The Silent Treatment

by Abbie Greaves

  I think it’s fair to say that we didn’t get much sleep in those first few months, not that I begrudged it for long once the fug of the wake-up call wore off. We would stay up into the early hours talking, both of us folded on our sides and propped up on our elbows until the feeling went right out of them. When I think about it now, it’s hard to single out particular subjects we talked about. Some nights you would just riff on small snatches of nonsense—imitating a particularly amusing patient or the latest visit from the landlord. Other times, you wanted to deal in the heavy stuff—did I believe in God? How did I vote? Oh no, you didn’t mean to ask that, but mind, it would be helpful to know if I was a Tory or not.

  Despite your inquisition, we touched on the subject of protection only once, that first night, just before. You told me you were covered, that it was a perk of the job and not to worry. I did what I was told on that front and I never thought to bring it up again. What was the need? Besides, it always amazed me how quickly you would begin to doze off the moment I tried to turn the high beam of conversation back onto you. As your eyes began to give the succession of tiny flutters that announced you were drifting off, I settled on tracing a series of hearts on the almost transparent skin at the nape of your neck, my body tucked like a parachute against your back.

  There was never a dull moment with you, not even close, and I knew that was what I wanted for the rest of my life. I liked who I was with you, Mags. I could be spontaneous! Funny too. I remember the day I borrowed a car from Sam in the physiology lab upstairs and took us on a last-minute trip into the Cotswolds. It was the perfect introduction to spring proper—warm enough for a T-shirt, and that satisfying sense of the sun licking at the back of your neck. We went on a walk that the map advertised as circular. Funniest-shaped circle I’d ever seen. Six hours and several wrong turns later, we were back at the pub where I’d parked the car, parched. We were still topping up our hydration when last orders were called.

  In the car, you drifted off almost immediately, the side of your face squashed against the glass as if your skin had melted in place there. For a problem sleeper, you put in a good performance then, so much so that it was almost tempting to hide the issues that I could feel starting under the bonnet, barely ten miles out of the village. I could feel the steering wheel vibrating under my hands, little tremors that kept intensifying until they were big enough to run right up my arm. I pulled in at the nearest service station.

  “What’s up, Frank?” you say, dropping your right arm to my knee and rubbing at your eyes with the other.

  “The tire needs changing.”

  “Ah. Are you going to call someone?”

  It’s dark, but the forecourt is lit brightly enough that I can make out the phone box on the other side of it, taped up and with a hastily scrawled sign jammed in the door: don’t use.

  “No,” I say, surprising myself with my own resolve. “I’ve got this. You head in.” I nod in the direction of the petrol station.

  Of course, that doesn’t work. You never have been a great one for following instructions, and instead you insist on standing out there with me. You must have been freezing in just your polka-dot summer dress, but no one would know it from the way you patiently hand the wheel wrench back and forth, steadying the spare, placing the jack back where it came from.

  “Ta-da!” I tighten the final nut and stand up. In the process, our foreheads smash together. I hadn’t noticed your approach.

  “Ah! Sorry, Mags, sorry!”

  One hand scoops under your nose to plug the bleed, and you flap away my apology with the other. “No.” You flap again, this time toward my nose. A double nosebleed.

  That was it, wasn’t it, Mags? The moment we both lost it. We were gone, the pair of us seized by the sort of hysterics I hadn’t had since I was a child.

  I manage to usher you back into the vehicle, and it is then that the full absurdity of the situation takes hold. We are both laughing so hard that the car starts shaking all over again.

  “I didn’t have you pinned as the practical sort, Frank,” you say, when you have recovered enough to talk. You are still pinching the bridge of your nose, and your voice is distorted like a cartoon villain’s.

  “My dad’s a mechanic—this sort of thing is in the blood.” I look at the mess all over our hands. “Fitting, eh?”

  You have found a tissue down the side of the glove compartment and are shredding it into four tiny plugs. I try not to think about how long it may have been down there.

  “A mechanic,” you say, as if you are mulling over the veracity of my statement. Gently, you bung my nostrils with the twisted paper before fitting your own. Satisfied with your handiwork, you reach over the gearstick and tap the side of my head. “Are you hiding any other talents in there?”

  “Plenty. You’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “I have no doubt you’re sitting on a wealth of secrets.”

  “I love you, Maggie.”

  The words are out of my mouth before I have the chance to think better of them. It is the secret I have been nursing for weeks now. I have never felt it as fully as I do then, with you smiling in the passenger seat, wedges of paper stuffed up your nose.

  “I love you too,” you say. It is so matter-of-fact you could have been reading out directions. There is none of the ceremony you see in films. No red roses or choirs or anything else besides. It just is.

  “Shall we?” You tap the wheel and crank up the radio. You certainly aren’t sleepy anymore.

  All the way home, I was treated to your personal rendition of the chart hits, minus the top notes that you were nowhere near hitting. When you were like this, high and alive and so fully in the moment it seemed as if you could barely breathe from it all, you were like the beacon on a lighthouse. The glare was square onto me, and it was all I could do not to go blind from your brightness and the way it lit up everything you touched. It was a miracle I didn’t miss our turning off the motorway.

  It would be fair to say I was enthralled. In fact, I was so wrapped up in you that it took a month or two for me to notice something was awry. We saw each other as much as we could, and for the most part you were your usual effervescent self. But that was never the full picture. I’d seen hints of something darker on our day on the river, in snatches of conversation since. There was nothing straightforward to you—there never has been, Mags—and I was mesmerized by the subtle waves of contradiction in you that bled into one another to form an overwhelming whole that I couldn’t shake. You were like a watercolor painting: from afar, perfect; up close, blurry, messy, a combination of a million hues I never knew existed. I loved you fiercely, Mags, but more than that, I wanted to understand you.

  So, you can see why I would take to studying you, in those moments when you would withdraw, burying your arm in mine as Jules and Edie babbled away in the kitchen and hiding yourself behind a heavy drape of silence. As you lay beside me in bed, I tried to read into the subtle flexing and uncurling of your muscles. Was this just you? Or was there something more?

  Once, I awoke in the middle of the night and you weren’t there. En route to the bathroom, I heard voices from the living room downstairs—Edie and another, whispered. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, Mags, but I was concerned—scared, really—for you. I tiptoed just far enough down the stairs to see you pressed against Edie’s chest, shaking.

  I wanted you to want to confide in me, Mags, but as you know all too well, you can’t force someone to talk against their will. When you came back to bed that night, I made sure to envelop you in my arms. Usually, at this point, you would curl into me, your head landing on its special spot beneath my collarbone. That night, you rolled away, your back to me and your hands tucked under your head. It was as if you barely registered I was there. Even now, I can still feel the iciness of your feet when they accidentally brushed against my calves.

  Later that week, I tried to open you up on our walk home from the surgery. Our bikes bumped uncomfortably between us, but I had
made a scene of needing a tire change and you were too distracted to interrogate the story. Not for the first time, I realized how much you always led our conversations, nineteen words to the dozen until you came up for air, gulping it down greedily before embarking on a new observation or anecdote.

  “Good day, Maggie?”

  “Yes, fine, the usual, but Aoife was off sick—more work for us all.”

  For you, this is positively monosyllabic. I want to drop the bikes and take your face in my hands, kiss it better until I hear my usual torrent of Maggie tales again, delivered with their inimitable panache.

  “Mags, look, I hope I’m not intruding, but I feel like something is up. Is there something wrong?”

  Silence.

  “You’ve been so quiet, so withdrawn. It’s not me, is it?” I whisper.

  Silence.

  “If it’s me then I’ll understand. Just say what I need to do to make you happy again.” I am babbling, but I know that’s the fear kicking in. I won’t be fine if it’s me, if I stand to lose the best thing that has ever happened to me . . .

  “It’s not you, Frank.” You look up from the pavement and fix your gaze on me. There are tears glazing over your irises. The green-gray pools I am drowning in, now fully submerged before a thunderstorm. I am too afraid to move to blot your eyes in case it stalls you. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

  “Mags, you know that couldn’t ever be the case. Whatever it is, we can work through it.” I take one hand off my handlebar and press it against your hand in a gesture that I hope is calming. My mind is in overdrive—have you been unfaithful? Are you calling us off?

  “I’m . . . I’m pregnant, Frank. With our baby.”

  Whatever I was expecting, it certainly wasn’t a child.

  “I can’t get rid of it, Frank, I just can’t.” With that, you drop your bike on the pavement with such force that it takes mine down too. For a minute we stand and face each other across the tangled heap of metal. Your face shines with the track marks of fresh tears. You have never looked so beautiful, or so afraid. Slowly, as if you are a wild horse that will buck away at any minute, I make my way round to you and take you in my arms. I press my stomach hard against yours.

  “It’ll be fine, Mags. We’ll be fine.” I have no idea if this is true, but I do know that it is what you need to hear, and I will say whatever I need to in order to take away just a fraction of your fear. I don’t know how long we stand like that before I guide you back to the house.

  That night, as you are putting on your pajamas, I get down on one knee.

  “We better make this official, Mags. Marry me?”

  You are visibly taken aback, as much as is possible when stuck half in your blouse, but you nod before the tears start again. I rummage in my pockets. There is no ring, not at this short notice, but I find an old receipt, roll it lengthways, and tie the ends in a most ungainly knot. It does the trick—you laugh. Just a little at first, a tinkle, as if you are testing it out again, then louder, longer. My paper monstrosity dwarfs your tiny ring finger and it has a nasty habit of leaving cuts on my chest where you rest your hand throughout the night, but it has solved something, temporarily at least.

  For the first time in a long time, you fall asleep before me. I don’t sleep at all. Instead, I am afforded eight hours to think about how our lives will change. In the middle of my panic, I feel happiness unlike anything I have ever known. A lifetime with you, Mags? A family? It was beyond my furthest hopes and dreams. I had never imagined myself as a father. I have no idea how to parent. But then I think of my own—their quiet, contained existence, their reserve, their uncanny ability to dodge discussion of any remotely awkward issues, and I know I want to do better than that, for the baby and for you. I would lay down my life for any tiny ball of cells that bore your magnetic imprint. We would be just fine. Far better than fine, in fact.

  Chapter 6

  I don’t see Daisy until she enters the room to carry out her observations the next morning. At first, she is blurry. My gaze has been fixed on the middle distance, my eyes are swollen, and my glasses are smudged from several days without a polish and from the debris that comes with keeping your fists balled into your eye sockets. Wordlessly, Daisy places a box of tissues on the stand next to the bed and begins her rounds by straightening the cover over Maggie.

  “Do you know that Maggie knows when you are here?”

  “I doubt it,” I say, immediately hating my own cynicism.

  “Really, Frank, she does.”

  “I hope so,” I say, trying to summon a smile this time, but the corners of my mouth remain resolutely tight.

  “I see it in the readings that are taken at night, once you’ve dropped off to sleep. Everything is a little lower—her heart rate, oxygen flow. She wants to be back with you. Whatever you have to say, she clearly wants to hear it.”

  “It’s hard.” I try to swallow as it strikes me that I have yet to get anywhere close to the difficult bit. With Mags, it has always been so easy to be blinded by the positives.

  “I know. No one ever said otherwise.”

  “How do you do this?”

  “What? The job?”

  I nod.

  “Yeah. I’d say it’s hard too.” I catch Daisy’s eye before her gaze moves to the window. She looks exhausted: some of her hair has escaped from its elastic band and frizzes at her hairline; her previously impeccably pressed scrubs have a network of creases daggered down their back. “You see some terrible things. Course you do. But there are some brilliant weeks too. The recoveries. You have to remember them when it’s tough, or you wouldn’t last long around here.”

  I am too scared to ask whether I will be one of the lucky ones, the sort that gets the patient home and pretends this was all a bad, bad dream.

  “Thank you.” My voice comes out quietly, but it is enough to stall Daisy as she heads for the door. “For everything, Daisy. And you were right, about the talking. I mean, I don’t know if she hears, but I hope she can. There’s so much I should have said already.”

  “We all feel that way, Frank, but you’re lucky you have still got time. You’ve got the time to say what you need.”

  How much time, though? Enough for me to get there, to explain myself in full? To let Maggie know that my silence had nothing to do with her? No, it never could have done. It was about me, my failings. How I let her down. The fact that she could never forgive me for that.

  “You all right there?” Daisy goes to separate one of the cardboard sick bowls from the stack on her trolley. “Frank? Here.” Daisy passes one over and lays a hand between my shoulder blades. “You’re going to be OK, Frank. You and Maggie both. Don’t stop now.”

  The cardboard feels rough and grainy in my hands, its woody smell doing nothing to settle my stomach.

  “I can’t,” I mumble.

  “You can, Frank. If anyone can, you can. You will get her back, and you will get her home, and you will take good care of our Maggie. I know it.”

  That was always the plan.

  You were three months along when you told me. You had eaten something bad and spent a night vomiting, rendering your pill ineffectual. For some reason, you hadn’t thought the incident bad enough to warrant some additional protection. I remember being pretty unsure of what they had been teaching you at nursing college, but I bit my tongue regardless.

  We decided to tell our families of the engagement but held off on news of the pregnancy while we found a place of our own and worked out how quickly we could get a registry office to take us. You ended up falling for the first flat we saw, something about the light and the way it fell in the living room. The minute the estate agent stepped outside, on the pretense of checking the parking meter, you spun around, arms spread wide, and declared it our home. I nearly balked when I saw the size of the deposit on the rental agreement, but then I caught a glimpse of you, running your fingertip along the windowsill in that very same light, and all my doubts dissipated. I signed on the dotted li
ne. We would move in a month later.

  In all honesty, I was mainly happy to be out of my poky single room and catapulting into a life with you, Maggie. I’ll never forget how, in advance of our moving day, you led us on a quick-fire tour of the charity shops of Oxford, on the hunt for the cheapest and cheeriest furniture we could find. We took that sofa missing a back cushion on the proviso you would make a replacement yourself, and a kitchen table so old that it might have seen the Industrial Revolution. They never did get the renovations you promised, did they? Dare I say it, I grew quite fond of them as they were.

  Our first night in the flat was perfect. Two beanbags, a large pizza, and a six-pack of that disgusting orangeade you had been craving for the past few weeks. In the corner, the one item we had unpacked so far: a cactus with tiny pink flowers that I had bought you on one of our earliest dates at the Botanic Gardens. “Short and spiky. Like me,” you’d said. We had been so busy moving in the boxes that you fell asleep mid-slice, one hand sprawled out in the direction of the spines. I tucked your abandoned crusts back in the box, cleared some space, and shifted my beanbag so we could fall asleep under the uncovered duvet together. I could replay that night on a loop forever, Mags, I really could.

  The next morning you were up and at the unpacking before I had so much as rubbed the grit from my eyes. You were in your element as you set about making the flat a home, and I thought it best to leave you to it. Do you know, Mags, that to this day that is my greatest regret? Leaving you to it? God knows you were—are—the vision of competence, but at that stage? I should have known better.