The Price of Silence

by Camilla Trinchieri

  When An-ling found me in her home, she would clap her hands. “A hundred happiness frogs leap in my heart.

  Please stay. It’s lonely at night.”

  By late afternoon I’d be back in Manhattan as Tom’s wife, Josh’s mother.

  “Do you know what you’re doing to Josh?”Tom hurled at me one night from the doorway of the bathroom while my mouth was full of toothpaste.“He’s sick to his stomach. His mother panting after some girl like a dog in heat. A girl who’s only after what she can get out of you. God damn it, Emma, Josh is your son! He should come first.”

  I spit out the toothpaste. “An-ling is not my lover!”

  He steeped into the bathroom and closed the door.“You love her like a daughter, right?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

  “How can you say that to me?” His voice was low, raw with emotion. “That girl is nothing like Amy. No one can replace Amy. She’s dead.You killed her, remember? You can’t get her back!”

  I let the cruelty of Tom’s words steep until I started to believe he had no love left for me. In the years since Amy, anger had whittled away what good feelings he’d had. For fifteen years we had walked through our married life on opposite sides of a chasm. I knew it all along, I told myself. How could I not? And yet it was only now, leaning over the sink with toothpaste dribbling out of my mouth, that I realized how insurmountable the distance between us had become.

  His face moved into the mirror. “Leave. Move in with her. Play mommy or lover around the clock. Get it out of your system.We’ll do fine without you.”

  He wanted me to go. Just him and Josh, without the killer mom, the way he must have always wanted it. An-ling was his excuse. Our excuse.

  On cross-examination, Fishkin asks, “Mr. Curtis, in the five months you and Emma Perotti lived in the same building, how many times did you speak to her?”

  “Hard to say. Eight, ten times maybe.”

  “Where did you speak to her?”

  “In the elevator.”

  “How many minutes would you say is the ride to the fifth floor where she lived?”

  Curtis looks annoyed. “I never timed it, but I’d say two, three minutes. It’s a real old elevator.”

  “What did the two of you talk about during that brief period?”

  “Hell, I don’t remember. Nothing earth-shattering, I guess.”

  Curtis raises an arm, exposing a streak of iridescent orange paint.

  “Wait a minute. One time she asked me to come look at the girl’s work. She wanted me to help her find a gallery. I told her I had my hands full promoting my own work.”

  “How did she react to your refusal?”

  “She was always a cool lady. You know, the type that keeps her baggage under lock and key.”

  “Having exchanged two- or three-minute conversations with Emma Perotti eight or ten times over five months, you say that you recognized her shouting voice one floor below, while listening to Mahler and concentrating on your painting?”

  “Yup. She’s got a furry voice. Sexy.”

  “Even when she shouts?”

  Curtis’s eyes dart to Guzman. There’s a moment’s hesitation before he answers. “Yes, even then.”

  Josh

  It was about a month after the trip to Maine, a month when it felt like the iceberg that sank the Titanic had surfaced in our apartment. I was in bed, almost asleep. I heard a click, felt heat on my face. Then I heard Mom’s “furry” voice. “I want to talk to you about An-ling.”

  I unscrunched an eye. She was standing over my bed. I poked my nose out from under the bedcovers and opened the other eye. The lamp lit her from the waist on down.

  “Your father thinks you’re upset.” Her knees stuck out of her bathrobe.They looked like old wrinkled faces.“Are you upset?” Her face stayed in the dark.

  “What, Mom?”

  “Are you upset that I see her a lot? That I’m helping her?”

  I shook my head. Shaking your head is like a twitch, something that can happen even if you don’t want it to. It’s not like downright lying, because the truth is, that while I wasn’t what I’d call upset, I did wonder what the hell was going on.

  “I’ve tried to tell you we’re just friends.Our relationship is a perfectly normal one.”

  “You’ve got to work it out with Dad. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

  “He wants me to give her up or leave and if I give her up—” she sucked in her breath, a quick sizzle of a sound.

  “What?”

  “It would be cruel. An-ling has no one in this country except us.”

  I sat up. This was it, what Dad was preparing me for in Maine.“You do what you want to do, Mom. Don’t ask me to make up your mind for you.”

  She grabbed hold of my neck, kissed the top of my head.

  I could smell the perfume she uses—One by Calvin Klein.

  Dad and I give her a bottle every Christmas. Remembering that made my stomach feel funny, caved in.

  “You love your father very much.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’re best buddies.”

  “Yeah.” I didn’t know where she was going with that. I mean, she knew this stuff already. I don’t know. Maybe she was jealous. She wanted me to tell her how much I loved her. I didn’t because,well, I just didn’t.Which didn’t mean I didn’t love her.

  “Go stay with her for a while, if you want,” I said. “It’s okay.We’ll be okay.” That was what she wanted to hear, I thought. Now I’m not so sure.

  Tom

  Friday of Columbus Day weekend I had one of my cravings for ice cream in the middle of the night. I opened the freezer and was confronted with a wall of food. Every inch of space was crammed with stews from our favorite takeout place on Broadway, hamburger meat, chicken breasts, spinach, corn, pizzas, supermarket lasagna, Mars bars for Josh.

  I shook Emma awake. “What the hell is all that food doing in our freezer?”

  She turned over, mumbled. “It’s just food.”

  I shook her shoulder.“There’s enough to get us through the entire winter.”

  She sat up, pulled the blanket up under her chin. All she let me see was her face streaked with pillow marks. “I’m going away for a few days. I’ve discussed it with Josh and he’s okay with it. It’ll do us both good. Please don’t make it a big deal,Tom. It’s something you want too. As you pointed out, you and Josh will do fine without me. The two of you are a kingdom unto yourselves.”

  “I want no such thing!”

  “I’m going.”

  She stared at me, waiting for me to fight her. Instead,my anger walked me out of the bedroom, back to the kitchen. I sat in the cold light of the open freezer and dug into a pint of strawberry ice cream.Anger got mixed with humiliation, with love, with grief.The new grief touched upon the old one of Amy being gone, went further back in time to the stunned silent grief of when my mother died.

  For the duration of that pint, I cried tears I didn’t know I had in me.Then I threw that self-pity in the garbage with the ice cream carton and went back to the bedroom. She was waiting for me.

  “How long is a few days?”

  “That depends on you.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” Again I walked. Josh and I were indeed a kingdom unto ourselves.

  My wife left on Columbus Day. I wonder if she was aware of the irony of that date.

  I didn’t ask Emma to leave our home, I told myself in the days that followed. Nothing would drive me to separate my son from his mother. By giving her a choice I was trying to jolt her mind, to clear it. I was presuming she was still a mature, responsible individual. I was assuming she could assess the consequences of her behavior, the damage to Josh, to our marriage.When I gave Emma a choice I had no doubts that she would stay. Her family or that girl—it was an absurd juxtaposition. It was no choice at all.

  TWELVE

  Josh

  THE SUNDAY AFTER Mom left I met her for brunch on Avenue B—Alphabet City, a secti
on of town Dad said was full of muggers and drug pushers. I pecked Mom’s cheeks. “How’d you know about this place?”Why here? Why not in Brooklyn near An-ling’s place? Why not in Morningside Heights, near me?

  She pecked back. “I don’t remember,” she said in a small voice, like her throat was bothering her, like she didn’t want me to know An-ling was showing her a whole new world.

  We sat by the window in a corner of a long, narrow room with polished metal walls and furniture that made me wish I owned sunglasses. Outside, couples walked past, holding hands or pushing strollers. No dealers I could spot.

  “How are you?” she asked, after she ordered eggs benedict. I went for French toast.

  “Fine.” The chair I was sitting in dug into my back. I put my down jacket back on.“Lots of work at school, but I can handle it. Practice with Max and Ben.You know, the usual.”

  “Dad?”

  “He’s okay. He’s working big time.”

  Her eyes stayed glued on my face. Did she forget what I looked like?

  “Stop it, Mom.”

  She gave a tinkle of a laugh.“You’re becoming so good-looking.”

  “In a week?”

  The food came, which gave her an excuse not to answer that.The French toast was thick, the way I like it.“We got a cleaning lady on Friday”—my mouth was half full— “from Mrs. Ricklin. Soledad. She’s from Guatemala. She’s going to come twice a week.”

  Mom’s fork stopped halfway to her mouth. The egg dripped on the edge of the table, then slid down and landed on her lap.

  “Just until you come back.”

  She put her fork down.“Do you like her?”

  What did she want me to say? That I hated Soledad, that she could never replace Mom? I opted for the truth. “She’s really nice and I thank her a lot.You always tell me not to exploit people.‘Gracias, Señora Soledad. Gracias para Usted trabajo.’ It makes her laugh.That’s good, isn’t it?”

  She wiped at her lap with a napkin. “She’ll help with your Spanish.” Her face stayed as cold as those metal walls.

  After that, not much got said that meant anything in the situation. Mom drank three cups of coffee while I finished my toast.The rest of her food stayed on her plate. I should never have told her about Soledad. It made it look like Dad didn’t want her back.“Mrs. Ricklin said Soledad needed to make a few extra dollars to help pay for her son’s col-lege,”— not true but why not?—“so Dad thought why not help her and help us? I mean when you come back she’ll stay if you want her to.You know, it was just . . . why not?”

  Mom paid the check, put on her jacket, flashed me a half smile.“I’m glad someone is helping.” She walked me to the subway station on 14th Street.“Thanks for coming.” I got a hug.“Next Sunday?”

  So what happened to “a few days”? I wanted to ask, but didn’t.“Sure. Next Sunday.”

  That was the start of our routine. She called a couple of times a week, always on my cell, then on Sunday, brunch.

  Greenwich Village became our meeting place.“The halfway point,” she called it, which could mean two things: the halfway point between Brooklyn and the Upper West Side or the point where two opposing sides meet for truce talks.

  During those brunches I wanted to ask Mom,“Is it great to be with An-ling? Is that why you’re not coming home?

  Is she naked a lot?” I wanted to tell her how jealous I was, how I thought about An-ling every night. Instead I told her about the school principal sliding on a pretzel bag in the hallway and breaking his ankle, about Soledad ironing my T-shirts even after I’d asked her not to and earning me more dork points with the girls, about how Max had hired the trio for his own birthday party.How I was planning a series of portraits of my fish for photography class: The Fishtank Family Gallery.

  She didn’t offer much from her end. No touchy-feely conversations between us like: I miss you. Do you miss me?

  Will you ever forgive me? I really do love you. I love you, but I also love her. I want you both; it’s killing me.Tell me you understand.

  I would have said, “Sure Mom, I understand, but what about Dad? What about Dad’s favorite mantra: self-absorption is the scourge of modern-day youth? What’s your take on that, Mom? What’s the age limit on youth?”

  “How is your mother?” Dad always asked when I got home, his face looking like he was trying to loosen a really tight screw.There was always some written thing on his lap, like he was searching for a formula, some economic law that was going to balance things out again.

  “She’s good.” It had to be good.Why else stay away?

  A few days before Thanksgiving the phone rang while Dad and I were in the kitchen digging through Soledad’s tamales. Dad picked up, listened. By the sharp set of his jaw I knew it was Mom. I started to leave, but Dad tapped my shoulder. He cradled the phone against his chest.

  “Your mother wants to come home to cook Thanksgiving dinner for us. It doesn’t mean she’s going to stay.”

  “Did she say that?”

  Dad’s eyes turned soapy like he’d suddenly gone blind. It was up to me.

  “Sure. Sounds good.”Awful—a couple of hours chomping on food together, then the bell rings, family session’s over and it’s just me and Dad again. Hell on Dad.

  “Fine,” Dad said to the phone in his no-nonsense-tolerated voice.“What do you want me to buy?” He reached for the pad. I handed him a pencil. Then a long pause during which he turned his back to me, phone clamped tight against his ear.

  “No,” he said and hung up. He sat down, picked up his fork.“We’ll go out for Thanksgiving. Some inn out of the city.The fresh air will do us good.”

  Mom wasn’t invited, that much I knew, and I also knew not to ask what had happened. The unspoken is the M.O. around here and I’ve gotten to be an ace at reading the silence. Most of the time. The blade in Dad’s voice only came out if An-ling was mentioned. Mom must have asked if she could bring her along.

  For my fourteenth birthday, Mom suggested lunch—the three of us. Dad said he couldn’t make it, which was just fine.

  The two of them faking nice on my birthday, no thanks.

  December 6, a Saturday with lots of sun. Mom and I celebrated by eating great pasta at Lupa in the Village. She gave me a gift certificate for Drummer’s World. I nearly choked on a fettuccini when I saw how much it was for. After lunch we sat on a park bench in Washington Square Park.

  “Dad’s taking me to Pittsburgh for Christmas,” I said. In the dog run, a black-and-white terrier was trying to mount a panting Lab.

  She closed her eyes, pressed her lips together. I felt a little swish of satisfaction that I’d surprised her, that she didn’t like the news. “We’re visiting one of his college buddies, Sam somebody and his family.You know him?”The Lab sat down and put an end to the love affair.

  “I was going to take you to a restaurant where you could order all the lobster Fra Diavolo you wanted.”

  My favorite food.“With An-ling, too?”

  “No, just you and me. And Dad if he wanted to. I’ll miss you.”

  I kicked a stone real hard and almost hit a passerby.“No, you won’t!” I limped down the walkway,my toe killing me.

  I heard her running.

  She tugged at my arm.“Josh, come back. Sit down, please.”

  “I got a headache.” I kept on walking.

  “All right, it’s my fault,” she yelled. “All of it. I’m a terrible wife, a terrible mother and I’m sorry. I’m sorry!” She didn’t follow me, which was fine with me.When I ducked into a sidestreet I called Max, but he wasn’t at his place and there was no way I was going home early to face Dad.

  I ended up walking real slow on Sixth Avenue, then hitting Broadway at 34th Street and taking it all the way home, about a hundred blocks in all, my sore toe screaming at me the whole time, which somehow made me feel heroic.

  Along the way I made up my mind that if Mom wanted to see me, she’d have to come home.

  The following Sunday she was smil
ing and I was eating Lobster Fra Diavolo and telling her about how The Tale of Two Cities was a boring book.

  “Why doesn’t An-ling ever come with you?” I asked.

  “This is our special time, just you and me.”

  “I’ll go back with you. I want to see where you live.”

  “Maybe when you come back from Pittsburgh.”

  In bed at night I imagined the place she’d gone to: a humongous white cave full of light, like the lofts I’d seen in the movies. They would never lose sight of each other:

  Mom reading or correcting papers at one end of the place, An-ling painting at the other end.They could wave to each other, shout to be heard. At night they could curl up in bed and listen to each other breathing and never be scared of being alone. I’d see An-ling getting up in the middle of the night: She’s naked and the light from the street shines on her body as she walks toward me across the floor. She continues to walk, getting bigger and bigger until I came in my hand.

  The Sunday before Christmas it was real cold and Mom took me to a crowded Italian coffee shop on MacDougal Street after our brunch. She started telling me how coming down to Greenwich Village was the it thing to do when she was at Queens College, how she and her girlfriends would sit in this same coffee shop and order espresso after espresso until their hands trembled from the caffeine.

  “We were trying so hard to be sophisticated Manhattanites.” She spread out her hands and started pinching her fingers.The windows were all steamed up from the heat in the place, but she kept her gloves on, which meant we weren’t going to stay for long. A quick bite, a coffee for her and then we’d head for my subway on Christopher Street and she’d go back to Sixth Avenue to get the F train— I’d studied the route on a subway map—back to An-ling.

  “Now I can only drink decaf,” she said.

  “What about your friends?”

  “I lost touch when I got married.”

  “Let’s go to the loft, Mom.”

  She shook her head, the smile stuck on her face like a bubble-gum balloon that had popped before she could get it back into her mouth. “Everything is still a mess. After Christmas.”

  Inside me, it felt like the wind had just died. I watched her pinch her thumb, forefinger, middle finger, down the line of one hand, down the other hand and back again.