The Meetinghouse

In the Brooklyn house, the air hung quietly around Alan’s freshly pressed shirt. As his mother buckled the small strap of her shoes, he glanced at the slight snag in her nylons but turned quickly away when his father began his loud descent from upstairs. Alan was silent and patient, the hallmark of every Hannaford child whose role within the small brick townhome was to wait and listen, to consume and forget. Marjorie, tall and slight, her nose slightly crooked from a childhood fall, fastened the buttons of her gray coat; the same coat worn by her sister Agatha—passed down from one Hannaford to the next, its pockets a time capsule of each sister. A thimble. A penny. A butterscotch candy.

“Are you girls ready?” the voice boomed from upstairs, and the three children turned to face their father, even Alan, who knew not to show any reaction to the exclusion.

As their father landed loudly upon the polished hardwood floor, dressed neatly in a charcoal suit and navy-blue tie, Alan noticed a small piece of tissue adhered to his father’s neck, a speck of blood right at the center. He thought of how his Adam’s Apple had caught on his undershirt that morning, a sensation not quite unpleasant. He fought the desire to touch his neck just then, afraid his father would question the meaning of the gesture.

At the meetinghouse, Alan sat in his assigned seat between Marjorie and Agatha. The congregation was small; there were only a handful of Quakers in their neighborhood. Marjorie and Agatha always got fidgety, but Alan loved the meetings. The silence of the room enveloped him, and he was free to think the things he wanted to. At home, he feared his thoughts, as if allowing himself the luxury of them was in itself a sin. But in the meetinghouse, with its wide wooden benches and plain white walls, he felt free to let his mind wander to the places he forbade at home.

For the past few weeks, only one or two Friends had offered a message, and those had been brief and relatively uninspired. Alan loved the surprise of the messages, the quick interruption of the silence as a Friend stood and spoke out into the empty air, and while there were a handful of creaks from the benches, as if someone might stand, no one spoke. Marjorie made a funny face at Alan, and he stifled a laugh, biting the inside of his cheek until he could feel the warm metallic taste of blood. Children weren’t usually allowed to be part of the entire meeting, but Alan’s parents had insisted, promising that their children would behave in a way befitting of the Friends. So far, they had done just that and would continue to do so, burying their true selves in the clothes their mother sewed for each of them until the day she died.

Twenty years later when, in the Brooklyn house, his father first became sick, Alan rarely visited. His father refused to leave the bedroom, and Agatha often left crying, or wiping her face with anemic hands. Marjorie was undeterred and continued to sit with him, suffering every imaginable slight. Her forehead still bore the scar from her father hurling an ashtray at her the previous May.

Agatha gave up after a time and did not enter the room until Marjorie called to tell her their father had died. Alan was at the house when it happened. He had not wanted to be, but Marjorie had pulled him inside, telling him he would regret it if he didn’t see his father one last time. Alan would not tell her that he was glad she made him see his father, his mouth slightly open as if to speak. Alan had looked for the space that usually held words of admonishment or insults flung through the air like confetti but found none. Alan embraced the silence, allowing his thoughts to run wild as they had in the meetinghouse all those years ago.

After their father’s body was taken away, the siblings, surprisingly hungry, stitched together a simple lunch from food they found in the refrigerator; leftover quiche, a few wilted lettuce leaves, and a bottle of wine Agatha had brought from home. Never had they been allowed to eat on their laps, so the siblings sat, plates perched on their knees, in the living room. When Agatha dripped salad dressing on the couch, they all took an involuntary breath. Agatha’s eyes remained on the stain, and she bit her lower lip, a gesture the siblings recognized as fear. But when Marjorie rose to dampen a dishcloth or find a bottle of stain remover, Agatha shook her head and, with one clean movement, lifted her fork. They watched, delighted, as a small trickle of vinaigrette dripped onto the carpet beneath her feet. Marjorie stood and came closer to the stain. Then, placing her stockinged foot atop the stain, twisted it back and forth, pushing the stain deeper into the fibers of the carpet. Alan could feel his sisters’ eyes upon him, and he considered the glass of wine in his hand, the weight of it against his palm. He tipped it carefully so that a dark stream of red fell, blooming like a wound on the carpet below.

As if this were an opening of a long-rusted door, the siblings began to laugh, quietly at first, but then a crescendo, a storm of laughter like the house had never seen. Agatha had to wipe her eyes with a napkin, and Marjorie’s head tilted back, her pale throat exposed in a way that Alan found remarkable. Alan laughed, but soon felt something else rise within him. Theirs had been a house in which unspoken need gathered like dust in every corner, but today, with the upstairs bedroom empty, the siblings filled their lungs with air and exhaled joy, and Alan stood and spoke.