Silence

Silence

10 August-05 November 1990

20 years old

It all began the afternoon he introduced me to her. Such a quiet, wounded-looking creature. He eyes unconsciously implored you to hold and comfort her, and quite unwittingly you found yourself irresistibly drawn to her. She’s a loathsome, hateful creature, really. I detest her with all of my pathetic being.

Jack and I met five years ago at a frat beer bash. My date and his were best friends, and they thought, with their typical female mentality, that it would be neat to double-date one night. The bash, consequently, offered the perfect opportunity.

When Denise and I arrived at the party, we were immediately greeted by Tanja and Jack. They introduced us to each other and we hit it off remarkably well. Jack and I were the best of friends ever since. In fact, our close friendship cost us the friendship of the two girls. We had spent so much time together, Jack and I, that Denise and Tanja became fed up and eventually moved on to other men. Quite frankly, we considered that to be no profound loss to us, and it turned out even better for the girls. Last we heard, they were quite well-off. Denise and Tanja married an accountant and an attorney, respectively, and currently reside in neighbouring condos. Both, we hear, keep their husbands on their toe with their schoolgirl antics.

The fall after Jack and I graduate with our BA’s (he in business, I in social science), we found places to live and jobs to keep food on our tables. Jack, always the successful one, landed a job as assistant to the vice president of a major nationwide telecommunications firm. When asked what he does, he says exactly that. Although he will deny it till he’s blue in the face, he’s actually a glorified go-fer. A secretary, even. But who am I to judge? I’m only his not-quite-as-bright-or-ambitious, exceedingly jealous best friend.

After graduation, I managed to land a job as assistant manager of a local B. Dalton book store.

We were content. Though neither of us had any money, as corny as it sounds, we did have each other. As our friendship grew, the bond between us strengthened. Rarely were we seen apart after office hours. Then, exactly two years and three days after we graduated and had taken our first tentative steps out into the proverbial Real World of Chicago, it happened.

After a long, snowy night of drinking and carousing, we stood waiting impatiently for the El on Belmont. There were only two or three other people around, also waiting and stamping their cold feet against the wet snow clotted on their shoes. No one spoke.

Jack and I leaned against a billboard, watching the trains go by, and silently played the universal guessing game: Which One Will Stop Next? We stood in the silence as the wet snow formed a thick impenetrable curtain around us. Suddenly, a loud sound from below thundered up through the stairwell, where a fuse had blown, enshrouding the void in darkness. A gunshot. Everybody on the platform glanced around uneasily at each other, my own gaze finally resting on Jack’s. In unison, Jack and I looked warily to the stairwell. I staggered backward drunkenly, anticipating, in my shameless stupor, a mob o people to come rushing forth.

As if from nowhere, a solitary shadowy figure bounded from the black depths of the stairwell and tripped just as he reached the top riser. He thrust his hands out before him to break his fall, and from his left hand flew a dark object that I at first took to be a rat as it skittered across the cement. It changed course as it hit the metal support of the billboard and came to rest at my feet. I looked down and bent to pick it up. It was a gun, blue-black and sleek, seductive and lethal, whispering to me of its deadly promise of power without compromise.

As my fingers closed almost reverently around the butt, still warm from the other man’s hand, I was knocked backward with violent force as the gun was torn from my grasp. I was thrown off balance as my feet stumbled around each other, trying to regain their purchase on the iced-over wood planking of the platform.

I heard Jack cry out my name. “David, no!”

I looked up in time to see him lunging toward me. A look of sheer horror passed over his face as my feet lost their tentative grip in the slick platform. I toppled helplessly over the edge into the track pit.

I lay there for a moment, too stunned to move. Through the mist of my daze I heard Jack calling out to me, holding out his hand. Then, slowly, as if in a dream, I realised that I was sprawled in the middle of the northbound track. It vibrated softly, soothingly beneath me. I heard the distant rumble of the train and knew that soon it would grow to a deafening roar as it drew nearer.

I got up a little unsteadily and stumbled across the tracks to the edge of the pit. It came up to my chin, and being rather inebriated, I found it next to impossible to pull myself over the edge to safety. My heart filled with fear and despair. Jack’s own drunken efforts were hindering rather than helping me, and as a result, I fell again onto the track.

The rumble of the train was growing considerably louder. I looked to my left, southward, and could see the train advancing inexorably forward with dizzying speed. In a moment of strange lucidity, I wondered briefly if this train would stop or keep going.

I struggled to my feet again. I reached the edge and desperately attempted to scramble over it, but my motor skills were largely hindered by panic and drink. I slipped a little, and just as I believed I had recovered, the roar of the train pulsated deafeningly in my ears, enveloping my senses. The fear overwhelmed me.

Then, there was silence.

I awoke nearly a week later with Jack’s worried, angelic face peering anxiously into mine.

“Shit, David. Thank God. We didn’t think you’d make it,” he told me.

I looked around me, noting my surroundings. A hospital room. There were three other beds, two that were occupied. I wondered when the third occupant would show, and if he already had, where he was.

“What happened, Jack?”

The relief on his face was quickly replaced with concern. “Don’t you remember?” he asked tentatively.

I could see dark circles and lines under his eyes and mouth that weren’t there before. They were more deeply etched in his strong, handsome features than I had remembered. “The train...” he prompted.

After a brief pause, I remembered everything with a sudden fierceness. The loud report of gunfire, the shouting, the figure leaping from the dark stairwell and throwing me off balance. I remembered falling into the pit, and Jack impotently attempting to help me climb out, but unable to because we were both too drunk. I remembered everything. But most of all, I remembered the gun, the blue-black whispering to me, the deafening roar in my ears, the overwhelming fear, and the silence.

“Yes...” I whispered hoarsely.

“I pulled you out just in time, David,” he told me quietly, almost apologetically. “You would have died...”

“What’s wrong with me?” I asked.

He looked away and swallowed nervously. A shadow crossed his face. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

I was growing impatient. “Just tell me, damn it.”

His face paled slightly and he took a deep breath. “David,” he began, “you’re not paralyzed, but...” He stopped and looked at me helplessly. I could almost hear him thinking, But you might as well be.

I returned his gaze ruthlessly and said nothing, waiting for him to continue.

“But, you’ve lost the use of your legs. One is... severely damaged. The other had to be... ” His eyes brimmed with tears and his face was awash with grief.

“The other had to be what, Jack?” My temper flared, and my voice rose. “God damn it! Just tell me!” I already knew what had happened to the other leg, but I wanted Jack to tell me. I needed for him to say it.

“The other leg had to be...” he stammered. “ It had to be amputated.”

So now you’re a cripple.

He continued to explain, but he spoke mechanically, as if he’d rehearsed the same speech to himself over and over, yet failed to convince even himself, despite his characteristically infinite optimism.

“You’ll have to use a wheel chair. You can try physical therapy for your other leg, but the doctor claims that it will be virtually useless no matter what you choose to do.”

He looked at me, the pain showing clearly on his ashen features, while I remained impassive. I was in shock.

“Oh Christ, I’m so sorry!” he burst out, his tears flowing freely now. “I did everything I could. Please forgive me! Oh, God...!”

He carried on like this for some time before I finally stopped him. Although I took great pains in reassuring him that the accident was nobody’s fault, the knowledge that things would have been very different had we not been drinking that night hung in the air between us like a heavy shroud.

For just over two years, Jack took care of me. Unable to care for myself at first, I quit my job at B. Dalton (no big loss) and moved in with Jack. He acted as my nursemaid for months without complaint. I began urging him to go out and have fun. He initially agreed to do so, but only if I would go with him. I, on the other hand, was ashamed of being seen in my condition, and wanted to avoid the looks of combined pity and curiosity on people’s faces, so I always declined. Instead, we would spend the weekends at home playing poker, renting movies, drinking beer, and watching Saturday Night Live. We enjoyed that time together, but it was always tainted with the shared but unspoken knowledge between us that his extended devotion to me was inspired and drivel solely by guilt.

Finally, Jack started going out during the days, always asking me to join him. But still I refused. Had I not been so self-conscious, maybe things would have been different. I have found that my life has been riddled with many such what-ifs.

At first, Jack only went out on Saturdays and came back an hour or two later, devoting the nights, as always, to ourselves. His time away, however, shortly lengthened to occupy the whole day, finally encompassing Sunday afternoons, as well. By this time, he had stopped inviting me to go with him, but still we spent the evenings together.

One Sunday afternoon, I asked him where he went.

“To the library,” he answered after a slight pause.

“To the library? You spend your goddamned weekends in a library?” It hurt me to learn that he’d rather spend his time in a library than with me.

“Listen, David,” he reminded me. “You’re the one who suggested that I should go out.”

He was right, of course, and I couldn’t stand it. I had created a monster. I didn’t answer him; I had nothing more to say.

Soon, he started going out on Saturday nights, too. He’d leave for the library at noon, come home for dinner, and leave me again an hour or two later. I began to grow suspicious. Although I rarely if ever, stepped foot in a library, I doubted that any were open Saturday and Sunday evenings. Like post offices and banks, it went against the grain of public institutions.

I was right. One afternoon, I called ever library I could find a listing for in the phone book, and every one of them closed at 5 pm Saturdays, 3 pm Sundays.

I grew sullen and irritable, but Jack seemed to have hardly noticed my sour moods. I was desperately afraid that he had found someone else with whom he could go out and get a beer, talk and have fun. Just like he and I used to do. I was afraid that he had found someone to replace me. Someone who was not crippled.

One night, as I sat alone watching the tail end of a SNL rerun, Jack came home and quietly sat down beside me.

“You’re home early,” I observed bitterly.

“David,” he sighed, exasperated. “I can’t stay here playing nurse for you for the rest of my life.”

“Well, what the hell am I supposed to do about it?”

“I think you’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. If you put a little effort into it,” he added quietly.

“Oh yeah, right. Like, where is a cripple supposed to get a decent paying job that’ll keep my head above the poverty level?”

“I’m sure there are places you can go. If we went to see Dr. Holmes, we can find out if—”

“If there are any homes you can put me in?” I finished for him. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” the realisation dawned upon me. “I can’t believe you! You’re supposed to be my best friend!”

Jack sighed. “David, this isn’t the way I wanted to tell you...”

“What, there’s more?”

He hesitated. “I met someone.”

“At the library?” I asked. Sarcasm dripped from my voice. He didn’t appear to notice.

“No, not at the library. I met her—” He stopped suddenly, realising that he was caught. He blushed furiously.

“Where?” I demanded. “Tell me. Just where did you meet this woman?”

“Oh shit,” he said. “David, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“Spare me, Jack. You’re always sorry, aren’t you? You lied to me. You lied to me about going to the goddamned library all these months, and you sit here apologising to me as if that’s going to make up for it all.”

“David—”

I was livid. “Shut up! I don’t want to hear it. Just tell me where you fucking met her.”

“Oh Christ,” he muttered under his breath. “I, uh, I met her at a party I went to right after I started going to the library. It was a barbecue—”

“Spare me the details, okay?”

Jack cleared his throat. “Her name is Amy.” He paused. “I want you to meet her.”

“You lied to me...” I marvelled. I wasn’t so much pissed that he lied to me though, as I was devastated that my worst fears had come true: I had been replaced. And by a woman.

“We’re going to get married.”

The statement hit me like a ton of bricks and smashed that last tiny bit of sanity I had left. I could not handle this information well, at all.

During Jack’s caretaking, guilt-ridden though it was, I had fallen in love with him. More than anything, I wanted to keep him for myself. I could not rationally tolerate the idea of anyone else being with him, not matter who, or what, it was. Once, as I watched him from the window leaving the building, I saw him stoop to pet a stray dog, giving to it the rest of the sandwich he had been eating. I had made that sandwich for him, and he had given it to a dog. I felt the familiar insane rage of jealousy and had the uncontrollable desire to throw the potted plant sitting on the sill before me out the window and bash the dog’s head in. But instead, I sat there, trembling with rage, grinding my teeth.

And then he told me he’d met someone and that he was going to marry her. And she wasn’t even a dog.

“David,” he said hesitantly. “I want you to be my best man.”

It is now seven months and eighteen days later, and Jack and Amy are getting married today. Soon after Jack’s disastrous news, he began helping me set up a life of my own. I went along without complaint, and even pretended some enthusiasm. They both helped me move into my own apartment about two months ago. It’s located just three blocks from Jack’s and Amy’s place.

I hate it.

I do my own shopping, cooking and laundry, and I even have a job in the little cafe on the corner of my street. I wash dishes, but occasionally the cook lets me grill up some orders. He says that when he leaves his job in a month or two, he’s going to push our boss to take over. He doesn’t fool me, though. I can see right through him. He feels nothing but pity for me. I hate pity. I suppose it’s okay, since I would have a better job, except the boss is worried that my wheelchair will get in the way. He just doesn’t want to give me the job because I’m a crip.

I sit here next to Jack as he stands waiting for Amy to walk down the aisle. As his best man, I’m supposed to be happy for him. Instead, I’m overwhelmed with grief and hate for the loss of my best friend and the woman who is responsible for it.

I slip my hand into the pocket of my rented tuxedo and rest my fingers lightly on the object within. I pull it out slowly, unobtrusively, and hold it almost reverently in my hand. The cool metal rests heavily and reassuringly in my palm. I look down at it, caressing it gently. Its blue-b lack gleams evilly at me, seductively, whispering to me dark promises of peace and finality.

The music stars, and soon I see Amy walking down the aisle with her father. I look at her with loathing, hating the compelling aura of innocence and helplessness that makes people want to wrap their arms around her. I’d like to wrap my hands around her frail little neck. I can’t stand the sight of her.

As she withdraws from her father’s arm, she moves next to Jack, my Jack, and they regard each other with sappy-sweet eyes of love.

I’ve had enough of this, but I hold my emotions in check. I wait patiently through the ceremony until the priest begins his futile recitation of the wedding vows. Finally, he declares, “If anyone here had reason that this marriage should not take place, let him speak now, or forever hold his peace.”

This is my cue. I wheel myself in front of them.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Jack hisses at me.

I don’t say a word. I can hear the gasps of surprise and the murmurs of speculation as I position myself before the doomed couple.

“You did this,” I finally say to Amy as I raise my hand.

I hear someone shout, “He’s got a gun!” But before anyone can react, I swallow the muzzle.

The seductive blue-black whispers its reassurances to me. I am briefly reminded of the El on Belmont: The deafening roar of the train, my fear enveloping me, and the silence that followed. The  roar becomes the blood pounding in my ears. My fear, which has been a continual ordeal over these many months, crescendos. I pull the trigger.

And now...

Silence.