Silent Pretty Things

by O. J. Lovaz

  “I know. And Frank, good to see you.”

  Frank hugged her awkwardly. “Hey, troublemaker.”

  “Come in, you guys. I have some fresh guacamole. I made it myself. And here’s some red pepper hummus which I…bought, of course.” She laughed. The snacks were laid on the small table in her living room.

  “The guacamole looks great. Here, we brought some wine,” said Frank.

  “Oh, thank you. You didn’t have to.” Diane grabbed the bottle from Frank and examined it curiously. “Ooh, this does not look like the cheap wine I buy.” She chuckled softly as she walked to the kitchen.

  Frank sat down and grabbed a chip. “Mm, I’m going to dig into this guacamole. These chips are nice too, restaurant quality.”

  “Yes, they are my favorite chips,” Diane’s words came from the kitchen, followed by the sound of wine being poured into a glass. “I got them at a store I like a lot. They sell authentic ingredients from different countries—at least, I think so; they could have me fooled and I wouldn’t know any better—but I like their stuff.”

  “I bet these really are authentic Mexican chips,” Frank said.

  “I’m glad you like them.” She brought glasses of wine for the two of them, then went back to the kitchen and returned with her own glass of wine and the bottle, which she placed in the middle of the table.

  Anna had been watching the scene like a bystander. It all seemed somewhat surreal to her. This delightful young woman was her cousin, yet it felt a little like she had just met her. It was an odd feeling. She realized that she had not spoken in a while and hastened to say something, anything. “We better not get too full before dinner, or we’ll have to deal with our annoyed significant others.”

  “Yeah, we don’t want that.” Diane smiled, sitting down beside Anna on the couch. Frank was sitting on a black leather chair that seemed out of place in that room but did create an interesting contrast in what would have otherwise been a rather plain space.

  “You know what I just remembered, Diane? I wonder if you remember it yourself. You were little, like seven or eight years old. You were visiting us one day. I remember you were playing with Anna. I was watching something on TV. Then Aunt Marlene came asking if anyone had seen her car keys, because she couldn’t find them. I told her I hadn’t seen them. Mom asked her if she had checked inside the car. She said she had. They were not there, she said. Then I heard her asking you, and Anna too; nobody had seen those keys.

  “She kept looking everywhere—under the furniture, the front porch, the grass in front of the house, under the car, inside the kitchen cabinets, even inside the fridge! Nothing, they were nowhere to be found. Then it got dark. She decided to stay for the night and look again in the morning. Oh, she was very frustrated! Then morning came, and after breakfast, she started looking everywhere for the keys again; only this time, Mom and I helped her as well. I went and looked inside her car one more time and, voila, found the keys wedged between the armrest and the driver’s seat.”

  “I remember it well,” said Diane, smiling mischievously as though she was once more a child. “But finish the story. You’re doing great.”

  “So I brought the keys to Aunt Marlene and explained to her where I found them. She couldn’t believe it; she was beside herself. She was sure that she had looked in there. She seemed more irritated than she seemed relieved to have found the keys. That was the end of it as far as everyone knew, and even to this date, that would be the official story.”

  Frank looked at Anna with a sly smile. “But before Aunt Marlene and our little cousin here left, Diane came to see me—I was alone—and she proudly confessed to me that she’d made the keys disappear. So cunning was Diane that she knew to hide the keys in an impossible place—inside one of your boots, in your closet, Anna—and then wake up before anyone else and put the keys inside the car, in a place where, conceivably, Aunt Marlene might’ve not looked well enough.”

  “Wow, I didn’t know that story,” Anna said.

  How come Diane had trusted Frank and not her with that confession? And how come her brother never shared it with her?

  Frank seemed to read her mind. “I knew that Diane didn’t want another soul to know about it. If she could’ve told a mute kid, she would’ve. Am I right, Diane?”

  Diane smiled and nodded. “And I found the next best thing—Frank. I swear you could’ve been a priest.”

  “Ah, that’s ironic. But what’s most interesting to me is that you really didn’t need to tell anyone; you had gotten away with the perfect crime, so to speak—prank really would be the word for it. And yet…you told me. Why?”

  Frank’s eyes glimmered with mischief. He stroked his chin. “Well, I think I understand it quite well. What good is getting away with the perfect crime if no one knows about it—where’s the glory in that?”

  “Well, mister, you have me all figured out. I thought Anna was the only psychologist in the family.” Diane paused, then continued in a more subdued tone.

  “You know, I was eight at the time. Mom had just recently told Dad that she wanted a divorce, and he had moved out of the house only a few days before that day I hid Mom’s car keys. I wanted to punish her in any way I could. I did other things too. Glasses mysteriously fell to the floor and shattered. Important letters got lost. Stuff like that.”

  Anna began to comprehend something of significance. Frank and Diane had shared a special connection in their childhood that she had not understood until now. They both became acquainted with rage, despair, and cynicism at a tender age; and in response to their painful upbringing, they had grown up rebellious, clever, sarcastic, fond of mischief, and almost certainly hostile to authority figures. Her own childhood would have been just as terrible but for the protection Frank afforded her. His defiant presence alone was enough to deflect her father’s unwanted attention away from her, the same way the Earth’s atmosphere shelters all life beneath from the fury of our Sun.

  “If I remember correctly, Aunt Marlene and you left for Baltimore the year after that,” Anna said while glancing at her phone. The time was now 6:30 p.m.—she darted a glare at Frank in an attempt to convey the urgency of discussing the main topic already.

  “That’s right,” Diane said. “Pretty random thing to do, don’t you think? No explanation. ‘I got a job there,’ she said and dragged me to Maryland, away from Dad.”

  “I liked your dad,” said Frank. “Haven’t seen him in ages.”

  “He’s doing well. I’m actually going to hang out with him in New York next weekend.”

  “Oh, that will be amazing, Diane,” said Anna. “I’m jealous.”

  Anna and Diane both took a moment to sip their wine.

  “I do believe we have a most unpleasant matter to discuss,” said Frank.

  “The affair,” said Diane.

  “The affair, yes,” said Frank.

  “The suspected affair,” added Anna.

  Frank waved a chip in his hand. “Suspected, yes. That’s precisely the matter at hand. We must either prove or disprove this seeming abomination, this…”

  “Sin?”

  “Nah, Diane, I’d rather keep God out of this,” said Frank.

  “I think he too wants to be left out of it,” said Diane.

  “Hmm.”

  Anna interrupted, suddenly getting impatient with her brother’s knack for turning any conversation into a philosophical rant. “All right, guys, we better get on with it.”

  “Right,” Frank said. “Before we begin let’s make sure we have our facts straight.”

  “All right,” said Anna. “There’s the text message, of course—the pictures, and Diane’s memory of someone who looked like Dad picking up her mom in a black car.”

  “You forgot to mention Aunt Lydia’s reaction when you asked her how Mom and your dad got along with each other,” said Diane.

  “Yes, in the garden.” Anna had left that out on purpose. “It just seems like that’s the weakest piece of evidence we got.”
/>   “Don’t be too sure about that,” said Diane. “That incident alone might’ve been meaningless, but in view of everything else we know, it becomes significant.”

  Frank nodded in agreement. “It suggests Mom may have her own suspicions, or worse.”

  “Let’s tackle the big question. How can we prove or disprove our suspicions?” Anna leisurely dipped a chip in the guacamole, anticipating the long silence that followed. Anyone can formulate theories. Now came the tough part.

  Frank looked at Anna, then Diane, and then Anna again, giving them an opportunity to share their thoughts. Diane sank back in the couch, looked at the ceiling, and sighed. “Well, I got nothing. Let’s hear your ideas.”

  Frank leaned forward. “I’ve come up with a few ideas myself, most of which I have discarded after playing them out in my head.” He sipped his wine. “There is only one idea that I think could…should work.” He sipped his wine again, placed the glass back on the center table and repositioned himself in his chair—all this with deliberate movements that were infused with sophistication and suspense.

  Frank’s theatrics were testing Anna’s patience. He seemed to be enjoying this too much. She leaned back, crossing her arms and legs. “Come on, Frank, tell us already. It’s almost seven.”

  “I’ll try to be brief, but I need to explain the idea well enough, or your instinct may be to reject the one idea I think will work.”

  Diane nodded, but her face was taut with apprehension. Anna herself felt uneasy the moment Frank hinted that his idea might not be well received by them.

  Frank straightened up in his chair and put his right foot over his left knee. “The first thing is to determine which type of evidence we could hope to get that would conclusively prove or disprove that there was an affair.

  “Right at the top of the list, a full confession from either Dad or Aunt Marlene would be fantastic—I mean, it’d be horrible, but conclusive. Of course, trying to get a confession from either of them would be very risky.”

  Anna interrupted. “They’d probably just deny everything, and without evidence, we would have to drop the whole thing. I can’t even imagine having that talk with Dad. And if it was you, Frank, who confronted him, I don’t even want to think about how that would end.”

  “Agreed, it’s a bad idea,” said Diane. “What’s next?”

  Frank continued. “Questioning Mom crossed my mind, but I quickly discarded the idea. She could go and confront Dad alone, and that, we must prevent at all costs.

  “Without a confession, the only other evidence we could get is the text messages. We must find a way to retrieve the entire conversation, their whole exchange. In the messages that preceded the one Anna happened to see by mere chance must lie the answer we need.”

  “You’re right. I can’t think of anything else, but how could we possibly do that?” asked Diane. She leaned forward and cupped her face between her hands, briefly fixing her eyes on something in front of her before darting an alarmed look at Frank. “We would be assuming that they’ve not erased those messages. Do you suppose that’s something we can count on?”

  “That’s true,” said Anna. “They may have erased them. I would’ve.”

  In that instant, Anna had to admit to herself that, deep down, she was still harboring some hope for a way out of this obligation, free of guilt, absolved by circumstances. It had not occurred to her that such an outcome could result from this gathering, but now suddenly, Frank’s only feasible idea seemed on the brink of rejection. Indeed, his notion appeared to rest on cracked, unstable planks of wishful thinking.

  Still, she felt ashamed at the thought of Frank noticing in her voice or demeanor any inclination to give up on the investigation.

  Frank continued. “To be sure, that’s certainly a possibility. They both could’ve erased the entire string of texts and, if that were the case, we would have nothing; no evidence at all. However, I would bet neither of them have done that.”

  “What makes you think that?” asked Diane.

  “Psychology,” Frank declared, glancing at Anna with a clever smile. “Of course, I’ll defer to Anna’s opinion on these matters, but I dare say that I understand enough about the human psyche to make some sound inferences. Diane, we’ll start with your mother. Would you say that she’s the suspicious type?”

  “Yes, I would. She’s a mistrustful person.”

  “I would’ve guessed that, but I couldn’t really say why. So we can assume that she’d normally be inclined to erase from her phone a self-incriminatory conversation. However, she lives alone. She has no reason to fear that someone might get her phone and go through her messages. And that’s why I think there’s a really good chance that, this very minute, that entire conversation is still in Aunt Marlene’s phone.”

  Anna said nothing. She couldn’t really disagree with his logic. Diane nodded in agreement.

  “Our most interesting research specimen is, of course, our father,” Frank said, glancing at Anna. “What is it like to be Victor Goddard? He’s the Kaiser, king of his little kingdom, a man accustomed to do as he pleases, unchallenged. He’s a predator at the top of the food chain. Everything and everyone orbiting around him exists to serve him. Why would the man I just described to you fear anyone, especially our victimized mother, the only person who lives with him, going through his personal messages?”

  “He wouldn’t,” Anna answered, knowing that with those words she was extinguishing any hope of ending their dreadful enterprise right then and there.

  “Quite right, he wouldn’t. His arrogance and overconfidence play in our favor. I’m positively certain that he would keep the entire conversation and perhaps even go over it every night, the dirty bastard.”

  “All right,” Diane chimed in, “let’s assume then that at least one of them, if not both, have kept the conversation intact. Have you thought of an actual plan to get our hands on one of those phones long enough to find and read the messages, undetected? And let’s not forget that they might have protected their phones with a pass code. That’s a very common practice, of course, and we should not go as far as presuming they wouldn’t take that simple precaution. Even wannabe dictators can lose their phone at the mall.”

  “Dad does have a pass code. I know that much,” said Anna.

  “I did think about that, and, yes, it might be a tricky challenge to overcome. I’ve thought out the rudimentary foundation of a plan, but I’m hoping the two of you can help me with the details, which have thus far eluded me.

  “First and foremost, we must devise a plan that maximizes our chances of success by running simultaneous attempts on both targets—so to speak. Sequential attempts would be much riskier. Let’s say, for example, that we decided Diane would attempt to get into her mom’s phone; and only if that attempt failed, we would attempt to seize our father’s phone. Should Aunt Marlene discover Diane trying to get at her private messages, two things would likely happen. First, Diane would be left having an awfully uncomfortable conversation with her mom. Any of us doing such an attempt must have ready an alibi, a credible alternate reason to be rummaging through that phone—preferably an emotional reason. In your case, Diane, maybe you wanted to see if your mom mentions you to other people. Not bad, huh?”

  “You devil. That’s not half bad. Mom would probably gobble that up.”

  “Thanks, Diane. I wish I had more good answers where that one came from, but I’m starting to run thin on ingenuity. See, that response will likely get you out of trouble, but not out of suspicion with your mother, which brings us to the second thing that’s likely to happen in this scenario should you get caught red-handed. And that is, possibly in a matter of minutes, Aunt Marlene would delete from her phone the conversation we are trying to get at, and immediately alert our father, who might, as a mere precaution, delete the conversation as well. Even if he didn’t, he wouldn’t then leave his phone unattended for any reason.

  “So that’s why we must find a way to make both attempts simultane
ously. It’s the only way we are really going to realize the benefit of having two cracks at it. That’s the first, rather vague notion I’ve come up with.”

  “It’s well thought out,” Anna said. “Now, we just need to figure out the details.”

  “We’d need to create some sort of controlled situation that gets us access to both Dad and Aunt Marlene and come up with tactics to get them away from their phones,” said Frank.

  Diane’s face grew somber, her gaze suddenly dropping to the floor. “There’s something you haven’t addressed directly but is implied. If I’m to be of any help, I must first reconcile with Mom. How else could I get near her?

  “As it is, I’ve been contemplating doing just that. I’ve begun feeling like enough is enough, that it’s time to forgive…and seek forgiveness. Am I to do it now only as a necessity, to put in motion a scheme, a plan that may ultimately drive us apart for good? I just don’t know if I can do that. That in itself seems as despicable and heartless as the betrayal of which she might be guilty.”

  The three of them remained silent for what seemed like a long time. It may have really been only a minute or two—time enjoys an uncomfortable silence.

  Anna bounced notions and words in her head until, finally, she thought she knew what to say to Diane. “I think I can understand how you feel. I’ve been torturing myself with similar thoughts about causing irreparable ruptures in the family. I’ve thought about you too. Even now, sitting here, I feel somewhat guilty to have brought you into this; but it would’ve been even more unfair to keep you in the dark. In the end, we’re only looking for the truth. If we find that nothing really happened, I’ll be the first one to open a bottle of champagne.”

  Frank had been looking at Anna absorbedly while she spoke. An inkling of a smile flashed on his face before he turned his gaze to Diane. “Would you feel better about this if you weren’t the one getting into your mom’s phone?”

  “Yes, I would. That would be easier. What would I do, then?”

  “I think you could create the distraction needed to get her away from her phone. Then one of us could get the phone without her or anyone else noticing,” he said.