After Silence

by Jonathan Carroll

  Walking in from collecting the mail one morning, I heard the telephone ring. I wanted to ignore it because of what was in my hand, but unlike other people, I cannot disregard a ringing phone. It makes me both excited and uneasy for the same reason—what’s coming from the other end?

  I was holding a child’s drawing of a smiling man. The picture included his whole head and neck. In the middle of the neck, looking as if it had been swallowed whole, was a big red rose. Written in unmistakably adult script at the bottom of the page was: “We agree we both have a rose in the throat for you.” I receive a fair amount of fan mail, but my first rushing hope was this had come from Lily and Lincoln. Kid’s artwork, grownup’s handwriting. What did it mean, “a rose in the throat”? The phone kept ringing. One thing at a time.

  “Max? It’s Pop. I’ve got bad news, son. Mom had a stroke last night. She’s in the hospital in a coma. You think you can come here and be with us?”

  I was on an airplane heading east three hours later. By late evening I was holding my father’s hand in a hospital room very similar to the one I’d so recently left. Lying still and pale in bed, my mother already looked dead. The stroke had done something to her mouth and it gaped open oddly to one side.

  It was the third time my father had told me the story of what had happened. I knew it was necessary for him to talk it out as much as he could, so I said nothing.

  “We were watching TV. She said, ‘Do you want a little snack, honey?’ You know her, always wanting to feed you. Then she makes sure you eat every bit. I said no, I’m fine. Then she stuck her hand out like this, like she was pointing at something on TV. I even looked that way, but a second later she fell forward, right off the couch.

  “Oh, man. Oh, Max. What am I going to do? If Mama doesn’t get better, I don’t know… I don’t function… I can’t do things right when she’s not around. You know how I am, son.” He looked at me desperately, as if waiting for me to explain him to himself: explain a way out of the final dilemma that was here now in the form of his too still wife.

  “I think she’s resting, Pop. She’s in there sorting things out and seeing what she needs to do to come back to us. Mom wouldn’t leave us in the lurch like this. Hey, listen, you know her—always sets lunch out for us before she’d go anywhere. She’s not going to leave now without making sure we’re taken care of!”

  I meant it as a gentle reassuring joke, but the light in his eyes was suddenly bright and surer. “That’s right! Ida never left things undone. She is in there, resting up for the next act. That’s right. She’ll wake up any minute now, yelling for us to take off our shoes.”

  Inescapable. At some point, life orders us to our parents’ seat at the head of the table and suddenly we’re responsible for “feeding” them after a lifetime of vice versa. It is a moving and genuinely disconcerting moment, one you can’t fully bring into focus until later.

  When the doctors spoke to us about Mother’s condition and treatment, my father constantly watched my brother or me, as if only we understood and could translate what was being said. In the days we spent there, he never stopped asking, “What do you think, guys?” But what did we know that he hadn’t already taught us? He was the one who had gone through the Depression and war, the loss of his parents, and nine thousand more days of life. Nevertheless, when Saul or I made a decision, he accepted it instantly. We never knew if he agreed, but I got the feeling the loss of his wife had entirely sapped his strength. Like someone who stumbles and starts to fall, any steadying arm is welcome. The fact it was his sons’ made it easier to grab and hold on. Plus any decision made quickly and with a degree of certainty appeared to reassure him there was still some order and balance in his now teetering world.

  He told us many things, both about Mother and about their relationship I’d never heard before. Some of these stories were intensely personal, others boring. What was disconcerting was that all three of us continually referred to her in the past tense. Even the tone of our nostalgia, or the way anecdotes were told, made it sound like the woman wasn’t really there anymore; she was half ghost, or ectoplasm, rather than a living Ida Dax Fischer.

  “Okay, so enough about your mother and me. What about you, Maxie? Have you got a nice girlfriend these days?”

  “I think so, Pop. We only met recently, but so far I like her very much. You have to hear a story, though. She has a ten-year-old son and he had a birthday party the other day…” I went on to tell him about the party/snakes/Tackhead because he likes a good story and I thought this would make him laugh. To my disappointed surprise, he only half smiled and asked what had happened to the Aarons when I was done. I said they’d come to the hospital and appeared to have forgiven me, but who knew? Maybe I’d go home and never hear from them again.

  “Do you think you’ll get married one day?”

  “I hope so, Pop. I like the idea of marriage but’ve never met a woman—”

  “Listen to me. I wouldn’t say this if your brother was in the room, but you know how I feel about the dragon he’s married to. I got hitched young and was lucky. Saul got married young and Denise was the biggest mistake of his life. But now Mom’s like she is and I feel like my head’s cut off. So what does either get you? Know what I mean? If you’re lucky, you end up feeling headless. If you’re unlucky you got to get into bed for forty years with a monster from hell. I don’t know if you can win, Max. Maybe you should stay single and play the field.”

  “I want to have children, Pop. I’d love to know what it’s like to see kids in a sandbox and know they’re yours. That must be a hell of a feeling.”

  “It ends up the same—kids grow up and leave, and you feel like your head’s been cut off.”

  To our amazement and delight, Mother came out of the coma four days later and immediately asked for a screwpound. When asked what a “screwpound” was, she said a vodka and orange juice. With the exception of many of these eerie, funny “offnesses,” she returned to full consciousness in decent shape. Her mouth remained crooked, as did many of the things she said, but nothing else was damaged and she was in good spirits.

  “How much is the hospital costing?”

  “I don’t know, Ma, but don’t worry about it. Saul and I will pay.”

  “Then get your father in here to take the other bed. It would be the first vacation we ever had.”

  My father walked on air. He had always treated her well and with the fullest respect and appreciation, but the return and recovery made her even more special in his eyes. He spoke of her in glowing, reverential terms. He spoke to her in almost a whisper, as if afraid any loud noise might scare her away, back to where she’d been or worse.

  She chided him for his obsequiousness, but there was much love in her expression and she insisted on holding his hand whenever he was in the room.

  Sitting there, I sketched them again and again. We talked, they held hands, Saul told stories about life in London and the company he worked for there. Although the four of us got together for family reunions once or twice a year, this was totally different. We were all breathing relief, love, and apprehension as one. It warmed the emotional temperature of that room fifty degrees. Mom had almost left us forever, I’d had kidney stones, my father had turned over familial power to us and spoken of marriage, family, and lifetime love as things that killed a person in the end. Perhaps he was right to whisper. Perhaps we all should have.

  In my mother’s room one afternoon while she slept, I remembered the drawing Lincoln had sent of the man with the flower in his neck. A rose in the throat. Wasn’t that what was happening here? Choking on life’s good things if they went down the wrong tube, the wrong way? Roses are meant to be seen and smelled, not swallowed. My father’s love for Mother turned instantly lethal when he thought she was dying. This way, not that. It made such sense. But what did the Aarons mean in saying it? It was ten in the morning in L.A. There was a telephone in the room but I chose to use the public one out in the hall.

  “Hello?” />
  “Lily? This is Max Fischer.”

  “Max! I’ve been waiting for you to call! How are you? How’s your mom?”

  “Okay. She was in a coma but she’s out now and they think she’ll be all right. Listen, apropos of nothing, I wanted to ask you something. Remember that drawing Lincoln sent me? The one of the man with the flower in his throat?”

  “The rose. Sure I remember—I told him to draw it! Exactly to my specifications.”

  “Okay, but what does it mean?”

  I could literally feel her smile through the telephone.

  “Guess.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You have to guess.”

  “I’ve been guessing since I got it, but the only thing I could come up with was depressing.”

  “No, it’s not depressing! That I guarantee you. You know how sometimes you’re sitting somewhere and, very faintly, you hear music coming from the next room? You sit forward and cock your ears, trying to make out what it is? After a while you do, and you sit back like ‘Okay, life can now continue.’ That was me, Max. I figured out what music you are to me: you’re a rose in my throat. Don’t you love mixed metaphors?”

  “But it’s good?”

  “Yes, definitely good. When are you coming back?”

  I looked at the door to my mother’s room and felt a slap of guilt. Now that she was better I wanted to leave and go back to my life, back to what might happen with Lily Aaron. “Soon, I hope. As soon as they say she’ll definitely be all right.”

  “Let’s go bicycle riding when you’re here. The three of us.”

  “Great.” I made a mental note to buy a bike the moment I set foot back in Los Angeles.

  “Know what I’ve wanted to do for years? Ride a bicycle around Europe. Not with a backpack or anything. You have a car and you stay in hotels, eat good meals… but you have bikes too on top of the car and when you stop in a city or in the mountains, you only ride around or walk. No sightseeing from the car. Can you imagine how beautiful it would be to ride around the Alps?”

  “Or Paris? That’d be a dream. Can I come?”

  “I don’t know. Come home and we’ll check you out. Like a job interview—see if you’re made of the right stuff.”

  Before he returned to London, Saul and I had dinner together. Although we have little in common, my brother and I get along very well. He loves business, women, traveling. When he’s not working on a giant deal, he’s either in bed with a beauty or getting on a plane to some exotic place. Our parents know only that he’s successful and sends postcards or bizarre presents from the ends of the earth. His wife, Denise, is a stupid woman who used to be very beautiful before her stupidity and mean-spiritedness wore the beauty away. They have no children and she’s quite content to live well, spend money, and have an occasional affair when her self-confidence slips. Saul told me all this but says he doesn’t care.

  When my brother and I chat it’s always comfortable because we like each other but wouldn’t for the world wish ourselves in the other’s shoes.

  “What does this Lily look like?”

  “Short, long dark fluffy hair. She looks sort of French.”

  “What’s the last name again?”

  “Aaron.”

  “Is she a Jew?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And she’s got a son?”

  “Yes, he’s nice.”

  “Are you sure you want to get involved with a woman who has a kid just entering puberty? Do you know how to skateboard? Are you ready for Little League?”

  “Saul, my brother, fuck you. How many women have you been with who had children?”

  “Different, very different. You’re single. They always knew I was married. They were given that info before anything ever happened, bucko. I never gave any kid a chance to think of me as Papa. But ‘cause you’re single, the tighter you get with his mom, the more the boy will see you that way. Believe me.”

  “That may not be so bad either. Instant family. No diapers or teething. He’ll probably even like the same videos I do. Didn’t you ever want kids? I’m sure Denise wouldn’t, but I could see you jiggling a nice little one on your knee.”

  “I could too, kind of, but then the idea of spending half a lifetime parenting exhausts me. Anyway, Denise would like kids if the only thing they did was serve the drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Other than that, she envisions children as little monsters who’d make her breasts sag and put runs in her silk stockings.”

  “Do you ever think of divorcing?”

  “Seventeen times a day I think of it, Max. But know what stops me? This is going to sound funny coming from me, but we have a life together. That counts for something. I mean yeah, I have a million girlfriends and she’s had her share too. Plus she drives me crazy, and I’m not at home enough to make her feel like she’s got a full-time husband. But despite that, there is this life we’ve made together. We like to poke around in the Burlington Arcade, and go to Tottenham soccer games. Denise loves soccer. She’s still the best lover I’ve ever had and… I don’t know, man. Put all the good together and it counts for something. She can be dubious, but she’s my wife and my history. She’s the only one who knew what it was like ‘way back when.’ That means something.” He talked on and I loved him very much both for what he said and for what he implied. Marriage, even in the most difficult “climate,” can be as sturdy and sometimes as beautiful as cactus. Because now and then it surprises you without warning by blossoming into the most delicate, vibrant-colored flowers. “Who cares when a rose blooms, you know? A rose you expect to do what it does. But when a cactus flowers and it’s gorgeous…

  “Listen to what happened the other night. I was getting into bed and on my pillow was a slip of paper. It said ‘sweet red splendid kissing mouth’ in Denise’s handwriting. So I called out to her, ‘Hey, Den, this is really nice. Did you make it up?’ ‘No, Swinburne.’ ‘Swinburne? You mean the poet? When’d you start reading poetry?’ ‘I didn’t—it was inside the wrapper of one of those Baci candies. Isn’t it sweet?’ Christ, Max, did I love her more for writing it out and putting it on my pillow, or admitting right off she’d gotten it from a fucking candy wrapper!”

  A woman waiting alone in public has a determined, closed-door look on her face. To men it says, “Yes I’m waiting, but not for you, bub. Go away.” To women it gives them the once-over, as if daring them to say something. When a woman is waiting for me I like to watch a moment, unseen, before making contact. Pretend I’m seeing her again for the first time with no prejudice or desire in my thoughts.

  Lily was already through the gate, sitting in a blue plastic chair and giving “the look” when I arrived. Luckily I’d called Air France to make sure of the flight time and heard her plane would be arriving forty minutes ahead of schedule. A mad dash in the car down from St.-Paul-de-Vence and no traffic had made me only a little late. Little enough to take one good look before saying hello.

  Her hair was shorter and curlier. Something else was different, but what? I was so glad to see her, so flat-out grateful she’d gone along with my crazy, one-chance-in-a-million idea: Call a woman you hardly know. Ask her to drop her life for a week and fly to the South of France with the ticket you offer. If she wants to bring her son that’s fine, but you’d prefer her alone. There is, was, a long pause on the other end of the phone, which naturally I take to be the beginning of “No.” Instead she asks only one question—“Have you ever done this before with another woman?” And you know she is saying yes once you’ve said no, you never even thought of doing something so whimsical and hopefully romantic. Before she answers you know your whole life is about to change. God bless her.

  Her lips were green. Her lips were green.

  “Max! At last! What? What’s wrong?”

  “Lily, are you all right? Your lips are green!”

  She gave a little “Oh!” and brought a hand halfway to her mouth. Then the “Oh!” turned into a smile, then a big laugh. “It’s my stupid
lipstick! That happened once before. It’s this special stuff which when you put it on is green, then turns the red which most suits you. But that’s right, the last time I put it on and it stayed green, I was nervous too. Oh, Max, isn’t that dramatic? I fly all the way to Europe to show you nervous green lips.”

  Close enough to touch her, I did—hands to her shoulders, friendly, warm, intimate enough. “How’re you doing, Lily? How was your flight?” Before she had a chance to say anything, I pulled her to me and gave her a long tight hug. She didn’t do anything for a moment, then her hands moved tentatively up my back.

  “I didn’t know if you’d do that. Maybe that’s why my lips were green. Maybe if I’d known you’d hug me right away, they’d have been red as pomegranates!”

  Still holding her, I said into her hair, “You came. You goddamned came! It’ll be great. I promise you we’ll have a ball.”

  She pushed a little away and looked me sternly in the eye. “I don’t need France, Max. And I don’t need a good time. I’ve got lots to do at home. I came because of you. I came because you asked an impossible thing that might end up meaning the world. Where are we staying?”

  “St.-Paul-de-Vence. It’s about half an hour from here.”

  “That’s where the Colombe d’Or is. Gus said I had to bamboozle you into taking me there for dinner.”