Most conversations had lapsed a month back. I suppose it should have made me feel better; we weren’t the only ones being locked out. Katie was the most recent text—despite what we’d seen on the doorstep, she hadn’t been entirely pushed away. She’d been in touch just a day before.
Tried calling but you are still not picking up. If he took things too far that’s serious, you need to speak to someone. You don’t have to tell the police or school or whatever if you don’t want to but tell your mum or someone. Please Ellie I’m worried about you xxxxxx
Someone might as well have come and slammed my head into the dashboard. I felt dizzy, hot, and sick, my ears ringing and the lines of text wobbling in front of me. I made myself take deep breaths and scrolled back up through their conversation in case there was some shred of context I could latch on to that might lead to an interpretation other than the one that was screaming out at me. The last few texts were all from Katie—variations on pick up and r u OK? Nothing more.
Just then my own phone started going. Sharon was coming down with something and had to leave. They hated to ask, on my morning off as well, but would I mind coming into the surgery a bit earlier? My noncommittal humming was quickly taken as a yes. I didn’t have the energy to protest. Before I started the car, I went back to Katie’s last message and took a photo of it with my phone.
All afternoon, in between patients, I would flick my phone on and reread the message. On some level, I was hoping that I had imagined it, that it would magically have managed to disappear in the time it took to run a stop-smoking consultation or to change the dressing on an ulcer. I suppose I was also hoping that some answers might miraculously show up, slap-bang between the tightly compacted lines of text. How could I raise this with Eleanor? More importantly, how the hell could I even begin to go about fixing it for her?
I thought about telling you, Frank, of course I did. But somehow that felt like a double violation of Eleanor’s privacy. It was bad enough that I had seen, been through her texts—dragging you into it seemed one step too far. And if it was what I thought it was, what then? No sixteen-year-old girl wants her father to be privy to that sort of knowledge. No, I resolved that this was my cross to bear.
A couple of days later, I spent a torturous morning waiting for you to do the food shop. Finally, it was just the two of us in the house. The minute I heard the car pulling out of the drive, I steeled myself against the kitchen counter, ironing in hand, my evidence in my pocket, and took a minute to collect myself. Do you know, Frank, that was the most fearful I have ever been? I was scared of my own daughter. I was scared of what I would learn. I was so scared, Frank, but I had no other choice.
“Can’t you knock?” Eleanor dropped her phone to her chest. She had seemed so grateful to have it working again that even if she had been worried about it being temporarily unlocked, she certainly hadn’t mentioned it. I suppose she had so much on her plate that the thought of my accessing it had never even crossed her mind.
She watched in silence while I picked my way across her room. I dropped her laundry on the rocking chair in the corner of the room and then sat on the edge of her bed, my hand reaching out to clasp one of her ankles under the duvet.
She flinched.
“What’s up, Eleanor?” She had never been odd about touch before. “Is everything OK?”
Eleanor was looking past me, out the window to the playing field beyond. I clung tighter to her calf and felt a shiver run up the back of my own neck as she recoiled again.
“Look, there’s no easy way to say this.” That got her attention. I lifted my thighs up enough to pull my phone out of my pocket and flicked through my album until I found the image. By that stage, it was in my thumb’s muscle memory. I passed it to her and braced myself for the recriminations.
Nothing.
“They had to unlock your phone at the shop . . . ,” I started, cringing at just how weak the excuse coming out of my mouth sounded.
I watched as her eyes scanned the text, once, twice. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“What happened?”
“Just that.” She briefly nodded her head at the message between us, before clicking the button on the side of my phone so the screen turned black. “A guy took things too far, at a party. I didn’t want to, but I didn’t say no. I should have done. But . . . I couldn’t.”
“What?” My voice was barely above a whisper, all breathy and rasping.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Mum. I’m sorry. It was my fault. I just want to forget this ever happened. I want it to go away.” Her eyes were brimming. All I wanted to do was reach out and wipe the tears away. She got her sleeve there before me. “Please. Can we stop talking about this now?”
For a minute or so, I watched as she wound a loose thread on her duvet cover round and round her index finger. I had never come to terms with how strange it was to see my own nervous tics played out in Eleanor. It was the closest I had been to her in months and in the worst possible circumstances. My mind was all questions and I didn’t know where to begin or how to phrase them, and suddenly it was all too much, the itch inside me, the need to know.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to let you down.”
What was I meant to say to that, Frank? I must have mumbled all manner of things—that it was impossible, that we loved her regardless, that all we ever wanted was to make her happy. None of it went in. It can’t have done, can it? Otherwise how the hell have we ended up here?
Before I left the room, she made me promise. Not to tell the school or the police or to tell you or anyone. Not to try to find out who it was. She was so adamant about that, gripping my hand, fixing me with a look that was so hurt and so desperate that I would defy anyone to have behaved differently. She told me it was enough that I knew. That we would get through it OK, together. And do you know what? I believed her. I’m sorry, Frank, but I promised.
Later, in bed, when I felt my guilt holding you at arm’s length, I told myself I was doing the right thing. I couldn’t betray her, not when she had confided in me again. That was all I ever wanted. I thought I could solve this myself and bring Eleanor back to us both. I can’t believe I was ever that naive.
That night, while you slept, I asked myself if you would have found whoever did that to her and forced him to suffer the way I wanted him to. I have imagined you swinging at him, from behind, and taking a final blow when he was on the floor, man-to-man and face-to-face, every ounce of his flesh screaming for mercy.
In my head, it worked, but in reality? You have never been a violent man, though there is violence in the way that you love us—with an intensity and a ferocity that seem to eat you whole.
Still, I do not think you would wear revenge well. Do you?
Chapter 7
Frank is panting, short, heaving exhalations, each one following so quickly on the last that the stale air is immediately sucked back in, halitosis unnoticed. His pulse is racing like the march of a thousand soldiers, each one on a mission to the brink and beyond.
Oh, Eleanor.
Why couldn’t she tell him? He would never have judged her. It just wasn’t possible. Not when his love stretched out like the passage of time, not conditional on outside events and impossible to stop. He has spent a lifetime priding himself on being an approachable man, the sort people feel comfortable asking to carry their luggage up the stairs, or to watch their bag while they zip to the loo. Suddenly he feels like the biggest fraud of all.
He’d known there was something wrong. It was apparent that night when she barreled in, so dazed and lost and confused, and it was apparent the next morning too, when she shrank back from every attempt he made to reach out and speak to her. After that, he had been so scared of losing the whisper-fine strands of Eleanor that remained that he had just avoided the subject altogether. There is no denying how badly he has failed her.
Should he have guessed this? A boy. A party. Something that so evidently did not seem to be Eleanor’s fault however much she protested to the contrary. Perhaps. You could call it willful ignorance on a father’s part or just a blind belief in the goodness of humankind. Either way, he had never come close to this conclusion.
But now he knows, and he can see no way through the barrage of increasingly sickening images—the hands clutching at her, her skirt pulled up. Worst of all, her head turned to the side as if she didn’t even want to associate with her own body anymore. He hates it. Hates it. He drags his nails down the page with such force that one catches in the paper and makes a neat vertical tear.
But what Frank hates the most is his failure to protect Eleanor. As a parent you are meant to have a radar for your offspring’s troubles. A burbling in your stomach when they are sick, an unshakable headache when they are sad. What’s yours is mine and more besides. But that night? While they humored his colleagues and toasted his success over a fleet of inane anecdotes and serving dishes sticky with salad dressing? He’d had no idea. What sort of a parent does that make him?
Frank has been sitting so hunched up that the dull ache in his spine has turned into short, sharp jabs, caused by the compressed discs the physio is forever complaining are a result of his height or the cycling or lifestyle factors that at sixty-seven he has no intention of changing. To shift the pain, he tilts back in the desk chair until he is almost reclining. He shuts his eyes for just a moment’s respite from the onslaught of realization and revelation. When he opens them, it is Maggie he sees, chastising him for nodding off again when he said he had things to do. He has never suspected that she knew.
When he asked her—What happened, Mags? What changed?—it was always with that rhetorical rush that signals you aren’t expecting an answer. He furrows his brow in concentration. He can’t remember her opening her mouth to offer up her intel, but he can’t remember leaving a gap long enough for her to do so either.
And really, when it comes down to it, why did he feel he needed to know anyway? It is not as if he could have done more than Maggie, who he knows would have tried everything and the kitchen sink, who could not have cared more. No. He wanted to support Maggie. He wanted Eleanor to feel comfortable sharing that secret with him instead of so adamantly denying it to him. Did she think his love was more conditional? If he is honest, really, very honest, there is also a small piece of him that, childishly, feels left out, like the second favorite. That is the issue with the biological necessity for two parents—someone has to come last.
Frank presses his index fingers and thumbs together, the rest of his digits interwoven. When he presses his hands to his forehead, running the fingers up and down his frown lines, he plays with a handgun of his own creation, nestled against his skull. I do not think you would wear revenge well. Do you? Maggie always did know him so well. He would have been the worst avenger in the history of the world. He would delay the mission, dither at the point of action, find any excuse to avoid the moment of confrontation. That doesn’t mean Frank didn’t fight, though, in his own silent, unassuming way.
As he slumps forward, Frank is hit with an earth-shattering tiredness behind his eyes. He felt this fatigue a lot when the fight kicked in with Eleanor, once everything sprinted so far out of hand. In some perverse inversion of expectations, he had slept less the older she got. After that night, he felt his bond with Eleanor disintegrating like a tissue in the rain. He was grasping and grasping after it and still it dissolved into the tiny white fragments too small to collect, let alone keep.
And then, of course, there is the anxiety. Even these past six months, with his own cross to bear, he has worried ceaselessly about her—where she is, who she is with. It never stops, that worry, as a parent, does it?
One day to go
Selfishly, I am glad I am not there to see how you took that, Frank. You have always done such a good job at looking stoical, another thing Eleanor inherited from you, no doubt. But don’t forget, I have known you forty years, loved you for all of them: I can read the signs in you better than I can read myself. I know the nervous adjustment of your glasses, your eyes glancing off to the side before drawing back to the problem in hand. That was your default face for Eleanor, when everything started to spiral.
You wear your hurt so very obviously. You have done these past few weeks and months. I know you are suffering. After the initial shock subsided and I realized that you weren’t going to speak to me, no matter how hard I tried or cried or begged, I resigned myself to studying you in the moments when we were together in the house, not separated by the kitchen or study doors. Over supper, I would watch as you marshaled the peas onto your fork in case there was a tremble in your hands that might give something away, a clue to what, if anything, might also be awry. When we brushed our teeth in the bathroom, I would check the tension in your jaw, on the off chance you might momentarily break the silence and burble out an apology in among a mouthful of toothpaste.
I stay awake until you come to bed with that same hope. Not that I can sleep anyway, not without my pills. I like it because, when I hear you inevitably knocking over the washing basket, the buckle on your trousers making a racket as it hits the hardwood floor, I know my ears still work. I know I am not trapped in here, with just my voice for company. I haven’t gone mad. Though there is still time, I suppose. One day more.
The minute I feel your body melt against mine, I cry. If not every night, then close enough. I know you can feel it, because you squeeze me tighter, press your lips against my neck. Sometimes, at this point, we have sex. I am never quite sure who initiates it. Our need is equal. Recently I have wondered if this has been the only way for us to bridge the gaping hole between us. For those minutes, those blissful, peaceful minutes, it is as if none of this ever happened. We are back before the baby, before Eleanor, tangled together in the single bed where we spent our first nights together, with no heed for Jules’s and Edie’s sleep patterns.
Just last night, when we lay there, when we were done, I wondered if it might be the moment when I would finally hear you again. Six months of dashed expectations, frustration piled upon frustration to the point where I could scream just to feel the give in the air, and still there is a piece of me that thinks my patience will get through to you eventually. Why? Why? Why? I don’t know why I still get my hopes up, with so little time left. I convince myself that I can see your lips about to move, as if an itch has passed across your face that is just waiting to be scratched. Then it subsides and there are just those same blank stares into the darkness that we have been doing since Eleanor shut off.
That was what it was, wasn’t it? Someone had turned down the dimmer switch on our glowing orb of a daughter until she was trembling with the effort of not switching off entirely. After that night, she began fading into a shadow of her former self, a hollow cast of the original. It was like living with a stranger, if it was possible to have birthed and raised an entirely alien object.
We tried to get things back to normal once she started sixth form, in the hope that routine would bring the old Ellie back. We probably needed it as much as she did. At work, I could barely focus on the job in hand. For the first time since Eleanor was born, I had no control over the images that flashed in my mind. I did blood tests and saw Eleanor bleed in the aftermath, over the toilet bowl, scared and confused. Every time I saw a man in his twenties swaggering in, leaning on the reception desk, elbows wide and head cocked at the receptionist, I saw him pulling Ellie away by the hand, her feet hesitating with doubt.
I was trapped, Frank. Who could I tell? Not you, not without the risk of pushing away what was left of Eleanor. Not Edie. Not a colleague. After all, a promise is a promise. Instead, I threw myself into finding her every source of help I could with a compulsion that terrified me in its insistence. I stashed leaflets in her schoolbag only for her to force them into my hand again the minute she was home: Seriously, Mum. Don’t.
You wer
e out the night I told her. It was about four months after the dinner party, give or take, our desperation by that point well and truly rooted. When I got back from the surgery, I headed upstairs to change but stopped at her bedroom doorway. I took a deep breath, walked in.
“How was your day?” Eleanor was scrolling through her phone and lifted her head just enough to show that she had heard but not enough to convey anything beyond ambivalence.
“I have this for you.” I slipped her a piece of paper, hastily crammed into my handbag straight from the printer.
“What is this?” She sat up a bit and smoothed it on her lap.
“Someone to talk to. Privately. Look, I know you didn’t like the idea of your dad and me being there too, so I thought . . . maybe this might be better? You can go by yourself; I’ll settle up after.”
There was nothing and then, miraculously: “Thank you.”
I didn’t want to push my luck. I turned to leave but just as I did so, she reached out a hand and caught the edge of my jacket.
“Really, Mum. Thank you.” She stood up, and we even managed a cuddle, a short one, but for those seconds it calmed the frantic mess of my mind.
Three days later, when the appointment should just have been wrapping up, Amelia (PsyD) phoned at work. A no-show. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I shouldn’t have let her go alone, should I, Frank? I didn’t want her to feel we had abandoned her, but if I acted on instinct, clung to her like the sole life raft in my ocean of panic, I risked her shrugging me off for good. I never could work out what constituted enough space.
All the time, Eleanor was speeding toward a cliff edge and the brake cable was cut right through. We should have been her brakes, shouldn’t we? That is what parents are meant to do. Sometimes you asked me why I didn’t come down harder on her when, each evening, she would return to her room the minute we had finished another painful supper, Eleanor answering our questions with little more than the odd monosyllable and pushing her uneaten food around the plate. It wasn’t as if you wanted to throw yourself into the ring as the disciplinarian either, but clearly you also needed confirmation that we were doing the right thing by Eleanor.
The Silent Treatment Page 21
