Love in Many Languages

by Jamie Bennett

  Augusta and her baby Phoebe came in quickly. “Oh, it feels good in here, so nice and cool,” Augusta said, and sighed in happiness. Then she coughed. “That ointment smells like something. I can’t place it.”

  “Herbs? Plants?” I pulled on some old shorts, too, because she was looking at my bare legs with a questioning eye.

  Augusta sniffed again. “No, it’s kerosene. Is that what it’s made of? God, I hope not.”

  I did too, because I really thought it was working. “Thanks for bringing the baby.” I leaned and gave Phoebe a quick kiss on her silky red hair. “I missed seeing her. I’m pretty sure it’s not kerosene.”

  “Well, I’m not going to light a match around you, just in case.” Augusta put Phoebe down on the floor, and she immediately used the giant box to pull herself up to a stand. We clapped for her and she smiled widely. Then she took off in a wobbly run and explored every room of the ground floor of my house before she settled back down on a blanket Augusta rolled out. We covered it in toys out of the giant bag they had brought with them.

  Augusta threw herself down on the blanket, too. “Long day for us. Music class, the park, no nap. For her,” she corrected. “I fell asleep on the floor next to her playpen for a while.” She sniffed the air. “Besides the smell of you, I smell something good.”

  “I made dinner,” I explained. It had been hard again, with the one arm thing, but I could use my right hand a little, and I was getting steadier with my left. “Cold beet soup. Don’t make a face, it’s delicious! Very refreshing for the summer, but I think you’re smelling the rolls. I bought the dough, I’m just baking them.” I was not ready to try kneading.

  “I’m impressed,” Augusta told me. She raised herself up on one elbow. “What’s in the box?”

  “Furniture. Cooper is going to come over later to help me put it together but I was trying to get it open and lay out all the pieces.” Phoebe pushed herself up to a stand and took off again. “I’ve got her,” I said, and Augusta put her head back down, using a teddy bear as a pillow.

  “My days at home seem much longer than my days at work,” she said, as I followed her daughter into the dining room. “But when I look back, I can’t believe how much time has passed. How much bigger she is. Isn’t that funny?” She yawned. “Even funnier is that if I closed my eyes, I could go asleep at this exact moment.”

  Phoebe was attempting to climb on the box of my grandmother’s belongings that Cooper had brought down from the studio. “This is a box full of things that belonged to my grandma,” I told her in Polish. “Her name was Marja, almost like your grandmother, Mary. Your Grandma Mary is very sweet. She’s your mom’s mother. Your father’s mother, Diana, is a czarownica.” Phoebe looked at me, fascinated. “I’ll teach you this language, króliczku. Would you like that?”

  “What are you saying to her?” Augusta asked.

  “I’m saying that your mother-in-law is a witch.”

  “Well, you got that right. But only say it to Phoebe in Polish.” She patted the big box. “Tell me more about the furniture. And Cooper coming over.”

  I didn’t know how he was doing it, with everything else in his life, but somehow Cooper had carved out time for me in his busy days. On Monday, after he had dropped me off at home, he had gone back to work but come by again on his way back from Japanese class, and my house was not on his way home at all. On Tuesday, I had made it through the whole day at work, and he picked me up to drive me home. I was sure he had cut off his own day early to do it. I had fallen asleep in his car and he carried me in again. And tonight he would come, for dinner with me.

  “He carries me,” I told Augusta.

  “Like, in his arms?” Her eyebrows shot up. “Like in a princess movie?”

  I started to answer, but there was screaming outside. I rushed as fast as I could to the window.

  Sania’s two little girls were in their front yard in their bathing suits, playing with a sprinkler. They were shrieking as they ran under the high arc of water and it rained down on them. I had never heard them make so much noise, but Sania didn’t seem angry. She was sitting on her steps and watching them, laughing.

  “Remember doing that?” Augusta asked me, and I did, playing with the grandkids of our neighbors in that exact spot in their yard. The grandkids had moved out to the suburbs with their parents a long time ago, now. It was nice to see kids out there again.

  “Let’s bring Phoebe out and let her play,” I said, and Augusta nodded.

  “Like you, Phoebe’s not averse to public nudity,” she told me, as she stripped the baby down to her diaper. “Can she join them?” she called to Sania, as we stepped out into the breathless heat outside.

  Sania called something to her daughters, and the older one walked over and took Phoebe’s hand. “This is Mita,” Sania told Phoebe, who trotted off happily with the slightly bigger girl. Phoebe didn’t quite know what was going on as the water dripped down on her and the three of us adults all laughed at the shock on her face. But she quickly adapted and soon all the little girls were laughing and soaked.

  Sania walked over to us and I introduced her to Augusta. They talked about mom things for a while, and then Sania sniffed. “It smells like you’re using my balm,” she said to me.

  I nodded. “I really like it. I think it’s helping the bruises and it feels so nice on my skin.”

  “What’s it made out of?” Augusta asked curiously, and Sania filled us in. No kerosene.

  “I’ll bring you something else for this,” Sania said, and ran her fingers over her own cheekbone to indicate what she meant. My fingers went to my cheek. “What cut you?” she asked.

  “Maybe glass.” I looked at the two little girls splashing each other, while Phoebe had plopped herself in the grass and watched, mesmerized.

  “It doesn’t look like an accident,” Sania said. “It looks like it was on pupose, I think with some kind of blade.”

  My hand flew to my face. “You think he did this deliberately?”

  “Maybe…” Sania looked past me, at Augusta. “I don’t know. I was just guessing.”

  “Ione, is that soup ready?” Augusta asked, her voice kind of loud, but very upbeat. “I would love to try some! Sania, Ione made beet soup!” she continued, and it sounded just like she was teaching kindergarten.

  “I’ll get it,” I said, and went inside to the cool kitchen. I stayed a minute in there, because suddenly I was imagining it. I had been unconscious, at his mercy. He could have done anything to me. With a knife, he had—

  “Ione?”

  My whole body convulsed in fear and I couldn’t speak for a moment. “In the kitchen,” I managed to say.

  “Can you bring a towel out here for Phoebe? She’s getting cold and I don’t want her to drip on your floor,” Augusta requested.

  I found a towel and brought out two mugs of soup for Sania and Augusta to try, holding the handles in my shaking left hand. They both drank it and asked for more, and the second time I carried out the mugs, my hand wasn’t shaking.

  ∞

  A while later, I was watching and listening for Cooper’s car. He had texted that he was going to be a little late, but time was ticking by. I wondered for a moment if he was going to come at all, but then I remembered that it was Cooper. Of course he would come. I had spent some time after Augusta left talking on the phone with Ash, the police officer I had met at the party where we had both been sad about the people we wanted, who didn’t want us. He had been checking in with me in a regular way, keeping me updated—but really, there were no updates, so mostly he just asked how things were going with me. He had given me the name of a psychiatrist who helped people who had been victims of trauma.

  “I was involved in a shooting,” he had explained to me briefly. “I needed to talk to someone and this guy helped.”

  Another car passed, but it wasn’t Cooper’s practical, dark blue car that didn’t show much dirt, with the wide door openings that made it easier for his mom to get in and out
. And the excellent gas mileage, and the structural elements that made it very safe in a crash. He had explained all its great qualities but he didn’t have to convince me. I liked it because it reminded me so much of him.

  Finally, a car turned up in my driveway, and after again I checked to make sure, I pulled open the door to wait for him. Cooper walked up my path in the measured, steady way that he always did. I just wanted to throw my arms around his neck, so I did, but only the one arm.

  “Hi,” he said, sounding very surprised. “Are you ok?”

  I nodded and kept hugging him. “I’m glad to see you.”

  He wasn’t hugging me back, but his arms were full, and also, I knew he wasn’t into me like that. But I was happy to be close to him.

  “Hang on, let me put all this down,” he told me. I walked backwards into the house and he set the things he was carrying on top of the box of furniture parts that Augusta had helped me to open and unload. Cooper put his hands on my shoulders. “Are you really ok?”

  “Yes.” I stepped forward and hugged him again. “If you lived here, every time you came in, I would hug you like this,” I said.

  His arms went around me, too. “That would be an exciting way to come home.”

  “Didn’t your old girlfriend just hug you all the time?” I asked, my cheek against his chest. No one would be bothered by my scar with it pressed against him. But I didn’t think that Cooper had really noticed it, anyway.

  He laughed, his low laugh, and it vibrated in my chest too. “No, she did not. Neither of us was very physically demonstrative.”

  How could she have helped herself? “I am.”

  “I can tell.” He laughed again. “What smells so good?” His stomach growled and I stepped back.

  “It’s our dinner. Come eat.” He picked up the bottle of wine that he had been carrying and followed me into the kitchen.

  Cooper practically guzzled the soup. “That was delicious. Tell me how to say it again.”

  “Chlodnik,” I said slowly.

  “Wad knee,” he said carefully back.

  “Very good,” I said, and he smiled at me.

  “Don’t patronize me, Ione Szczupakiewicz.” He said that carefully, too. “I got enough of that in Japanese class tonight. Every time I didn’t drool as I spoke, Gin said ‘Yoda decided Mazda’ to me, like it was an important accomplishment.” I knew he meant yoku dekimashita, good job. Cooper took another roll. “We all missed you in class. It wasn’t the same without you there.”

  “Really? Everyone missed me?” I asked.

  “Gin did, because there was no one to call on for the right answer anymore.”

  That made me so happy I almost fell out of my chair. I had been the student with the right answers. I was beaming with pride.

  “And I missed you,” Cooper continued, “because there was no one to pass notes to, except that woman who always wanted to talk about her daughter in Okinawa. It wasn’t as fun at all because when she wrote back, I never had to stop to wonder if she was writing in English or Japanese.”

  “Ha ha,” I told him.

  “I have something for you.” He went into the living room and came back with an envelope and a bag. “This is from the class,” he said as he handed me the envelope.

  There was a beautiful card inside with Japanese characters on the front. “What does it say?” I asked, running my fingers over it.

  “Gin wrote it inside for you.”

  “O daiji ni,” I read. “Get well soon.” Everyone in the class had signed it and written little notes, too, mostly in English with a few words in our broken Japanese. “This is wonderful!”

  Cooper passed me a napkin and I wiped my eyes. “Everyone really missed you,” he said again. “You know that today was the last class.”

  “I know.”

  “I was thinking, I should probably take it again. I didn’t learn too much.”

  “You did!” I said immediately. “You learned a ton.”

  “Maybe when it’s offered again in the fall, we could both sign up. I’ll probably need the tutoring and you could get what you missed.”

  I nodded slowly. “Maybe. I was looking for my notebook from class, but Karis went through the studio the other day and she couldn’t find it.”

  “Have you been in there yet?”

  I suddenly felt itchy and jumpy, and my heart started pounding. “No. Not yet. Karis searched everywhere, though, and I know she’s very thorough.” I saw the notebook again in my mind, the turquoise cover being ground under the black rubber sole of his boot.

  “Ione?”

  I realized that I was staring into space, with my mouth partway open. “Sorry. I was thinking of something else.” I stumbled over the words.

  “Your notebook got, um, ruined. I’m sure it was thrown away.”

  “Because he stomped on it?”

  “Because of…blood.”

  I nodded and felt my heart beat harder. “Ok. Sure. That makes sense. But it makes me feel,” I started, but stopped, because again, I couldn’t identify the emotion. “Scared.” That didn’t really cover it.

  “Here.” Cooper now handed me the bag. “This may not make you feel better right now, but I hope you’ll like it. And I’m here, so I don’t want you to be scared. Because I won’t let anything happen, and you have all the locks, and the alarm.”

  “Thank you. Yes.” I waited for my heart to slow down.

  “Open it,” he prompted me, and I reached into the bag and pulled out a book.

  I read the title. “Beginning Kanji,” I said, and looked up at Cooper. “This is to learn Japanese writing?”

  “I thought you could start. I know you’re having trouble holding a pen, but maybe you could start reading it, studying it, and then when you’re ready you can try it.”

  I ran the fingers of my right hand, the one that wasn’t working very well, over the title again. “Thank you. I love this. Thank you for remembering how much I wanted to learn to write in Japanese.”

  “You’re welcome.” He cleared his throat. “At the time you told me that, I thought you sounded a little crazy. I didn’t understand your facility with languages. And with art. The writing looks like art to me.”

  “Now you think I can do it?”

  “I’m sure you can,” he told me, and I got that rush of happiness and pride again, that drove out the terrible feeling that had been sitting like a weight on my chest. “There’s something else in the bag.”

  I pulled out a notebook, very similar to the one I’d had for our class but with a blue cover. I looked up at Cooper.

  “Open it.”

  I did, and discovered a page covered in my own handwriting.

  “You gave me your notes,” Cooper explained. “I copied them, and mine, and put them in here for you. For the next time we take the class. You’re already all set.” He paused. “Ione?”

  “It’s the nicest present I’ve ever gotten, ever, in my whole life.”

  “Is that why you’re crying?”

  It was definitely one of the reasons, but some of the others remained just out of my reach.

  Chapter 12

  I pulled down the long sleeve of my shirt and wished it were cooler. I would have worn a sundress with no straps and fabric that flowed around me, but that wasn’t the best choice for tonight. For one thing, I had wanted to wear a sensible bra for Augusta, and for another, I had wanted to cover as much of myself with as much fabric as I could. I just felt like I needed to.

  I set the alarm and locked the doors, but something felt off…shoes! I went back inside to get them and grabbed my purse at the same time.

  It was strange to drive again. I had decided that I needed to get behind the wheel, if I had one arm to do it or two. My left arm was definitely more capable than it had been but I drove very slowly, extremely slowly, over to Augusta’s parents’ house. My Gremlin felt very low and sounded very loud after all the time I had spent in Cooper’s car. He had been picking me up after work almost every
day, and he would have been picking me up before work also, but Karis had said that she and Reid wanted to do it. I liked spending time with all of them, but I didn’t like not being able to do things myself. I hadn’t realized before how important that was to me. I missed it.

  Tonight Augusta’s parents were having a party for Reid, their nephew, and Karis. They had wanted to throw a big engagement party a few months ago, but Karis’ dad had gotten pneumonia and it had been pushed off until now. Karis had been extremely nervous about this party all week, because she didn’t like the social aspect of things very much. She tended to stop speaking in front of strangers or make unusual hand and arm gestures, but Reid was going to stay with her. Many of the people coming were members of his big family and she was already relaxing around them a lot more, too.

  I finally made it to the house, in about twice the time that it had taken me before, and handed my keys to the valet. I stopped before I went in, admiring the way the light played off the vines on the façade, wishing I could sketch it. There would probably be a lot of interesting faces here tonight. I would just try to remember them, for when my arm was back. I was doing a little writing, but I couldn’t move right to really draw or paint.

  Augusta’s mom found me immediately when I came in. “Oh, Ione. I’m so happy to see you well! That was a very frightening time.” She hugged me, gently. “Thank you for coming.”

  “Thank you for inviting me,” I answered.

  “Let’s find Karis, shall we?” she asked. “I don’t think she’s enjoying herself very much. I know she isn’t really a party person but I’m hoping she can relax tonight and have fun.” Mrs. Wheeler put her arm through my left one and led me through the crowd.

  Unlike Karis, I had enjoyed myself very much when I had been at their house before. They always had delicious food, and beautiful music, and, although it was never quite as exciting as some of my former parties had been (in that no one ever tried to climb the chimney, or other things of that nature), everyone had a good time talking and socializing together.

  Karis was standing right next to Reid, her eyes very big and frightened-looking. She let go of him to come to me when Mrs. Wheeler steered me over. “I know you don’t care, but you look beautiful,” Karis told me.