Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  I thought it was a passing rude and childish phase being exhibited by these fully grown adult children of Graeme’s and tried to stay hold of my sense of proportion and not be paranoid. They were interested in making judgments about other people (namely me), and their lives and scaring me off by not letting me get too close to the flames of their intimate little group.

  Graeme’s son-in-law, Marvin, is in his early thirties and has his black hair plastered down on his head like shiny patent leather. He has a mother who is named Valerie, like myself. She is a tall, well-padded woman with a semi-permanent aubergine rinse in her tightly-permed hair and an air of confidence that she has no doubt passed on to Marvin in spades.

  When Graeme and I had been together some six months, we gathered together in the name of ‘family’ at Marvin and Wendy’s, (Graeme’s daughter’s), house in downtown Baysville. Valerie, like myself, was a single person. Graeme found no difficult in calling her ‘Valerie’ in every sentence, sometimes even twice should the need arise.

  When cause arose for him to address me, he would lift his gaze to me, jut his chin out and speak a little louder and higher, a routine I was finding increasingly irritating. When he and I and the dog were the only ones around, I often had trouble distinguishing whether it was me or the dog he was addressing while avoiding the use of a name. At that time he never used my first name if he could possibly circumvent having to do so. Didn’t until the day I left him.

  Something to do with his genes. A Germanic inheritance? Perhaps. I have noticed this trait in people of a similar background, something like the American Indians who never use a given name in case it’s bad luck, I gather. Or raises demons who chases the speaker through the undergrowth to an untimely death or stabs them in the heart with a dagger. Or whatever. I don’t understand the cause as I was brought up to believe that it’s only manners to use people’s names. But I digress.

  Anyway, according to his family’s beliefs, there were supposed emotional complexities at play in this imaginary triangle, brought about by two women having the same first name. I objected to what I saw as a degree of benightedness in not using my name but in being able to address the other Valerie freely by her name. I voiced my objections to Graeme, who, I was to find out, went straight with the tale to his children, as fast as his legs would carry him. This became the next subject of jollification, a mirth-provoking indication of my strangeness which they all knew I was harboring in my bosom.

  They must have all mulled it over, alert for subtle nuances in our conversations, deciding I was consumed by jealousy, my gut eaten out by enormous green emotions towards the elite and effervescent Valerie, mother to Marvin the Marvelous. From there on until the time when Graeme and I were married, any time the other Valerie and I were in the same house there was rolling of eyes and snickering behind hands, as well as kicking under the table plus more whispering even than normal. Sick-making childishness.

  Meanwhile, all and sundry were closely watching for signs of the pea-green monster rearing its ugly head in me. I felt inclined to vomit but suppressed the urge with some difficulty, knowing the tomato soup or beetroot or red wine I had consumed would do unforgivable things to the muted beige on fawn carpet.

  The reasoning was that I was supposed to be consumed by desire for Graeme, my emotions in a turmoil because he was consumed by desire for the other woman with the same name. An imaginary eternal triangle, yet. How do you explain these things to people who haven’t got a clue? With each sneer and snicker I became more humiliated and yet did not feel obliged to explain my emotions to the patronizing multitude.

  I never felt able to broach the subject because nothing was ever said outright to me, but only implied by the juvenile goings on I witnessed. I wished for some brilliant comeback to bounce into my head and out through my lips. But nothing came and I was left sitting in tight-lipped silence while around me the merriment went on, a faint glaze over my eyeballs as I waited for the next bout of hilarity at my expense which I was assumed to be too dense to know was about me.

  The point regarding Valerie was missed completely, the hypothesis being that I was rabid with jealousy and determined to rip Graeme from her side if getting together was they were both proposing. Claw him by the throat and drag him out to the car.

  But then nobody ever gave me an opening to discuss the true facts. Graeme went along with the majority opinion that I was immersed in resentment, barely controlling a need to dispatch my rival with a dose of Belladonna at three paces. Or something more drastic like oleander leaf tea. Hmmm. I believe it’s a very potent brew.

  I tried hard on several occasions to explain my feelings to him and he appeared to understand, but perhaps he thought I was simply in denial and the truth would out when Valerie physically swept him from my side.

  I let the hugger-muggery go on around me in the supposition that in the course of time the ‘children’ would grow up and get over their attitude. Hopefully, as mature adults they would come into the real world and stop huddling in corners at intervals, trying to make mischief.

  The green-eyed monster was never the problem. I found nothing to be jealous about in the appearance of this Valerie. The frequent ease of using of her name and unlikelihood of addressing me by mine was my cause for complaint. I could never comprehend why ‘Valerie’ was so easy to say to one person and yet remained almost impossible to say to another. Apparently I was the only person who got the fine detail involved. It was too hard a concept for the rest of the multitude to grasp.

  Also early in the piece, my grandson, Jeremy, gave me a battery-operated key-ring that beeped when approached. I was forever losing my car keys and the child thought to save my sanity, if there was any trace left. It was the kind of present children like to give to addled grandparents and I used it until it was worn out.

  One night we were having one of the family gatherings catered for by Marvin and Wendy. Unaccountably, the key-ring went off in my pocket, beeping incessantly for some time. I was queried as to the reason for the noise emanating from me and explained it was a key-ring aimed at informing me where the elusive car keys were.

  Much of the usual eye-rolling ensued. Cheeks were puffed full of air and loud ‘Pfffffs’ were exhaled. Graeme’s family never attempted to hide their amusement concerning my perceived strangeness but openly raised eyebrows and poked faces at the weirdness of this person who had come into their midst. She had arrived courtesy of their beloved father and father-in-law whom they hoped would see sense eventually and run screaming away from this extraordinary person.

  During the pantomime I deduced that because I said nothing I was assumed to be too thick to know that they were making fun of me. There was plenty I could have said but for Graeme’s sake I chose not to cause an open rift. Nor did I want to say anything that couldn’t be unsaid in the course of the relationship, if it survived.

  I wanted to say, ‘If any of you young men live long enough to have grandchildren, they may, if you’re lucky, buy you gifts. First, however, you have to live that long.’

  But in my usual style I said nothing and so they thought I knew nothing. Saying nothing equates to denseness, as the more and the louder a person talks, they wiser and more knowledgeable they are assumed to be. Volume equals profundity. All these young men were under forty and have yet to prove their longevity, let alone display their grandchildren’s gifts to them if they are fortunate enough to see them, (the grandchildren, not gifts, that is), come into the world.

  Now I’m not big on church-going and spouting Biblical data hither and yon, but I rather like God and I’ve got a soft spot for Jesus. I think He did His best under very difficult circumstances. There weren’t too many courts of appeal in Jerusalem in those days or He may have got a better deal. Maybe He could have been granted a life sentence or early parole or even a bit of community service.

  Anyway, I’ve got to come out on the side of Christianity when push comes to shove.

  One Christmas Day, Marvin and I had this discussion:
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  Marvin: ‘Christmas is strictly for the birds. Doesn’t mean a thing. Christmas wasn’t even Christ’s birthday. They don’t even know when He was born. Just picked a date out of thin air.’

  Me: ‘True, to a certain extent, Marvin. Originally the pagans celebrated Saturnalia twice a year. December 25th. June, too. I think at the winter and summer solstice or thereabouts.’

  Marvin: ‘So where does Christ come into that?’

  Me: ‘The Christians kept on celebrating at that time for the next 300 years because it was in their blood, I suppose, certainly a tradition. They celebrated the twelve days of Christmas, more the season than the exact date. Maybe it suited the powers that be to have the festival at a time when the population was used to celebrating it.’

  Marvin: ‘Christ wasn’t even born in the year dot.’

  Me: ‘No. They think now more like 6 AD.’

  Marvin: ‘So none of it means a pinch of pooh.’

  Me: ‘Yes, indeed it all does matter a very large pinch of pooh. People throughout the ages have died in honor of it all, in honor of the man, Christ.’

  Marvin: ‘They died for nothing, then, didn’t they?’

  Me: ‘Do you really think so? I would disagree with that. No. They died for the idea of God becoming Man and giving us eternal life. They died for the ideals Christ represented—loving your neighbor as yourself, doing unto others and all those ancient concepts that were already around when Christ was born. He personified the ideas and gave them a working title—Christianity.’

  Marvin: ‘It didn’t work, then, did it?’

  Me: ‘No, but it might yet.’

  Marvin: ‘Bullshit.’

  Me: ‘Yes, Marvin, if you say so. I bow to your superior wisdom and life experience.’

  Graeme’s first wife’s sudden death was a terrible shock to her family. The fact that their father took up with another woman came as a surprise to most of them, and not a pretty one as they seemed to think he should live out his days being cloistered with his family.

  Before we were married and were still living in separate homes, I overheard such comments as –

  ‘Wouldn’t you think she’d stay away and let us have the time alone with Daddy when we’re here on holidays?’

  The fact that Daddy wanted me there and invited me to stay was not in the equation.

  Picture: A family gathering somewhere during Year Two. Marvin is in the kitchen being aided and abetted by wife Wendy and the two sisters-in-law, Carla and Rebecca, who are serving the roast meal he is carving.

  From my spot in front of the television I can hear him ordering,

  ‘That’s Valerie’s. That one is for Valerie, Carla. That’s Valerie’s like that! Leave it, Wendy, leave it just as it is! Rebecca, hear what I’m saying, please! Don’t you touch it. Just leave it alone. It’s fine like that.’

  I know it’s mine because I am the only Valerie present on that particular day and I know it will not be especially good. I may not be the brightest light on the Christmas tree but something tells me he is making a point. I sit and look towards the kitchen, open-mouthed and wondering what treat is in store for me.

  We gather at the table. Everyone else has ample meat, two, three slices folded on their plate. Mine is his chosen slice, tiny, with streaks of gristle through it and fat surrounding it, the slice with ‘Valerie’ written on it in invisible ink.

  I hadn’t as yet taken on the role of second wife so there was still time to outrage me out of the game with these simplistic methods. He wanted to offend me. He succeeded in doing so but I stayed on ‘keeping company’ with Graeme regardless. Sometimes very uncomfortably but I’m made of pretty perverse stuff. Reflecting on my fate I decided that I still wanted to be with Graeme and would put up with a little more rubbish if needs must.

  Because of this and other ornery behavior I was aware Marvin had made himself and/or the others a promise to rid the family of me for reasons best known to themselves. Probably because they didn’t like me because I’m not their mother/ mother-in-law. A rare insight granted to me via means of my female intuition over the progress of two years at that point.

  Ridding themselves and their father of my presence would automatically raise their mother from the dead. Not!

  I assessed them with cold, level eyes and decided that I would not let them scare me off for both Graeme’s and my sake as we needed one another and got along well together when we were not being subjected to this kind of infantile behavior.

  Graeme, who hated personal conflict of any kind, said I shouldn’t expect his children, their partners and the grandchildren to love me the way mine love him because I had divorced their father whom nobody liked at that time.

  However, his children’s mother, whom they liked a lot, had died a natural, swift and unexpected death. That made a profound difference in the acceptance stakes and I must not expect to win them over to any further extent than cool politeness and quiet jeering.

  Okay, says I. I don’t love any of you all, neither, so how do you like them apples?

  Henceforth, I never did expect love in any form from any of them. Although I thought in time they would cease to see me as an outsider or freakish or weirdo or alien or however they judged me to be, it didn’t happen. That they would come to care for me the way my children cared for Graeme. Boy, was I in for a shock.

  I could always tell when the adults had been particularly into me with knife-like precision as the children couldn’t hide their attitude to me the way the adults could. Those of the younger generation would regard me like the wicked witch of the north while the adults were giving a passable imitation of treating me like an ordinary human being. This was just a little two-faced behavior in case their father should notice they thought of me with contempt.

  Yes, I could always tell by the kids, God love ’em. Game and set to the older generation but not match. As yet for the moment, anyway. I let each strained moment pass for the simple reason that it suited me to do so.

  I grew incredulous at the things about me that sent them into paroxysms of amusement. When I bought my first computer, the guy who sold it to me connected me to an Internet Service Provider. In arranging the e-mail address and the account name and address with the company, he spelt my name and the street name, (which happen to be the same), incorrectly. ‘Percell’ instead of ‘Purcell.’

  I had proudly sent Marvin and Wendy an e-mail, along with any other family members whose address I happened to have. There was no reply from them, but when Wendy telephoned her father there were gales of laughter from this end of the conversation along with comments about people who didn’t know how to spell their own name. Marvin had wondered who this strange person was sending him e-mails. Valerie Percell. Who in God’s name was that? Wouldn’t you think even the worst clueless dunderhead in the southern hemisphere could spell their own name? More jocularity. Petty. Precious. Vomitus.

  Once Graeme and I were spending a couple of weeks with Marvin and Wendy at their home in the south where he had been transferred for his banking job. We were going to launch out by ourselves for a few days, do a little touring around. We hadn’t made any motel bookings for the first night we would be on the road.

  Marvin said he would take care of it, found his motel literature and rang a motel on the other side of the state.

  ‘I want to make a booking for my father-in-law and his wife for tomorrow night,’ said he, a mass of officiousness.

  My ears pricked up and I wondered why a motel owner on the other side of Victoria would care whether the couple were his parents, his parents-in-law, two single people, two lovers, or three blind mice.

  Might he just as well have said, ‘I want to make a booking for tomorrow night for two people by the name of Purcell?’

  Would that not have served the purpose? Did he expect the motel owner to come out and give me a special inspection from head to toe because I was not actually Marvin’s mother-in-law but only the wife of his father-in-law, the interloper going ar
ound in disguise as a real wife? Was there a dotted line upon which I would have to sign as an intruder into the Purcell family?

  Graeme just stands there with his bare face hanging out, unreadable, blank. Defending me was never his strong point. He knows Marvin is God’s gift to efficiency when it comes to dealing with traveling questions and motel bookings. I walk on eggshells trying to pretend I am so stupid that I do not notice I am the outsider some twelve years into the relationship.

  Maybe it was the fairy penguins that finally did it. Or rather, what happened with the fairy penguins. On our trip back to our home town from where we had been visiting, we were accompanied some of the way by Marvin, Wendy and their children. Graeme and I went to the beach at dusk to see the fairy penguins coming from the beach into their burrows for the night.

  In the afternoon we had found a burrow with a pair nested inside and discussed this with Marvin. Red-faced with indignation, he proceeded to work himself into a lather about the shocking behavior of unspeakable tourists who flash camera lights into the faces of the tiny, defenseless birds. The sheer awfulness of these ignorant tourists and the virtue of tour guides who confiscate cameras in the face of this behavior filled Marvin with wide-nostrilled righteousness.

  Marvin and Wendy along with their sons, Oscar and Harvey and daughter Mahalia, went on home to their abode, as this was as far as they were accompanying us. Marvin’s habitual halo was visible to Graeme, as always. He regards this person as an intergalactic being lacking only in wings, propelled along by a shaft of sunlight beaming from his nether regions. There is a succinct and more basic way of expressing this, but you will know what I mean.

  Graeme and I set up our vigil on the rocks by the ocean, eventually spying a fairy penguin between two boulders. I watched the weeny bird while Graeme climbed around looking for others.