Sweet Lamb of Heaven (11)

I sat in startlement for a few seconds—it seemed to me that the silence had its own soft, rising hum.

This was it, this was how it happened: this was its departure. Her first word had supplanted the voice. And suddenly I knew, in a rush, what had been suggested to me, what had been hinted at opaquely in the preceding weeks—the voice had a life cycle. It passed through those who were newly born, in the time before they spoke, and when they spoke it moved on, displaced by the beginning of speech. It lived in the innocence before that speech, the time that was free of words.

The end, the end, I thought: the beginning.

I picked her up and laughed, bouncing us both around.

For a while, after she said that first word and the voice fell silent, I was worried it would return. This reflexive, ritual worry recurred whenever I found myself in an anxious frame of mind.

But the voice didn’t return, and by and by I persuaded myself to stop fearing.

And during the new silence I spent weeks, even months in an altered state—the euphoric state of a lottery winner, as I imagine it, or maybe a newly minted Nobel laureate, a state of incredulous rapture. I’ve never won a lottery, I’ve never been given a prize, but I had this. I floated wherever I went, my baby in the stroller ahead of me or on my back—my tiny girl toddling contentedly beside me, holding my hand. I smiled a lot, people said, shone like a bride.

Ignorance is bliss, few sayings are so demonstrable, and I was blissful without the voice, I drifted on thermals. I loved the freshness of the new quiet and sometimes sat deliberately in a hushed room, picking out faint noises from the street. And the opposite too—I played favorite songs loudly, held Lena and danced with her. Excitedly I prompted her to speak, I asked for repetitions of the word Mama, for other words, whatever. I would lean down over her little face with such joy in the movement!—lean close to her, lean eagerly—no one between us, nothing but sparkling air.

Since the voice fell silent I’ve often been able to put the whole episode behind me. There’ve been many days, many nights, whole weeks when I’ve been able to forget the untenable aspects of that time, the first year of my daughter’s life.

I’ve frequently been successful in my denial strategy, and it’s probably this success that has allowed me to live a life that, aside from my domestic problems and our flight, could almost be called normal.



SINCE GABE AND BURKE arrived, the routine has changed. Actual maids come now, since the linen laundry is more than Don can handle by himself. They’re a couple of teenagers from town who do their work with earbuds in and haven’t introduced themselves to us.

Plus Don has opened up a spare room off the lobby and begun to cook. The food he offers is simple and good—special dishes for Lena, a children’s menu with pancakes or cinnamon rolls in the morning, macaroni and once bite-sized hamburgers at night. These didn’t tempt Lena since she doesn’t eat meat and never has; she feels too sorry for killed animals.

The motel guests have been gathering in the café for breakfast and dinner, and since Don keeps limited hours—as befits a chef with a base clientele of five—we’re usually all there at the same time. And it’s not just the guests anymore; stragglers from town have also been appearing here. First there were two or three old people wanting a break from microwave dinners, then a portly state trooper; Faneesha, the UPS driver, came at the end of her rounds and was instantly commandeered by Lena. Every night there are a couple more customers.

The first evening it felt strange to dine in the room off the lobby. I hadn’t realized how much of a restaurant’s mood comes from an illusion of permanence. The place seemed like an oversize supply closet, despite the flowers and candles and checkered tablecloths. But already by the second dinnertime it didn’t seem preposterous to call it a café—even the lighting seemed altered, though the lamps and candles were in the same places. It had gotten more welcoming overnight.

Lena was intent on the patrons, and on the fourth night she hit the jackpot: a kid came in who was only a year older. He was with his father, whose attention was captured by a cell phone, and the boy too had an electronic toy, a glossy plastic robot that emitted tinny music and recorded the children’s voices to play back. The two of them traded it to and fro, giggling at the senseless insults they made the robot pronounce. Lena got so enraptured she forgot to eat.

I was absorbed in the question of Thanksgiving, whether Lena and I should visit my parents. They’re not too far from here, but on the other hand Ned knows the house. I was weighing the risks while the guests talked and laughed and Don carried food back and forth with the help of a teenage girl from down the beach. A song was playing in the background, a sad folk song about a love-struck, gunshot bandito dying alone in the hills, and I looked out over the ocean, reached to rest my fingertips on the cold window. I thought of other Thanksgivings, suffused in an amber glow.

When I turned back to the room again, my fingers still tingling, the guests all seemed familiar. It was one of those soft sinkholes of time when separate elements coalesce—we were a blur of sympathy, the air between us pockets of space in one great body, one saltwater being, unplumbed depths where the ancestors came from, primeval well of genes . . . the feeling stretched like a generosity, the gift of oneness. Who cared about those differences we had, those minor distinctions that kept us apart?

But then that lofty idea turned trivial, from second to second its shine faded. It’s your commonality that’s frivolous, I scolded myself, you want to think we’re so many eggs under the down of a nesting bird—you want to be held there forever, sheltered in the warmth of a body that watches over you. You want it as almost everyone wants it, to pretend that we’re one. To let the burden of our separation be lifted at long last.