The Subtlest Sound
When Kyle turns off the vacuum cleaner, silence rushes down the second floor hallway of her home and closes around her like an angry mob. She stands there in a pair of Mom-cutoff denim shorts, loose blue tank-top, and crocs, with her black hair spilling free from the back and edges of a blue bandanna. White diamond studs flash from her ears in the half-light. Tastefully framed family photos of better days smile at her from the beige walls. Kyle looks at the shut bedroom door to her left then clamps her thin lips into a severe line to still a scream. Loss.
Loss screams loudest when you can’t let go.
Kyle feels strange standing outside this bedroom door and not hearing sounds trying to tear through the oak-music, teenage girl-squeals and laughter. Screaming. Crying. Glassy objects shattering against the hardwood. Then more laughter, but different. Darker. Kyle’s slender fingers press absently against her lips. Her simple gold wedding band glints there. Her diamond studs flash SOS of which she is no longer aware.
By choice Kyle neither ventures this far down the hallway nor has she set foot inside this bedroom in a long time. It is the third bedroom on the second floor of her home. The last bedroom there, but on the opposite side of the hallway. Hunter, her youngest son, has a bedroom on the same side of the hallway as her own, which provides a buffer of sorts. Still there is no way to avoid this bedroom, only distance enough to avoid it.
“Christina…” she whispers unaware that she has even let her oldest child’s name slide across her lips. Outside the tinkle-tine melody of a ice-cream truck steals through the open window before her at the end of the hallway. Other sounds follow, mix, become one in this moment—dogs barking, breeze-caught chatter, children laughing. Sounds of life! Kyle gasps. Sounds hurt. Sounds cut. It’s not supposed to be this way! What plans contemplated, coordinated, and ultimately executed with preternatural precision were never supposed to be conceived behind bedroom doors, inside three-storey brick Georgians in tuny neighborhoods, with the right zip code.
Kyle isn’t conscious of how hard she rubs her thumb against the vacuum cleaner’s plastic on/off switch until she feels the first sting of skin breaking. She snatches back that hand, assesses. No break. No blood. Just rub-rash. Kule lifts her chin ever so slightly. Light careening off the glass in the picture frames fire the amber and gold in her green eyes. She knows it is wrong to envy the good fortune of others. Yet no one can convince her that she is wrong to feel this way.
Kyle studies her husband’s smile from a picture on the wall taken on a family vacation in Savanna. His smile remains just as contagious after 20 years of marriage, and she smiles remembering something he used to say to her when they were younger and jaunting “The Corner” at UVA. A silly pronouncement all new lovers gush to each other in one form or another when all they see is heat, hope, and forever in each other’s eyes.
“Whoever masters your heart Masters You, Master…”
Kyle glances at her thumb again. Memories bubble and burst through the meniscus of now. Because of her husband she believes in love still. Because of him love holds deeper meaning to her now than sharing a blanket with him, beside Big Water watching fireworks explode across starry night skies. True love, unlike so much in life, survives. True love, above all else, stays.
Kyle rests her fingertips against the doorknob’s cool brass and sighs. Standing there in the crucible of this moment even a sigh sounds much too loud. Loud like church-whispers when a sinner walks to the pulpit seeking forgiveness and salvation. Loud like the machine-gun staccato click-clacks her heels made against the trauma center’s shiny white floor tiles as she searched desperately for Christina that sunny morning after everything happened. Loud like the little whimpers which somehow always seem to escape her during visits to cemeteries, mausoleums, and disintegrating sidewalk memorials for children and others no one visited anymore. Loud like the lies she feels she must always tell others when she haunts those places in search of the key to unlock a memory so she could see the exact moment she failed Christina as a Mother. Loud like that truth.
But no such moment existed, so neither did memory of it.
Kyle looks to the open window at the end of the hallway. Sounds push through. Floral-scented carpet freshener cloys the air. Christina smiles at Kyle from the walls. A close Mona Lisa smile and Kyle looks away. Biting back her bottom lip, Kyle tightens her grip on the doorknob and begins turning, knowing, feeling each click of tension. She pushes open the door gently as if she doesn’t want to awaken someone sleeping there. Sunlight spills golden from the breach.
In more ways than one this bedroom remains the home’s master bedroom, despite the silence that abides there now. And this too holds meaning as deep, if not deeper than love. Because silence comes before and after sound.
Instantly, the past and present mix and Kyle becomes a point of convergence. Mr. Cuddles, Christina’s ratty, one-eyed teddy bear sits vigilant atop a throw pillow on the bed where Christina left that morning. Huge posters of every life-bruised, love-battered muse born with too much feeling for this world glare from the walls at Kyle’s intrusion into this most sacrosanct space—Sylvia Plath, Virginia Wolff, Janis Joplin, Kate Spade, Phylis Hyman, Amy Winehouse, Anna Nichole Smith, Whitney Houston, Marlowe West. Selfies of Christina and her friends flash their best curated smiles which never reach their mascaraed eyes.
In her head blame screams at Kyle using her very own voice with the same intensity she remembers wielding against anyone, including the media when they tried to pressure her to join them in their pillory of Christina, her very own child: “It did NOT happen that way…She did NOT do That!…That’s a lie! Fuck You!! She’s still MY daughter, I Love Her!!!”
Kyle rubs her hands up and down the outsides of her arms as though the air carries a chill. But it is warm, nice. Kyle looks at the window seat Christina used to crouch watching the idyllic street below which by anyone’s estimation was a neighborhood most people dreamed of calling home. Kyle goes to the window seat and just stands there. No news trucks parked along the street below. No news reporters had knocked on her door for nearly a year. Only a few hard looks from neighbors remained.
Kyle turns and studies the sunlight splashed against the blue comforter Christina used to cocoon herself with against the chills she felt in her world. The comforter’s promise of warmth draws Kyle to it like Christina’s smile, still does during prison visits. Kyle goes to the bed, sits there in its truth, light. The comforter gives under Kyle’s weight as easily as Christina again gives herself over to hugs. Kyle reaches for Mr. Cuddles and buries her nose into the soft faux fur. Even after nine months Mr. Cuddles still holds Christina’s scent.
Then Kyle lays there holding Mr. Cuddles as she listens to the whimsy and song of Christina’s laughter filling memories, the subtlest sound.
Paulus Perkins: I am an incarcerated military veteran. “The Subtlest Sound” came about due to a disturbing legal trend that condemns parents for the “sins” of the child. I agree that if parents go too far in contributing to a child committing a crime they should be punished, but just being a parent of a child who commits a crime—any crime—just destroys families, period!