Leah had
become a collector of silences following her bout of sudden deafness.
The
cause of her deafness was clear: Shock of…the
doctor’s pen hovered a moment, before plumping decisively for the only word
appropriate: bereavement.
The
cure was less apparent. The medical jury was quite confident that her hearing
would be restored, but were unable to say when exactly that would be. They
recommended therapy. Luckily Leah’s sense of humour had a bent for the
ludicrous.
‘Speak
up,’ her therapist would say, Leah lip-reading. ‘I can’t quite hear you.’
London
became strange and angular. It took on the air of a theatre set, and the other Londoners
were like players in costume, masquerading as important versions of themselves.
She made scuttling forays through indifferent crowds, her eyes strained to
saucers, ears in a vacuum, fighting the paranoia that this was all an elaborate
set-up at her expense.
Having
slipped out the back exit, she re-entered centre stage at her parents’ home in the
Kent countryside. A flurry of excitement followed, involving some wild
brandishing of the vacuum, and fresh sheets in her old room. Her existence in
the world reaffirmed, she rallied, and quite simply – as she told it – walked
herself out of the silence. After four weeks of daily tramping down sunken country
lanes, over muddy fields and through bluebell woods, she woke up one morning to
the sound of the kettle whistling, and the muffled voices of her parents over
breakfast. Relief washed over her, and she immediately began planning her
return to London.
Perversely,
she found herself missing what she’d lost once her hearing was regained. She
felt a need to find the mute button to life.
She
stumbled upon a passing substitute for this unlikely possibility when house-sitting
for friends who had rabbits. She’d thought the creatures gormless at first.
Mainly, she realised, because along with having almost no tail to speak of,
they also had no vocal chords. She’d googled it, after realising they made no noises:
not a yap, squeak, or even a purr.
She
started to observe them for signs of communication. They reciprocated this
interest with a shy curiosity, and she found herself won over. Their stubby
noses would nudge for food, and their paws rest delicately on the edge of her
hand as they ate from her palm, exerting a pressure as light as their fur was
soft. She found comedic value in their habit of materialising by her side, treating
her to their deadpan stare. She imagined them speaking in her terrible
rendering of an Australian accent. ‘Awright, Sheila. Whaddaya got for us
t’day?’ While steadily munching on a daisy. The tension in her shoulders eased
as she watched their noiseless movements.
They
were the start of her collection of Things That Moved Without a Sound.
After
them came sycamore keys helicoptering through a sylvan tableau, and the swirls
of vapour dancing upwards from a mug of tea, cupped by cold hands on a chill
day. She added the sound-deadened cacophony of fatly whirling snowflakes. Then
a butterfly’s wings’ soft breathing in and out. Dust motes moving treacle-like
in a golden shaft of sunshine. The coy unfurling of an evening primrose, with
its startling flick into full-skirted bloom.
She made
the mistake of telling her sister Claire about this private film reel. Who
immediately saw that curling up the edges of all the silences was the moment
when her world had become deafened.
‘You
need to get another dog.’ It was stated in the imperial tones of an older
sister. They were walking Claire’s own canine companions through Hyde park. Purdy
and Ponce cavorted gracefully in the light drizzle, and Claire’s bedewed hair
framed her face in a pearly halo. Leah looked up, half expecting the clouds to
part. They remained sullenly grey. The dogs whizzed past and sent up a spatter
of mud.
‘No,
I don’t: my hearing’s come back; I’m cured,’ Leah protested, hating the idea. Ponce
came up and waffled into her palm with a wet muzzle, wanting her to throw a
stick. She bent down and scooped one up as they walked, hefting it as far from
them as possible. Then she surreptitiously wiped her hand on her rain coat. Her
sister had a fondness for big dogs with loose jowls and ribbons of drool.
‘That
just means you’ve got over the shock,’ Claire was saying. ‘You’re still
grieving, and this is the best way to speed up the healing process.’ She
stopped, forcing Leah to stop too and face her sister. Hand on hip, head on one
side, every line of her vibrating holy pragmatism: ‘What, are you telling me
you’re never going to have a dog again?’
Enter
Monty. A rescue, a sheepdog mix of wire-haired unruliness. But he could only
ever be an ‘after’ dog, because before Monty, there had been Tilly. She was a
Jack Russel, as neat and perky as Monty was scruffy and daft. She was the Lady
to his Tramp, although Monty was more gauche than raffish, and Tilly more
bright than dainty. She was pithy, whereas he was rambling. On paper he was the
more loveable, but in the end any comparison was unfair, because Tilly was that
once-in-a-lifetime dog, and that trumped everything.
Still, her
sister had been right. Monty had got her back to a place where her collection
of silences became as harmless as falling snow. Where she could meet Robert
without a Tilly-shaped shadow dragging at her feet.
She
hadn’t foreseen that Robert might have his own shadow. She clocked it
immediately at their very first meeting, in the gold glint of his left ring
finger. Not just an ex-wife-shaped shadow, with its tell-tale circle of pale skin
where there should have been a ring, but a dead-wife-shaped shadow; an
altogether more fearsome adversary.
He
had been disarmingly open: he still loved his wife, and always would, but he
was ready to start moving on. Leah knew this to be a blatant lie, even if he
didn’t, had recklessly jumped aboard the leaky ship anyway; and they’d settled
into a comfortable routine of home-cooked dinners, companionable dog walks in
the park, and Sunday papers over coffee, with ominous speed.
Meanwhile,
she sensed every action of hers being matched by a shadowy counterpart. It was
never spoken of, and so couldn’t be exorcised. Leah just lived alongside the shadow,
feeling its presence hovering as she filled the dishwasher, or falling in step
as they gamely strode out in all weathers, or reading the fashion supplement
over her shoulder; a habit she couldn’t abide, whether the person was living,
or dead.
Leah
changed tactics, insisting more frequently that they stay over at her place, or
choosing a different park each time as though shaking off a stalker. Rob
laughed. ‘At least I’m discovering the greener side of London with you,’ he
said. By which Leah understood that park walks hadn’t been part of his
repertoire with the Other One.
She
joined him for one of his regular climbing sessions, wanting to learn, and was
diabolical. Rob was infinitely patient, and at the end put a chummy arm around
her shoulder, giving her a bracing squeeze as he said: ‘Hey, it’s just a
question of practice; Anna was terrible when she started.’ She would have
preferred it if he’d made fun of her.
The
shadow laughed silently.
The
feeling that it was all so unfair weighed on her, like branches full of
suspended raindrops after an April shower, poised to fall in shimmering
abandon. She was so ready to go all in; but first she needed to know if Robert
could commit to a sequel – their own film in which she, Leah, starred alongside
him.
And
that it wouldn’t be called The Replacement.
She
decided to broach the subject while they sat in their favourite café, safely surrounded
by the hum of other customers. The waitress came and set down their order, and
Robert said ‘Thanks,’ with his ready smile.
Leah
felt nervous, and reached out to touch the sprig of dried flowers on their
table, lightly traced the translucent honesty with slightly trembling
fingertips. She sensed her own artifice, wondered if she was playing the
vulnerable ingénue, and in a sudden move of frustration crushed the whole
arrangement in her hand with a satisfying crunch.
‘Such
a fad at the moment, isn’t it, dried flowers?’
‘Leah!
What did you do that for?’
Now
was the moment.
‘I
understand grief, too,’ she said quietly. ‘Let me share yours.’
Was
it too scripted? But he’d been caught unawares, automatically taking the hand that
was being proffered across the table. She watched as what she was inferring
dawned on him, saw his eyebrows knit in a frown. He wasn’t sure what to do with
her hand, held now as awkwardly as her suggestion. His eyes slid, tell-tale, to
Monty, and he let go.
‘A
dog. You’re comparing my wife to a dog? How could you possibly compare your
grief with mine? How could you have even the remotest idea of what I’ve gone
through? Am still going through?’
‘I
know, Rob, I know – but – but I can imagine! Grief, mourning: it’s the same
emotion, whatever the cause. Let’s not make a competition out of it, out of who’s
been hurt the most. I just wanted to say I’ve been there, I’m on the same
spectrum; I can help.’
‘She
was my soulmate, Leah, my ever-after. Not a pet.’
‘Your
“ever-after”. Right. Then what are we doing here? I’m not a pet either, Rob. I
deserve more!’
This
was just one of the variations of the scene Leah had played out in her mind.
But
in the event, in ‘real-life’ as she used to say when she was little, none of
that got said.
Instead,
Robert glanced across to Monty, withdrew his hand, and looked at Leah
thoughtfully.
‘Tell
me about it,’ he said.
All
imagined conversations where Leah got to play the second-choice, righteously
aggrieved woman beat a shamefaced retreat, and she was once again confronted
with what a simply good man Robert
was. Perhaps hearts are much like raw meat, she found herself thinking; a bit
of bashing can make them more tender.
She
breathed out a sigh, but so gentle that the raindrops only trembled, and began.
‘She really was the most special
little dog. I’ve grown up with dogs; they were always there, but they were more
like moving pieces of furniture.’
To
be honest, Robert didn’t much care for animals; he tolerated Monty for her
sake. Nor was he particularly imaginative. But he was intuitive, and felt now
that it was very important he understood what she was telling him. In a triumph
of empathy, he conjured up a childhood of small fingers grasping at fur, of pushing
away damp doggy breath in the back of the car, the clatter of nailed paws on floorboards,
a homely weight flopped down on feet.
‘I’d
never experienced the bond I had with Tilly before. For the first time I felt a
kinship with homeless people. You
know; the way they walk and don’t look out for their dog, like they’re tied
together with invisible string.
She
took a sip of her latte and made a grimace. Rob took a cube of brown sugar from
a little pot on the table and plopped it into her cup. She picked up her spoon
and gave a couple of automatic stirs before continuing.
‘Well,
one day I drove home with my friend Jamie, and we parked on the opposite side
of the road to my flat. He crossed over to my building. I was still unloading
stuff from the boot. Tilly knew where home was and she knew Jamie; she wanted
to go with him. So I checked nothing was coming – I always checked – and let her go across to him.’
She
raked her fingers through loose hair, unconsciously graceful as she gathered
and twisted it over her shoulder. Rob listened, on the alert.
‘And
because I could anticipate her perfectly, I knew what she would do next: she
looked for me. She needed to be with me. And what I couldn’t anticipate was Jamie in that situation. He just needed to
pick her up. But he didn’t.’
She
was fiddling as her story got to the hard part, avoiding his gaze, brushing
some crumbs off the table and onto the floor.
‘So,
of course, she started back across the road. To me. But this time there was something coming, a Tesla. It came
out of nowhere, and –’
She
raised her eyes, meeting his with a little ‘there you have it’ shrug of the
shoulders, her hands with fingers interlaced resting lightly on the table top. Studiously
nonchalant. Rob always found her transparency endearing, but never let on,
knowing she’d be embarrassed. Even now, he held himself back. Didn’t take her
in his arms, didn’t say ‘Have a good cry, love, let it out; let down that
bloody great wall you’ve put up and we can get on with life.’
Just
said: ‘Oh Leah, I’m so sorry. Did she – ?’
‘She
didn’t die immediately. We had to take her to the vet so they could put her out
of her misery. I couldn’t do it. I just held her.’
She
still found it hard to remember those eyes fixed on hers, trusting her to take
away the pain.
‘Jamie
took care of it all, and it was only after…everything… I realised I’d gone
deaf.’
That
Tesla. It had tricked her brain, which couldn’t tally its noiseless movement
with the sickening crash of impact, and so had short-circuited into silence. A
blessing, perhaps, as dogs did have vocal chords.
‘And
now I have Monty, and I love him’ – she gave Monty a good scrub behind his
ears, an involuntary admission of guilt – ‘but it’s not the same.’
There
it was: Robert fumbled towards it, the crucial point, but felt he wasn’t quite
grasping –
Whereas
Leah saw everything clearly now. She felt the shadow leave, and knew it was for
good.
It
was Robert then who put out his hand; a comforting gesture, but imbued with a
curiously pleading quality. And it was then she saw he’d removed his ring; it
made his hand look naked, vulnerable. How funny she hadn’t noticed before; her
eye was usually always drawn to its gloating shine. Of course, it wasn’t there
to shine anymore; easy to not notice it when it was gone. Not like the silence
of her deafness, which roared when she’d lost it. Always such a balance;
something lost for something gained.
She
felt a reluctance inside herself even as she slid inexorably to her decision, sensing
there was a counter-argument to her unassailable logic…wasn’t it ‘someone’s
loss is someone else’s gain’? She imagined an alternative ending. They would
pick up their coats from the backs of their chairs, would weave their way
through the tables of customers chatting beautiful banalities, and leave the
café holding hands, discussing what to watch later on Netflix.
At that moment she felt a dampness seeping
onto her thigh, where Monty was resting his head and drooling for a treat. Time,
which had slowed to the pulse of an evening primrose, suddenly sped up with a
flick. She pushed Monty away with some impatience, and knew she’d made up her
mind. And Robert saw it, felt the wind of change that shook the branches so the
raindrops fell with a sharp patter. Knew he was just a little too late.
‘So,
you see,’ she continued, ‘I do understand, and I can’t be the after-dog. I
don’t want to be the replacement. I can’t.’
And
she took her little tenderised heart, as lovingly cupped like cold hands around
a hot mug of tea, extricating it before it was too late, not quite ready to
risk another pounding, preferring her sycamore keys and butterfly wings;
silences as soft and safe as rabbits.
Robert
put his ring back on.
About the
Author:
Sharmela
Kaluzny is using the time in between completing her MA in English Lit and
becoming a secondary school teacher of English to brush up on her short story
writing. She lives in Switzerland and her dream is to one day open a bookshop
cafe.
