I nod and she takes my hand, lacing her fingers in mine.
I turn around to say good-bye to her mom, and she’s gone. Probably back to the kitchen. Something is making the whole house smell delicious. It is distinctly not stir-fry.
Robin tugs me down the hallway into the living room. It’s a comfortable, homey affair with a couch, a TV, and a fireplace. There are huge bookshelves lining the walls. A man is sitting in an easy chair, reading.
“Carter, this is my dad,” Robin signs and says.
He stands up and I see that he’s about my height and balding, with a hooked nose. He looks almost nothing like Robin except for his chin.
He smiles and holds out a hand. “Nice to meet you,” his mouth says, and his smile looks something like Robin’s, too. It’s honest and intelligent.
“Nice to meet you,” I sign, mouthing the words like I do for Robin.
Robin translates and her dad nods at me, giving an appraising look. He reaches down for a pad of paper that’s sitting on the table next to him. I realize that he put it there on purpose, for when he met me.
“I hear you’ve been spending some time with my daughter,” he writes. His handwriting is neat and uniform, every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’ crossed.
“Yes, sir,” I write. I can’t think of what else to say for a minute. But he seems to be waiting, so I continue writing, “She is one of the loveliest people I’ve ever met. Thank you for letting me hang out with her. And thanks for inviting me to dinner.”
He looks back at me and nods, smiling back into his book.
“I’m going to show Carter the rest of the house before dinner,” Robin writes.
Her dad looks up at her. “Okay,” his mouth says and he nods.
She leads me back through the hallway, and I let the breath escape from being trapped in my lungs. Laughing, she looks up at me.
“He’s not that scary,” she writes.
I shake my head. “He is plenty scary,” I write.
She leads me through the hallway, past some closets, to a door that leads to a basement. She flicks on the light. From what I can see at the top of the stairs, it’s a bright, finished basement with newer furniture. “The den,” she signs, fingerspelling D-E-N.
I follow her back through the hallway and up the stairs. I can’t imagine living in a place like this, where everything is separated by walls and halls! Our apartment in New York, our condo on Long Island, our summer house in Chautauqua—all open floor plans. I could sign something to my mom in the kitchen from a place in the living room and she could see every word.
At the top of the stairs and to the right is a door. It’s her door. I can tell because it’s already open, ready to be seen, and neat as a pin. But it’s not always that way—the trash can is full, and there are a few things peeking out from under the bed.
“My room!” she signs.
It’s a small room with a twin bed and a desk with an old computer. There are posters all over the walls—band posters of women with long hair and men with beards, holding string and wind instruments. There’s a huge collage, too, of pictures. I go over to it and see Robin at all stages of her teenage life, smiling. Jenni is in many of the pictures and a card at the bottom says, “Happy Sweet 16, Love, Jenni.” There are pictures of Robin playing a guitar or that little metal flute. She’s in her tennis uniform and she’s hiking in the woods. She and a guy have their arms around each other and a little jealousy flares up in me when I realize it’s the clueless guy from the overlook. She’s singing in a choir. She’s wearing a fancy dress, probably at a dance. I could stay there forever, looking at all her different smiles, but she taps me on the shoulder. “You like it?” she signs.
“I love it,” I sign back.
She smiles and writes. “It’s a gift from Jenni for my sixteenth birthday. It’s one of my favorite things.”
And I can’t help myself—I stroke her hair, ending with my hand right behind her neck. I lean down and gently pull her up onto her tiptoes, kissing first the tip of her nose, then her mouth. My other hand finds the small of her back and I press her to me. Our kiss deepens, her hands sliding up my back to my shoulder blades and then down around my waist. And then she breaks away. I startle. My hand flies to my chest.
“I’m sorry,” I sign. I grab for the pen and paper. She is backing up and wiping the corners of her lips. “If I did anything—” She takes the pen out of my hand and smiles.
“My mom just called up the stairs, that’s all,” she writes, smiling. “Don’t worry. It’s only time for dinner.” She reaches up and kisses me on the cheek and takes my hand once more.
On the way out the door, I notice a guitar in the corner and a music stand with one of those metal flutes resting on it. She catches me looking at the guitar and signs, “My baby.” I smile and reach for it but I don’t want to break it, so I don’t pick it up.
“You should show me sometime,” I start writing, but she’s already out the door.
I hurry to catch up and when I enter the dining room, her mom is just laying out the last of the meal. The jam I brought is in little serving dishes next to rolls. The spreading knives have grapes on the handles. Dinner looks like beef Stroganoff, a thick mushroom and beef gravy and egg noodles that are absolutely not Asian.
“This looks amazing!” I write, and Robin’s mom flushes with pleasure.
Her dad enters, book closed in his swinging hand, looking kind of like a clean shaven, graying Abraham Lincoln in jeans and a T-shirt.
He sits at the table and they bow their heads and I follow suit, hoping somebody will tap me when the prayer is over. He slides his paper over to me and I read, “For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful. Amen.” I look up and the rest of the family’s mouths are saying “Amen.” He timed it perfectly.
I smile at him. “Thank you,” I write under his prayer.
“You’re welcome,” he writes back.
Dinner is funny. There is no real translator, since Robin doesn’t know a whole lot of ASL and still gets stuck in basic conversation. I see a lot of awkward conversational pauses as well as sighs and yawns. Not because they’re tired or bored—hearing people just have a hard time with silence. They’re always filling it with sounds that don’t mean anything.
By the end of dinner, I am writing things down and Robin is reading them aloud. Her parents are writing and speaking aloud, and Robin is doing a funny combination of all three. At one point, she passes her mom’s notepad to me while saying what I was writing in reply to an earlier conversation and trying to sign that her dad would like the butter, please.
I have to stop my writing and laugh. Her face while she’s concentrating is one of the cutest things I’ve probably ever seen—right up there with Trina’s pudgy toddler hands signing from her high chair when she was a baby. Robin’s eyebrows furrow and the tip of her tongue sticks out the side of her mouth, just like in a cartoon. Her hands stop and start and stop again. Instead of spelling “butter” she spells “burret,” and I laugh.
“You are too cute,” I sign to her, and she drops her concentrating face and smiles, shaking her head and turning pink. I pass her dad the butter and smooth a little curl that’s escaping from her ponytail.
When I look back to the table, her parents are looking at each other and communicating in secret parent-look language. They turn their attention to me and their smiles tell me that I did something right.
“Dinner was wonderful,” I reiterate as the meal comes to a close. “Absolutely delicious.”
Robin’s mom blushes and smiles and signs, “Thank you.”
“You wanna go to Sciarrino’s and get a movie?” Robin writes.
I shrug, “Yes,” I sign, and I follow her to her beat-up Subaru. “What’s Sciarrino’s?” I sign when we get to the car.
She laughs. “DVDs” she signs.
“You still have a video store?” I write.
“Yeah,” she signs. “Westfield is small.”
Despite her living at least a mile from any neighbors, the drive to town takes less than five minutes. On the way there, she drums her fingers on the steering wheel, bopping her head around. At first, I have no idea what’s going on and then I glance at dashboard—sure enough, whatever sound system she has is lit up. “Track 05” says the screen. I give her a little smile and she turns red. She punches a button on the radio and it turns off.
“Sorry,” she signs.
I don’t have time to tell her it’s okay—we’ve pulled up to a little storefront with a big window and a lit neon sign. It smells like stale smoke in spite of the New York smoking ban that’s been in effect as long as I can remember. There’s a wall of DVDs and Blu-rays, a wall of video games for the various systems, a ton of candy, and a few newspapers. These places only survive in tiny towns and big cities. There’s one down the block from Jolene’s apartment in Queens, and we go all the time to buy Nerds and Twizzlers.
Robin wanders over to the wall of new releases and I follow her. She runs her finger along the titles, stopping when she gets to one she wants to see. I shrug or nod or shake my head until we finally decide on one. As she lifts it down (a superhero movie—action and romance and not depressing or pretentious), she turns around and says hi to somebody standing behind us.
I look. There are two prettyish white girls about our age. They have light brown hair and they’re smiling too big at me. I sigh inside and set my face into what I hope is a pleasant, open expression. It’s just so different here. In the city there are thousands of ethnicities and hundreds of languages and most people don’t care much about what makes you different. Yeah, people stare. Especially if I’m speaking ASL. But they would never actually try to meet me.
“Hi,” Robin says and signs. “This is Carter, my… boyfriend.”
Boyfriend. I like it. I smile. “I didn’t know you knew that sign!” I sign to her.
She shrugs and blushes. “I learned it last night,” she says.
I smile at her and she looks up to the girls, who are talking to her. They look at me with raised eyebrows out of the sides of their eyes, like they want to include me, but they can’t. It’s a little distracting.
“He’s from New York City,” Robin says, signing and spelling the city out. “Yeah, he’s deaf. No, I don’t mind.”
The girls pretend to look curious and I see the word “music” on their lips.
Robin blushes and her smile becomes forced. She stops signing. “Yeah,” her lips say. “I know. I guess I like him more.”
I look away for a second, pretending to study the old movie posters. When I look back, Robin is teaching them how to spell their names, “Ana,” and “Callie.”
“Hi,” Callie signs slowly, still smiling too big. “I’m C-a-l-l-i-e.” A flicker of recognition flashes through my head. This is the girl that wanted my number—the number of a guy she doesn’t even know. And I thought Lexington was a small community, ready to pounce on fresh meat.
“Hi,” I sign. I’d really just like to get back and watch the movie. “Nice to meet you.”
“Hi,” Ana signs. “I’m A-n-a.”
“Nice to meet you,” I sign again. I turn to Robin. “Want to go?”
She turns to them and talks. She holds up the movie and says something about the dark. Oh right— I’ve got to get back to Chautauqua before dark.
The girls giggle and wave and Robin and I walk over to the counter. Another teen girl is sitting behind the counter, watching TV on the little screen above her. She turns to us, bored, until she sees me and her face lights up. I don’t know how much longer I can take this small-town thing. Turning to Robin, she says something. She points at me and I catch the word “boyfriend.”
Robin nods and looks up at me. “Yeah, he’s my boyfriend,” she says and signs, smiling again.
The girl turns back to Robin. “He is sooooo hot,” comes clearly from her mouth. I grin and look down at Robin. Does every new guy get this special treatment?
Robin glances up at me and laughs when she sees me waggling my eyebrows. My teasing look gets me a nudge in the ribs and I grab them in mock pain. “Thanks,” she says to the cashier.
I look back and the expression on the cashier girl’s face has changed. It’s now sad. She shakes her head. “It’s too bad he’s deaf,” her mouth says, clear as day.
Robin looks like she’s been hit in the gut. I pretend I didn’t see anything as I pull out my wallet to pay for the DVD. I hand the girl a five and turn to Robin.
“You okay?” I sign.
“Yes,” she replies, but she swallows a couple of times, hard. And her eyes are starting to pool a little.
The register girl gives me the DVD. I nod thanks and escort Robin out. She shudders when we reach the door. She starts for the car but I can’t bear just sitting there, facing front, not even looking at each other for the next few minutes. Not to mention I can’t return an almost-crying girl to her parents.
So I put my arm around her and guide her down toward the park. The shadows are long but the sky hasn’t started turning colors yet. I have plenty of time before sunset. The grass still bears the scars from craft fair booths and thousands of footsteps, but there are a few benches scattered among the huge trees. I find one near a light post.
We sit down and she sobs.
I wrap my arms around her and she holds my shirt bunched in her fists, tears and mascara staining my shoulder.
I stroke her back and stroke her hair. She shakes and clutches at breath.
I kiss the top of her head.
It’s the first time I’ve really wished I could talk to her. In her language. Because in books and in movies and in life, people are always murmuring something reassuring. I remember crying to my mom when I was little and feeling her voice speak to me, even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
I know sounds. I know vowels and consonants. I’ve taken years of expensive speech therapy. But I also know my words don’t sound right. That, for my whole life, hearing people have laughed when I spoke.
So I stay silent and I stroke her hair and run my hand up and down her back, like my mom would do with me when I was crying.
Her breath begins to steady itself. Her sobs become more infrequent. She looks up at me with red eyes and tear-stained cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” she signs and says.
I kiss her on the forehead. “It’s okay,” I sign back.
She reaches out and I hand her the notepad.
“I’m so sorry for the way those girls treated you,” she writes.
“It’s okay,” I sign. “I’m used to it,” I write.
“But it hurts,” she writes.
I circle the words, “I’m used to it,” then write, “Life is pain, Highness. Anybody who says differently is selling something.”
She laughs through her tears and a hiccup interrupts the laughter. “Did you just quote The Princess Bride?” she writes.
“Of course,” I write.
She smiles again. “Do you just want to watch that instead?”
I nod and kiss the top of her head. She smells like flowers again. We cuddle for a minute, her leaning against my chest. Her head fits perfectly in the space between my shoulder and my chin. It rises and falls as I breathe.
“You ready?” I sign after a few more minutes.
She nods and we stand up. She crosses her arms like she’s cold and we walk back to the video store to return the DVD I’m holding.
When we get to the door, I motion that I’ll return it. She doesn’t have to bring her tear-stained face into the store with those girls. She nods, but as I turn away, she reaches out and grabs my sleeve.
I flash her a confused look. “You okay?” I sign.
“Your shirt!” she writes in huge letters. I crinkle my eyebrows and look down. There is a huge wet spot covered in eyeliner and mascara. I smile and start laughing a little. I really can’t help it.
She starts laughing, too.
“I’ll just return the D
VD later,” she writes.
“And waste another five bucks?!” I write, grinning. “I’ll return it now. Here.”
I hand her the DVD and take off my button-down so I’m standing in just my ribbed undershirt and jeans. She raises her eyebrows and I shake my head, embarrassed. I know people say that I look good or whatever, but I really don’t see it. I hand my shirt to her and she accepts it, wordlessly.
“DVD,” I sign.
She hands it over.
I open the door to the video store just in time for Ana and Callie walk out. They rubberneck as I walk in the store, and I catch Robin’s eye as I hold the door for them. A smile starts to peek through her red eyes. I let the glass door swing shut behind me.
The cashier girl is paging through a magazine. I cough and lay the DVD on the counter. Her eyes travel from the DVD up my arm, across my body, and finally to my face. She looks like she can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.
“Thanks,” I sign, not knowing what else to do. I’ve never returned a DVD a half hour after renting it. She must be wondering what the heck is wrong with me.
I turn and push back through the glass door.
My Robin girl is leaning against the hood of her beat-up old car, waiting for me. Callie and Ana are nowhere to be seen.
“Come here,” she beckons, mischief in her barely dry eyes. I approach her, not quite sure what’s about to happen. To my surprise, her fingers reach up to the back of my neck, and all of a sudden, she’s kissing me like I’m some kind of superhero. All I did was return a DVD. This is definitely worth the weird look from the cashier girl.
I wrap my arms around her waist and she wraps hers around my neck. I lift her easily so she’s sitting on the hood of her car. Without thinking, I lean over her, my left hand braced against the cold metal of the hood and my right hand wrapped around the back of her warm neck. She is astounding. Her fingers slide up into my hair and down my neck to my shoulders. They twine around my bare arms. Blood pounds through my veins.
Dear God, I could take her right here.
One single remaining thread of rational thought tells me that I can’t: we’re in public, and we’re outside.
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