Silent Bird

by Reina Lisa Menasche

  “Home? Which home?”

  “My home.”

  “You mean…America? No, Pilar, that is not”—his voice faded off. His mouth hung open.

  “To talk to my mother, at the very least,” I said. “Because even though you’re wrong about your family, you are right in one way: this is about my family too.”

  “Chérie, please. Wait. Stay here, let’s talk about this.”

  Believe me, I was tempted. Maybe I would have waited. Maybe I would have weakened and capitulated and stayed with him right then and there if I hadn’t felt a tug in my lower belly, followed by a rush of warmth inside my pants.

  Blood.

  I was having a miscarriage.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I

  The night before I left for college, I almost forgave my father.

  He'd visited me in the tiny bedroom I'd called my own since Mom and I moved from the big house in the Hamptons after the divorce. That room had been my sanctuary for fifteen years. It hadn’t changed much since kindergarten: yellow flowered wallpaper, lacy curtains; my stuffed animals lining the floor against the wall. The only alien presence was the row of suitcases open like hungry clams on the bed.

  Except they weren’t empty. They overflowed with clothing, books, notebooks, sketchpads, keepsakes. Proof that I would be gone for most of the year in case my mother needed evidence of that reality when she came in from the kitchen where she happened to be cleaning the oven at nine o'clock at night. Proof for me, too.

  “You’re not going so far as all that. You can drive home every weekend if you prefer,” said the familiar deep voice behind me, its urbane British accent roughened by cigarettes.

  I spun, startled by the intrusion—and automatically tugged down the hem of my oversized T-shirt.

  My father stood in the doorway. He made it look too small for a big kid’s room. His thick twist of brown hair, threaded with gray, had not receded an inch after all this time. Yet the lines beside his eyes and bracketing his mouth had eroded into trenches. His cheeks looked perpetually chapped. I instinctively checked his eyes. They were clear. He was still staying away from the evil fluid. The dreaded “cough medicine.”

  Good for him.

  “I don’t prefer,” I said coolly. “It’s time for me to move on.”

  He walked all the way into my room as if I was still little and no invitation expected or needed.

  “Moving on is never so simple,” he said. “No matter where we go, there we are, if you understand my meaning.”

  “I appreciate the tip.” My voice sounded skeptical though he really did know something about failing to move on. My whole life had been full of unexpected appearances and disappearances as he traded New York for England and Sark and who knew where else and who else.

  He sure didn’t know how to move on. God only knew if I’d turn out any different.

  “Pencils?” he asked dryly, reaching into one of the suitcases. “You think they don’t sell art supplies on campus?”

  “Please leave it. I won’t have much spending money. I need my drawing stuff.”

  He put the pencil down. “Were you intending to tell me that you were leaving three weeks earlier than planned? I heard nothing from you. You didn’t return my calls.”

  “Things have been hectic.” I paused. “How did you find out?”

  “Your mother. She rang me with your schedule.”

  “She did?” I fought down anger. “Well. I figured you'd already gone back to…wherever.”

  “Now, Pilar.” He touched something else in one of my suitcases. “You know I want to see you settled at university.”

  I knew it, but I was a consummate liar. Like him.

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I didn’t think it mattered.” Even if you’re paying my tuition!

  “You don’t believe that,” he said mildly, as if he knew the things I held against him would never be fully believed.

  Then he changed the subject.

  “Your mother's quite upset at you leaving, much less three weeks early.”

  “Really. Well.”

  “Surely you can understand? Empty nest and all that.”

  “I know. But she’ll get over it.”

  He turned and looked me straight in the eye for the first time since entering the room.

  I made myself look back.

  “You've really grown up, haven’t you, Pilar?”

  At some level I'd been waiting for these words to come out of his mouth. He'd said them to me a thousand times in a thousand ways since I was five; I'd learned to hate hearing how big and grown-up I was. Yet the words seemed different now. It took me a minute to realize that he sounded...wistful. The way you’d expect any decent father to sound when his only child was about to leave home for college.

  It disarmed me. I wanted to hate him all the more for that.

  “I think you've done a damned fine job with yourself,” he went on. “I recall your high school guidance counselor claiming you'd never get into college. Yet here you are, ready to spread your wings.”

  Better than my legs, my mind retorted—and shut down with an almost audible snap. As if being kidnapped by your father and taken to a cold house on a cold island in the middle of the English Channel and then molested should leave no mark. As if remembering the baths, the long baths he gave me there, or the bribes he paid me when I was older, should wash away my anger too.

  He turned his head to look out the window. “You've done wonders, you and your mother. God knows I haven’t been much help, though I tried to be in my own way. I am glad to do this for you, to pay for your studies. It’s important to me.”

  I shuddered. What did he expect me to say now? You’re right, Dad; thanks to you, I'm heading for a bright future.

  “I haven’t forgotten anything,” I said instead. “I still remember everything that happened. Even if you act like it’s all changed.”

  “It has all changed.” He actually sounded surprised. “We’ve put the past behind us, haven’t we?”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s forgotten.”

  He looked away.

  “I’ll never forget,” I said. “Ever. And one day I’ll tell Mom. Then she won’t forget either.”

  He turned back toward my luggage. “Ah, Pilar, aren’t things easier now? We don’t need to bother your mother with the past, do we?” He scratched the base of his neck.

  And for some reason, that harmless little gesture pushed me over the edge.

  “I’m tired of protecting you,” I growled. “I am going to tell on you someday, whether she believes me or not. You wait and see!”

  He nodded but didn’t look too alarmed. Maybe because he knew I was full of shit.

  I leaned past him and began pulling old T-shirts out of a suitcase. T-shirts were cheap. I could buy new T-shirts on campus.

  “Well, then. Despite all this, I do have a bit of a going-away present for you,” my father said.

  He turned toward me so abruptly that I straightened in alarm. But his face remained businesslike, almost stern. He placed an envelope in my palm. The envelope had a distinct bulge to it.

  “Some spending money,” he said.

  I opened it. Riffled through crisp new bills.

  Then again, more slowly.

  “This is a lot of spending money,” I said. Bribery money.

  “Maybe. But as you said, you are on your own now, right? You need a cushion in case you need something and can’t run home.”

  “I won’t need this much.” I wanted to shove his envelope back at him. Really I wanted to.

  I didn’t.

  God help me, I even struggled with the part of me that longed to throw my arms around his neck. That longed to thank him for thinking of me, for helping me. I just stood there, clutching the envelope in front of me like a bouquet, my head lowered over it.

  “Please, take care of yourself. And be gentle with Mum.” His voice had turned gruff. “Don’t waste your money on fancy clothes.”

 
; It was a joke. I snorted.

  “Well, I’ll be off then,” he said, “and let you finish packing. I’m glad we had a moment to talk.”

  He hesitated, then leaned forward and kissed my cheek.

  And he was gone. One moment he was still there, overfilling my little room. Next there was this void, a void that continued more sharply with his death only one month later.

  “Thanks for the money!” I shouted at the open doorway—and immediately wanted to chomp off my tongue. Mom might hear me yelling this stuff to him and get really upset by the gift. She'd feel inadequate, the way she often did after my father’s gifts.

  I sat on the bed amidst my overflowing suitcases...and tears.

  Was it okay to hate someone you loved?

  Was it?

  II

  “You have no signs of recent pregnancy. I am sorry,” the doctor said gently.

  Dressed again, I was sitting on the papered examining table of the same man who had treated my fungus-ridden toe all those long months ago. For I had been extraordinarily lucky; in Villefranche sur Lez, a person can knock on the doctor’s private residence and get an emergency appointment. An American without medical insurance can appear without an appointment for a nice long exam and soothing conversation.

  Since I’d left Jeannot’s vineyard without telling him about the blood, I was lucky I even remembered where this doctor lived. Yes, lucky. He didn’t seem even slightly put out to be disturbed at home on a Sunday by someone he’d only met once. He didn’t ask after Jeannot; did not require how I’d ended up alone on his doorstep. He didn’t even ask me for money.

  Not pregnant. All in my head.

  The doctor’s face had a long shape to it, like that of a horse, with the kindest eyes I had ever seen. Perhaps like Jeannot’s eyes would look in another fifty years. If his father didn’t ruin him.

  On the wall was a framed poster by Bazille, a local artist from the nineteenth century whose work hung in Montpellier’s Musée Fabre. I had seen this painting before: a primly attired young girl sitting in fields below huddled red roofs. She, too, appeared calm and patient. Ribbons of innocence flew from her hair.

  “I was so sure,” I said. “I had…symptoms.”

  The doctor nodded. “The body can fool us. And stress can create all kinds of symptoms. A woman’s menstruation is the first thing to change. As for what else you describe—the sore breasts, the morning sickness—well, perhaps you were pregnant but lost it very early. Not in the last couple of weeks. Or perhaps you had a kind of false pregnancy...your mind creating your pregnancy for you, so to speak. It is truly amazing what the mind can do.”

  I cleared my throat. “But my period. I’m usually so—”

  “I know.” He patted my hand. “Would you like something to drink? A glass of water?”

  “Yes, thank you.” I accepted a small cup. It tasted like heaven. “How embarrassing,” I said after a moment, “to have created this whole drama.”

  “Not too big a drama, I hope.”

  “But...why? Why would I…create a pregnancy when I don’t even want to be…a mother.”

  My eyes went prickly on me again.

  The doctor shrugged, one of those Gallic shrugs I realized I had become quite fond of. He sat down like a person with nothing better to do.

  Why couldn’t this doctor be Jeannot’s father? Why did the nicest young man in the world have to come with the Family from the Black Lagoon?

  “I am not really able to tell you. I am sorry,” the doctor said. “I wish I could. Look at it this way.” All at once, he seemed inspired. “Perhaps a small part of you did wish to be pregnant. It is possible that you were not aware of it, but your body was. Perhaps you needed a little extra love, a little hope. Something to plan for. Your inner self merely accommodated you.”

  I glanced back at the picture. The girl with the ribbons looked so young, hardly a woman yet but most definitely of menstruating age.

  The doctor kept watching me. I could almost hear his mind ticking off possibilities. Exceedingly gentle, he took my water glass and refilled it. I had the urge to throw my arms around him, cry on his bony shoulder, and blurt out everything. Somehow I was sure that he would understand. Like Grandpa would have.

  My Grandpa used to watch me like this, with his worried heart in his eyes. My beloved Grandpa, gone by the time I turned twelve. He had seemed so pensive around my father; so protective of me whenever possible. And all that time he spent staring at my drawings: the house without windows, and the family with no mouths. “You can tell me anything, little one,” he used to say.

  But I never did.

  “You mentioned you were pregnant before, at a very young age,” the doctor said.

  I nodded. “Yes. Fourteen.”

  “So you know what it feels like. You remember these symptoms.”

  “Yes.”

  “The experience of pregnancy is not new to you…”

  “…And therefore easy to imagine?” I shrugged, feeling Gallic myself. “Maybe I am crazy.” The Evil Eye.

  To my surprise, he laughed.

  “If every woman whose period did not obey her, who was late and had prolonged soreness and unexplained nausea—if every woman who experienced these things was crazy, then the psychiatrists would be very busy.” He patted my hand again.

  “Can I talk to you about that pregnancy?” I said in an impulsive rush. “The first one?”

  If he was surprised by the outburst, he didn’t show it.

  “Would you like to sit on a chair instead of that table? You cannot be very comfortable.”

  “I'm fine here, thanks.”

  “What would you like to tell me?”

  With as much hope as despair, I began. “I had a boyfriend at the time. His name was TAG—Theodore Allen Garfield. But I’m not sure the baby was his.”

  The doctor nodded.

  I took another breath, glancing at the picture on the wall. Somehow I liked the idea of finishing my story in French, the way I’d begun it in French. This was a language I would always find less emotional than the angles and flat consonants of English. English was, and forever would be, the language of my heart. French remained just a promising landscape.

  “What I mean is, my father…he might have got me pregnant.” Pause. “So I had an abortion, without telling him. Or TAG, or anyone except my mother. Later I tried to tell her—my mother—the rest of it. About my father. But she didn’t want to know. Didn’t listen. And I…I didn’t make her.”

  The doctor’s eyes got more liquid in them, as if he'd forgotten to blink.

  “When I was very small,” I went on, the truth flowing now as it tore away bits of the dam inside, “my father touched me. For a long time, he never—he didn’t try to—you know, penetrate. That happened later, and only when he was drinking. But I let him do it. I let him.”

  The doctor said nothing. His eyes spoke volumes.

  “When I was eight, he quit drinking and everything got better. For a while, I mean. But when I was thirteen, he started drinking again. And touching me. And I let him again. I don’t know why. Maybe I've always been—like that.”

  “Like what?” the doctor asked, his voice so soft it was barely audible.

  I shrugged, ready to move on to the next point. I had to move on to the next point. Here, now; not later.

  “It happened only twice—the penetration. After that he never bothered me again. He developed heart problems, got sober for good, found himself a girlfriend for a while. Then he dropped dead of a heart attack. And I cried. Would you believe I missed him? By then I knew what we’d done was wrong. I thought I hated it, but that’s a lie too. Because part of me missed him. Everything was so mixed up…like some kind of freak—”

  “Not a freak.” He patted my hand and looked sad.

  We sat together in silence, both sad.

  “Thank you for listening,” I whispered after a moment. “Jeannot doesn’t know I came to see you. He doesn’t know I…got my period.”
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  “No?”

  “We have our own problems. Our secrets. It’s like history repeating itself.”

  “Everyone has secrets, yes?”

  “I guess so.” Do you? I wondered.

  “Some of what happens to us in life cannot be helped,” the doctor said. “The other part? Well, this is life. We can only do our best and then learn to let go.”

  He sounded as sensible as Monique.

  “I know,” I said, and that was also the truth.

  Learn to let go. Of Jeannot? Of France? Or just my past?

  If I left even for a while, Jeannot would turn to Thérèse. I hated the thought. But I couldn’t control him, could I?

  Learn to let go.

  “Is there something else I can do for you?” the doctor asked.

  I thought about it. “Yes. Please keep this visit confidential. Not that I have to say that.”

  “No, you do not.” He shook my hand warmly with both of his and led me to the door. “Take care of yourself, young lady. Above all, take care of you.”

  When I stepped outside, Villefranche sur Lez appeared as timeless as always. Yet I had the strangest impression that it had changed over the last few hours. These lovely old buildings and quaintly narrow streets and courtyards felt…less alien.

  I don’t see evil everywhere, I realized.

  Not in the doctor. Not in Carole or her kids and maybe not in Jeannot’s mother. Definitely not in Monique. Not in the nice man at the reception desk of the hotel the day I first arrived in France. Not the nice taxi driver. Not Jeannot; never Jeannot. Not everyone, not everywhere. Just whoever deserved it.

  I thought of my cartoons: all those childish drawings with their dismal themes: cats stuck in refrigerators and socks missing soul mates—not much more cheerful than houses that sneezed or faces without mouths. But maybe that was okay, too. Stories need to be told, right? We can always choose what to listen to.

  Sad or not, it was time for me to accept my art; to throw myself into it with love and acceptance; to branch out, mentally and emotionally.