The Silent History: A Novel (24 page)

After the ritual—if that’s what it was—in the dome, we were encouraged to walk the grounds. Flora and her friends took Spencer down to the river, and I found a hammock made of old clothes stitched together with a rough, thick yarn. I watched them build a bonfire at the river’s edge until I fell into a deep sleep. I dreamed that Spencer and I were back in the Kazakh jetliner, but it was airborne, and we were cutting through the clouds, trying to keep a fire going in the makeshift stove while the wind howled through the broken windows. Then we were falling straight toward the ocean, and Spencer took my hand and I felt a sense of calm, but when I opened my eyes it was the middle of the night, and a girl I didn’t recognize was standing over me, tugging at my wrist. I sat up and saw a shack down the hill that was consumed in flames. Apparently some stray embers from the bonfire had landed on the roof and the whole thing went up in a single burst. Silent kids were throwing buckets of water on the fire, which they were passing up from the river like a fireman’s brigade. Spencer and Flora were at the head of the line, tossing water on the blaze, barely making a dent in it. I joined in, passing the buckets up to my son. Flora went up and down the line, checking in with everyone, stepping in when somebody needed a break. Whenever I passed Spencer a bucket, he’d be looking at her, or looking for her. He hadn’t shown a whole lot of interest in women before—at least not that I’d ever seen. So it was a bit of a shock to see him so enthralled.

We worked for what must have been several hours, and eventually the fire died down to a glowing heap. Everybody stumbled off into the darkness until it was just me, Spencer, and Flora sitting around the smoldering remains of the shack. I leaned back on my elbows and closed my eyes. My face was hot, but my back was cold. I thought about the Mercury landing, about how those drones had to keep moving to avoid the night or they’d freeze. When I opened my eyes, I saw Spencer looking into Flora’s eyes, and I realized I shouldn’t be there. I stood and wiped the dirt from my elbows, and Spencer turned and looked at me and I saw how happy he was, and it made me a little sick, a little dizzy, but in a good way, like a Tilt-A-Whirl.

I returned to the hammock only to find a large bearded man in sports briefs straining its seams, lighting a blimp-shaped bong. I wandered around the compound in the predawn light. A mist had rolled in, making the place feel even more like a ghost town than it already was. Half-finished buildings—or were they half-wrecked?—rose out of the mist like ancient ruins. Everything was overgrown and wild. My gut clenched whenever I thought about Spencer—we’d just been closer than ever before on our trip across the country, and already he was drifting away again. But maybe that fear was actually a kind of communion—a communion with all the other mothers in the world, in history, who’d had to stand by with a stiff upper lip and watch their children go off into their own lives. And maybe that experience of the pain of letting go was all I’d been after the whole time.

FRANCINE CHANG

MONTE RIO, CA

2032

Mayor Conway called me in Oakland to say Face-to-Face had become “moribund.” He didn’t specify how. Some people from town had come in with cameras and filmed the retreat and shown it during a county meeting, and now a lot of them were grumbling about passing legislation to have it condemned. The mayor said, “Know that I’m your biggest advocate.” The defeated way he said it, it was worrisome. Like it implied, if I’m your biggest advocate, you’re in trouble.

So I went back, like I always did. I found clutter outside the cabins, toys, wire, random computer parts, creepy-eyed dolls. Abandoned clothes and bed linens. Down by the amphitheater were tents and blue-tarp tunnels. A dead raccoon feet-up and decomposing near a propane tank. A boy I didn’t recognize sleeping on the dirt nearby with his arm over his eyes. Quite a few of the cabin windows had been smashed, and glass still twinkled in the dirt beneath. I walked to the main kitchen and found Dane and Cheryl scavenging in the pantry for food. Dane with overalls and no shirt or underwear, and Cheryl with shiny eyes and a mouthful of croutons. In the cafeteria, only Flora came up and hugged me. She looked around at everyone else—it was just silents now, all the tourists were gone—and then at me, visibly disconcerted. The cafeteria smelled like armpit, scalp, decay.

I’d heard about the thing at the Navy Yard, the bus-pass riots in Mexico City, public opinion turning against the silents, but I guess I assumed Face-to-Face existed on its own separate plane, propelled by its own logic. I stopped by Patti’s cabin, but when I knocked, then knocked harder, no one answered. There were black drapes over the windows, and I heard faint Christmas music playing—it was July. I wanted to turn around and head right back to Oakland, but I guess I still felt some sort of obligation to the place. Or to my former students. Maybe I just wanted to be needed. I felt at home there, in a fellowship of sluggish decrepitude. I decided to stick around for a week, hoping to help but secretly knowing nothing would change.

And then, three days later, they showed up—a boy around twenty and an older woman, both in the filthiest getups I’ve ever seen. They walked up the main path in these, like, muddy quilts turned into clothes. The boy had scarred-over slice marks on his arm and the mom looked road-burned but happy. Their first night here, the bathhouse burned down, which seemed like some sort of omen, but they were still here the next morning, and they never left.

Spencer followed Flora wherever she went, with the most transparent look of fondness on his face. He was handsome. Together they went off into the deep woods with the canvas berry bags and returned a few hours later, each with two or three kindling twigs in the bags and huge smiles on their faces. During meals Spencer gallantly cleared her plate and gave her his dessert and watched her eat it. At the nightly bonfires they snuggled together and laughed together and left together.

I’d visit them in Flora’s cabin, an oasis amid all the decay rubble. Everything was neat and clean—some half-melted candles in wine bottles on a card table, stitched-together rice bags draped over it as a tablecloth. They insisted I use their bent-birch love seat and they sat next to each other on the floor and we spent hours together in silence. I’d always thought that the only thing less interesting than the content of someone else’s dreams is the sight of two people in love, especially when you’re not in love. Give me a nice tetanus shot, or chip my front tooth instead. Anything but lovers and their love antics. But I was so happy for Flora, who was always so composed and self-possessed, now giddy, basking in Spencer’s attention.

One day the mayor came by with a group of townspeople to inspect Face-to-Face. He pulled me aside and said that things didn’t look good for us. “Public sentiment is a cruel mistress,” he said. “Do you follow me?” “No,” I said. He winked and said, “Sure you do.” And I said, “No, honestly, I don’t.” And we both stood there quietly, his eyes blinking very slowly, looking like a friendly toad. That’s when we saw the group of kids come out of the cabins, pretty much everyone at once. One woman clutched her purse to her chest and said to me, “We don’t want any trouble.” Once they got closer, I saw that they were wearing clean clothes, even Dane. At first I thought they were doing the orphanage routine, putting on a nice show for the benefactors. But they walked right past us to the amphitheater, Spencer’s mom in tow. The rest of us followed.

We sat in the back bleachers and watched. I’d seen their impromptu plays and dress-up games, but this was way more organized. Half of them sat on one side of the theater, the others on the other side. Nothing happened for a few minutes. They exchanged glances every once in a while, and then, all at once, they stood and turned around, toward us. “What’s happening?” the mayor said. I turned around, too, and Spencer and Flora were walking up, holding hands. Spencer was wearing a thrift-shop suit that was too big for him, and Flora had on an orange dress and she wore two braids tied behind her head and held two white gladiolas. She looked beautiful. She and Spencer walked down the aisle, stopped at the first row, and turned around. It was a long ceremony. Spencer and Flora communicated something to each other, then they each took a side and went down the aisle, person by person, and had a lengthy exchange with them, one that ended with an embrace. When they were done, Flora and Spencer returned to the stage and the others started clapping rhythmically and the couple began to dance, a slow waltz. The others fanned out around them and encircled them, hiding them from view, while I remembered the day I taught Flora to waltz, back at Oaks, a lifetime ago.

THEODORE GREENE

RICHMOND, CA

2032

I always made sure the apartment was clean when Flora came to visit. I got obsessive with it. I wanted to destroy any evidence that I’d gone on and continued to live a life after she’d left for Monte Rio. Everything in the place was the same as the day she’d left. Right down to the notes on the refrigerator and the way they were arranged. I know it sounds insane. I’d be down on my knees, scrubbing the broiler pan under the stove, which I’d never even used, and I’d be thinking, “This is insane.” But I did it anyway. Every time she came.

Then she showed up with Spencer. The two of them, standing in the doorway. He was tall and wiry, with a haircut that looked like he’d done it himself, with ragged bangs that were, like, off-center. And he was wearing a kind of a quilted vest-type thing that was all beaten and sun bleached. Flora, on the other hand, looked incredible. Radiant. So confident and satisfied, and her hair was shorter than it used to be, tied back with the same orange scarf she’d worn when I took her to Monte Rio. And then I saw Flora’s belly—the unmistakable fullness there that hit me like a concrete block. So much that I couldn’t even speak. I could barely move.

I stood back to let them in, my whole body chilled from the shock. I was so blindsided by it, by all of it—I just gave Flora a stiff hug and shook the guy’s hand, although I think I would’ve rather wrenched it off and tossed it into the bay. Flora led Spencer over to the couch and sat him down and then went into the kitchen to pour some water. I stood at the threshold, looking into the room at the boy, who sat on the edge of the couch. He had his eyes locked on a blank area of the wall just over my workstation. Acting like nothing was out of the ordinary. I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to respond. I took a seat at my desk, swiveling the chair around to face him. I stared hard, directly into his eyes. He looked back at me for just a second and then looked away, which was unusual for a silent kid. I could see that he wasn’t as comfortable as he let on. And I guess a part of me was happy about that.

Flora came back in with water for everyone, in plastic duck tumblers. We sat there in the living room for a good while, sipping water. I was feeling a newer, deeper kind of knifing pain than I’d ever experienced. The sight of a woman’s pregnant belly always tore me up. And to see Flora, looking so much like Mel with her hair pulled back and her head resting on the couch pillow, with the fabric of her dress draped over her belly—it dredged up all of the ancient grief like corpses snared in a dragnet. She held on to Spencer’s hand. Their fingers were intertwined and she would occasionally give his palm a squeeze, like a heart beating. And he looked over at her—he had serious gray eyes and he gave her this look like he was her puppet, that he would sacrifice anything for her. And I knew the look and the feeling that went along with it, and I wished I could’ve warned them both about the fragility of it all. But we sat for a while longer and then I divided up the lasagna I’d made into three smallish portions and we ate in the kitchenette. I kept my head down most of the time, just trying to process it all.

That night I turned in early and stayed up for a long time, staring at the triangle of street light on the wall opposite my bed. I thought about the baby. I wondered whether it would be silent or not. I knew that there were cases where two deaf parents had made a hearing child. Was it possible that Flora’s baby might be born a talker? I felt guilty for even thinking about it. Or maybe what I was most ashamed of was the spike of hopefulness that accompanied the thought. Because I definitely felt that. I definitely conjured a series of images in my mind of the baby growing up in the world as a talking child. I imagined myself teaching him or her to play chess, explaining each step, or, later, helping figure out how to ask someone on a date. All the obvious clichés—clichés that I never got a chance to experience firsthand. All of that in an instant, a single, forceful wave that gave me a sense of almost criminal guilt. I swore to myself I would never confess it, but I wanted that baby to talk.

The next day we went out to Expect Discounts to get supplies. This was something I’d always done with Flora ever since she moved out to Monte Rio—they never seemed to have enough of the essentials, things like toilet paper, toothpaste, all that sort of stuff. Now she had this man in her life, and a kid on the way, so the trip seemed more urgent. The whole way there, Flora kept showing Spencer all of the landmarks from her childhood. The day-care center she’d gone to before the Oaks School opened, the Cambodian restaurant we used to eat at, the one that was decorated to look like a real temple inside, and the dance center where she’d taken classes as a teenager. I watched them through the rearview mirror. Spencer absorbed everything with the wide-eyed look of a tourist on a Hollywood tour—he seemed to adore Flora in a way that, I have to admit, weakened my resolve to detest him.

We pulled into the Expect Discounts parking lot, and the whole front section was taken up by a traveling carnival—a thing with rickety old rides and midway games. A sketchy-looking Ferris wheel loomed over the various tents and inflatables, and Spencer and Flora craned their necks way back to take it in. I made a face at Flora like, “You’ve never been on a Ferris wheel?” And she smiled and laughed, as if to suggest, “You’d know better than anyone else.” I decided they had to go on a Ferris wheel—like, right then. I went to the little booth by the cotton candy machine and bought a whole sheet of tickets. I watched them go up in the gondola or whatever it’s called. They slowly climbed up and up, higher and higher, until I could just see their feet dangling. Eventually I realized they should probably have some privacy, so I went and bought a sour paw and ate it by the Haunted Mansion.