The Sound of Us Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Acknowledgements

  Titles by Sarah Willis

  The Sound of Us

  A Good Distance

  The Rehearsal

  Some Things That Stay

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario M4V 3B2, Canada

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Books Ltd., 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia

  (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty. Ltd.)

  Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr. Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany, Auckland 1310, New Zealand

  (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty.) Ltd., 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196,

  South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2005 by Sarah Willis.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “B” design is a trademark belonging of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  eISBN : 978-0-425-20970-7

  1. Custody of children—Fiction. 2. Cleveland (Ohio)—Fiction. 3. Single women—Fiction.

  4. Child abuse—Fiction. 5. Girls—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3573.I4565557S68 2005

  813’.54—dc22

  2005041103

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For Matt and Moira,

  with all my love.

  Chapter One

  The girl lying on the exam table is fourteen and bone thin, elbows and knees like pipe fittings. Her mother stands in a corner of the small room, arms crossed. When she first dragged her daughter into the clinic she said, “I want to know if my baby’s pregnant,” but she has hardly said a word since then. The information that I got from the Hearing and Speech Center was that the girl, Beatrice, is deaf and uses ASL at the school she attends, but that her mother only knows a few signs. At this moment every inch of her face is tight with anger. I have just signed the words Test exam same. Pregnant you. Eight weeks, ten weeks, between.

  “You can sit up now, Beatrice,” Dr. Franklin says, and again, I interpret. The doctor switches off the lamp, swiveling it out of the way. With four people in the room there’s little space left to move around and it’s uncomfortably close.

  Beatrice points to the doctor. Sure? Her eyes are tearing up. I want to look away. Most of my interpreting jobs are at schools and colleges. This is the first time I have had to tell a child that she’s pregnant. And her mother’s certainly not helping me any. I ask the doctor Beatrice’s question, and he nods.

  “Sorry,” he says. “I’m quite sure.”

  As I sign sorry, I feel the word inside me.

  I can’t help thinking that this girl should have been under better supervision, and not because she’s deaf, but because she’s at such a vulnerable age. If I can see the danger she could get into, why couldn’t her mother? If I had children, I’d know where they were at all times.

  Beatrice sits up awkwardly, making sure the blue paper robe covers her thighs. I hear the sound of the paper crinkling and wish this clinic had something soft and warm to cover this child.

  “We’ll give you a prescription or prenatal vitamins,” Dr. Franklin says, “so Medicare will cover it. You need to make monthly appointments for the first five months, then we’ll see you—”

  Beatrice’s mother bumps into me as she moves between the doctor and the exam table, her back to her daughter. “My baby will need an abortion,” she says to Dr. Franklin. The minute I start to sign she turns and grabs my hands. Her grip is tight. “Don’t you signify what I’m saying, lady,” she says. “He can hear me just fine.”

  It happens so quickly. I try to pull my hands away, but she holds on tight. I am completely freaked out by this woman grasping my hands. “Let go of me! This is my job!”

  Her face is inches from mine. I can smell her. “I’m talking to the doctor. This is my baby we’re talking about. You understand?”

  My heart pounds in my chest. I hear Dr. Franklin say, “Hey! Hey!”

  “Let go of me!” I tug harder, and she lets go so quickly that I fall backward against a cabinet. Something clatters to the floor. Dr. Franklin steps between us. It’s so crowded, our movements seem like some strange dance, as if we’re caught in a savage box step.

  “Don’t you ever do anything like that in here again!” Dr. Franklin says. “Do you understand? We’ll leave the room now and let Beatrice get dressed. We don’t do abortions. If you’d like to come for prenatal care, make an appointment with the receptionist.”

  I’m still thinking about this woman grabbing me, and can’t think straight. What did he just say? How can I interpret it? My hands are shaking. I’ve never not signed what I should have.

  “Yeah, you go on,” Beatrice’s mother says, motioning me with her head to get lost. I want to give her the finger, but I’m not that stupid.

  I look at Beatrice. She looks horrified. I raise my hands and point to the doctor. He say we all leave room now. Clothes-on you now. My signs are slow and deliberate. Her mother watches me carefully. I could say something nasty to her that I bet she would understand, and the doctor would never know.

  Beatrice nods slowly, obviously confused by what’s happening. Dr. Franklin and I leave the room, closing the door behind us.

  In the hallway, a nurse walks by with a specimen slide, and at a small desk a physician’s assistant takes an old man’s blood pressure. I feel as if I’m in one of those movies where meteors are about to destroy the earth, but no one has been told. I want everyone to know what just happened to me.

  “I’m sorry,” Dr. Franklin says, p
utting a hand on my shoulder. I hate being touched and he must sense this because he takes his hand away. “Are you all right?”

  I’m shaking and furious, but not hurt. Still, I rub at my wrists. “I’m okay, but, Jesus, she wants her daughter to get an abortion without telling her. Can she do that?”

  “Let’s hope not.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  I want him to do something, because I can’t. Ethically, I can’t pull Beatrice aside and tell her what I think her mother might do. I spent years at Gallaudet getting my masters in ASL Interpreting, taking two different classes on ethics alone: I am not to get involved, only interpret accurately.

  “I’m sorry she did that,” the doctor says again. “You’re all right?”

  I nod, and he walks off. I have to wait here for Beatrice to come out in case she has some questions, which I doubt, but my job is to interpret for her until she’s done at the clinic. After Beatrice leaves the building, I’ll be free to go wash my hands, physically and figuratively.

  The door to the exam room opens and they come out, the mother holding her daughter’s thin upper arm so tightly that I bet it’ll leave a mark. Pulling Beatrice down the hallway, she looks right into my eyes as she passes, silently daring me to say anything. What can I say? Hey, bitch, you’re a lousy mother? They didn’t have to tell us in ethics class that we weren’t to call our clients bitches. Then again, Beatrice’s mother isn’t my client.

  Just before they turn into the next hallway, Beatrice looks back at me. She’s in tears, and then she’s gone.

  Outside, it’s hot and humid, and when I open the door of my Corolla, which has been parked in the sun for two hours, the pent-up heat is stifling, the steering wheel too hot to touch. Turning on the car and starting up the air-conditioning, I sit on the edge of the seat, leaving the door open, my feet on the sticky pavement. My hands still tremble as I take out my cell phone and call Polly at work. I’m not supposed to talk about the details of an interpreting job to anyone except my supervisor, but Polly’s my best friend. I need to talk to her. My supervisor is only going to be upset at me for not signing something I should have.

  “Jesus, Alice,” Polly says after I tell her what happened. “What a wacko. That poor girl. I know you wanted to do more, but, really, there’s nothing you could do but get out of there. I’ll come over after dinner.” She’s speaking in a rushed whisper. I hear phones ringing, people talking. She’s the assistant to the mayor of Cleveland.

  “No, no, I’m okay. Don’t bother. Really. I’m fine.” Polly’s daughter Rachel is heading back to Boulder in two days, and I don’t want to take up time they could spend together. “I have to finish reading that book for my book club.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, call me, if you need me.”

  “Tell Rachel I said Love.”

  “I will.”

  Rachel’s deaf. I met Polly when she and her husband, Patrick, came to the Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center where I was teaching sign language classes when Rachel was first diagnosed. Now Rachel attends the University of Colorado. She’s smart, just like her sister, Nora, who’s not deaf. Polly’s going through that empty-nest syndrome thing. I miss her kids, too.

  Next I call my supervisor, Elaine, to report the incident. “You should have signed even if your hands were shaking,” she says.

  I say, “I know,” hang up, and throw the phone against the backseat. Screw her. She wasn’t there.

  The car has almost cooled down. It’s three o’clock on a Thursday afternoon in mid-July. This is really my vacation time, but I’m through going on vacations by myself, trying to pretend I’m thrilled to learn about the mating habits of whales or hiking with strangers in the Grand Canyon. Now I just stay here, where my friends are, take on a few jobs until the schools start again.

  I drive home, my teeth tight, unable to shake off the experience at the clinic. But turning the car onto my street comforts me, the sight of my house loosening my hunched shoulders. It’s a plain white colonial, but it’s mine and I’ve lived here for ten years now. The front lawn is perfectly green, the hose roping across the grass, the sprinkler a metal frog lying on its back, an odd little thing I found in an odd little shop last week. I need to move it to the back lawn, get the ground good and wet. I’ve got three dozen perennials in pots to plant back there. It’s not the right time to plant them—early spring or late fall would be best, the man at the garden center told me—but I’ve got it in my head to plant a perennial garden, and I don’t want to wait.

  Across the street, the widow Mrs. Myerson’s daylilies are a wide band of orange trumpeting summer. Along the sides of her walkway is a rainbow of snapdragons, and both trees on her lawn are surrounded by yellow marigolds. My garden is going in the backyard where no one can see it. I need to see how I do with this flower thing before I put it on display.

  The man with the horse dogs and the baby is just crossing my drive, and I wave hello. He has two Great Danes, and a new son, whom he carries in a pouch across his chest. I never see his wife, just him and the dogs, and now him and the dogs and the baby. We have said hello for years—he lives a few streets over—but I don’t know his name. He is just the man with the horse dogs, as Vince’s son Bruce nicknamed him. Seeing the horse dogs reminds me of Bruce, which reminds me of Vince. I miss him so badly.

  As I park my car and get out I hear the sounds of my neighborhood: the muffled afternoon soaps coming from Mrs. Linley’s window, which looks out over my driveway; the shush, shush, shush of the sprinkler in the yard to the left of my house where the Boncheks live; the annoying loud drone of a leaf blower somewhere; the faint sounds of children calling each other. My hand spells Come on! and I know I must have heard those words, although I wasn’t aware of it.

  There are in this neighborhood the man with the horse dogs, the widow with the daylilies, the Orthodox Jewish family with five kids, the college kids who rent the side-by-side duplexes, the old retired couple, the man and woman from Hungary who grow tomatoes in their front yard, and me, the tall, white-haired lady without kids who occasionally sits on her front porch in the white wicker chair, reading a book.

  Some life, Vince says.

  Shut up, I say. It’s my life.

  Yeah, like I said. Some life.

  Even when he was alive he never shut up.

  When I was fourteen, I got a book at the library about the life of Helen Keller, and learned the manual alphabet that was printed in the back. I began finger-spelling people’s names as I met them, words on signs, things I was thinking, forming the letters with my left hand down by my thigh like signing a secret. When I was young, my hand would ache at night when I went to bed and I’d tell myself that I had to stop this, as if I had picked up a bad habit like smoking cigarettes. But the habit stuck. When I entered Gallaudet, I could finger-spell like all get out. At least I never took up smoking.

  Growing up, I took ballet lessons, painting lessons, acting lessons, always moving on to the next thing within a year, believing I could never be great at what I was trying to do, but that I might be great at something else. At Ohio University, I majored in English for no particular reason, and minored in dance. After college I danced in a small company that paid almost nothing, and worked mornings as a secretary in a real estate office. I was neither a great dancer nor a great secretary. It wasn’t until my midtwenties that I went to a play where an interpreter signed, and it occurred to me that signing for the deaf was an occupation, and one my hand had been training me for all these years. I was accepted into Gallaudet, where I found that sign language came naturally to me. Suddenly, I had a skill, a career, a passion, and a feeling of power.

  Standing in line at the grocery store, I felt special. I knew something no one else knew.

  I moved to Cleveland, following a man I thought loved me. We had lived together in Washington, D.C., for almost three years while I was at Gallaud
et, and as well as I had learned to read faces, I ignored that quick moment of surprise on his when I told him that I’d move with him to Cleveland, where he had just gotten a job. Six months after we moved here, he left and I stayed. Cleveland is only a few hours from Columbus, where my parents still live in the same house I grew up in. Housing is cheap, and there’s a good, strong, Deaf community with plenty of jobs for an interpreter. His name was Jeff. I’ve dated two Jeffs since then, and men with other names, too.

  Yeah, all hands-off stuff, Vince says.

  My brother just won’t give it a rest.

  I’m a twin, but not identical, although I once wished I were. When Vince and I were six, I’d make him wear my clothes, little pink dresses with crinoline slips and pinstriped pinafores. We could make each other do anything. Together we were fearless; a competition and a team all in one. When we were eight, Vince cut my hair as short as his and rubbed my father’s brown shoe polish into my lighter, dirty blond hair. I thought it looked great. My father grounded us, but my brother loved me for it.

  My hair turned white when I was thirty-three. Vince teased me for a year until he suddenly went white himself. It looked good on him. It made him look more serious than he was, smarter, like wearing glasses might for some people.

  He was hit by a car and killed five months ago on Valentine’s Day, at age forty-seven, while walking across a busy street, sipping steaming hot hazelnut-flavored coffee out of a paper cup. There was a slash of burn across his right cheek that might have scarred him if he hadn’t died. The car hit him at fifty miles an hour in a thirty-five-mile-an-hour zone.

  Vince had been married twice—the second time, he had two sons, Bruce and Dylan. When he got divorced, his ex-wife Cindy left the boys with Vince so that she could go to Hollywood. She made two commercials in two years, then married someone else. The someone else didn’t want someone else’s kids, although Bruce and Dylan visited her occasionally. Now, of course, they live with her in Arizona. Vince made a living painting houses during good weather. In winter he plowed driveways. He drank and smoked pot, and always called me after he’d done one or the other.