Page 34 of The Sound Of Us

Eli

Without realizing it, I’ve planned my nights around Axel’s visits to the lake.

His dog, Pepper, is always with him, so I made sure to get some dog treats the last time I went to the grocery store.

I think he’s fallen in love with my piano. When he comes to the lake, he reads for about an hour. Pepper sits near him and waits. Then, I go out to them, give Pepper a treat and the three of us go back to the house so Axel can play on the piano.

Some days he’d rush out like he did the first time, and other days he stays till past midnight.

The routine has become so predictable he even comes by on Friday nights around midnight. It's a strange routine but I know nothing about his life so I try not to make judgements. But one thing is clear: he’s always on edge. He might struggle with anxiety because I’ve also noticed Pepper nudging him or placing her paws on his chest sometimes.

We never, ever talk about his husband. It feels stolen, these moments he comes to play on the piano. But we do nothing else. Nothing’s going on. He sits at the piano, playing, and I make sure I’m barefoot so I can feel the vibrations, or, I sit next to the piano and place my hands on it so I can feel the sound of his music.

Sometimes, he gets so lost in the music he seems to forget about his anxiety and even Pepper settles down under the bench.

He never accepts anything from me. Not food, not water. Definitely not wine. Nothing.

One day, I went to get a treat for Pepper while Axel played. When I got back, he had a piece of chocolate in his hand. But he wasn’t eating it. He was picking out the nuts from around the chocolate, eating them and discarding the chocolate into the trash can nearby. When he saw me watching him, he’d laughed with embarrassment and I got him an actual bag of nuts from the pantry. He accepted those.

I show him old albums with pictures of my dad. His fascination with the old photos is curious, and he tells me that he’s always loved history and when he was younger, he’d read through the obituaries in the newspaper and wonder what kind of lives those people had lived.

He’s fascinated with sign language, but not everything he wants to learn is innocent. Last week, he wouldn’t leave me alone about swear words. We sat in front of the fire, cross-legged and facing each other, and Axel made me teach him how to say motherfucker.

So, I held my palms out facing each other, my index and middle fingers making a V shape and the rest of my finger tucked in. Then, when Pepper came to sit next to me and refused to leave when it was time for them to go home, he told her she was a motherfucker in sign. It left me breathless to watch him laugh his head off for cursing at his beloved dog.

His happiness over learning swear words was so endearing I’d spent the whole week teaching him.

Asshole.

Fuckface.

Fucking cunt

But motherfucker was his favorite. Poor Pepper.

It isn’t long before I have to come to terms with the fact that Axel’s importance in my life is becoming increasingly concerning.

For two people, one of whom couldn’t hear and the other was only starting to learn to sign, we ‘talk’ for hours. With Pepper sitting quietly beside one of us near the fire if we’re inside or at the foot of the boulder if we’re outside, I got to learn that he started reading so he could live in another world sometimes. It still helps him escape sometimes, he’d said. I asked what it was he wanted to escape from and he just shook his head and smiled.

I told him about my father, showing him online articles which documented my father’s contribution to the protection of American cyber borders.

He’d looked so impressed and then he googled me, which I’m not sure was a good idea. Luckily, he didn’t look into articles about previous partners I’d been linked with.

He was most interested in how educated I was. “You’re so smart,” he’d said. I told him it was all because of my father and somehow I also managed to tell him that I struggled to shed tears over his death. Axel had smiled then, and typed a note on my phone, telling me that the best gift I could give my father was my tears. I saved the note.

Then, he told me he got sick in his senior year, but he didn’t tell me what kind of sickness he had and I didn’t pry.

His mother had died when he was still in high school and his father had left when he was still a child. He’s been married for ten years and… maybe it’s my deafness and the subsequent fact that I might be more sensitive to body language and mood changes, but Axel’s visible anxiety is disturbing, especially after he mentioned his husband.

And it gets worse with each day that passes after one particular Friday two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I noticed the first bruise on his cheek and that was when I decided I didn’t care that Axel was married.

He was already inside my skin. My fascination with him escalating to a kind of possessiveness that should have had me booking the first flight back to Louisville. Instead, the more I convince myself that I don’t get to just embark on an affair with a man like Axel, especially because he’s not once given any indication that he’d be willing to cross that line, the less sense it makes that he should be with someone like Frank Davis.

Tonight—Friday night—I watch him walk down the path with Pepper by his side. But instead of turning left toward the house, since it’s extra cold today and we’ve gotten used to the fireplace on days like this, he makes for the Old Scarlet tree.

I watch him for a while from the window. He passes the boulder and heads to the lake.

He doesn’t have a book with him as far as I can see. Or flashlight. Even Pepper seems confused. She stops at the boulder, looking between it and the lake.

---