After Silence Read online

  “Amazing. I don’t know what to say about your house, Mrs. Meier.”

  “Anwen.”

  “Anwen. One minute it’s enthralling. The next, or the next room we go into, I think I’ve had too much to drink. This room is extraordinary. The way you’ve combined the stone and metal and wood, the windows up there… It is an UFO. Otherworldly!”

  “But the other rooms? Where you felt drunk?”

  I shrugged. “You can’t win ‘em all.”

  “I’m glad you’re honest. I’ll tell you why it’s like this. My husband and I have a little boy. He was kidnapped nine years ago. Until we find him, this house will be both Brendan and everything we want to give him in his life with us.”

  There was no remorse or self-pity or stoicism in the way she said it. These were the facts of her life. She was telling them to me but asking for nothing.

  “I’m very sorry. And you have no other children?”

  “No. Neither of us can conceive of another child until Brendan comes home. So my husband raises dogs and I work on the house. One day our son will come back and we’ll have lots to show him.”

  Right there, at the end of her sentence in those last four or five words, I heard the smallest hitch of pain in her voice.

  “When we bought the place it was only an ugly old chicken farm. My original idea was to create something Brendan would like. Childlike but not childish, you know? A place with moods and colors and tantrums.”

  “Tantrums. That’s a lovely idea.”

  She surveyed the room with hands on hips. “Yes, but it changed after we’d taken away most of what was originally here. First I wanted it to be for him. Then I realized until he came home it had to be for us too. So I made more changes. More and more and more. I was studying to be an architect before we got married, just so you don’t think I’m completely nuts!”

  She told a little of their history, leaving out the parts about her husband’s breakdown and her car crash. The way her version went, they’d lost the child, changed jobs a few times, finally got a strong urge to return to their home state and live life the way they wanted. I asked no questions. Her lies were gentle things; lies to a stranger who needn’t know more about their ongoing pain. I don’t think she wanted my pity so much as my understanding of why their house was so different. It was both her child and her art, for the time being. Like some kind of impossible and heartbreaking golem, she was trying to bring it to life with her care, love, and imagination. When the boy returned she would direct it back to him. Until then, all of the energy and emotion she had for her child would go into trying to make this inanimate thing animate.

  Every room of their house was a different world. They had cut through some of the walls and ceilings so as to build bridges linking one to the next like surreal dream sequences. One bedroom was only crooked objects at cockeyed angles. Pictures in free-form frames and the only mirror were all mounted on the ceiling. A hole had literally been punched through the wall at foot level and filled with glass. It took a moment to realize it was a window. Another, called the Fall Room, contained only soft objects in two colors.

  There are eccentrics who build houses out of Coca-Cola bottles or Wyoming license plates. Architects who design churches to look like melting candles or airports like manta rays. But the most singular and frankly exhausting thing about the Meier house was the raw obsession at work. Anwen said nothing about it, but it was plain she knew that if her mind sat down for a time to rest, it would realize the deadly hopeless truth of her situation and destroy her. So she never really sat down. She planned and built and tinkered with the only link she felt she still had to her lost child.

  A little black dog waddled into the room and over to my leg. I bent over and petted it.

  “That’s Henry Hank. My husband names all the puppies after old boxers. We know the customers change the names when they get them home, so Greg gets a kick out of having a whole stable of fighters around him for a few weeks.”

  Another one came in and was introduced as Gil Diaz.

  “Hello!”

  At first I thought her husband looked fine. Much more robust and healthy than Anwen. Very tan and filled out. Those were the impressions that crossed my mind when I stood up to meet him. As we were moving toward each other, one of the dogs started barking and Gregory looked down to see what the hubbub was. Seeing him up close, I realized his skin was tanned the unnatural brown-orange that come from tans in a bottle. When I was a boy and that junk had just been developed, a guy in town bought some Man-Tan and slathered himself with it. For weeks he looked like he was wearing a kind of dreadful burnt-siena lipstick, badly layered, all over his unfortunate body. I suppose they have improved the product since then, but not much, by the looks of Gregory Meier.

  He shook hands oddly too—a much too big and powerful burst when we first touched and squeezed, then nothing. His hand went completely flaccid. I remembered he had had a breakdown. The longer I watched him, the more signs of his fragility and eccentricity were evident. In the end I had the feeling they might have “retired” to the country from their previous life because the pressure had been too much for this man, and would be for a long time.

  “Darling, he says a famous breeder in the West recommended us. A man named Raymond Gill?”

  “Raymond! Sure, I know Raymond. Nice man. What does he raise again?”

  “Pugs.”

  “Pugs, that’s right. Nice man.”

  He cleared his throat much too often. He paid such dramatic, overly close attention to what others said, even when it was trivial lighter-than-air chitchat, that it was disconcerting. He tried so hard and that’s what made it so fucking sad. He wanted you to think you were a very important person to him, despite having met only minutes before. He wasn’t a sycophant or a glad-hander either. He probably did like me, because I was nice and pleasant while there, but the pathos was in his rictus smile, a handshake that died after too much first squeeze, the scary-adoring way he looked at his wife. By comparison, she was the strongest person on earth.

  The most embarrassing moment came in the middle of a discussion about the merits of the French bulldog over other breeds. Gregory broke off what he was saying and grinned. “Do you know what H. L. Mencken called Calvin Coolidge? ‘A dreadful little cad.’ The tongue should never show in these dogs, as I’m sure you know.”

  The change from dogs to Mencken to dog tongues came so fast it took several seconds to register. I’m sure I overreacted, because when I turned to Anwen, she was frowning and puckering her lips at me as if to say, “Sssh! Don’t show him you heard.” This wild skid from one side of his mind to another happened again twice while Gregory spoke but I pretended not to notice.

  So what was worse, his brittleness? The way the Meiers lavished their ghostly love on each other and those gargoyle dogs? Or simply the power of their house? The house/monument/golem they’d needed and built to replace their lost child.

  It was quiet torture remaining there that long, sad afternoon. I needed more than anything to get away and think. To sit in a bar or a hotel room, a corner anywhere alone where I could talk to myself about what to do next.

  I was ninety-five percent certain Lincoln Aaron was their son. But there remained things to do to make sure. I did them in New York by contacting yet another detective agency and having them check out Lily’s “parents,” Joe and Frances Margolin, in Cleveland. No one by either name had lived in that city for thirty years. The same was true about a child named Lincoln Aaron, purportedly born in Cleveland eight or nine or ten years before. No hospital or governmental bureau there had any record.

  Why am I getting ahead of myself here and telling the most important part of the story before it happened? Because I already knew the truth that day sitting in the Meiers’ living room. Sitting on a soft couch with a cup of aromatic tea, I knew the woman I loved more than any person on earth was a criminal and a monster. Kidnapping is monstrous. Like murder and rape, it undermines the only real givens we have
in life: my life, my sexuality, the issue of my blood are my own.

  Lincoln once made up a story about crows with blue eyes. It wasn’t good or interesting, but his image of those inky birds with azure eyes haunted me long after. Crows are smart, sneaks, loudmouths. I like them very much for what they are. If I saw one sitting on a branch smoking a cigar I’d laugh and think yes, that’s right. But blue eyes belong to babies, angels, Swedes; put them in a crow and the funny goes away. The imp becomes perverse. Several phone calls away from knowing my love was a nightmare, I couldn’t rid my mind of the boy’s image. A crow with blue eyes. His mother, my friend and love, the very worst kind of human being. Crows with blue eyes. Lily Aaron, kidnapper.

  When the visit was over, after I’d seen the house and all the dogs and we’d talked until the three of us were in a late-afternoon stupor of too much information and too many words, they walked me to my rental car. I thanked them for their time. To get out of having to buy a dog, I told them what I really wanted was a gray one, which they didn’t have. One of their females was due to give birth in a few weeks and I’d call to find out if a gray was among the litter. When Anwen asked for my address and telephone number in Portland (where I supposedly lived), I made them up.

  As I was turning the key in the ignition, Gregory touched my arm and asked me to wait a second. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a sheet of white paper. While he carefully unfolded it, I glanced at Anwen, who looked uncomfortable and embarrassed for the first time that day.

  “I’m sure you haven’t, but I ask everyone we meet. I know it’s crazy, but I’m sure you’ll understand. Anwen told you what happened to our son. This is what they think he’d look like today. The police have these machines that can draw a face in a kind of long-term projection. Take someone who’s five years old, press the button, and you get an idea of what they’d look like at twenty. It’s really amazing, but they say with a baby it’s very hard.” Gregory’s face wavered, fell, rose, tried to smile, couldn’t. “The bones are so soft when they’re that young. They don’t have much distinctiveness in their faces then. You’ve never seen a boy out there in Portland who looks anything like this, have you?”

  Cold, cold, such cold poured across my heart and froze me. Taking his bent sheet of paper, I forced myself to look. But for long seconds I honestly couldn’t focus on what was there. My life was in my hands and that is the final danger.

  When the anxiety settled some and I saw the drawing, it was with the most horrid relief that I realized it wasn’t my boy! The eyes were wrong, the round cheeks, a chin that was soft when it should have been unusually prominent. This wasn’t Lincoln. For a moment I felt absolved. There’s no way Brendan Meier is Lincoln Aaron. Hooray! Thank God. Amen. Then came the most perverse synapse, for I felt a terrible urge to say, “He doesn’t look like this. The eyes are much deeper. He has Lily’s wide mouth. His hair—” And I didn’t know if I was meaning their boy or our boy or the same boy. My heart was the first to know. This was the moment to tell the truth, but my heart went both secret and dead to them. I was almost sure of Lily’s crime against this couple but could almost physically feel my whole self, starting with my heart, turning away. There’s a proverb that says a person has a chance at the splendor of God twice in his life—once in early adolescence and again when he is forty-five or fifty. Conversely, I could literally feel myself embracing evil then. Perhaps I would come back later and tell them the truth, or go to Lily and confront her, but now I handed their picture back, made a small apologetic smile, and said no, sorry. What was worse, seeing the pain on Gregory’s face as he took it and looked at the drawing for the millionth time or Anwen’s glance of pity at her husband? Or was it even the drawing itself, this bad counterfeit of a boy’s face that was so much handsomer and full of character in real life.

  Driving away, I watched them in the rearview mirror until I passed over a small crest and they were gone. Only then did I become aware of the pressure in my bladder. It felt like I’d explode if I didn’t piss immediately. There were no houses around or cars coming down the road, so I stopped, jumped out, undid my pants, and barely wrestled it free in time before the stuff blew out of me in a fury.

  Despite all of the terrible matters flying around in my head, it was bliss to pee. All the complicated, perverse, and dangerous things that had happened and were sure to come, none was more important than this dumb little function I did ten times a day.

  “Winner and still champeen, the cock!” I announced to the New Jersey countryside. Which reminded me of Lily’s sweet curiosity about my penis. One of the first times we went to bed, afterward she held it in her hand and inspected, jiggled, poked it until I raised my head from the pillow and asked if she was conducting a science project. No, she’d just never had the nerve to look at one so closely.

  “Never? You didn’t even look at Rick’s?”

  “Naa, I was always too shy. I always felt self-conscious, you know?” She looked up from her position across my thighs and beamed. Partners in crime. Such a happy, comfortable moment. So adult and childlike at once, like playing Doctor. It was around that time I began thinking how deeply I loved this woman.

  I had two options—fight or flight. I doubt if many people ever seriously consider running away from their lives altogether. It is either childish or desperate, and luckily few of us behave like that or experience such dark extremes. I knew one woman who was beaten very badly by her husband. An hour after he left the house for work, she packed a small bag and took a taxi to the airport. Charging a ticket to New York on his credit card (wanting him to think she’d gone there), she paid cash for a ticket to London. The ploy worked, and by the time he found her months later, she was safe and well protected.

  In comparison, that seemed so cut-and-dried. Her life was threatened and she ran. My situation, “my danger,” was more complex and tricky. Yet in this era of quick relationships, when people go from A to Z at the speed of light and then separate, I could have gotten away with saying to Lily: I’m sorry, but this isn’t going to work, bye-bye. The easy, despicable way out, but given the alternative… Plus what was the alternative? I’m sorry, sweetheart, but I have to tell the police about you.

  Sometimes the solution to a problem comes so quickly and resolutely that it leaves no trace of doubt about what must be done.

  While I was driving back up the turnpike toward New York, my mind was fidgeting wildly about what to do. Traffic was busy but not enough to heed. The radio was on loud, tuned to a rock station; my companion for the trip.

  There were so damned many Lilys in this. The Lily I knew. The Lily I thought I knew. Lily the kidnapper. Lily—

  “Hey!”

  In a far part of my mind I had heard the sound of a very loud car rattling up behind on the left. But turnpikes are full of clanging clunkers you ignore and just hope they don’t strangle you with their exhaust.

  “Hey, fuckhead!”

  In the middle of my muddle I looked quickly toward the shout. Right out my window, a man was pointing a gun at me. He wore a huge grin and every few seconds kept yelling, “Hey! Hey! Hey!” Then he laughed a screech and, before I could move, pulled the trigger and the gun exploded.

  I pitched the car to the right. Because I was in the slow lane, I hit no one. Screech and his driver both howled with delight and, clanking louder, their car sped up and away.

  Braking, I pulled further over onto the shoulder of the road. Why wasn’t I dead? He must have fired a blank. Why would he do that? Why hadn’t I panicked and crashed? Luck. Or blessed. Why had he shot at me? Because. Life gives no explanations or excuses. We’re the ones who think them up.

  Sitting there trembling and cursing, thanking God Almighty for this break, I felt the moment slowly unwind and pass. Adrenaline stopped pumping terror and relief through me and shakily my own life with its present and future returned.

  Lily returned too, and what filled my mind once the scared-to-death feeling passed was immense love for her. Love no mat
ter what. Death one moment, Lily Aaron the next. I had survived and, returning to life, thought first of her. It was clear she was all that mattered. Cars rammed and rummed by on the left, night was purpling the sky. I would go back to her. I had to find a way to bring our love and a new life together through this wall, this world of fire we now faced.

  I rang the doorbell but no one answered. After waiting a while longer I used my key. It was three in the afternoon. Lincoln would still be in school, Lily at the restaurant. Dropping my bag on the floor, I smelled the familiar bouquet of home—scented candles, dog, cigarette smoke, Lily’s Grey Flannel cologne. As I walked slowly through the place, it struck me as a kind of museum now—a museum of our life as it had been. Everything the same, everything different. This is where we played Scrabble together, that is where I spilled chili sauce on the carpet. A comic book of Lincoln’s was on the table. I picked it up and riffled through the pages.

  Lincoln. This new world centered on him now, and the contradiction, if that was the word, was that he was one terrific kid. Smart and well adjusted, he often had a sense of humor and insight that made him a real pleasure to live with. Who knows how much we’re born with and how much is a result of upbringing and education. From living with the Aarons and watching the way the two interacted, I believed Lily was a great mother and had had a profoundly positive effect on the boy. That was part of the problem: she was so good for him.

  Cobb was lying on his big bed in the kitchen. When he saw me, his long tail whacked the floor a couple of times. I waved hello and that was enough for him. He groaned contentedly and closed his eyes.

  For want of something to do, I opened the refrigerator. In among the bottles and bags was a white clay figure of what looked vaguely like one of the characters in my “Paper Clip.” Why it was in the fridge was a mystery, but such enigmas are common when you live with a ten-year-old. Taking it carefully off the metal shelf, I turned it slowly in my hand. Was the artist ten years old, or nine as the Meiers had said? I thought constantly about that sad fragile couple, their house and the scarred life they led. How thrilled they would be if they were shown this figure and told who’d made it. How much joy it would give them to know it was by their son, who was well and happy. Like filling their lungs with air all the way instead of shallow breaths.