I take one last look at Mr. Perfect Guy, who’s watching me, drinking his milkshake with eyebrows raised. His perfect lips drop the straw and he grins at me, crooking his finger like he wants to tell me a secret.
I bend in closer to hear what he has to say, but he doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he picks up his napkin and brings it up to my forehead, wiping it right above my eyebrow. A lightly spiced cologne cuts through the greasy diner air and for a moment I’m disoriented. This newly not-gay gorgeous guy is touching my face, which is probably bright red. He pulls his napkin away and shows me: chocolate sauce. He tilts his head and smiles.
“Thanks,” I say.
He nods, not saying anything. Of course.
I almost run back to the bar, dishes threatening to spill out of my arms
“Not gay!” I whisper-yell to Violet. “Not gay! Or at least not on a date! Separate tabs! Separate!”
Her mouth makes an “o” and she claps twice. “Good, that’s good,” she says, trying to regain composure. “Not gay!” she yells back to Fannie, who squeals.
I take the newly separated checks back to the guys at their table. “There you go,” I say as nonchalantly as possible.
This time, strawberry blond is the one who nods as he picks up his check. And Mr. Perfect Guy does something totally unexpected:
He lifts his right hand to touch his dimpled chin. Then he arcs it down, like he’s blowing a kiss.
And it all makes sense.
He’s not gay.
He’s deaf.
Chapter 2
Carter
Usually, people realize I’m deaf when my back is turned; when I’m signing with a friend or with my family. They approach me carefully, if at all, and always after the fact.
This time, I see the realization hit her. It’s almost physical. It makes both her smile and her stance waver. She nods, unsure if she should talk.
I should have told her straight off the bat, but I didn’t. It’s a big deal, you know? It’s like telling somebody that you’re a Buddhist or that your mother died when you were a child or something. It makes me who I am, but it might be a game changer to somebody else.
Because I’ve found most hearing people are like Barry, my current illustrious companion. His knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) extends to “bathroom” and “okay,” which doesn’t really count because it’s two letters. Seriously. I’ve seen him every summer since I was two, and this is the first time since middle school that we’ve hung out. And we’re only hanging out because my parents told his parents that I would tutor him in ASL. He obviously doesn’t really want to learn—we’ve been texting all through lunch.
Anyway, this hearing townie girl is just so cute. All bounce and smile. She’s wearing black pedal pushers and a white V-neck with black Vans sneakers. Her apron is wrapped twice around her little waist, and dark curls escape from her ponytail. Her eyes are the bluest I’ve seen.
She’s blushing and nodding too fast. Averting her eyes, like she doesn’t know where to look. Taking it well, I think.
I almost didn’t show her at all. I was happy when she thought we were gay. Barry? Not so much.
“U tell her or I tell her,” he texted after she left to split the check.
“We’ll never see her again,” I replied, typing with one hand and glancing at the little dab of chocolate still on my napkin. I’d never done anything like that before, but I couldn’t help myself. I guess I was feeling brave. Are gay people perpetually brave? Are deaf people, for that matter? The world seems to think so. I don’t think I’m brave. I’m just me.
“But I’M NOT GAY,” he sent. “Now tell her so she gets y I’m talking 4 u.”
“Fine,” I sent back.
So when she brought the check, I told her. In my language. By saying, “Thank you.”
More composed now, she can finally look at me.
A smile flickers around her lips. “You’re welcome,” she says. She’s speaking clearly through her smile, at normal speed, so I have no problem reading her lips. She gives two quick nods and turns her smile once more to Barry before turning on her heel and heading back toward the counter.
She knew my thank-you.
My phone vibrates and the screen flashes.
“About time. Let’s go,” says the text from Barry.
I turn over the bill. Eight dollars and fifty cents. Eight fifty for a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake? Definitely not in the city anymore.
I dig twelve dollars out of my wallet and leave it on the table, peeking the corners out from under my plate. She can keep the change.
Barry counts out exactly six-fifty. He pauses, then adds two more quarters. I roll my eyes, smack his arm, and point to the pile.
He adds a dollar.
I jam my hands in my pockets (an unusual place for them to be) and walk toward the door. The older waitress is watching me with wide eyes. Our waitress must have told her.
Yup—the younger waitress walks up to the older one, grabs her arm, and pointedly leads her away, giving her an earful, from the look of it. She glances over her shoulder at me, ponytail bouncing, blue eyes apologetic.
“Sorry,” she mouths.
I shrug and smile and wave good-bye.
She blushes and waves back.
“Good-bye,” her mouth says, clear as day.
I push the door open with my shoulder and whip out my phone.
“Did she say her name?” I text Barry.
“Yeah,” he replies.
“. . .”
“I forget.”
He would.
What does it matter?
I’ll never see her again.
We climb into Barry’s Jeep and I buckle myself in. My hands are moving before I remember that he doesn’t speak my language.
“She’s cute, that’s all,” I sign.*
He looks at me, exasperated. “What?” his mouth says.
I dismiss his question with a wave of my hand and run the hand through my hair, feeling the rough edge of the scar behind my right ear, which reminds me that my life could be very different. Doesn’t matter. Can’t miss what you can’t have. Vineyards flash by, one long row after another, and I wish I’d brought my camera. Not my phone camera, which is good enough, I guess, but my Nikon. The good camera. My phone vibrates. It’s Barry. Texting and driving. Perfect.
“You wanna do anything else?”
I shake my head. I’ve fulfilled my obligatory “tutoring” hour. It’s not my fault he didn’t actually want to learn the language.
He looks at me. I shake my head again.
My phone is still for the rest of the drive.
After a twenty-minute drive, we park in the Chautauqua lot and approach the gate to have our passes scanned. Barry’s wearing his around his neck, but I took mine off before entering Grape Country Dairy. I don’t think the people here realize how pretentious it looks to wear something that proclaims their status to everybody. Here, it’s routine to wear Rolexes or carry Gucci bags.
Or drive Ducati motorcycles. Like I do.
Touché me.
Pondering the dichotomy of my moral choices, I walk down the cobblestone streets, past manicured lawns, parks, pavilions, and amphitheaters, to my house. Chautauqua Institution, my summer home, is an interesting place. It’s a gated community on Chautauqua Lake that focuses on education, the arts, politics, and religion. Every summer, there are tons of concerts and lectures and performances. It’s like an intellectual summer camp for privileged adults. There really is no other place like it in the world.
Anyway, I’ve been coming since I was just a little kid. The house was passed down through my dad’s family, and he and my mom thought it was the perfect place to take their young family for the summer. There’s a wall around the town, after all, and the whole atmosphere is inclusive. It’s the perfect place for my deaf dad and CODA (child of deaf adult) mom to summer with their three adopted deaf kids. We’ve been coming for so long that we’re some
thing of a staple here. Some of the snowbirds learn basic ASL simply so they can communicate with us. My mom does ASL interpreting at the morning lectures and my dad does some architectural consulting work out of his summer office.
“How’s Barry?” my mom signs as I walk into the kitchen. She’s up to her elbows in flour and her hands are covered in the stuff. My sister Trina is standing on a stool next to her. She’s nine, and she’s wearing a sparkly turquoise T-shirt and little black shorts. Her blond hair is pulled up into a ponytail, revealing her turquoise cochlear implant, or CI. To describe it very basically, a CI is a really complicated, high-tech, invasive device that enhances hearing ability. Part of it is permanent, implanted under the skin and attaching to the cochlea, and part of it is external, removable. I don’t have one and never will.
“Barry is fine,” I sign. I pull a stool up to the island, across from the two of them. “His horizons have not been broadened. He learned exactly zero ASL. Fancy college will have to wait.”
“Sorry,” my mom signs back. I shrug. I wasn’t expecting it to be a roaring success. I guess he’s failing Spanish. His parents think the brilliant way around this is to teach him ASL this summer so he can test out of any foreign language requirement. That in itself shows you how ignorant he is. There is no way he can learn an entire vocabulary and language structure in seven weeks. Maybe he can learn enough to hold basic conversation. Maybe he can learn enough to scrape by. But fluent? Ha.
I watch as my mom kneads a big loaf of bread and Trina kneads her own little loaf. It’s adorable.
“Looks good,” I sign, and try to snag a piece.
Trina slaps my hand away. “Mom!” her mouth says, and then she turns to Mom and I can’t see her face, but her mouth is still moving, since Mom can hear her. I take the opportunity to grab a piece of dough. You know how cookie dough tastes almost better than the cookies themselves? Bread dough is the opposite. Terrible. I choke it down.
“Manners,” my mom signs and says. She takes Trina’s face and turns it my way. Then takes her little hands out of the dough. “Use sign,” she signs.
Trina rolls her eyes. She’s had her CI since she was a little less than two years old; so long she’s practically hearing. She’s just begun to realize that the whole world doesn’t talk with their hands, and she likes to practice that freedom. It’s frustrating to my parents, who debated long and hard about getting her implanted so young. They like the independence her CI gives her, but it’s frustrating that she’s already using it against us.
“Carter is stealing!” her little hands say.
“Carter, don’t steal from your sister,” my mom admonishes.
I hold up my hands in surrender.
“How was your trip? Where’d you go?”
“A diner in Westfield,” I reply. “Grape Country Dairy.”
“What?” my sister asks.
I sign it again, carefully.
“That doesn’t make sense,” she signs and says.
“I know,” I sign. “But the food was good.”
And the server was pretty cute.
“What’d you get?”
“Bacon cheeseburger. A milkshake.”
A smile. A wave good-bye.
“Will you go back?”
Will I?
“Yeah.”
* * *
*American Sign Language is a visual language. Direct written translations of ASL are confusing and an inaccurate representation of the language. For the reader’s ease, all signed sentences are translated to English.
Chapter 3
Robin
The music flows soft from my heart, liquid through my fingers, and hard against the guitar strings, into the ears of the congregation. I fingerpick slowly.
The choir comes in softly with the chorus of, “Awake, my soul!” Trent’s stand-up bass joins my guitar, rounding out the accompaniment and quickening my heartbeat. He winks at me while singing the verse and I almost forget to join him in the bridge, when the keyboard and second guitar add in. We let the last note of the bridge ring out for a minute in the big, old-fashioned church. This is the best part: the moment before a kiss, when you’re breathing the breath of the person you love. There’s a gleam in Trent’s eye as his fingers slide up the neck of his stand-up bass, pounding out a new rhythm.
My right hand begins a rollicking strum pattern, and I find that I’m smiling. These are the little kisses—the tentative, building nibbles. I glance at the congregation. Every foot in the building is tapping and every head is nodding. Some people have their eyes closed. I can practically see the song being played out around them—over their heads and under their feet and around their hearts.
The choir sings of awakening souls, and I can feel mine coming alive inside of me. Something rounded and lovely begins to blossom inside me and it bubbles out through my fingers and my follicles. This is the only time my soul awakens: when I’m in the middle of the music. And now the descant is coming.
I sing over top of the choir. My voice flies as my soul soars, peering down at the heads of the people in the crowd, joining their souls as they fly among the mahogany beams in the vaulted ceiling.
Too soon, the instruments cut out, one by one until just Trent and I are left. I’m fingerpicking again, and we sing out the last line, slow, in unison, but separated by an octave.
I end the song looking at the neck of my guitar and breathing a sigh, savoring the last notes as they echo above the heads of the listeners, finally fading away.
The congregation claps politely, a kiss on the nose after five minutes of passion. I set Bender, my good-enough-for-now guitar (Fender Bender is her full name) on her stand. I look and nod at them before going back to my seat in the hard pews, between my parents. It’s weird to be clapped at in church. I don’t mind, but somehow I don’t feel like I should take all the credit. The sermon is fine, I guess. Something about loving God and loving people. But my fingers twitch and my brain replays, and my heart can’t stop pumping out the beat of the song that just ended.
Church ends with the benediction. After the “Amen,” I go up to the stage to take care of Bender as the congregation mills around, exchanging good mornings and comments on the weather.
“Robin!” I hear, and I turn to see the crowd part, heads turning to let a gorgeous and determined redhead through. It’s my best friend, Jenni.
“Ooh, Robin! That was so good!”
Jenni catches me up in a hug, threatening to knock Bender out of my hands. I come up to her shoulders. A situation which is not helped by her three-inch heels and my ballet flats.
I laugh and untangle myself. “You came!”
“Of course, I came!” She flicks her long red hair over her shoulder. I catch this guy from out of town doing a double take and I smile to myself. Happens all the time. Jenni is, of course, oblivious. She looks over the crowd. “So this is church?”
I shrug. “Yup.” I’ve been coming here my whole life. It’s only recently, though, that we got the new worship pastor and he found out I can play guitar.
“Do I look okay?”
I give her a look. “Jenni. You are the most beautiful thing here. You could be wearing sweatpants and a poncho and you’d still be the most beautiful thing here.” We became friends sometime around middle school, before she got gorgeous. Our friendship has remained solid through her growth spurt and my growth sputter, her sleek red hair, and my frizz-prone brunette locks, her slim figure and my sturdy thighs. Sometimes I think she’d be higher on the popularity scale if it weren’t for me. But who needs a popularity scale when you have a best friend?
“So will you play again next week?” she asks.
“No… we rotate. It’ll be a while before I play again.”
“It’s tempting,” she says, looking around at the instruments, and I think of how her breathy alto would fit between my sweet soprano and Trent’s clear tenor.
“You’re welcome to join,” I say.
She shrugs. “I’ll see, but probably
not. This is my last real summer before I’m an adult. I want to enjoy it.”
Suddenly, big hands cover my eyes. I recognize the calloused fingertips before I smell his Sunday cologne or peek through the fingers to see the look of disgust on Jenni’s face.
“Peek-a-boo, guess who?” says a disguised voice. My breath catches in my throat.
“Get off, Trent.” I step away and brush his hands from my eyes, kind of wishing I could just stay there, his hands on me again. I wonder if he knows how he affects me. My flushed face doesn’t do a whole lot to hide it.
He laughs in his natural tenor and shoves me lightly. “Just playin’, Robin egg,” he says, his voice back to normal now that his “disguise” is gone. His curly hair is parted on the side and gel attempts to hold it down. Gray-green eyes glint and the stubble on his face is already defying the morning’s shave.
“Maybe it’s a little too soon to play,” Jenni says tightly. She liked Trent well enough when we were dating but when we broke up he became the oil to her water.
He ignores her. “Good job up there, Robin,” he says.
“Thanks. You too.”
“Nah…” he waves me off. He never takes compliments well. “You gonna do the gig next month?”
“What gig?”
“You mean he hasn’t talked to you about it yet? You are in for a treat.” He winks at me and I look just in time to see Pastor Mark approaching.
“Robin!” he says. He’s a tall man, balding and bearded, but he has excellent taste in music, which goes a long way with me. When he became the worship pastor at our church, the music scene morphed from canned ’90s praise songs to a mix of secular acoustic songs, old hymns, and original arrangements. The music is musty but fresh—new life breathed into old traditions and sentiments. Like today’s mash-up of “Awake My Soul,” and “I’ll Fly Away.” Brilliant. “Good job today, Trent. I’m glad you joined us.”
Trent nods and winks at me. “Thanks for letting me stay.”
Pastor Mark gives him a questioning look. Trent joined the church worship band around Christmas, by my invitation. Pastor Mark never knew that we were dating, much less that we broke up.
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