Deafening (18 page)

Jim had taken off his muddy boots on the landing at the top of the stairs, but more mud was spattered up his trouser legs. He removed his jacket and came to stand beside her at the window and looked down and shook his head, and then he reached over and closed the dining-room curtains.

They stood, face to face. He was taller by four inches, and she looked up. As if in a dance, they turned, back to back. He tipped his head to rest against hers and she felt his wet hair. Then, they were face to face again. He placed both hands on her swept-up hair, and he hummed softly. She felt the hum and leaned forward. She put a hand to his throat. His skin was cool. He was always singing or humming. She pulled away to see if he wanted to speak.

She had taught him the alphabet and some of the sign language and he could make slow words, but they had also begun to create a
language of their own. It arose as naturally as the love between them, an invented code no one would ever break.

The tiniest flicker of her index finger resting against her dress and he moved to her side.

His name-sign, her gift to him—a
C
turning over to become an
H
that tapped once over her heart.
Chim.

And he, delighting in the new language of hands, returned a
G
close to his own heart.

When they were visiting Tress’s town friends in Deseronto, he brushed a fingertip over his lips and signalled across the room.
Now I’m going to take you home.
But it meant something else, too. Grania’s cheeks reddened furiously when he made this public-private display, though no one else had noticed.

In the tower apartment they lay on the blue blanket, the parlour curtains pulled back so that they could see the night sky. He lay beside her in the dark and she turned on her right side, where she could tuck in closely.

She wanted to talk. The room was dark unless there was a moon, but she did not need the moon. She closed her eyes and raised the fingers of her left hand to his lips. Though at first he was astonished, he understood and began to speak. His careful words fell into her fingertips and she whispered back and they conversed like this, side by side. She had been well taught; her hands and body remembered the countless times at school when she had sat on a chair facing her teacher.

“
Place your fingertips over my mouth. Lightly now. Feel the word. Now to my throat, back to the lips. Let the shape of the word fall into your fingers. Scoop it up with your hand.
”

He had never known a language that so thoroughly encompassed love.

She had never felt so safe.

He had quickly learned that she did not need full sentences in order to understand, that her ability to focus the immediate was extraordinary, that with lightning speed she was able to fill in the gaps. He saw query on her face, her reddish brows forming the barely discernible frown.

He watched her silence.

But Grania knew when she was being watched.

“Tell me,” he said. He wanted everything. He watched her brown eyes focus on his face, her glance as it darted to the background, right, left, back to his lips.
What did she see? He wanted to know.
“Tell me, so I’ll know. About being deaf. Start with the worst thing.” He leaned towards her, listening hard.

They were sitting on the blue blanket where they had brought their trays and eaten their breakfast. They could not be seen from the street below. The late-autumn sun warmed the room and he saw the varying shades of red in her hair as light fell across her.

“The worst thing?” She thought for a moment. “Not having information that everyone else has. No—worse is when information is withheld—the smallest detail—by someone who thinks it isn’t important enough to pass on.”

“More. Something I can’t know.”

She did not have to ponder this.

“The way I see the world.”

“No one sees so much.”

“The way I see is divided. Into things that move and things that don’t move.”

She saw the surprise on his face, watched him stow the information. This pleased her. “You could not have known that.”

“I do now.”

“It keeps me alive,” she said. “Movement and shadow. I rely on those. Mamo helped me, but I learned by myself, too. Maybe when I was a child—instinct.”
A horse moves, a swing, an auto, a gate, a cutter, a door, a branch in the woods, a running child. Wind moves;
it lifts, even sweeps objects from place to place.
She thought of Miss Marks during senior class at school, trying to explain the various meanings of sweep.

“The first time I saw you,” he said, “last year, in the bandage room at the hospital, I walked up from behind and didn’t realize you were deaf. But you didn’t move. No part of your body moved. You should have been surprised when you saw me. Anyone else would have jumped, they would have been startled.”

She watched and weighed the words.
Always a time lag.
“I remember. But you were not a threat. Not in that place. From the side, I could see Miss MacKay’s eyes flicker. When you approached.”

She reached across and touched his shoulder. They were face to face. She slipped her hand into his. “You tell something, something I can’t know about you.”

Tell.

He laughed. “You’ll never know how I sing. Sometimes I wish you could hear me.”

“I do know you can sing. You know the words to all the songs. Everyone tells me about your voice. You sing every time you’re near a piano. Your Grandfather Lloyd played the fiddle—you told me. Mamo likes to hear you play piano and sing when you are home—parents’ home—with me.” She corrected herself.
Married woman.
“You sing when you’re beside me. You hum most of the time. You think I don’t know?”

“You can’t know. You’ll never hear me sing,” he teased. “Did you hear me hum the ‘Sparkling Waltzes’ when we danced at our wedding at Bompa Jack’s?”

“I felt the hum. I watch your words. I see your fingers on the keys. I feel your song. I follow your body when we dance. That’s how I listen. I listen to your body.”

They did not talk about him leaving. She did not agree to the silence; there was simply nothing to say. He had finished his work with Dr. Whalen; he had stayed to help his uncle; he was going to
war. She believed that his Uncle Alex had exacted the promise to delay his departure in hopes that the war would be over by now. But the war was not over.

They did not think beyond the end of their time in the tower. They knew that on departure day, Jim would travel to Belleville and leave by the eastbound train. Eventually, when he reached the coast, he would cross the sea.

What Grania had to do was believe that he would come back. Once he was
over there
, he would write. He would not withhold information. Withholding meant keeping her out and that would be worse than everything else put together. He would keep back only what he would not be permitted to tell. If he wrote enough to enable her to create a picture of him there, she would be able to keep him close. He knew her in her setting, and that was what he would take away with him.

He wanted to tell her about sound.

“Ask,” he said. “Ask what you want to know.”

But she had no questions about sound. She would have to make some up. She knew he wanted to understand. She opened one of the narrow windows and saw that a new wind was blowing in off the bay. The tips of the trees that lined the street were waving in a commotion. A ruckus was like a commotion; Mamo had told her that. Father used to say to Grania and Tress and Patrick, when they were children, “Don’t make so much ruckus”—and that meant noise.

“The leaves,” she said—she was making the effort, to please him—“do they make a wild noise when they are like this?”

“Not exactly the leaves. The wind howls but not the leaves.”

She came back to the blanket and curled her feet under her, and wondered.
The wind howls. How many things did she not know? Many. But she knew that wolves howled along the edge of the woods near her grandfather’s farm on the Ninth. Bompa Jack had
gone outside and shot one with his rifle during the night because it kept coming too close to the barn. He told her that on a clear night the cry of the wolf was like the crying of a baby.

“Bompa Jack,” she said, “when the wolves howl, he feels their voices up the back of his neck.”

“Different kind of howl. The wind howls but it can change its sound. It all depends.”

It would
, she thought. She rested one index finger over the other, making the sign, and lowered her hands to her lap.
It all depends.
Sound was always more important to the hearing.

At night, they lay in each other’s arms, a light cover over them. The parlour curtains remained open so that if there was a moon, it could show itself. Grania positioned herself so that she could lie with her head on the soft part of Jim’s upper abdomen, just below his chest. For a while he sang softly so that she could feel his song. She knew the spot where it began, the origin of song, the onset of breath. The words circled on a thin column of air but were also connected to the low resonant place where she laid her head.

She was certain that she could identify Jim’s heartbeat from all heartbeats. It pulsed to her skin, and the rhythm of their breathing merged. He tucked an arm beneath her shoulders and her hair. It was a wonder to him, the way their bodies curled to each other after lovemaking; the way they fitted perfectly together in deepest sleep.

Grania had just returned from her work at the Red Cross office, where she volunteered one afternoon a week. After Jim’s departure, she would work two. Jim had been up inside the clock tower and had worked at jobs around the building most of the day. For a brief moment when she came into the apartment, they felt as if they were in their own place. The night before, they had talked about having a home after the war, after he would come back. They would have a
baby. Two babies, or three. They had allowed themselves to speak of that. And they both laughed when Grania told Jim that he would have to listen for their sounds, that he would have to describe every noise their babies would make. Even their cries, their early cries.

Jim hung up her coat for her. “Is it good,” he said, “to come home? To turn your attention off, relax? So you don’t have to be alert to everyone’s lips around you?”

“No,” she said, but she felt the word rise as she was about to explain.
Control the voice
, said the other voice in her head, the one that slipped in unbidden. “No. Most of the time, I
am
turned off. Only when I want to make the effort, that’s when I turn on—that’s when I’m most alert.”

She unpinned her hat and moved towards him. But she saw his surprise.
Dulcie comes up for air and sees the look on his face.
She thought of the earless cutout girl who wore a bathing suit and used to live in the closet drawer next to the catalogue ladies.

Once again, Jim had misunderstood what he thought he knew. It was a mystery then, the silence where she lived. Somewhere between wilful and involuntary attention. Where, despite frustrations large and small, she pulled into her own space.

She saw his disappointment.

“It’s what I learned in childhood,” she said. “It’s easy to let things fall away. To choose what to attend to and what not.”

He saw how comfortable she was in her inner place, how private and peaceful. With him, she allowed this to be seen. When she wanted to focus on the world outside herself, she stopped and made sense of the situation. After that, she let in the extra cues.

The glimpse she allowed was enough. The inner place was one he could never know. It was the source of her strength, her stillness; he saw that. Despite all that she told him, despite all of the questions she tried to answer, he understood that he was outside of that place. But when he was away from her, he felt his own strength move towards her, in the same way that he felt hers moving towards him.

“What else?” he said. They were walking along Main Street, arm in arm, in the afternoon sun.

“When there are more than two people in a room, if hearing people are talking and change the subject, the deaf person in the room doesn’t know. We are back in the old conversation, left behind.”

“Explain.” He turned towards her.

“We don’t hear the asides, the sudden shifts. We can only watch one pair of lips at a time. If someone speaks when we’re not looking, well…”

He nodded, taking in what he had never known.

Grania carried her box camera in her free hand. Near the end of town, they passed the side-by-side verandas of the hotel and her parents’ home. How strange to be an outsider looking in. Someone of, yet not of, her own family.

No one could be seen inside; the hall and parlour lights were off. From the street she saw only shadows and the dark angle of the piano. One evening, after she and Jim had had supper with the family, everyone—even Father—walked back through the passageway and into the parlour, and Jim sat on the round stool before the piano and played. He did not need sheet music; he could play by ear. His grandmother had taught him the notes when he was a child, and he had learned to chord by himself. His long fingers looked as if they were floating across the keys. Grania had stood beside him and watched song come from his lips. She’d placed one hand on his shoulder and the other on the top panel of the piano. Her body had stilled as she’d allowed his music to enter her.

From the street, it was easy to imagine the rooms inside the house and where everyone would be. She created pictures of Mamo, Mother, Tress, Father, Bernard, Patrick, confident of what each would be doing at four o’clock on a weekday afternoon. She tightened her grip on Jim’s arm. She was independent now.
Married woman.
But during the summer, when Jim travelled to Deseronto to speak to her parents, there had been barely
restrained conversations that Grania thought of as:
What is going to happen next?

“Of course you will come home.” That was Mother. “You can’t live somewhere alone as a married woman while Jim is away at the war. Where would you live? What if a stranger came to your door? What if we had to contact you? What if you were in danger?”