The Midnight Estate
by Charity Wilkie
Weeks flew by Silas in a monotonous blur. There had been no change in his sister’s condition—not so much as the flutter of
an eyelid.
Occasionally, Dr. Lomas tried to talk to Silas about her prognosis.
“Son, the problem is that the longer this goes on, the less likely—”
“She just needs more time,” Silas would interrupt, as if hearing the odds of recovery would make them even longer.
His daily pancake breakfast was the one bright spot in an otherwise grey routine, marking another day gone in the same way
the sunrise did in normal times. The dreary environs of the hospital were heavy and dull, depressing in every way. By contrast,
the diner was a place of rich turquoise vinyl and shiny chrome light fittings and warm sunshine through the window. The pop
of the honey on his pancake. The warm, rich brown of his coffee. The soft, pretty colors of Marie’s outfits, the peach of
the lipstick she wore.
She came by most days. If the booth beside Silas was empty she would sit there, facing him. Some days, she would look at Silas
and her face would transform into a breathtaking smile. Often they made perfectly brief small talk and then sat quietly, together
but apart.
“What are you reading today?” she’d ask.
He was reading through whatever he laid his hands upon in his sister’s library, glad even for the books he didn’t particularly enjoy, just because they represented a link to Maeve.
The longest conversation Silas and Marie had during those weeks was about Brave New World Revisited, which he was reading for the first time.
“I’ve read Brave New World five or six times,” he told her. “I keep rereading it over the years and it just seems truer and truer. Huxley is a genius,
obviously—I mean it captures so much of the modern age, and he wrote it almost thirty years ago! This new analysis of advancements
and developments since the original publication is fascinating—” The startled expression she wore at this outburst was one
Silas was well familiar with. He considered himself to be a quiet, somewhat dull man but felt he came alive when someone asked
him about books. “Tell me you’ve read it. Brave New World, I mean.” Marie shook her head, and Silas winced. “Well, we can’t have that. I’m sure Maeve has a copy in her library—if
I can find it, I’ll bring it with me and you can borrow it.”
“Thank you,” she said, and she offered him a quiet smile. “You’re very passionate about books, aren’t you?”
“Books are everything,” he said. “Whatever you need in life—escape, wisdom, knowledge, power, pick up the right book and it
will all be there. Humans have created a lot of useful technology but the ability to share stories, between friends around
a fireplace or neighbors across a backyard fence, or even across great distance and languages . . . why, that’s the making of us.” He paused, then sighed wistfully as he looked back down to his book. “At least, it could be.”
Marie never stayed more than about five minutes, but some days, that was more than enough for her to brighten Silas’s day. She was a warm, gentle touch point during an especially lonely and difficult period in his life.
That made it all the more confusing on the days when Marie would rush into the diner just as she always did, but she’d barely
make eye contact with Silas. Her gaze would flick this way and that, as if she was waiting for someone to leap out to frighten
her. On those days, she usually ordered her coffee, watched her brother through the kitchen window for a few moments and then
left whether she had a chance to speak with him or not—whether her coffee had arrived or not. Silas just could not pick the
pattern to it. There was something bafflingly familiar about Marie’s unease on those days, although for the life of him Silas
couldn’t figure out where he’d seen it before.
It eventually occurred to him that his mother’s apartment would need to be cleaned out so it could be sold. What a terrible
waste, to have a beautiful home like that sitting empty. He sat at Maeve’s bedside and explained to her that he would still
be by every morning, but during the afternoon he would be at Linda’s apartment, sorting through her things. He told his sister
not to worry, that by the time she woke up, everything would be sorted and anything precious would be back at their childhood
home waiting for her.
When Silas stepped inside his mother’s apartment this time, it hit him all at once. Grief delayed is grief multiplied, and
he thought for a few moments that the brutal sharpness of it would crush him. He sat on the floor in her foyer and he didn’t
even try to hold back the sobs. Silas had so adored his mother, and now that she was gone, he found himself deeply conflicted
about the choices he’d made in his life. Did he do the wrong thing in moving to the other side of the world, even if it was
for love?
His fortunes had changed so unexpectedly as he reached his late teens.
Silas won a scholarship to college but dropped out before the start of his sophomore year, when a great big cheque arrived in the mail and the world unexpectedly became his oyster.
Instead of classes and tutorials and textbooks, he studied and learned by watching people going about their lives in Malaysia and Canada and Bolivia.
He drank warm beer in London and ate baguettes and cheese in France and he walked parts of the Appalachian Trail and he watched the sunset over lakes and beaches and rivers in Yugoslavia and Spain and in New Zealand.
He always came home to Linda and Maeve, stopping for weeks or months between his adventures. But once he locked eyes with
Christine, that was the end of that too. Should he now regret the choices he’d made, the time he’d spent away? Should he mourn
for the days and weeks and months and years he could have spent with his family when he was adventuring then settling down
elsewhere?
When the torrent of emotions settled, Silas looked around his mother’s home and finally accepted that there was a chance that
he was the last left standing in his family of origin. His mother and sister might really be gone.
And added to that, there really was a chance that he’d already broken his marriage beyond repair.
Eventually, he started packing and cleaning, with a burst of energy that left him almost manic. The thought of being alone
was so terrifying his instincts screamed to keep busy to avoid facing the reality of it.
As he packed up his mother’s life, it was only natural that Silas might return to the oldest parts of his memory, moments he generally refused to visit.
Images and scents and feelings came to him in bursts and intrusive, irrepressible explosions, as though the simple act of packing up Linda’s clothes for the charity shop was enough to force the screening of a film in his mind.
He was five years old and hiding in her closet, too terrified to even breathe. When his lungs felt as though they would burst,
he’d finally inhale—catching a deep, reassuring burst of her scent among her dresses and coats. Outside of that closet, his
father raged, throwing anything he could get his hand on, chasing Linda from room to room, reminding her that he was so much
bigger than she was, so much stronger. That he could take from her anything he chose to take, even her life if he wanted to.
Silas shook the memory off. He promised himself that he had suppressed it once before and he could do so again. But the next
morning he was drinking coffee at Maeve’s square kitchen table when he remembered a different table—the circular table the
family had used in his earliest years. It was marked with age and stains. Silas remembered hiding beneath it, arms wrapped
around his knees, trying not to make a sound as his father held his mother over the kitchen sink, a knife against the soft
skin of her throat. Young Silas kept closing his eyes but he couldn’t keep them closed so he saw it all. Cruel, spiteful words flew from his father’s mouth and spittle right along with it, right into
Linda’s eyes and onto her cheeks. Frank had been so wild with rage that although Silas had been hiding less than three feet
away, he had been blind to his son’s presence.
But Linda wasn’t blind. As Silas peeked around the table leg she had pleaded with him with her eyes. Stay quiet, stay still. It’ll all be over soon.
No. Silas shook himself from the memory, but as he left Maeve’s house and walked towards her car, he recalled the very last time he saw his father.
Frank didn’t leave the family in shame or guilt, not pushed away as punishment for terrorizing Linda and Silas for five long years.
The man abandoned his family for the worst kind of cliché: Linda was pregnant but so was Frank’s girlfriend, and Frank had made his choice.
The last Silas heard of his father, he was living in Ohio with his new family. Knowing Linda, knowing the strength of her
integrity and her kind heart, Silas was certain his mother would have sent word to Frank that he had a daughter. The one good
thing that man had done for his family was to never return to rejoin it, not even to meet Maeve.
Try as he might, Silas couldn’t stop these memories from circling through his mind over the weeks as he packed up his mother’s
home. And on the morning the truck from Goodwill picked up the last of her furniture, Silas took himself to Carmen’s for pancakes
to celebrate.
Marie was there, and it was one of those days when she was so skittish. She gave Silas a fleeting, hesitant smile, then went
right back to watching Irving through the window into the kitchen, and then after just a few sips of her coffee, she hurried
out the door, like some invisible ghost was on her heels.
That’s when Silas finally joined the threads in his mind, and in an instant he knew why Marie’s expression looked familiar.
His mother had worn that look often.
This was the tortured, hunted gaze of a woman who feared for her life.