Read Online Eloquent Silence by Margaret Weise - Free Book Online

exhausted and demoralized, all energy zapped from her bony body by the elaborate tirades her husband served up to her on a regular basis.
    Conrad? What about Conrad? The thought of him caught in her throat, bringing with it a stifling sensation like a hand grabbing her across the windpipe. How prone he was to sudden variations in mood, swinging unaccountably from happiness to anger. Conrad Himmlar? She was deluged by fresh waves of fear and regret at the thought of her husband and his reaction to the news of a possible pregnancy.
    No, she decided. She must be brave. Despair was the killer that would bring her down if she let it. He was not so bad. Surely he was not so bad? He could even be kind if the mood took him even though he often wore that dangerous mad-dog look after he had been drinking rum.
    But when you are tied to a brash and cock-sure critical man you live your life with that person’s voice forever in your head lecturing you about how you will next fail to live up to their expectations and the ramifications of how badly this latest venture will turn out.
    Usually he seemed to be in a rage, this short, red-faced, angry man.  His fury exploded without a source known to her, but forever continued to smolder just under the surface, ready to ignite into flame for little or no reason that Annie could comprehend. She would stare at him, regarding him with blank astonishment as he ranted and raved, pushed items of furniture about and generally caused as much ruckus as he could without having the men in white  coats come and take him away.
    At this time Annie was living mostly in her head, aware of forces within her life that could sweep her up and have her reeling out of control if she were to make a mistake of any description within this minefield. All he was lacking to make him a facsimile of Adolf Hitler was the toothbrush mustache.
    ‘Into the bath with you, my lad,’ she told David gently as she caught up to him on the back stairs of their house. ‘If you hurry you’ll be in time to watch Noddy.’
    Cries of, ‘Oh, no, not Noddy!’ issued from the girls’ room to greet this remark. From their superior viewing standpoint David’s sisters felt duty bound to complain about their acute attack of Noddyitis each evening. Even so, there was no end to the lengths to which they would go to pamper and amuse their precious little brother, especially since he had been ill.
    The three children, their faces scrubbed and shining, their tummies full, (with the possible exception of David’s), lined up in their plaited plastic saucer chairs to take their daily dose of Noddy, Big Ears and Co.  The girls smiled tolerantly. David viewed the program with a huge amount of interest, being heavily into Noddy’s adventures.
    ‘I’m going to jump into the TV and play with Noddy, Mum,’ David would often tell Annie during the exciting evening program.
    His mother would laugh at her beloved little boy and tell him that wasn’t the way things worked. But David knew better and was aware that if he could manage to get inside the set, he and Noddy could race their pedal-cars all around the village to their hearts’ content.
    Annie, in her reclining chair with her eyes closed, her stomach heaving ominously, snatched a quiet moment. Soon Conrad would be home for his dinner. What would have gone wrong during the day? What sort of mood would he be in tonight?
    She moaned softly to herself, ‘Dear God, let it be all right. And if it isn’t, let me be able to handle it.’ Eternity seemed to drag by as she awaited her husband’s return for the evening.
    This had been her girlhood dream come true or should have been. To have babies and grow flowers and sew clothes for her children. To bake cup cakes for them, go to their school concerts, make their school uniforms, watch them walk down the aisle, hold their babies in her arms with a loving, sensitive man by her side.
    She exhaled deeply, trying to rid herself of the tumult in her