A Silent Place

Sometimes when I go deep into my subconscious, I hold my breath so long I go out of breath. I do this when I’m afraid of pain. Of accountability. You think the past is in your photograph albums, but unless you re-live the past, like putting together a puzzle, you’re not whole. I need to find my father. I hardly knew him but he lives in my life. A film distributor for Universal Motion Pictures, he commuted from San Francisco to Los Angeles. On weekends when you arrived home, went to parties with Mother, and on Sunday nights, you left for the airport.

My story starts the day my father died. He died in 1963. It is 2020.

It is night now. I turn off the lamp. I like it dark. I am ready to descend deep into my subconscious. A silent place, where truths exist. Where I face scenes from my past. The windows are open and night sounds float inside. My eyes are shut tight. I am ready to address my father. I begin my descent. I sit cross legged. Here, the air is gray, like smoke. So quiet except for the snapping sound of a bird flapping its’ wings.

It’s a warm October afternoon in Happy Valley. I’m married to my second re-bound husband and I’m pregnant. I remarried less than a year ago, a few weeks after the annulment of my first marriage. I re-married to prove to you that the first marriage and the subsequent scandal was not my fault. I was a nineteen year old virgin and married as Mother called him, a “catch.” He was rich, handsome, older. To pay for the lavish wedding Mother insisted on, you mortgaged your house. But on my wedding night, my husband said he made a “mistake,” and took me home early the next morning. To avoid alimony, he sued me for fraud, claimed I was frigid, and won an annulment. You were sad. Mother blamed me. To prove he was wrong, I quickly re-married.

The sprinklers rotate, soaking the lawns, the yellow rosebushes along the patio still in bloom. It’s beautiful here, but I feel detached, as if my body is somewhere else. On the patio, reclining on a lawn chair, I’m pasting recipes into a scrapbook. When my husband’s truck ascends the long road to our long ranch home, I wonder why he’s early. He’s never early. “Time is money,” he always says. Heavy footsteps on the gravel.

He stands a few feet away from me. A handsome tall man, he wears Western boots. A real estate developer, he surveys properties. A lit pipe is between his fingers. “Hello,” I say, pretending I’m glad to see him. “. . .You’re home…early?”

He pauses. Then he says, “Your father passed away.”

For a quick second, I have this feeling you get when a door suddenly slams, or your car crashes into a curb. “ You’re wrong,” I say. “I . . . just spoke to my father. We’re having lunch in San Francisco next week…when he returns from LA.”

“A massive coronary,” he continues. “He was at a business lunch on the set. Suddenly he slumped over. He was pronounced dead.” I hold my breath.

You are in the open casket, wearing your custom gray silk suit and blue silk tie, your usual white starched monogrammed handkerchief folded neatly in your jacket pocket. You look like you are sleeping, your long mouth grim, a frown on your high smooth forehead. Your hands are folded, your manicure fresh on your oval shaped nails with the perfect moons. Your hand is ice cold. A beautiful stone statue. The flowers smell too sweet. I take a seat next to my husband, who takes my hand.

Like the mafia, your work colleagues from Universal Motion pictures, handsome men in custom dark suits, drop flowers, coins, and notes into your casket. While Mother, wearing a beige knit suit, sits behind a tall dusty green velvet curtain, her dark gold hair perfectly set, molded to her perfect shaped head. She waves her perfumed lace handkerchief, murmuring “…He loved you so. Nice of you to come….” Your two sons are drugged.

As the Rabbi eulogizes your work with the Shriners, your forty two years at Universal, what a family man you were, my mind travels back to the pieces of memories I have of you. It was your birthday. I watched you from behind the door. You were admiring the silver platters of prawns, caviar, and your favorite canapes the caterers arranged along the dining table, for your poker party. On impulse, I put my arms around you and kissed you on your cheek. You wiped your cheek with your starched white handkerchief. “You’re drooling. All ladies carry handkerchiefs. Go upstairs and get a handkerchief.” Quickly, I recall the times growing up how I loved to go to your branch office, to your screening room where you watched the newest films., deciding which films would go to certain theaters. I can smell that dusty r dark room with the velvet seats, the dust floating in the filer of light as it lit the screen…the times my childhood birthday parties there, watching Disney movies. How I loved it when you sat next to me and once you touched my hand. You were so elegant, worked so hard, and though self made you knew so much about literature and film and politics. I yearned to have a conversation with you. But why did you keep your head down at dinner when Mother ‘s fists’ pounded your older son’s ears, as he howled? Or when Mother shouted that I couldn’t keep a husband? Is this why you died? Did you heart fill up with too much hurt, anxiety, and sadness? I blame my annulment on your final loss.

I always felt that you had secret self. What you didn’t say, I felt. Your work ethic is my work now. When you are in my thoughts, I feel an overwhelming love and respect. I hear you. Feel you. I just can’t touch you. To this day I wonder what our conversations would be? So little we had together. But what we internalize is just as good as words.

The funeral is over.

I release my breath.

*

Decades pass. I get my masters degree in creative writing, and a teaching credential. Only when I’m writing, do I feel attached to myself. Not to feel attached, feels like you feel when you’re lost. Or like something you hold tight suddenly flutters away and you can’t catch it. With my magnifying glass, I study the photograph of you I keep on my desk, imagining the words that you and I didn’t share. But it’s the internalization of spirit that educates the soul and often you come to me in my dreams dressed in your custom gray silk suit, folded handkerchief, silk tie. I see you through the images I write.

Custom tailored gray silk suit.

Oval moons on your wide oval nails.
Smooth leather briefcase.

Gold Mark Cross pen.

Electric shoe polisher.

Shriners pin.

Imported bar of soap.

Sound of voice. Low. Restrained.

Scrawly signature.

Yellow golf pants.
Aura of sadness.

There’s more to the story. Do you know that Mother died on her 80th birthday? From her third heart attack, in ICU, hooked up to morphine, she died unresolved, sad, guilty, and angry. Your younger son, the one you called “punky,” died at sixty-two. He was gay and Mother refused to acknowledge who he was so he never left Mother who paid him lavishly. If you don’t live who you are, you die and he died from the same “old heart,” as Mother would say, as she had.

I’m 84. I never could sustain a relationship. I had to dramatize them, replay trauma, until they ended. So I could write about them. I dedicated my last novel to you. My current therapist says I have a detachment disorder. When you hold your breath all your life, you have to be careful or you’ll go out of breath.

I close my eyes tighter.

An orchestra is playing The Anniversary Waltz. The three hundred guests surround the parquet wood floor dance floor. You and I waltz. You love to waltz. In my three-inch high heels I am taller than you. My white silk Audrey Hepburn style wedding gown rustles as I turn. You hold me slightly apart as if holding me close is not right, and your eyes are averted. Your mouth moves as you count a one, two three, a one two three. I can see the slight pink circle of scalp on top of your sleek silver hair. When I close my eyes I feel dizzy, dizzy from champagne and dreams and dancing with you. You dip me back and applause and coins fall at my feet and my arms are tight around your neck and I’m almost out of breath.

Barbara Rose (Brooker) is an author, journalist, speaker. Her TV appearances, podcasts and latest books are on www.barbararosebrooker.com

Her latest novel Love, Sometimes, published by PostHillPress/Simon Schuster and the audible are available on Amazon and all bookstores and sites.