quiet

Not a word is said.  Silence sits between us like a ring after the music stops.  Here, but not.

John bobs his head, picking up on the missing beat.

Telly sways like the silent bars of a string movement.

I’m listening for a key, a degree of purity, something that says this is the real deal.

One rear leg lifted like a cello’s neck, my cat Toby licks and ducks and licks again.

“Well?” John asks me.  “Is that what you’re talking about.”
I want to think it’s out of respect….but Toby actually stops what he’s doing before I answer.

“No,” I say, sure of myself, sure of the answer.  “I mean, yeah, that was quiet.”  The four of us made an intentional, if conversationally awkward, thirty-second silence.  But the longer we did it, the more insincere it felt.  Toward the end, honestly, I was just faking it.

“But not…”  Even through John’s denim mask, I can discern the thoughtful roll of his jaw.  “…IT.”

“Have you considered wearing earplugs?” Telly says, mask-free with all his expressive features on display.  “Or, if you’re on a budget…fingers.  Your own, preferably.”   

Toby and I left our masks in another room.  We’ve had our double dose of the vaccine.  Telly?  The doctors say he has natural immunity.  John has had two shots of Moderna, but he says after a year of hiding half his face, he feels naked now without it.  But no matter how protected or invulnerable we are against the virus at large, some of us find ourselves a little sensitive to the demoralizing noise of people divided over masks, the election, ideology, Brittany Spears.  Everything.  

“It’s like we’re sitting in traffic,” I explain, “wondering when the guy with his windows down is going to grow some empathy and turn down his stereo or, God-willing, blow a speaker.  But it’s more than that.  I mean, I can hear it in my eyes when I read a post or a tweet.  It can sound like a four-letter shout after a good toe-stubbing, or an angry evangelist with great stamina ranting on the street corner while he keeps pushing the pedestrian button to keep his audience in place while he goes on and on.”

John looks at me to ask if I’m done.  “I get it man,” he says.  “It’s like…I don’t know…an undertow.  It pulls at you no matter what other thing you’re trying to pay attention to.  Subversive.”  His mask billows out.  “That’s the word I was looking for.  I can be in the check-out line, trying to catch myself up my favorite celebs, and then I read a word like filibuster or recount, and I start to doubt my general positive view of humanity.”

Telly’s eyebrows appeal to a higher common-sense as he tells us, “You two are taking this way too seriously.  I mean, yes, it is serious.  The noise is there.  But you don’t have to listen to it.” 

In the ensuing silence, all we can hear is the deliberate lick of one cat with a grooming compulsion. 

“The trick,” Telly says, “is to stay focused.  That mindfulness thing you’re always telling me to do,” he says to me.  “If you focus on one thing or one voice at a time, you don’t hear the ambient chorus.”

“That sounds dangerously close to unaware,” John says.

“How to break through the generation barrier,” my ninety-two-year-old neighbor muses out loud.  “Okay, you two like analogies.  Try this one.  The three of us are here together.  Just the three of us.”

The ever-present licking sound volumes-up.

“Okay, the FOUR us,” he says.  “Now, tell me, why is it that Scottie, my very argumentative grandson-in-law, is not with us right now?  Or close-minded Ed from across the street?”

“Because we want to have a pleasant conversation?” John suggests.

“Exactly.  And because we want to have a pleasant conversation, we chose—or you chose, Loch—not to invite them.  So?”

John and I look at each other, wondering who is going to tackle the dangling so. 

I’m not going to do it, and I hold perfectly still. 

Well, I’m not going to do it, John’s straying eyes make clear.   

“So…neither one of them are here with us now,” Telly answers himself, unwilling to sit through another thirty-seconds of nothing-said.  “Let’s call them the noise.” 

We try to ignore the other noise my cat is making. 

“By mindfully not inviting them to the conversation,” Telly continues, “you keep them out of the conversation, and their voices off of the porch.  That, gentlemen, is how you treat the negative noise building in our country, by not giving it the attention it is clamoring for.” 

John nods his head.  “But there is always someone who is going to give it attention, retweet it or click a Like button.  And that will encourage it.”

“Yes.”  Telly agrees.  “But not you.  Let’s go back to the traffic stopped at the light.  The guy showing off his new base speaker, or subwoofer, is never going to turn it down.  So?”

This again? 

I hold still enough to disappear.  John looks solidly into one corner.

Toby lays down and puts his paws over his head.

“Crank up the Goldberg Variations,” I finally answer.  “Or Enya.  I love Enya.”  There is a murmuring of consent.  We all love Enya.

“But only if you want base-guy to pull you out of your car and challenge you to a stereo brawl.”  John looks at me completely serious.  At least from the mask up.  God only knows what’s going on under the mask.

“No,” Telly says.  “You roll up your window.  It’s that easy.  Of course, John’s scenario might be more entertaining for everyone else stuck in traffic with you.”

I ignore the ensuing laughter.  “What I want is a quiet I can feel.  That I can wrap around me like a heavy blanket.  Don’t get me wrong, I love our country’s first amendment.”

John points out that free speech and the ability to connect with a thousand people within seconds is bringing, not just our country, but the whole world closer together.  

“Like two cats in a bag.”

“No’oh,” John says to me.  Toby looks at John and asks him to be serious.  “Well, maybe.  But think about it.  Social media is extending free speech across borders into countries that don’t have otherwise have that privilege.”

“Is it possible we have forgotten what a privilege it is?” 

“Listen, I fought in two wars to defend that amendment,” Telly says with the growing indignation of an online post.  “Trust me, free speech is not something you can put a price on.”

“Maybe not, but there can be a price to pay: hearing all that free speech.  Unsolicited, mean, self-righteous, petty and divisive.” 

Telly shrugs.  “Well, I’m afraid you’re stuck with it until the next 3-mile meteor takes us out or hackers turn off our power grid, because free speech and all its inglorious platforms appear here to stay.”

“You guys,” John appeals to us.  “Connectivity is one of the great triumphs of our age.  We just need to work out some of the attitudinal glitches.”

“Maybe if there were a code of conduct for online behavior,” Telly says.  “Of course, it would be impossible to enforce.”

“Not if you gave everyone their own volume control,” I say.  “Or a filter that takes out bad ideas.”

John shakes his head.  “Not going to work.  You can’t stop people from being people.”

I tell him, “I don’t want to stop people from being people.”

“I get it.  You want to be able to sit at the traffic light without feeling accosted by an over-amplified base line.”  John lifts his brows to ask if he what he got he got right.

Telly points out that the traffic light will eventually turn green.  “And then Loch can go somewhere, somewhere the base-guy is not.”

“Not if he has Loch’s cell number, or Facebook handle” John says.  “Remember, we’re still connected.”

“Guys, I’m right here,” I remind them.  “Right here.”  Toby helps me out by climbing into my lap and laying down to mark the here where I am.

“He could go to a library,” Telly says.

John shakes his head.  “Too many shushing codes of behavior.”

“He could hang out in a doctor’s waiting room.”

Unbelievable.  The longer I am talked about in the third person, the less place I have in the conversation.

“Sure,” John says with an edge of sarcasm.  “If you like watching Property Brothers episodes back-to-back.  Really, don’t you think those two guys are the same person?”

Telly shakes his head.  “I remember when waiting rooms didn’t include a TV on the wall waiting with you, talking over you.  Heck, I remember when homes didn’t have a television set squatting in the living room.”

“How did you live without television?” a voice beyond the porch asks.  Actually, it comes from just the other side of the screen door, where Tabby, my eight-year-old neighbor, is questioning another generation’s more primitive lifestyle.

“Hey Tabby,” I say.  “Come on in.”  

“Hello there,” Telly says.  “And to answer your question, we had radio.  And newspapers.  But every family had a big radio we gathered around for certain shows like The Shadow and The Lone Ranger, music of the day.  Even the news.”

“So, you were still connected,” Tabby says.

“More or less.  The only real difference between free speech then and free speech now is that when you talk back to your television now-a-days, everyone can hear it.”

“It becomes part a conversation,” John says.

“A million people talking at the same time is not a conversation,” I insist.

“Then what is it?” 

“The reason you have to leave, one in a while, to find a more quiet place.” 

Tabby turns to look at me.  “Is that where you are going?”

Going? 

“Tabby, I’m sitting right here with a cat in my lap.  I’m not going anywhere.”

“You said you were sitting in the car listening to base.”

We all have a good laugh.

“How long were you standing there listening to us?” I ask her.

“As far back as the noise.”

“That long,” John says, looking at me when I am the only one who is facing the screen door.

“I was just fantasizing about some place I could go where the quiet is so big you can feel it hug you from every side.”

Tabby smiles like a cat by the open hearth.  “I like that place too.”

Hold on.  “What place?” we all ask. 

Tabby laughs, as though adults can be just the cutest things.  “When you live in the same house with a little brother and two parents, you have to find your quiet place.”

“Where?” we ask again.  I was being figurative for the sake of a moving complaint.  But Tabby has found that impossible place.

“Your bedroom?” Telly asks.

“Your imagination?”

She shakes her head.  “I go there with Number Two all the time.” 

I stop John before his mind can go there.  “Number Two is what she calls her doll.”

John lets this sink in before he asks, “So…”  He is clearly trying to keep his mind from going there.  “…where is it that you and Number Two go?”  

The girl actually points, suggesting a place you could find on Google Maps.  “The big church with the pretty windows.”

“Talk about your political hotbeds,” Telly says.

“What does that mean?” the girl asks him.

“The noise,” he says.  “We were talking about the noise people make and how to get away from it.”

“Not going to happen at church,” John says.  “I had a short run as an associate pastor.  It never occurred to me when I was in divinity school that some of the same political foot-stomping we see in the senate, you can find behind church doors.”

“Why did you leave?” Tabby asks him.  “Was it noisy?”

John’s mask lifts with a smile at the innocent question.  “It was suggested to me that I need to narrow the scope of my beliefs.”

When this fails to turn the light on for her, John says, “I believe in everything.  Even people.  I want everyone to win.  But not everyone wants everyone else to win.  It’s not so much a church-thing as a people-thing.  But it does happen at a church and it can create a bit of noise.”

“I don’t go to church during church,” the girl says.  “I go after, when you don’t hear other people stomping and talking in loud shoes.”

The former pastor and the veteran for free speech look confused. 

“Do you mean when no one is there?” John asks.

“I’m there,” Tabby says.  “And I take Number Two, because she doesn’t talk unless I ask her to.”

“Do you…pray?”

She screws up her face.  “We watch.”

“You watch,” John repeats what he has just heard.  “You watch what?”

Now Tabby looks confused.  “I thought you said you were a pastor.”

Smile lines crease at the corners of John’s eyes, but his confidence in the matter appears to be only mask-deep.

“You should know,” she hammers home her point.

John looks at me and back to the eight-year-old among us.  His smile lines wizen, and for the first time today, he removes his mask.  What he reveals is the face of a man who recognizes an opportunity he didn’t know before that he might need. “Remind us.”

Tabby puts her hands together as if she is going to do the one thing she just told us she doesn’t do at the big building with pretty windows.  “Here is the church.  And here is the steeple.”  We all know this visual analogy from childhood.  You bend your hands outward and reveal all the people. 

But that’s not what happens. 

Tabby keeps her hands solemnly clasped.  The rest of us become as wordless as a bunch of Number Two’s, as we stare at the hands, half-expecting there to be something to see.

“We leave our shoes at the door,” the girl says as one who has been taught something about respect.  “And then we sit in the front and watch the quiet.”

Our loud shoes left at the door, we watch the quiet.