The Price of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page A

won’t lose me in a crowd with this.” He was teasing me, but I realized that the color, a fire-engine red, was wrong. Tom likes discreet colors. Heather green is his favorite.
    “I’m sorry; it’s too loud. I’ll exchange it. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Red for happiness, An-ling had said.
    “Give it to Josh,” Tom suggested. “He could use some grown-up attire.”
    “No. It’s for you.” I took the box from him.“I’ll exchange it.” I touched his fingers coiled around the wine glass. “I’m sorry,Tom.”
    He raised his glass, took a small sip. I looked at my empty hand on the tablecloth, retracted it to my lap. “It’s fine, Emma. I’ll have more time to write. There’s an article I’ve been working on that may turn out to be the first chapter of a new book.”
    “What about?”
    “The impact of terrorism on the buying patterns of the American public. Stop looking at me in that maudlin way. As Josh might put it, getting turned down for chairman is ‘no big deal.’ ”We both knew he was lying.
    We ate in silence. I ended up drinking most of the wine. As the alcohol took effect, I wondered why he had married me, why I had let him.There he was in the movie line, jingling his keys, instantly familiar, like the guy who’s been living next door all your life, the kindred soul my grandmother used to talk about—a gift you would receive from God if you were good enough, devout enough. He’s the one, I had thought, making music so that I can hear him. It was nonsense and yet I had wanted to believe, as I had wanted to believe in Lazarus rising from the dead and the loaves and fishes multiplying. Let it be, this story of twin souls, let sweetness and love be.
    That resolve would come and go the first year of our relationship. I could see the puzzled look on Tom’s face when I retreated from him.A test, maybe, to see if he would come back. He did.Always. He was constant, loyal. He cared deeply. That was why I married him, why I loved him. So much has changed in our lives, but I still love him.
    “I depend on you,” I said as we finished our desserts.
    He paid the check. If he’d heard me, he didn’t let on.
    Back at home I eyed the living room sofa and wanted to make love on it, to play at being young and carefree, something that perhaps I’ve never been. I wanted to groan and roll and heave with Tom in our pristine living room, in our kitchen, anywhere but the bedroom, the only room sanctified for sex.
    I ended up making love to Tom on top of the bed, undressing him, taking off my clothes on my own. I was in charge of our lovemaking for once.Tom stayed with me as I took a long time in coming, not the usual half-hearted moan that let Tom know he could stop.Afterward I groggily wondered if I was too old to get pregnant.
    In the morning, lying in the empty bed with a headache, a hot flash reminded me I would never have another child.

THREE
    Tom
    I USED TO watch my wife and my daughter kiss each other’s hands, fingertip after fingertip, two kids delighting in each other’s sweetness. They were so filled with love they could not stay apart for more than an hour or two. I watched, fat with pride, and assumed that life would continue to treat us fairly. Hard work rewarded, love reciprocated, good health as long as we took care of ourselves. It was what this country was all about, what I had been led to expect.
    Twenty months after we met, Emma and I got married and moved to Westchester, picking Mapleton because it had a good school system.We wanted kids right from the start. We both had careers in teaching. I had obtained an assistant professorship in the Economics Department at SUNY Purchase, a tenure-track position. Emma was a substitute teacher for a year after our move and then taught fourth grade at a private school in Armonk until Amy was born.
    Emma had two miscarriages before Amy. She was still religious then. Mass every Sunday without fail, confession every week. When she got