River: A Novel (9 page)

 Erasing his
erroneous confession of why he’d been forced to kiss me (as an emergency
life-saving tactic, apparently), I contemplated the coupling question again with
reluctance and handed him the sheet.

 He took his
time answering, seeming to struggle for words. I picked at what was left of my
pancakes; they were cold, but I hadn’t eaten anything before the doughnuts for how
long? Thankfully, he handed the paper over before theories of quantum mechanics
manipulated my brain. That was never pretty.

You used to be
confident, very sure of yourself. You were at home in your skin, and in this
way of life. When I saw you running toward me, you looked so frightened that I
hardly recognized you. And
you never miss rehearsal. Of
which, I think you are going to have a very contagious flu bug for the next
week. I will take care of everything—you
should
stay here.

 I could
only guess that the rehearsal bit tied in with the poster that was plastered up
outside the playhouse
.
He looked thoughtful for a second, as if he were having some
kind of internal debate, before adding to the page—

 
And you didn’t wear glasses.

 I was fairly certain
that was not what he’d intended to write.

..................

Enthusiastically
agreeing with Danny’s suggestion that I should stay incognito, I dressed in my
now clean clothing while he coded to the theater that I was extremely sick. Displaying
the coder, he demonstrated how to send dots and dashes through space on an
archaic-looking device reminiscent of a pager from 1988. Again, I was impressed
with how many people knew how to code. Before River, I’d always thought of it
as a dying art form, like removable type.   Dan was one of the few civilians
the Caravs, a group of people who remembered letters, passed their knowledge of
written language to. Suddenly, a very obvious quandary came to me.

 “How can
people code without learning the alphabet?” I couldn’t believe
I was just thinking of this now. Seriously,
did the Lulling kill brain cells, not just put them to sleep? Well, Dan had been
an active participant in the extinction of more than a few of those before, and
he may have some to spare, but I didn’t. I needed every ounce of my brainpower
and then some, especially if given the chance to get us back to New York.

 At that
moment, I had a déjà vu. When thinking of going home, I heard a voice from
memory telling me to go there. It was crystal clear for a microsecond before
the moment of clarity passed
,
leaving more aching frustration along with a chill covering my arms. Would
I ever remember how I got here? How to go home? Dan’s hand shoving paper into
mine brought me back to the present.

The first
thing we learn from our parents is signing. Signs are the fundamental language
here, which is why you must learn it, or else someone will catch on that you
are not the same. The Speakers came up with signing specifically for their
Mutes. The gestures are complete in their phrasing as sentences, or singular
meanings, like ‘apple’ or a person’s name—without signs for individual
letters. Names are given to the parents for their child at birth and every Mute
is
taught the code and sign for that name by Speakers, who are also the only
access to what language sounds like. No one in River has the same name, except
for some fathers
and
sons, as tradition. Coding is then taught to us in school and memorized as full
phrase meanings instead
of individual characters.
I
tested you last night with a shortened version of your name to
see if my theory
was right, that you were different
.
You
are
.

 My head started to throb
again. I kept staring at what
he’d written, with one part jumping out at me, a line that wouldn’t go
away: “
The Speakers came up with signing specifically for
their
Mutes
.”
The townspeople were considered possessions of the Speakers. Slaves. I was
abruptly furious, not only because it was deeply wrong, but because now I was
one of the enslaved.

 Dan became
my drill sergeant during the next twelve hours. I knew very little sign
language from one semester in high school, but the gestures were almost completely
different, anyway. As Dan had attempted to explain to me, their signing was even
more akin to pantomiming the dialect of an ancient tribe, whose language was
long forgotten and
very
difficult to learn. It was Latin and French
rolled together with a little Arabic mixed in, difficult. I wanted to give up
the first hour.

 “For crying
out loud, just turn me over to the damn mob and let them roast me on a spit! I’ll
never be able to do this,” I wailed.

 The end of
my whining trailed through Dan’s hand over my mouth, and I guessed my volume
grew louder with frustration. Danny had to translate words into sign, and then
make me try it without his hands as a guide. I looked like an inept magician
while he was a world class orchestra conductor. Deciding I was going about this
all wrong, I tried to forget everything I’d perceived about language and think
of signing with a clean slate. 

 During my
many demanded upon breaks, I finished reading what Danny had written that
morning and asked him any questions I could think of. There was only one puzzle
he had no answer to: if I wasn’t River Elodie, where was she? I tried to ignore
the fact that he was convinced we were the same person, and I thought of my
scar-free leg once again. Were we the same, and I’d had just lost my mind? I
skipped vocalizing that notion to Dan, still afraid of ending up in a padded
room. Instead, my questions veered toward his friendship with me. He was very patient,
maybe waiting for lightening to strike, for me to remember River. I think I began
waiting a little, too. 

 Or maybe
not.

 “So, what
you’re trying to suggest is that I was a…
diva
?” Me? I was a mouse. I
couldn’t fathom it. To everyone here, I was one of the stuck-up girls I
would’ve loathed? Dan just looked at me sheepishly. He must have been making
this up. Maybe more jokester was in there than I’d thought.

 He hadn’t
called me a “diva” exactly; he just described what River Elodie was like, the
facets of her personality. I was the one who had construed the stereotype. Afterwards,
he’d placated me a little, making her sound not
as
egocentric. He wrote a
bit sympathetically, I think, after watching me sulk over my previous pseudo-bitchiness
.

You were never
like that with me, Lodie, though you were stronger. You seem sort of frail now.
Like you could crumple with
the
wind
and
blow away
.

 I did feel a
bit ephemeral. It could’ve been due to the possibility that I might go to sleep
and wake up somewhere else entirely, or that the Speakers could vaporize me at
any given moment, or whatever it was they did after discovering a Mute who could
talk.

 “I just don’t
think I could act that way,” I argued around my icepack. The headaches were
getting ridiculous again, and I thought maybe I really was sick. I would be feeling
fine one moment and then swooning, as if I were a character from a nineteenth-century
novel in dire need of smelling salts, the next. A consequence of being a Lulling
neophyte, Danny explained.  

 It could’ve
been the dreams I’d been having, too. Running away constantly, or maybe it was
to
something. And then I would become completely paralyzed, unable to
wake myself up to stop that annoying alarm
clock, though Dan swore he never set an alarm; he had consistent insomnia here.
It was as if we had been flipped—Old Dan had always been able to conk out on a
sofa in the middle of a raging party. Sleep like a baby. I had been the one who
was always awake. Well, I would have to revert back to my former self to keep
up with the signing lessons.

 According
to Dan, the new me was much less intimidating, more approachable and pleasant. The
exceptions were the sort-of amnesia, the ability to vocalize my irritations, and
the inability to learn sign as quickly as he would’ve liked. We were already
behind schedule when I insisted on another break. While my headache was getting
worse, he wrote a little fact that I hadn’t thought of at all—I had parents
here. Real live ones who had birthed and raised me. The ice pack I’d been using
dropped to the ground. I held up the paper fiercely with both hands. “Are you
joking?” I whispered, my eyebrows crunching together. After staring blankly at
the page, I knew he was not.

 I wouldn’t
let him erase it until I believed. Everything else he had written was gone,
scrubbed out of existence. With my many questions, I’d started erasing the
evidence of our lopsided conversations in order for Dan to write answers
quickly.
 

 All of that
fell away. “Write everything you know, please,” I said evenly and cleaned my
glasses so that I wouldn’t miss a word.

..................

Dan could’ve
been writing for a while, but I was pretty sure I’d held my breath for most of
that time. I fidgeted, drank more coffee, looked around the kitchen for food I
wasn’t going to eat, and then finally, I paced. Was this what it was supposed
to feel like to have parents, to be a daughter? It felt a little like the panic
attack I’d had the day before. I’d lost track of time when hands rested on my
shoulders from behind me. Then I was spinning around to face the table, and the
paper on it. Dan began tapping on my collarbone.

 
B-R-A-V-E-R-Y
   

 A gentle
shove propelled me forward. My hands were shaking when I finally picked up the
paper, promptly losing my grip. I watched it flutter gracefully, catching only
a glimpse of the print before it landed face down on the hardwood floor. Taking
this for a sign, I straightened up and headed for the kitchen counter, deciding
another cup of coffee sounded good. It kept the headaches at bay, if not erased. 

 “Let’s work
on signing some more,” I suggested and
heard a deep, hollow breath behind me.

 Later that
night, the paper Dan had placed right-side up on the table was glaring my way. 
Dare you,
it goaded. I worked vigorously until I could forget about it. Danny
was an amazing teacher and unbelievably intelligent, having learned to
translate code and sign to letters in a matter of hours after a rudimentary
lesson from one of the Caravs. Though I was not as quick a study as Dan, his
ability to learn at light-speed gave me hope that I would be able to get by in
a few days, and not be burned at the stake—figurative and literal. My chances
would probably improve if I could get that piece of paper off my mind and concentrate.

 “Do you
think we should hide it? In case
you have a visitor?” If Danny got into trouble because of me,
well, I would throw myself in front of him screaming,
Take me instead!
It
would most likely be a grisly scene. I really didn’t want Danny to watch them incinerate
me, and then have to sweep up my ashes off his spotless floor. I chuckled darkly
at my rapidly increasing morbidity. Dan shook his head and touched
my
cheek, as though he could read my
mind and thought I was being
silly. He broke away to unlatch his front door,
pulling something inside that looked like a “Do Not Disturb” sign, only it was
code. I translated quickly:
ILLNESS
 
 

 “No one will
come in?” I tried not to sound anxious as he shook his head, his hair flopping
around. “For how long?”  

 Dan held up
his other hand, fingers spread wide. “Five days?” I guessed, my voice
quavering. “Then someone might come knocking?” He gave me a nod and a shrug. We
were in some sort of quarantine. I only had four more days to retrain my brain to
sign and think in a different language. My eyes widened. No more breaks. And I
wasn’t just making excuses to avoid a certain piece of paper.

 Not
surprisingly, insomnia took hold the night Dan unveiled that I could have parents
here in River. I tossed and turned for over three hours before deciding to give
up, get out of bed, and find out what I needed to know about River Elodie and
her… family. If I were ever going to be able to leave this apartment and keep
Danny safe, I had to play the part—become my own alias. I’d left the paper in a
kitchen cupboard, hidden under the coffee can, in case of unexpected visitors. Padding
through the hall, I slid a bit in my socks on the polished floor. The silence
was isolating. I was very much feeling disconnected from both the life I
thought I knew, and the one that had trapped me here. Like a stranger.

 The only
evidence of a breeze outside was flickers in square patches of light on the
floor. I was suddenly dying to look out the window. Everything not
in the apartment was still a mystery,
since Dan had left the curtains closed. Lips forming words was unheard of in
River, and sometimes he would mouth them to me.