Breaking The Silence

3

EMMA WAS SITTING ON THE FLOOR OF HER ROOM, ABSORBED IN her new tropical fish puzzle, a gift from her teenage baby-sitter, Shelley. Laura hunched down next to her. It had been two weeks since Christmas, yet this was the first time she’d seen Emma play with the puzzle. It was taking her some time to get over Poppa’s death.

“I’m going out for a little while,” Laura said, tucking a strand of Emma’s hair behind the little girl’s ear. “Daddy’s downstairs in his office.” It was good that Emma was so wrapped up in the puzzle. She would be little bother to Ray.

Emma held up a piece of the puzzle. “I know what this is,” she crowed. “Do you, Mom?”

“Fish scales?” Laura asked as if she weren’t quite sure.

“Right! And it goes right here!” Emma dropped the scales into the picture. “Are you going to work?” she asked, reaching for another piece of the puzzle.

“No. First I’m going to drop off my broken necklace at the jeweler’s. Then I’m going to visit someone.” She stood up. “I won’t be long.”

“This one’s an eye,” Emma said. “I can’t wait till when I have it all done. Can we put paste on it and hang it up like we did with the other one?”

“Sure, if you like. But then you won’t be able to play with it again.”

“That’s okay.” She looked up at Laura. Her eyes were the same color as her pale blue sweater. “Mom?” she asked.

“Honey, I really have to get going.”

“I know, but do you want to look at one of my books with me?”

“Tonight. Before bed.” She bent over to kiss the top of Emma’s head. “I’ll see you in a little while,” she said.

“’Kay,” Emma said, returning her attention easily to her puzzle. She was an independent child, far more independent than other five-year-olds Laura had encountered. People had been surprised to see her at Poppa’s funeral, but Laura had prepared Emma well for what she would see and hear, and she was certain she’d made the right decision in taking her. Emma finally seemed to understand the permanence of Poppa’s death after attending the service. Her daughter hadn’t cried during the funeral, but she’d put her little arm around her mother in comfort each time Laura began to tear up.

Downstairs, Laura found Ray in his office, his manuscript on the desk in front of him, but his attention focused on something out the window. She put her hands on his shoulders, the gray plaid flannel of his shirt warm beneath her palms.

“I won’t be long,” she said. She looked out the window herself, trying to determine what had caught his eye, but saw nothing other than the row of town houses across the street. Each of them was identical to the house in which they lived, each of their slanted roofs was covered with a thin layer of snow.

“Please don’t go,” Ray said, his gaze still riveted outside, and she knew he was slipping into one of his dark moods. She’d known Ray for ten years and had been married to him for nearly six. During that time, he’d seen several psychiatrists and taken a myriad of antidepressants, but nothing could hold off the darkness for long.

In the two weeks since her father’s death, Ray had apologized repeatedly for his outburst, assuring her he was not upset about her career. Still, the words he’d said that morning echoed in her ears, and she didn’t believe his retraction of them. In his moment of anger, he’d finally spoken the truth. Wanting to honor his feelings, Laura had tried to set her father’s request aside, and she was able to do so with reasonable success until the call from her father’s attorney.

“Who’s this Tolley woman?” the attorney had asked her. He told her that her father had paid the entrance fee for Sarah Tolley to move into Meadow Wood Village five years earlier. Not only had he continued to pay her monthly rent, he’d also left a large sum of money in trust for her so that she would still be taken care of after his death.

“I don’t have a clue,” Laura had told him, but her father’s arrangements left her even more certain that Sarah Tolley had somehow played a significant role in his life. She had to see her. When she told Ray her plans, he grew sullen.

“I’m leaving,” Laura said now, bending over, pressing her cheek to Ray’s temple. “I’ll be back in an hour. I promise I won’t stay longer than that. Emma’s completely absorbed in her fish puzzle, so you should be able to work undisturbed.”

He said nothing, and she removed her hands from his shoulders. He was giving her no support on this. Even in Ray’s blackest moods, it was out of character for him to treat her so coolly. It was almost as though her desire to carry out her father’s last wish had come to symbolize her inattention to him. She wondered if it was all right to leave Emma with him today.

“I’ll be back before you know I’ve gone,” she said, and she turned to leave the room before he had another chance to change her mind.

She dropped her broken necklace off at the jeweler’s, then drove across town to the retirement home.

Meadow Wood Village was a charming place, a large, three-storey building that managed to look well-aged and homey despite its relative newness and size. Its siding was a pale blue, the shutters white. An inviting porch ran across the entire front of the building. A place like this could take the fear out of growing old, Laura thought as she walked to the front door.

The building was as warm and inviting inside as it was out, and it smelled like cinnamon and vanilla. The carpets and upholstery were all a soft mauve-and-aqua print. Laura stopped at the front desk, where the receptionist looked up from a stack of paperwork.

“I’m looking for one of your residents,” Laura said. “Sarah Tolley.”

“I’ll call her attendant for you.” The woman motioned toward the lobby. “Have a seat.”

Laura sat on the edge of one of the wing chairs, and in a few minutes, a young, heavyset woman wearing a long floral jacket came into the lobby.

“You’re here to see Sarah?” the woman asked. She looked frankly incredulous.

“Yes,” Laura said. “My name’s Laura Brandon. I don’t actually know her…know Sarah,” she said. “She was a friend of my father’s, and he died recently. He’d asked me to look in on her.”

The woman lowered herself into the chair closest to Laura’s. Everything about her was round: her body, her face, her wire rimmed glasses, her button nose.

“I’m Carolyn, Sarah’s attendant,” she said, “and I have to say, I’m a little surprised by this. No one ever comes to visit Sarah.”

“My father must have,” Laura said. “Carl Brandon. He was about six feet tall, very slender, eightiesh, and—”

Carolyn interrupted her with a shake of her head. “No one has ever come to see her. I would know.”

“That just doesn’t make sense.” Laura saw her own puzzled reflection in the attendant’s glasses. “Well, can you tell me about her?” she asked. “How old is she?”

“She’s seventy-five. And she’s in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Did you know that?”

Laura sank lower in her chair. “No. I don’t know a thing about her.”

“She’s in excellent shape, physically,” Carolyn said. “She takes the exercise classes in our pool. And the Alzheimer’s is barely apparent, so far.” She sat forward in her chair. “We have three living areas here at Meadow Wood,” she explained. “Independent-living apartments, assisted-living apartments, and then a separate wing for those patients who need round-the-clock care. Until just last week, Sarah was able to live in the independent-living wing, but we had to move her over to assisted-living so she could receive more supervision. You know, no stove, no lock on the door. She got lost a couple of times when she went out for a walk, so we felt it was time to move her. We can’t let her go out by herself any longer.”

Laura nodded. What was she getting herself into?

Carolyn leaned even farther forward in her chair. “You know what would be fantastic?” she asked. “If you could take her out for a walk sometime. When the weather’s warmer, of course. Sarah would love that.”

Laura pictured Ray in the study, stewing in his disappointment that she’d gone to Meadow Wood even this once. “I don’t know,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t even met her.”

“The other thing you could do to help her,” Carolyn continued as if Laura hadn’t spoken, “would be to simply listen to her. Let her talk about her old memories. At this point, her primary symptoms are confusion and short-term memory loss. Her mind is still sharp in the past, though, and she loves to talk. But like I said, there’s no one to listen to her, except me, and I have other patients to take care of.”

“I really just wanted to—”

“Even though she’s always up for the bingo games, and she loves movie night,” Carolyn surged ahead, “she still spends too much time in her apartment watching TV. It shouldn’t be like that. I mean, with some patients, that’s okay. That’s enough stimulation. But someone like Sarah needs more.”

“Well—” Laura held up a hand to stop the woman “—as I said, I’ve never even met her. And I have a family of my own as well as a job to attend to. I only wanted to find out how my father knew her. That’s all.” That was not all her father had been asking of her, though, and she knew it.

“All right,” Carolyn stood up, clearly disappointed. “Come with me, then.”

She followed the attendant down a long corridor lined with pale aqua doors, each of them decorated with something different. Some of the doors had photographs taped to them. One had a stuffed teddy bear attached to the knocker. Another, a pair of ballet slippers.

Carolyn stopped at the door bearing a black cutout of a movie projector.

“This is Sarah’s apartment,” she said. “She loves old movies. We put the pictures or whatever on their doors so they know which door is theirs. Sarah’s not that bad yet, though,” she added quickly as she rang the buzzer.

It was a minute before the door was pulled open by an elderly woman, who smiled warmly when she saw Carolyn. “Come in, dear,” she said.

Laura followed the attendant into the small living room, which was furnished in attractive contemporary furniture. Nubby, oatmeal-colored upholstery and oak tables.

“Sarah, this is Laura Brandon,” Carolyn said. “She’s come to visit you.”

“How nice.” Sarah smiled at Laura. She was tall, an inch or two taller than Laura’s five-six. Her silver hair was neatly coiffed, and she bore a slight but unmistakable resemblance to Eleanor Roosevelt. She was impeccably dressed: beige skirt, stockings, beige pumps. The only giveaway that she was not entirely lucid was the incorrect buttoning of her beige-and-white-striped blouse. The fabric gapped slightly above the waistband of her skirt. For some reason, that slip in the otherwise noble carriage of the woman put a lump in Laura’s throat.

Carolyn glanced at her watch. “I’ll leave you two to get to know each other,” she said. “Enjoy your visit.”

Sarah led Laura to the couch after Carolyn left. “Won’t you sit down, dear?” she said.

“Thank you.”

“Would you like some coffee? Or lemonade? I think I have some in the refrigerator.” She started walking toward the small kitchenette, but Laura stopped her.

“No, I’m fine,” she said. She looked awkwardly into her lap. “I’d like to explain why I’m here.”

Sarah sat down at the other end of the couch and looked at her attentively, hands folded in her lap.

“I believe you knew my father,” Laura said. “Carl Brandon.” Sarah’s expression did not change.

“He died a few weeks ago and he’d asked me to…visit you. He wanted to be sure you were all right.”

A small cloud of confusion slipped over Sarah’s face. “That was nice of him,” she said. “I can’t remember who he is, though. I don’t remember things too well anymore.” She looked apologetic. “What did you say his name was?”

“Carl Brandon.”

“And where do I know him from?”

Laura smiled. “I don’t know. I was hoping you could tell me. He didn’t say. I figured maybe you were old friends. He pays for your apartment. And he still will, of course,” she added hastily, not wanting to worry her. “He set up a trust for you in his will.”

“My!” Sarah said. “I thought my social security paid for it.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I truly must be losing my mind. I just can’t remember him. Where did you say I know him from?”

“I don’t know, Mrs. Tolley. He was born in New York City in 1918. He grew up in Brooklyn. I think he moved there when he was about twelve and lived there until he was in his early twenties. Did you ever live in New York?”

“New Jersey,” Sarah said. “I grew up in Bayonne.”

“Well, maybe you didn’t meet him in New York, then. How about Philadelphia? He moved there when he was twenty-four or so, and he worked as a physicist at Allen Technologies. He had a passion for astronomy—everyone who knew him knew about that. He married my mother when he was around forty. My mother died when I was a child, and my father never remarried. I don’t know if he ever dated anyone or not. But maybe he knew you during that time? Could you have gone out with him at some time?”

“No, I don’t know how I knew him, but I’m sure that wasn’t it. I only went out with one man in my whole life.” Sarah’s gaze drifted to a photograph on one of the end tables. It was an old, sepia-toned picture of a good-looking young man.

“Was that the man you…went out with?” Laura asked.

Sarah nodded. “Joe Tolley. He was my husband. The love of my life.”

Laura sensed something in the tone of her voice. There was a long story behind that photograph, and she didn’t have the time to get into it.

“So, you didn’t date my dad, then,” she said. “Could you have worked together?”

“I was a nurse,” Sarah said. “And I never lived in Philadelphia. I lived in Maryland and Virginia most of my life.”

“Well, this is a challenge.” Laura smiled, trying not to let her frustration show. “If you were a nurse, could he have been your patient? He was sick for quite a while before he died. He had cancer, and was in and out of hospitals.” She realized how ridiculous it was to think that Sarah, in her seventies, could have been her father’s nurse. “I guess that doesn’t make sense,” she said.

“I grew up in Bayonne,” Sarah said again, and Laura guessed she was seeing the Alzheimer’s at work.

“Yes,” she said.

“I was a nurse on cruise ships.” She stood up and handed Laura another framed photograph. This one showed Sarah, in her fifties, perhaps, standing beneath a palm tree, a cruise ship looming behind her in the distance.

“That was in St.Thomas,” Sarah said. “Or maybe St. Lucia. My favorite was Alaska, though.”

“Well, what a wonderful job,” Laura said. “You got to see the world.”

“They have an Alaska show on the TV sometimes.” Sarah picked up the TV Guide from the end table and began flipping through it, and Laura felt antsy. She thought of Ray at home, staring gloomily out the window of his study, and Emma playing with the puzzle in her room. Looking at her watch, she realized she’d been gone well over an hour already.

She stood up. “I have to go, Mrs. Tolley,” she said.

Sarah looked at her in surprise. “Oh, you do?”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t solve the mystery of how you knew my father.”

“Did you say he was a doctor?”

“No. A physicist. And an amateur astronomer.”

Sarah looked as though she didn’t quite understand what Laura was saying, but she nodded. “Well, you come see me again, dear,” she said, walking toward her apartment door.

Laura only smiled, unwilling to make that promise. She had no more idea of why her father wanted her to take on the responsibility for Sarah Tolley than she did before her visit.

4

SOMETHING WAS WRONG. LAURA KNEW IT THE MOMENT SHE stepped out of her car in the town house garage, although she couldn’t have said what triggered her sense of dread. As she neared the door, she could hear a child crying inside the house. Was it Emma or some other child? The sound was unfamiliar. A wail. A keening.

Panicked, Laura struggled to fit her key in the lock, finally managing to push the door open. Stepping into the foyer, she found Emma sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, hunched over as though her stomach hurt. Her wailing turned to screams, and she leapt from the step into Laura’s arms.

“Sweetheart!” Laura tried to keep her own voice calm. “What is it? What’s wrong?” Maybe Emma had bugged Ray to read to her and, in his sour mood, he’d yelled at her, but this seemed an extreme reaction. Emma was usually more resilient than this.

Emma didn’t answer her. She clung to Laura, standing now, but pressing her head against Laura’s hip.

Laura looked through the living room toward Ray’s office, a patch of cold forming at the base of her neck. Emma’s screams could not mask the stillness in the rest of the house. “Where’s Daddy?” she asked as she walked toward the office, Emma clinging to her more tightly with each step. “Ray?”

The office was empty, the pages of Ray’s manuscript still piled on his desk. “Ray?” she called as she walked back toward the foyer and the stairs.

“Stay here,” she told Emma, gently pulling the little girl’s arms from around her hips. “I’ll be right back.”

She climbed the stairs, the cold patch at the back of her neck spreading down her spine. She walked through the doorway of the bedroom she shared with Ray. It was empty. Ray must have gone out. He’d left Emma alone. That’s why she was so upset.

That would not be enough to undo Emma, though, and Laura remembered seeing Ray’s car in the garage. She was about to leave the bedroom when she noticed a stain on the wallpaper on the other side of the bed—a red stain in the shape of a butterfly. Biting her lip, she walked slowly around the foot of the bed. Ray lay on the floor next to the window, his head in a pool of blood, a gun in his hand.

Staggering backward, Laura crashed into the dresser, knocking her jewelry box to the floor. She scattered the jewelry with her feet as she fled from the room and down the stairs.

Emma’s wails had turned to a whimper, and she sat huddled on the floor of the foyer, her eyes on Laura. Laura grabbed her by the arm and led her into the kitchen, where she used the phone to call 911.

“Is this an emergency?” the dispatcher asked.

Laura’s brain felt foggy. Ray was dead. There was nothing anyone could do to change that fact, no matter how quickly they got to the house.

“Is this an emergency?” the dispatcher repeated.

“My husband shot himself,” Laura said. “He’s dead.” She had a sudden, desperate need to get out of the house. Ignoring the dispatcher’s questions, she dropped the receiver to the kitchen floor, grabbed Emma once again and ran with her outside to the small front porch.

Sitting down on the old wooden bench Ray’d picked up at a garage sale, she pulled Emma onto her lap. I’m in shock. The thought was clinical and detached. She was nauseated and a little dizzy, and although she knew the air was cold, she couldn’t actually feel it. This is what shock feels like. Her eyes couldn’t focus, even as the police cars, the ambulance and the fire truck pulled in front of her town house, sirens blaring. Neighbors came out to their yards or peered through their windows to see what was happening, but Laura simply stared at the snow covering the front lawn. All she could see, though, was the butterfly-shaped stain on the wallpaper in the bedroom.

“He’s upstairs,” she said to the first police officer who approached her. She pressed her chin to the top of Emma’s head as the army of EMTs marched past them and into the house, and she closed her eyes against the image of what they would find in the upstairs bedroom.

Emma had stopped crying, but her head remained buried in the crook of Laura’s shoulder. She was really too big to sit on anyone’s lap, but she had made herself fit, and Laura did not want to let go of her. The little girl shivered in her light sweater, and Laura rubbed her arms. What had Emma seen? Had she heard the gunshot and gone into the bedroom to investigate? Might she have actually been in the room when Ray did it? Laura should not have left her with him. She should not have been gone more than an hour.

It seemed like a long time before one of the police officers returned to the porch, carrying jackets for her and Emma. He’d brought Ray’s down jacket for Laura, and she put it on, pressing the collar close to her nose to breathe in her husband’s scent.

“Who was in the house when it happened?” the officer asked, pulling a notepad from his pocket. He stood on the walkway, one foot resting on the step.

“Emma.” Laura nodded toward her daughter, who had once again folded herself to fit in Laura’s lap.

The police officer studied Emma for a moment and seemed to decide against questioning her.

“And you were out?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do you know why the jewelry box and its contents were on the floor?”

“I knocked into it after I found him,” she said. The image of the jewelry spilled across the floor seemed like something she’d seen days ago, not mere minutes.

“There was a note in the bedroom,” the officer said. “Did you see it?”

“A note?”

“Yes. Taped to the dresser mirror. It read, ‘I asked you not to go.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

Laura squeezed her eyes shut. “I had to visit someone this morning and he didn’t want me to go.”

“Ah,” he said, as though he’d found the missing piece to the puzzle. “There was a big age difference between you and your husband, huh?”

The question seemed rude, but she didn’t have the strength to protest. “Yes,” she said.

“So, was this ‘someone’ you had to visit another man?”

Laura looked at the policeman in confusion. “Another…? No. No. It was a woman. An old woman. But he asked me not to go, and I went, anyway. I was always leaving him. Always working. I left him alone too much. It’s my fault.”

“Now, don’t jump to conclusions, ma’am. Did your husband suffer from depression?”

She nodded. “Terribly. I should have realized how bad it had gotten, but—”

“He has an old scar obviously made from a bullet in his left shoulder,” the officer said. “Was that from some previous botched suicide attempt?”

“No. He got that fighting in Korea.” He had survived Korea. He had not survived his marriage to her. Guilt rested like a boulder in her chest.

The police officer nodded at Emma. “Do you think I could ask her a couple of questions?”

Laura leaned back to shift Emma’s head from her shoulder. “Honey,” she said, “can you tell the policeman what happened? Can you tell me?”

Emma looked at them both in silence, her eyes glazed. And that’s when Laura realized that her daughter had not spoken a single word since she’d gotten home.

5

LAURA SAT NEXT TO STUART, RAY’S YOUNGER BROTHER AND only sibling, during the memorial service at Georgetown University. Ray had taught at Georgetown for many years, and the chapel was completely full. People stood in the rear of the building, some of them forced into the foyer by the crowd. Many were his former sociology students and fellow professors. Ray had left his mark at the university.

He’d left his mark in the streets, as well. A busload of homeless people and the staff from several shelters were already sitting in the chapel by the time Laura arrived. The news of Ray’s death had brought an outpouring of sympathy from the entire metropolitan D.C. area. Ray had been loved and respected. She hoped he had known that. He’d been so wrapped up in his inability to get his book published these last few years that he’d lost sight of all the good he’d accomplished. Seeing the somber crowd in the chapel made her heart ache. She wasn’t sure how she would get through this service.

She glanced at her brother-in-law. Stuart gazed straight ahead, and she could see the tight line of his jaw as he struggled to maintain control. She wrapped her hand around his arm. The hardest call for her to make after Ray’s death had been to Stuart. He lived in Connecticut, and as a marketing representative for a textbook company, he traveled frequently. She’d worried he might be on the road, but she’d found him at home. Stuart had cried when she told him. Big gulping sobs that frightened her, they were so out of character for him. He’d adored and admired his older brother. Ray was all the blood family Stuart had.