Listen to the Silence

by Marcia Muller

  “Your birth mother?” Jim glanced at Susan.

  “Hardly,” she said. “By the time you were born Fenella was close to fifty. And even if she were still physically capable of conceiving, she’d proven by her track record that she knew how to prevent that.”

  I pictured Fenella, who had died in a mountain-climbing accident at the age of sixty-four. Although she never married, she’d had more than her fair share of lovers and didn’t fit the profile of the maiden aunt in any respect. “Then what does she have to do with it?”

  Jim said, “Interesting question.”

  “Are you willing to talk about her, in spite of Ma asking you not to?”

  They looked at each other, and then Jim’s eyes started to gleam. “I’ve always been fond of Katie,” he said, “but ever since she hooked up with the King of the Laundromats, she’s turned into an imperious pain in the ass. We’d be delighted to discuss Fenella.”

  I was exhausted from my sleepless night before, so shortly after dinner I excused myself and went to Jim and Susan’s cozy guest room, where I curled up in bed and thought over the things they’d told me.

  While none of Ma and Pa’s friends and relatives had seen her after what was supposedly the fourth month of her pregnancy, Great-aunt Fenella visited her several times at her mother’s home in San Luis Obispo. Fenella herself had spent much of that time nursing her own mother, my Shoshone great-grandmother, Mary McCone, through a bout with pneumonia. The two were close, closer than most mothers and daughters.

  Fenella, Jim claimed, was like me in many ways: adventurous, outspoken, unconventional, and inquisitive. When Pa and Jim were young, she’d bundle them into her car and take them camping or fishing on the spur of the moment. After they grew up, she traveled the world by freighter. In spite of many offers, she refused to marry, although for a time she “lived in sin” with an actor. She drank hard, drove fast, and took up mountain climbing in her forties. At fifty she enrolled at San Diego State, and four years later received her degree in anthropology—an area of interest that stemmed from her fascination with her Shoshone roots. At one point in the 1950s she visited the reservation where her mother’s relatives lived.

  That piece of information surprised me. My parents had claimed Mary McCone never spoke of the years before she appeared in Flagstaff, Arizona, and joined my great-grandfather on his trek west. She’d disavowed her heritage, became a good Catholic matron, and never once looked back. But now it seemed she must have discussed that past with her daughter.

  What reservation? I asked Jim. He didn’t know. What had Fenella done there? Who had she met? She never said; she had a secretive streak.

  And that was it. Not much to go on. Susan’s and Jim’s memories might be inaccurate, colored or faded by time. But at least I now had a clearer picture of a woman I could have liked, had I taken the time to know her. I’d only been thirteen when she died, a self-absorbed and conformist age; then she was simply the relative in the too-short skirt and too-big hair who’d once embarrassed me when my girlfriends and I encountered her at the mall.

  It was getting late, and I realized I hadn’t called Hy as promised—an oversight no doubt prompted by my discomfort with telling him I was adopted. Now I braced myself, dialed, and reached him at my house. My reluctance to talk with him vanished as I related my story. If anything, he seemed less surprised by it than the others I’d told.

  “Well, families keep worse secrets,” he said. “How’re you gonna deal with this?”

  “God, I don’t know. Keep asking questions, I guess.”

  “Why not go up against your mother again?”

  “No! Not after what she did today, calling Jim and Susan. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I ever want to lay eyes on her again.”

  “That’s just anger talking.”

  “Don’t I have a right to be angry?”

  “You have a right to whatever you’re feeling. But I don’t think you should cut her off till you know the whole story.”

  “… You’re being wise, as usual.”

  He ignored the comment. “What about the lawyer who handled your adoption? Maybe he could tell you something.”

  “I checked before I left San Diego. He’s long dead, but I doubt he would have, anyway.”

  “Old family friends?”

  “I made phone calls to a few. None of them seemed to know anything. If Ma and Pa hid my adoption from relatives, they’d certainly have hidden it from friends.”

  “I’ve heard there’re bulletin boards on the Internet, where adoptees can post, in case their biological parents are looking for them.”

  “Maybe I’ll try that. But it’s such a long shot. Jesus, Ripinsky, I’m an investigator and I don’t know what to do!”

  Silence. Then: “McCone, could be you’re going about this wrong.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, from what you say, you’ve been listening to what people’re willing to tell you, and it’s not much. Maybe you should listen to what they’re not willing to tell.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “You’ve known these people all your life. You’re tuned in to their personalities, their ways of thinking, subtle nuances. Tune out their words and listen to what’s hidden in the spaces between them. To the pauses, the hesitations. Picture them at the times when they won’t look you in the eye.”

  “Interesting approach.”

  “You try it. Listen to the silence. It can tell you everything.”

  I slept fitfully, plagued by disturbing dreams, one of which brought me fully awake before midnight. It was a vivid image of a circle: golden, perfect, its arc moving from me to Great-aunt Fenella, then to Mary McCone, and back to me. A circle connecting the three of us and excluding all others.

  LISTENING…

  “Who was Baby Girl Smith?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Can’t, or won’t?”

  “… Both.”

  “Dammit, Ma, I need to know!”

  “I’m sorry, Sharon. There are things… you don’t understand.”

  Those are the silences: the hesitations before Ma said the words “both” and “you don’t understand.” Listen to them, picture her.

  She’s drawing back into her chair, away from my questions. There’s a tremor around her mouth, and her eyes are half closed. What’s the emotion she’s trying to hide? Why has she laced her fingers together?

  What is it she’s not saying?

  “I can’t tell you because there are things Andy and I weren’t told. And I won’t tell you because I’m afraid of what those things might be. Andy shared your obsession with the truth; he hated that we didn’t know everything. That’s why he left the document where you’d be sure to find it—so you’d uncover that truth.”

  Yes, maybe.

  “And that’s it? You never wondered again?”

  “Sure I did. Especially when the rest of us started having kids. I mean, Karen and I had our three, Charlene her six, Patsy her three. No recessive gene ever came out in any of them. Besides, you’re different in other ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “… You’re hardworking. Focused. Ambitious.…”

  Another silence, before John starts reciting all the ways I’m different. Something he doesn’t want to say, for fear of hurting me or provoking a scene like before?

  Could be. That kind of scene was nothing new. He and I fought a lot when we were growing up.

  “You’re a spoiled brat, Shar!”

  “Am not!”

  “Yeah, you are. You get away with stuff none of the rest of us can.”

  “Do not!”

  “Yes, you do. You’re Pa’s favorite. He doesn’t give any of us special nicknames, but with you it’s always ‘Shari this’ and ‘Shari that’ and ‘My little girl gets such good grades.’”

  “So? You want I should’ve got kicked out of Catholic school like Joey and you?”

  “Spoiled brat! Why’re you the favorite?”
r />   Is it the memory of old favoritism that lives in John’s silence? Could be. I always received special treatment.

  And then there’s that folder in Pa’s box of legal documents: all my report cards and copies of my diplomas.

  I can understand the special treatment: guilt, because of all the lies. But why’d you save those things, Pa? Why did they mean more to you than those of your natural children?

  Or were you saving them for someone? My birth parents, in case they ever found me?

  “What reservation did Fenella visit, Jim?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What did she do there? Who did she meet?”

  “… She never said. She had a secretive streak, you know.”

  There’s that silence again. And the look that passes between Jim and Susan. They’ve always exchanged those swift, telling glances, communicated on a nonverbal level. Jim wants to leave a party, he looks at Susan, she eases them out the door. Susan wants to change the tack of a conversation, she looks at Jim, Jim launches into one of his bowling anecdotes. So what does this particular glance mean?

  He’s remembered something, and when he looks at Susan, she remembers it too. It’s not good, and suddenly they think they may have talked too much. They’re feeling protective toward me, so Jim steers the conversation to Fenella’s idiosyncrasies, hoping I’ll forget her reservation visit.

  Not too likely. Not too damn likely I’ll forget or ignore any of those silences.

  Thursday

  SEPTEMBER 7

  1:32 P.M.

  “Here’s the stuff you asked for on the Shoshones.”

  Mick set the file on my desk with a thump. It was a big one, about two inches thick. The stack of manila folders on my side table was high, and growing: articles on genealogy; lists of databases; printouts from Web sites; text of Division 13 of the California Family Code, regulating adoptions. That last one had been slow going; I often amused myself by dipping into law books, but after spending an hour with the civil statutes, I had to admit that I found the criminal code more diverting.

  “All this,” I said to Mick, “on one little tribe?” I’d asked for the information because of my growing conviction that Fenella’s visit to the reservation was directly connected with my adoption, but I hadn’t expected to be inundated.

  He propped his hip on the edge of the desk, looking smug, as he always did when he knew more about a subject than I. “They’re not a little tribe, Shar. There’re all sorts of Shoshones: Bannocks, Lemhis, Northern, Eastern, Duckwater, Elys, Fallon Paiutes. And they’re scattered all over Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Nevada, Arizona, here in California. I got you everything I could off the Net, plus ordered some books.”

  “On what?” I rubbed my forehead over my right eyebrow, where a headache was rapidly blossoming.

  “History, customs, religion, arts and crafts. The reservation system and its current status. I figure if you’re gonna trace our family’s roots, you ought to know as much as possible.”

  Mick thought I’d assigned him this project out of a simple interest in the family background brought on by Pa’s death. He was still reeling from that loss, and I hadn’t wanted to further shake him up by revealing I was adopted. Not yet, anyway.

  “Don’t look so discouraged,” he added. “It’s pretty easy reading. Most of the stuff off the Net is kinda sketchy.”

  I eyed the folder disbelievingly. In college I’d been a fanatical researcher, often emerging cross-eyed from the library at closing time to realize I’d stood up a date. But nowadays the volume of information available by computer was formidable. By the time I’d plowed through it and determined where and how to start my search, my biological parents would be long dead (if they weren’t already), I’d be an old lady, and my agency would have gone to hell because of my inattention.

  As if to prove the point, the phone buzzed and Ted’s voice said, “Glenn Solomon on line two.”

  “Tell him I’ll call back.”

  “He says it’s urgent.”

  I sighed. With Glenn, a prominent criminal defense attorney who regularly channeled business my way, it was always urgent. “Okay, I’ll talk with him. Thanks.” As I picked up, Mick saluted me and went out onto the iron catwalk that fronted our second-story suite, his somewhat melancholy whistle echoing off the vaulted ceiling of the pier.

  Half an hour later I’d taken down the details of the embezzlement case Glenn was defending, explained them to Charlotte Keim, my best investigator in the financial area, and told her to set up an appointment with Glenn’s client. Then I dialed John’s office number in San Diego.

  “Hey, it’s my afternoon for sisters,” he said. “I just talked with Charlene and Patsy.”

  “When did Charlene and Vic get back from London?”

  “Yesterday. They cut the trip short; she’s taking Pa’s death really hard.”

  “And Patsy?”

  “Well, you know how she keeps things bottled up inside. Neither of them has heard from Joey. I’m starting to think we’ll never get to tell him about Pa.”

  “He’ll show up when he’s ready.” Last winter he’d left his job as a waiter in McMinnville, Oregon, and hadn’t surfaced till June, when he sent Ma a birthday card from Eureka, a lumber town in northern California.

  “Yeah, I guess so.” John hesitated. “Ma’s called me a couple of times.”

  “Oh? What did she want?”

  “For me to talk some sense into you.”

  “And do you plan to try?”

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to.”

  “Did you tell Charlene and Patsy what I found out?”

  “Not my place to, but I’m sure Ma’ll spread the word of what an ungrateful child you are.”

  “She said that?”

  “Implied.”

  “Jesus!”

  “So what’d you find out from Jim and Susan?”

  I told him, adding, “I’d like to ask a favor of you. Go over to Pa’s house and look through those legal papers. See if there’s anything like a marriage license for Great-grandma and -grandpa. Or birth certificates for Fenella and Grandpa James. Something that’ll show what Mary McCone’s birth name was. And while you’re at it, see if Pa kept anything of Fenella’s.”

  A long pause. “Shar, maybe Ma’s right. Can’t you just let go of this? Aren’t the rest of us family enough for you?”

  “It’s not family I’m after.”

  “What then?”

  A question I’d been asking myself. Identity, I supposed. A history. The truth. And something more that I couldn’t yet put a name to.

  “Just take a look, will you? Please?”

  “Only if you say ‘Pretty please with peanut butter on it.’”

  Was he deliberately trying to remind me of our shared childhood, hoping to reinforce the bond between us?

  “Say it!”

  I sighed. “Pretty please with peanut butter on it. The super-chunk kind.”

  9:47 P.M.

  From where she crouched on the back of the sofa, Alice the calico cat regarded me with slitted eyes. On the hearth rug her orange tabby brother, Ralph, telegraphed unease with the tip of his tail. Both had picked up on my restless tension and were probably afraid they’d done something to provoke it.

  I dropped the file Mick had put together on the Shoshones on the floor. Alice levitated and streaked for the kitchen. Ralph tried to play it cool by yawning and stretching before he followed. When in doubt, check the food bowl for crunchies.

  Hy was staying at his ranch in the high desert country tonight, so I’d taken advantage of his absence to plow through the mound of information I’d amassed, starting with adoption and ending with Native Americans. The adoption and genealogy material was dry and boring, often incomprehensible, but the Shoshones were another story: Photographs accompanying the text Mick had provided convinced me they were my people. Made me suspect that at least one of my birth parents was somebody Fenella had met on that trip to the res
ervation.

  There wasn’t a whole lot of consensus about the tribe, and that pleased me because it indicated complexity. The name was variously spelled Shoshone and Shoshoni, and some writers called them Snake Indians. Historians—mostly non-Indian—lauded them for their friendship toward the white man, while citing epithets applied by their more warlike brethren that ranged from “false Indians” to “dirty dog eaters.” It didn’t help their stock with other tribes that one of their women, Sacajawea, volunteered to guide the Lewis and Clark expedition to the Pacific coast.

  One fact about the Shoshones put me off: their neighbors, the Comanches, introduced them to the horse in the early eighteenth century, and they took to the animal with enthusiasm, expanding their hunting and fishing territory west from Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains to Idaho’s Snake River, and south from the Yellowstone River to the Uinta Mountains of Utah. I, on the other hand, flat-out hated horses. The critters sensed right off that they could push me around, and in my limited experience with them I’d been stepped on, knocked over, thrown, and kidnapped by a recalcitrant beast that galloped miles down the beach near Half Moon Bay, then refused to return to the stables.

  The Shoshone religion was based on the belief in one Creator, visions, and dreams, and every year was expressed in the Sun Dance ceremony.

  Well, as far as I was concerned, the jury was still out on the Creator, but I did rely on my dreams for insights into my cases.

  This religion was said to foster courage, self-reliance, and wisdom. The Shoshones were skilled in dealing with life’s problems in a difficult and often hostile environment.

  Wise I wasn’t, but any good investigator has to be brave and self-reliant. And as for dealing with a difficult and hostile environment, as an urbanite I contended on a daily basis. Thrived on it, actually.

  During the reservation era, the Shoshone were forced onto three reserves: Wind River in west central Wyoming; Fort Hall on the Snake River in southeastern Idaho; and Lemhi Valley in northern Idaho. In 1907 the latter was closed and the few remaining Lemhi removed to Fort Hall, thus ending a decades-old struggle to stay on their ancestral lands.

  That meant the reservation Fenella had visited was either Wind River or Fort Hall. I went to the bookcase, took down my atlas, and located them. To my Californian’s eye they seemed remote, isolated, and I thought of all the time I’d need and distance I’d have to cover in order to find my roots.