Page 90 of The Sign for Home

“Read it!” she demanded. Foolishly I did.

I do not want Shri to think I don’t care again. How you feel if you love someone and they have disappear and never hear words about what haves been happening on you. (CRYING) I’m torture! I’m heartbreak! Please, Professor Lavinia Bahr, help me! Will PLEASE help me to visit my sweetheart?!!

The rest of the letter contained Arlo’s attempt to get the professor to persuade me to help him get to Shri. When I finished reading, I looked up and saw Lavinia’s moist eyes staring at me, like I might suddenly jump in the closet and change into my superhero-of-the-disabled outfit.

“You see?” she said. “We must help him see Shri! Then he needs to move out of that house! Maybe he could even stay with you for a short time? We’d need to clean it up, of course.”

The absurdity of what she said hit me like a bucket of ice water. Clara and Molly were right. Instead of making things better, I made things much worse. Because of me, Arlo had to leave the class and possibly lost his chance of ever seeing Shri again. It was the unseen end of my dream. Instead of saving the DeafBlind dog from running onto the highway, I wasthe one who chased him under a Mack truck. I folded Arlo’s letter and handed it back to Lavinia.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I can’t do this. I’m just an interpreter, Lavinia. That’s all. If you want to help him out, that’s your business. I’m done.”

Lavinia held Arlo’s letter aloft in front of her as if it were Arlo himself in paper form.

“But how can I help him without you? I don’t know the language. I take Ubers, I don’t even drive. I… I can’t.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

Lavinia placed Arlo’s letter back in her purse. When she began to speak again, I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me or herself.

“I’m a fifty-eight-year-old adjunct professor who lives in a one-bedroom apartment with a neurotic husband who is constantly underfoot. I have to wake up every morning and pray that one of my half-witted students can write one intelligible English sentence. I’m tired. I’m tired and I’m scared. But every once in a while I meet a student who has such light inside them it reminds me of why I do what I do. Arlo is one of those students.”

Lavinia’s black-brown eyes fixed onto mine, expecting me to be moved. Instead, I became enraged.

“Are you serious? Do you know there’s a fucking restraining order against me? I’ve been forbidden from even being in the same room with Arlo. They’re trying to take my certification from me! I might lose everything I’ve ever…”

A giant lump of self-pity choked me, stopping me from finishing my sentence. Lavinia pressed a hand to her mouth.

“Cyril! That’s unjust! I had no idea.”

“Molly and Birch have been spreading rumors about me. If I lose my certification, I’m completely fucked. So please stop asking me to help.”

My voice cracked and I couldn’t say anything more. Lavinia turned toward the window so I could no longer see her face. When she began to speak, her voice was softer and tentative.

“About a month ago the dean called me into his office to tell me that Arlo’s family was concerned about you.”

“Of course,” I said, shaking my head with disgust.

“Their suspicions were completely incongruous with the man I saw in the classroom. I begged them not to jump to conclusions.”

“Fuck them. I’m sorry. But Molly has been out to get me from the beginning. Anyway, thank you for defending me.”

Lavinia lowered her eyelids. Her breathing was heavy.

“That’s the thing. I did defend you… at first. Cyril, I’m so sorry. When I thought it was you who lied to me about the day of the field trip, I began to doubt everything. Then Brother Birch indicated you were acting like some puppet master, forcing ideas into Arlo’s head, not being professional. He implied that you were the one writing Arlo’s essays. I was furious.”

“That’s absurd! Yes, I helped him with a word here and there on the Whitman piece, Hanne helped him with his grammar on his personal essay, but he wrote them himself! Lavinia, Arlo is smarter than anyone even knows. Smarter even than I knew!”

“I believe you now, Cyril! I saw it. It was his letter to me. It was proof. There were mistakes everywhere, but the voice, the vocabulary… I am so sorry I doubted Arlo, and I’m so sorry I said…”

Lavinia closed her eyes and began to twist a large blue glass cocktail ring on her finger.

“What?” I said. “You’re sorry you said what?”

“When I’m angry I can be so stupid. That afternoon, after I met with Mr. Birch, the dean called me and asked me again if I had seen anything unsavory occur during class. And so I told him about how after you returned from the conference you became more physical with Arlo. How you started to do the touching thing on Arlo’s back and thighs.”

I ran my hands through my hair and walked to the other side of the living room, putting space between me and Lavinia. But still the rage came.

“Are you fucking kidding me? I told you, Lavinia! I told you that waspart of interpreting for the DeafBlind! It’s called Protactile! Do you know what you might have done to my life? You told them I molested Arlo?!”

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