by Arlene James
“Abby?”
“She had to get back to the store.”
He nodded. Time to pay the piper, then. “Want to go out front so you can yell at me?”
She cut her eyes to the side and folded her arms. Finally she shook her head. He dropped down to sit on the floor in front of her, one knee drawn up with his arm wrapped around it.
“Had to be done, Becca.”
“Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she said, keeping her gaze averted.
He moved his toe back and forth, trying to think what to say to that. “Could be worse.”
She pushed her hands through her hair and glowered at him, saying, “Yeah, we could be charity cases with nothing more to our names than the clothes on our backs, a useless piece of land and a stock of canned peaches and pickled okra.”
He dropped his gaze and said, “I can help.” When he sneaked a peek at her, she was sitting forward with her forearms on her knees, mouth flattened, gaze level. She opened her mouth, but then her eyes filled, and she put her head back to keep the tears from falling. He gave her a moment, then got up so he could look down into her face.
“It’s been a long, hard day,” she said, mouth trembling.
He nodded. He was feeling it himself—the weakness that came with being emotionally drained. “It’ll get better,” he promised.
She sat up straight again, looked him in the eye and said, “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “You’re welcome.”
She sighed. “You must feel like God’s dumped us on you.”
He chuckled. He actually felt as if he was finally understanding why it had all happened, why God had brought him back here, what his real purpose was. He finally understood that being deaf was next to no hardship when all things were considered, that he’d traded his hearing and a career for a life and that he was no less a man than before. Maybe just the opposite.
Now was not the time to say these things, though. It wasn’t about him. She had been through a serious trauma. She needed time to adjust, to accept, to understand, and he needed time to work out some details and get everybody settled. The details, actually, were a good distraction.
He pulled the folded instructions from his back pocket and waved them at her, saying, “Now I could use some help.”
She took the paper from him, glanced at CJ and said, “Okay, but what about that mess in the front hall?”
He waved a hand. “Dig out what’s needed later. Leave the rest for tomorrow.”
Sniffling, she nodded. “Fine.”
Backing up, he said, “I’ll get the tools.”
“I’d better check on Jemmy,” she replied, starting to rise, but he pushed her back down.
“I’ll do it.” He was happy to do it. Just plain happy, in fact, which didn’t make a lot of sense because he really did hurt for Becca and all that she had lost. Furthermore, he knew perfectly well that more difficult days lay ahead before they could really say that they had weathered this storm, yet life suddenly felt right to him.
He found Jemmy in one of his old sport shirts, buttoned up to the neck and stuffed haphazardly into her shorts, sweeping the floor of her imaginary playhouse with a fallen tree branch. She looked up and smiled as he approached. He smiled back and instructed, “Stay inside the fence. Okay?”
She nodded and continued her play, talking and shaking a finger at some imaginary troublemaker.
Yes, he thought, giving a few more moments to her little drama, this was what life was really about, and he might never have known if left to his own devices. Like Uncle Ted, he might have awakened one day in a place far from home with the realization that his only heirs were nieces and nephews of whom he’d seen too little over the years. He understood now that he didn’t want to be like Ted, and a profound sense of gratitude washed over him. With it came the whisper of an almost forgotten Bible verse.
“In everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
In everything give thanks. Everything.
Even deafness, as incredible as that seemed.
Becca quickly realized that putting together a crib was a daunting process that in this case could have been a disaster. For one thing, reading instructions aloud to Dan proved less than efficient, especially when those instructions appeared to have been written by an individual with only a vague understanding of the English language. He simply couldn’t watch what he was doing with his hands and the movements of her lips, too. This necessitated much study of intricate diagrams and a good deal of trial and error.
If that wasn’t bad enough, CJ greatly complicated the procedure. He desperately wanted to get in on the act. Two adults down on the floor with an interesting array of wood and metal parts spread out between them looked like great fun to him. A situation tailor-made for bedlam. They spent at least half their time removing things from his reach or taking them away once he had gotten his hands on them. This naturally produced a series of infantile protests, complete with back arching and squeals of outrage.
Through it all Dan remained cheerful, patient and—somehow—productive. Just when her own frustration or CJ’s reached fever pitch, Dan did or said something to lighten the atmosphere. Once he even pretended to skewer himself with a long, thin piece of metal, reeling about the room on his knees and finally collapsing on his back with arms and legs lifted toward the ceiling and jiggling like some insane cartoon character. CJ threw himself onto Dan’s belly with a shriek of delight, although a moment before he’d been screaming in demand of the dangerously long, thin metal piece, which Dan quickly passed to Becca before pitching the child into the air and catching him for a prolonged ticklefest. By the time he let the little urchin up for air, she had the rail guide firmly attached to the side of the bed and the conflict was forgotten.
As the parts disappeared into the whole, CJ began to lose interest in the process and realize that the result of the game was all about him, too. He knew a crib when he saw one, and he was ready to climb in well before it was safe to do so. Dan worked at a feverish pace then, having mastered the intricacies of the design, while Becca herself paced the floor with CJ in her arms, babbling a running dialogue on the delights of this new wonder. Once the mattress was installed, the casters locked and the side raised into place, she deposited her rambunctious son in the crib. CJ grasped the slender wooden rails and shook them with all his tiny might, as if to exert his mastery over his new abode. It was then that Dan realized he hadn’t purchased the appropriate bed linens—as if she’d ever had any.
“A regular sheet will do just fine,” she told him, and then had to let him placate CJ while she folded and tucked the thing into place.
CJ went back into the crib and refused to get out until they both pretended to leave the room. Grinning at each other in the hall, they let him howl for a moment before swooping in to scoop him out of the bed once more and carry him off downstairs to the kitchen, where Jem was discovered helping herself to another glass of milk, her second since lunch. Her skill at this endeavor was clearly demonstrated by puddles of milk on the counter, table and the floor in front of the refrigerator. She had not, however, broken any glasses or turned over any chairs in the process. Becca coaxed her into entertaining her brother with a set of plastic measuring cups and other extraneous utensils while dinner was being prepared.
Dan kept a well-stocked larder, and the freezer tucked into a corner of the utility room proved to contain enough meat to feed them for months to come. The chest-type freezer seemed to have held its seal well and adequately preserved its contents, so it was just a matter of determining what could be prepared most quickly. They decided on hamburgers, though the package in Dan’s pantry contained only three buns and he declared himself hungry enough to eat a whole cow. In the end he ate one burger with bun and all the fixings, another with white bread and a third patty all on its lonesome, not to mention canned pork and beans and fruit cocktail.
Afterward they loaded the dirty dishes into the automatic washe
r—such luxury!—and adjourned to the living room for a little television, very little, as it turned out. Jem was asleep before she fully stretched out on the rug in front of the set, and Becca herself was fading fast. Even CJ, who had napped much of the day away, seemed worn out. When Dan shut off the set and stooped to gather up Jem, Becca was only too glad to let him carry the child up the stairs.
What followed was unique in Becca’s experience. Whenever Cody had been home, it had been his habit to take a few moments for himself while Becca prepared Jem and got her into bed. Later, often after Jemmy was already asleep, he would slip into the room and kiss her good-night. He even stood sometimes and watched her slumbering peacefully, a smile of fatherly pride on his face, but it had never occurred to him, apparently, to actually get her ready and tuck her in, and in all honesty it hadn’t occurred to Becca to let him, perhaps because Jem was a girl and because her own father had never taken a hand with his children except in discipline. John Odem provided fine help with the children as a general rule, but even when they were around at bedtime, he was usually the first one to bed. Whatever the reason, she didn’t expect Dan to help out with bedtime chores, even though they would be sleeping in his house.
It came as a shock when, after producing pj’s and other necessary items from the mound of shopping bags in the foyer, he wrestled CJ into a dry diaper and shirt while she changed Jemmy. Then while she got the baby down, a more time-consuming task than normal, he calmly toted Jemmy into the bathroom and held her up to the sink so she could brush her teeth, which involved much more giggling and spitting than it should have. When Becca was finally able to slip away from CJ, she found Dan sitting on the side of a twin-size maple bed reading a book to Jemmy in such a soft voice that it was almost a whisper. Jem looked up and lifted a finger to her lips, as if to say that it would be rude to ask him to speak louder. Feeling a pang at her heart, Becca stood in the doorway, arms folded, back against the casing, and waited until he was finished. As she tucked Becca beneath the covers, she noticed a small, roughly triangular pink plastic box standing on the shelf above the bed. It was the only feminine thing in the room.
Out in the hallway Dan handed her a corresponding piece that he’d clipped to the back of his belt. “Monitor,” he explained. “In case she gets scared.” He shrugged. “First time sleeping alone, strange place.”
Becca stared at the gizmo in her hand, watching a tiny light flash green as Jemmy coughed in the other room. He’d thought of everything. In the old house she’d heard through the wall every time one of her babies had so much as rolled over in the night, but this place was different—not just larger but more solid. She nodded, a lump in her throat, but when she looked up to thank him, he produced a second receiver, a blue one.
“CJ,” he said succinctly.
She stared at him for a long moment and saw the weariness and concern around his eyes. He needed a shave, but the shadows on his jaws and chin just made the blue of his eyes look brighter and more vivid. She ached to feel his arms around her once more, but too much had happened for that now. She was too dependent on him suddenly, too much of a burden. She had dared to dream of finding love with him, of an equal and mutually beneficial relationship. For a while she had imagined that she could be his ears, his bridge to the hearing world, but this long, traumatic day had shown her he didn’t really need a thing that she could provide. Just the opposite, in fact. He surely didn’t need the trouble she’d brought to his doorstep.
If God had any purpose at all in bringing her into his life, it was to show him how little assistance he really needed. No, she rather feared that the need was all on her end. That, it seemed, was the story of her life, and she was purely tired of it, tired to the bone. In more ways than one. It must have shown.
“Better grab some gear,” he said suddenly, moving toward his bedroom. “Shift stuff around tomorrow.”
“No need for that,” she told him, but his back was to her, so he couldn’t know. She stood in the doorway of his room, head bowed as he packed up.
Large and spacious, the room was simply furnished with a ridiculously large bed, a single side table and a dresser and chest of drawers that matched each other but nothing else. He pulled things from both and tossed them into a small black kit bag, working quickly, then moved into the well-appointed bath to pick up his personal toiletries. She hated putting him out of his room, but it was only temporary. Tomorrow, she decided wearily, she would figure out what to do. He moved toward her, zipping the bag as he crossed the room.
“I’m sorry about this,” she said, catching his eye, “but it won’t be for long.”
He smiled, stopping in front of her. “It’s okay,” he said, and then he reached around her, the bag swinging lightly against her back as he hugged her briefly. “Sleep well.”
He was at the top of the stairs before she even thought to return his polite good-night, and then he was gone. She stood in the silent house, pink and blue monitors in her hands, and felt the weight of broken dreams around her.
Chapter Ten
Dan spent Saturday morning salvaging as many of his tools as he could from the wreck of his pickup truck. The toolbox had flown open at some point, but a number of the larger items were still inside. His levels were broken, the blade of a circular saw had been bent beyond redemption, but he had the tools necessary to help John Odem get a tarp over his back porch where the roof had been blown away. Clouds were building in the west when John dropped him back at the house, and he’d barely started on the late lunch Becca had prepared for him when the insurance adjuster arrived, having driven over from Lawton. Becca showed the fellow in, introduced him as Alan Hampton and insisted on fixing him a sandwich, which he accepted with a happy smile and words that Dan didn’t quite catch.
“Can’t very well eat in front of you,” she said, sitting down across the table from Dan.
Hampton was a youngish fellow, affable and self-assured but nondescript physically. After making short work of the sandwich, he took out a long form and an ink pen and began asking questions about the storm, which either Becca or Dan answered. It went fairly smoothly. She was so good at helping him understand all that was being said that Dan doubted the young man even realized he was talking to a deaf person. Hampton would be writing and speaking at the same time, so Dan would totally miss what he was saying. Then Becca would ask something like, “Can you remember your Social Security number off the top of your head?” or “The mailing address here would be the same as the physical address, wouldn’t it?”
Dan would concur or make some relevant correction, and they’d move on to the next question. One time she looked at him and said very deliberately, “You never did tell me the exact date you bought that truck or who you bought it from, either.”
Dan had to grin at that one. “Don’t suppose I did.” He recited the date and place in Oklahoma City where he’d purchased the now wrecked truck, and the insurance adjuster wrote it all down.
When Hampton asked why Dan happened to be out that night, Becca supplied the answer. “It was a mission of mercy, pure and simple.”
Grateful that she hadn’t made more of it than that, Dan added simply, “Sirens can’t be heard out there.”
Hampton nodded his understanding and asked, “Anyone hurt?”
“No,” Becca told him, looking at Dan. “Everyone’s just fine.”
“Can’t mind a wrecked truck too much, then, can we?” he said, and Becca and Dan both agreed that they could not.
The form was filled out pretty quickly after that. Hampton thanked them both and left to go check out the damage, promising to return later with a settlement check. Dan offered to show him the way, but he felt confident that he could find the site on his own, so Dan let it be. He didn’t really care whether or not the fellow knew that he was deaf, but he was coming to the conclusion that he and Becca worked well together. In fact, they seemed to fit pretty much like glove and hand.
“That went fine,” he said to her as soon as they w
ere alone.
“Should’ve,” she answered, getting up to clear the table. “Though why they have to ask some of that stuff is beyond me.”
He nodded in agreement, then softly said, “You didn’t have to run interference for me.”
He knew he’d gotten it wrong or that she’d taken it wrong when she stiffened. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“No, no,” he protested, but she kept going.
“I didn’t even think. I mean, it was sort of automatic.”
“It’s okay,” he said quickly.
“No, really, you manage just fine on your own.”
“You don’t understand,” he tried to say, but Jemmy skipped into the room then, announcing that CJ was awake from his nap.
“The monitor?” Dan asked, glancing around the room.
“I forgot it,” Becca admitted with a grimace before going to rescue CJ from his crib.
Dan tamped down his impatience. Not only had he gotten the tone all wrong, his timing obviously left much to be desired. Pushing out a long breath, he looked to Jemmy and swirled a finger at the littered table. “Want to help?”
“I’ll get it,” she said, whirling away. Puzzled, he rose and brought his hands to his hips, his gaze skittering around the room. A red light was flashing on the alarm panel. Someone was at the front door. He stepped out into the hall just in time to see Jemmy swerve almost into the wall as she ran toward the foyer. Following, he came upon her talking to two women, one elderly, the other a mere teenager with dark, short hair caught up in all manner of clips and barrettes.
“They come to see you,” Jem announced, looking up into his face. He looked at the two women.
“Are you Mr. Holden?” the girl asked. He nodded, and she went on. “Gram needs your help. The roof’s plumb off the bathroom, and there’s a leak coming out from under the house. John Odem down to Kinder’s said you was the one to call on account of she hasn’t got insurance, only he said we wasn’t to telephone, you being deaf and all.”