision.

  Lincoln was used to having his mother to himself. I learned he was not a terribly egotistical kid but, like anyone, enjoyed being the center of another’s universe. They had lived alone together ten years. He was her history, while she was his rock and his truth. She had had boyfriends over the years, two of them quite serious, but nothing ever serious enough to threaten the straight distance between their two points. Lincoln’s father, Rick Aaron, was a rumor and a ghost to the boy. He seemed larger than life, ten feet tall, an adventurer, Zorro, et cetera, but he was more of an event to his son than a real human being.

  Lily and Rick met at Kenyon College. He was a handsome math whiz with a sleek ponytail of long hair, a blue Jeep, and a notebook of poetry he’d written two hundred pages long. He did photography, calligraphy, he knew a world about ornithology. Lily was enthralled and disturbed by him in equal measures. Why was this Mega Man interested in Lily Margolin, language major? She was good-looking, had enough self-confidence to hold her own in conversation, and liked sex more than most of her friends. Butttt Rick Aaron was one of those rare people who part the waters wherever they go. Men disliked him, yet they wanted to be his friend. Women looked too long at him, sometimes their mouths hung open a bit. He had a reputation, but from what Lily could gather, his old girlfriends were proud of their time with him and few of them said bad things. What bad was said was good: he was too intense, too hungry, too self-absorbed. She liked those qualities. Besides, with everything he had going for him, didn’t he have a right to be self-absorbed? It made Rick all the more compelling when he shone his thousand-candle-power attention her way. One night she even dreamed he was a lighthouse. A human lighthouse with enough brilliance and power to illumine every part of the night. The only odd thing about this dream, which naturally she took as a crucial sign from her deepest heart, was that Rick’s head swiveled completely around on his neck. But at the time, she took that as further proof of him as a true lighthouse. To include everything one must cover all directions, swivel or not.

  And he sure shone his light in her direction! She had had boyfriends. There was even one now at another college, but that guy, any other guys, stood no chance compared with this man. That was part of it—although he was only a sophomore, Lily thought of Rick as a man. What was wonderful was that at times he could be as silly and charming as a boy, but his strength and curi
osity made him sure, calm, adult. They met in September, and that Christmas, Rick gave her a hand-tooled leather album of poems and photographs he had done especially for her. She’d saved up for months and bought him a special lens for his camera but then felt like a superficial twerp holding that beautiful black leather book, letting pages slip down her thumb. A lens compared with poems?

  The more attention he paid her, the more happy and nervous she became. She was waiting for the bomb to drop or at least someone to hand her the bill for what this man and their relationship really cost. Most people think they deserve better than they’ve gotten. Trouble is, if we ever happen to get “it” we become terribly suspicious.

  The bill arrived shortly after they moved in together and Lily had survived her cucumber episode with Mr. Aaron. One evening Rick announced he was leaving school for a while. Just like that he was dropping out for a semester and going to San Francisco to see what all the fuss was about there. Like a brain tumor or terminal disease that lies dormant for years in our body until the day it comes to life and begins to eat us away from the inside, Rick suddenly was afflicted with either wanderlust or irresponsibility. It depended on how you saw it and on where you stood in relation to him. Always the good boy, good student, good good, he abruptly decided to hit the road and see what he was missing. Just like that. Unfortunately he left behind (among other things) a young woman hopelessly tied to him and willing to put up with this romantic bullshit so she could remain in his life. She even asked if she could go with him. That was an astounding realization to make. Emotions like this really existed! She had actually met a man for whom she’d sacrifice everything. She would desert her old life too if he’d let her. But he wouldn’t. Not that he was thinking of her well-being. Borrowing from bad cowboy-film dialogue, he actually said something along the lines of a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do and left Lily Margolin on the doorstep in Gambier, Ohio, watching his Jeep buzz off into the sunset.