From the day she was born, everyone knew that the girl was a bit different from the rest. Her mother's doctor was the first to recognize with a gasp in the delivery room. "What is wrong?" the mother asked."Is my baby okay?" The doctor paused a moment, took a cleansing and fearful breath and responded, "She seems fine. There are no problems that I can pinpoint right now. It's just... strange." The mother's face twisted in concern. "Doctor," she said" I have had two children before this one. You can tell me if something has gone wrong. Is it a horrible birthmark? A scar? What? Tell me!"The doctor drew another deep breath and said with trepidation, "No, it's nothing. Don't you see? Nothing. Not a sound. You've had children, I have delivered many. This baby is perfectly healthy. She's not screaming, she's not crying. She is looking me straight in the eye and smiling. I've never seen anything like it. This is an exceptional delivery." The doctor shook his head again in fascination as he stared down at the newborn meeting his gaze. For years he would swear that, at the moment he said this to the mother, the child winked at him. The child understood every word. It was impossible.
During the next few years, the child grew in perfection, yet still never uttered a sound. The parents, frantic with confusion, took the girl in and out of different specialists, each of whom performed extensive tests. Why didn't she make a sound? Was she deaf? Tests indicated that her hearing was fine, if not exceptional. Perhaps she was autistic? Again, the testing proved nothing substantial for the parents. The girl was alert in an uncanny sense. In fact, she frightened all those who came in contact with her. She was obviously watching everyone and everything around her. The world moved around the girl and she watched, as though it were her own private screening of a brand new film. Eventually, after many bewildered doctors and specialists, the parents decided that the girl just needed her time to sort out the world as her own.
After three years of utter silence, the girl decided to speak. She began one morning in the kitchen as her mother was fixing breakfast. Her sisters were fighting, as usual, and the girl was sitting quietly in her high chair. "Mother?" She spoke with perfect diction. Her mother jumped, burning herself on the stove as she twirled around to stare at the unfamiliar voice of her youngest daughter."Could I have some juice, please?" Her two sisters stopped fighting and everything froze, as all eyes fixed on the child in the chair. The moment broke as the mother pressed further. "What kind of juice would you like, Sweetie?" "Apple, please,"she answered. The girl's mother quickly fetched the juice and jumped to the telephone, as the breakfast burned on the stove. They all ate burnt eggs and crispy bacon that morning in silence, waiting for the girl to speak again. She did not.
Throughout her childhood, the girl continued to speak seldomly, yet with clarity and importance. She never spoke in frivolity or carelessness. Each word was important and necessary. She felt no need to experiment in excess. She listened to her sisters fight, her parents bicker, and her schoolmates gossip. She listened to the television coerce the thoughts of those around her with an overt media morality. She was amazed by the noise which surrounded her at all times. She was a happy child, listening to these voices rise and fall around her in her own private symphony. The girl did not limit her listening to voices, however. Often, she would take off to the wood behind her house and stay there for hours, listening to the wind breath softly around her, the sound of animals scurrying past her. The most amazing sound to her was the sound that the sun made as it filtered through the leaves and danced upon the soil.
Her sisters teased her when she spoke of her favorite sound.
"You idiot!" they laughed,"The sun doesn't make any sound." She looked to them with sadness."You've never heard it?" She asked. "Of course not!The sun is silent." They answered. The girl shook her head, looked up to the smirking girls and spoke, "Then I am truly sorry. You are missing the most beautiful sound in the world." The girls just looked at her as though she were crazy and continued their fight over who they thought was the cutest boy in school. The oldest sister was sure it was Henry Odet, because he tried to kiss her during recess. The middle sister insisted that he had crooked teeth and a big nose and that Roy Eliot was definitely cuter because he had pretty eyes and always gave her cookies from his lunch. The girl sat and listened to them while she could, realizing that she could not share her treasured sounds so openly anymore. She quietly left without acknowledgement and took to the wood, where she could listen and learn.
The girl returned a few hours later to find her sisters holding their ground in front of the television. She was familiar with their battle; they sat there waiting for their favorite sit-com to come on, but they would stake their claim and watch whatever was on the hour before to insure that no one else would be so rude as to find something else to watch. They were in their waiting period when she found them, still fighting about boys as 20/20 explored an expose on the elderly. The girl was captivated by by the interviews of people in their sixties talking about their sleep patterns. A regretful woman of sixty five was speaking on the fact that she documented the amount of time she slept in her life, and realized that she had slept half of her life away. A man of seventy echoed the same ennui. The girl listened closely. Her family never understood why she never slept more than six hours a night. These strangers did. At the age of six years, the girl discovered a fear of sleep-a fear of missing.
For years, the girl listened and listened, until finally, the voices became cluttered, as they all spoke the same message of selfish discontent and ridiculous vanity. The girl found herself running for the safety of the wood, when she used to saunter. She used to return for a different perspective until she realized that she travelled for the truth that filtered in spots and shadows as comfort and awareness. The girl was not a child, however, and knew that this society of mundane and trivial remorse was her inheritance of life. She recognized her difference, as well as her need for assimilation. She realized that this relationship was private. This realization brought her comfort and grief.
At the age of thirteen years, the girl broke. She couldn't hear another word, or it would drive her mad. The more she listened, the more she grieved. She decided to fight back. At thirteen, the girl began to speak incessantly of the trivial world. She couldn't listen to her sisters speak of boys and eating disorders, she couldn't bear to hear her mother's discontent. Her schoolmates traumas added more banal idiocies, that she had to fill their vocal space before they could. She realized that their was no such thing as silence or attention in the world she found. She became what her family wanted; a girl of bubbly personality and unending jokes. She secretly mocked those in her life as she tossed her hair and regurgitated stories. She curled her hair and tightened her clothes. She insisted that no one take her seriously, as she could no longer take them seriously. The girl began to lie. She claimed to run off and do the things that were expected of her: shopping, movies, dating. In truth, she was running of to the wood to listen and breath a sigh of relief.
The girl who seldom spoke grew into the chattering woman. There was no subject that she couldn't comment on, no personal observation that could override the logic of high pitched banter. No one spoke to her of anything true as it was, so she accommodated with her chatter. If she were to be subjected to certain idiocy, she wanted to voice it before the sound tainted her ears with another voice. The chattering woman, despite her amiable demeanor and constant uplifting laughter, was very angry. This anger pulsed through each painful breath intended to support her lighthearted laughter. She was well liked by all of those who needed her presence. She represented life and happiness to each of them, as she cringed with disappointment and a smirking condescension. Secretly, when she stole off to the wood, she would pray for someone to open their eyes widely enough to see through her and challenge her insight.
The chattering woman began to fantasize, with her back propped up against the largest oak. One day, she would be taken by surprise when someone she knew found her here, her eyes brightened with amazement, rather than laughter. In her mind, they would catch her, she'd look away with guilt, and they would sit next to her and say nothing. Together, they would listen to the sound of the sun and never leave. They would keep this sancitity silent and pure.
The chattering woman recognized loneliness, and went on a search. She didn't, however, realize that she was disabled. She never recognized that she had become a pure cynic, and would only find attraction in the negative, lost soul. The chattering woman discovered the man of angst. She spotted him one day in the park, chain smoking and desolate, with his head stylishly poised upon his hands. She fell in love instantly. She walked up to him, and took her seat next to his crumpled frame and joined his assault upon the world. His black horn rimmed glasses seperated the two of them with a certain rebellion. "The world just seems so much more bearable when I can't see," he mused, as she wished that her vision weren't quite so perfect. She stared at his beautiful jet black hair falling recklessly around his composed misery and imagined that she wasn't quite so blonde, her eyes weren't quite so blue, her frame wasn't quite so petite. She became lost in his world. She almost looked forward to his over-privledged apocalypse. She acknowledged her purpose, and began her blue eyed banter of beauty and perspective, expecting him to challenge, to deny. Instead, he looked to her and growled. Behind his growl lay a smile. They created a new world of turmoil and necessity. He swung from his noose as she supported his feet, refusing to allow this selfish stupid suicide. After four years of this silly choreography, he let go and released himself. The sun broke upon his disshevelled hair and he replaced his glasses upon his face. She walked away while he danced in euphoria. She left ultimately unchanged and continued her chatter. When he finally stopped his dance to catch his breath, he realized that she was nowhere to be found.
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Beth began her day as she always does; the night before, monitoring her wine and marijuana with the appropriate rations of water, advil and sleep. Six hours guaranteed, with and hour and a half leeway for the snooze bar, or a potential amorous morning wake-up from Nick. The alarm was always set for 7:30, as Nick needed to be out the door by 9:00. He usually made it out by 9:45, but it wasn’t a problem with his job. He worked at a small print shop for a daytime alcoholic, who was content with his consistent tardiness, just so long as he could start drinking by noon, and Nick could deal with the clients and presses from that point forward. Nick and his boss had a symbiotic relationship which bordered on incestuous. His boss was a little proud when Nick arrived to work late, the prodigal son, and often, a bit rough around the sobriety edge. A perfect match. His boss could drink during the day, go home to sleep, while Nick handled the shop, then Nick would continue his debauchery when he left work and returned to Beth’s apartment, weilding either a magnum of wine(when he wanted her to join), or a six pack(or two) of beer. He’d load his bong and get himself suitably stoned, make some new discoveries on his computer, then resign to the couch and television until the next sound he heard was the alarm going off for the fifth or sixth time. In New York City, this was his dream job. This was a laughable life.
Beth, on the other hand, was still wandering, bouncing back and forth in circumstance. Her control, on which she had always held a firm grasp, had faltered somewhere along the way, and she couldn’t quite place where it had gone. She knew that it hadn’t escaped her yet, but it was merely hiding. However, she also understood that hiding was the first movement towards escape, and this paralyzed her with fear. When that alarm sounded each morning at 7:30, she’d wake in a fright, pause, press the snooze bar, knowing that she should, and sleep through the next four snooze intervals. When she awoke completely, she’d make the coffee, and jump into the shower, so that Nick would have plenty of time to relax into his morning routine, and show up to work late, as usual. The earlier his late time would be, the more time she would have to relax. Those mornings created a stress upon her greater than any other. She spent all of her time documenting moments, so when those moments were taken away, she began to mark off those things she had planned for her day, beginning with the things that brought her peace. This is how she lost personal control: when she alone made that decision to sacrifice her necessary peace. This is how she began each morning of each day for two and a half years. Nine hundred and thirteen mornings.
When he was finally gone, she’d move about her day: She had classes to teach, rehearsals to conduct, and a restaurant to run. In the past, treasured days of ambiguity, she had been an actor, moving from city to city, wherever work led her, but always returned to New York: the one city where she felt strong to be lost. What she was too naive to understand, however, is that when you finally find stability in this city, you’re still lost. Answers are not found, they are only suspended. They are suspended in the people you think you know, the world you think you have, and the promises you thought you made. You are left in the midst of it, throwing your hands into the air, knowing that you can go back, but being too proud to do so. This is how the city eats you alive. This is how it subtly robs you of your own peace. This is where she has found herself. She had no idea how to cope. She suspended herself, and held fast to the memories of people and times past. She just moved. She just breathed. She just fit. She hated herself for it at times, but understood the challenge which confronted her. She knew she could still get out, but she refused to do so before finding what she had lost. And so, she resumed, and quietly began adding points of joy.
She began in the museums, quietly building her own church in the time that she spent at the Cloisters, just a five minute walk through the beautiful park next to her house. She spent hours in the stone courtyards, with the withering, deep tapestries. She began to understand the pear tree flourishing up the side of the cold wall in the herb garden. She’d sit on the edge of the adjacent wall, looking out upon the river, clasping her unopened journal in her hand. Eventually, she’d come to this same place without her cell phone, without her notebooks of responsibility, and just write. She’d open her journal and record. She’d open her vault, and explore what lay inside again. Then, she would walk along the cliff by the river, and she’d glow in the fact that Manhattan still had a mystery in it. Manhattan still had a soul. Even Manhattan had peace. She began returning phone calls. She followed up on alienated friends. She got back on the East Village singing circuit, this time only doing back up, as her own songs had become an allowed sacrifice, but she felt better this way. She felt more honest helping a friend reach her intent. And so, she began to move again, still far from the girl in pigtails roller skating to a Joni mitchell album in a Memphis parking lot, but close enough that she could smile. She felt honest enough to continue with her world, understanding that it was stinted right now, but now was not always.
She knew she had to stop in at work tonight. She had been gone all week, and had to construct the schedule for the next week. She had it perfectly planned:she’d go in for half an hour, put the schedule together, run down to Bleeker street to do the show with A.J., then come back to the restaurant to meet Samantha. Time was a little tight, but hey, that was alright. As she was walking out the door, A.J. called to say that the show was cancelled, but they were on the guest list for the club, so they could meet there, anyway. Beth considered, but decided against it, she already had plans, and the show had been an hour set, and she could have easily left, but a night hanging out with A.J. always ended at some strange diner at 6:30, and she wasn’t up for that. She just went to work.
When she arrived at the restaurant, she holed up at a tiny table to schedule the staff. She had a few hours to kill before meeting Samantha, so she figured that she’d get her work done, stop over at the bookstore, then return and sit at the bar, reading, until she arrived. She stood, and looked to the right. This is when she saw him, sitting as he had been the first time she had seen him. He was wearing the same hat, skewed backwards, but this one was gray. When she first had met him, it had been blue. He looked exactly the same. She hadn’t seen true familiarity in so long, that she stopped. She looked to see that this person before her was only a resemblance, nothing more. She chided herself for her imagination.”The ruthless villain memory returns,” she thought. She inspected for flaws. This guy was too perfect of a facsimile, it couldn’t be him. He must have changed. She grinned as she reasoned, “Who wears their hat like that?!” She spoke his name. He turned. She felt joy, and ran to her friend without hesitation. “Thank the universe,” she mused, “someone whom I know. He knows me. How did he get here?” He greeted her with a quip, and a remembrance, and she took his cigarette out of familiarity. She saw how much of himself he had maintained, and she was proud. She understood how much she had fluctuated, and how strange she must seem, and she began to tremble. He was fine. He was wonderful. He was surrounded by amazing, good people. She could read that immediately. She became embarassed. She felt exposed as some strange charlatan. She hadn’t taken care of herself as she had promised that she would. She was caught between her own shame and her euphoria for his success. She wished for the innocence that he had known in her, and suddenly understood where it was hiding, lovingly intertwined with her control and her peace. She silently thanked him again, and awkwardly walked away, knowing how odd it must have seemed, but understanding how much this all would mean. She began again.
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