S is for Silence

“Sorry if I scared you.”

“I just wasn’t expecting it,” I said, wondering how long he’d been trailing me. The notion generated an uneasiness I had to struggle to suppress. “I appreciate your seeing me on such short notice.”

“That’s quite all right.”

He was tall and gaunt, with sleeves slightly too short for the length of his arms. His wrists were narrow and his hands were big. He was clean shaven, his cheekbones prominent and his jawline pronounced. His face reminded me of certain black-and-white photographs taken during the depression-haunted-looking men in breadlines, whose gazes were fixed on the camera in despair. His eyes were a deep-set blue, the orbital ridge darkly smudged. I’d seen someone else with the same demeanor, though the reference eluded me in the moment. There was no animation when he spoke. He looked out at me from some remove, a curious distance between his i

“Come on with me. I’ll show you where I live. We can talk down there where it’s private.”

“Sure, fine,” I said, and followed him, wondering at the wisdom. Alone with a guy like him in this big empty church. Daisy was the only one who knew where I was. We descended one flight of stairs to the basement level, which was dry and well maintained. Foley opened the door to what I first mistook for a large storage closet.

“This is my apartment. Help yourself to a chair.”

The room he’d shown me into was maybe ten feet by ten, white walls, gleaming beige linoleum tile floor. In the center was a small wooden kitchen table with four matching chairs. He had a hot plate and a small refrigerator tucked into a counter along the wall, a sofa, one upholstered chair, and a small television set. Through a doorway I could see a smaller room with the suggestion of a roll-away bed poking into view. I was guessing at the presence of a bathroom beyond that.

I sat down at the table. In the center was a bowl of unshelled peanuts. He sat in apparent relaxation. The gaze he rested on mine was direct but curiously empty. He indicated the nuts. “Have some if you want.”

“Thanks. I’m fine.”

He picked up an unshelled peanut, broke open one end, and tilted the kernel into his mouth. He opened the second half of the nut and ate that kernel, too. The sound reminded me of a horse crunching on its bit. He held on to the empty shell. I could see him feeling the waffled surface, the tips of his fingers moving across the edges where the fibers extended from the shell. I’ve been known to eat peanuts shell and all to eliminate the mess.

He took a fresh one from the bowl and rolled it, pressing slightly, measuring its give. His fingers might have been moving with a will of their own. Rolling, pinching. “You’re a private detective. Where from?”

“Santa Teresa. I’ve been in business ten years. Before that, I was a cop.”

Foley shook his head. “Why’s Daisy doing this?”

“You’ll have to ask her.”

“But what’d she say when she hired you on?”

“She’s upset. She says she’s never made peace with her mother’s leaving her.”

“None of us made peace with that,” he said. He looked away from me and then shrugged, as if in response to some i

“You hired an attorney?”

“I had to. I needed to protect myself. Everybody thought I killed her, and what was I supposed to do? I had Daisy to support and I couldn’t get a paying job to save my soul. How can you prove you didn’t do a thing when the whole town believes you did?”

“How’d you earn a living?”

“I couldn’t. I had to go on welfare. I was ashamed of myself, but I had no choice. All the time we were married, Violet wouldn’t take a job. She wanted to stay home with Daisy and that was fine with me, though I could have used the help. Some months, I couldn’t pull in the money we needed to cover the bills. That was hard. There’s people who seem to think I didn’t care if I was behind on my bills, but that’s just not true. I did what I could, but once she was gone, I didn’t know where to turn. If I left Daisy for a single minute, she’d come unglued. She had to have me in her sights. She had to know where I was. She had to hang on my pant leg for fear I’d up and disappear. That’s how it was. Violet did what suited her, regardless of us. She was a self-centered woman, and mothering wasn’t something she did all that well.”

“What was?”

“Come again?”

“What did she do well? I’m asking because I’d like to get a sense of her… not just how she behaved, but who she was.”

“She was a party girl. She stayed out late and drank. Sometimes she danced.”

“What about you? Did you go dancing as well?” I asked, wondering if he was using the word as a metaphor.

“Not often enough to suit her.”

He replaced the unshelled peanut in the bowl and put his big hands in his lap under the table. I could hear a popping sound and I knew he was systematically cracking his knuckles.

“Did she have hobbies or interests?”

“Like what, did she do macramé?” he asked with a touch of bitterness. “Not hardly.”

“Cooking, for instance. Anything like that?”

“She fixed things out of cans. Tamales wrapped in paper. Sometimes she didn’t even bother to dump them in a pan and put them over heat. I know I sound negative and I apologize. She might have had good qualities, just none I could see. She was beautiful, I’ll give her that. She had her hooks in me deep.”

“Why’d you stay?”

“Dumb, I guess. I don’t know, it seems so long ago. Sometimes I can hardly remember what it was like. Not good, I know. Why I stayed was I loved that woman more than life itself.”

“I understand,” I said, though the statement was preposterous, given what I’d heard.

He went on. “Anyway, I’m not the only one who had complaints. She wasn’t happy, but she stayed on, too. At least until she went.”

“Daisy tells me you believe she was having an affair.”

“I know she was.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Aside from the fact that she told me?”

“Really. What’d she say?”

“She said he was twice the man I was. She said he was a tiger in bed. I don’t want to go into that. She cut me to the quick, which is what she intended.”

“Maybe she was making it up.”

“No, ma’am. Not her. There was someone all right. You can trust me on that.”

“Do you have any idea who?”

“No.”

“There was no one you suspected even the tiniest bit?”

He shook his head. “At first, I thought it was someone from Santa Maria or Orcutt, somewhere like that, but there was never a claim from anyone else about a missing spouse, which is why no one gives credence to anything I say.”

“Let’s talk about you. What’s your story?”

“I don’t have a story. Like what?”

I shrugged. “Were you ever in the military?”

He shook his head, his expression sour, as though I was adding one more item to his list of grievances. “Army wouldn’t take me: 1941 when the war broke out, I was fifteen years old. As soon as I turned eighteen, I tried to enlist, but the physical messed me up. Teeth were bad. You were supposed to have six biting teeth and six chewing teeth lined up right. I didn’t get mine fixed until later. By then, I could see how being in the army wasn’t such a hot idea. Bunch of boys from around here went off and never did come back.”