When Silence Becomes a Song Felicity Wong

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When Silence Becomes A Song

Felicity Wong

The elevator doors opened. I didn’t know what to expect eight years later. When I got out of bed this morning, I remembered the last words you said to me in your cursed Tribeca apartment. And as you walk out of the elevator, those are the only words I’m thinking about. Nothing about you—the sound of your heels hitting the ceramic floor tiling, your starch collar standing upright, the stacked brass rings on your long fingers— seems like the girl he left me for so long ago. I’m standing by the front desk, watching your every movement. Your eyes skim the people walking in and out of the hotel lobby. It’s the moment you recognize me—you turn your head, glance over, and immediately walk in my direction. And finally, you’re standing six feet away. You look right into my eyes. “Caroline.” “Ava.” We both nod at each other. There’s an awkward pause in the air that drowns out the dreary, nondescript hotel lobby music in the background. “How’s John?” I ask without a smile. You smile back. “I gave you that call yesterday, actually, because I want to talk about him. It’s about John.” As soon as those words escape your mouth, you stiffen up. I stiffen up. People swarm around us, oblivious to the tension brewing. I guide you to one of the leather couches in the lobby. You refuse to sit down until I motion you to. “What is it?” Whatever you say next, I’ll try not to care about. If it’s a “John and I are deciding to have a child, and we

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want your blessing” or a “John and I plan to move across the country,” I know I’ll scoff and escort you out of the hotel quickly. But you traveled all this way to talk to me, so I’m curious. After the thirty seconds that feels like five minutes, you look up at me with your brown eyes. Your confidence and poise is long gone, almost like the girl I knew many summers ago. Suddenly you grab my left arm with clammy, shaking hands. “Caroline, John’s dead.” *** The day you received the call about your mother was probably the worst day of your life. For every week of the past six months, we visited her like regular clockwork. Alice wasn’t like a second mother to me after mine left. She wasn’t even really a mother to you—eighteen years of missed recitals, silent dinners, empty voice mailboxes—yet, even still, Ian drove us in his car to Presbyterian every Thursday. We’d see Alice, and immediately, this tight knot of weights would sink to the bottom of my stomach because I know we’d spend the next two hours watching her wilt—this poor woman, fighting for a life with every ounce of her body for a life she barely enjoyed. Sitting next to Alice made me think about how short my life was, and I didn’t like it. The day you received the call about your mother was my birthday. It was just you and me, lying on the living room rug, reminiscing about our unrequited loves. We laughed about Isaac and Ben, Elliot and Noah. For a moment, I forgot about all the girls at Episcopal who drunkenly spent their birthdays in vacation homes, happy with their best friends and family. You and I had no one, least of all Alice. The house was empty except for us, and then the phone rang. “Is this Alice Lee’s daughter?” You dropped the phone to the ground. The day you received the call about your mother turned into tomorrow’s twilight. You had Ian on speed dial, and we

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made our final trip to Presbyterian. In the car, you were numb as I held you in my arms. As you sobbed loudly, I stared out the window, thinking about how just two months ago, Alice asked you to leave your home. When we sat in the waiting room, we didn’t speak to each other. I could have offered you soothing words of comfort. Instead, I simply held your hand. It’s funny, because you never talked about how much you loved Alice. You didn’t have to, because we both knew. *** I’m sitting on your rug again, facing the set of blue futon couches in the corner of your living room. The silence swells beneath the thin walls of the room. But it’s not unfamiliar or uncomfortable. This silence is like rediscovering the kind of song you put on repeat for a month straight and then stop listening to because it gets old. It eventually becomes catchy again. “Caroline?” The silence shatters into a million pieces. I turn my head towards you. You’re on the futon—a cocoon of blankets and grief. Then, you ignore the fact that we haven’t known each other for eight years—you lean in and whisper, “Some people are saying it’s a homicide.” “Who do you think did it?” “I never said I thought it was a homicide.” “Well, do you?” “John didn’t have enemies. It doesn’t make any sense.” You retreat back into your cocoon. I look up at the ceiling. The silence starts playing on the radio again. *** “Every night, I have these nightmares. I only ever dream on this blue futon couch.” You adjust your legs so they’re swinging off the bed. “What are they about?” “A lot of them are about Alice.” “Alice? Even now?”

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“In some of them, Alice keeps on dying. I’ll be in the Presbyterian hospital room and then she’ll stop breathing, the machines will go silent, she’s gone. I’ll leave the room paralyzed, open the next, and she’ll be in that room too. It never stops. I rip open door after door, and Alice dies in front me a thousand times over.”

“And John?” “They’re always about Alice, never about John.” You start whimpering. I hold you in my arms. “There’s another dream I keep having.” “Do you want to tell me about it?” “In the dream I look like a little girl and I’m in this room where all the walls are made of mirrors. I’m drawing on the mirrors with red markers, but every time the tip of the marker hits the wall, thousands of little, screaming faces appear on the walls. And then I faint, the ink seeps into the mirror, and I’m back in bed. In the dream, I wake up in pools of red ink every time. And then I actually wake up, and I’m horrified.” You must have seen my face, because the next thing you say is, “Caroline, do you ever have dreams like that?” Before I can even answer, you start whimpering again. So I hold you in my arms. We rock back and forth as you tremble. We talk about your nightmares and I tell you it will be alright. After a while, you look up at my face. I know you have something else on your mind; the mood has shifted. The light seeping through the venetian blinds are hitting your futon at a different angle, bathing it in light. “Do you forgive me?” We look at each other. I walk across the room, away from you, and face the blue futons. It’s silent again. *** I take you up on your offer a few hours into that evening after you fall asleep on the futon. Your kitchen is clean, ceramic,

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pristine, and your fridge is built of stainless steel. The bitter part of me smirks internally, knowing how much money John must have spent on it for you. I grab the door, swing it open, and stare. At first glance, everything seems normal. The top shelves are stocked with peanut butters, salsas, mysterious Tupperware containers, eggs, and miniature cartons of fruit. Green produce fills the bottom two transparent drawers, as do the milk and condiments along the rows lining the side of the fridge. My fingers reach around the miscellaneous jars to check the unlabeled Tupperware with the hopes of finding leftovers from a few days ago. I peel the lid off a white oblong one. A powder pink post-it note that had already lost its stickiness flies into my face. “We give our regards. Call our home phone if you need anything - Tracy & Family.” An untouched green chile sits sullenly in the ceramic, top glazed over. Immediately, I search for the other five Tupperwares in your fridge, opening them one by one: chicken parmesan from Eric, a bacon and egg casserole from Ananda, beef curry from Cecile and William, another green chile from the Czaplewski family, and pasta salad from Lulu. As I glance at their notes, sending regards and sharing their sympathy for you, I realize that my eyes are the first to ever see the scribbly handwriting. Strangely enough, there’s a half eaten shrimp scampi and chocolate cheesecake sitting next to the untouched medley of sympathy meals. So you’re eating. You’re eating well. I stand in front of the opened door for a few minutes, listening to the humdrum buzz of the stainless steel fridge—a fridge powerful enough to kill the mold begging to grow and mask the raging odors waiting to explode. Just like you. I peer into the living room again. You’re sleeping, dormant on the couch, hiding from the rest of the world, waiting to erupt. Looking at you, melting into the mattress of the futon— that’s when I know. This is not the fridge of a grieving woman. I slam the door of the fridge shut. I walk back into the living room,

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combing through these thoughts like a boy running his fingers through his lover’s hair.

*** When I arrive at the cemetery, I stay in my car, watching you stand with Ian and Isabela at your side. I know you’re tired, from the way you hold your head because your neck is sore to the dark circles under your eyes. Groups of people ebb and flow from you, giving you a kind word or a kiss on a cheek. But you’re not paying attention—your eyes are cold, staring into the distance. When the men arrive to dig into the dirt, you don’t cry. When the Father arrives with his prayer book and mutters a few words, you don’t cry. When they lower John’s coffin into the ground, you don’t cry. After everyone has left, I unbuckle my seatbelt and walk towards you. As soon as you see me, you’re startled. “Caroline, I didn’t know you were here.” There’s sadness, but no surprise or anger in your lilting voice. “You didn’t stand with us.” “I couldn’t. I watched everything from my car.” I take a sharp breath. “Where’s Ian and Isabela?” “Isabela left with Ian to go visit Alice.” You suddenly reach out to grab me. Your hand is supple, warm, kind.

“I never thanked you. For that morning in the Presbyterian waiting room, or that afternoon at the coroner’s office.” I don’t know what to say, so I simply look at you. Dead silence is music to our ears, unforgettable and familiar. Your eyes flash, then soften. “I think there’s someone waiting.” My voice cracks, and I smile a bit. You turn around, step into the car, and drive away. *** The heat in the room we’re sitting in at the police station is suffocating. None of the windows are open. You sit in the chair across from mine, legs crossed, lips pursed. You fidget with the

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stacked brass rings on your fingers, trying to distract yourself. But it’s all a facade. I know, because I also sat across from you in the Presbyterian waiting rooms for months. Finally, the officer walks in. A curt “appointment for Ava Lee?” and we’re walking down a dimly lit hallway. After a few twists and turns, we arrive at the door of a dingy room that features walls lined with file cabinets. A man sits behind a wooden desk covered with his desktop and reams of paper. There is nothing notable about his physical appearance except for an ugly pair of horn-rimmed glasses that sit slightly high on his nose. As we enter the room, he stands up. “I’m Matthew DeLuca, the coroner for this case.” He pushes his glasses even higher up on his nose. “We did an autopsy of John Akana’s body and consulted several detectives to determine the cause of his death last week. We thought you might like to know what we found.” Both you and Matthew stoically stare at each other. The words he says seem to hang in mid air between your two bodies. I’m just a bystander in the corner of the room. Matthew DeLuca draws a deep breath. “Ms. Lee, we think it was a suicide.” As soon as those words leave his mouth, I tune the rest of the world out. Relief washes over me like crashing waves at a beach. It’s not exactly a victory to be celebrated, but I had hoped for the worst and fate dealt me the best. I briefly glance over to watch your reaction. Nothing is different. I see the tension in your shoulders, the hollowness behind your eyes, the anchor holding your body down. You don’t glance back at me, so you don’t see the relief on my face.

*** “I had the dream again last night. The one with Alice.” “In Presbyterian?” “Yeah, and you were in it.” “What was I doing?”

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“It started in the waiting room. Nobody even told me she was dead. In the dream, I don’t have any recollection of a phone call. I walked into Presbyterian that day thinking it was just a regular visit. The nurse escorted me to that room to see her, and when I opened the door, you stood there over Alice’s body.” “Oh. How come?” “You pulled the damn plug, Caroline! You were the one who killed her.” “I wasn’t in the waiting room with you, in your dream?” “No, and when I saw you there, I started screaming. So I ran down the hallway, opened another door, and I saw Alice again in that room. And you stood over her again like a fucking murderer, and I started yelling at you. It happened over and over again. But I can’t remember what I yelled at you or what you yelled back, because I woke up.” “Why do you think I killed Alice in your dream?” “I have no idea.” “Aren’t dreams the manifestation of your subconscious thoughts?” “If I could explain to you what my subconscious is trying to tell me, I wouldn’t talk about my dreams with you.” “Fair enough.” You roll back into your cocoon, and we sit in silence again. But there’s a song replaying in my head. It’s persistent, on repeat. I’m thinking. *** Jazz music plays softly in the background as people move around the room. The heels on the bottom of my shoes feel as if they are about to fall off, my mouth is dry from talking to strangers, and I want to go home. But this moment has been in the making for the past two years, and I need it to happen tonight. “Where is she?” John puts his right arm around me in an attempt to help

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me hobble around. “She called me saying she flew in around an hour ago. She should be here.” I look down at my watch. 10:54 PM. “It’s four minutes past.” “Is that her?” I spin around to face the elevator, and you’re there— wearing a baby blue taffeta dress and your heart on your sleeve. I run towards you. There’s squealing, hugging, “I’ve missed you so much”-ing. We finally untangle ourselves. “I hope you didn’t forget about me, Caroline.” John reaches out to hold my hand, smiling. I smile back and put my arm around him. “Ava! This is John. John, my best friend from the Lower East side, Ava.” He smirks at you. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” “Don’t worry, I’ve heard a lot about you as well.” You smirk back. “Caroline and I have known each other for nearly quadruple the amount of time you’ve probably known her.” I throw my head back in laughter. You start laughing with me, and John looks at both of us in awe. *** The woman opens the bedroom door gingerly as if not to disturb anyone, even though she knows there is not a single person in the apartment. She walks over to the bathroom and flips the switch on. She spends thirty seconds surveying the two sinks in front of her until she turns to her right and walks towards the wall. Her gloved hands open one of the mirror cabinets nailed onto the bathroom walls. Lining the shelves are rows of bottles—some are skinny and transparent and orange, others are gargantuan and opaque and green. Her hands hover over each bottle as she reads the fine print labels. Finally, her hands stop over one. This bottle is transparent and pink, with a white sticker covering two thirds of its surface. She runs her thumbs over the ridges of the medicine cap. Slowly press down

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and release. Twist the cap off. Pour the remaining two pills out into her dry palms. Drop the two new pills in. Twist the cap back on. Put it back into the cabinet. She looks at herself in the mirror briefly. Then she flips the switch back off and leaves. *** “The dream was a bit different this time.” “The dream about Alice?” “Yeah, but it was strange. I got called to that cursed hospital room by the nurse at Presbyterian. I think I lucid dream, because I’ve dreamed this dream so many times, so now I prepare myself to look at Alice’s dead, limp body on the bed.” “What was different?” “Well, I open the door expecting to see Alice. But the bed was empty.” “Did you look inside the other hospital rooms too?” “Of course.” “And?” “She wasn’t in any of them. I ripped open door after door. She wasn’t there. The beds were all empty. She was gone.” “Ava, she is gone.” With that, you roll back over into your futon. Cue the silence that plays like a song, a masterpiece without a melody.