After Silence

by Jonathan Carroll

  Where were Lily and Greer now? At the market. She’d said they were going to stop at the market first and then come home. But I’d been so nuts when I ran in to tell her I had to leave, she might have panicked and would return much sooner than planned. I hoped not. I hoped she’d stay away. I hoped the phone wouldn’t ring yet. I hoped my room was still only a room and not a whole new crisis.

  The house had grown even bigger since I’d gone through Lincoln’s room. A small picture on the wall I’d drawn for Lily loomed, a yellow rug glowed so much on the floor that I stepped over to avoid touching it. You grow smaller. You lose perspective, control. Something is eating you from inside out and there is nothing you can do about it. It’s your own fear.

  At the door to my room I put a hand on the knob, paused a breath, turned it. Clicked the light on.

  Nothing.

  Nothing had been touched. The neatness that was my room, that always was the room, was there. Until I noticed the smell. Shit. The place was clean and tidy and reeked vilely of shit. The smell owned the room.

  It was on my desk. Two things were on my desk: one of Lily’s favorite dinner plates piled with shit, a photograph stuck in the top. Next to it was a green manila folder. I owned only one green folder. Purposely. I kept it in a locked strongbox at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet. In that box was the green file along with copies of my will, insurance policies, and important bank certificates. Lily did not know about the box but our lawyer did. No one but me knew the contents. If I were to die suddenly, he would inform her and give her the extra key. I hadn’t told her because I knew she would have objected furiously to the existence of the file. It was dangerous and incriminating, but I believed a fundamental artifact of our life and relationship. I envisioned a day when we were older, going through the papers together. I believed experiencing it all again through sixty-year-old eyes and hearts would matter very much to both of us.

  The file was thick. It held ninety-three pages of information gathered by the detective about Anwen and Gregory Meier. It also held the diary I’d kept from the day I went to visit the Meiers in New Jersey until the day before Lily confessed to kidnapping her son. Once she had told me the truth, I felt no need to write about what I thought was the truth anymore. I felt no need to write about anything at all. It had changed from being what was feared to what was from that moment on.

  As Lincoln grew older and more untrustworthy, I’d twice moved the box to a safety-deposit box at our bank. But having it there made me extremely uneasy and both times I’d brought it back. To lessen the risk of discovery, I put the “Lily documents” at the bottom and covered them over with stock certificates and other boring papers that had no immediate value or interest to a snooper or a thief.

  Even reading through the papers from the detective agency, one would have thought I simply had an inordinate interest in a couple named Meier. People who had tragically gone through one harrowing experience after another and only barely survived to crawl out on the other shore of life. Those Xerox copies alone said nothing.

  It was my diary. I could quote specific, damning passages from it here, but what would be the point? You have already heard my questions, alarm, and pain from that time. The diary Lincoln found and read said it all. Except for the one other thing I discovered the night of Lily’s confession. But seeing the shit and that deadly green folder so neatly side by side on the desk, I did not think of that one other thing. The hideous smell got stronger, closer; it made me want to retch. I walked over and sat down in the chair. Breathing through my mouth, I bent forward and plucked the photograph out of the top of the glistening brown pile. It was of our son squatting on this desk, shitting onto this plate. He was grinning at the camera and giving it the finger. Written in thick black marker across it was: “Look what I found!”

  The telephone rang. I glanced at it. It seemed a hundred miles away on the other side of the desk. I didn’t have the strength to reach across the few inches for it. It rang again. It rang again.

  “Hello?”

  “Dad!” His voice sounded so happy. “Now, I thought you’d be home. Get my message? It must be pretty ripe by now. What did you tell old Lil to get you home so fast? I bet you hightailed it over to see if I’d be there. Right?”

  “Something like that. Lincoln—”

  “Shut up. I don’t want to hear a word from you. I’ll hang up if you start talking. I’m at the airport. I took your extra Visa card and am going to use it for a while. I already got a few hundred out of a money machine with it. Bet you didn’t know I knew your code, didja? Do not call Visa and stop the card, understand?”

  “Yes, use it, but listen—”

  His voice grew more confident. “Good, right. I’m catching a plane to New York in ten minutes. Just so you and Mommy know, and don’t worry. Then I’m going to get a car and drive out to visit Mr. and Mrs. Meier. We need to have a good long talk together.”

  “Lincoln—”

  “Shut the fuck up! I’m going to talk to them and then I’ll think about you. Maybe. Maybe I’ll come back, maybe not. Don’t try to follow me. Besides, there isn’t another plane to New York for three hours. I checked. Even if you try, it won’t do you any good.

  “Stay away. You owe me that, asshole. You and Lily owe me a lot more than that. Stay away until I get in touch with you. In the meantime, the only money I’ll have will be from your credit card, so do not cancel it.”

  I had to say just one thing to him. I had to chance it. “Lincoln, the Meiers—”

  “Shut up!” The line went dead.

  Before doing anything else, I took the plate from the desk, shook what was on it into the toilet, and flushed. Then I rinsed the plate in fresh water until it was clean again. Not good enough. Taking it to the kitchen sink, I poured on liquid bleach and let it sit in that chemical bath a few minutes before cleaning it off with scalding water and soap. Still unsatisfied, I put the plate into the empty dishwasher and turned the machine on. I wonder what Lily thought later, opening the door and seeing only one plate. Strange things afoot that night in the Fischer household.

  I didn’t want to be around to tell her what had gone on in the last hours. For a short time I considered admitting everything, including Lincoln knowing because he’d read the diary I’d kept hidden from her for years. But that would demand a discussion meant for a night when we had hours to weigh and argue and hopefully come to a peace with each other about my having kept the book around in the first place. There was no time now. Lincoln was about to board a plane to New York and do whatever the hell he planned to do with the Meiers once he got there.

  I called flight information at Los Angeles Airport. The boy had told the truth—the plane just now leaving for New York was the last for three hours. No, there were no flights to Newark either. One to Hartford in an hour, another to Philadelphia in two. Both cities were too far away to be of any help. I needed New York or New Jersey but neither was available for one hundred and eighty minutes, plus flight time. For a while I felt hopeful on realizing that even with a valid credit card, an auto rental place won’t rent a car to a sixteen-year-old. Right! He’ll have to stay in the airport till he can figure a way out, which will buy me badly needed time. Yet this was also the young man who kept a loaded .45 pistol taped to the back of his dresser and had found my most secret of secrets. Which meant, of course, he was enterprising enough to find a way to Somerset, New Jersey, a lot sooner than I would.

  Since I had no idea if they still lived there, the next step was to call New Jersey information and ask if Anwen and Gregory Meier still lived in Somerset. They did. Goddamnit, they did. In that strange and spooky house that was supposed to be a replacement for their lost child.

  I sat and thought, then hopefully called a couple of different charter airlines listed in the phone book to ask how much they charged to rent a private plane and pilot to fly East. The prices were insane, but I was willing to do it until they said they’d need at least three hours, minimum, to arrange it. I
called the airports in Burbank, Sacramento, and San Francisco. Nothing worked. There were flights to New York from these places but not the right connections to get me to them in time.

  Seconds after I put the phone down after the last futile call, it rang again. Praying it would be Lincoln so I could tell him the one essential thing he didn’t know, I snatched it up. Only to hear Mary Poe’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Max, it’s Mary. I’m calling from the car phone, so it’ll be a bad connection. Lincoln’s gun is definitely real, and it’s stolen. The serial numbers say it’s part of a shipment of guns from a truck that was hijacked in Florida six months ago. It’s also a major league weapon, very high-powered shit. Terrorists love Glock guns because they’re made mostly out of plastic and can be snuck by airport metal detectors. It’s no Saturday night special, Max. It’s the kind of piece that gives you the willies even when you carry a gun yourself. But you say it’s still there? Then it’s all right. Just take it down and hold it in your lap, or stick it in a safe till boyo gets home.”

  I got off as quickly as I could, after asking her to be sure not to tell Lily about the gun. Having no idea how long I would be in the East, I went into our bedroom and packed a small bag with jeans, a couple of shirts, underwear… enough for three or four days. I knew I had to write Lily a note explaining some of this so she wouldn’t go mad with worry when she returned and found both of us gone. But what could I say? “I am running after our son, who has discovered he was kidnapped…” What could be said? There was no time to think about it. I wrote that he had run away, possibly with Elvis and Little White. I was going to try to find him before anything bad happened. That was why I’d run out of the restaurant earlier—because he told me he’d had enough of us and was going to go and live life on his own. It was the kind of lie that left out enough to be almost true. She would go for it and that was all I could hope for at that moment. Lily was stubborn about Lincoln, but not stupid. She knew how angry he was and how unpleasant he could be. Hearing he’d flown the coop would not surprise her. I wrote I would call her the minute I knew anything.

  I ran out of the house, locked the door, and unthinkingly looked through the living-room window and saw that I’d left on a number of lights. One memory flicked through my mind of changing a bulb in one of those lamps, calling to Greer to please go to the kitchen and get me a new bulb. “Yes, Daddy.” The soft sound of her slippered feet racing down the carpeted floor and in a far part of the house asking her mother for a light for Daddy. What would our lives be like the next time I changed a light bulb in our home? How long would it be before that happened?

  In contrast to all the frightening possibilities, the Los Angeles evening was lovely and fragrant. It would have been pleasant to sit out on the back patio, drink a glass of brandy, and talk quietly late into the night. We did that often. Greer would fall asleep in one of our laps as Lincoln had years before. We wouldn’t disturb them. It was too nice being there together. When he was still alive, the greyhound would lie on his side near our chairs, his long legs stretched out straight. He was still around when Greer was very young. More than once we’d enter a room and see this tiny girl standing close but never actually touching him.

  “Cobb! Oh my God.” I remembered something intriguing when I thought of our dog. Lincoln was the only human being the old eccentric let touch him. Until one day the boy ran into the house in tears, wailing that Cobb had just snapped at him. Neither of us could believe it, knowing their special relationship. We reassured him, saying the dog had probably been sleeping and was in the middle of a bad dream or whatever. The three of us went out to find him and see what was up. He was in his favorite place—lying in the sun on the warm stones of the patio. We told Lincoln to go try petting him again. When he bent down to touch the gray giant, Cobb either grumbled or growled. The sound was not friendly. That was the end of an era. From that moment until he died, he didn’t want any of us touching him, not even his young pal. He still stuck his tongue out in those long, slow swipes Lily insisted were kisses, but he wouldn’t be touched. When was that? Walking to the car, I tried to figure out exactly when the change happened in him. It seemed to have been after Lincoln and I became blood brothers. Or it could very well not have. My mind was racing so fast and trying to tie so many different strings together that it was unhelpful and dangerous. I made up a line that has become a kind of all-purpose prayer for me: “I want calm and not control.” As I backed out of the driveway, window down for the cool air needed across my face, a part of me still couldn’t believe I was about to fly across country chasing a son who’d found out too much too soon and was doing exactly what he shouldn’t.

  Turning the steering wheel, I started repeating over and over, “I want calm and not control.” Down Wilshire, weaving through the red and yellow taillight traffic, I said it. Down La Cienega Boulevard out to the airport: “I want calm and not control.”

  The car was almost out of gas. I drove into a station and stopped by a self-service pump. The man in the cashier’s booth looked at me through a pair of binoculars. No more than thirty feet away, he used binoculars to see if I was going to rob him. It was a great idea for “Paper Clip,” but the life where I did that job now seemed as far away as the Ivory Coast. I went to the booth and slid a twenty-dollar bill beneath a bulletproof-glass window thick enough to stop a Cruise missile. The man held the bill up to the light to see if it was fake. His face was all suspicion. How many times had he been robbed, or simply scared to the bottom of his bones?

  “We get a lot of counterfeit twenties.”

  “I can imagine.”

  My mother used to say, “You feel black, you see black.” The drive to LAX that night was one scene after another of worry or angst or hell, beginning with the man with his binoculars. Was it coincidence that I saw a drunken man standing in the middle of the street screaming, or two police cars screech up in front of a house and the officers jump out going for their guns? Further on, a gang of black kids stood in front of a Fatburger all wearing the same black-and-white Oakland Raiders baseball caps and windbreakers. There must have been fifteen of them in this uniform and they all looked ready for murder. The road widened out and began to rise toward the oil-well-covered hills. Streetlamps dumped their fake orange glare over us. I looked to the side and saw ugly, sinister faces in the cars passing mine. Drivers with narrowed-down heads like weasels, bald rats, and lipless ferrets pointed forward, so eager to get somewhere that even their heads were squeezed down by the G force of anticipation. A young child in the back seat of a Hyundai had its hands and open mouth pressed to the window. A beautiful passenger with long blond hair looked at me with such burnt-out, nothing-interests-me eyes. Was she dead? Was the world I knew suddenly so macabre and threatening because of what had happened tonight with my son? Or had it always been this way and only now was I able to see it with understanding eyes?

  I sped up. It was a long time before my plane left but I needed to be at the airport. Needed those clean long boring halls and plastic chairs where you sat looking at nothing, waiting for the time to pass until you could get on a plane and continue looking at nothing for a few more hours.

  Before you see L.A. Airport, you see the planes gliding in over the highway to land. They are enormous there, eighty feet above the ground and sinking. Larger even than when they are parked at the terminal. They dwarf everything as they drop slowly in toward earth; you love their size and the fact they’re tame, that you can ride in one anytime you want.

  I left the car in long-term parking and walked quickly to the terminal. It was an evening in the middle of the week and traffic was light.

  So much emotion at the doors of an airport. Hugs and tears, the joy on the faces of those who’ve just landed and are coming out into the real air after so many hours on the plane. Cars pull up, pull away. Above all else, everything is rushed. A rush to get there, to get out of here. The world on fast forward. Where was Lincoln now? Rushing across the country toward tw
o people—

  “Call them! Just call them up!” Whatever is most obvious hides when you’re stressed. Two steps into the building, the idea to call and give them some kind of warning came to me. I looked around wildly for a telephone. Over there! I’d taken a load of change when I left the house, which was good because this was going to be one expensive call. I dialed New Jersey information and for the second time that night asked for Gregory Meier’s number. Those blessed push-button telephones. How long it took when you were in a hurry but had to twist and twist the wheel of the old machines. Now stab stab stab… and you’re through. It was ridiculous feeling so pressed for time when Lincoln was still four hours away from landing, but I did. The connection was made and their phone began to ring thirty-five hundred miles away.

  “Hi. You’ve reached the Meiers, but no one’s home now. Please leave your name and message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can. Thanks for calling.”

  There was a peep and the demanding silence that expects you to talk. I couldn’t think of what to say. In one minute? If I had told them, “Be careful of a boy who’s coming. He thinks you’re his parents and could be dangerous,” they might have called the police or gotten scared enough to make things even more confusing and difficult. What if someone I didn’t know called and told me that? I’d think either that it was a bizarre prank or that the speaker was a sadist. I tried calling four more times before taking off, but their machine always answered. What did that mean in terms of Lincoln? Would they be home by the time he reached them? If not, if they were out of town and not due back for days, how would that affect him? What would he do? Wait? Take his anger and frustration, get back on a plane with it, and fly somewhere else? Knowing our son, he’d wait a short time and then return home. I didn’t know which was worse.