Unspeakable (10 page)

She certainly hadn't gone out of her way to make him feel welcome. He got the impression that she was avoiding him. He could also be reading a lot more into her avoidance than it signified. She signed something to David, which he immediately protested. "There aren't any mosquitoes out here, Mom. I haven't got bit. Not once."

She said more. Whatever it was, David felt it prudent to obey. He slid off the seat of the swing and said to Jack, "I gotta go take my bath."

"Well, we guys gotta do what we gotta do. The sooner you do it, the sooner you get to bed, the sooner you can get up and swing again."

"Will you push me higher tomorrow?"

"We'll see." He gave David a high five.

His mother turned him about by the shoulders and gave the seat of his shorts an affectionate swat to direct him toward the porch. Then, to Jack's surprise, she motioned him in the same direction. He pointed to his own chest. "Me? Come inside?"

She gave a curt nod and, without waiting to see whether or not he would follow, she started in after her son. Curious, Jack fell into step behind her. "Yes, ma'am," he said out loud. Inside the entry, she pointed David upstairs. "What're you and Jack gonna do? Can I stay down here with y'all?"

She held up her index finger and mouthed one. A couple seconds later, she raised the second finger. Two.

"When she starts counting, I'm in trouble," David said.

"Better scoot then."

The boy turned and trudged up the staircase, calling down, "Good night, Jack."

" 'Night."

Anna motioned Jack down the central hallway. Rooms opened into the hall from both sides, but she gave him no time to stop and look into them as they went toward the back of the house, where she showed him into a small room tucked beneath the sloped ceiling behind the stairwell. One wall had a window with louvered shutters. Two other walls were lined with bookshelves. Against the third stood a desk, on which were set two keyboards, one belonging to the special telephone for Anna's use. The state provided a telephone network where the hearing-impaired could type information to an operator, who in turn would vocally relay the message to the hearing person on the other end. For messages sent to a deaf individual, the system worked in reverse.

The second keyboard belonged to a computer. The screen saver was on. Planets and meteors streaked across a starry sky.

She pointed him into a wide leather chair. He sat down and looked up at her expectantly. "Now what?" She held out her hand like a traffic cop. "Halt? Stop? Stay?" She nodded.

"Stay." He repeated the word and she repeated her nod, then she turned and left him alone. "Just call me Rover," he muttered, listening to her footfalls on the stairs and reasoning that she was going up to check on David and the progress of his bath. Delray, he assumed, was already in bed. He left the chair and began a slow circuit of the room, acknowledging his nosiness. But if she hadn't wanted him to look around, she shouldn't have invited him to come inside. The furniture wasn't new, but it was well polished. The leaves on the thriving ivies were glossy. Everything was in its proper place. The room was homey but uncluttered. Anna Corbett was a good housekeeper.

The book collection on the shelves showed an eclectic reading taste. There were numerous biographies and non-fiction books covering a wide range of topics, in addition to leather-bound volumes of classic literature and recent best-selling fiction paperbacks. On a lower shelf, he found a comprehensive sign language dictionary. Curious, he took it out and scanned the introductory pages. He was fascinated to learn that there was a difference between American Sign Language and Signed English. He had always thought that sign language was sign language. Apparently not.

According to the foreword of this dictionary, Signed English was based on using one sign for one word. Other signs, called word markers, designated plurality, tense, prefixes and suffixes, and other elements of English.

American Sign Language didn't equate to English either written or spoken. It was a language unto itself. One sign could translate to several English words with synonymous meanings. Some of the signs used in Signed English were taken from ASL so that users of Signed English could communicate with users of ASL. But the two were entirely different, and the advantages of one over the other was a topic of heated debate among deaf educators.

Jack read just enough to become confused. But he smiled when he glanced through a diagram of the manual alphabet and discovered that David had shown him correctly how to form the letters of his name.

There were also several pages of diagrams depicting common phrases. He tried out a few, and smiled again when he saw that Anna had signed " Thank you" and not an obscenity. He was practicing a few of the rudimentary signs when Anna rejoined him. She moved straight to him, took the book out of his hands, closed it emphatically, and replaced it on the shelf. More puzzled by her rudeness than miffed by it, he watched her sit down in the desk chair and work the computer mouse until she had a blank screen. She then typed what was apparently a message for him. He dragged a wooden ladder-back chair closer to the computer table, positioning it so that he could see the screen and she could see his face to read his lips. He straddled the seat backward.

On the screen she had typed, "Why were you having David teach you sign?" He shrugged. "I wanted to learn."

Her fingers moving faster than his eyes could follow, she typed, "Why?" The answer seemed obvious. He raised his shoulders in a second shrug. "What's the big deal?"

"You don't need to learn sign. If you have something to say to me, you can say it through David and Delray."

His eyes shifted from the computer screen to her. "Oh, I get it. This is your way of letting me know that we really don't have anything to say to each other."

She made a slight affirmative motion with her head.

"How come? When did you decide I wouldn't be a good conversationalist?" He could tell she'd missed the last word, so he made an adjustment. "When did you decide I wouldn't be good at conversation?"

Slender fingers tapped the keys with lightning efficiency. "Don't talk to me like I'm dumb. I'm deaf, not—"

Jack reached out and stopped her hands. Then he made the sign he had seen David question her about. Stupid. "I remember."

There was a lot of turbulence going on behind the spectacular blue irises of her eyes. He knew enough psychology to figure out that Anna Corbett liked to sting before she could be stung. It was an understandable defense mechanism. Human nature being what it is, Anna must have been teased by classmates in school. Even well-meaning adults could be thoughtless and tactless. She had developed her own method of self-preservation. She fought ignorance and cruelty by striking first.

"No one could think you're stupid," he told her. "What you are is a..." Reaching over the back of the chair, he used the hunt-and-peck system to type the word snob. She pushed his hand aside and reached for the computer's power button. "No way," he said, stopping her hands again. "That's too easy. You're going to listen... I mean you're going to hear what... Hell, you know what I mean."

He paused to take a breath and arrange his thoughts. She was regarding him with open hostility, but he didn't believe deafness gave her an excuse to be rude. Why should she have open season on him just because she couldn't hear?

"You've got this bug up your butt about being deaf—"

She frowned with misapprehension. The idiom had escaped her. He started over. "You've got this chip on your shoulder..." He paused and she nodded curtly, indicating that she understood.

"From the minute we met, I've been nice to you. You've treated me like shit. Now why is that?

Because I can hear and you can't?"

Furiously she shook her head no.

"Then why?"

She typed, "Because I'm afraid of you."

Jack was taken aback by the words that appeared on the screen. She couldn't have said anything that would have surprised or wounded him more. "Afraid of me?" Her eyes moved from his lips, up to his eyes, then she faced the computer screen again. "I'm afraid that it will hurt David when you leave. And Delray."

Jack smiled wryly. "I just got here. I'm not thinking about leaving."

"But you will," she typed, underlining the last word.

Her intent gaze was unnerving, but he answered her honestly. "Yeah. I will." She typed a short sentence. "When you go, they'll be sad."

"Why should they be sad?" he asked.

Her fingers hovered above the keys for a few seconds before she typed, "You fill a..." She struggled with the next word. Finally she consulted the well-used thesaurus that was sitting next to the keyboard. She typed "void," then looked at him, her eyes inquiring.

"That fits," he said. "What I mean is, that's the correct word. I'm not sure it's what you mean to say."

Nodding, she mouthed It is, then began to type again. "Delray was an unhappy man before he met Mary, my husband's mother. Mary was his second wife. His first wife had two sons when he married her. His stepsons were bad boys. They gave him a lot of trouble. Really bad trouble. After his wife died, he..." Again she paused to search for a word. Looking at Jack, she made an imperious motion with her hand.

"Pushed them away? Had nothing to do with them? Disowned them?" Nodding, she continued, "That was a long time ago. Delray pretends it never happened. He had a second life with Mary. He loved her very much. But she died. Then Dean. When Dean died, Delray withdraw."

"Withdrew," Jack corrected absently. He asked, "How did he die?" Jack read the words as they appeared on the screen. Dean Corbett was a soldier. He joined the army to supplement his education, never guessing that the U.S. would go to war during his active duty. He was sent from Fort Hood, Texas, to Iraq during Desert Storm. After the surrender, his unit remained behind to assist in the clean-up of Kuwait. He returned uninjured, but a casualty nevertheless.

"There was infection in his lungs because of the oil-well fires," she wrote. "One after another until he became very sick and died."

She stopped typing and Jack looked at her. "I'm sorry."

She gazed at him a moment, then down at her fingers, which were still resting on the keyboard. The grandfather clock in the central hallway struck the hour. Jack reacted. She did not. She dealt with her handicap so facilely it was easy to forget that her world was silent. Getting her attention, he asked, "David wasn't even born yet?" She smiled wistfully, then typed, "Three months after Dean died." Jack rubbed his knuckle across his lips. He supposed there were worse things than living alone all your adult life, as he had done. One of them had to be losing the father of your child before the child was even born. He wanted to ask if she would have reconsidered having David had she known she would be an early widow. But he didn't. He knew the answer. She would have wanted David no matter what.

She began typing again. "Delray has built his life a second time. I don't want him to hurt again."

"You are giving me more importance than I deserve, Anna. I won't hurt anybody." She was shaking her head even before he finished. "It won't be your fault. David wants a father. Delray misses his son." She looked at him and shrugged, the conclusion being obvious. Jack refrained from pointing out that when Dean died she had also lost a husband. He wondered if there was a man filling that void in her life.

Instead he asked, "Does David look like Dean?"

She stuck out her hand, palm down, and waggled it back and forth. She then got up and retrieved a leather-bound photo album from a shelf and brought it back to him.

The first picture in the album was of Anna and Dean on their wedding day. She was garbed in the traditional gown and veil, looking positively radiant. Dean had been a stocky, physically fit young man with an honest face like Delray's, but showing much more humor. It shone in his lively eyes. He wore a broad smile. Probably because he had been head-over-heels in love with his bride.

"The two of you looked real good together," Jack told her as he continued to turn the pages of the album. "Happy."

She nodded vigorously.

One group of pictures had been taken at a beach. "Honeymoon?" he asked. Again she nodded. There were shots of them together, sipping drinks with paper umbrellas in them. Dean, preening like a bodybuilder. Anna in a bikini, striking a cheesecake pose.

Jack studied the picture of her, tilting his head as though giving it an objective appraisal. When he glanced up at her, he grinned and bobbed his eyebrows. She blushed and kept her eyes lowered. He laughed.

Then he turned another page in the album and was arrested by the marked difference in the last collection of photos. They weren't the standard professionally posed wedding portraits, or the candid honeymoon snapshots. They were a series of black-and-white eight-by-tens. The first photo was of Dean Corbett. He was sitting almost in silhouette in an open window, staring out. The mood conveyed by the photo was noticeably different from the one taken of him on his wedding day. Gone were the smile and the liveliness. In this picture he looked aged, pensive, and very sad.

Anna typed, "He was sick. We were just about to leave for the hospital." Then she added, "For the last time."

What the portrait expressed so eloquently was that Dean Corbett had known he was dying, leaving behind his beautiful wife and unborn child.