Laura Anderson - Song of Summer

Because I’ve found most hearing people are like Barry, my current illustrious companion. His knowledge of American Sign Language (ASL) extends to “bathroom” and “okay,” which doesn’t really count because it’s two letters. Seriously. I’ve seen him every summer since I was two, and this is the first time since middle school that we’ve hung out. And we’re only hanging out because my parents told his parents that I would tutor him in ASL. He obviously doesn’t really want to learn—we’ve been texting all through lunch.

Anyway, this hearing townie girl is just so cute. All bounce and smile. She’s wearing black pedal pushers and a white V-neck with black Vans sneakers. Her apron is wrapped twice around her little waist, and dark curls escape from her ponytail. Her eyes are the bluest I’ve seen.

She’s blushing and nodding too fast. Averting her eyes, like she doesn’t know where to look. Taking it well, I think.

I almost didn’t show her at all. I was happy when she thought we were gay. Barry? Not so much.

“U tell her or I tell her,” he texted after she left to split the check.

“We’ll never see her again,” I replied, typing with one hand and glancing at the little dab of chocolate still on my napkin. I’d never done anything like that before, but I couldn’t help myself. I guess I was feeling brave. Are gay people perpetually brave? Are deaf people, for that matter? The world seems to think so. I don’t think I’m brave. I’m just me.

“But I’M NOT GAY,” he sent. “Now tell her so she gets y I’m talking 4 u.”

“Fine,” I sent back.

So when she brought the check, I told her. In my language. By saying, “Thank you.”

More composed now, she can finally look at me.

A smile flickers around her lips. “You’re welcome,” she says. She’s speaking clearly through her smile, at normal speed, so I have no problem reading her lips. She gives two quick nods and turns her smile once more to Barry before turning on her heel and heading back toward the counter.

She knew my thank-you.

My phone vibrates and the screen flashes.

“About time. Let’s go,” says the text from Barry.

I turn over the bill. Eight dollars and fifty cents. Eight fifty for a bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a milkshake? Definitely not in the city anymore.

I dig twelve dollars out of my wallet and leave it on the table, peeking the corners out from under my plate. She can keep the change.

Barry counts out exactly six-fifty. He pauses, then adds two more quarters. I roll my eyes, smack his arm, and point to the pile.

He adds a dollar.

I jam my hands in my pockets (an unusual place for them to be) and walk toward the door. The older waitress is watching me with wide eyes. Our waitress must have told her.

Yup—the younger waitress walks up to the older one, grabs her arm, and pointedly leads her away, giving her an earful, from the look of it. She glances over her shoulder at me, ponytail bouncing, blue eyes apologetic.

“Sorry,” she mouths.

I shrug and smile and wave good-bye.

She blushes and waves back.

“Good-bye,” her mouth says, clear as day.

I push the door open with my shoulder and whip out my phone.

“Did she say her name?” I text Barry.

“Yeah,” he replies.

“. . .”

“I forget.”

He would.

What does it matter?

I’ll never see her again.

We climb into Barry’s Jeep and I buckle myself in. My hands are moving before I remember that he doesn’t speak my language.

“She’s cute, that’s all,” I sign.[1]

He looks at me, exasperated. “What?” his mouth says.

I dismiss his question with a wave of my hand and run the hand through my hair, feeling the rough edge of the scar behind my right ear, which reminds me that my life could be very different. Doesn’t matter. Can’t miss what you can’t have. Vineyards flash by, one long row after another, and I wish I’d brought my camera. Not my phone camera, which is good enough, I guess, but my Nikon. The good camera. My phone vibrates. It’s Barry. Texting and driving. Perfect.

“You wanna do anything else?”

I shake my head. I’ve fulfilled my obligatory “tutoring” hour. It’s not my fault he didn’t actually want to learn the language.

He looks at me. I shake my head again.

My phone is still for the rest of the drive.

After a twenty-minute drive, we park in the Chautauqua lot and approach the gate to have our passes scanned. Barry’s wearing his around his neck, but I took mine off before entering Grape Country Dairy. I don’t think the people here realize how pretentious it looks to wear something that proclaims their status to everybody. Here, it’s routine to wear Rolexes or carry Gucci bags.

Or drive Ducati motorcycles. Like I do.

Touché me.

Pondering the dichotomy of my moral choices, I walk down the cobblestone streets, past manicured lawns, parks, pavilions, and amphitheaters, to my house. Chautauqua Institution, my summer home, is an interesting place. It’s a gated community on Chautauqua Lake that focuses on education, the arts, politics, and religion. Every summer, there are tons of concerts and lectures and performances. It’s like an intellectual summer camp for privileged adults. There really is no other place like it in the world.

Anyway, I’ve been coming since I was just a little kid. The house was passed down through my dad’s family, and he and my mom thought it was the perfect place to take their young family for the summer. There’s a wall around the town, after all, and the whole atmosphere is inclusive. It’s the perfect place for my deaf dad and CODA (child of deaf adult) mom to summer with their three adopted deaf kids. We’ve been coming for so long that we’re something of a staple here. Some of the snowbirds learn basic ASL simply so they can communicate with us. My mom does ASL interpreting at the morning lectures and my dad does some architectural consulting work out of his summer office.

“How’s Barry?” my mom signs as I walk into the kitchen. She’s up to her elbows in flour and her hands are covered in the stuff. My sister Trina is standing on a stool next to her. She’s nine, and she’s wearing a sparkly turquoise T-shirt and little black shorts. Her blond hair is pulled up into a ponytail, revealing her turquoise cochlear implant, or CI. To describe it very basically, a CI is a really complicated, high-tech, invasive device that enhances hearing ability. Part of it is permanent, implanted under the skin and attaching to the cochlea, and part of it is external, removable. I don’t have one and never will.

“Barry is fine,” I sign. I pull a stool up to the island, across from the two of them. “His horizons have not been broadened. He learned exactly zero ASL. Fancy college will have to wait.”

“Sorry,” my mom signs back. I shrug. I wasn’t expecting it to be a roaring success. I guess he’s failing Spanish. His parents think the brilliant way around this is to teach him ASL this summer so he can test out of any foreign language requirement. That in itself shows you how ignorant he is. There is no way he can learn an entire vocabulary and language structure in seven weeks. Maybe he can learn enough to hold basic conversation. Maybe he can learn enough to scrape by. But fluent? Ha.

I watch as my mom kneads a big loaf of bread and Trina kneads her own little loaf. It’s adorable.

“Looks good,” I sign, and try to snag a piece.

Trina slaps my hand away. “Mom!” her mouth says, and then she turns to Mom and I can’t see her face, but her mouth is still moving, since Mom can hear her. I take the opportunity to grab a piece of dough. You know how cookie dough tastes almost better than the cookies themselves? Bread dough is the opposite. Terrible. I choke it down.

“Manners,” my mom signs and says. She takes Trina’s face and turns it my way. Then takes her little hands out of the dough. “Use sign,” she signs.

Trina rolls her eyes. She’s had her CI since she was a little less than two years old; so long she’s practically hearing. She’s just begun to realize that the whole world doesn’t talk with their hands, and she likes to practice that freedom. It’s frustrating to my parents, who debated long and hard about getting her implanted so young. They like the independence her CI gives her, but it’s frustrating that she’s already using it against us.

“Carter is stealing!” her little hands say.

“Carter, don’t steal from your sister,” my mom admonishes.

I hold up my hands in surrender.

“How was your trip? Where’d you go?”

“A diner in Westfield,” I reply. “Grape Country Dairy.”

“What?” my sister asks.

I sign it again, carefully.

“That doesn’t make sense,” she signs and says.

“I know,” I sign. “But the food was good.”

And the server was pretty cute.

“What’d you get?”

“Bacon cheeseburger. A milkshake.”

A smile. A wave good-bye.

“Will you go back?”

Will I?

“Yeah.”

Robin

The music flows soft from my heart, liquid through my fingers, and hard against the guitar strings, into the ears of the congregation. I fingerpick slowly.

The choir comes in softly with the chorus of, “Awake, my soul!” Trent’s stand-up bass joins my guitar, rounding out the accompaniment and quickening my heartbeat. He winks at me while singing the verse and I almost forget to join him in the bridge, when the keyboard and second guitar add in. We let the last note of the bridge ring out for a minute in the big, old-fashioned church. This is the best part: the moment before a kiss, when you’re breathing the breath of the person you love. There’s a gleam in Trent’s eye as his fingers slide up the neck of his stand-up bass, pounding out a new rhythm.