A Hard-Earned Silence

All you said was, "Hi," but it served to ruin my mood. Just that one word - hardly a word, one lonely syllable - set me off and made me temporarily hate you, which I could tell caught you off guard. Your attitude immediately reflected in sorrow what I was giving you in anger.

See, it's like this: I had gone down there to be alone. I had originally intended to sit on the deck, to lounge in the brightness of the sunlight reflected off of the wood that is painted red-brown so as to appear the color of wood. Right then, however, I was willing to let the irony of that pass by me in favor of relaxing on the long wooden chair, letting my body make an imprint in the long blue cushion that is yet too hard to do much but support my weight. The stiff fabric is hardly comforting, but it softens the effect of the chair considerably. I wanted to surround myself in the dense heat of a July day, to let my skin soak up the sun's soothing, burning rays. Being a redhead, however, I was covered head-to-toe in sunscreen, and it was that smell that drowned out the odorous pines surrounding the deck and the cool, almost-fishy scent of lakewater drifting up from the shore below.

But when I got out to the deck, I found that I was not to be the only one there. Sitting on chairs with magazines and mid-afternoon margaritas, my mother and aunt were gossiping behind their sunglasses. The rustle of glossy pages turning was the opposite of what I was seeking; quiet though it was, it gave the illusion of silence without actually ever reaching it. And the chatter they shared, albeit in mezzo piano, was also too disruptive for the solitude I wanted.

So I left the deck by the long straight flight of wooden stairs that brought me to the cool and shady underside of the deck. The hint of a musty smell hovered in the air, and within the cracks of light shining through from between the boards of the deck, the bright glint of sun shining off cobwebs could be seen. Not wishing to find my relaxation in the cold on a hot day, and also not relishing the prospect of spiders, I continued my journey still lower.

The next flight of stairs I took was the uneven one of rocks covered in spotty green lichens that reappear in the summer as fast as we wash them away each spring. The comfort of a rail was denied me, so I braced myself along the grainy rock wall next to the stairs and carefully watched my feet as I picked my way down the stairs that seemed to be conspiring for me to fall. My footfalls were lighter here: I feared travelling on more than tiptoe. Silence almost caught up to me, but my sharp intakes of breath at each new discovered danger, as well as the far-off hum of a boat's engine on the opposite side of the lake, kept it still at bay.

Red-brown painted wood greeted me again as I stepped from the concrete walkway above the lakeshore to the little bridge that leads down to the dock. The scent of it assaulted me: a fainty artificial woodsy smell, augmented by the actual woods scenting the air around it. The sun's glint off of the water blinded me and I wished for a pair of sunglasses. I grabbed a blue-green towel from the wooden trunk on the corner of the dock. It was warm, almost too warm to lay on, but the deck would be scalding and uncomfortable without it. Already the soles of my feet were unwilling to stay in one place too long. I lay the towel on the deck and myself on the towel, alone at last.

But still silence evaded me. First it was the noise of ducks in a nearby cove, quacking the way they do when someone throws chips or bread in their direction. That died off, the ducks well-fed, and the noise was replaced by that of several whirring engines. I didn't open my eyes to see how many - I could see red through my closed eyelids and didn't want to open them to stare directly at the sun - but I guessed there were three or four, each dragging a wakeboarder or waterskier who wasn't afraid to yell. Then the wind began rustling the pine trees, making soft wooshing noises that still seemed too loud. The wakes from the now-passed boats reached the shore, and the gentle crash of waves on the retaining wall that served as a shore bored into my consciousness with it's repetitiveness.

Finally, that also passed. Suddenly, the birds around me stopped chirping, the water held perfectly still, and all the boats stopped or retreated to ends of the lake far out of earshot. The world held perfectly still, and silence overtook me. I hardly dared to believe it, as though if I thought of it too long it would cease to exist, but I had finally found the emptiness I had left the house to find.

And then a shadow passed over my face, blocking the sun from seeping through my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes to see what was the matter, but red spots were all I could see. I couldn't figure out what had caused the shadow until your voice proclaimed your identity.

"Hi," you said, interjecting yourself into my long-sought solitude, breaking my hard-earned silence, bringing into the forefront of my mind the thing I had come to escape in the first place.

So, you understand, my anger was no more than a defensive reaction. Not just at having my space and my thoughts invaded, but at being presented with you all over again. Defensive hatred was the only thing between me and loving you, and I know damn well that you'd rather have the hatred any day.