Silent Words

by Lisa Fenwick

  “That wasn’t very dramatic of you,” I teased again as he settled into his seat.

  “Would you please tell the court what you mean by drama,” he asked, his voice shifting into a lower register. The effect was off in some weird way, oddly flat like I was used to deaf people sounding when they spoke. Still, he put these inflections into it, pacing it in a way that made it clear he was leading me into a trap.

  “Well, everything being all big and overblown. Emoting all over the place.”

  “You don’t think this can be dramatic?” he asked, still keeping his voice low and measured.

  “It’s tense,” I said. “It would probably be more so if I could see your face.”

  “Probably,” he said. “Call it a subtle advantage of your condition.”

  “I can hear the danger, though. It makes me kind of afraid to say anything,” I said. “But I still say it’s more level-headed than dramatic.”

  “The quiet voice is.” I heard Noah’s fork scrape in his bowl. “This is very good,” he said.

  “Do you really mean it?”

  “I do. I definitely need to return the favor sometime after I get back.”

  I could pick out a definite change in his voice. “Do you want to tell me about the death, if it’s a family member or a friend?”

  “The funeral is for my ex-fiancée’s grandma. Sounds weird saying that. Anyway, I got an email from Ashley today, which has been the first contact I’ve had with her in months.”

  “I hope I’m not out of line for asking, but is it really a good idea for you to go to the funeral?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Noah said. “But Lucy Norton and I were very close the entire time Ashley and I were together. We stayed in touch after the breakup, but it wasn’t the same. I was struggling with my deafness and learning about how to communicate with others.”

  Noah took a few more bites of stew and sipped his wine. “Lucy was the grandma I always wished I had. My maternal line is very cold, superficial. Lucy was powerful, strong, and sharp. But at the same time, she was very human and warm. The first time I met her, I felt more genuine affection in our first handshake than I have ever felt from my grandma on both my mom and dad’s side.”

  “So, it’s important for you to attend the funeral?”

  “Yeah. Besides, Ashley’s offered to make herself scarce if I need her to while I’m out there, at least long enough for me to say a proper goodbye at the visitation. I’ll probably go low key to the burial as well. Mingle in with family friends.”

  “Do you believe her?” I asked Noah.

  “I developed a lot of trust issues with Ashley after the attack, but I can trust that she won’t dishonor her grandma’s memory by causing a scene at the funeral. She only contacted me about the funeral, nothing else.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing. I feel sad about the idea I expected to live the rest of my life with her, but I didn’t feel anything when I read the email. The opposite, in fact.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was on a high that day and hearing from her brought me back down to earth. I didn’t know if it was the news about Lucy or hearing from Ashley.”

  “You've sounded different, moved differently during the last few weeks that I’ve known you. I think you’re a pretty amazing guy, Noah. I think this little retreat you’re on is doing you a lot of good, and I’d hate to see you lose that. Even now, I can hear how nervous you are. Even more than the day we met, and you’ve told me that was a pretty rough day for you.”

  Noah and I didn’t speak for a while. We just ate in silence.

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid of the same things,” he finally said. “I’m not denying that I would rather stay right here and not go to the funeral. But this is my last chance to show some respect to somebody that deserves it. I can’t turn my back on that.”

  I heard his foot tapping on the ground.

  “Ashley hurt me badly,” he continued. “Since she left, I have been really closed off inside. Emotionally. I didn’t go gallivanting off with a rebound girl. I haven’t been on a single date. I haven’t been looking and have even turned down a few offers. It’s as if I have major trust issues at the moment. Can we talk about something else?”

  I nodded, but we didn’t. If anything, the tone and timing at the cottage was cut short. I regretted the conversation, because once again I was leaving, and I didn’t want to. Before, it had been so easy. I could spend hours there. Now the mood had changed. I would get there, and we’d talk about something and then I’d want to leave again.

  Why was it getting so uncomfortable?

  The walk home after lunch seemed longer than it ever had before. I had so many thoughts going through my head. Thank God for Smokey because I felt like Noah and I were really getting to know each other. Not just the surface stuff, but we’d started developing rhythms with each other, learning how to communicate without words. Maybe it was because he’d adapted to the fact that I couldn’t see him and I to the fact that I couldn’t hear him. We understood the need the other had to not let these things define us, so we had an intuitive sense of how to be around each other.

  I thought that Noah and I could become very close while he was in Berwick. And I feared that seeing his former fiancée was going to hurt him badly, confuse him, maybe close him up. It was so obvious that just the little bit of contact he’d had with her yesterday had really hit him hard. What was he going to be like when he got back?

  At the same time, I knew better than to say anything. His ex’s grandma was a very important person to him. Just listening to the change in his voice and his words when he spoke of her, I could tell he respected her a lot and she was very important to him. This must have been something he had to do to be at peace with himself. I could only pray that seeking that peace wouldn’t cost him too much.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Noah

  The Present

  I was amazed at just how easily I slipped into my old routines at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport. I got off the plane and let my feet just take me to the car rental desk, where I picked up a nice car.

  Ashley’s family hailed from the far northwest corner of the state, where the Piedmont bled into the Blue Ridge. The roads out there were a true joy to drive—curvy switchbacks and ridge roads interrupted by long, clean straights. They were different from the mountain driving closer to home in upstate New York and New England but no less fun.

  I had a GPS unit primarily geared toward motorcyclists and their severe allergy to super-slab highways and straight roads. I just had to tap one button on the screen, and it picked out a route for me that avoided both as much as possible. Once I was out of the Greenville area, I also switched the car’s suspension and engine mapping to sport mode and let myself roll.

  I was missing Boy, since I was driving toward two days that would be emotionally trying and were already opening up a lot of memories that I’d rather have left buried. I knew that with everything going on with the trip, there was no way I’d be able to give him the attention he’d need in exchange for the support he’d be giving me. Maybe it wasn't so bad that he wasn't with me. I’d taken him out performance driving with me twice to compensate for the time we’d be apart.

  The first time, Boy got terribly carsick and I had to slow it down almost immediately for him. The second time I tried, just in case the first was a fluke, he had the exact same response. I decided to take advantage of the fact that I wouldn’t have an unhappy pup throwing up all over the rental car’s interior to see what exactly a Porsche Cayenne could do. At least they were able to hook me up with one in Palladium Metallic instead of Carmine Red. I never had good luck driving in a red car, and the area where Georgia and the Carolinas converged wasn't where a Manhattanite wanted to be invited to chat with local law enforcement. The one time I’d been pulled over in the area, Ashley was with me and was able to turn on her Southern charm. I doubt I’d do so well on my own, even by droppin
g the Norton name.

  After four hours of driving, twice as long as the original GPS route, I pulled into a sweet and luxurious bed and breakfast. It catered to visitors to some of the small clusters of affluent people in the area. There was a very slick layer of “quaint and homey” affectations spackled over “gated-community bland.” I was sure that I’d seen the exact same aluminum signs with the exact same dents and wear in at least five other states, along with the empty hurricane lamps, quilt-less quilt racks, and horseshoes. I was tempted to pull one of them off the wall to see if it actually had casting marks and Made in China stamped on it.

  Along with all the down-homey pretension, there was also a very polished and anonymous quality to everybody I had to interact with. On a different trip, I’d gladly have stayed somewhere genuinely owned by a local who was honest and earnest, somewhere like Amy’s cottage. But for Lucy’s funeral, being able to sail through any business interactions, like renting a car or checking into my room without having to genuinely engage, was what I needed.

  As I left the front desk of the B&B to head up to my room, I reflected on how different the last eight hours had been compared to the previous few weeks at Amy’s cottage in the little town of Berwick. Up there, I found myself choosing to connect with people, everybody, not just Amy or the guys at Hyde garage. Gassing up my car, picking up food for Boy, having dinner out. All those places, I found myself actually talking to the people I interacted with. There was just a different quality, as simple as handing over a credit card for a purchase.

  Buying a cup of coffee at the regular folks’ joint in Berwick felt like a much more genuine act than dropping nearly sixteen hundred dollars for three nights’ accommodation in a little wealthy pocket of the Carolinas.

  When I got into my room, the perfect facsimile of a country guest room in a world that never existed, I found myself longing for my room in the little Berwick cottage, waiting to get the buzz on my phone that would tell me Amy had arrived so we could chat and Smokey and Boy could race around the yard. Three times, I cued up Amy’s number just to say hello, but I stopped myself just before hitting the dial button. Professional relationship, I reminded myself. She and I had a professional relationship, regardless of how pleasant it was to spend time with her when she wandered over.

  Calling her to tell her that I missed her terribly wouldn't be remotely appropriate for a professional relationship. I pondered going into town for a beer, but I knew my choices were either the plastic place catering to folks like me or a local place where I wouldn't be welcome. I thought back to Amy’s warning that Bev’s Home Cooking up in Berwick was very definitely a locals-only joint, but my feel of the town was that they’d still serve me and be polite but clearly not enthused about me being there. I knew enough about the bars down where the Nortons lived to know that I’d get a much colder welcome.

  With nothing else to do, I shut my eyes and tried to get some sleep. I hadn’t gotten much of that since Ashley’s initial email to me. Every night, I’d woken up at two or three worried about what was going to happen down here, and now that I was here, all I could think about was Berwick because I had Amy on my mind.

  I dozed off for an hour, went out for a flawlessly executed but completely unsatisfying dinner at a classy café a block away, and came back to the room to spend the night tossing and turning.

  When I slept poorly, I'd finally fall deep into a solid slumber right before my alarm went off, and then I couldn’t get up. I played snooze tag for an hour before I finally managed to actually get out of bed and get myself into the shower. While Grandma Norton wasn’t really religious, she did have grand-matronly appearances to keep up, so whenever Ashley and I visited, we would always go to church with her on Sunday. The funeral home was on the same block as the church. Once I got into town, I let the muscle memory take over and before I knew it, I was parked across the street from the quiet little white building with its pristine white steeple and immaculately groomed grounds.

  It was a pretty neighborhood, and it looked like God himself had crafted perfect weather to send off the Norton matriarch. I wanted to try to slide into the visitation without drawing attention to myself, so I knew that I couldn’t hesitate or hem and haw in front of the building, no matter how much I had to force myself to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I crossed the threshold and quietly made my way to the guest book to sign in.

  That task finished, I turned around and felt like I could finally just stop and take my surroundings in before I did anything. Plenty of people in the vestibule were doing the exact same thing, looking for familiar faces or steeling up the courage to go into the visitation room itself.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Ashley. I felt my heart stop for a second and had to brace myself before I could look her way. She had already caught sight of me and was standing still. When we made eye contact, she gave me a simple nod and stepped to one of the side entrances of the room. I took it as an acknowledgement that she was willing to hold to her promise and let me have a moment with Lucy in peace.

  The visitation room was a riot of flowers and very tastefully assembled photo collages. Every grandchild had their own easel, dedicated to pictures of them with their grandma. I let curiosity get the better of me, and I went up to Ashley’s board. Sure enough, about half of the pictures that I could pin down to the years that we were together included me. That was when I almost lost my composure. I found that the pictures of Lucy, Ashley, and I together were the ones that most powerfully drove home what Lucy had come to mean to me. As I got my breathing under control, I reflected on what about those pictures really moved me so much, and I realized that almost none of it was mourning for the loss of Ashley from my life. I lamented that my relationship with Lucy had been a casualty of Ashley abandoning me after the attack, but I didn’t feel much of a sense of loss for Ashley herself.

  I discreetly stepped out of the visitation room to find a quiet corner where I could sit and steady myself for a while. I sat on a sofa and leaned forward, eyes on the floor. A few pairs of shoes came and went from the nook, but I paid them no mind. I didn’t register that one of them had stopped until I felt a tap on my shoulder. It startled me, and I looked up.

  It was one of Ashley’s cousins, Sean, just a few months younger than her. “Sorry,” he said.

  I could tell by the way he was moving his mouth that he’d started talking louder and slower than when he’d first approached me. Before he remembered that I was the new Noah, not the old one.

  I shook my head and leaned back.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Mostly recovered. I should be back to working full time again in a few months.” It was vague enough that I didn’t feel like I was lying to or actively deceiving him.

  “Glad to hear it. Oh. Oops.”

  I waved the gaffe away. "How have you been?”

  “Well, other than the obvious, things have been good.” He gave me a rundown of what had happened in his life since we’d seen each other last. “I’m really glad you came down. A lot of us miss you.”

  I’d thought about how to respond to that sentiment for the past few days and still had nothing. It wasn't the place for me to be overtly bitter about Ashley having abandoned me. Nor was it the time for me to be maudlin or play the martyr card. I didn’t know what Ashley’s version of events was, so I didn’t know how people were going to react to me. If Sean was any indication, though, I hadn’t been painted in a terrible light.

  “Well, I should go mingle some more. Will you be at the burial as well?”

  “I will. I don’t know if I’ll stay for the luncheon afterwards, though,” I confessed, because I didn’t know how I would feel. Grief was starting to settle in, and it wanted me to run to Berwick into Amy’s arms.

  “There’ll be a seat at my table for you. Take care, Noah.”

  I thanked him and decided I was steady enough again to go back into the visitation room. As I passed the row of easels, I couldn’t
help but look at all the pictures. Like the bed and breakfast I was staying in, the café I’d dined at the night before, and so many things about the little community of wealthy people, the photo collages were very carefully crafted to look spontaneous and individual, but I could see a common hand in each. Somebody had collected pictures and curated them and set them up according to solid principles of visual design.

  I didn’t expect what I saw, but I wasn't surprised that it had slipped in. There was no reason for that person to be in a picture with Ashley and her grandma. That person wasn’t at the visitation as near as I could tell. And there was no reason why Ashley would have had that picture on her board if that person weren’t there and she knew I would be. I pushed the feelings down because I just wanted to bid Lucy farewell without having to duck out of the visitation room again. I buried my reaction to the photo, because at the moment, I had something much more important to do.

  There were a dozen people in line before me. I made small talk with a pretty brunette that introduced herself as a teacher at the school some of Lucy’s great-grandchildren attended. She had obviously had training in dealing with deaf people because she noticed the hearing aids with almost no reaction and made sure to face me and very slightly exaggerate the shapes of her words as we spoke.

  I told her I was just an old family friend, and she accepted that. It helped pass the time while I waited my turn. When I finally reached the head of the casket, I placed my hand on one of Lucy’s. My final words to her belonged only to the two of us.

  With that duty fulfilled, I picked a route out of the visitation room that took me past as few other people as possible. Fortunately, that route also ran me along the side of the room without Ashley’s photo collage, so I didn’t get another look at the picture that had bothered me. I slipped out a side door of the funeral home and found myself envious of the smokers who were gathered in a little knot nearby. I could have used something to steady my nerves and just the silent proximity of other people. I’d always noticed that smokers’ areas tended to have that. People seemed happy to either talk or not, as you would, while they had a quick cigarette. There was no pressure to interact, just a mutual understanding that you were all out there primarily for a quick fix of nicotine.