Page 35 of The Sign for Home

Snap lowers down while you clean your hands with sanitizer. You can feel from how her body is shivering that she’s as excited as you are about the new lunch. For the next twenty-five minutes you say nothing to Cyril or Snap until you’re too full of delicious new food to eat any more. Only a meatball and a few strands of spaghetti remain on your plate. You pretend to accidentally drop the other meatball on the floor for Snap, who gobbles it down, then licks your ankle to say thank you.

“Cyril? Are you still here?”

He is.

“Are you still hungry?” Cyril asks jokingly.

“Ha ha. No. I’m full now. Thanks for helping me get new food to try.Special food is delicious too. I have again tomorrow… but not all at same time.”

“Okay,” Cyril says. “I’m going now. Oh, hey. The lunch ladies decided to give you a big discount today. So here’s your money back.”

Cyril puts nine dollar bills in your hand. For a moment you hold the money in your palm, surprised that the lunch ladies would be so nice. You put the money back in your wallet.

“Do you know your way back to the library?” Cyril asks.

You do know your way back, but really you want to say,I am lonely, please stay so I have someone to talk to. I will give you the nine dollars back if you just stay. You want to tell him that you trust him, and then tell him secrets the way you used to tell Martin and Big Head Lawrence. You want to tell him about your mother, and about S and what happened. But he is just your interpreter, not your friend, so you say, “Yes. I know where library. Thank you. See you tomorrow.”

14HANNE MEETS ARLO

After Arlo’s class the following Wednesday I met Hanne at the community college for a coffee and catch-up. She had just gotten off work and changed from her barista outfit into her nursing scrubs for her clinical class. It was one of those rare midsummer days where the temperature was only in the high seventies, so we sat outside on the grass in front of Hudson Hall enjoying the weather. Hanne had swept her hair up in an old-fashioned French twist and, as always, garnered some lingering stares from the male students, which she ignored as if they were as common as the gnats that flitted about the lawn.

Before I could even ask her how school was going or if Curtis and Wout were doing okay, Hanne immediately began peppering me with questions about “that extraordinary DeafBlind boy,” as she called him. It was like I was working with her favorite rock star. I told myself I wasn’t breaking the confidentiality clause of the RID Code of Professional Conduct, because I never actually said Arlo’s name and tried to speak in what I thought were generalities. But, being that he was basically my only client in the dead of summer, Hanne knew good and well to whom I was referring. (I’m not proud of this.) I just needed someone to talk to about it, because the more I worked with Arlo, the more mystery seemed to surround him.

“I’m telling you there’s something there. I feel it,” I told Hanne.

“Are all Deaf people so withholding about their personal lives?” she asked.

I laughed and almost snorted my iced coffee onto the grass.

“Hell no! Most Deaf I know reveal way too much. You ask them where they bought a sweater and you end up hearing about how their aunt just left her husband for the milkman. It’s another reason why I love the Deaf community. This student’s different, though. I barely know anything about him.”

“I thought you said he was opening up more?”

“He did, I guess,” I said, plucking a blade of grass from the lawn. “But it’s like the door slammed shut again. But I know there’s something there. Something he’s dying to say. I saw him having this private conversation with himself—or rather with someone inside his head. The look on his face—it was so desperate. Heartbroken even. When I tapped him to get his attention, he jumped an inch off his chair like I had caught him in the act of committing a crime. He looked terrified.”

Hanne squinted and scratched her chin like she was some gorgeous Belgian nurse-detective.

“Interesting,” she said. “A secret lover?”

I shook my head, despite the fact Arlo had indeed told me his vague secret of loving someone a long time ago; that was not something I’d ever reveal to Hanne or anyone. I had promised. And I knew that if he was currently seeing someone, he probably would have hinted at it in that moment.

“No. I doubt it,” I said. “I get a strong feeling he’s still a virgin, anyway.”

“Impossible,” Hanne protested. “With that beautiful face?”

“Um, he’s also a Jehovah’s Witness. Besides, from what I can tell, he’s barely ever alone outside his home unless he’s studying at the library or waiting for a bus. He usually has his interpreter or guardian around. But who knows?”

Hanne’s brow knitted, and then the spark of another idea flashed in her eyes.

“Cyrilje, I hope this isn’t a rude question, but what is someone DeafBlind attracted to anyway? Sexually? Romantically? What part of a person do they fall in love with? Like for me, I’m drawn to a man’s hands or thickmuscular legs, or the sound of a good low voice. What does someone who can’t see or hear find attractive?”

I shrugged.

“It obviously depends on the individual,” I said. “Just like anyone else, I imagine. And remember, this student still sees a little, but not much. When he was small, he could see pretty well. But if someone was deaf and blind from birth? Or what this consumer eroticizes now that his vision is gone? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. Maybe the feel of the body? The smell?”

“Fascinating!” Hanne’s eyes glowed with curiosity. “Could you ask him?”

I laughed.

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