The Mighty Sound of Nothing
by Shauna Checkley
While Starr was walking home, the sensation followed her; it was with her all the time, in fact. Even when she rubbed the grit from her eyes first thing in the morning, it rose with her, enduring then falling as final as night. She heard it while the radio was snoring or the traffic roaring. She languished under its mighty, flighty spell.
Starr passed the Eighth Avenue vape shop. She dismissed the city sounds, the sighs and cries that comprised her urban landscape. Knowing it was all just a voice from the void, an indecipherable song, she moved to its staggered rhythms. Sound had become all-encompassing. Sound had become an empty enemy.
Starr pressed on. Past the sub shops. The electronic specialty stores that blared and glared in high-tech outrage. Moving along until she finally arrived home, at Greystone Apartments. She unlocked the door and spilled in.
Tigger, her muted calico cat, padded up to her. Starr rubbed the soft head.
Where’s Rob? He’s supposed to be here along with the supper he promised to cook, “chili con Robbie,” as he always liked to say, the very best. But the place was empty, sans any savory smell. It had the same disquieting soundlessness as ever.
Damn him! For the walls smacked of betrayal, four long faces that stared back blank and pale.
She sighed. Suppressed the urge to fly into a fury, as she judged it an emotional expenditure that she just wasn’t able to afford right then, even though it had happened many times of late. So instead, she transferred tears to sauce, anger to an exquisite array of spices that simmered on the slow flame inside of her. Just gotta make it myself then, like I have to do everything around here.
Starr ate emotionally, bowl after angry bowl, until she became so full that she had to lie down, feeling rather bloated.
Without meaning to, she fell asleep. Thankfully, it was a peaceful passage. She found herself in a soundless, surreal plane. She watched it all unfold the same as she did when she watched the TV on mute.
But the story ended when her bedroom door was flung open with a bang. She awoke to Rob on top of her and such a sudden and rude relocation of consciousness it was that for a moment she hadn’t any spatial awareness, only darkness and pressure bearing down.
“Get off!”
He did. Rolling onto one elbow, he smacked loudly and exclaimed, “Man, is this ever-good chili. Almost as good as mine.” He ate with gusto, clanging spoon against bowl, making clatter in the night.
“It’s supposed to be your chili! You were supposed to make supper tonight! Where in the hell were you and why didn’t you at least call?”
“I was out.”
“Where?”
“Matt finally called, and you know that I’ve been waiting forever to see my good bud. We went out for ‘cheap wings’ night.”
Rolling towards him, Starr frowned. “Well, did you at least check out that job I told you about?”
Rob fell silent.
“Aww, c’mon! Don’t tell me you didn’t at least do that!”
Sheepishly, he said in a low voice, “Oh, crap, that’s right. I totally forgot. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
“You better!” she warned.
Then she rolled away from him, establishing as much distance as possible from her partner of two years. She closed her eyes to the darkness of the bedroom, only to find more darkness instead. She tightened the patchwork comforter about her, then went deeper still until she found that soundless plane once again.
* * *
Starr came through the door and saw Rob asleep on their sagging, gray couch. She erupted: “What are you doing?!”
His eyes popped open. It reminded her of a doll she had as a child, one that opened its eyes when you shrieked at it or squeezed it.
Rob sat up on the couch. Dazed, he looked about.
“Well?” she pressed.
“I must have fallen asleep. Didn’t sleep that good last night, y’know,” he said, and he ran his fingers through his taffy-colored, rumpled hair
“Wh-what?” Starr sputtered.
“Look, I fell asleep, is all. C’mon!”
She slammed her knock-off white and gold Dolce and Gabanna purse down on the coffee table. Then she stomped into the tiny kitchen and began clanging about, making toast and reheating some left-over chili.
“Stop having a fit!” he countered.
Feeling hungry and angry, she hurried. Soon chili was bubbling and babbling to itself, while the toaster answered back. When is he gonna function? When will this finally end?
She gripped her metal serving spoon tightly and stirred the concoction. He’s thirty now, it’s not like he’s eighteen anymore. Time is passing at the speed of sound; life is breaking the sound barrier, and I feel myself breaking... breaking up.
Sauntering into the kitchen, he smiled faintly and said, “Look, I know you’re mad at me for not getting on the job thing. But I nodded off by accident.”
“Just forget it,” she said, busily buttering her toast. Her gaze was elsewhere.
“Starr, c’mon.”
“C’mon what?!” she snapped.
“Aww, Starr.”
Sitting down at the bistro-style table, Starr set upon her lunch. She stared straight at the fare, refusing to make eye contact with him.
Rumpling his hair again, as was his habit, he said, “I’m going to get right on finding a job. You’ll see.”
His tone was apologetic, sincere. Yet it caught in her mind, his words held like an audio loop that hit a snag, that would no longer play the tune you had heard countless times before but rather settled into its own maddening and deafening groove and then broke. Snapped, even.
“Bullshit. You never keep your promises.”
His face darkened. It became an unrecognizable wilderness of shadow, scar, ridge, and edge. Just for a moment, she felt apprehensive; mabe she’d gone too far.
Then without another word, he scooped up his belongings, clothes and vapes and shoes, and things and dumped them unceremoniously into a couple of big, black garbage bags. He then emptied her life as surely as the contents of the living room.
He slammed the door and left. It rattled in its frame and rang in her mind for a time. Then she heard nothing at all. That mighty sound of nothing.
Days past. She endured. Yet she had trouble seeing past the dimness, for it was as if her field of vision had turned inward and personalized. All she saw was him and her, because a self-centeredness had seized her, the egocentricity of love. Do I miss him? Or what?
She wasn’t certain. Feeling ambivalence, she floundered initially to the point even that she feared losing herself. But soon regained her bearings in coffee, cat, and thought, a blessed trinity she had come to believe in.
Eventually, she settled upon a sense of grievous apathy, as she was as troubled by the loss of their patterns and rhythms as she was by the loss of him, for with Rob went the reality that she was familiar with, the rules — or lack thereof — by which they were defined as a couple in their shared space.
What of the quirks, the concessions, the wars already won and fought? What now? The TV rules like “Don’t touch my Jeopardy” or “Leave Dead to Me alone!” The channel surfing, the meals timed for the wedge between their favorite shows, the esteemed winners, the dissed rejects, all of that lost as easily as the flick of a remote control.
And would I forget and buy bricks of cheese instead of the already shredded? Or forget to make that all-essential beer run? Just what heresies now?
For the forbidden zones were opening like little, forgotten envelopes, carelessly spilling the contents of her life to the floor, habit like litter, familiarity ground under until she felt as spotty as her rug.
That Saturday night she felt especially fragile. She felt as vulnerable as the city at night.
With all her girlfriends busy, Starr was at a loss. But she knew that she couldn’t stand to be alone in the disquieting quiet, that infernal soundlessness. So, she flicked the TV on. She stared into the glow. Yet as Tigger settled on her lap and the rock videos droned, she heard a disturbance in the distance. Noise that made her slide the patio doors open and look for the cause.
Tigger shot out.
Damn it! I’ll have to go after her!
But she soon saw the cause of the tumult. Rob and some other guy lumbering about on a nearby balcony. They both clutched beer cans. They appeared to be barbecuing between bouts of playful pushing and shoving. Flapping his arms like wings, she recalled Rob’s antics with a pang of nostalgia. Him. Them. Everything.
Doing near somersaults on the lawn, Starr saw how happy Tigger was to be outdoors. I’ll just let her enjoy it for a bit before I bring her back inside. Starr gazed, sighed.
Tigger then scampered towards that very balcony.
Oh no, of all places she would have to wander to! She probably smells the barbecue. Or perhaps she remembers Rob? At this point in the ensuing absurdity, she wasn’t ruling anything out.
But then she watched in horror as the other guy pelted kitty with an empty beer can. Tigger jumped straight in the air.
Son-of-a-gun! Starr was furious. Ready to charge over in her kitty’s defense, she glowered at the drunken lout.
But Rob pushed the pudgy barbecue host down. Then he leapt off the one-story balcony and ran to check on the kitty, who had only wounded feelings. He picked her up and cradled her. Tigger proceeded to lick his hand.
Starr paused. Watching from afar, she felt a touching enthralment, for as banal as it seemed, there was still a poignant quality to the scene unfolding. She saw her past rise before her.
“Kitty!” She covered her mouth. Her hand flew there. For she regretted the word as soon as it was uttered, because it brought them face to face, forced eye contact, blew her cover.
Rob looked up and grinned. Striding toward her with cat in tow, he said, “Hi. Hey did you see what happened?”
She nodded, frowned.
They paused.
Though still uncertain about her feelings, she had allowed the situation to take over, to begin to decide with its own careless logic. And though she did find it somewhat disconcerting, she permitted it anyhow, passivity overtaking clarity, common sense surrendering to need. Damn. Should I be allowing all of this? But she did.
Sauntering back inside, he cockily declared, “The big sexy has returned!”
Instantly, a curious depth and dimension returned to the tiny apartment. His presence of course, it was the energy of his crazy, larger than life persona.
Bargaining inwardly, she told herself this was his doing and not hers, arguing that he chose to leave and that she hadn’t technically thrown him out. It was just a continuation of “as before,” though she hoped for a much happier ending this time.
“Gotta get my bags of clothes and stuff before he trashes them,” Rob said
Starr nodded.
He then hurried back to that place.
Crumpling onto the dusty rose love seat, a garage-sale discard, Starr settled with Tigger. She mused on the recent turn of events. The purring cat was a balm for her jagged nerves. It all came at her like an inner cacophony, those voices within. Still, she preferred muffled emotion to that raging stillness that seemed to entomb her. Something was better than nothing after all. Or is it? Or am I just settling?
Tossing and turning on the love seat, Starr moved about. She clutched Tigger, that green-eyed avatar of graceful dignity. She smelled the wild scent of the cat’s fur. And once more, she heard everything and nothing, she felt everything and nothing. She sighed.
Copyright © 2023 by Shauna Checkley
