The Price of Silence (22 page)

“He expressed it in teenager shorthand. ‘Great!’ is all he said, but the tone of his voice was sincere.”

I felt light with joy.“I owe Josh more than he can know.

I owe you. I want to erase my debt for good. Please help me do that,Tom.”

He left the room without a word.

“What do
you
want?” I followed him into the bedroom.

Tom reached for a magazine from the pile he kept on his bedside table, used the magazine as a tray to carry my boots.

He carefully placed them on the floor of his closet. On Sunday he’ll shine them for me,was that what he was telling me? “Talk to me,Tom. Please. Our silence hasn’t done us any good at all.”

“Please keep our home clean of her.” He handed me my old sneakers.“I never want to hear her name. No explanations or excuses to me or Josh about what happened or why.” He reached for a strand of my hair, twirled it around his finger.

“You never called, Tom. Why couldn’t you say, ‘With An-ling or without, I love you. Come home’?”

“Would you have come back?”

“Yes.”

His fingers stayed in my hair, but the wisp of softness that had touched his face a moment before disappeared. “As far as we’re concerned you never left.”

“Half of me never did.” I took his face in my hands and kissed him softly.

He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

A few hours later, I was in the kitchen, getting ready to cook dinner for Tom and Josh. Six months had gone by since I’d been there and I played a game I use with my beginner students: find the differences in two similar pictures. I could spot only three.The old spice jars that I kept lined up on the counter had been removed and not replaced. The African violets under their grow lights were gone.The space above the phone where I always hung the World Wildlife calendar was empty.

I set a large pot of water to boil and waited for Josh to come home, the faint hope I had nursed earlier swallowed by the fear that Tom had gotten it wrong, that Josh would turn away from me.

I heard the refrigerator door open behind me. Josh was there, in the kitchen. For a few seconds I imagined turning around, hugging him, covering his face with kisses, overwhelming him with my feelings. I turned on the stove fan even though the only thing cooking on the stove was water.

The whirring sound calmed me.

A lobster crawled out of the paper bag I had set down on the counter. I’d always refused to cook lobster and now the thought of plunging a live animal into boiling water turned my stomach. “We’re having lobster Fra Diavolo,” I announced, still facing the sink,washing salad.

Thanks to the din of the fan, my loudness made me sound resolute instead of afraid. How should I start our new life together? Did you finish your science project?

How’s Max these days? What about that gig you told me about; did it go well?

I turned to face him.“I’ve come home, Josh.” Under dark lashes, deep hazel eyes that seemed to swell when he smiled; full lips that were so pink when he was a baby that Tom accused me of putting lipstick on them. His hair, fine, dirty blond, straggled below his ears. Cheekbones pushed out of a face that had been chubby until this year.With the emergence of cheekbones he’d added a small gold hoop in his left ear. He was holding himself taller these days, aware of his newfound muscles. He worked out on his home gym every day he had told me when I remarked on the change in his body.

I leaned into him. He was growing too fast and my arms wanted to fold him into me and reassure him that his life was going to be worthwhile despite his mother. “I’m sorry I stayed away so long.”

Josh tapped the top of his Coke can—a hand-me-down gesture from Tom that was supposed to stop the soda from gushing out—and dropped his eyes to the lobster making its slow way across the counter. “Lobster Fra Diavolo! Great, my fave!”There was no enthusiasm in his voice. Only awkwardness, maybe embarrassment.

Josh popped the can open. Foam spewed out, dripped to the floor, turning into transparent liquid.“I’ll get it,” he said.

I bent down before he had a chance and wiped up the soda with a sponge. I straightened myself up by holding his elbow. I could only bring myself to make timid gestures.

“We’re celebrating you, Josh.”

He bobbed his head.The grin leaking onto his face made him look no older than ten. “I can go for that!”

“Josh, Sweetie—”

Josh stepped sideways,out of the reach of my opening arms.

“Hey, where does my dinner think he’s going?”The lobster had sidled to the edge of the counter and was about to fall over. Josh picked it up, rubbed his finger on a spot above its eyes.“It makes him drowsy.He won’t know what hit him.”He lifted the lid of the pot and slid the lobster into the boiling water.He grabbed the paper bag on the counter and turned it over.Two more lobsters fell in the pot, the water splashing on his arm.

“Oh, Josh! Let me get some ice to put on that.”

“Leave it. It’s fine. I can get my own ice if I want.”

With my eyes I tried to reach behind that closed, remote face to gauge his feelings, to get an inkling of what he was thinking about An-ling, about my coming back. I gleaned no information.

“Want me to rub your forehead, too?” Josh asked.

“How about adding Mom to that sentence?”

The grin came back, forced this time.“Sure. Mom.”

“I guess I could use a little numbing.”

I hardly felt his touch on my forehead. Close-up he smelled of cigarettes and sweat. He smelled like a man, a sexual being. I pulled away. He was still so young.

“Did Dad ask you a lot of questions about you? An-ling?

I mean about why you’re back?” His face turned red.

“I’m back because of you.”Which was the truth. I even came to think, in the days that followed, that bringing me back to my son had been An-ling’s aim all along. “I missed you.” I waited for a reaction.

His eyes look almost transparent in their blankness.

“There’s no need to tell Dad anything.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” I said, adding a smile for reassurance.

I will protect you always, I thought and remembered a time when I had watched Josh, two years old, playing on the floor of this kitchen.We had just moved back to the city.

Josh was stacking wooden blocks with lip-sucking concentration. When the blocks were piled as high as he could get them, he peeked at me from beneath the long dark lashes that he had inherited from my mother. His mouth was clamped shut but I knew he was hiding a smile, a smile that with a quick brush of his hand exploded into laughter as the blocks went flying. I forgot my penance, my vow to God, and scooped up my son, buried my nose in his belly, blew on his navel, tickled him, swung him over my shoulder, laughing my love for him out loud for the first time.

Two days later I took Josh to his first city playground in Riverside Park. He was playing near the jungle gym; I sat on a bench nearby, correcting papers. I don’t know how much time passed before I was startled by a small gasp, a rush of many colors crossing my line of vision. I looked up to see a woman kneeling on the concrete by the jungle gym. She bent over, her colorful skirt pooling around her, hiding what I took too long to realize was a child. I stood up, scanned the playground for Josh. He was nowhere.

“Josh!” I ran to the jungle gym.

“He is yours?” the woman asked.

Josh was on the ground, silent, his face gone green, his eyes swollen with pain.“Baby!” I bent down, started to lift him up. He howled and slammed his small hands against my chest.

The femur of his left leg was broken in two places. It took months before he’d let me pick him up again. I never let my love for Josh out of my heart again.

Now my son’s worried face was inches away from my own.We were together in our home for the first time in months. I felt like a cripple who, having suddenly found her limbs again, was having trouble getting started.

I love you, Joshua Howells, I told his eyes with mine.

Always have.Always will.

Out loud I said, “Rinse out your mouth before Dad comes home.”

SEVENTEEN

AYESHA KIRBY’S LONG, gauzy skirt catches on the railing as she slides into the witness chair. She is thin, petite, with hair cropped close to her scalp, chiseled features and a complexion the color of almond skins. After she states her profession— dancer and artist’s model—Guzman asks, “On April nineteenth of last year, you went to 313 Lowry Street to model for Tod Curtis, is that correct?”

“You got it.”

“Was April nineteenth your first time in that building?”

“No way. I modeled for Tod a hell of a long time. I’m in lots of his paintings.”

“Exactly how long did you model for Mr. Curtis?”

“Two sessions a week for seven months.”

“In your comings and goings, did you encounter residents or visitors at 313 Lowry?”

“Some.”

“Do you see any of the people you encountered sitting in this courtroom?”

Kirby points a long arm at Emma Perotti. “Her.”

“The defendant?”

“I seen her a coupla times.”

“When did you last see her?”

“My last sitting with Tod.”

“Can you pinpoint the day?”

“April nineteenth, last year.”

“Can you explain under what circumstances you saw her?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Guzman’s shoulders tighten as his smile widens. “Where and how did you see the defendant on April nineteenth of last year?”

“She was ringing the doorbell on the fifth floor. Tod lives on six and I always walk up ’cause it’s good for my quads.”

“Did she see you?”

“She didn’t turn around, if that’s what you mean. I’m pretty light on my feet.”

“But you got a good look at her?”

“I saw her profile. She’s got one of those long noses. You can’t miss it. I said to myself—Jewish or Italian, one of them two for sure.”

“Do you recall what time it was when you saw the defendant ringing the doorbell on the fifth floor?”

“I sure do. Three-fifty p.m.”

“How can you pinpoint the time so precisely?”

She grins. “Tod did that. I was twenty minutes late and he was pissin’ mad.”

In his cross-examination, Fishkin asks Ms. Kirby, “How do you know Emma Perotti was ringing the doorbell instead of, say, just standing in front of the door?”

Kirby leans her torso to one side and gives him a slow, patient look. “ ’Cause her finger was glued to the bell, that’s how, and what’s more I could hear the buzzin’ comin’ from inside.”

Fishkin shakes his head. “I should have thought of that. The buzzing must have been very loud.”

“If that’s a question, I’ll tell you that I don’t know how loud it was, but it sure was annoying, you know, like those grasshoppers in the summer that never shut up?”

“Then you heard the buzzing more than once?”

“Sure did. I heard it coming up to her floor and going up to Tod’s.”

“As you were walking up from the fifth floor to the sixth, you kept hearing the buzzer?”

“Yeah. I just said that.”

“Did you hear the door open?”

“No, just the buzzin’. If there was anybody in there, they must have been deaf.”

Fishkin’s eyes shine. “Thank you, Miss Kirby. No further questions.”

Emma