The Price of Silence Read Online Free PDF Page B

out to me, in case she asked for help. At night Emma slept on the floor of Amy’s bedroom. I slept in an armchair I dragged into the hallway outside the open door. “Slept” is an exaggeration in this case. I caught naps off and on, despite the cramp in my stomach. Later, when Emma took up living again, I realized I’d been on a suicide watch—the cramp was plain and simple fear. But at the time, I couldn’t see it. I thought I was simply trying to be there for her, to show her I still loved her.
    I tried to help Emma with all my heart. I’ve thought about it a great deal and I know I didn’t come up short. I bought her books on grief, took her out for rides, rented movies she never watched, tried to get her to talk, cry. I did the best I could. It’s useless to ask for more from a person. Each of us comes equipped with a given capacity for generosity, for love, caring, patience, even for grief. Genes, experience, parents, whatever, determine that by a certain time— your teens, your twenties—there it is, a jugful of emotions, a specific quantity.There’s no refilling. Once the quantity gets used up, there’s no more.
    Emma
    I was driving home, to Tom and Amy. In the back seat was a big stuffed dog, a Lab, bought to appease Amy for the puppy she kept crying for, that I couldn’t give her because of my allergies.The afternoon shone, as if wiped clean with Windex.The leaves on the trees had turned and pumpkins grinned on the front steps next to wooden vats of chrysanthemums. It was a cinematic day, precious in its prettiness.
    I turned the sharp corner onto Longmeadow Road and relaxed my grip on the steering wheel. Home was an easy mile and a half away. I revved the Buick up to fifty miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour speed zone.There were never any police on this stretch of the road and I was eager to get back.
    At the turnoff to my street, my neighbor’s golden retriever stood on the corner, wagging her tail at me, her milk-filled teats swaying rhythmically.A dog as dumb as she was sweet, she was always running off. I swung into my street. Our home was four houses down, on the right, a small white two-story with a short front lawn edged with rhododendrons that needed pruning. I’ll get to it tomorrow, I promised myself.The dog barked, her tail now whipping the air.
    “Go home, Sandy!” I called out.
    The dog lifted her head, ears cocked.
    “Home!”
    She streaked in front of my car. I jerked the steering wheel to the right, away from her.The car skidded. Out of the corner of my eye I caught colors shifting low on the sidewalk, a darting movement I had no time to comprehend. A yelp was followed by a soft thud.The right front tire lifted, then dropped back on the road. Then the back tire lifted and dropped back.
    Up and then down.
    I hit Sandy; Sandy is dead!
    I cried out, yelled, as I tried to regain control of the car.
    A dog barked.
    From the sidewalk across from where I had first seen her, Sandy wagged her tail.The surprise lifted my hands off the steering wheel.
    The car kept moving for another thirty-seven feet, according to the police report. It was stopped by the fifty-year-old maple, the tree that had made Tom and I fall in love with our property. The report stated that I walked away from the accident shaken, but unharmed.Amy died in the ambulance.
    Tom
    One night in March, six months after Amy’s death, with pellets of rain hitting the windows, I sat at my usual post in the hallway, on my fourth Scotch. Emma was lying in a tight curl on the floor of Amy’s room, her nightgown bunched up high, showing the whiteness of her thighs, her face covered by her thick, glorious hair.Watching her sleep, I felt rage surge in my blood faster than the Scotch and I heaved myself out of the armchair.
    “Emma.” I stood in the doorway.“Emma, look at me.”
    She didn’t respond.
    “Emma, please.”
    I walked into the room, knelt down. “Emma. Answer me.” I reached over and shook her shoulder. She