Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  I tried to insinuate myself into their lives by my never-ending agreement, a nodding puppet trying to keep my own control while the controllers cast haughty glances at me.

  Andrew and Paul were strong and confident, blasé from a young age, able to cover up and carry out what was expected of them. At least, that was the impression they gave and I found no reason to suspect this was not the case.

  Benji was different. He was born with a foot that was not quite straight. Not clubbed, but oddly shaped, lop-sided enough that he had to have special shoes made. It marked him, made him stick out from the crowd. Made a target of him in some of the schools he attended during the many shifts the family had.

  There was emotional fallout from this within their household. Neither Anya, nor later, Poppy Lee, had the time to ‘baby’ Benji and give him a little extra attention, talk him through his days. That was all it would have taken—just for him to know that someone in the household was looking out for him.

  Poppy Lee had our sons full time and Anya’s children, Luca and Adam, part time. As well, she soon had the twin girls, Maya and Amy, to contend with and that was about all she could do along with the housekeeping for her husband and the numerous children.

  When the boys came to visit with me, if Benji became dark, moody, absent, keeping his distance from the adults, what else was new? Wasn’t that the way boys were expected to behave at that age?

  If he was passive, more resigned on other days, for some reason that bothered me deeply. But I, legally removed from the responsibility, was roundly reminded of my place eventually by his father. The astounding disclosure to me one night in a telephone conversation, that I did not matter any more, brought me literally to my knees when my ex-husband hung up in my ear.

  In hindsight there were times I thought everything that had gone wrong was my fault. Tears would come unbidden as I wandered through the years in retrospect, inconsolable about the loss of my sons, taken from me because I did not have a ‘normal’ household with the requirement of a residential husband. Yet there was much worse loss to come.

  So we stand at the open door, the police man and me. I am cold, shivering, wanting to collapse, listening to the bearer of the tidings without really comprehending what is being said while the telephone goes on shrilling unanswered in the background.

  Is this true? I’m not sure I heard correctly. He shrugs with a look of futility and compassion, a little dampness round his eyes as he stares at me soundlessly. I should be able to be more articulate than this. I have nothing that I can possibly say, feeling as though an unaccountable message had come to me from outer space.

  Then, furious, heartsick, my world begins to unravel around my ears. I stare at this stranger wordlessly, flummoxed as I gaze into the hair of the sideburns next to me, ginger hair with slight flecks of gray. A little dandruff. Speckles of gray, clusters of gray, tufts sticking out from under his policeman’s hat, hair of the same vintage as mine. Neck scarred and pock-marked by something? Chicken-pox? Nose large and bulbous, mouth thin-lipped and looking like a piece of cord.

  I wait for further confirmation and glance into his eyes. He is an abomination to me, I think illogically. If he knew how much I hated him he would disappear in a puff of smoke.

  Stupefied, I make my eyes stay steady for as long as I can bear to and he looks at me with a kind, deliberate expression. He is willing me with his eyes to accept the tidings without making a fuss in the street in the middle of the night. He separates his syllables and tells me the truth again.

  Suddenly, for some strange reason I find myself wanting to ask his forgiveness for causing him the trouble of coming around to my house in the dense darkness. Has my blood curdled in my veins? Why won’t my tongue move?

  I open my mouth, move my jaw with my last atom of strength, try to say,

  ‘Thank you. Sorry to cause you this bother.’

  But nothing comes out. I sink down on the doorstep, mummy-like, making myself as small as I possibly can to avoid detection, blame, hurt. Cold palpitations jolt me. My heart is pounding against every inch of my body. My palms are wet, eyes wide with horror.

  Finally I am able to make some unintelligible sounds despite the ache in my throat. The policeman is able to offer some comfort without uttering a word, simply by looking at me almost pleadingly as if to say, Be brave. He helps me inside to the lounge room and asks if there is anyone he can notify for me. I shake my head, zombielike. There is no one, thank you.

  It is the trifles that constitute our lives and it is the trifles that maim us, kill us. What trifle finally pushed Benji beyond help, over the edge and into oblivion? This argument is unanswerable now. I doubt that anyone will have an answer about this question. He was so private, so defensive many times.

  If he could have learned not to let whatever it was get to him. Just to get through the days, get through the nights until he was a man, educated, adult, autonomous, free from the constraints of the home, released from peer group pressure. It would not have been too long. Surely he could have held on for a few more years?

  Later they told me he had no drugs or alcohol in his body at the time of his death. He was stone cold sober. Not stoned. Cold sober. Did he ‘use’? His father and brothers never told me so. I never had cause to wonder in this regard when he was at my house.

  How can I find another chance for him, my Benji? Where is the way back into the life he abandoned? Where is the path his feet trod to take him away from me to a place I am not quite ready to go? How can I go after him and find him, my son, middle child of the marriage, the most difficult position to be in except for that of the eldest child. Middle children complain of being ignored, taken for granted, not encouraged to succeed as the oldest child, not as pampered and beloved as the youngest.

  Indeed, wherever the child comes in the birth order they consider it to be the most difficult place of all. Life is like that.

  If he was bedeviled by his peers, his place in the family hierarchy, the replacement of his mother with stepmothers, new siblings, I was uninformed although not entirely unaware. But hamstrung, always manacled, forced to skulk in the background, the woman rejected.

  Trying to formulate my convoluted thoughts, I cower against the door frame leading to the bedroom as if for shelter, my last shred of strength ebbing away like leaking blood. There’s nothing to be done. Struck by tragedy. He, my life, my breath, my son, my friend, is gone.

  Impossible not imagine the dead surveying us from their shadowed travels on the meandering road to their permanent home in the next world, observant, taking note of our reactions or lack of them, chronicling the effects the news has on us, staring while we absorb our loss. Who is it that feels the loss most keenly? Meanwhile our love for them hangs in threads like skeins of spangling spider webs, a veil between the universes.

  Am I mourning enough to suit him? Is he gratified to see how truly demented I am, slack-jawed in my shock and denial? If I keen a little louder will he pause in his untimely trek and reconsider his decision, perhaps return to me and say ‘I only did it to scare everyone. I didn’t mean it. I’m back now. Hi ya!’

  Should he hear me wailing like a banshee will this cause him to alter his resolution? Will he turn and run to me as he did as a small child? Was it brooded over for a long time or was it hasty, not thought through? Impromptu? Was he systematically destroyed by the world around him or was he destroyed by the system in which he was forced to function? Is my excess of emotion enough for him?

  The world has narrowed down to guilt, blame, culpability. All these are mine. I am enclosed behind walls of disdain for our culture and disgust towards my inadequate self. I, reputedly brave, who should have done more, did little but hope for the best, tongue-tied, shackled by the system that took him from me years ago and taught me my place. My boy with the bluest eyes imaginable and the softest heart.

  My brain races on the edge of loathing, insanity. I believed I would live forever. Young, vulnerable, he whom I loved and longed to help di
dn’t know how to live at all. He failed the test of endurance and apparently had no mentor to help him through the tangles and traps of life.

  Who teased and baited him? Persecuted him unto death? Bewildered him until he lost his perspective and his desire to go on? Humiliated him? Victimized him?

  Who will tell me what happened at the end? No one, I believe. Was his sense of self threatened? Was there a quarrel that smoldered like a smothered fire in him?

  Who embarrassed him, finalized his determination to exit this place where it was too hard for him to live on? Should he have been allowed more dignity? Was it his loss of dignity that brought him down in the end? My powers of comprehension will not allow me to accept that he has gone forever.

  I, of another generation, find the problems of current youth appalling stuff. Gladly would I hide my head until society’s changes cause me to abandon my will to desist in the struggle to live. Perhaps this is a little like the abhorrence Benji felt towards the world before he snapped and ended it all.

  Then, if and when the horror is finally gone I can open my eyes fully to the world again without fear. Could he have been saved at the critical moment if I had been there to say the right words? How will I ever know the answer to that? Never. I will never know. I will never see him alive again. My mind refuses to register this and yet at another level I know it.

  Mute, appalled, I return to bed to try to sleep for a couple of hours, aware of the futility of this desire. A drugged haze slows my heartbeat but does not dull my brain as the thundering, fist-banging sensation finally comes under control. Tomorrow I will conduct my mental post mortems. Tonight I must simply retain my sanity. Try to survive. Bring out all the old platitudes about death and the Hereafter, meeting again in the Beyond, my anger muddled with self-pity and anguish for Benji, flesh of my flesh.

  I feel a presence that is too close and too sharp to be denied. Benji’s presence. My skin puckers, pimpling into goose flesh. Benji is here. He is beautiful, tall and slender, large feet in smelly boots, he is wearing a T-shirt announcing, ‘Shit Happens’. He smells of their Doberman, Mojo. Dark fuzz shades Benji’s upper lip. His blue eyes look into mine and his curly halo of darkly blond hair reflects the sheen from the street light outside my window. Or I think it does. My head turns as I search to see where he goes but he has disappeared, melted into thin air.

  A gift from the gods can’t be rejected without invoking a curse. To me he was a gift of limitless measure and memory is my curse. I was blessed with three sons who were taken from me by a runaway husband and a prejudiced judicial decision. I survived the separation. Now, as the boys are almost grown, I have to pull through a new loss, more definite, even more grievous. Much more profound and soul-destroying.

  The fiery ball in my chest will not be pacified. Again, the lump in my throat threatens to block my airways and I fear I will choke on my pain. Hairs stir on the nape of my neck. I am angry, wanting to go after him and bring him back, ordering him to come back in the same way I ordered him as a tiny tot to eat his vegetables.

  ‘Benji, stop your nonsense. Behave!’

  The next hours pass like a hallucination of distorted memories while I keep my vigil for him, I alone in my bed with a fog around me that will not disperse. Once or twice I speak to him sharply, accusingly,

  ‘Benji! How could you do this to me, I who loved you in my pathetic style while those who claimed expertise in the matter did no better? Worse.’

  Love between the generations, the nurturing of the young, the forgiving of one another that goes along with this, all that’s necessary to the survival of relationships is meaningless in the face of my sudden and crippling sorrow. In these fragmented hours I yearn for the comfort of family, for the courage that family gives. The strength that family gave when I believed I was welcome, safe. Before I was replaced by another woman and then another almost young enough to be my daughter.

  Dozing finally, waking suddenly and for a few seconds there is a fact that torments me with its brutality, its injustice. Momentarily the details escape me but my stomach lurches into my throat and I gag. Love, despair. Two sides of the same coin. A flaming sense of futility overwhelms me. There is nothing I can do. I cannot even weep.

  Love should be able to do better than this, care more than this, consider tender, maturing emotions, ill-defined and developing. Helpless anger rises to the boil in youth but it is defenseless in its dependence. The young react reflexively, often barley pausing to consider the outcome. Did Benji take the time to consider that death is forever? Was he even capable of digesting this fact in his silent pain and anger?

  Everything I touch I seem to destroy, but I am not alone in this for I alone am not guilty of this crime of neglect. If we love someone we should be able to do so without making them feel bad all the time. I should know better as I have already paid this price, loving yet being charged with crimes I was unaware of committing, trespasses in which I would be the guilty party no matter the outcome.

  I should have listened harder to my instincts and realized that Benji was not coping. But I barely saw him or even spoke to him. He was cloistered from me, hidden behind an invisible wall meant to keep us separate. How was I to know for sure what he was feeling? How he was maturing into a man?

  What was my crime? Name it and I will accept the culpability. Easier by far to set me aside and begin again on younger, more malleable minds. Easier by far to control their thinking, their actions, their life and death decisions. Unless they reject the control in the ultimate act of defiance.

  Did I, in my absence, encourage the final, desperate gesture by something I did? Or failed to do? Did I care too much? Not enough? How could he know what I was thinking, feeling, even during the times he was staying at my house? Our conversations were always limited by the destruction of our family, by matters that could not be discussed.

  When daylight brings the new morning I travel the intervening miles to bid him goodbye and find myself whispering to him, to the cold pallor of his face, ‘Benji, Benji?’ although I know that he is dead. I have nothing to say of comfort so I hold him mutely, loving him with the fierce tenderness I have loved him with all his life.

  He simply stares from opaque eyes but does not accuse me outright of being more or less than what I was or could be. I tenderly close his eyes again so that he will not see the horror on my face. Somehow I must subdue this raw hatred in my heart against a Fate that failed to warn me or to protect my vulnerable boy.

  He lies rigid, his lanky, muscular body struck forever in the pose in rigor mortis. Is there a kind of acceptance, then, for the person who has expected only to be loved by the few within her circle, the few whom divorce could not entirely remove from her? Or so she thought.

  His red-faced, large-headed father with his hair oiled tightly against his skull, utters the first kind words he has said to me in years.

  ‘Rosemary, you couldn’t have done more than you did. We weren’t to know, any of us.’

  These few patronizing words from a blubbery man are supposed to free me from my guilt-ridden remorse. Yet I feel as though I have cried every tear I’ve got and there hasn’t been enough grief. I have lost half of my soul and the remaining half is punctured beyond belief. Ruined.

  Granted I have other sons but they are not vulnerable like my Benji was. They can cope better, keep their upper lips stiffer, I suppose than Benji could. For this blessing I must be glad.

  There will be no end to this for me, just as I cannot pinpoint the beginning, where our lives began to unravel. Where the love we shared began to erode, to drift off like sand, exposing Benji, his brothers and me to the harsh reality of the world where the family unit was no longer preserved at all costs. A good thing in some cases, the very worst in others.

  But we should have known, I truly believe. Benji should have granted at least one of us access to his innermost world. He should have had at least that much faith in one of us, if not his father or me, then one of his brothers. But would the boys
have given any credence to his announcement that he would give up his life?

  ‘My love for him is too deep to bear a prolonged funeral with all the photographs on the screen and the sad music and speeches and dragging things out. I simply could not take the strain of “celebrating” his life and would break down and possibly make a fool of myself,’ I tell Joel, hating him in his priggishness.

  For a second his jowls quiver in indignation that I should feel so deeply about a child that he assumes is his possession, but he softens as he can see how distressed I am. He is nattily dressed and groomed to perfection, every woman’s dream made flesh. Except mine, who bore him three sons and lost them to his infidelity.

  ‘How can Benji’s life be “celebrated’ in it’s vulnerability and defenselessness? In his pitiful escape from reality?’ I ask, trying to stop the tears that are flowing freely down my face.

  He said he understood, my ex-husband, that stiff, prim man with his salt-and-pepper plastered-down hair and nicely trimmed sideburns, his slightly protruding stomach and waspish new wife some twenty-five years his junior. She looked at me with a measure of disbelief, possibly considering me to be merely selfish in my distress, just a dowdy old castoff daring to intrude upon Joel’s life—and hers as a consequence.

  She had not been a mother until very recently, never borne a child. What she thought she knew she knew only in theory until her twins were born last year. She had barely had time to adjust to the changes in her circumstances over the last couple of years, with his children of the second marriage visiting every weekend, the sons from the first marriage and her own twin babies. Her silver earrings jangled as she shook her bottle-blonde hair in disbelief. Poppy Lee Simmins, ex-beautician and hairdresser, nail queen of the Seven Hills Mall.

  ‘Joel,’ she said sotto voce, ‘you do it the way you want to. After all, you’re the one paying for the funeral.’

  She hissed something further into his ear but I did not care to hear it or know what it was. Too late to care. Too late to go back to when Benji was alive. I feel a surge of loneliness and isolation. Even now, with my son in a coffin in the funeral home, I am an outsider, even an interloper, an exile.