Page 82 of The Sign for Home

“Okay. Fair enough. But you’ll just have to wait and see. I’ll be honest with you, things like this don’t always work out. But by going to see Shri now, no matter what happens, you won’t be spending the rest of your life regretting not ever trying. Right?”

Before Arlo could say anything, the light turned green. There would be no more talking for a long stretch. When we finally got on the Taconic Parkway, I was speeding along nicely for ten miles, but suddenly traffic slowed to a crawl and then to a stop. Arlo kept lifting and dropping his sunglasses from his eyes, attempting to make out why we weren’t moving.

“Stop, why?”

“Car accident somewhere up ahead,” I told him, signing with only one hand while I held the wheel with the other. “Google Maps says delays for the next twenty-five miles. It’s okay. Not a huge deal.”

Arlo punched the door. He grimaced with impatience.

“I don’t want late! Different road… can?”

I googled an alternate route that would take us down a back road through a park. It would be a huge horseshoe back to the Taconic, but we’d bypass the accident. I pulled onto the shoulder and my tires squealed as we backed up to the nearby exit.

Seeing how anxious Arlo was, I drove as fast as I could to make up for lost time. After thirty minutes, we were in the middle of a forest and stopped along the side of the road for a pee break for Arlo and Snap. I assured Arlo he didn’t need to worry about time since we were now running ahead of schedule. When they returned from relieving themselves, Arlo said that the air smelled good and asked me to describe what I saw.

“It’s beautiful out here. Lots of big mountains. A long, gray, quiet asphalt road that curves around the next bend. There’s a small stream—they also call it a B-R-O-O-K—along the side of the road. The water makes little falls when it pours over the rocks. Old rotten logs make bridges over it. There’s a gorgeous big oak tree right in front of the car. It’s covered in moss on one side of the trunk. Here! Feel it?”

I guided Arlo and Snap to the tree and Arlo reached out and touched the moss, then reached his hands out to measure the width of the tree.

“The sunlight makes the green at the top glow and sparkle in places where it shines through. There are some rock formations that stick out the side of the hill… gray rock with bits of white and black. Granite, I imagine. A dragonfly is skirting across the brook. Some birds are flying above us. I see a squirrel… two squirrels…”

After I recounted every single thing I saw to Arlo, he took a deep breath.

“Feel the sublime?” he asked.

“Ha ha. Sure. Kind of.”

We again found ourselves considering alternate ways to signthe sublime.

“No. Not right,” Arlo signed to each attempt, claiming that none contained the right sense of power, beauty, or A-W-E.

“Must also heartbreaking,” he signed. “Don’t worry. Later I will figure it out.”

Then, out of nowhere, he said he wanted to ask me something personal. My shoulders tightened—I’ve never been a fan of questions that start that way.

“Um… sure. Go ahead.”

Arlo turned his head toward me, but his giant sunglasses made it hard to see if he was actually looking at me. His signs were low and smaller than usual, as if he thought someone might have been watching.

“Long time ago you fall in love, right?”

So we’re finally getting to it, I thought. I couldn’t help but smile.

“I know Hanne talked to you about me,” I signed.

Arlo’s face flushed beneath the rim of his sunglasses.

“I know. Very private. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I signed. “We can talk about it. Yeah, I was in love. A long time ago when I was your age. Remember I told you about that Deaf teacher I followed into his sign language class during college?”

Arlo nodded and leaned forward as if he had been waiting for this moment. Suddenly I found myself telling him all about Bruno. How he had been my ASL teacher at RIT. How he was older than me and how one night our friendship became something more. I realized it was the first time I had told the story in years. I had been avoiding it, hoping it would lose its power. It hadn’t. Suddenly I could see Bruno’s face in my mind. The green eyes, the animated face with its peekaboo dimple, the funny way he would lazily sign the letter K like a P. I could see his room, smell his cologne, imagine his bed with the neatly folded blue knitted afghan.

“One night we were in his living room practicing ASL with each otherand our knees touched, and neither of us jumped away; in fact, we both just sat there, attached, letting that warm feeling flow between us. I figured I might be imagining it until… you know… we… um… kissed.”

Arlo smiled broadly and gave one big rock back and forth.

“I know that feeling,” Arlo signed excitedly. “Me and Shri… same. Our bodies touch and inside heart…”Snaps fingers. “We know! Not need talk talk talk. Hands know, fingers know… knees know. Ha ha.”

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