The Price of Silence

by Camilla Trinchieri

  Saturday morning we were on the New Jersey Turnpike coming home and my cell rang. I looked at Dad. He thinks cells should be banned except for emergencies.

  “Josh, please. Let whoever it is leave a message.”

  I knew it was An-ling. I just knew it.

  “This is really important, Dad.” I answered.

  “I don’t want to see you anymore,” she said.

  She was kidding, I thought. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Look, it was just a hook-up, okay. It’s over.”

  I told her I’d call her back in a few hours.

  “Don’t. I’m bored with fucking little kids.” She hung up.

  Now I was roadkill, crow food.

  Dad had one eye on the road, one on me.“You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was that your mother?”

  “Max. I gotta go over there to practice a new song.” Lies come easy once you start.

  I took the subway to Brooklyn, telling myself this wasn’t happening to me. An-ling was going to open the door laughing and kiss me and say it was just a joke. If it wasn’t a joke? Yell at her, beg her to take me back, shake her until she changed her mind, make love to her. I didn’t know what. I had a hundred rats’ teeth chomping at my insides and my head felt like the whole Manhattan subway system was running through it at breakneck speed.

  I called her as soon as I got out of the subway station to get her to come down and open the door. No one answered. I walked over anyway. I rang the doorbell, banged on the door. She called my cell.

  “Go away, little boy. I’m through with you.”

  I don’t know when I smashed the cell against the door. I wasn’t aware of doing it until I saw the blood on my hand from where the cracked casing cut it. It wasn’t a bad cut, but I pressed my finger hard against it and watched the blood ooze out. It felt good.

  I waited for a couple of hours. Long enough for the rats’ teeth to stop chewing up my insides and the subways in my head to call it a day. On the way back to Manhattan, I kept my thoughts on how I was going to get my great-grandmother’s St. Christopher medal back.

  I went over to Max’s apartment and cried out every drop of water in my body. He wanted to know what was wrong.

  I told him Mrs. Ricklin’s dog got run over by a car.

  Tom

  Toward the end of March, leaving school one late afternoon, I spotted An-ling standing on the corner underneath a streetlamp.

  She was in a clutch of students smoking, drinking soda, eating hot dogs from the vendor on the corner,pretending to belong among them. It was an unusually cold March—most days the temperature stayed in the mid- to high-thirties, with so much rain the reservoirs were overflowing—but she was standing there with her midriff bare, slacks tight enough to show the mound of her groin,over her chest something skimpy that the rain rendered transparent.

  “Hi,Mister Professor,” she called out.“Hi,Tom.”

  My chest tightened at the sight of her, but I walked right by. I half expected her to follow me as I climbed down the subway stairs. She was after something; I had no doubt about that, but what precisely that something was escaped me.

  Seven,eight times I saw her over a two-week period and as the days passed an idea—more of a premonition, truth be told— began to take hold in my head. Her continued presence outside the college, waiting for me, gave me the feeling that something had gone wrong in her relationship with my wife.

  I had no rational explanations to back me up, no known factors from which to gauge the situation and yet that is what I believed.I realize now that I was overcome with that most idiotic of sentiments,hope,which overrides all sensible thought.

  After seeing An-ling for the third time in a week, I called Inez Serrano, a friend of Emma’s and her school director.

  After much cajoling on my part, she told me Emma had been sleeping at the school for the past week and a half.

  When I saw An-ling outside the college the next time, my chest tightened out of joy, not disgust. I believe I even flashed her a smile, one of triumph, but which she interpreted as a sign of encouragement to move on to her next nefarious step.

  SIXTEEN

  ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY Guzman hands some papers to a court officer, then shifts his glance to Judge Sanders.

  “Your Honor, at this point I offer printouts of Joshua Howells’s emails as People’s Exhibit Fourteen.”

  After the exhibit is labeled, the court officer hands the papers to the witness, Jerry Potarski, a large, pony-tailed police computer technician in his mid-twenties.

  “Mr. Potraski, do you recognize the printouts now in your possession?”

  “Sure do. They’re printouts of four e-mails I retrieved from Joshua Howells’ laptop computer.”

  “How did you retrieve them?”

  “I found them in the hard drive. They’d been deleted from the e-mail file.”

  “When were these e-mails sent?”

  Potarski looks through the printouts. “The first one is dated April thirteenth of last year, then April fourteenth, then April fifteenth. The last one is from April seventeenth.”

  “Who were these e-mails addressed to?”

  “Chinese canary at hotmail.com.”

  “Were you able to discover who held the Chinese canary account?”

  “An-ling Huang.”

  “Thank you. No further questions.”

  Fishkin stands up. “No cross, Your Honor.”

  Emma

  I was back home, feeling like an intruder in the apartment I had shared with Tom and Josh for twelve years. I also felt ashamed and immensely stupid. That morning I had gathered my courage and called Tom to meet me there.

  The sleigh bells on the front door jingled. Tom had attached them when we first moved in, to mark our comings and goings. I heard keys being tossed from hand to hand, the sound that had first made me notice Tom as we stood on line for a movie way back, twenty-six years ago.A lean, reserved profile, long sideburns already curling with gray, heavy-framed glasses, a chiseled face, reassuring in its strength.

  “My father used to play music by tossing his keys,” I told him, standing two people behind him. “Jailhouse Rock. My mother would start singing.”

  Tom laughed, guessing I’d made it up.

  Now I rested my head on the back of the sofa and shut my eyes. Footsteps in the hallway came closer.Then a hush.

  He’s on the carpet now, he’s seen me. Cold air dropped on my thighs as Tom lifted my coat off my lap.He removed my shoes, pressed his warm hands against my toes. I started to cry.Tom took his hands away.

  “Are you planning to stay?” It surprised me how far away his voice sounded, how light in delivery his question was.

  I felt a gust of cold air and opened my eyes to flapping curtains. Tom had opened the window. It was snowing, flakes swirling against the wall of the opposite building. A cold, demented April. It had been over two weeks since I had told An-ling I never wanted to see her again. I had screamed my fury at her for the whole building to hear.

  My coat was neatly folded over the armchair.

  “I’ve been sleeping at the school.” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth.Tom was going to think I was begging for sympathy.

  “Have you left her?”Tom asked.

  “I want to come home.”

  Tom stood immobile across the living room, with my boots in his hands. I always forgot how tall he was. Tree Tom, I used to call him, telling him he was the only tree I wanted to climb. My boots were wet.They were going to stain the carpet.

  “Is it over?”

  “Yes.” I sat up. “An-ling is over. Do you want to know why I’ve come home?”What would I tell him? That she stole money from me, stayed out all night, did drugs—lies that would satisfy his opinion of her? No, I wasn’t going to besmirch her to satisfy my anger or Tom’s. The truth belonged to Josh. Only he had the right to tell it. What I could tell my husband was that regardless of what An-ling had done, I
was coming home anyway.Would he believe me?

  “I’ve stopped requiring details from you, Emma.”

  “Aren’t you at least curious?”

  “You’ve never been very good at explanations for your actions.”

  “You’re right,Tom. I can’t explain them even to myself.

  If you had called just—” I broke off my sentence. “How is Josh? He cancelled last Sunday, said he had a cold. I miss him.”

  Tom was looking at me warily.

  “I miss him.” I repeated.

  “He’s fine.” He went back to examining my shoes through his glasses. Black ankle boots, scuffed and dirty from bad weather.Tom, the family shoe-shine boy. Every Sunday with The Times’ Help Wanted pages spread on the kitchen floor,Tom polished the family shoes, his, hers, Josh’s one pair of Timberlands even though they only got worn a couple of times a year. For Tom it was a Sunday ritual as sacred as Mass used to be for me. His way of making sure we put our best foot forward.

  “I want to come back to be with you and Josh.”

  Tom’s gaze stayed on the boots.

  “Please.”

  “I talked it over with him at breakfast this morning,”Tom said slowly.

  “What did he say?”

  “I knew you’ve been sleeping at the school.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Josh would be happy if you came back.”

  “He said that?” I so wanted to believe it.

  “He expressed it in teenager shorthand. ‘Great!’ is all he said, but the tone of his voice was sincere.”

  I felt light with joy.“I owe Josh more than he can know.

  I owe you. I want to erase my debt for good. Please help me do that,Tom.”

  He left the room without a word.

  “What do you want?” I followed him into the bedroom.

  Tom reached for a magazine from the pile he kept on his bedside table, used the magazine as a tray to carry my boots.

  He carefully placed them on the floor of his closet. On Sunday he’ll shine them for me,was that what he was telling me? “Talk to me,Tom. Please. Our silence hasn’t done us any good at all.”

  “Please keep our home clean of her.” He handed me my old sneakers.“I never want to hear her name. No explanations or excuses to me or Josh about what happened or why.” He reached for a strand of my hair, twirled it around his finger.

  “You never called, Tom. Why couldn’t you say, ‘With An-ling or without, I love you. Come home’?”

  “Would you have come back?”

  “Yes.”

  His fingers stayed in my hair, but the wisp of softness that had touched his face a moment before disappeared. “As far as we’re concerned you never left.”

  “Half of me never did.” I took his face in my hands and kissed him softly.

  He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

  A few hours later, I was in the kitchen, getting ready to cook dinner for Tom and Josh. Six months had gone by since I’d been there and I played a game I use with my beginner students: find the differences in two similar pictures. I could spot only three.The old spice jars that I kept lined up on the counter had been removed and not replaced. The African violets under their grow lights were gone.The space above the phone where I always hung the World Wildlife calendar was empty.

  I set a large pot of water to boil and waited for Josh to come home, the faint hope I had nursed earlier swallowed by the fear that Tom had gotten it wrong, that Josh would turn away from me.

  I heard the refrigerator door open behind me. Josh was there, in the kitchen. For a few seconds I imagined turning around, hugging him, covering his face with kisses, overwhelming him with my feelings. I turned on the stove fan even though the only thing cooking on the stove was water.

  The whirring sound calmed me.

  A lobster crawled out of the paper bag I had set down on the counter. I’d always refused to cook lobster and now the thought of plunging a live animal into boiling water turned my stomach. “We’re having lobster Fra Diavolo,” I announced, still facing the sink,washing salad.

  Thanks to the din of the fan, my loudness made me sound resolute instead of afraid. How should I start our new life together? Did you finish your science project?

  How’s Max these days? What about that gig you told me about; did it go well?

  I turned to face him.“I’ve come home, Josh.” Under dark lashes, deep hazel eyes that seemed to swell when he smiled; full lips that were so pink when he was a baby that Tom accused me of putting lipstick on them. His hair, fine, dirty blond, straggled below his ears. Cheekbones pushed out of a face that had been chubby until this year.With the emergence of cheekbones he’d added a small gold hoop in his left ear. He was holding himself taller these days, aware of his newfound muscles. He worked out on his home gym every day he had told me when I remarked on the change in his body.

  I leaned into him. He was growing too fast and my arms wanted to fold him into me and reassure him that his life was going to be worthwhile despite his mother. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

  Josh tapped the top of his Coke can—a hand-me-down gesture from Tom that was supposed to stop the soda from gushing out—and dropped his eyes to the lobster making its slow way across the counter. “Lobster Fra Diavolo! Great, my fave!”There was no enthusiasm in his voice. Only awkwardness, maybe embarrassment.

  Josh popped the can open. Foam spewed out, dripped to the floor, turning into transparent liquid.“I’ll get it,” he said.

  I bent down before he had a chance and wiped up the soda with a sponge. I straightened myself up by holding his elbow. I could only bring myself to make timid gestures.

  “We’re celebrating you, Josh.”

  He bobbed his head.The grin leaking onto his face made him look no older than ten. “I can go for that!”

  “Josh, Sweetie—”

  Josh stepped sideways,out of the reach of my opening arms.

  “Hey, where does my dinner think he’s going?”The lobster had sidled to the edge of the counter and was about to fall over. Josh picked it up, rubbed his finger on a spot above its eyes.“It makes him drowsy.He won’t know what hit him.”He lifted the lid of the pot and slid the lobster into the boiling water.He grabbed the paper bag on the counter and turned it over.Two more lobsters fell in the pot, the water splashing on his arm.

  “Oh, Josh! Let me get some ice to put on that.”

  “Leave it. It’s fine. I can get my own ice if I want.”

  With my eyes I tried to reach behind that closed, remote face to gauge his feelings, to get an inkling of what he was thinking about An-ling, about my coming back. I gleaned no information.

  “Want me to rub your forehead, too?” Josh asked.

  “How about adding Mom to that sentence?”

  The grin came back, forced this time.“Sure. Mom.”

  “I guess I could use a little numbing.”

  I hardly felt his touch on my forehead. Close-up he smelled of cigarettes and sweat. He smelled like a man, a sexual being. I pulled away. He was still so young.

  “Did Dad ask you a lot of questions about you? An-ling?

  I mean about why you’re back?” His face turned red.

  “I’m back because of you.”Which was the truth. I even came to think, in the days that followed, that bringing me back to my son had been An-ling’s aim all along. “I missed you.” I waited for a reaction.

  His eyes look almost transparent in their blankness.

  “There’s no need to tell Dad anything.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” I said, adding a smile for reassurance.

  I will protect you always, I thought and remembered a time when I had watched Josh, two years old, playing on the floor of this kitchen.We had just moved back to the city.

  Josh was stacking wooden blocks with lip-sucking concentration. When the blocks were piled as high as he could get them, he peeked at me from beneath the long dark lashes that he had inherited from my mot
her. His mouth was clamped shut but I knew he was hiding a smile, a smile that with a quick brush of his hand exploded into laughter as the blocks went flying. I forgot my penance, my vow to God, and scooped up my son, buried my nose in his belly, blew on his navel, tickled him, swung him over my shoulder, laughing my love for him out loud for the first time.

  Two days later I took Josh to his first city playground in Riverside Park. He was playing near the jungle gym; I sat on a bench nearby, correcting papers. I don’t know how much time passed before I was startled by a small gasp, a rush of many colors crossing my line of vision. I looked up to see a woman kneeling on the concrete by the jungle gym. She bent over, her colorful skirt pooling around her, hiding what I took too long to realize was a child. I stood up, scanned the playground for Josh. He was nowhere.

  “Josh!” I ran to the jungle gym.

  “He is yours?” the woman asked.

  Josh was on the ground, silent, his face gone green, his eyes swollen with pain.“Baby!” I bent down, started to lift him up. He howled and slammed his small hands against my chest.

  The femur of his left leg was broken in two places. It took months before he’d let me pick him up again. I never let my love for Josh out of my heart again.

  Now my son’s worried face was inches away from my own.We were together in our home for the first time in months. I felt like a cripple who, having suddenly found her limbs again, was having trouble getting started.

  I love you, Joshua Howells, I told his eyes with mine.

  Always have.Always will.

  Out loud I said, “Rinse out your mouth before Dad comes home.”

  SEVENTEEN

  AYESHA KIRBY’S LONG, gauzy skirt catches on the railing as she slides into the witness chair. She is thin, petite, with hair cropped close to her scalp, chiseled features and a complexion the color of almond skins. After she states her profession— dancer and artist’s model—Guzman asks, “On April nineteenth of last year, you went to 313 Lowry Street to model for Tod Curtis, is that correct?”