If you didn’t use your voice for ten, or twenty years, could you lose it? What about those monks and nuns who take a vow of silence, and eat all their meals together without ever saying, “Pass the potatoes” or “This chicken needs salt”? What if one of them started choking on a fishbone? Or saw a mad strangler come up behind another monk?
Big deal, Linda told herself. Even the President of the United States is not a spontaneous person. Somebody else has to write all of his speeches. And the whole world listens, as if he were a great poet talking off the cuff and straight from the heart.
Robin was not speaking to her at all, that old punishment for unintentional crimes. The girl had not even shrugged for a long time; perhaps it was difficult to do effectively while lying down. When the gas-station attendant wiped the back window and said, “Hot enough for you in there, kid?” she had shut her eyes and pretended to sleep, with a comic book spread across her face.
Once, Linda read an article about a couple who had stayed married for fifty years without speaking. It had all started with an argument on their honeymoon about the wrong eggs ordered for breakfast. During the years that followed, they had children, bought a house and cars, took trips, without exchanging a word, and now they were having a golden wedding anniversary party. That’s why they were in the newspaper. The caption, under the picture of a grim, white-haired couple holding champagne glasses, read: Weehawken Pair Prove Silence Is Golden. Maybe she should tell Robin about that. Or about the woman in an iron lung who had memorized the entire Bible. What made me think of that, Linda wondered. Anyway, Robin was really asleep now. The comic book had slipped off her face, leaving a small tattoo of color on her left cheek.
Robin woke and thought: What if the monastery caught on fire? But then they would have a special bell to ring, wouldn’t they? She sat up and looked through the window. She wondered how long it was since she’d last spoken. And what was the world’s record? She didn’t have a watch and she certainly wasn’t going to ask Linda the time and spoil her own record, whatever it was. In the Guinness Book, she remembered, a man in Australia had showered non-stop for 336 hours.
Robin often dreamed that she could not speak in moments of crisis. Sometimes she was in danger; sometimes she recognized her mother in a huge crowd that pressed around her and wouldn’t let Robin through. In the dream, she saw her own wordless mouth working, and would come awake, breathless and frightened.
She touched the fork in her pocket. At the Marriott in Iowa, she’d wrapped the tines in some of the free Kleenex they had in the bathroom wall, so that they wouldn’t leave scratches across her hip any more. What if she said absolutely nothing when she saw her mother, became as mute as the dream Robin, except that her voicelessness then would be deliberate, controlled? What if she simply stared with burning eyes and took the fork from her pocket and plunged it in before her mother could speak, either, or scream? If Robin had had more time that day on the farm in Iowa, she would have stolen a real weapon, a sharp and shining knife. She thought of those three rifles on the wall of Linda’s friend’s house in Indiana. If they had been smaller, if they had been revolvers or pistols. If her father had really been the chief of police. The fork would have to do. She must remember to remove the Kleenex first, that’s all.
An unspoken (ha!) contest had been started between them. Linda wasn’t sure how, or even why. It was just that neither of them was speaking. If it came to it, she knew she could endure much longer than Robin. But she was the adult here, the one to set the proper tone for their behavior. And it was childish to continue this competition with a child. Her mouth began to shape Robin’s name, and then shut again, with a defiance of its own. Anyway, what would she say?
They were going to have to stop soon for lunch. She thought, with a passing tremor of guilt, that it would be interesting to just drive and drive and see how long Robin could hold out without food or water or going to the bathroom. Linda had used the one at the Shell station while Robin pretended to sleep, and she had taken a long drink when she’d filled the thermos there. As far as hunger went, she could get by for hours on the Tropical Fruits Life Savers in the change tray on the dashboard. Linda saw with spiteful satisfaction that Robin’s favorite, tangerine, was coming up next.
But the center line of the road was starting to have that hypnotic effect. At each rise, Linda worried that she would be carried over it into sleep, without warning. And using the radio to stay awake had to be a violation of the rules of whatever stupid game they were playing. How did this craziness begin? How would it end?
If you never spoke, would that increase your ability to send telepathic messages? In science last year, Oxhorn told them that the loss of one sense often led to the sharpening of another. Compensation, he called it. Robin sent a swift trial message to Linda, commanding her to shut the front window. It was blowing Robin’s hair around, anyway. Linda Close The Window. She stared at the back of Linda’s head. Nothing happened. It was probably Linda’s fault. She was just a lousy receiver. You probably couldn’t send a message through her brain with a poisoned dart.
Robin had ESP. She and Ginger tested themselves once with a deck of cards, according to instructions in a magazine, and Robin had come out Above Average in Telepathy and Clairvoyance. Sometimes she knew when the telephone was going to ring right before it happened. She’d get this tingling in her neck, and she would know. LINDA YOU DUMB ASSHOLE CLOSE THAT WINDOW.
There was a chartered bus at Howard Johnson’s and another one pulling in. They were carrying a convention of insurance underwriters from the Plains states. Inside the restaurant, all the tables and counter stools were taken, and there was a considerable line of people waiting to be seated. They buzzed and trilled with conversation. The hostess occasionally held up three fingers or four. Feeling foolish, but enterprising, Linda raised two fingers herself when asked how many, and thought she perceived surprise on Robin’s face. But the smaller tables had all been recently assigned, and Linda could see they weren’t going to waste a whole booth on two diners. She was thinking of heading for the next Howard Johnson’s, at least fifteen miles away on I-35, when a stranger spoke to her. He was a tall, handsome, elderly man who was holding an immaculate panama hat against his breast. Linda was so startled, and the conventioneers were making such a din, she didn’t understand him. She almost said, “Pardon?” but checked herself in time. Instead, she moved her head inquiringly, and touched her ear, and the man obliged by repeating himself. He and his wife were wondering if she and the other young lady would mind sharing a table, so that they could all be seated sooner as a party of four.
Linda looked at Robin, who smirked, and then she nodded vigorously. The man informed the hostess of their new status and they were seated within a few minutes.
The man and his wife had the sweetest faces. They sat close to one another in the booth, sharing a menu.
Linda hardly had to look at hers. She knew most of the offerings by heart and could even predict the Daily Specials. But how was she going to convey her order to the waitress without speaking? This nice couple would think she was rude, or peculiar, if she didn’t speak to them, either. The whole business was idiotic. Yet she said nothing and pretended to examine the Technicolor illustrations of fried clams and cheeseburgers.
Robin slid out of the booth to use the ladies’ room. She glanced at Linda as if to say, Dare to speak while I’m gone! Linda stared back, intimating her outrage at such a suggestion.
The two strangers spoke to one another in gentle, considerate tones. “The ham salad looks good, dearest,” he said. “What do you think?” She was thinking of the fish fillet on a bun. They decided to order one of each and share them. Their intimacy was so natural that Linda believed they shared everything. The mystery of love’s beginning was nothing compared to the miracle of its endurance.
Inevitably, the couple turned their attention to Linda. “Have you decided yet, dear?” the woman asked. And Linda nodded and pointed to the photograph of the grilled-chee
se sandwich. It was a special that included potato salad and pickles, a choice of beverage, and one scoop of ice cream. The man and his wife exchanged a look of deep understanding and sympathy. Why, they think I can’t speak, Linda realized, and was horrified.
“May I order for you?” the man asked. His eyes were watery with kindness. This was the appropriate time to end all this nonsense, and she would have, or would have cheated, whispering a fast explanation, if Robin hadn’t come back to the table at that very moment.
“Your sister is having the grilled-cheese special,” the woman said to Robin, after she was seated. Every word was enunciated with excruciating care. “Would you like the same thing?”
Robin shrugged, the international language that always worked for her.
“Good! Fine!” the man cried, in a jovial outburst. He snapped his fingers for the waitress, like a flamenco dancer, and she whirled to their table.
It all went like that. Even the choice of beverage was easy. The woman read them off until she was stopped by a show of hands. Linda thought: This is the worst thing I’ve ever done. When she was a child, she and a couple of friends liked to pretend they were blind. They would link arms and, with their eyes squeezed shut, walk downtown, careening into people and shop windows. Her father caught them once, and she was beaten for being disrespectful of the less fortunate. But she had not done it to ridicule anyone, only to test the terror of possibility. She remembered disabled beggars in Newark, and Simonetti saying bitterly that they were all fakes; the blind could see, the amputees were contortionists; the world was full of phonies and crooks. Maybe he was right. Her face flamed. She could barely chew her sandwich. And it was much too late to undo this situation now, not without humiliating these strangers, too. The man and his wife were overwhelmingly solicitous. They discreetly asked questions that could be answered easily with a gesture or a nod. They told about their son, who was a plastic surgeon in Amarillo, and about their daughter, who was a librarian and raised basenji puppies, a rare breed that was barkless. After she said this, the woman looked dismayed, and her husband patted her hand to reassure her. Linda took some comfort from seeing that Robin was suffering as well, and had let her ice cream melt into a soup in which she drowned her spoon.
Of course the couple insisted on paying for everyone. “It’s a pleasure!” the woman shouted. Her voice had doubled in volume since they sat down together. “And a privilege!” her husband added. “We don’t often get to have lunch with such charming young ladies.” They both shook hands with Linda and Robin. Linda felt hers being pressed fiercely. Courage, was the message, courage.
In the parking lot she looked upward, feeling faintly religious and expecting retribution. But the atmosphere was cloudless and forgiving. The elderly couple waved from their blue Pinto and drove away.
Robin climbed into the front seat next to Linda. They went slowly down the service road and then merged with the highway traffic. Still, neither of them spoke.
Maybe we can’t any more, Linda thought, and put one hand against her own throat. It throbbed with contained language. Everywhere in the world, people were speaking civilly to one another. Good evening. Goodbye. It certainly looks like rain. Would you care for a cheese puff? In French, in Chinese, in that African click-talk that sounds like wooden beads being strung together across the vocal cords.
Robin’s profile was cool and inscrutable. Her fine light hair blew wildly around it. I’ll give in, Linda decided. She never will. “Is there too much of a draft for you?” she asked. “Shall I close my window?” Had her voice always been this musical? It was thrilling to speak again, like opening one’s body willingly to love. Not really giving in at all.
Robin’s eyes were astonished, and her skin blossomed with blood. “Yes!” she said. “Oh, yes!”
24 “So now tell me about him,” Robin said, as they were settling in for the night at a place called Buddy’s Siesta.
“Who?” Linda asked, already on guard. Robin often didn’t seem to listen to anything Linda said. And then days later, without warning, she would gather up the strings of a failed conversation, and begin again. It startled Linda and made her feel uneasy, like a courtroom witness about to be caught in a lie.
“Your father,” Robin said.
“What about him?” Linda was stalling for time in which to invent history, or a further, convincing stall.
“Anything,” Robin said, her voice stretched with impatience, a cranky child demanding a new bedtime story.
“Well,” Linda said. “He was a mill worker and he had a lung disease. It’s called emphysema.”
Robin nodded as if she had received the most pertinent facts.
Linda took that moment to shut the light and position herself for sleep. Maybe she could if Robin stopped talking and she didn’t start thinking. “Good night,” she called, with faint optimism and even less authority.
“What happened to him?” Robin asked.
“He died.”
“Of what? The lung stuff?”
“No, not exactly … It was more of an accident.”
“In a car?”
“No,” Linda said. “I don’t know about you, Robin, but I’d better go to sleep before I drop.” By now she was as tightly coiled as a runner before a race.
“In a plane?”
“Uh-uh. It was a household accident. And I don’t want to talk any more, okay?”
“That’s the fourth biggest killer in America,” Robin said. “After heart, cancer, and strokes. This insurance guy came to school last year and told us all this junk about not leaving your skates on the stairs and everything.”
Linda was quiet, hoping that if she didn’t answer, Robin would simply wind herself out.
“And not smoking in bed,” Robin said. “Are you sleeping?”
Maybe never again, Linda thought.
“He came for career week,” Robin said, yawning. “He was a real asshole.”
“Mmmm,” Linda dared, and then held her breath. She realized after a while that Robin had diverted herself, and that the inquiry was over, at least for now. Linda was grateful, if not quickly relaxed. Her father’s death was something she was still unable to discuss with dispassionate calm. And everyone said it could never have happened exactly the way she remembered it, anyway. On a date last year with a rescue-squad paramedic, she’d tried to describe it, and he thought she was only kidding. He said she must have a terrific imagination and how about using a little of it on him? But she wasn’t kidding and she didn’t hold her imagination responsible, either. She believed, with valiant resolution, that it really had happened that way.
She’d had many fantasies about her father dying, before the actual event. Mostly they involved major catastrophes. What if the great maple out front finally collapsed under its burden of branches and fell on him? What about fire? Her chest would knock with alarm and excitement. She would have to go looking for him, then, to see that he was still alive, to reassure herself of her own impotence. And when she found him, it would all begin again—the abuse, the fantasies.
Linda would wonder sometimes about her mother and father together. Even before she knew about sex, or knew she knew, she’d try to think of them falling in love and agreeing to marry and have a child. She wished much later, too late, that she had asked her mother why she had chosen someone so darkly moody and cruel, and what she, Linda, had done right from the beginning to attract that cruelty. With others he was taciturn and gruff, but he seemed to reserve the center, the very eye, of his furious storm for her. One day, when Linda’s mother came home from a job and found her crying in the sticky shade of the porch and rubbing the red places on her arms where he had gripped them, she didn’t even ask what had happened. She knelt to embrace Linda, tried to erase those fingermarks with her own hands, and said, “He had a very hard life.”
Linda thought she recalled some days of careless peace, herself in the doorway watching him asleep on the sofa, his afternoon snoring a steamboat’s benign whistle. He did
n’t look so bad then, though she knew it had to do with the small charge of power she exerted by being the unseen observer. But maybe he’d once been a tamed and loving man, a daddy who played cards with her and carried her gently from an infant sickbed to the toilet. Or was that someone else with cool strong arms and a thundering heartbeat against hers? All the real witnesses were gone, and who could trust the unreliable witness of memory?
Yet she clearly remembered her parents walking up the stairs to the second floor, him following her like some large faithful dog, panting after the white stockings, almost nipping at the white hem. They’d go to their bed and Linda to hers, where she would count and hoard those latest miseries, all the prickly wounds of spirit and flesh. How he had locked her in her mother’s closet for three hours because she had been found rummaging there, how he would not acknowledge her apologies after she was released, would not speak to her at all. How she had been awakened in the middle of the night to be held accountable for sins she was too confused to remember, but confessed to finally for the promised solace of bed. Where she would rock in a tight circle of herself until she gasped and could be delivered again to sleep.
It was early in March, about a month after her tenth birthday. Her mother had left for a new job, and Linda was instantly bereft. In those days her imagination ran to fear as much as it did to dreams of wish fulfillment. And she was always afraid her mother wouldn’t come back. It was raining hard; Linda was positive of that detail. The rain fell through the trees with the noisy urgency of plumbing, and it intensified her bereavement. It also confined her to the house that Saturday, sealing her in with her father and Mrs. Piner and Mr. Botts and a new old lady who cried soundlessly most of the time, as if she were separated from them by a thick pane of glass. Linda couldn’t remember the old lady’s name now, but everything else was sharp and immediate—the way the rain sounded, the way the house smelled of trapped dampness and breath. Her mother was already miles away, powdering the newest baby, holding its little wrinkled legs up and patting on clouds of talc—the way she floured a chicken.
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