Sound of Silence

by Mia Kerick

  Relief. If I could multiply it by a thousand, relief is what I’d call his expression as he reacts to my words.

  But, shit, I’m fairly certain it’s more than that. His feelings run far deeper than mere relief. And this knowledge—this certainty that Renzy freely loves me, not merely because I’m offspring or sibling—both thrills and frightens me.

  I have no idea how to be loved—I’ve spent my entire life behaving as unlovable as possible, even with Morning. But I am reasonably certain that he loves me anyway.

  This journey is about Renzy’s truth, not mine, I remind myself firmly, so stop with the dreaming that you can offer him more than a temporary solution to his problems.

  Still, I reach for him. One hand finds the hollow beneath his smooth jaw, and the other settles on the very center of his chest. I know I should warn him not to fall in love with a rebel like me, but at the moment I’m too selfish. Before I kiss him, I savor for a moment the look in his eyes that promises me I’m the only one he’ll ever see.

  When I press my lips to Renzy’s, a soft escape of air releases into my mouth and I breathe it in eagerly. And then I kiss him deeply. I’m certain this kiss has betrayed what’s in my heart, and since I can’t have that, I turn the deep kiss into passion, and from there it is all about pleasure.

  I can’t deny that with Renzy, I’m again innocent. I have given up to him virgin territory in my heart. As we make love, he touches places I’ve never been touched—places I’ve never wanted to be touched.

  You are only here to fix him, Seven. Don’t forget this fact.

  I HAVE to shake Morning awake, as she couldn’t hear me calling her name. I guess I also need to thank her for sleeping once again on the couch with earbuds in and music playing too loud to be good for her hearing, in an attempt to give us some privacy.

  “Hey, Morning… it’s morning.” I use my most annoying singsong tone.

  Still half-asleep, she flips me the bird. “Where’s Renzy?”

  “He went down to the café to get hot beverages and croissants.”

  “He’d better bring me the right kind of marmalade or I won’t eat.” She yawns and sits up. “Make yourself useful and pass me my computer, Seven. It’s on the bedside table.”

  I take a walk to the next room and return with her computer. “What’s on your mind?” Morning is usually fairly slow to wake up, especially since what happened to her last summer, and I’m surprised that she wants to start researching so early. Before her cup of tea.

  “Just something.” She types in her password and taps on the computer keyboard.

  “What are you looking for, ma soeur? A Neiman Marcus department store? Or a Bloomingdale’s?”

  “Fuck you.” I’m again treated to the sight of her middle finger.

  I lean down on the arm of the sofa and peer over her shoulder to peek at what she’s typing. “Kidnapping… Lorenzo Callen… Dorothy Alexander,” I read aloud. “You think it’s actually on there?”

  “Everything is on here.” Morning’s voice sounds so self-assured. I think I like its confident ring, but a tiny part of my heart shrivels up in fear.

  When did self-assurance become part of Morning? And what does it mean for me?

  “Here. I found something… listen. ‘Federal investigators joined with Missouri law enforcement officers in the search for an eight-year-old boy who was abducted from the sidewalk in front of his house as he waited for the school bus on Monday morning.’”

  “You think this is about Renzy?”

  “Keep your pants on and let me read the article. ‘County officials say that eight-year-old Lorenzo Callen of Redcliff Hills was pushed by a woman into the trunk of a late-model silver sedan at 8:10 a.m. on Monday morning in front of his house on Mockingbird Road. The female abductor is estimated to be about thirty years old and is described as being approximately five-feet, five inches tall, with shoulder-length brunette hair.’”

  “That sounds like Dot.”

  “There’s more. ‘Law enforcement reports that the boy’s mother, Cassandra Callen, last saw the eight-year-old boy with his two younger sisters, six and five years old, when she glanced out of the kitchen window to see if the school bus had yet picked them up at about 8:05 a.m. At that point, all three children were accounted for. The next time she checked, Mrs. Callen noticed that only the two girls were standing at the bus stop and Lorenzo was missing.’”

  “Dot kidnapped him from his front yard!” I’m stunned to hear the details—ones I don’t believe Renzy is yet aware of. It’s like looking into a crystal ball that tells the past instead of the future. “But Morning, he… Renzy told us that the figure he sees haunting him isn’t Dot, but his mother… and Dot claimed to be the one who loved him the most. So why did she put him in the trunk? Talk about a fucked-up situation.”

  “At least we know roughly what happened to him to make him so afraid.”

  “Are there any other articles that tell about how he was found and returned home? And about how Dot Alexander ended up in a mental hospital and….”

  I’d walk over a pile of hot coals with bare feet if it meant I could know more, but Renzy quietly comes through the door balancing a drink holder with three large cups and a white bakery bag.

  Morning closes her computer and hops up. “Well, Renzy, mon cher, you certainly know the way to a girl’s heart.” She takes the cup marked with a big T and the bag from his hands. “Too bad you’re gay.”

  Caught off guard, Renzy’s mouth falls open.

  But when Morning stands tall and kisses his stubbly chin, praising him profusely for having chosen the correct marmalade, he turns that shade of pink I like so much, and his eyes pop open before his gaze meets mine.

  “Well, why are you two standing there gawking at each other? Eat your pastries and suck down your coffee—we have some major ground to cover today.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Renzy

  WE’VE BEEN on the road since last Monday, and I’ve been drawing a lot. Like, fingers cramping, eyes blurring, filling-every-blank-space type of a lot. Seven and Morning try to talk to me about it: what happened at St. Joe’s, recalling horrible abusive memories through a hallucination of my mother, and the kidnapping. Oh, by the way, I was kidnapped, did you know that?

  When I was eight years old, a helper from the Montrose Academy, a Mrs. Dorothy Alexander, drove to my house, snatched me up, and threw me into the trunk of her car. She was the wife of my sperm donor, also, apparently, my stalker. And you know who told me about this?

  Not my parents, no.

  To some degree the person who revealed this personal information was a woman at a mental hospital. Also contributing to my enlightenment were my friends, but mostly Google.

  Thanks, Google. You’re the best.

  So, no, I don’t want to talk about it. I want to be quiet for a little while.

  Ha. That was almost a joke!

  I’m serious, though. The quiet helps because when I have to discuss it, that’s when I get pissed. So, for a while I’m just letting myself… be.

  Which may sound as if I’m ignoring what happened, but that’s not it at all. I’m fully and completely processing it. I’m just not processing it in a way that others recognize. See, I get it. All of it. My life as a ghost? That’s just the tip of the shit.

  Mom had an affair with a man, I was born, she physically abused the hell out of me, and the man’s crazy wife stalked and then kidnapped me. When I got back home—thanks Larry for returning me—my mother stopped.

  She stopped hurting me.

  She stopped screaming at me.

  She also stopped talking to me, holding me, being a part of my life at all.

  She stopped being my mother.

  There’s a place in the center of my heart, nestled into the meat of it that appreciates what Dorothy “Dot” Alexander tried to do.

  Sure, she may have thrown me in a trunk and threatened to cut out my tongue but…

  She cared?

  Yeah, that’s
a question mark.

  I know Seven’s been sneaking looks in the large, leather-bound art journal he picked up for me outside of Iowa. He’s trying to find meaning in the art, but I’m not drawing right now to communicate with anyone. I’m drawing to speak to myself.

  Every night now we stop somewhere new—guided to fancy hotels by the app on Morning’s phone. We eat expensive things and go shopping, and live too damn decadently. It all feels meaningless, but I don’t think I know what meaning is supposed to look like anymore, so it’ll do for right now.

  We’re in Pennsylvania now. A mountain lodge. This is my first time seeing the mountains and they’re gorgeous.

  “Hey, Renzy…,” Seven says quietly. I look up and see him leaning in the doorway. God, he’s still beautiful. Still? Like it’s been thirty years. But he’s been weird with me for the past few days. Like, really weird. We still hold on to each other sometimes in the night, but we’re not making love. We haven’t had sex since that time after we got home from St. Joe’s. I think he thinks I can’t handle it.

  Maybe right now I can’t.

  I don’t know.

  But he has been pushing for something else. Something he brings up at least once a day. He gets a look in his eye when he’s about to start talking about it—a look I’ve really come to dread. It’s a determined “I’ve got this, I can fix this” expression. Tonight, though, I’m ready.

  No tension. No anger. No apprehension.

  Tonight I’m going to tell him how it is.

  “I was wondering if we could talk?”

  I take a deep breath, steeling my resolve, and then I nod. I motion toward the chair nearby and for the first time in a long time, I smile. He hesitates at the curve of my lips, tracing it with his eyes, before pushing on.

  “About what happened…. Now that we know what happened to you, do you think it’ll free your voice?”

  My smile grows. The image of my voice trapped in a cage makes me laugh. That’s never been the point. Well, maybe “never” isn’t right. Maybe my voice was trapped in a cage years ago. Maybe my mother and Dot did that to me, or maybe it was the classmates laughing at my stutter, who knows? But my voice hasn’t been “trapped” in a very long time.

  I slowly place my palm over my mouth for “mute” and then move the palm to my heart. “Me.”

  He frowns and swears lightly under his breath like someone who’s gone out to the garden only to find that snails have eaten all the tomato plants. Tomato-less salad. I laugh again.

  “I don’t know why you think this is funny,” he snaps, and I shake my head. Because it is funny. “What would it take to get you to speak, Renzy? If I was standing on the train tracks and didn’t hear the train coming, would you yell then? ‘Look out, Seven!’?”

  I stare at him, his cheeks flushed with frustration, his eyes glassy—he thinks I don’t care, that I’m just being stubborn with my silence. He doesn’t understand that this is fundamentally who I am. This is me. It has nothing to do with him. Nothing to do with how much I… love him.

  I buckle a little, surprised that I’ve finally accepted it. I look up, seeing him there, so passionately waiting for me to respond and I smile. With quick hand motions, pointing to him, pointing to me, miming the train along the tracks, pulling the whistle.

  Seven says, “Yeah? Do you call out to me?”

  I shake my head. No, I don’t call out to him.

  I step back a few feet and then I charge at Seven, knocking him hard back against the couch. His blue eyes go wide in surprise. My body covers his, and I grin down at him.

  Just so he doesn’t think I’m trying to change the subject by getting frisky, I fall off the couch dramatically, arms and legs spread at different angles, tongue lolling.

  After a moment Seven peers over the edge of the cushion, an eyebrow cocked.

  “You’re saying you’re going to jump in front of a train for me, Bruno Mars?”

  I wink at him and his lips twitch.

  It’s now or never.

  He has to understand.

  If he wants me, he’s going to have to understand this is who I am and how I’m moving forward.

  Taking another deep breath, I collect all my courage in one strong, warm place in my soul. Then I speak aloud. “I don’t need speech to show you I love you, Seven.”

  God, he’s got beautiful eyes. Beautiful eyes that widen in amazement at the sound of my unwavering voice. There’s no stress, nor strain in my pitch. No tremor, nor hesitation. See, whatever fear I may have had about speaking in the past? I don’t have it anymore. I’m not a ghost. I don’t plan to live in the shadows. I’m Lorenzo Callen, and my silent voice is just as loud as anyone’s.

  “You… you can talk. Do it again.”

  I shake my head.

  I’m sorry, Seven, but no.

  That was the last time anyone will hear me speak. If that means I lose him… Jesus. The thought guts me.

  But my vocal cords are not my voice. My voice is in the songs I choose and the pictures I draw. It is the things I muse about when I’m sober and dream about when I’m high. It’s the way I move my arms. It’s my own invented sign language. My voice is my sloppy handwriting, my smile, my body.

  I’m happy being this way.

  Truly.

  I ignore the way he stares at me. Instead, I pick up my artbook and start to sketch again.

  MORNING’S BEEN rejecting a lot of calls on her phone lately. I might not have noticed except she wasn’t receiving any calls, and now she’s getting them every thirty minutes. But the cell only buzzes once or twice before she kicks the caller to voicemail.

  Seven got me a phone, which I thought at first was his way of blatantly ignoring my choice in how I communicate.

  Instead he told me, “It’s idiotic you don’t have a cell phone. This is pay-as-you-go, fill it when you run low, and we can text each other.”

  From across the room, I send Morning a text message with my new phone.

  She jumps a little and glances down. After a moment she smiles. Even though we’ve been hanging out on the veranda of our latest hotel room for the last hour or so, she hasn’t said a word to me this whole time.

  As she swipes at her phone, the white-blonde hair that entranced me early in our friendship falls like a curtain to shield her face.

  “Um… Renzy? There’s… something I should tell you….”

  I type back What? just for fun. I could easily have drawn the question mark in the air.

  Morning hesitates for a moment more, her teeth worrying her full bottom lip. She flips the cell phone over and over in her hands.

  I wait. It’s all I can do, though I’m kinda getting nervous.

  Whatever she has to say, it obviously isn’t easy. But why does it seem like she’s afraid I’ll judge her? I’ve never judged her for anything.

  When she raises her eyes, they’re shimmering with tears.

  “Edgar called me.”

  For a second I can’t remember who Edgar is and then “Egger” and the mountain monastery come back to me. She shrugs as if it’s no big deal that her father contacted her while the three of us are running across state lines. I frown.

  I motion to the phone and she bites harder on her lip, her pale eyebrows nearly meeting in the middle of her forehead.

  “No… that’s not him. He only called the once. To demand we come home as he is tired of the incessant phone calls from the school. Obviously we care so very much about his demands.”

  I hold up seven fingers and then trace a question mark in the air.

  She shakes her head. “No, Seven doesn’t know.”

  Again, I point to the phone, a little firmer this time. The tears well in her eyes and break, running down her pale cheeks. “I’m sorry, Renzy. I should have let you talk, I just….”

  She pokes at the screen of her phone and then as if she can’t bear it another second, she shoves the device at me. I look down at the number glowing on the screen. It’s my number. Well, it’s my hou
se line, at least.

  Thoughts of my mother startle me, and I jerk involuntarily, as if I expect the faceless creature to leap out of the shadows and taunt me.

  “It’s your dad,” she murmurs almost inaudibly. “Your dad has been looking for you, Renzy. Like, kind of desperately. Edgar gave him my number.” She makes a harsh little noise under her breath. “I can only imagine. ‘Here, strange man, call my underage daughter. She’s probably with your son. If not, can you convince her to come home? I called once and I’m bored now.’ I fucking hate him.”

  Dad called me?

  I look down at the phone again, the big green Call button there.

  Should I call him back?

  “I can play his messages for you,” Morning says uncertainly. “The long and short of it is that he wants you to come home. I mean, he really, really wants you to come home.”

  This confuses me more than the hallucinations and the mental hospital and the sperm donor who made me a bastard son.

  I reach up and wipe my nose.

  Good. No blood.

  I’ll tell Morning that she’s got nothing to worry about. I’m not going home.

  But…

  What about the girls?

  And my brother?

  God, my brother looks just like me. Is he Larry Alexander’s kid too? Is Mom going to hurt him like she hurt me? Has she been hurting them all? Jesus. I can’t let her get away with it.

  My hands start to shake.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” Morning snaps—all of a sudden alert as my fingers hover over the chat threads in her text message box. I didn’t even realize I’d backed out of the calls screen. I was going to write a message to her on her phone, but her reaction stops me and that’s when I notice it.

  Her cheeks burn, and she lunges for the phone, but I’m quicker.

  I shake my head, confusion a shroud I’m trying to throw off.

  The name is there like the angry scar behind my ear.

  Tomas?

  Tomas!