Shades of Blue (Part Two of The Loudest Silence)

by Olivia Janae

  Revulsion rode a wave of bile up her throat. She remembered the stories that Vivian had shared about the lessons, the humiliations, the sorrow she had faced. Kate had heard about the hours young Vivian spent in her speech therapist’s office, her little hands feeling the way his throat worked, watching his tongue move, his teeth. She had seen pictures of twelve-year-old Vivian, her lips dry and cracked from all the ways they had been pushed and pulled just a little too hard by his rough hands in the effort to teach her how they should move, how she could make her speech better.

  Kate hadn’t understood. She had thought ”rehabilitate” meant helping the kids along, healing their wounds. “They still do that kind of stuff?” She had assumed that the therapist Vivian had grown up with had been corrupt, that he had been harsher than was normal. Had she been wrong? Was this still how deaf children were treated? That couldn’t be.

  Vivian wasn’t paying attention again. She had gone somewhere else, drifting through unpleasant thoughts. “You’re just like all of the rest of them.” It was the gentleness with which Vivian muttered this that scared Kate. “Just like my mother. God,” Vivian scoffed, her face crumpling, “no wonder she likes you so much.” A knife’s edge slipped between Kate’s ribs, and she gasped. “I can’t believe I ever trusted you. I can’t believe I ever thought… you would teach a whole new generation of children that they are wrong? That they need to be fixed?” A little, hurt girl stood where the fierce and angry Vivian had stood a moment before. “I thought only my mother...” She shook her head, confused.

  Kate reached for her, a denial fast on her lips, but Vivian recoiled as if a spider had touched her fingertips, something grotesquely fuzzy and skittering. Kate spoke anyway, fast and quick, probably too quickly for Vivian to catch all of her words. “God, no! I didn’t realize, I didn’t get – I can’t fucking believe they still do those things. You can trust me! I don’t want to teach children that they’re wrong. They aren’t! How could you think I would think that? The foundation is in your name! You can make it better, Vivian. Let’s make it better! You can decide what type of therapy is offered – stop! Listen to me for a second!” Kate shouted. She sniffed and realized that she was crying. She didn’t know exactly when she had started to cry, wasn’t sure when she had begun to feel like she was being backed to a cliff’s edge. There was something in Vivian’s voice that was scaring Kate to death, a finality that Kate didn’t want to understand.

  “I thought I could trust you.” Vivian’s face was pale, mortified. She wasn’t listening to anything Kate was saying, too busy locked in her own head or perhaps she truly couldn’t be understood. She debated signing for a moment, but realized instantly that there was no way she could say everything she needed to that way.

  “You can trust me! That’s the only reason I’m saying you should think about it, because you can trust me. I swear I was only trying to help. Hey, you asked how I could not know that you wouldn’t want it, that I didn’t know that about you, well, what about me? How can you think I would mean any ill will? I thought I was doing a good thing. I’m sorry we fought earlier. I’m kind of sensitive about the money stuff, but, damn it, Vivian, I thought this was something you would want. I thought this would be a good change!”

  Vivian’s sad eyes searched Kate’s face while Kate clung to the side of the kitchen island, mentally begging her to trust her, to see she only meant to help, she only meant to make her life better. “And why do I have to change, Kate? Why can’t I ever be enough? Just me. As I am.” Her voice was raising again, her hurt morphing back to white-hot anger.

  “Vivian!” This felt so familiar. This felt just like the last time, and she knew what was coming.

  “I never thought you would need to change me in order to be with me! Not you.”

  It was strange hearing her own words thrown back at her. She wondered if Vivian saw the similarity.

  “No, I don’t! That isn’t what—”

  Vivian eyes swept over every inch of Kate’s face, looking at her like she was searching a crowd of strangers for someone she knew. “You’re not who I thought you were, are you? Who are you?”

  “Viv—”

  “What do you want from me?” The words came out at top volume, a sudden scream as her hands came down like thunder on the island. There were tears flowing down her sallow cheeks, dark and bloody, so unlike the beautiful crystal drops Kate had witnessed the night before. “I can only be who I am, Kate!” Furious, she threw the stool across the floor, tears falling fast as she yelled. “Tell me why that needs to change! So I bought you a coat! So I can’t hear. So what? Why should any of that matter!”

  “No, no, Vivian,” Kate sobbed. She hated herself. That hadn’t been what she meant. It was coming. The spring was about to snap, and she had to stop it, she had to. She couldn’t handle it. “You don’t understand. I’m sorry!” Her arms felt heavy, her mind dizzy as she watched her love’s cold face stare at her as if she were a stranger, a bug. She reached for her again, and, again, Vivian moved away.

  “I thought you… I thought you loved me.” The laugh Vivian gave at that was cold and disbelieving and as quickly as it came it turned into a sob. Her face twisted with the sob, and, seeming angry that she had given into the emotion, her hand came up to hide her face.

  “I do! Oh god, I do!” Kate reached for her and was denied. “I love you so much, Vivian, please. Listen to me! You’ve got this all wrong. Please don’t do this! I made a mistake.”

  Vivian was backing away, her head shaking, those walls snapping up around her and leaving Kate out in the cold and the dark. Her neck lengthened, her chin held high, Only her eyes remained dejected, confused. “What the hell have you done to me? This isn’t who I am. I don’t – I don’t need people like this. This is so silly!” She let out another dark little laugh.

  “Vivian!” They had never vocalized their feelings before, never made it clear how they felt, and now it felt like too little, too late.

  “What have you two done to me?” A ripple of fury crossed Vivian’s face, her teeth baring in a snarl. “You don’t know me! You don’t want me as I am! You sided with my mother! You’re just another lackey, another person who jumps when she tells them to!”

  “No! Vivian, come on!” Tears dripped from her cheeks, her heart that had pounded with such joy, such happiness, for months was cracking. Kate clutched at it in her chest, trying to hold it together. This couldn’t happen. Not like this. Not again. “Vivian, no! Stop! I get how it looks that way, but no!”

  She scoffed, more to herself than to Kate. “My mother. How could you side with my mother? How could you be that person? How did I fall for that? No wonder you never tried to learn to sign with me. No wonder you have always been satisfied to let me use my voice as I signed. It never mattered to you, did it? You thought you would tell me to do this and the pathetic, little deaf girl would just comply!”

  “Vivian!” Kate launched herself across the room, forcibly gathering Vivian into her arms, desperate to make her listen, but Vivian shoved her away. “That is not true!”

  Vivian’s voice was low, purposeful as she went for the jugular. “You lied to me. You made me believe that I could be loved. That is unforgivable, Kate.”

  “Vivian, please.” The words were meant to be a scream, but they only came out in a faint whisper. “Please don’t do this. I never lied. I do love you! I do! How can you not see that?”

  “You lied!” Vivian roared, shaking the windows. “It is not me that is wrong, it is you! Get your shit, Kate! Get your shit and get the fuck out of my house. I want nothing to do with you. I want nothing to do with any of you! You and your bigotry, your correctional behavior, are not welcomed here!”

  “Vivian!” Kate lurched for her and missed, tripping so her knees hit the metal of the kitchen island. She reached again, but Vivian was gone. She had turned and disappeared up the stairs and into the elevator.

  Kate couldn’t believe it. She had barely been in the fight. Vivian had, for the seco
nd time, built and ended the fight almost entirely by herself, leaving Kate strapped to the tracks of the train unable to do anything but watch and wait for the collision.

  She knew this feeling. She thought of all the times she had been through this. All of the times a social worker had appeared at the door of her foster home, ready to move her to a new situation for whatever reason. It had gotten to the point that she began to pack the moment she saw anyone walk up to the house with dark circles under their eyes and an air of worldly wisdom around them. She thought of all the times that she had watched as someone she loved walked out of the door, she thought of the moment she had sat there all alone, while she watched the pregnancy test flash a plus sign telling her that she was single, alone, and pregnant.

  ... you never learned Sign with me. The words repeated in her mind and made her hands ball into fists.

  That wasn’t true.

  She was on her feet then, flying after Vivian. “No! That is not it! I am not losing this! No! You didn’t give me a chance to fucking fight! This is not happening again!”

  She slammed her thumb into the button, signaling for the elevator but it didn’t come. She pressed again and again, screaming in frustration and planting a kick to the metal door. She yelped as her toe protested, popping twice. The door finally slid open, and she started the process all over again, slamming the “close door” button this time.

  “Come on, come on, come on!” She bounced on the balls of her feet as the machine slowly descended.

  She flew into the lobby the moment the doors were open, but there was no hope. Vivian had vanished like a cloud of smoke.

  Kate called her phone three times as she stood circling the lobby, each time being informed politely by the operator that the number Kate was calling did not pick up.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it looks like the call is going straight to voicemail now. I think the phone has been turned off.”

  Kate screamed in frustration, kicking a potted plant. It exploded, showering the lobby with pottery shards and dirt. “Shit!” She jumped in place, her already angry toe now throbbing.

  She couldn’t wrap her head around what had happened. Jacqueline had screwed her over. Jacqueline had known exactly what she was getting Kate into; she had known exactly what to say to get Kate on her side. She thought of Jacqueline when she had barged into her office, demanding to know why she had wanted to do this. She had seemed too honest, too hurt by the relationship she knew she had with her daughter. It had all been for show.

  Vivian had dumped her because of it.

  Vivian had dumped her.

  She had just been dumped.

  Kate stood for a long while, looking around blankly. She couldn’t help but feel like she deserved this. She had gotten comfortable. She had begun to picture a future with someone who wasn’t her son.

  She was so stupid.

  She shoved her fingers through her hair, her teeth biting into her lip as she tried to think of what to do next.

  She would go back up. She would go back up to the loft and wait. Vivian had to return sometime, and when she did, Kate would be there waiting.

  She wasn’t going to let her just disappear again, not like last time. Kate deserved better than that. She was a person! She couldn’t just be thrown out like trash!

  And yet, even as she said it, there was a dark shadow in her mind that whispered that maybe it wasn’t true. Maybe she didn’t deserve any better.

  She couldn’t stand here with those thoughts. If she let them in, then they would take over. Kate spun on her heels, ready to go back upstairs, but before she could move a deep voice cleared its throat beside her.

  Humiliation was only a dull flicker next to the barely contained panic coursing through her. “I’m sorry about the plant,” she mumbled to the building’s security guard, her fingers laced on top of her head, opening her lungs as she tried to breathe. “I shouldn’t have done that. I’ll pay for it, I’m sorry. That was inappropriate, I’m sorry.”

  The giant man who always stood by the elevator was looking down at her, and though she had always taken him for a huge and terrifying Jon Coffey look-alike, for the first time his hard face twisted with discomfort and sympathy. “I apologize, Ms. Flynn,” he said, “but Ms. Kensington has asked me to help you gather your things and escort you to the ‘L’ train.”

  “What?” She gasped in disbelief. Vivian was mad, but surely there was no way that Vivian was that mad, that... mean. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am.” He summoned the elevator. “Right this way, please.”

  Kate felt like a death row inmate. She didn’t even care that she was being watched while she rooted through the apartment weeping, picking up her belongings. She could feel the man’s pitying eyes on her; he was scrutinizing every movement as though making sure that nothing seemed as though it would belong to Vivian.

  She couldn’t believe this. She could believe that Vivian had become so cruel. But then she remembered the Vivian from before, before the kissing or the touching or the kindness; the one that had been so cold when they first met.

  Why was she surprised? In the beginning she had worried that Vivian, the Ice Queen,- would return. After meeting her mother, Kate wasn’t surprised that Vivian was like this.

  She jumped high as the man cleared his throat from the doorway. “Forgive me, ma’am, but she said you only had thirty minutes.”

  Cold. Mean. Nasty. The woman she loved was cold, mean, and nasty. The fact burned, biting at her and devouring her willpower.

  Twenty minutes later and Kate was done. She hadn’t been able to grab everything, but she had grabbed enough. Anything left behind could be replaced, or Vivian could bring it to rehearsal one night for her.

  They rode the elevator in a tight silence, Kate refusing to catch this intimidating stranger’s eye in the chrome elevator walls. She could feel him trying, awkwardly clearing his throat every few seconds, but she didn’t want to see the hardness on his no-nonsense face and, what would be worse, she didn’t want to see his pity.

  They stepped out into the night air, and Kate sighed, relieved that she would soon be alone. She wanted to be alone. She was barely keeping herself together.

  “Uh, Ms. Flynn, the ‘L’ is this way.”

  “I have to go get my son.”

  “Ma’am, I have a job to do, and it’s to put you on the ‘L’. I’m sorry.”

  Kate was pleased to see that he winced a little when she spun around on her heels, a snarl ripping out of her as her barely controlled patience frayed. “Are you seriously trying to say you’re not going to let me get my kid? Are you serious? Because I don’t think you get to force me to do anything, Mr. Creepy Big Security... Guy.”

  The man, she didn’t even know his name, cringed, but he stood his ground, apparently not afraid of a woman who was approximately the size of one of his arms.

  “I’m not leaving my kid,” Kate said in a more reasonable tone. “I’ll get on the fucking train after, okay?”

  She couldn’t believe this was happening. Did Vivian really think she had enough power to force Kate to do exactly what she wanted?

  She started toward the ice rink again.

  Kate approached the rink with dread, the bags weighing heavily on her shoulders. She was torn. Part of her wanted nothing more than to see Vivian, to shake some sense into her and insist that this was stupid, while the other part of her was furious about her escort and all of the rude implications that came with him.

  She didn’t know what to do when she saw her.

  Kate took the stairs leading to the McCormick Tribune ice rink slowly, her eyes raking over the crowd. On the far end were Max and Charlie, both slipping and sliding along the wall, huge smiles on their faces. As she watched, Max’s little face went into a round “o” of surprise as one of his feet slid out from under him. Before he could fall, Charlie made a grab for him. She couldn’t seem to stay up any more than he could, but at least when they went down,
Charlie was under Max and they both were laughing.

  The sight hurt Kate’s heart.

  What hurt more was that there was no sign of Jacqueline. Vivian seemed to be missing as well.

  Where had she gone? She didn’t even have the decency to be there when Kate was escorted to pick up her son? She didn’t even have the decency to revel in the humiliation Kate was feeling... to be available for one more try to get through to her?

  No, she realized, that was exactly why Vivian wasn’t there.

  “Char,” she finally called, feeling a renewed jab of humiliation when Charlie saw her face and her own dropped into shock.

  “Oh my god, Kate, what happened?”

  “Hi, Mommy! Look at me go!” Max called from a few feet behind Charlie and then proceeded to shuffle-walk on his skates for a few feet before he fell with a resounding flomp onto his butt.

  “Don’t worry, you’re gonna get it, buddy!” she called in a voice that sounded alien to her own ears.

  “Kate!” Charlie hissed as she made it over to the other side of the ring, grabbing her hand and squeezing it, for balance as much as for emphasis. “What happened? Was it, ugh, it was Jacqueline wasn’t it? That fucking—”

  “No.” Kate shook her head and then paused. “Well, kind of. Whatever.” She couldn’t get herself to share what had happened so instead she just swallowed and wiped at her still-leaking eyes. “Listen, can you just promise me to get Max home later? He’s having so much fun. I don’t want to ruin that for him. Okay?”

  “Kate—”

  “Promise?”

  Charlie’s face was usually upbeat, a grin almost always in place whether sarcastic or genuinely happy. Watching now as Charlie tried to figure out what could be wrong was harder for Kate to take than she thought it would be.

  “K, where’s Viv?”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah! I promise! Kate, are you okay?”

  “Um.”

  “Is that the guy from Viv’s security desk?”