by Nikki Logan
‘A little bit is more than we were expecting to get so that’s great,’ Lexi said. ‘And I’m fine with you bunking down in the props room in return for your help with the production. And your dog’s. You can use the showers in the green room.’
Bed. Hot water. Electricity. The three biggest challenges of this lifestyle of his addressed in one fell swoop. And the fourth as well.
Access.
He gave Lexi a thumbs up and felt even worse about his deception. This was exactly why he kept to himself.
‘That means thank you,’ Kenzie volunteered brightly.
Actually, it meant ‘good’ but it was the closest thing to a thankyou that he had in his limited repertoire of dog-training hand signals.
‘So … are you an out-the-front kind of guy or a back-of-house kind of worker, Dylan?’
The clench of his stomach at any mention of ‘out the front’ answered that immediately. You couldn’t get more behind-the-scenes than him. He pointed at their feet, where the props department sat immediately below the stage.
‘Well, there’s no shortage of back-of-house tasks to do. We’re about to start a new production so your timing is great.’
Yeah. It so was.
‘But I have some procedures for signing up a new volunteer. It’ll take about fifteen minutes if you can spare it?’
If? The woman had just authorised him to sleep in her theatre. He really had no choice. Nice of her to make it seem like he did, though.
Kenzie stepped into his field of view and spoke slowly. ‘I’ll meet you downstairs when you’re done.’ Then she gave him a thumbs up before turning and heading back the way they’d come.
Everything in him tightened as the one face familiar to him walked away. She’d walked away from him before, of course—a dozen times in the days since they’d met—but that was always to leave him alone. He loved alone. This time she was leaving him with a stranger and that always came with a lingering kind of gut-kick straight from his youth. Memories flooded in of support workers and teachers’ aides and kindly staff in the principal’s office. So many new faces … even when they knew what new faces did to him, somehow they’d just kept mounting.
If he’d had a single word on his tongue, those memories alone would have killed it dead.
‘This way,’ Lexi called and left him to follow.
‘Thanks for your time, Dylan,’ Lexi said. ‘Can you find your way back on your own?’
He’d found his way, solo, over half this planet. Getting back to the props room wasn’t going to be a problem. No-one gave him more than a cursory look as he retraced his steps across the stage and through the backstage area.
Community theatre, he reminded himself. People came and went way too regularly for a new face to be all that notable.
Give him a few days and he’d be curiosity enough. Once they got to know him. He heard the murmur of voices as he approached the closed props-room door. For a moment he thought about finding some other corner to lurk in, but then he remembered that his worldly goods were in there. So was his dog. And he was going to be meeting new people all the time over the next few weeks. The price he paid for the best part of his life. The price of freedom. Might as well get it over with sooner than later. He eased the door open.
‘I can’t be a mother to you, I can’t be a mother to anyone. I’m only thirteen years old.’
That was Kenzie’s voice. She paused for a few seconds and then continued as though she’d been having a conversation with an invisible man.
Was this what it sounded like when she spoke to him?
‘Don’t look at me like that, little man; like I’m your whole world. When there’s so much of the world yet to discover.’
He peered around one of her mighty storage shelves to where she’d pulled up the milking stool at the foot of his new bed. Phantom sat regarding her seriously. The way he always did when someone spoke to him in words he just couldn’t hear. Giving her his best attention anyway.
‘Not that I’ll be seeing any of it any time soon. If only Ma’d had more children, more boys, before she’d passed on …’
It was only then that Dylan realised what he was hearing. And what that meant Kenzie was doing. She was reading lines—to his dog. One tiny step removed from doing it to a mirror. Chalk it up to his lifetime of experience, but Dylan instantly knew what this meant. Hadn’t he done this enough himself as a kid? And just as secretly? Their family dog had been the only living creature he’d been able to talk to for a whole bunch of months there and he’d hidden himself away just like this to do it. It took him his entire childhood to overcome but it had finally done the trick.
‘Come on little man. These linens aren’t going to wash themselves.’
How often did Kenzie do this? Sit down here in the dark and run scenes, alone. Pouring her soul into lines she’d never utter publicly? Did she dream of doing it on the boards above her head? Did she sit down here during rehearsals and act out the scenes as they played out above her?
‘Especially since it’s your little round bottom that’s filthied most of ’em up in the first place …’
Did she know how good she was?
He leaned on the shelf and let himself immerse. Kenzie’s style was easy and fluid; she gave natural meaning to the text in her hand. A good director could buff the rough edges off her talent and create something pretty amazing. Even Phantom appeared spellbound.
Kenzie was wasted down here in the dark with her props and her varnish.
‘Come on little Ronnie Devon, there you sit and all. And do it quietly. Faster I get done here, the faster we can get down to the dam for a swim and the sooner we can wash off the sweat slick from ourselves.’
The scene reached its end. Even with only half the dialogue, it had enough conviction to hold his attention and to get even her up off her seat so that she could finish the scene with the physicality it needed. It struck him that this was how all her conversations with him had gone since they met. Her words bouncing off his silence.
Was that part of why she felt so incredibly natural delivering the lines? Or was there something else going on? Whatever it was, he was struggling to take his eyes off her.
Kenzie wound herself up and pinned a rapt Phantom with the blunt-force poignancy of the scene’s denouement. His tail began to wag at the passion coming off her in waves.
‘Though best you get used to it now, little man. Your life is going to be nothing but sweat and stink and milk rash on that soft skin. Best you dig a hole three yards deep for any hopes you might’ve had. Because there ain’t no more. Not for them such as us!’
And there it was. End scene. The end of the first act, in fact. She’d chosen the perfect moment to indulge her secret passion. He shifted, ready to step out into the light applauding, but Phantom’s keen gaze shifted to him and pre-empted his entrance.
Kenzie spun on him, her blue eyes wide.
‘You’re amazing,’ he said aloud, surprising them both. ‘What on earth are you doing buried down here?’
Chapter Four
Kenzie sucked in what little breath she could. Phantom leaped off the little bed and scuttled to Dylan’s side where he’d been lurking by Rivervue’s collection of plastic plants. He didn’t need to take his keen focus off her to reach down and place a reassuring hand on the dog’s head.
‘You … You can hear?’ she stammered. And then something else occurred to her. ‘You can speak?’
No doubt her stare was a murky mix of mortification and accusation. Every moment they’d shared was playing out for her again from his perspective—as someone with perfectly functioning hearing. She was trying to remember all the things she’d said under her breath, believing she was muttering in confidence.
‘Yes.’ The attractive little lump high in his throat lurched. ‘To both.’
No. Not attractive. Deceitful! That lump was the voice box that had been disguising the truth.
‘I thought you were deaf!’
We. We thoug
ht it. Lexi had been similarly fooled, and she’d set her friend up for it. Shame flooded her neck and face with its angry warmth.
‘No. But Phantom is.’
Her accusation turned on the dog who at least had the good grace to look abashed. Deaf or not, the dog could accurately read a room. ‘He’s the reason you use sign language?’
‘I have to be able to communicate with him.’
‘Except it wasn’t even proper sign language, was it? You just made it up!’ Was she always this dim or had fury numbed her intellect? Sure enough, she was having trouble grasping the basics. ‘But you can speak?’
‘Not always. But yes.’
Not always? ‘What does that even mean?’
His voice—now that he had one—was chocolatey and accented. And deeply apologetic.
‘Kenzie, can we sit? Please?’
‘No.’ Right now she didn’t want him in her workshop. Her theatre, even. This was her happy place and he’d just made it very, very unhappy. Lord, what had she said, thinking he couldn’t hear her? ‘Speech isn’t a sometimes thing. You either can or you can’t.’
‘Most people would agree with you.’ He was picking his way carefully through her fury like a bomb-disposal expert tackling a fistful of wires. ‘But most people don’t know me.’
‘If you lie to them all, I’m not surprised!’
‘Kenzie—’
‘I hope you’re not going to defend the deception. You intentionally let me think you were deaf. All those scribbled notes. All … this!’ She gave him an exaggerated thumbs up and it fairly vibrated with anger. Poor old Phantom couldn’t understand why his ‘good’ signal was suddenly laden with so much ‘bad’.
Dylan stepped closer to her so that Phantom was behind him and shielded a little from her tension. Somehow, that kindness finagled its way underneath her anger, reminding her that there was a deaf dog in the room—who would be completely failing to understand why these two people were suddenly at such odds.
Nor would he understand that one of them had every bloody right to be furious.
‘No, I’m not going to defend. But I would like to explain. If you’ll let me.’
Damn him and his sonorous tones. She was better off when he couldn’t make a sound. At least then she only had his smile to deal with. It dawned on her then that the accent she was trying to ignore wasn’t the one her brain believed he would have.
‘Are you even French?’
‘I’m from Ottawa.’
‘More lies!’
‘I speak and read French. I’m just not from France.’
She glanced at his pillow where he’d left his Foucault gently resting. ‘So, not only do you actually have and use words, you can use them in two languages?’
His pause was almost comical. If she wasn’t so mad. ‘More, actually. I’ve spent time in about sixteen countries.’
Kenzie blinked.
‘Please let me explain, Kenzie.’
Shut up! She just wanted to tell him to stop talking and stop using her name in that rumbling, unsettling way. Could he feel all the hot air venting out of her? Was that why he was pressing his case? She scrabbled to keep it all in. She didn’t want him to fail to realise what a big deal this was. In her family, deception was the unforgivable curse.
‘Unless your explanation comes with a tragic backstory of loss and suffering, I don’t even want to hear it.’
He just regarded her steadily.
‘Oh …’ The last of her umbrage dissipated up and out between the cracks in the stage floor over their heads. Her voice lowered to a murmur. ‘Does it?’
‘You can judge. If you’ll let me explain, that is.’
Kenzie sagged down onto the end of the bed and sat quietly as Dylan composed his thoughts on the nearby chair. She’d grown used to companionable silences between them; as if they had all the time in the world. And he seemed to need it; his hands twisted around and over each other as he worked out where to start.
‘When I was five, my only brother died in front of me. A sheet of ice came flying off a passing vehicle as I followed my family to our car. Jake was there when I stepped off the kerb and then gone when my foot hit the road.’
There was something so heartbreaking about the normality with which he shared that. How horrific it must have been for a young boy to witness. ‘You don’t need to—’
‘We all handled that differently. My dad buried himself in work, mom started sleeping in Jake’s room and I … I just stopped talking to anyone outside of the immediate family. Anyone that hadn’t seen what I’d seen. That was how my young mind managed the vivid memories of all that red against the pristine snow. Of losing my brother.’
‘But you could speak to your parents?’
‘Mutism can be selective. Though that title always bothered me—like it was somehow a conscious choice. Turns out I could speak to anyone who’d shared Jake’s loss. And to mom’s chihuahua, Sanchez. Everyone else … They were in another world to me. Like ghosts. You can’t speak to ghosts.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, I saw a parade’s worth of therapists to help me find my voice again. My teachers developed all kinds of workarounds so I could still learn. But, in the end, they all decided I just needed to grow out of it. Literally. I was sixteen before my body would let me forge even one word in front of regular people again.’
Oh. How awful. How alienating.
‘Anyway. Turns out if you stop speaking to the world for long enough the world stops speaking to you.’
‘Dylan, I’m so sorry.’
‘Don’t be. I got by. I was included in things and I got an education but I just spent all my time with myself.’ He glanced at Phantom. ‘And with Sanchez. I figure I had a richer and more expansive internal life than anyone else, but it was still a life. A good one. And for me it was a normal one. It’s just that silence became my habit. And I still find it … challenging. To meet new people. To talk to them.’
She didn’t want to understand. She wanted to stay angry. To punish him for his deception.
Except she couldn’t help but empathise. And understand.
‘You’re talking up a storm with me now.’
‘Oh, I’m full of words. I just struggle to get started. It’s not normal for me to be able to speak with a stranger so soon. Or at all.’
Should she be wounded that he still thought her a stranger or flattered to be his exception? It caused a warm kind of melting in her veins that threatened to rob her of umbrage.
‘So, it just turns on one day?’
‘I can force it, if I have to. But it hurts, emotionally, so I don’t.’
‘Why didn’t you stay in Canada? Where you knew people?’
He thought about that one for a while, but she wasn’t about to rush him.
‘If I’m going to feel like a stranger,’ he finally said, ‘I’d rather it be with strangers. You know?’
She could imagine how much harder it would be to be around people you knew and maybe even loved and not be able to speak to them.
Suddenly ‘stranger’ didn’t seem so bad a label. Not if it meant he could speak to her. To someone. She got the sense that Dylan North was a man who had rather a lot to say.
‘Besides, all that looking inwards had kindled a fire in me for discovery and exploration. And for people, ironically enough. People are interesting. They’ll tell you their greatest truths if they think you don’t understand them. Just like me confiding in Sanchez.’
Hadn’t she begun to do exactly that with him?
‘So why speak now? Why didn’t you just stay silent?’
Little forks sprouted between his brows. ‘It wasn’t planned. I was just so immersed watching you, I didn’t think, and … out it all came. It was surprisingly effortless. This is already more words than I’ve spoken in months.’
His confusion about that reached out and infected her. Hadn’t she, too, felt how easy Dylan was to be around?
‘I didn’t like keeping it from you,’ he mumbled. ‘I
just don’t normally stay put in one place long enough for it to matter.’
But it mattered now? Was that what he was saying? And was that why she was so hurt by his secret? Because she’d begun to feel that he somehow mattered too?
‘This probably isn’t the best place for you, then,’ she said. ‘Nothing but strangers here. Extra-strange, even. Theatre tragics.’
‘Actually, I was a drama kid,’ he admitted. Then to her sceptical browlift, he added, ‘Truly. I loved it. I wasn’t built for the track and I don’t have a musical bone in my body, so the drama club was the only other place where being mute wasn’t always a disadvantage. Where what you did physically could mean more than what came out of your mouth.’
She immediately had a vision of him as some kind of pint-sized Marcel Marceau.
‘Is that why you chose Rivervue to camp out behind? Because it was familiar?’
Something indefinable chased across the back of his gaze. And then it flicked away.
‘So that’s the tragic backstory,’ he joked. ‘But it doesn’t excuse the fact that I didn’t tell you sooner. I guess I’ve grown very adept—and a bit too accustomed—to hiding it from people. Hiding me, maybe.’
Wow.
For a man who had said so little until now, he sure had a lot to say now that he could. And she got the sense that he was laying it all on the line, with his newfound voice. It made her braver about doing the same.
‘You feel comfortable with me?’
He nodded—just like old times—and her long deep breath gave her the courage she needed to be uncharacteristically open with him. After all, wasn’t she keeping the mother of all secrets from the whole darned town? Mackenzie Russell was many things, but she’d like to think ‘hypocrite’ wasn’t one of them.
‘I understand privacy,’ she admitted. ‘And I can see how you could get caught up in a place where you’re just not sticking around long enough to make it worth exposing the truth.’ She leaned forward, brought herself closer to Dylan. ‘But I’m glad you’ve told me now. Thank you.’
They sat like that, nearly touching, eyes locked, with only Phantom’s thumping tail to measure the time that passed.