Speak Now or Forever Hold Hold Your Peace

To a child, everything is normal because it is all you know.  It takes some years to appreciate the eccentricity that surrounds every home in every town.

Among our neighbors was a couple I will call George and Martha.  They did not speak to each other.  They had been married for many years, had a grown child, and shared a lovely little house that was divided in two.  George had use of the former dining room; the living room was Martha’s.  They prepared separate meals and, I assume, slept in separate rooms. 

Alice was exceptional in many ways.  She was middle aged in my childhood, and not svelte by any means, but she wore rather dramatic clothing, favored black stockings, and wore lots more makeup than any other woman I knew.  She worked full time and did not drive.  My mother made it very clear that we were to help her by running errands whenever she asked, and she asked fairly often.  She was very nice about it, and so I didn’t mind—except for those rare occasions when she would ask me to deliver a message to George.  Even a small child knows that this is odd.

I am not sure when George and Martha stopped speaking to each other or exactly why.  I do know that we occasionally saw George with another woman at the grocery store and around town.  Divorce was no doubt out of the question for these devout Catholics.  The standoff lasted decades.

Then, miraculously, when I was grown and gone, George and Martha reconciled.  But almost as soon as they did, Martha was diagnosed with cancer and had to have her larynx removed.  She was never able to speak again, and she never regained her health.

George was completely devoted to Martha’s care at the end of her life, treating her with great tenderness.  When I visited them, they looked into each other’s eyes like love-struck teenagers.  But they were never able to speak to each other again.