Me & Mr. Chatters

J. T. Townley

1.

Not a week after Phil took a vow of silence, Mr. Chatters appeared.  He knocked, I answered, he stood there in a vest and watch chain and top hat. 

“Thomas Chattfield III, at your service.”  He was already in the living room inspecting Phil, who was reclining in his Laz-E-Boy, tuning us out.  “Call me Mr. Chatters,” he said.  “All my friends do.”

I eased onto the couch and listened to what he had to say.  He had a lovely accent, British, if I wasn’t mistaken.  I taught French at St. Ramon’s School, so I had quite an ear.  But Mr. Chatters could’ve been anyone:  mailman, cable guy, some ex-con selling magazines door to door.  A week of silence, while you beg and plead for your husband to tell you it’s all a bad joke, he loves you and needs you and wouldn’t know what to do without you, feels longer than you’d think.  When Mr. Chatters showed up, I was just happy for some company.

“I was in the neighborhood,” he said, “and heard of your predicament.”

“Goddamn rumor mill!”

Mr. Chatters patted my knee.  “People talk, Liz.  May I call you that?”

“How do you—?”

“Some people, anyway,” he said with a laugh. 

I chewed my lip. 

“He’s been like that for a while, has he?”

I nodded.  “‘I’ve taken a vow of silence,’ he said.”

“Ironic, n’est-ce pas?” 

“When I asked him what it all meant, why he was doing this, know what he said?”

Mr. Chatters fiddled with his watch chain.  “‘You regard it too much as a matter of course that one can communicate anything to anyone.’  That was it, was it?”

I took a deep breath.  “‘The man who knows what is behind words speaks without words.’”

“Sounds like a bloody fortune cookie!”

“I find their crispy sweetness quite pleasant,” I said.

2.

The hostess showed us to a dark table in back.  The tablecloth was scarlet vinyl.  A warbling voice accompanied by someone beating on pots and pans drifted from a speaker mounted to the ceiling.  Mother scowled.

“Have you carried him to the doctor?” she asked.

“Mr. Chatters came to see us.”

“He some kinda specialist?”

“He’s a, well.”  I didn’t know where to start. 

“A what?”

“A cat.”

Mother cringed.  “What do you want with one of them nasty creatures, Beth?”

“It’s Liz, Mother.  He’s a therapy animal.”

She sniffed at her chipped porcelain cup, then took a sip and puckered.  “What is this swill?”

“Tea?”

“Tastes like hot dirt.”

“That’s how they drink it.”

“It’s eighty-five in the shade!”

I flagged down the waitress and ordered Mother an iced tea with lemon.  The waitress returned with two cubes of ice on a saucer.  Mother rolled her eyes.

“What’s Mr. Haughty-Taughty need with a therapy animal?”

“He won’t talk, Mother.  Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

The waitress set a plate of eggrolls in the middle of the table.  Mother shook her head but said not a word.  I scarfed my portion of the appetizer and half of hers.  A few minutes later, the waitress drifted over with three platters and a bowl of rice, arranging them on the table between us. 

“Oh, dear God, now what?”

“I ordered us dim sum,” I said.

“Looks like surplus from the organ thief warehouse.”

“They’re just dumplings, Mother.  Try some.”

She placed her napkin on the table and watched me eat.  “What I get for letting you choose.”  After a few minutes of tinny Chinese opera, she said, “Well, I’ll tell you, Beth—”

“Liz.”

She reached for her tea, then thought better of it and laced her fingers together on the scarlet tablecloth.  “When Fred quit talking on me, I up and left the imbecile.”

“Fred?” I said through a mouthful of dumpling.

“Didn’t have to think twice,” she said.  “Just lit out for the territory and never looked back.”

“Mother?”

She fiddled with her silverware, scraping something crusty from the end of her spoon with her thumbnail.  “First husband,” she said.

“But his name was William, right?”

“No, Miss Smartypants, William was my second husband.  Rancher in Lubbock, congestive heart failure.  Least he died in his boots.  Fred was an insurance man, and a pretty lousy one, at that.”

“Why haven’t you ever mentioned him?” I said, shoveling in dim sum.   

“Sonuvabitch broke my heart, is why.  Think I want folks far and wide to know that the man I loved, who had no talent whatsoever for moving indexed universal life policies, went deaf and dumb as a free-choice decision?”

The waitress brought more tea, hissing quietly when she noticed Mother’s full cup.

“He ever explain why?” I asked.

“Last thing he said to me was, ‘Words harm the world.  They take something away from it and put themselves in its place.’”    

“I don’t get it.”

She frowned.  “Nutjob cult mumbo-jumbo was all I could figger.” 

“Then what happened?”

“Just what I told you.”  Mother pursed her lips, glaring across the table.  “And I suggest you do the same before it’s too late.” 

The warbling voice and tinny percussion grew louder.

“Too late for what?”

“Then again,” she said, “that moron’s never been any good at follow-through, right?  Vow to the church didn’t take.”

“Don’t exaggerate, Mother.  He hadn’t even been ordained when we met.”

“Vow to you didn’t take.”

“It was a one-time deal.  Interpreters’ conference, too many Mai Tais.  Phil confessed, I forgave him, we moved on.”

“So maybe you shouldn’t dump the halfwit,” she said.  “Just give it a couple days, he’ll break this vow, too.”     

It had already been three weeks.  Phil hadn’t said peep.

“Are you finished with this drek?” asked Mother.  “The stink’s making me queasy.” 

“We didn’t get our fortune cookies yet,” I said.

Mother shouldered her purse and started toward the cashier.

I picked one up on the way out, but when I broke it open, I was not amused:  One who knows does not speak; one who speaks does not know. 

3.

When I got back across town, Phil sat in his easy chair sporting a pair of industrial earmuffs I’d never laid eyes on.  Mr. Chatters lounged on the back of the sofa, cleaning his paws.

“Your darling Phil,” he announced, “hasn’t uttered a single word the entire time you’ve been gone.”

“Nothing?”

“I’m afraid not.” 

His whiskers twitched.  I wondered what he’d done with his top hat. 

“Do I smell dim sum?” he asked.

I remembered the to-go containers.  I plated the leftovers and laid out a place mat for Mr. Chatters at the kitchen table.  He scampered over, bounding from couch to floor to chair.  He sniffed, then nibbled a little. 

“Absolutely divine,” he said, purring.

4.

Phil’s silence, which grew less novel every day, posed a whole array of problems.  Not least of them was gainful employment.  Phil was an interpreter of the simultaneous and consecutive persuasions.  Despite Mother’s opinions, the man was a human dynamo.  He’d listen to a boring speech about trade restrictions in any one of half a dozen languages, changing it into English right there on the fly.  While I was in the language business, too, I could never understand how Phil managed.  I’d watched him work a couple times, and it was like magic.

As it turned out, I could only make excuses for him for so long before he ran out of sick days.  Now he was on an indefinite, unpaid leave-of-absence.  St. Ramon’s School offered little better than slave wages, so we relied on Phil’s salary for all the essentials:  monthly mortgage on our historic bungalow; Pinots of good vintage and provenance; meals at trendy bistros, cafés, and restaurants throughout Lower Greenville.  Without Phil’s income, we were sunk. 

Mr. Chatters’ arrival set us on a different course.  Not that he and Phil became bosom buddies, not even close, but Mr. Chatters was quite the talker.  He distracted me from the burden of Phil’s silence, regaling me with tales of swashbuckling and derring-do.  When I finally gave him all the sordid details of our sorry situation, Mr. Chatters clucked his tongue:  “That shan’t do at all, I’m afraid.”  He could’ve just sprung out the open window and over the blooming rhododendron, disappearing into the afternoon heat.  Instead, Mr. Chatters studied me with his steely gaze.   

Then, together, we hatched a plan.

5.

Only before we could set things in motion, Phil lost his job, an inevitability I could never bring myself to accept.  Once that happened, there was no way we could keep up with the mortgage payments, so I made the executive decision to sell.  What else could I do?  The pittance St. Ramon’s School paid me wasn’t going to cover it.  Phil managed to scrounge up an old notepad and pen to draw a huge, confused question mark, and his wounded expression spoke volumes.  But even in the midst of so much tumult, he never said a word.

We showed up on Mother’s doorstep unannounced, my Prius stuffed to the gills.  Phil wore slippers, Mr. Chatters sported his top hat, I’d donned the ugly gold earrings Mother gave me for Christmas last year that I’d never worn.  We rang the bell and waited.  Passersby stared in awe at the Prius:  how high the junk was packed, how low the car was riding.

“Jesus, Mary, and Jehoshaphat,” said Mother.  She was still in her housecoat.  “Look what the cat dragged in.”

Mr. Chatters hissed.

“Literally,” she said.

Down the block, a street sweeper hummed along, hugging the curb.  I realized it wasn’t even seven in the a.m.  “Good morning, Mother.” 

She gawked at us.  “Don’t y’all have someplace to be?”

I flipped my hair, hoping the morning sun would glint off those giant golden crosses dangling from my ears.  “Mind if we discuss it inside?” I said, pushing past her.

Mr. Chatters followed.  Phil, too.

“The cat and the halfwit,” she muttered under her breath.  “Joy upon high.”

Mother wasn’t thrilled about putting us up.  She hated cats and thought Phil was an uppity Dallas snob.  She wasn’t so fond of me either, point of fact, the only child of her third marriage.  And talk about set in her ways!  Lights out at eight, breakfast at five-thirty sharp.  No excuses!  Which was fine by me, given my new commute, an hour each way without traffic.  Phil usually went straight back to bed.  As for Mr. Chatters, he found Mother insufferable and kept his distance. 

Still, there was the plan to consider.

“I’m not so sure about it now,” I said.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings,” said Mr. Chatters.  “But we now share accommodations with your mum.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“No patience for tomfoolery, is it?”

“She’s quirky that way.”

But Mr. Chatters wasn’t convinced, and I knew he was right.  We had to get Phil talking again. 

6.

We waited until Mother’s Wednesday church potluck, then set things in motion.  First, we hit Unmentionables, where I acquired silky undergarments with frills and lace:  thongs and thigh-highs, corsets and negligees.  Also, a feather boa, which Mr. Chatters dubbed indispensable.  Then we had a baby grand delivered to the house.  While I donned my silky new attire, Mr. Chatters ran through some scales, not three feet from where Phil sat, then worked his way into a scorching medley of burlesque classics:  “Bazoomba Shake,” “Strip for Me,” “Friends & Lovers.”  Though I was new to this, I shook and shimmied, teased and taunted, slowly peeling off one garment at a time. 

Phil’s response wasn’t overwhelming.  We’d hoped he’d whistle and shout, Take it off, baby!  Instead, he sat back in Mother’s easy chair, fully reclined, industrial earmuffs covering both ears, so it was possible Mr. Chatters’ musical ingenuity was completely lost on him.  All the same, Phil wore a pleasant, attentive expression.  He followed me around the room with his eyes.  He seemed impressed with the entire spectacle, especially the grand finale, which left me sweaty and panting, though I wore nothing but a feather boa and a smile.  Lingerie littered the room.  The ceiling fan whirred and clanked.  Phil remained tight-lipped.

We had our work cut out for us.

The next day, Mr. Chatters came home with a saxophone.  Two, actually, tenor and baritone.  I broke out my old cornet.  While Mother was at bingo, we ran through a few numbers in the back bedroom.  Mr. Chatters wanted to play some of the jazz standards, but all I could remember was “The Star-Spangled Banner” and a couple Sousa marches from high school.  We ambushed Phil while he was napping.  I blew on my cornet, and Mr. Chatters played both saxophones at the same time, but Phil didn’t stir.  I noticed Bose noise-canceling headphones had replaced his industrial earmuffs. 

Why was he being so difficult? 

I wasn’t sure what to do next, so good thing Mr. Chatters was there.  He made a couple of calls, and the next morning while Mother was at seniors water aerobics, we set up a huge drum kit in the living room.  Also, a pair of Marshall stacks, a series of effects pedals, and a Gibson Les Paul in vintage sunburst.  Mr. Chatters signed the bill, though everything went on my credit card.  It was almost maxed out.  We ran extension cords to power strips and plugged everything in.  He sat on his stool and palmed his sticks.  I shouldered the guitar.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” I admitted.  Which wasn’t exactly true:  I’d played acoustic folk songs by candlelight in college. 

“Nor I,” said Mr. Chatters.  Then he rolled down the toms and broke into a wicked solo.  Five minutes later, he hit the high-hat, crashed the cymbals, and grinned at me.  “Just flip those switches.”

Electricity buzzed.  I fiddled with the tuners, then gave the Les Paul a couple of muted strums.  From the amps, a thousand jackboots slapping concrete at a military parade. 

“What are we playing?” asked Mr. Chatters.

“How about ‘Sounds & Silence’?”

Mr. Chatters grinned.  “Purrrfect!” 

Did we rock out?  Absolutely.  And my first time on electric, too.  Maybe I went overboard on the wah pedal at times, but I couldn’t help myself.  I was really wailing!  Mr. Chatters kept time on those drums like a Swiss watch, punctuating each verse with perfect cymbal crashes.  We’d already been through the whole song once when, over the bass thumps and snare snaps, Mr. Chatters hollered something.

“What?” I yelled.

“Sing!”

“But I don’t—”

Mr. Chatters pointed.

And there it was:  a mike in a stand.  A grin swallowed my face.  I cleared my throat and gave Mr. Chatters a nod, and we took it from the top.

7.

Then Mother came home.  She was still sporting her bathing cap.  A uniformed cop stepped through the door behind her.  I stopped playing, reverb resonating into the musty corners, but Mr. Chatters had his back to the door, so he kept pounding out the rhythm.  When the next chord change didn’t come, he looked perplexed.  Then Mother yelled:

“What the devil’s going on?”  She seemed dazed and disbelieving.  All the color drained from her face, not that there was much to begin with.

Mr. Chatters leapt down from his stool and scurried behind the sofa. 

“We,” I said, pointing to Phil.  “My husband.”

Phil flashed a half-smile and waved.

“Mrs. Cranfield called the police!”

“It was for Phil,” I explained.  “We’re trying to get him to talk.”

“Mr. Fancy-Schmancy!  So much for BVD sedans, Yemeni suits, and Rolodex watches now.”  Mother looked disgusted.  “That freeloading bum is playing you like a piano.” 

A vaudeville ditty drifted to us from the baby grand we’d hidden in the bedroom.  That cheeky Mr. Chatters!

“And who might Phil be?” the cop asked.

“A certified deadbeat,” said Mother.

“My husband,” I said.

“What ails him?” asked the cop.

Mother’s mouth was an angry crease.  “The moron won’t talk,” she said.  “Won’t work.  He’s driven them out of house and home.”

“It’s a work in progress,” I said.

Mr. Chatters tickled the ivories some more, to great comic effect.  I had to bite my lip to keep from cracking up.

“Listen, Beth, I’ve lived in this neighborhood for twenty-odd years.”

“It’s Liz, Mother!”

“And I’ll be damned if you’re gonna besmirch my reputation as a goodly woman and God-fearing Christian.”

“We had no intention—”

“I don’t give a flying fricassee what your intentions were!”  Mother was working herself into a tizzy, spit gathering at the corners of her mouth.  “That racket about drove Mrs. Cranfield off the deep end, and she wears hearing aids in both ears!”

“I’m sorry, Mother.”

“Now you march right over there and apologize.  And make sure she accepts.  Yell if you have to.  Then get back over here and clear all this junk outta my parlor.”

The cop waited until Mother was finished.  “I won’t issue a citation, ma’am, but I have to give you an official warning.  Keep the noise level down, okay?  Let’s everybody be neighborly.”

“Oh, for shame,” said Mother.

I could almost hear Mr. Chatters snickering.           

8.

On the way home from First Methodist, we stopped off at Steeple’s for a bucket of spicy chicken, along with a side of biscuits and mashed potatoes.  After that dim sum disaster, Mother wasn’t open to suggestions.  As she wheeled her giant Pontiac along University, barely able to see over the steering wheel, oblivious to joggers diving for cover, I sat on my hands, took deep breaths, and tried to make chitchat.

“I’m thinking about joining the choir,” I said.

Mother adjusted her glasses, then blew through a red light. 

“It would get me out of the house,” I said, clutching the seat as Mother swerved to miss a squirrel, then almost broadsided a city bus.  “Fretting over Phil isn’t exactly helping.”

Mother dug a drumstick out of the bag and came six inches from clipping a cyclist she never noticed.  She nibbled on it the rest of the way home.  As she parked her land yacht in the driveway, she took the last bite and patted her lips with a paper napkin.  Then for a full minute, she just sat there, hands on the wheel, silently staring at the garage door.

“Listen, Beth, I love you like a daughter, but—”

“It’s Liz, Mother.  And I am you daughter.”

“You know I hate to turn out my own blood kin.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mother licked the spicy grease from the corners of her mouth.

“You’re kicking us out?”

She forced a smile in my general direction, then wriggled out of the car.  “Thanks for understanding, sugar.”

I grabbed the bag of food and trailed after her.  “My very own mother?”

“So you keep insisting.”

“We sold our house, Mother.  Where are we supposed to go?”

She spun around, one hand clutching her purse strap, the other on her hip.  “You got a fancy job in Dallas and a high-and-mighty hubby.  Plus, an eccentric tomcat.  You’ll figger sumpin out.”

“What about church?” I said, chasing her to the front door.  “We always loved singing together, right?”

She paused, key in the lock.  “Don’t take this personal, Beth, but you couldn’t carry a tune with a forklift.”

I felt my heart drop.  “You always told me I had a beautiful singing voice.”

“You were cut from every choir you ever auditioned for, honey.”  Mother bit down a grin.  “Don’t that tell you sumpin?”

I remembered the only explanation I’d ever been given:  “Already too many sopranos?” 

“I was too soft on you,” she said.

I stood there, grasping for something to say, but words abandoned me.

“You’re a big girl now, Beth.  Maybe it ain’t easy to swallow, and it don’t exactly do my heart no good, but tough love’s still love, right?” 

 “Please, Mother.”

“No two ways about it, Beth.  Y’all have got to go.”

9.

I was convinced for a couple days that Mother was joking.  Who ever heard of a mother kicking her one and only daughter, along with her one and only daughter’s willfully mute, unemployed husband, to the curb?  Plus, everyone loved Mr. Chatters!  Mother’d always had a wry sense of humor. 

But then, after almost two hours in traffic, I came home from work and discovered Phil sitting on a lawn chair right there in the middle of the front yard.  Everything we hadn’t stuffed in our storage unit after losing the house was there, too, spilling from our ratty suitcases and piled in cardboard boxes Mother probably scavenged from the Piggly Wiggly.  Mr. Chatters lolled in the sunshine.  I sensed Mother was trying to tell us something.

We found a motel for the night, then rented a furnished studio apartment over by the airport the next morning.  Our new luxury palace in Oak Creek Cliff Apartments offered numerous amenities, such as indoor plumbing, electric lights, and a functional deadbolt.  The toilet only backed up a couple times a day, and the refrigerator hardly clanged at all.  Another perk was that the living room doubled as the boudoir, and the kitchenette was just a corner of that very same room.

At least the move cut my commute in half.

What I couldn’t bear was the silence.  It filled that apartment entirely, spilling out into the asphalt courtyard with the sickly-looking oaks, muting the soft babbling of the eponymous creek, more of a rank drainage ditch if you looked too closely, pouring off the panoramic concrete cliff that led to said creek or ditch.  It swallowed everything, almost.  But not the steady moan of interstate traffic or the staccato jackhammer symphony or the erratic pistol pops that punctuated our nights like fireworks on the Fourth.  All I could hear, besides the clanging fridge and running toilet, were the other tenants smashing glass and screaming or thudding their headboard and making crazy grunting jungle noises.  Plus, since we were right in a flight path, the near-constant screaming of jumbo jets bound for Paris.

Even Mr. Chatters disappeared for a few days.

One afternoon while Phil slept on the couch, TV muted, or perhaps not, Rangers getting walloped, I borrowed his fancy noise-canceling headphones.  They helped some.  But I forgot to take them off before I left for work in the morning, and standing in a pothole in the parking lot beside my Prius, I lent them to a polite, mangy fellow in a black hoodie stabbing silently at the air between us with a stiletto.  If Phil was upset about their disappearance, he didn’t say anything (naturally), resurrecting his industrial earmuffs from some dark abyss.  But when he noticed my suffering, he foisted them on me, stuffing Kleenexes in his ears.  I bought him a bag of cotton balls the next day.  He thanked me with an effusive, longwinded smile.

Soon Mr. Chatters returned.  I was so happy to see him!  Though I almost didn’t recognize him in his black beret and striped sailor shirt and lascivious smile.     

“Bonsoir, chérie.”

“Mr. Chatters!”

We almost had to shout for all the noise.

“Miss me?”

“Beaucoup!” I said and meant it.  “Where have you been?”

Mr. Chatters sauntered around the cramped space:  peeling linoleum, stained carpet, smudged walls.  He stopped in front of Phil.  “Ça va?”

Surprise:  no response.

“True to his vow, I see.  A purist.  Impressive.”

I sighed.  “C’est la vie.”

Mr. Chatters wandered to the kitchenette and uncorked a bottle of Beaujolais.  He poured some for each of us, and we sat at the rickety kitchen table situated in the living room/boudoir.  He dimmed the lights.  A candle wedged into a wax-dribbled Chianti bottle flickered and danced.  We raised our glasses, but I couldn’t think of anything to say.  Leave it to Mr. Chatters:  he took the words right out of my mouth.

“Phil doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

I felt my cheeks flush in the dim light.  We clinked our glasses, then drank and drank some more.  Mr. Chatters waltzed away across the room, and when he returned, he was carrying a dozen long-stem roses in a cut-glass vase.  He even had one clamped between his teeth.  Then he whipped out an accordion.  From the opening strains, I thought it might be the one about the moon and the pizza, but as soon as he started singing, I recognized it as “La vie en gris.”  I joined right in, without any prompting.

We drank wine and sang into the wee hours, though I had to teach early the next day.  But carpe diem, like they say.  Mr. Chatters was indefatigable on the squeezebox, and I was coming into my own, belting out those French ballads at the top of my lungs:  “Briser le silence,” “Que l’on me donne la parole,” “Tout n’est pas perdu.”  Maybe the neighbors enjoyed it, maybe they didn’t, but no one around here was about to call the police.

We emptied another bottle of Beaujolais and worked our way through the classics.  I glanced over at Phil once or twice, and he, too, seemed to be enjoying the music, balled up on the sofa, hands clamped to his ears, face turning an amazing array of reds.  Now Mr. Chatters transitioned into more upbeat ditties.  In fact, we were smack in the middle of “Elles s’engueulent” when something interrupted us.  I stopped singing.  Mr. Chatters kept playing for a couple bars.

“Did you hear that?” I asked.

“What, chérie?”

“I’m not sure.”

Mr. Chatters took a swig of wine, then fingered a couple of chords, ready to launch back into the tune.  But there went that noise again.  It came from the direction of Phil’s mouth.

“Would you please be quiet?  Please!”

“Phil?”

He sat on the edge of the ratty sofa, cotton balls pinched between thumbs and forefingers.  He looked like he was about to pop.    

I emptied my glass and glared at him.  “Shut up?  That’s all you have to say?  Do you realize what you’ve put me through?”

Mr. Chatters squeezed out a melodramatic, minor-key progression.

“Please stop,” he said.  “I beg of you.  I can’t take it anymore.”  His head swiveled from me to Mr. Chatters and back.  He seemed to expect an apology, or at least an explanation.  “I’m sorry to say it, Liz, but that’s the worst singing I’ve ever heard.”

I felt a hot surge in my chest.  I wanted to lay into him.  Instead, I grabbed a fresh bottle, and Mr. Chatters threw himself into another song, one of my own personal favorites, “Je m’en fous (de vous).”  I came in right on cue.  Only when I opened the door, the whole world flooded in:  traffic and jackhammers and jumbo jets, gunfire echoing through the early morning haze.  Mr. Chatters squeezed his accordion harder.  I sang from the diaphragm.      

Then we stepped out into the dawn light, together.

J.T. Townley has published in Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, and other magazines and journals. His stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net award. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and an MPhil in English from Oxford University. To learn more, visit jttownley.com.