The Absence of Silence

By Leo Chace

A struggling artist, after he hits it big in a New York art auction finds himself embroiled in a International Art scandal. An over night success, that took ten years, finds Jerry Thornton and his autistic son, Philly  thrown into a world of the art underworld, and the dark beauty that inspired and distracted their art. In this book of fiction book that explores the meaning of art and autism and the passionate relationship between friends, family, and their partners.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Chace
• Release date: Dec 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386198291

Book preview

Chapter 1

The stairs creaked and moaned, as if they knew how long it had been since I last walked these old, oak steps. Eight years seems like a long time, but when you look back it stand next to you like a familiar stranger that you met once but never knew. I carried Philip up these creaky steps, up to Randy’s first floor Apartment. Although he had fussed all the while during the plane trip, now it seems that this old brown stone had some sort of calming effect on him; even though the creeks were loud enough to stir Randy from his Led Zeppelin and in-scents and turn a suspicious eye at top of the stairs. His eyes flew open wide when he saw us, How the fuck are you? You old bastard! he said.

Now is that any way to greet an old friend, especially for an ex Jesuit? I lamented.

We both laughed out loud, and Philip only stirred to change his head position. Randy gestured me into his apartment, slapping me on the behind like football players do, as I entered. The place still was basically the same. A mixture of clutter, music memorabilia, crucifixes, and a new array of computer equipment that would make Bill Gates proud; all of which were arranged in neat, yet jumbled sectionals around the living room. Randy led me through the living room into the kitchen, dressed in his usual attire of boxer shorts, bare chest, and wearing a San Francisco Giant baseball cap, "Some things never change,’ I said, as we sat down at his dining room table/ computer terminal.

He smiled, and said, It looks like some changes have occurred for you, he gestured toward Philip with a large anvil of a hand and a look of quite concern.

I only slightly grimaced and looked away for a moment. My face a mixture of embarrassment and internalize anger.   Have you seen her since...?

I cut him off with a darting, flat low glare before he could continue.

He chuckled, a nervous giggle and asked, So, how long has it been?

You’re looking at him right now, I said.

He definitely has grown, Randy said grabbing a beer from the fridge, want one?

No I’ve got my hands full already. Jerry said hoisting Philly up on his hip.

Randy jumped, looking both embarrassed and motherly at the same time, OH SHIT! Where are my manners and waved to me to give Philly to him to lay down. I gave Philly to him, and he looked like an infant in this massive man’s arms, and resting on his enormous beer belly.     

Jerry first met Randy in a city league Rugby club, He blind-sided me as I came out of the scrum, and laughed, Not bad for a priest, hey!

After that, and a few beers after the game we became good friends. Always meeting at My House Bar & Grill to swill a few pitchers and Ogle the waitresses, who were dressed like house wives from the 50’s with slightly higher hem lines and push up bras. Randy never officially looked, he always said, One look is human my boy! Two is a sin in a slightly, slurred Irish Gaelic. He was finishing up his final year as a Jesuit, and I was in my sophomore year in college. Randy never officially became a priest, I think he always preferred the idea, rather than the actual profession of leading a congregation of people, but when his father gave him this old brown stone building as a graduation gift it seemed to fit his unique blend of talents and faults. So of course, my girlfriend and I moved into the top floor loft/ art studio.

To answer your question,’ I said, about eight years", as Randy returned from laying Philip down.

Too long my friend, too long he said, as he sat down across from me at the dining table. He looked at me in his best priestly manner, both concerned and accusatory. What’s wrong Jerry? Why here, why now?

I looked away and at him at the same time, I guess you heard of my big success" I said, as I finally focused on my beer not knowing where to look.

Heard! It’s all over the fucking Net, not to mention the San Francisco Chronicle, he quickly shuffled through some old newspapers ranging from the New York Times to the local Stranger art gazette. Hear it is.’ Right here he said, as he pointed at the head line, Local Artist hits big at International art show. So like I said, "What are you doing here?

I paused a moment to review the last year, Philip’s autism fluctuating better to worse on a moment’s notice, the swirl of the art auction three months ago, the aggravation of Jessica’s continual assaults of threats and insults, especially after the monitory gain from the auction, even though they have been divorced over three years. Well, he said. "Philip’s Psychologist moved here, I said.

Yea, Randy grinned is she hot?

For Christ sake Randy, you must be the dirtiest religious bullshit artist I ever met. Jerry smiled at Randy in a mocking manner.

Randy smiled a huge grin and winked Well, you try being celibate for the last ten years, and watch the profanity in the name of the Lord. I can still knock you from near to Sunday my boy.

We both shook hands and hugged in a an awkward, familiar way. Come on, let me take you to the loft, Randy slapped Jer on the back, It’s been empty for about a month, so you're in luck; besides it will always be yours  and Jesse’s place-, he stopped before saying anything else, His eyes contorted as he stumbled up the large stairway, Well, your place any ways." Randy mumbled as they neared the loft.

Chapter 2

The over sized door swung open, after Randy giggled and fumbled with the lock with his two large hands, and it banged against the brick wall with a low flat thud. You could see the effect on the wall where the cracked brick and sand that tumbled to the floor with each opening of  the heavy mahogany door.

Randy gestured to the wall, I gotta fix that one of these days. Randy grabbed Jerry behind the shoulders a gently jiggling him, welcome home dude bro.

Sure Randy, sure. Jerry teased, as I passed him in the narrow hallway leading to the living room. I stopped short for a moment, memories flashing back and forth from reality to fantasy; I still could not imagine Jesse and I were split up. It seemed like some sick dream you just couldn’t’t get out of your head the next morning.

"I remember when she broke out part of the hallway to open the dining/ living room so she could see the entrance.

She always thought things should be open and airy, Jerry said with a murmured whisper only that I could here or think I heard in my head. I gently smiled to myself, of course that was what she also thought I should be, and she tried desperately to make me open and airy. Randy back then almost ruptured a small artery when he came up to see what the hell all the noise was about.

I could have killed her that day. Randy said with a reminiscent smile, as he caught me looking through the small opening in the wall. Jesse and Randy had many such occasions. Randy referred to them as "great battles’ that he could never win.

Jerry quickly moved my way through the living room and kitchen only stopping to comment to Randy that, The place looked great.

Yeah, I gave’m a break on the rent and they did all this, he opened his arms out toward the kitchen and living room.

Good thing, Jerry said, That hanging ceiling when we were here was an eye sore and a death trap

Randy only shrugged his shoulders in a I don’t give a fuck gesture. Jerry rushed by him, passing the newly remodeled wood floors, vaulted ceilings and modernized kitchen and bath. Jerry was thinking that there was only one place he had to see, and hoped to hell the yuppie couple had not changed it". Rushing up the small flight of stairs that circled along a spiraling stairway not knowing what Jerry was going to find, or was it dread Jerry feared, as he rushed toward his past, his beginning.

Hey, Aren’t you even going to look at the place? Randy questioned in hurt, motherly tone.

No.’ What are you now Better Homes and Gardens? Jerry said with a sarcastic wry smile.

Randy only managed a simple gesture for his reply, which was by flipping me off as I rushed up the small eight steps into the bedroom and my studio. The bedroom looked pretty much the same except; hard wood floors replaced the carpet, and new lighting fixtures to accentuate the loft from the living room below were added, which you can now see from the bed room now that the couple vaulted the ceilings. The room was small only 10 x 12 accentuated above with an old gray, rusted sky light that was opaque with the rust and fading by the Sun. The sky light hung partially over the bed room and studio giving a soft glow of light, but when fully opened cascaded sun light across the entire bed room. My studio was up old creaky steps almost ladder like, up and around into what was the old entrance onto the roof that had been built to allow easy access to the maintenance shop. I guess the young couple that had lived here after me must have used it for a closet or storage?,  Jerry yelled down to Randy, because everything was the same as he had left it several years earlier. Specks of paint still lay on the floor and the faintness of old turpentine and oil paint linger on in Jerry's mind and haunted this little space where I truly became an artist. Jerry grimaced back at Randy, A closet!? 

What?’ you thought I should make a shrine out of this hole in the ceiling ? he laughed out loud. He bowed in a mocking gesture, cramped by this small room and his immense size. Christ. I don’t know how you and Philly sat up here for so many hours? Randy chastised Jerry in a teasing manner.

It was easy just reverse the ceiling fan and open the sky light and presto instant ventilation. What more could a man want? Jerry said with a wry smile. Jerry really thought this place was perfect except for the only view was this brick wall outside my one window. Apparently when they built the place it was designed in a square shape with the center being hollow. Jerry was sure there was some technical name for the design that would allow consensual light into the internal rooms of the office building, now however, it created a quaint little quart yard three stories below.

Jerry cranked open the stiff window and craning my neck to look below. "What nobody been in here for a while?

Randy scoffed, Most people don’t make painting studios out of closets. Jerry backed his head out of the small window and eyed Randy for a moment.

He looked artificially sheepish and bowed again in the same mocking gesture as he backed down the small staircase. I’ll just go look in on little Philly now. He paused then stuck his head back in and said giggling, And let you pray to your shrine.

He was half right, when Jessie wanted to leave here when we finally had a definitive diagnosis of Phill9y’s mild autistic behavior even though he had never spoken, and move to San Francisco for Philly’s sake and my career, Jerry balked. I couldn’t leave my little tower, as Jesse called it. This little confined space was where I became a painter and I was terrified of the fact of leaving because of my superstitious fear that if I left then I couldn’t paint anymore. It seemed like this cramped space and this dank wall outside, this one view that somehow made sense to me that kept me sane through the uncertainty of my talent, the birth of my son and the uncertainty and fear of not being able to communicate with him and what his diagnosis was. All this and the little sanctuary where I and then Philly my son could, well hide and create or rather escape, was somehow connected to my talent. This tiny room and hard warn outside wall was my only refuge during the several months of Philly’s silence, and Jessie’s constant worries and guilt. This place and wall was my fortress, my hide out, where Jerry could paint hours after hours looking at that same old gray brick wall and up through the murky, rusted sky light above while Philly sat silently and watched. At least Jerry thought as he watched, somehow he thought that he and Jerry could communicate through the still life’s and colors he painted. Jerry imagined that my paintings were a part of his world where we both could be together. Jessie always worried about Philly and the fumes and the closeness that we shared when we were painting. Once in a heated argument before the divorce, she accused me of causing Philly’s autism, in that fucking gas chamber of yours! she had screamed' her ghostly voice still echoing.

Jerry looked back down into the courtyard below a faint smell of wild flowers and Italian food drifted up toward my small little room. Jerry remember Bambino’s and the dinners the three of us had shared in the little courtyard before Philly was born; Randy downing multiple carafes of wine, Jessie doodling designs on the napkins, and me watching them both in their animation while we ate our late suppers. Adjacent to Bambinos was Rosa’s flowers and design, where Jess worked sometimes to earn some extra money while I painted.

Randy bellowed out of the window below from his apartment startling a young couple who was sitting in the cafe’ almost upsetting their latte’s, Philly is awake what do I do?

Jerry looked at the wall one last time and smirked,

looks like we did it, Jerry said aloud to myself. Jerry hurried down to Randy’s apartment not knowing what Philly’s reaction might be to the strange surroundings and the huge, boisterous man watching him like a scared puppy.

Chapter 3

Jerry quickly dressed Philly, though he fussed while Jerry put on his new cloths the he had bought only yesterday, thinking he might impress Dr. Elaine Miller when and if he got to see her. Besides, Jerry thought to myself, Hey, I’m rich now. We can wear new cloths all the time.

Jerry put on a very expensive tie the sells women said that it set off my blue eyes. Jerry looked down chagrined, of course falling for the sells pitch, the shop girl being a very young, slender, attractive girl with a full figure for her size, set off by a professional, yet tight white silk blouse. Jerry decided we both looked good and Jerry smiled at Philly who out shined me even on his worse days. He looked almost business like in his new sweater and slacks except for the tasseled dark hair that hung slightly over his brow. Jerry guessed he figured out we were going someplace by the stern look and pout he held on his face. Philly didn’t’t talk much, though the speech therapist and medical test revealed he was fully capable. Jesse and I thought he was deaf because he just would not cry when he was a baby, but the expressions of his face with Jesse’s dark hair and my pale blue eyes could reveal everything he wanted to convey including the times he would suddenly seem to shut down, and the once animated face would become as still as stone. The doctors thought at first he might be having seizures, but no evidence was ever found to prove that. Once outside we hurried up the gradual climb up the hill towards the hospital, Philly seemed preoccupied with his new surroundings not necessarily the buildings or streets, but his focus was on the sky. It was as if he recognize the newness of his surroundings by the low lying almost perpetual cloud cover that hung over this city like a gray wool blanket. Gray, and more gray seemed the predominating color of the surroundings buildings, sky and streets. A light misty drizzle began, and my once optimistic mood seemed to drain like the slow trickle that ran down the slight grade and into the gutter. Everything seemed gray the dark street, charcoal colored by the rain; the buildings mouse gray only contrasted by the faintness of the flicker neon signs brought on by the ensuing dusk of the drizzle. Philly on the other hand brightly stared up into the sky, his long eye lashes flickering to deflect the slivered raindrops. We quickly hurried through the next two blocks to the children’s hospital. Philly would not exactly run he preferred a very quick gait that resembled a race walker, but without the arm movement and his head held at a slight angle with a constant lateral nodding, as if he were saying no.

We entered the hospital with its automatic doors that opened in a timed sequence one then the other. Philly was always spooked a bit by this phenomenon, and he would pause until the last moment than slip through the doors as they shut in there timed intervals. No matter what the sequence he seemed to have an innate ability to time the opening and the closing; his father, on the other hand wasn’t always that lucky in his pursuit to follow, since Philly would not pass through the door way if I went first. I found this out painfully clear when he was four, and our first time in an elevator. We were staying in a hotel in San Francisco and Jesse had gone ahead while Philly and I checked in, as I entered the elevator to the 17th floor I had Philly by the hand, something we had worked for months on in order to be able to do successfully, he suddenly stopped as I entered while the doors closed. A moment of frantic button pushing later I was staring face to face with Philly who timed the closing of the door, which I just hastily vacated, and he entered almost leaving me behind for the second time. After several episodes of this in grocery stores, department stores, and the hospital I got the hang of the timing thing, so now I mainly tried to find manual doors not for Philly’s safety but my own.

Philly and I looked through the glass window that separated the therapy gym and Elaine’s office.

Dr. Elaine Miller like being so close to the gym and the therapists, the constant movement of the therapist and children working and struggling together in a ritual of movement and motivation. The Physical and Occupational Therapists, a mixture of beatnik types, clad in Birkenstocks, while others more clinical looking in lab coats and ties. A myriad of swings, tubes Populated the wide open gym adjacent to Dr. Elaine Miller’s office.

The movement, she thought was critical to the kids both to stimulate and to desensitize them to allow the simplest gesture of holding their parents hands. No small feat both psychologically speaking and a grand gesture for the parents who never appreciated their kid’s seemingly endless movement. Something the Therapist called functional activity, but Elaine felt all movement was essential. She like the movement because it connected the kids to their environment and all movement was functional, in her eyes any way, even the endless rocking of the autistic and blind children was useful, though often disturbing to most people. Her college professors theorized that the rhythmical rocking was a substitute for the sensory deprivation of the condition. Elaine looked out to the gym as the parents, therapist, and kids worked together on bright yellow and blue Thera balls, large mats and plinths that held the children while the therapist attempted to mold their postures and positions to stretch, strengthen, and orient the children. She felt that the movement was more for comfort, and disinhibited the children that seemed to get too much stimulus. As if they could not filter the constant input of light, sound, and touch that befuddled these small children to the point they shut down to cope. The rocking she likened to that of a mother rocking and cradling an infant, a comfort to the kids. She looked up and over her desk to see a small dark haired boy holding a drawing of her. He had in his hand a painting done in watercolor that accentuated her large blue eyes and gave her a thoughtful, care free look. A version of herself she had never provided to anyone or expressed it only to those very close to her, and defiantly outside of work. The picture startled her, this likeness she rarely saw in herself, and for a moment she lost focus on the child who was holding it out in front of himself and smiling. She did not recognize the boy at first and the man who stood behind him both dressed in Nordstrom casual wear, like some sort of Father’s Day card. Boy, are they in the wrong place for a Hallmark card, she thought to herself. In this old children’s hospital full of sick, dying, and disabled children. But, on the other hand, it should be the perfect place for a greeting card to celebrate the courage of the kids and their parents. Elaine smiled slowly as her memory  grew with her recognition of the boy as she looked into his pale blue eyes- Philip!?", she exclaimed a bit too loud. In her enthusiasm and excitement in remembering, almost running to the little boy, but his smile faded by the her sudden movement and higher tone that he lowered the picture and clanged to the closeness of his father’s safe and familiar side, as he slowly half raised the picture again in a questioning gesture.

It had been almost three years since she had left San Francisco, but he had recognized her first, Elaine thought.

Hello, the father spoke breaking the eye contact of the psychologist and child. She looked up still a little surprised and intrigued by Philly’s recognition of her.

Ah, Ah... Mr. Thornton? What? How? Why are you in Seattle? Elaine stammered as she stood up and led them into her office. I ‘m sorry. I mean. Hello. How are you? Where’s Mrs. Thornton? She said looking past and around Jerry for his wife. Who she always thought was a bit pretentious, and a bit bitchy. Both stood for a moment, looking a bit sheepish and the boy’s and father’s new cloths looked tattered and spotted by the rain. Elaine offered them a towel, and gestured for them to come and sit down. Jeremy led Philly to a chair, and Philly again presented the drawing toward her in a friendly, more confident movement.

Jeremy leaned forward and extended his hand. Hello, I’m sorry for stopping by unexpectedly. I hope I didn’t disturb you in any way? I’m in town visiting an old friend, and I thought we would say hello. So how are you, Dr. Miller?

Philly closed his picture book while the grownups began their clatter of conversation that echoed then seemingly drowned out as he focused on the colors on his note book cover his father had made for him. The colors seemed to grow and move within themselves like his Daddy’s Pictures, and he began to rock as he played with them in his mind.

After a brief exchange of how are you and what have been up too. What are you doing now? and all the niceties of familiar acquaintances that have not seen each other for a while. The conversation paused and Elaine rose from her desk crossing the small space and walking to the father who stood up immediately like a startled school boy who was on his first date, trying to remember what his mother had taught him on how to treat a lady. Philly stood up following his father instinctively. She glanced at the clock as she strode toward them, and noticed an hour had almost pasted. He was unassumingly handsome with a casual confident air and a vulnerability that he exuded through his son. She liked this man as she shook his hand in a firm, professional manner. Where is your Wife? Mr. Thornton.

Jeremy looked down a little and toward Philly,’ Ah we divorced a couple of years ago."

Oh? Elaine said in a not so sympathetic reply, I’m sorry. I wish she could have visited with you both to see how’s our Philip is doing; as she knelt down winking at Philly. Though in truth she did not like the ex-Mrs. Thornton much with