Virtual Silence Read online

  “What, darling?”

  “He said, ‘Love, love, love, Ida. You have a beautiful house, a job you like, and two healthy daughters, and all you can talk about is—’”

  “Shhh,” Goliath said softly. “Don’t get yourself so worked up. He’s not worth it.”

  Ida wiped her tears with her sleeve. “I’m going to rinse my feet,” she announced, and she got up slowly and began to walk toward the surf. Goliath, meanwhile, scooted over, so that we were side by side. To my surprise, she put her arm around my shoulders and squeezed. “Marshmallow, she must have meant,” she whispered.

  Though I knew the color was rising in my face, I turned to look at her. Her face was so close to mine that I could see a light spray of freckles, which I had never noticed before, parading across the bridge of her nose. She smiled a delightfully wide smile. “Your father’s lucky. You’re a beautiful girl, willful, and one day you’re going to be a fine, strong woman,” she declared. Then she kissed me quickly on the cheek.

  I turned away, stiff and embarrassed, but Goliath only laughed. “Let’s go down with Ida and stick our feet in the water,” she cried.

  Our plan, Sharon, was to meet the men back at the house in the early afternoon and report our findings. As we approached, we heard their laughter. We found them in the kitchen, sharing a bag of chips and drinking beer. “Ed thought he saw a mermaid,” Charles declared.

  “There was something sizable,” Dad replied. “It moved the grasses in such a way that for a moment—”

  “Did you see any boats?” Ida interrupted.

  Charles leaned back against the counter. “Oh, didn’t we mention that?”

  “You saw something?” Goliath cried. “Did you light a fire? Did you get their attention?”

  “Two young fellows in kayaks,” Dad said. “They came down from the island just to the north of us. They’re out now on the point having their lunch and resting up for the trip back. They promised to contact the Coast Guard as soon as they get there.”

  “We’re saved!” Goliath cried. “Thank God! I was afraid I’d run out of cigarettes before we got rescued!”

  Ida clapped her little hands together. “Oh, this is good news.”

  “We told them to tell the Coast Guard to wait until morning,” Charles said. “That way we’ll still get our two nights in just as we planned.”

  “There’s still the matter of the boat,” Ida muttered.

  Charles threw a hand out at her. “Don’t worry about the boat, Ida. I swear, you’re never happy unless you have something to worry about. The boat will be found. And if it isn’t, well, that’s what insurance is for. Our worries are over. Let’s all go to the beach and frolic in the sun for a while.”

  “I’m going back to bed,” Ida replied. “I got up awfully early this morning.”

  Charles looked at Dad.

  “I think I’ll work for a bit,” Dad said. “I had a few insights last night, into what it must have been like to live in the pirate community on New Providence where Bonny lived for a time. I want to get them down before I forget them.”

  “Ginny? Rita?” Charles asked.

  I shook my head and faked a yawn.

  “I was at the beach all morning,” Goliath announced. “I’m going to check out the island.”

  “Fine, I’ll go to the beach by myself,” Charles said.

  Goliath disappeared into her bedroom and returned a moment later with the same cloth bag that she had had the first time I saw her. She slung it over her shoulder, opened the cooler, retrieved a beer and a hunk of cheese, and went out the door.

  A moment later Charles left, carrying a beach towel, another beer, and the rest of the chips. Ida went to lie down and Dad went into the living room to set up his lap top.

  I continued to stand in the kitchen for some time. I opened the cooler, but I didn’t see anything in there that I really wanted. I went into my room, took out my writing pad, and began a letter to you, but I realized I didn’t have very much to say. I went through my duffel bag next and retrieved the paperbacks I had brought from home. I read the review excerpts on the back of all three of them, and although they had seemed enticing enough in the store, I found I had no desire to begin any one of them.

  I was feeling restless, Sharon, incredibly restless, so much so that it seemed to manifest itself physically, in my back and neck and shoulders. I realized that what I was experiencing was a hunger, a longing, one that I had not felt in so long that I nearly failed to recognize it. I put the books away, stuffed a towel into my shoulder bag, and hurried out of the house.

  What I wanted, Sharon, was Goliath …, Rita … I wanted her companionship, her friendship, her warmth, her ability to see in me things I haven’t seen in myself for so long. You must understand: I’ve been invisible. Perhaps you’ll say I did it to myself, by taking a vow of virtual silence. I don’t know; it seemed necessary at the time. In any case, with Mom so preoccupied with her own problems, Dad so preoccupied generally, and my newest friend having treated me roughly (a matter for another time), and you and Terri gone from my life, and not a friend, not a soul …

  Then that moment on the beach, Sharon, when Goliath put her arm around me … she touched something in me, and for a moment I escaped from the bubble that I have been living in, the bubble that I’d devised to protect myself.

  I ran along the dirt path, breathless with my longing, exhilarated with my youth, free at last from my bubble, wanting to be reckless, like Goliath, to experience whatever might come my way, even if it hurt as much as …

  … As much as it hurt to be there that day in the diner.

  I ran with my mouth open, swallowing air greedily. Tears of bliss flew from my face. I went through a tangle of trees and caught, between their limbs, a glimpse of the sound. A cloud of terns was flying low above the water, their beaks pointing downward, their wings silver when they plunged, simultaneously, to strike their prey. It seemed a miracle, a thing of such great beauty that I thought my heart would burst with joy. The world made sense again, and I felt my blood pumping. My willfulness, which Goliath had discovered, seemed to emanate from my skin.

  I thought I knew how it felt to be her.

  The path forked, and I stopped to consider my next move. I was surrounded by low trees and I chose one and climbed up, standing so that my head protruded above the highest branches. The forest extended perhaps another fifty yards and then gave way to high grasses which became low sandy dunes and then the sound. Off to the southeast, I saw the kayakers, two lithe youths in bathing suits and hooded sweatshirts. One was smoking a cigarette, the other pointing at something in the water. I dropped down to a lower branch to watch them.

  It was then that I heard Goliath’s voice.

  I turned quickly, eager to drop from the tree and run to her. But I heard a second voice, Charles’s, and I froze.

  They were coming along the path that I had taken. Intermittently, I could see the tops of their heads through the branches. “So when was this?” I heard Charles ask with an edge in his voice.

  Quietly, I moved to a limb on the side of the tree opposite the path. I squatted there, my body tucked into a small ball. They reached the end of the path. There were only a few trees between them and me. “Last week,” Rita answered. “I told him I’d think about it. Can you see anything?”

  “It’s not that far,” Charles answered. “But we’ll have to go through this mess first.”

  “Well, let’s start,” Rita said.

  “We’ll get all cut up.”

  “So?”

  “So … if we both come back cut up …”

  Rita sighed. “Well, maybe we should head back then.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” Charles said. “You’re so mercurial. You were the one who suggested this trip. You said we’d make lots of opportunities to be together. I didn’t mean that we should turn back. I only thought … Why’d you tell him you’d think about it, anyway? Why didn’t you just say no?”

  “Because
I am going to think about it.”

  “Great. That’s just great. And how long do you imagine it’ll take you to decide?”

  “I told him I’d let him know in a couple of weeks. And lower your voice. I’m not your wife.”

  “Rita, just tell him no. You know you don’t want to do it. You can’t. We can’t go on like this otherwise.”

  “Why? What’s the difference?”

  “He’s my friend. That’s what the difference is. It’s one thing with you seeing him a few times a week, but if you’re living with him …”

  “Oh, that’s funny,” Goliath said, “coming from a married man. You can have it both ways but we’re not supposed to.”

  “Rita, please.”

  “Please yourself. I won’t have you telling me what I can or can’t do. I’m not Ida.”

  “No, you’re certainly not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, Rita.”

  “No, I want to know what you meant by that. Just what do you want, Charles?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” he said wearily.

  “Maybe we should just cool it for a while,” Goliath said.

  “Don’t do this to me, Rita.”

  “Yes, Charles. That’s what I think we should do. A couple of weeks. Until I’ve decided. You’re driving me crazy. I can’t make a decision about Ed when you’re giving me a hard time.”

  There was a long silence, very long, perhaps five minutes. Then Charles said, “Okay, okay, maybe you’re right. Two weeks. Decide what you want to do about Ed and then we’ll work out our own affairs.”

  “Fine. Let’s go back. I’m not having fun anymore.”

  “And don’t come to work.”

  “What do you mean, don’t come to work?”

  “I mean for the two weeks, because that would only make it hard—”

  “Does that mean you’re taking me off payroll?”

  “Payroll!”

  “Yes, payroll. I have to live, don’t I?”

  “Rita, with the money I’ve been paying you—”

  “If you take me off payroll, then I have no choice but to move in with him. I can’t pay my bills, Charles!”

  “Is that what this whole thing has been about? Money? I can’t believe this!”

  “You can’t believe this! I can’t believe this! You’re threatening me, aren’t you? You’re forcing me to choose between Ed and my job.”

  “You’ve got other clients.”

  “You know I make peanuts off of them.”

  “Stop! Stop! I don’t want to hear anymore.”

  “I won’t stop.”

  Charles must have turned and begun walking away because Goliath yelled, “Wake up, Charles. You must have realized from the beginning that I was never going to feel about you the same as you did me. I didn’t make any secret of it. I never exaggerated the way I felt!”

  I dared to peek. I could see the top of Charles’s head at some distance. He was running now.

  “If you take me off payroll,” she went on, shouting, “I’ll tell everyone. I’ll tell Ida and Ed everything! Better yet, I’ll put you in a position where you’re forced to tell them everything. I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!”

  I heard branches snapping, and then Goliath appeared right beneath me, scurrying around trees, slashing at twigs with her hands, muttering to herself. When she cleared the trees, she stopped, and seeing the kayakers, began to run in their direction. “Hey,” she yelled, her arms flying. “Hey, you!”

  They had just been sliding their boats into the water, but they heard her and looked up. When she got close, they pulled their boats back onto shore. Then the three stood conversing, Goliath turning to point inland, probably toward our house. The taller of the two men pointed at his kayak. Goliath went over to it, looked into it, and said something more. Then the young man shrugged and held his kayak steady while Goliath climbed in. He got in behind her, a snug fit, to say the least. Then the boats pulled away from the shore, the lone kayaker moving gracefully, swiftly, while the other, the one with Goliath, had to break his stroke continually so that the paddle could be lifted over Goliath’s head. Finally, she took it away from him and began to paddle herself.

  I reached in my bag and took out the gun. You see, Sharon, in my mind, Goliath had not only betrayed Ida and my father, but me too, in some sense. I had counted on her to save me; I had thought that she thought me worth saving. But this was a woman who had flattered a man into paying her a great deal more money, apparently, than her work deserved. If she had flattered me, I realized, it was for a reason. After all, I’m not beautiful and willful, am I? I’m a skinny little girl who looks like an eigth-grader, friendless, loveless, and afraid of my own shadow.

  I aimed the gun at her. I held it steady until she rounded the point and disappeared from my view. Then I lifted my arm, pointed the gun straight up into the cloudless sky, cocked it with my thumb, and pulled the trigger.

  I was dazed, Sharon, lost first in the reverberation of the shot and then in the silence that followed. Somehow I managed to climb back down the tree. I started back up the path and was halfway to the house when I saw Ida and Dad running towards me. Dad’s eyes were moist, something I had never seen before. “Ginny! Thank God!” he cried. He lifted me off the ground. “We heard the shot from the house,” he said, his hands gripping my shoulders. “Do you know what direction it came from?”

  For reasons unknown, I pointed toward the sound, to the place where we had come in on the boat. Dad turned to look. “Take her back to the house,” he ordered Ida.

  “Be careful, Ed,” Ida called after him.

  Charles was in the living room, sitting motionless on the edge of a chair. He looked at us when we came in. “Ed went to look,” Ida said.

  Charles slowly turned his head away. Ida sat down and lit one of Dad’s cigarettes, something I had never seen her do before. None of us spoke.

  Dad came back a hour or so later. “I didn’t see anything,” he lamented. “No boats, nothing. I walked all around the end of the island.”

  “It must have been the kayakers,” Ida offered. “Maybe they shot at a duck or something.”

  “It couldn’t have been them. If they shot and then jumped right in their boats and headed out, they couldn’t have gotten around the other side of the point in the time it took me to get out there. They’d have to have been in a speed boat to move that fast.”

  “And no sign of Rita either?”

  “No.”

  “Oh my God. I hope she’s all right,” Ida cried.

  “She has to be all right,” Dad replied. “I’m telling you, there’s no way that anyone could have left this end of the island without me having seen them. And if Rita had gone to the other end of the island, Charles would have seen her when he went to the beach. They left the house virtually at the same time.”

  Dad sat down hard, in a chair and hung his head. “Rita has a gun,” he said softly. Charles looked up abruptly. “I have no reason to think she brought it here with her—she keeps it in her apartment, in case of burglars—but she may have. She may have taken a shot at some animal, though God knows why she would do that.”

  We sat in silence, in the four chairs. My bag was on the floor, resting against my ankle. I imagined that I could feel the heat of my weapon on my skin. It made me uncomfortable. I got up, put the bag in my room, and returned to the chair again. “It’ll be time for dinner soon,” Ida mumbled. She forced a little laugh. “Knowing Rita, she’ll be back in time to eat.”

  “You don’t know Rita,” Charles said slowly, cruelly.

  Ida and Dad looked at him. Then they looked at each other. “Excuse me,” Ida said, and she went to her room and closed the door.

  Darkness came. Dad took a lantern and went out to look for Goliath again while Ida and I started dinner on the hibachi out in the yard. We could hear him calling her name, more and more faintly as he moved farther from the house. Charles stayed in
the house alone, in the dark. Ida had fed him a tranquilizer, to divert the anxiety attack that she feared was coming, and left a lantern beside his chair before coming outdoors, which he hadn’t bothered to light.

  You may be wondering at this point, Sharon, why I didn’t just tell them, if not what I’d done, at least that Goliath had gone off with the kayakers. Had I been thinking more logically, I might have. But it was beyond my powers of reasoning at the time to see how things might turn out or to guess what was in Charles’s mind.

  Dad returned and the three of us ate while Charles remained indoors. Ida said, “Suppose the person who shot the gun lives on the island? That would explain why you didn’t see a boat leaving.”

  “I thought of that,” Dad answered. He put his arm around me and some of the juices from his hamburger dripped down onto my sleeve. He noticed and released me again. “It’s possible that someone’s been holing up here, a criminal, an escaped convict or someone, and that Rita saw him and he, thinking he’d been found out, took a shot at her. That’s possible.”

  “Oh, God, Ed!” Ida cried.

  “However, it’s not probable,” Dad said quickly. “Like I said, she has a gun. It’s more likely that she fired it and that now she’s hiding.”

  “Why should she do that?” Ida asked in a shrill voice.

  Dad stared at her, considerering his response. “I think the answer lies with Charles.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He leaned forward and placed a hand on Ida’s knee. “Ida, I don’t know how to say this to you—”

  “Don’t say it then, don’t say it,” Ida cried. “I don’t want to know.”

  Suddenly there was a scream, a loud bloodcurdling shriek. Dad jumped up immediately and ran to the house, with Ida and me just behind him. We found Charles in one corner of the living room, speechless, pointing towards the back rooms. Ida grabbed me and dragged me behind one of the chairs, pulling me down beside her while Dad made a quick search. “Nothing there,” he said when he returned. Ida exhaled deeply.

  “It was her,” Charles cried. In spite of the tranquilizer he was quaking badly. “It was her ghost.”