Weight of Silence (11 page)

Before Fitzgerald and Louis leave they encourage us to go over to a relative’s or a friend’s house for the remainder of the investigation. They say it will be comforting to have family and friends nearby and that we shouldn’t compromise any evidence in the house by having people coming in and out.

“What if Petra comes home?” Fielda argues. “I need to be here for her!” They assure her that someone will be at the house at all times and someone will contact her with all updates.

I drive Fielda and myself over to Fielda’s mother’s home. Mrs. Mourning greets us tearfully and flutters nervously about Fielda. Fielda looks ill and we both persuade her to go lie down.

Her head is aching and I search through the bathroom medicine cabinet for some Tylenol PM’s to help her rest. I suspect she needs something more, but I would never give her something stronger. I bring the tablets and a glass of ice water to the bedroom where Fielda is curled up under the quilt her grandmother had made. She looks so frail there, and old. This
surprises me. Fielda, when in motion, is solid and vibrant, a force of nature, young. I am not used to this, taking care of her; she always has looked after me. Odd, I know, because being a bachelor until I was forty-two ensured that I took care of myself quite efficiently until I met Fielda.

I enter the bedroom and close the door behind me. The room is hushed and cool. Fielda obediently lays the pills on her tongue and sips the water that I offer her. I pull the sheet up around the curve of her shoulders as she settles her head on the pillow. “Just for a minute,” she says about resting. She doesn’t want to, doesn’t know how she possibly could rest with our daughter out there somewhere, but I murmur softly into her ear to just close her eyes for a moment. Her curly hair fans out, dark on the crispness of the pillowcase. I long to crawl in next to her, to swallow a handful of pills and let sleep pour over me. I cannot, though; I need to be alert, prepared to aid in the search for Petra. Louis and Fitzgerald assured me that they would contact me when their interviews with Antonia and her son were complete.

When Fitzgerald and Louis had finished questioning Fielda and me, shaken my hand and climbed into the car, a feeling of dirtiness edging toward perverseness crept next to me. Agent Fitzgerald did not accuse me of anything, certainly. However, he did request that Fielda and I stop in at the police station and have our fingerprints taken. Exclusionary purposes, Fitzgerald reassured us. I am not an uninformed man—oblivious at times, I admit, to the world around me—but not unaware that family members are the initial suspects in any missing child situation, and that more often than not, they are the guilty ones. The verity that the police, my community,
my colleagues would entertain the notion that I could harm two young children,
my daughter
, makes me angry. I know that Fielda and I had no part in this and the fact that crucial minutes are being squandered in that consideration makes me ill.

I recall feeling the same when Fielda left me, the second of two instances when we have been apart, a panicked, out-of-control sensation that started in my extremities and coursed through my veins toward my center, tossing me off balance. Since the day Fielda and I were married, Fielda spoke of children, a home full of curly-haired, dark-eyed babies who loved books as I did and who loved food as Fielda did. To be honest, I was so astonished to have this wondrous, beautiful woman next to me, the whole of being married seemed unreal to me, magical. I viewed children in the same manner. I could not imagine being a father.

Fielda would spend hours looking through parent magazines and children’s clothing catalogs, perusing and planning. I always nodded and made a noncommittal noise when she showed me a particular article about prenatal health care or organic baby food. Months passed, then a year, and no baby. Looking back, I should have seen the change in Fielda—the gradual slump of her shoulders, the slight pull of the corners of her mouth downward, the way she would stare at new mothers in grocery stores and at church—but I did not notice.

For two years, three, then four, Fielda continued to pore over parenting books. All she could talk about was babies. How to become pregnant with one, having one, raising one. I’m ashamed to say that I lost patience with her. I’m not a handy individual, but once in a while I’ve been known to try
and tighten a pipe or replace a fuse. I went down to our basement where I keep my toolbox, nearly pristine from lack of use. I was going to attempt to change the showerhead in our bathroom. I don’t know why the box caught my eye, but it did. It was a large, plain, clear plastic container with a blue lid and it appeared to be filled with clothing. Maybe it was the bright pink fabrics that were such a contrast to the gray dark basement that made me take notice. I don’t know. But I pulled the box down from the shelf and opened it, almost fearfully, as if I was doing something wrong. Inside were dozens of tiny baby outfits in pinks and blues and yellows with the price tags still hanging from them. There were dresses for a girl and overalls for a boy, there were socks that would barely cover my thumb. There were bibs in bright colors that said Daddy’s Little Girl or Got Milk? It wasn’t the money, though the amount of clothing in that box must have cost a small fortune, that bothered me. It seemed to me so sad in some way. Pathetic, really. Looking back, I can see that it was simply hope. That for Fielda, purchasing the clothing meant that she was going to conceive and have a child. She had to, she already had the outfits. I didn’t look at it that way, though. I grabbed a fistful of the clothing, dropping impossibly small T-shirts and booties behind me as I stomped up the steps.

“Fielda!” I bellowed, startling her so that she dropped the pot of spaghetti she was carrying to the sink to drain. She hopped back to avoid the scalding water, and limp strings of pasta slid across the floor.

“Martin!” she snapped back impatiently. “What’s the matter?”

“This is the matter!” I said, holding out the baby clothing. “Are you crazy?” I asked. Words I immediately regretted
because, by the look on her face, I think she may have wondered the exact same thing of herself. Still I ranted on. “Fielda, there is no baby. There may never be a baby. Maybe it’s time you faced it.”

“I’m going to have a baby, Martin,” she told me, her voice low and dangerous. “I can’t
not
have a baby. I’ve got to have a baby,” she went on, and I saw a light go from her eyes. A sense of dread wheedled through me but I pushed it away.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic,” I said cruelly. “I’m not going to sit by and watch you waste money on a baby that doesn’t exist.” I might as well have slapped her. The hurt on her face still takes my breath away and the fact that I caused it to be there still makes my face burn with shame.

She stalked out of the room, nearly slipping on the spaghetti as she left. She didn’t talk to me for nearly a week. And even after she did begin to talk to me, she didn’t allow me to touch her. She spent endless minutes in the bathroom and she would emerge with red, swollen eyes, but she never cried in front of me. One day I found the sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet. Good, I told myself. Maybe she would begin to sleep through the night again instead of the endless pacing, pacing. If I had thought about it, I would have known. I should have known. I should have thrown that bottle away the minute I saw it.

Then one day it was as if nothing had ever happened and she appeared to be the same old Fielda. I thought she had come to her senses, decided to let nature take its course. But I was wrong. Her mission to become a mother was as strong as ever, and I found out about the doctor’s appointment when the receptionist from the office called to confirm the appoint
ment. “We have the test results in,” the receptionist explained. “He’d like for Fielda to come in to discuss them.”

I gave her the message, trying to conceal my wounded feelings at being left out of this part of Fielda’s life. Though I must say, I couldn’t really blame her. I had told her to stop, which is something Fielda never did, give up, I mean. She thanked me for the message, staring at me levelly as if daring me to call her on it. I didn’t.

Instead I canceled and rescheduled my classes that drizzly October afternoon to accompany her. In the office I tried to hold her hand, which she shook impatiently away. I tried reading aloud bits from outdated magazines but she ignored me. Instead, she paced around the waiting room, looking at walls tacked with Polaroid snapshots of weary mothers holding tiny babies in their arms, sometimes a shell-shocked husband or boyfriend standing nearby. When the nurse called her name, Fielda marched back to the examining room without a backward glance toward me. Moments later, however, the nurse returned to the waiting area and called my name.

“Mr. Gregory, would you please come on back? Dr. Berg would like for you to join us,” she said, smiling.

I followed her, heartened at her smile. Good news, I thought. Fielda will return to her former self, her shoulders would straighten and laughter would return to her eyes. When I entered the room Fielda sat, fully dressed, on the examining table, crossing and uncrossing her ankles nervously. The doctor was a dark-skinned man with a serious face. His hair was black and slicked back from his forehead, and he had caring eyes.

“Mr. Gregory, I am Dr. Berg, Mrs. Gregory’s gynecolo
gist. Please, take a seat.” He indicated a plastic chair across the small room.

“No, thank you,” I replied and continued to stand next to Fielda.

“We asked you both to come in today to share with you the results of some initial tests that we have done in order to find out why Mrs. Gregory has not conceived.”

I nodded and reached for Fielda’s hand. This time she did not pull away.

“The good news is, we cannot find anything conclusively wrong that is preventing conception with Mrs. Gregory. There is, of course, further testing that we can do, but I would recommend that you try some other avenues.”

“For example…” I began.

“For example, I would suggest that you, Mr. Gregory, have a sperm sample taken. This could address any concerns with sperm viability.”

“Oh,” I laughed uneasily. “I don’t think that will be necessary. I believe that these things come in due time. Perhaps parenthood is not for us.”

I felt Fielda pull her hand from mine. It was not a violent pull, more like an easing away. It did not alarm me. Fielda’s next act, however, did. She slid off the examination table and breezed out of the room without a backward glance or an acknowledgment to the physician, which surprised me, as Fielda is normally unfailingly polite. I thanked the doctor for the both of us and quickly made my exit. When I stepped out into the wet parking lot I could see Fielda speeding away in our car.

I walked the nearly two miles home, ruining my dress shoes, the chill of autumn pouring into them as I sloshed through
puddles. When I arrived at our house Fielda was not at home. I decided to give her some time to think, to be on her own, but the minutes stretched into hours and evening arrived. I finally called the Mourning Glory and asked Mrs. Mourning, albeit awkwardly, if she had seen Fielda. She had not.

“Did you all have your first fight?” Mrs. Mourning teased good-naturedly. “Bout time, you’ve only been married four years!”

I laughed feebly and asked her to tell Fielda to call me if she happened to hear from her.

It had stopped raining, but darkness was gathering, pressing in on the house so that I nearly choked on its emptiness. Finally, I abandoned the notion that Fielda needed some time to herself and climbed into our other car, “the regular folk” car Mrs. Mourning would say, a Chevette that was a shade of bronze that fortunately covered the rust stains eating away at its edges. I spent the next hour driving up and down side streets, looking for Fielda; I drove past the library, the fabric store, the candy shop, searching to no avail. I even paused briefly in front of the Mourning Glory and glanced into its gleaming storefront, lit warmly, but did not see Fielda or our Camry. I decided to drive into the Willow Creek Camping Grounds, a dismal, junky spot, I thought, to which people who had nothing better to do with their time would pull cumbersome campers in order to sit around a fire and drink beer all day and all night. I could not imagine that Fielda would be there, but I had run out of ideas. As I pulled into the paved entrance area lined with gigantic maples, their bright red plumage shadowed in the dusk, I saw the car almost immediately and pressed my foot to the pedal, sending my car lurching
forward. I pulled in next to Fielda and could see at once that something was not right, that something very, very bad had happened here. Slowly—I do not know why I did not rush—I opened my car door, stepped out and firmly shut it again. I could hear my shoes slapping against the wet pavement as I approached the still car. No movement inside. I went first to the driver’s side of the car and pressed my forehead against the glass, framing my face with my hands to get a better look. My Fielda was seated, if I can call it that, in the driver’s seat, but sprawled in such a way that her head lay on the passenger’s side, her arms tucked up around her face as if she was sleeping. But she was not. I attempted to open the car door, but Fielda had locked it. I fumbled for what seemed an eternity with my key chain, found the correct key and tried to insert it into the lock. I had to stop myself to take a breath and steady my hands. Finally, I yanked the door open and pulled Fielda toward me. I could smell it first, the vomit, an acrid odor, and then I saw the mess on the car floor and car seat. Fielda had been lying in it. I do not know if I spoke, I do not recall that I did, but I remember thinking,
Please don’t take her away from me!
I held her close to me, I know, rocking her back and forth for a moment, until I pulled myself together. I pushed her away as gently as possible, but knowing the urgency that was upon me, not as gently as I would have liked.

I climbed into the Camry and breaking every traffic law, drove to Mercy Hospital, where the hospital personnel took Fielda away from me. I was not allowed to see her. They pumped her stomach. I handed the emergency room nurse the empty bottle of pills Fielda had ingested, and she informed me with a scathing look that it was a miracle that she had
survived and would be recuperating on Four West, a place described by my students as “Four West, Nut Nest.” I knew I deserved these looks, I knew I had failed my wife, and I was punished. She was taken from me. For two weeks, even when they allowed her to have visitors, she refused to see me. I did not teach and I did not go to my office; I went to the hospital and sat in the waiting area, begging the nurses to let me see her for just one moment, no more. I sent flowers, candy, orange poppy seed muffins, but still she refused. At last, at the insistence of Mrs. Mourning, I am sure, Fielda sent for me.