12

A series of Visible Speech signs. [Apt at chitchat]

[Apt at chit chat]

I was getting so used to Miss Lance’s lessons that it was a surprise to find Mr. Bell waiting for me. Several weeks had passed since I last saw him. He stood in the middle of the room, his hands looped behind his back. Good day, Miss Lark, he said. He seemed pleased.

I bade him the same and took my seat. I couldn’t help noticing that he looked well, his skin a better color and the usual wave of his curl drawing him up tall with its saplike shine. You are refreshed after your trip, I told him. Already my thoughts were skipping to his inventing work. Had he made some progress toward the human voice telegraph?

His answer fell quickly from his lips. I was startled to feel my eyes swimming, having missed all of it. There wasn’t even one word from which I could make my deductions. I tried to focus again, thinking I must have let myself get distracted by thoughts of his voice telegraph.

He was watching me. Did you catch that? he asked.

Unbidden, Frank came into my thoughts, his index flicking at his brow. Understand?

I pushed the image aside. I’m a little tired today, I said. That’s all. Please, carry on. I smiled at him and added, I would like to know the reason for your good mood.

But he said, Copy-work. He hoped he hadn’t given me too much copy-work. He hoped that wasn’t the reason for my tiredness.

Not at all, I said, trying to shift whatever cog had become stuck between us, but feeling conscious that my T’s felt soft and what I’d meant as reassurance had lumped together like melted toffee. He was talking more slowly now. It seemed almost conspicuous. Hoping to smooth the conversation onwards, I added: I could never be a night owl.

He laughed. It is not for everyone, he said, then sat down and put a notebook across his lap. “I shall tell you the reasons for my good mood later,” he wrote. “First, we will focus on the consonant ‘Wh’ in why and ‘W’ in way. These are frequently confounded.”

He showed me the symbols for both, and I read through the list: whip, whit, wit, white, wight, what, and watch.

Wednesday, I finished. Whirlwind.

But he must have sensed my disappointment that our lesson had so quickly turned to Visible Speech, as he wrote: “Miss Lark, your grandmother must feel she is getting her money’s worth!”

I tried to laugh although it did little to hide what he had plainly seen. With Miss Lance I had learned to quench the flame of doubt I had about Visible Speech so that I could get through the lessons. But now it felt fresh and raw again. Was there really any point in me learning to say Wh and W clearly? I only wanted to be understood and to understand. That was why I liked lessons with Mr. Bell. It had felt easy, at least compared to my usual encounters.

My grandmother is away, I said, after a moment.

He was watching me. Well, let’s impress her on her return. We shall read the Bard.

He had to repeat himself several times. The bard, he said. Shakespeare, the bard. You do know Shakespeare?

Of course I know Shakespeare, I said, more hotly than I intended, before adding: Some. I was unsure if he was asking if I knew the playwright or his work.

He wrote, “Then let your grandmother hear you say this,” and presented me with a line of text.

I studied it and wrote underneath, “This is Mark Antony, I think.”

Mr. Bell put down a line of Visible Speech symbols. He said, And now it is Ellen Lark. Go on.

“The evil that men do lives after them;” I read, “the good is oft interred with their bones.”

Again, he said, so I read it three times and on the last time he said, Excellent. Well, are you not pleased?

Very pleased, I said, trying to match his smile. I thought of saying: but I shall never dare read the Bard unless I have the symbols and have practiced them. Even then, it will feel like darkness and shadows in my mouth, and the only pleasure I shall have is in watching people marvel at me.

Instead, I said, Now you have promised me. What is the reason for your good cheer?

Suddenly I was desperate to be done with Visible Speech for the day. So I was already willing with my smile as he wrote, “I have found a financier for my telegraph work!”

Oh, I said in a rush, feeling that the whole earlier lesson had been flushed away with the pleasure of this news. I am happy for you. So the electricians were wrong? It can work?

For a moment he looked confused. Then he said, Oh. Oh, not that one. He wrote, “I mean the Harmonic Multiple Telegraph, not the talking telegraph. That is what’s in demand. Have you met one of my other pupils? Her name is Mabel Hubbard, a fine young lady. Her father is a well-known man in Boston, and I showed him the piano wire trick. He has joined forces with the father of another of my pupils. Do you recall the little boy I tutor whose family I reside with in Salem? Together, they will finance my inventing work for the Multiple Telegraph. I feel today like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders.”

I read through his paragraph slowly and by the time I reached the end, I felt like the weight that had gone from Mr. Bell had been passed to me. I was looking at a whole web of connections concerning his other pupils, and I’d no inkling of it, or any part in what had brought Mr. Bell momentum at last. I tried to be happy for him, but Mabel’s name in particular stuck in my mind. Had he been to her house, or brought her father here to the dusty piano in the classroom upstairs? It seemed more likely that he would be invited to call on them in their fine home in Cambridge. Indeed, perhaps Miss Hubbard had so sufficiently impressed her parents with the Bard that they had to meet with her teacher.

It is good news, I said, feeling that marvelous and wonderful would be too tricky for my tongue at this precise moment. But what about your dream? I asked. To make the wires talk.

Mr. Bell shrugged. He said something to the effect of: Mr. Hubbard has no interest in it and cannot be persuaded.

Then he looked at me, smiling again. I gave you that smoked glass, didn’t I? Illuminate, he said. When I nodded, he wrote, “I still hope for it, although at present I must focus my energies on the Multiple Telegraph. I trust you to keep the idea safe until then.”

Of course, I said, although suddenly the smoked glass, and the shining line of my voice, seemed to lose some of the luster that our trip to the Institute had given it. I wasn’t sure if I was keeping his dream safe for him, or else he was trying to keep me playing some sort of game, in which he had my trust and interest.

And Miss Lark, he added. The copy-work you do is—

I watched his next word push out his lips with a large, plush compliment. It arrived with the dropping of his eyebrows. Tremendous, he said.

I took in a breath, surprising myself with how sharply it filled my lungs. Well! I said. You will have to give me the next lot before our lesson is finished.

He smiled and stood up. I watched as he turned from me and tore the pages of the notebook on which he had written about the telegraph. He crammed the pieces into his pocket. Then he fetched a pile of copy-work and said, Thank you, Miss Lark.

But that evening as I copied out all the Visible Speech exercises for Mr. Bell’s classes, I couldn’t help thinking that my copied lines were not so different from my readings of the Bard. Both were tedious rote work, but one happened to be a delight for others. Why hadn’t Mr. Bell’s delight stirred my own, as it once used to?

I had my own classes to teach, and despite Frank’s distractions, I didn’t know how to teach them any other way. One lesson we were practicing the long I sound, as in pie. “The first movement,” I wrote, “is like that for ah in palm, but then watch how the opening of the lips becomes narrow in the next movement.”

Palm, I read from the Visible Speech. Pi-ee. See?

Then I read: Will you have another piece of pie? There is no rhyme or reason to this. The little girl seems somewhat shy. Please put out the light.

Frank wrote something down and showed me but I saw none of the words I’d read apart from Pie.

Try again, I signed.

He shook his head and pushed the notebook away. It’s no good. I’m not very good at this. I was born deaf, I don’t think in English like you do.

I attempted a long breath but it was ragged with irritation nonetheless. I’ve seen you use English along with your signs, I signed. Putting your signs in an English order.

Sometimes with you, yes, so you understand. I’m a printer. I print English all the time. Arrange the type, every letter in the correct order. His hands daubed out a row of imaginary type.

And true, he continued, I mix with hearing and deaf people, because of my aunt. The true sign language is completely different from English, you cannot compare them. But everyone has a different level of sign, so we have to find ways to make ourselves understood. Some people are pure sign language, others prefer the manual alphabet, others like to see some English on the lips. Deaf people learn to be flexible, unlike hearing people.

I was getting used to his jibes about hearing people, and I couldn’t help my answering smiles, because each time it felt like an invite to step a little closer into his world. But now an old loyalty stirred in me like a forgotten duty.

My mother is hearing, I replied. She always looked at me, tapped my shoulder, adjusted her words, so her meaning was clear.

You are lucky, he signed. Many people can’t be bothered. And I understand. He paused, leaning forward. They want the connection, he continued. They want the quick understanding, the jokes, the shared ideas. They want to find something in someone else that they recognize. They don’t want to explain. They don’t want to say it ten times, slowly-slowly.

I laughed at his imitation of a hearing person talking slowly-slowly, and of himself in return making a charade of smiles and nods. He started on a story about a hearing man who had stopped to talk to him at a stagecoach station, and how he had carefully matched his own expressions to this man’s, hoping it would pass for understanding. It turned out the man was a street-seller and he was being asked to visit his stall farther down the street where he sold an assortment of cutlery, spoons in particular. Frank was unable to extract himself from his own pretense and left later with fifteen spoons of various sizes.

I gave them to Augusta, he signed. But I was broke for a month! I also got some honeycomb from the next street-vendor along. It was delicious.

He showed the honey drip-dripping from the comb, then his fingers flew from his lip. Delicious. I was still laughing about the spoons, but in the pause that followed, it was Mr. Bell who came to mind. Once I was sure that he spoke naturally with me but then I had seen his faster speed. But couldn’t people speak slowly and carefully, and still let that connection arise? A few people had a talent for it or did not mind the burden like Frank said they did. Wasn’t Mr. Bell one of them?

I think some people are happy to make an effort, I told him. It would save money on buying spoons, I added.

He smiled at me, his eyes narrowed. You are always defending hearing people, he replied, and angled his shoulder so that his signs positioned me on the side he had allocated for the hearing. But of course, you have a hearing family, he added, and looked at me with a kind of pity.

I held up my hands in exasperated defeat, but he continued: I am always very grateful! He touched his chin repeatedly in a string of exaggerated Thank-Yous. So very grateful. Do you know what I think? I think English ruins the beauty of sign language. We deaf mix them up because we have to, but maybe we shouldn’t. Take your signs. A hearing person taught them to you, right? Methodical signs. That is not the same as the true sign language.

I shook my head, waved my hands: he was wrong. I had home-signs, I told him, with my sister. True, she was hearing, but it was like an instinct between us, not a lesson.

I had to spell Instinct, then tapped my stomach with my fingers, taking a guess at the sign. Frank made a small nod, his reversed role as my teacher never far in the shadows.

Then the other pupils at the Oral School taught me the proper signs, I continued. Some of them had been to the big schools. But I didn’t get to use signs very much.

He sat forward, his face growing long with interest although a teasing spark jumped into his eyes. Because you got caught? he asked. Let me guess. They tied your hands? You had to say Bread-and-Butter a hundred times? I-will-speak-very-good-for-you?

He mouthed the words as he signed them in an English order.

It was a cupboard, I said, feeling bluster enter my stance, as if punishment was somehow a test you needed to pass. I didn’t know why I was trying to convince Frank like this.

Frank sat back and nodded, his mouth folding down. Was it a small or big cupboard? he asked.

Small, I replied, marking out the size with my hands.

That is quite small. But you know what is smaller? The world with only English in it.

He made an impression of being trapped in a tiny space, looking around for an exit, English words assailing him. I raised my hands again, only this time I told him: I give up. You wanted to learn how to lip-read English. You, I added, pointing at him again for emphasis.

He rubbed his hand on his chest—he was sorry—and got up to cross the room. He stopped by the shelves next to the doorway which were stacked high with papers.

He turned back to me. There are so many sign languages I would like to learn, he signed. Sometimes in the North End I learn some of the Irish signs. They are quite like the French signs, which are like our signs because Laurent Clerc brought the de l’épée signs from France. Do you know him? He is the father of our signs. But British signs are completely different to American signs, while Australian signs are similar to British ones. There are so many more. Some deaf people are embarrassed of our signs, but I want to know them all. You can’t write them down like other languages. Deaf people are used to traveling far so we can meet up, but sometimes I feel I can’t travel far enough.

I didn’t say anything, because his face had grown serious, and I wasn’t used to it. He turned to the shelves and lifted one of the stacks of paper. I’d thought them to be leftover items from the print shop, but Frank’s face was curled with too much cautious care. He placed the pile in front of me and nodded, indicating that I should help myself.

The paper on the top was called the Mute’s Journal printed by the school in Pennsylvania. I flicked through a few more. There was the Deaf-Mute Pelican from the Louisiana school, the Mute Journal of Nebraska and the Alabama Banner.

This is the silent press, he signed. My father collected them. They come from schools all over the country. The papers connect the schools, connect their graduates. The silent press is how I learned to print, when I was studying at Hartford.

He reached into the pile and extracted a few papers. Canajoharie Radii, he spelled. The first paper. A New York paper but the editor was a graduate from the Hartford School. Look.

He tapped the masthead: the name of the paper was printed in finger-spelling, each handshape intricately detailed.

Frank pulled out another paper called The Deaf Mutes’ Friend. This one, he signed. More recent. The editor, Mr. Swett, was a friend of my father. He writes about his observations on the hearing world. You would like it. He went on many adventures, armed with his slate. He told his stories in sign language and then Mr. Chamberlain, another deaf man, translated them into English.

He waited while I flicked through the papers. It was the reports on the school’s activities that fascinated me the most. Accounts of baseball teams and football elevens, croquet and lawn tennis. Dates for picnics, maypole dancing, summer fetes. The announcements for marriages, births, deaths, the naming of children. They listed deaf-owned businesses and hearing employers who would take on deaf employees. A world of laced connections stretched out from their pages, like wires on a telegraph-map. It made the world of my old Oral School seem tiny. And as for the marriage announcements, you’d not tell them apart from those in the hearing press. Marriages like any other, although it would have made Adeline pale with horror.

Frank was waving a hand at me. Go on, go on. Take it home, read it.

I hesitated. So far, I had kept Frank as a separate part of my life that belonged to the printing shop and nowhere else. But bringing home the journals put them on par with the copy-work I brought home from the Oratory School. The few shelves in my bedroom were already piled high with Mr. Bell’s Visible Speech exercises. And what if Adeline found them? But Adeline never went into my room, so I reached for a couple and slotted them inside my bag.

There’s more, he signed. No rush. Just take more. Like a library. My friends often browse these shelves.

He stood close to me. His signs, turning between us, were closer still. The afternoon sun was slanting in through the window, putting sickles of gold in his eyes. His sign for Friend hovered in my thoughts, the clasping and re-clasping of his forefingers. Friend. Was I one? Our lessons, I knew, were becoming less like lessons with each one that passed.

I didn’t see Mr. Bell for several weeks, instead collecting the school’s copy-work from Miss Lance since she was taking my lessons again. On one occasion, she paused before handing me a particularly large pile and said: Miss Lark, I think we should pay you something. But I frowned and waved the idea away, taking the papers from her. This was an arrangement I had with Mr. Bell to assist him, not with Miss Lance.

But still I wondered about our lessons. I knew he was busy, but now he couldn’t keep the afternoon lessons as well as the morning ones. I thought of Mabel, and if he made regular trips to the Hubbards’ home, now that her father was his financier. I guessed more pupils were coming to the school, as I was asked for more copies of the exercises each week. In spite of what I told Mr. Bell, it took me late into the evenings to get it all done. I usually sat by myself in the kitchen or parlor to finish it, where the fires were warmest. Little St. Clouds had a few new boarders and Mrs. Baylis remained, but the Day sisters had gone. I was surprised to find I missed their teasing. Soon my visits to the Tanners’ printing shop were the only thing I looked forward to.

One evening there was a letter slipped amongst the papers Miss Lance had given me. I recognized the handwriting immediately. Had Mr. Bell placed it in the middle to conceal it from Miss Lance, or to prevent it falling out and getting lost? I opened it quickly, ignoring some of the Visible Speech papers that slipped to the floor.

Inside was a note which thanked me for the recent copy-work and informed me of a demonstration that he planned to hold at the Institute of Technology. “I shall ask a few of my pupils to give an exhibition of Visible Speech, but I also intend to display some of the apparatus that I have been developing. I would like you to present the Phonoautograph and shall ask you to say a word to show how the instrument works.”

I knew I should be pleased. But doubt kicked me like a boot. He wished me to read only one word of Visible Speech? Would the other pupils be singing and reciting the Bard? Or did he choose me because of my scientific mind, and what he had told me about his inventions? It was an honor, surely, to be linked to his scientific work, rather than the rote learning of Visible Speech. Still, I thought, it is only one single word he wishes me to say. A word!

I turned over the page. “If you agree, please let Miss Lance know that you are happy to attend,” he had written. “I may see you for a lesson before then, but I cannot say when that will be. It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself, who shall complete our telegraph apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician, but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomenon of sound than he is.”

He signed off his name with the usual Yours, and no special flourish. I might have suspected him to have sent several copies of this letter to every pupil invited to the Institute, especially as I had never heard of a “Mr. Gray” before. Had he mentioned this fellow inventor to someone else, and forgotten it wasn’t to me? Or was it one of the words I had missed on his lips? But then I read his postscript. “I haven’t forgotten the real prize,” he’d written. “It is an effort to put it from my mind, but nothing can be done for now.”

The “real prize.” He did not name it because he knew I would understand exactly what he meant. I felt myself relenting. I would do his demonstration, I decided, for I had no real grounds to refuse, but I wouldn’t send my confirmation through Miss Lance. Instead I picked up my pen to write Mr. Bell directly. “I would be happy,” I wrote, “to accept your invitation. But regarding the ‘real prize’ are you certain the human voice is too weak to generate a current? Were you not invited to the Institute of Technology in the first place because you knew better than anyone what could be done with the voice?”

I read over what I had written. I could still feel the insult simmering inside me that I would only speak one word at his demonstration, and that would be into a dead ear, not the living ones that attended to the many words of his other pupils, Mabel among them. Mama would be pleased, but I didn’t relish telling her as once I would have done. In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do the demonstration at all. Did I no longer prize speech, although it was what Mama, Adeline, and everyone had always wanted it for me? I folded up the letter anyway, and labeled it “Concerning the Visible Speech demonstration” to assuage Miss Lance’s concerns should she see it. Then I slipped it in with the copy-work to return to Mr. Bell.

When Adeline returned to Boston, I gave her an envelope full of Frank’s money. I’d made a note on the front. THE PROCEEDS OF MY COPY-WORK. I used Capitals for the avoidance of doubt and scrutiny. But I steeled myself for her response.

What work? she asked.

“A printing shop off Washington Street,” I wrote.

She frowned. A printing shop? she asked. Suitable was her next word. Was it really suitable for me?

I wrote, “Do you remember Augusta Tanner? Her husband runs the shop. I am to help copy the invoices and business papers. I work in the parlor upstairs. It is very pleasant.”

Augusta, she said, slowly. I waited tensely. Did Adeline know that Augusta was married to a deaf man? Augusta, she said again. Ah yes. I remember. She looked at me. Well, good, she said.

I smiled back: it was so easily done.

Then the lyceum series started at Tremont Temple and Adeline was out every Tuesday evening. I watched her at the front door, pocketing the program which had been printed at Mr. Tanner’s shop into her bag. I waved her goodbye. Now I needn’t rush back after my lessons, nor worry that she’d catch me at the door with Augusta and strike up a conversation that would reveal the true arrangement.

When the appointed hour came, I bade farewell to Joan and set off for the printer shop. As I turned onto Washington Street my step quickened and my heart felt lighter.

Outside the printer shop I always paused to admire the newest books. Usually, Mr. Tanner spotted me and opened the door. He had a friendly, workaday aspect and small gold-framed glasses which he tipped to the end of his nose as he welcomed me inside. I found his signs hard to follow but my gaze wandered so many times to his books that he started showing me his work, spreading out leather, marbled paper, revealing gilded letters, and using a simple sign or spelled word to guide my eyes along the work.

After a while Frank came downstairs looking for us. He stood in the doorway and stamped his foot.

Here, he waved. Are you giving my job to Ellen?

Maybe, Mr. Tanner replied. You turn up late.

I am always early, he replied.

Mr. Tanner looked at me. It’s true, he signed. He’s a hard worker.

I’m sure, I replied, thinking of Frank’s endless diversions in our lessons. He was standing erect as if he suspected my doubts and intended to bounce them from his chest like a ball. Then he slackened and wagged his hand: come on, he signed, and I followed him up the stairs.

Our lessons were settling into a new rhythm. I ran through a lip-reading exercise and then he found me a new paper from the silent press.

This one here, he told me, pointing at an article. Been looking for this. 1850, the grand reunion at the American Asylum. Graduates came from all over the country to raise a trophy for its founders, Clerc and Gallaudet. Such an occasion, amazing. And here, this one too. Two hundred deaf people gathered for a celebration at a rented hall in Boston in a snowstorm. Can you imagine? They stayed until eight o’clock the next morning!

He signed the heaving crowds, the swirling snow. If I could scarcely imagine a room of two hundred deaf people, Frank did the picturing for me. All our talking was becoming the language of signs.

I started to lament the moment when I’d take out my book and turn to the prepared exercise, and his shoulders would drop patiently while his cupped hands rested on the table, the shine of the mahogany kissing their stillness.

He began trying harder in his lessons. We both knew it was speech-reading that would justify our meetings, even if it was only a sliver of our time together. We worked through the exercises and I made an exaggerated report of his progress to Augusta at the end.

She nodded politely and made her face impressed at the appropriate points of my report.

You remember she is hearing, right? Frank asked, as I waited for her to fetch her coat before taking me home.

Yes, I answered, puzzled. But then Augusta was back and it wasn’t until we were out on Washington Street that I realized what he meant. Augusta could hear through the door that only a fraction of our lessons was spent reading symbols and lip-reading. The to-and-fro of our practice, our dimes and times, palms and pies, interspersed with long spells of silence which she would know to be the richest talking of all. I glanced at her as we walked toward the stage-car stop, newly aware of her tactful inclination to avoid the subject. I was desperate to ask her directly. What had Frank told her about his feelings? And how much did she guess?

A series of Visible Speech signs. [whirlwind]

Whirlwind

One Tuesday there was a dot of ink on Frank’s neck, just under his left jawline. A word smudged onto his fingertip in the print room downstairs and now jumping on the pulse under his skin. I was quite distracted by it.

Frank touched his neck. What?

I shifted my eyes. Nothing, I told him, waving my hands. He was patting his neck as if dabbing on lotion and I saw the guilty finger, capped with ink.

Ink, I spelled. There.

I was smiling but Frank leapt up. One minute. He came back with his neck rubbed pink, not a spot of ink to be seen. He sat down a little stiffly. My apologies, he signed. Busy morning downstairs. A huge order of pamphlets needs to be ready by the end of the week.

I wanted to tell him I didn’t mind in the least, it was only a tiny mark. A pause sprang up between us, as sudden as a hare in the road. For a while I didn’t know what to say, my head tight with a racket of formless thoughts.

There is something I want to ask, I tried, latching on to the first thing that came to mind. I couldn’t organize my signs and needed to write it down: “Would you print an advertisement for me? For my copy-work services.”

Now I was the one looking for distractions.

He nodded, relieved at the suggestion. You have a draft? How do you want it laid out?

Blankness dropped through my cheeks. I had no idea since the thought had just occurred to me.

You want to look at some examples? he asked.

In your print room?

There were nicks of concern at the corners of his lips. No, no, he signed. The composing room. It is quite clean. No one there right now. Apart from my uncle, he added hastily.

I laughed. Women do not usually go into the print room?

He considered this. I have met women in the print room at the large newspapers. More of a worry for the compositors though. Women have nimble fingers that can set type fast.

You can tell your compositor not to worry. You’ve seen my finger-spelling.

He smiled and stood up. You’re getting better. This way.

Downstairs the shopfront was empty and when we entered the composing room through the back door, Mr. Tanner was not there either. Frank didn’t seem to notice as he showed me around the room. There was a new bounce in his movements. I could tell he was proud of his domain. The room was large and airy, the walls whitewashed and windows looking over a small yard to the rear. Large wooden racks of type-cases stood in the middle of the room next to a flat-topped iron table that Frank called the imposing-surface. Frames were laid out on the surface, containing rows of type.

I examined the letters, the metal blocks laid out so formally and locked into a promise: of a page, an article, a book. I wondered if Mr. Bell had taken my essay to the printers yet, and if someone was spending hours setting out my words with care, binding them tight into a uniform and replicable arrangement. It had been a while, I realized, since I’d thought of my paper.

This will go in the press? I asked, pointing out the hand press that stood in the corner of the room. The elegant wooden frame of curved feet, columns and a wooden banner painted with the name “Washington Press” contained what looked like a huge iron clamp within the middle.

Frank shook his head. That is for small jobs, he replied. He pointed at the frame of set type. This here will be cast into a stereotype, which is a cylinder mold of the letters. We’ll use the book and job press, in the print room.

The spelled parts skipped off his fingers then he pointed out the door of what looked like a coal house. I glanced through the doorway, the dimness of the print room revealing a huge machine with several rollers and a long flat plane on which I supposed the paper entered and exited. Rolls of cylindrical stereotype, already molded with text, waited at the base of the machine.

Frank was watching me. It’s a jobbing press, just a small one, perfect for us. You should see the machines at the newspapers. Here we do some books but mainly small periodicals, flyers, leaflets, that kind of thing.

He waved a hand at the far wall of the composing room. Take a look at the adverts, he signed. Choose a style you like.

The wall was covered with samples, neatly pinned with an inch of space around each one. The top row was dedicated to programs for the Temple’s lyceum series and events at the Athenaeum. Beneath them were mostly invitations, advertisements and posters. One program caught my eye. It was for a fete run by the Boston Deaf Mute Society in honor of Mr. Gallaudet and Mr. Clerc who founded the Hartford School. It described an afternoon of activities carefully arranged in lines of varying size and font: a Twenty-yard dash, Tug-of-war, Croquet for the Ladies, a Hop, Skip and Jump, a Three-legged race, and Quoits for the men.

I felt Frank at my shoulder. I printed that myself, he signed.

And this one? I pointed at the front page of a deaf journal I hadn’t seen before. It was called: Boston Silent Voice.

His chest lifted. My first journal, he signed. The first page. Just an experiment. We will print the first run next month. I can’t decide on the name of the journal.

I gently lifted the bottom of the page so it curved away from the wall like a wing. The first article was called “Success Amongst the Hearing.”

Did you write this? I asked and couldn’t help the teasing linger in my pointing finger. Is this advice for thinking like a hearing person? I added.

Funny, he signed. No, my uncle’s friend. How to manage hearing people, not how to be a hearing person. That is the advice. You have to represent the community, show hearing people that they can work with us. Most people have never met a deaf person before.

I paused over the article, then tapped my chest. I was nine, I signed, when I first met another deaf person.

I was three.

Three? I asked. But your family—

Three when I first met a hearing person. Or tried to talk with one. It was my aunt’s father, before she married my uncle. He came to talk to me, so I made my mouth move at him because that’s what he was doing to me. He didn’t know what to do and walked away. I thought that was a success.

He reached up for an advert, his arm rising above my shoulder. I saw the weave of his shirt and through it smelled Frank’s warmth, mixed with the scent of linen. I turned my cheek slightly toward his arm, wishing to keep him close a little longer.

He dropped his arm to present me with a small advert for French lessons. What about something like this? Do you want to compose it yourself? He grinned at me and nodded toward the type-cases.

I squinted my eyes, curling a gentle threat into my smile. What if I am very fast? I asked.

I won’t mind. You can compose my new journal for me. Let me get new frames.

I thought briefly of the exercise book still open upstairs in the study and then followed him to the type-cases. He was setting up a small frame on the imposing-surface.

Here is the type, 11 pt. You can make up the forme. Go on, have a try. I will make the stereotype for printing later. Fifty copies?

I thought about the money I needed to give to Adeline. The fee for Frank’s lessons would pad out an envelope handsomely, but I couldn’t help the nudge of guilt that I was barely teaching him a thing. It was his fault, I reasoned. Not mine.

One hundred copies, I signed. I will give you a discount on your next lesson.

He smiled. I’m grateful for that. But there’s no need.

He peered over my shoulder while I started selecting the type and slotting them into the frames to make up the forme. He signed, The d is upside down. I know, it looks like p.

We both reached toward the forme, but my hand arrived at the d first, his hand landing on top of mine. I could feel the cold edges of the type’s raised letters pressing into my palm, the warm quiver of his hand not quite resting its weight upon mine. I glanced at him, but his gaze went forward, watching his hand as if he was waiting to see what it would do. I don’t know which happened first, the slow sinking of his hand or the turning of mine so that our fingers slipped together. We remained in that clasp for a moment. Then he lifted his hand away and before I had a chance to feel either regret or rebuke, he dragged an index down my open palm, tracing a line from the top of my middle finger down to my wrist. It was a feather’s touch, drawing tingling shapes that fizzed in my palm. Letters. He was making English letters. I waited, trying to feel their edges without looking at them. Dime, he was writing. Time.

Homophenes. I laughed. At first I nodded with each word, letting him trace them over and over. But after a while, the words became formless, and I couldn’t tell what letters he was making, or if they were letters at all. The shapes dissolved into the fiery spread of his touch, and my mind was emptied of any kind of comprehension other than the growing notion that Frank felt for me as I did for him. I didn’t want him to stop, so I made up the homophenes he was tracing: Gold, Cold, I spelled on my free hand. Wig, Quick. Boat, Moan.

He was laughing, and I was laughing, and laughter always had an endpoint. Regretfully, it seemed, he folded my palm, as if he was sealing the letters inside. We both turned our attention back to the type and fished out the letters of my advertisement.

After our next lesson, Augusta Tanner invited me to stay for dinner. Frank had gone downstairs at Mr. Tanner’s request, and I was helping Augusta crack eggs for the beef omelets when she turned her head toward the apartment door. I think I can hear the Reverend downstairs, she signed. She looked about anxiously. Will you check? I don’t know if the food is enough.

I went down to the shop. Both Frank and Mr. Tanner were behind the counter. Frank was stood still, watching Mr. Tanner who was slightly stooped and signing in the most English fashion I had seen him use, littering his signing with spelled words. Opposite was the Reverend, his dog collar peeping through his coat. The gentleman standing next to him was leaning with one hand against the counter, and I supposed he was a customer given the open briefcase that spilled a tongue of pamphlets across the countertop. He was switching his eyes between Mr. Tanner and the Reverend as the latter interpreted Mr. Tanner’s signs. He nodded hard as his head moved left and right, as if to show his certainty about what was being said.

No one noticed me enter the shop. I waited in the doorway, unsure whether to tell Augusta that the Reverend was staying for dinner or not.

Mr. Tanner was explaining how he had followed the man’s instructions exactly. Then Frank interrupted, but his signing was so fast that I caught little of it. The Reverend’s signs, when he explained the man’s dissatisfaction, were slow and English-based, and from him I understood that the man was displeased with the quality. He wished not only for a refund on the completed pamphlets but a cancellation of the contracted work for the following month.

Mr. Tanner looked desperate. We have already started the work, he was answering. Frank was picking up each pamphlet, requesting for the fault to be identified while his customer treated the pamphlets like they were handfuls of old leaves, gathering them up in fistfuls.

Frank signed, You’re damaging them yourself.

The Reverend’s words, when he translated, didn’t appear to match Frank’s signs. He said something like: You may wish to take a little care with those. Then the Reverend stopped signing altogether, talking directly with the man himself, so for several minutes Frank and Mr. Tanner, and myself with them, looked on, and could only guess at what was being discussed.

As we waited for the Reverend to conclude the matter, and give an explanation, the flag of the doorbell bobbed. Neither the Reverend nor the customer noticed its announcement, but Frank looked across the shop. His eyes snagged on me where I stood at the foot of the stairs, then he cast his gaze to the door. Since he was engaged with his uncle, I went over to the door, letting another gentleman inside. Frank’s face sprang in alarm when he saw this newest customer, and he looked at me with a rare expression of frozen panic. I didn’t know what had startled him, although it was true that I hadn’t seen such an uneasy-looking person before as this man. His dark hair was combed resolutely forward, making a soft ledge above his fleshy, uneven features. He saw Frank’s alarm and skipped his eyes over to me, his face squeezing with interest.

I felt a tug on my arm. Augusta was drawing me away even as she kept her eyes tight on the Reverend at the counter, who was still reasoning with the customer, as Mr. Tanner waited for someone to tell him what was going on.

Upstairs she gave me the silverware and bade me set the table. I counted out nine places. I didn’t know what calculation she’d made about the Reverend joining us. Most of the guests were old friends of Mr. Tanner from the Hartford School. It was the first time I had joined them for dinner, and I would likely be the youngest person there.

Who was that man? I asked. The one at the shop door?

She frowned and shrugged. Him? A new customer, I guess. Bad timing. He probably left after hearing that conversation.

Our reputation is very important to us, she continued as I arranged the cutlery. Mr. Tanner, he does the best work in Boston. But it’s not cheap. Sometimes this happens. A customer finds a cheaper place and they want to switch their custom. They blame the quality. Mr. Tanner asks the Reverend to help.

She started setting out dishes of cream slaw. The table was large and round, and free of flowers, candles and any ornament that reached higher than a middle waistcoat button. Instead, Augusta had arranged winter plum blossom along the secretary for decoration. I helped her with the last few sprigs, feeling an odd gratitude for the drama in the printing shop. I was an insider already for having witnessed it with Augusta.

Reputation is everything, she repeated. We must be self-reliant but also show hearing people what deaf people can do. That is our responsibility. Customers like that man: it is unfair.

I considered Augusta as she set down the plates, placing each one deftly as if matching them to some invisible mark on the table. Sometimes I forgot she was hearing herself. I saw it only in the turn of her head to a sound, or the English mouth patterns, but even those she dropped when signing with her husband. I wondered how she would sign tonight, and if I would follow her so easily.

Augusta caught my eye and I looked away, busying myself with needlessly rearranging the breadbasket. She was watching me so I tried to smile back but my cheeks felt hot: I had the feeling she could guess at my thoughts.

Frank, she began. He is very committed to the lessons. But honestly, I don’t see much progress.

More heat inched into my cheeks. I have taught him all the proper exercises, I began, but Augusta held up her hand. It’s not your teaching, she replied. I don’t think he has the motivation.

Why does he want lessons then? I asked and immediately wished I hadn’t because Augusta timed her smile too exactly with a knowing shrug. Then she looked toward the door again. It was soon apparent why: Frank appeared, tugging off his jacket. His bad mood was evident.

Two weeks’ work lost, he was signing. That man paid a pittance to cover it but all those other jobs we had on hold.

Augusta asked, Is Reverend Keep not staying?

Him? Frank replied. No, gone. I’m happy for him to go.

His aunt stared at him. Go tidy yourself, she replied.

I am tidy, he signed, presenting his flat hands at his shirt-front.

I turned back to the table. The incident in the shop was needling him but I couldn’t help minding that he had barely registered me. I’d thought all week of the composing room and the way he’d stared at his hand on mine as it rested on the type, knowing he should remove it. I felt a searing impatience for another moment like that one to present itself. And yet in our lesson, he’d been more diligent than usual. He was direct, open. There were no sides or hidden dimensions to his manner, but he didn’t mention what happened in the composing room other than to hand me one hundred copies of my advert. Had I been mistaken?

After he left the parlor, I asked Augusta, Is the Reverend local to here?

Yes, he does our service. He is a very respected man.

She put emphasis into her signs as if she wished to counter Frank’s flippant dismissal. She continued, Our community needs hearing people to help us negotiate our position. Frank thinks that it is a kind of dependency. But he cannot avoid it, and he knows it. No person likes a debt. But I wish he would understand that some kinds of sympathy can become friendship and trust. Haven’t I tried to be an example? Frank, he is too headstrong.

Over dinner, Frank was low-angled at the table. There was an agitation in him I hadn’t seen before. He went from bursts of storytelling to dropping his gaze on the soup tureen in front of him. The Tanners’ friends didn’t allow his spells of languor to last long. They waved at him or tapped the table, diverting him with their stories or prompting him on another of his own. But he fell back into stillness when Mr. Tanner started on an account of the incident in the shop.

I charged a good price, he was telling the group. His earlier acquiescence was replaced by hard, rapid strikes of insistence.

You know, one of his friends interjected, that deaf teachers are always paid less than hearing teachers.

You think I should charge less?

There are so many deaf teachers, argued another person, and fewer hearing teachers. Printing is not the same situation.

It is prejudice, said someone else. This was a woman called Mrs. Almena Ellison. Her signs were energetic and sweeping against the backdrop of her mourning dress. I could see what Frank meant about how differently people in the community signed. She continued, Even the best pupils at our schools can’t get the kind of work hearing people get.

Hearing employers are afraid to take on deaf people, replied another man, Mr. Brooks. Like the other guests, he didn’t always put down his fork while signing, making nimble one-handed signs that hinted just enough at their full shape, although I missed several of them nonetheless. They worry they won’t be able to communicate with us, he continued, or that we can’t do the work.

We need to give them opportunities to understand, replied Augusta.

Her signs separated out hearing people from herself, but Mr. Tanner smiled at his wife, as if he was recalling their own private opportunities. Right, he agreed. We must bide our time and hope for better luck.

Augusta turned to me. She asked, You still do some copy-work, isn’t that right?

My heart quickened. Frank must have told her about the advert. Did he tell her also how I’d gone down to the print shop alone with him to print it? I felt the prickles of a flush although the question was simple enough. I didn’t dare look at Frank.

I get a little work, I admitted. Frank didn’t know that only one job had resulted so far from my advertisements. The rest was for Mr. Bell.

How do you get it? Mr. Brooks asked.

My grandmother has a boardinghouse, I explained. There are always people staying, one of them runs a soiree in the evenings.

I was relieved when this wasn’t queried further and the conversation changed track, as Augusta remarked on the rise of boardinghouses in the South End. The group moved on to news about the people they knew. They discussed one friend’s weight gain, another’s decision to marry a hearing woman, and a third’s efforts to find land out in Iowa. I tried to keep up with their signing. It was a mixed crowd, and the conversation was filled with endless requests for clarification, which everyone was happy to give. But I was easily the youngest and newest person at the table, and it was a while before I felt able to interrupt the discussion as easily as the other guests. And Frank’s sour mood was like a magnet on my concentration as I tried not to look at him.

There’s nothing there but railroad land, signed Mr. Brooks.

His wife, Mrs. Clara Brooks, turned to me. I had met her once before when I arrived for Frank’s lessons. She was a dressmaker and once a year came to Boston to outfit the whole Tanner family with any needed garments. Augusta had told me that the couple had met at the Hartford School where they were among the small number of free black pupils. Many of the other schools for the deaf in the North wouldn’t accept them.

Clara had graceful fingers set off by the elaborate trim of ruffles and lace at her sleeves. He works as a boatman, she told me. We think about moving West, but the oystering business is going well.

She spelled Oyster and supplemented it with her two hands opening and closing like a shell. She smiled when she saw how I noted the sign and asked, When did you learn to sign?

I’m not sure, I told her. My sister and I had home-signs. She was hearing but some pupils used them at my school.

She nodded. You must learn from deaf people, she replied.

My eyes skipped to Frank before I could stop myself. At the same moment he looked at me, and the touch of our gaze felt like a bright clash of cymbals. We both quickly looked away again. I was embarrassed to find that Clara had noticed.

It is a shame Frank left Hartford early, she told me. He would have been a good teacher there, same as his brothers.

I was startled. Frank had never mentioned not finishing his studies although he had spoken so highly of his school. I looked back at him. He was studiously talking to Mr. Brooks and another guest. Was that why he worked in his uncle’s shop? And none of his own Hartford friends were here?

Clara’s comment caught the attention of Mrs. Ellison. She settled her eyes on me. They were a shining light gray color, in contrast to her heavy cheek and jaw, and I felt their beam like a needle in my stomach.

You are the girl who teaches Frank, she signed. You teach him lip-reading.

Everyone looked at me. I felt a note of surprise escape my throat, as if it had been squeezed from me, although no one apart from Augusta would have caught it.

That is correct, right? Mrs. Ellison turned to Frank.

Frank made a little laugh. Ellen is writing an essay on that topic, he signed, as though this was an explanation. She’s an expert.

Most of the group smiled although their expressions were a mix of surprise and polite enthusiasm. I smiled back, hoping to conceal the hurt confusion that steamed through me as hot as the freshly ladled soup. Shouldn’t Frank be taking my defense, since he had asked for lip-reading lessons himself? Instead, he was spending the dinner avoiding eye contact with me and the other guests to the point of rudeness. And now he shrugged away everyone’s eyes again by sending them all to me.

Mr. Tanner came to my aid. He signed to Frank, Maybe Ellen can publish her essay in your newspaper? Then he told everyone else: Ellen is a very good teacher.

I felt a scrape of shame at Mr. Tanner’s generous rescue.

Mrs. Ellison turned to Frank. You want to improve your skill? she asked.

Frank huffed a laugh again and replied, I don’t have any skill. But Mrs. Ellison was still looking at him so he reddened slightly. I can hope to improve, he added, and puckered his face as if the answer ought to be evident.

I could make no sense of his behavior, but I drew myself up and turned to Mrs. Ellison. It is useful, I signed, as fluidly as I could, to have many options when dealing with hearing people.

Right, agreed another guest called Mr. Olive who relied heavily on finger-spelling. He took out an ear trumpet from his pocket and laid it next to his plate like an unusual piece of cutlery. That is why I have Delia, he added, tapping his trumpet. Always prepared.

A few jokes sprang up around the table about Delia, although Mr. Olive smiled resolutely through them all.

Prepare what you will say, Clara signed. Prepare how you will arrange your face, prepare your smile, your notebooks. Prepare your eyes for all that watching, all that concentration. Prepare an answer for a question that went over your head.

She made such a mime of the effort of preparing oneself for the hearing world that everyone started laughing. Frank’s face cooled to its usual color, and he was almost smiling at Clara’s performance.

Mrs. Ellison was only briefly diverted. But Mr. Bell is your teacher, she persisted. As you know, he does not believe in all the options. He believes in one thing: speech.

It was the first time that I had seen Mr. Bell’s name at the Tanners’. An unease seemed to drift into the room, and my body felt tight, ready to jump, although I didn’t know at what. Mrs. Ellison was repeating my signs and I realized I’d made an error with Options, using the sign for Decide instead of Choice. There was something deliberate about her correction.

Mr. Bell, she continued, thinks that we deaf should not use signs. He is not arguing for options. No, it must always be speech and speech-reading. He will turn our children away from the silent language. What will be the result? He will turn our children away from our community. That is what he wishes. Frank, she asked, tapping the table smartly to force his attention. Didn’t he teach you the same?

Frank didn’t have much choice but to respond. That’s right, he replied. At the Hartford School. But I was just one of hundreds of pupils.

I gazed at Frank. Here was another thing he hadn’t mentioned, although I had wondered if he might have seen Mr. Bell at Hartford. My earlier confusion gave way to cold anger. If he was so embarrassed about the lessons, he shouldn’t have asked for them.

Mr. Olive signed, Oral methods are popular in Europe now. Isn’t Mr. Bell Scottish?

The question for me, Mr. Tanner signed, is how can you be useful in society? You must be practical. If you can speak, like our friend Mr. Olive here, fine. But a notebook is more useful than poor speech. If you are lucky your employer might learn the finger alphabet.

True, replied Mrs. Ellison. And what about home life? I was married for thirty years. Only a marriage between two deaf people can be an equal one.

Everyone laughed. You are forgetting our hosts, signed Mr. Brooks.

Augusta smiled at her husband, and signed: It is my own fault. I forget I am hearing most days.

But you are hearing, Mrs. Ellison replied, and her pointing finger was emphatic so that even Augusta struggled not to avert her eyes. And Mr. Bell has many oral pupils, she continued and looked at me. Her eyes didn’t shift from me even as she signed the multitude of his pupils. They help him to set an example to the rest of us. To forget who we are.

Augusta’s smile was strained. She stood up and signed something about fetching the dessert. Mrs. Ellison was still watching me. Her signs for “the rest of us” had neatly set apart Mr. Bell’s oral pupils from everyone else.

I looked down at my food. This must be what Frank believed, or he’d say otherwise. After all, he wasn’t one to be shy of his own opinion. I didn’t know how to respond to Mrs. Ellison, since a defense of myself felt like a defense of Mr. Bell.

Mr. Brooks glanced at his wife then said, In most places they already separate the students.

The oralists won’t bother with your schools, Mrs. Ellison replied. Her signs were neat and conclusive.

Frank waved his hand at Mrs. Ellison to get her attention. They attended Hartford, he reminded her.

Mrs. Ellison didn’t respond, but pushed away her plate so that Augusta could set down a clean one for dessert.

There were just a few of us, signed Mr. Brooks.

Frank said, In Hartford they sometimes divided the students according to their ability to learn speech. I had lessons in the assembly hall with all the others, but some pupils had smaller classes with Mr. Bell.

There was his name again, easily on Frank’s fingertips. Now his lips curled and he continued, You know what sign name we gave him?

He ran his hands up and down an invisible set of piano keys. Why? he signed. Because he was always playing the piano in his hotel room. Frank bashed extravagantly on the keys.

Mr. Bell is a fine gentleman, his uncle interrupted. I’ve seen him once or twice at the mechanic shop on Court Street when I get the parts for our printing presses. He wanted us to print his Visible Speech textbooks, but it couldn’t be done. You need a special type.

Frank added, He’s renting the attic there to work on a multiple telegraph.

His signs were quick and small, as if it was an inconsequential interjection, but my eyes snagged on him. How did he know about Mr. Bell’s work?

Mr. Tanner continued, The Western Union is offering a million dollars to the inventor who can solve the problem of the multiple telegraph. I saw it in the papers.

Now everyone was interested in the communication troubles of the telegraph, but I couldn’t join in, my promise to Mr. Bell to keep secret his work on the telegraph feeling suddenly like a burden. A slice of treacle tart had arrived on my plate, which thankfully required both a knife and fork. I busied my eyes and hands with it although I wasn’t at all hungry. I’d learned so many things about Frank this evening and felt that I knew him less, not more. So I was surprised when, three mouthfuls into the tart, Frank’s hand slid into view. He was reaching across the table and rapping his knuckles to lift up my eyes.

We are talking about communication breakdowns, he signed. I was telling everyone that you have some good examples. From your essay, he added, and he kept his gaze on me, as if he was trying to glide over a reconciliation.

I looked around at the guests. Everyone was waiting, and I felt the blaze of their expectation. I regretted the nervous smile that fluttered on my face but took a breath. My mother is hearing, I began. Once she said she had a hot ache at breakfast time so I brought her a cold compress. But she had said Egg, not Ache. A too-hot egg.

Ache, Egg, I spelled on my hands, making the same lip-shape with each one, to show how I’d become confused. I continued: She put the compress on her egg, and said that will cool it down.

Everyone laughed as I showed my mother draping her egg, and relief flew through me to find that Frank was smiling as well.

For my next lesson, I arrived at the Oratory School expecting Miss Lance and found not only Mr. Bell in the hallway, but Miss Hubbard. The skip of pleasure I felt at seeing Mabel was immediately brought into check by the way Mr. Bell was talking to her.

I paused on the doorstep, even though Miss Lance waved me inside. Mabel’s face was upturned to Mr. Bell’s, and his gaze pooled down on her. She stood rooted within the great wash of his attention, and did not seem to mind it in the least.

Mr. Bell saw me, breaking eye contact with Mabel so that she turned as well. I spotted the greeting on his lips, and managed to return it, answering Mabel’s smile at the same time. But I was still thinking of the way he had been looking at her, and was slow to focus on his speech, although he seemed to be saying something about good news.

I shall be teaching your lesson today, he said, then turned to Miss Lance with some remark about the good job she had been doing with me. He said, Will you wait five minutes? holding up the splayed digits of his hand. He went upstairs to his classroom, leaving me in the hallway with Miss Lance and Miss Hubbard.

Mabel watched him go, her smile warm on her cheeks, and I felt the cold sluice of clarity. Does she know it yet? I thought. That she cares for him?

Mabel looked at me, and Miss Lance stepped closer, remembering no doubt our misdemeanor of a few months before. Miss Lance started saying something about the demonstration at the Institute. She stood with Mabel at one shoulder, and myself at the other, and spoke clearly, switching between us in turn, repeating herself on occasions, so we both had equal sight of her speech.

I started to feel needles of my impatience. It would be better if Mabel and I could sit down with our notebooks, but Mabel was nodding, so I followed suit.

Eventually I understood that Miss Lance was talking about Mabel’s Visible Speech performance at the demonstration. Mabel would be reading a poem. I didn’t get the name of the poet, although it seemed to be a Robert.

Robert, she said, then the corners of her lips sprang back on the poet’s surname. The word I thought of was “Noise.” But I knew there was no Robert Noise, just the silence of the ignorance she left me in.

Then I saw the word Phonoautograph and Apparatus. Since she was directing her speech at Mabel, I guessed she was explaining what my performance entailed. I knew that in Miss Lance’s estimation this was the lesser performance, and my impatience flared into something worse; a desire to take Mabel by the arm and find some spot where we could talk more easily alone, leaving Miss Lance adrift in one of her morbidly slow sentences.

But I noticed that Mabel was struggling with the word Phonoautograph. Had Mr. Bell never told her about it, despite this new closeness of theirs? Instead of feeling pleased, I felt a knife of longing for Frank, and the way he had looked at me in the print shop, same as Mr. Bell had looked at Mabel.

After a moment, Mabel’s look of concentration bounced loose from her narrowed eyebrows and strained gaze. She said, Oh! I’d much rather do that.

Miss Lance was taken aback. What do you mean? she said.

Mabel glanced at me, checking herself. I mean, she said, that does sound interesting.

Miss Lance recovered and started talking about Robert again. I attended as best I could, feeling I owed Mabel a compliment similar to the one she had paid me, but I still missed the surname of this Robert, even as I raked through my repertoire of all the famous Robert-poets I knew, which did not number many.

Mabel noticed and reached into her bag, finding an opened envelope. She wrote “Robert Lloyd” on the back and added, “I shall read an ode by Robert Lloyd in a British accent!”

Miss Lance pinched in her lips so that Mabel’s hand quivered slightly under her teacher’s downward gaze. But she held out the envelope until I’d read it and laughed. A British accent! I said. That will impress everyone.

Miss Lance pulled out her watch and said something about five minutes, and that no doubt Mr. Bell was waiting. Goodbye, I said to Mabel. I wanted to add something about seeing her at the Institute, but the word was tricky for lip-reading, and Mabel had folded away the envelope.

Goodbye, she returned, and Miss Lance said, Lovely, as if she was stamping the conversation with her approval. Mabel went with her to the door, and I went upstairs to Mr. Bell.

He was sitting at his desk with a pile of papers at his elbow. He didn’t look like he was readying himself for my lesson, but starting on another task, or else trying to finish one. Ah! he said, when I came in. He glanced at the papers and said something about the window.

I looked at the window. There was nothing changed about the view. The temperature in the room was ambient, so it didn’t need opening. Did he wish to chuck the papers out of the window, such was his workload? I looked at him, to see if I’d missed the joke.

He wasn’t smiling. Instead, he was rephrasing his words carefully. Time, he was saying. A smaller window of time. Between lessons. I have less time. A smaller window. Less time to do all this work.

I said, I thought you said you were going to throw your papers out of the window.

I meant to jest but his smile was brief: he was preoccupied today. He turned to the pile of pupil notebooks and busied himself with trying to find mine. I could see Mabel’s notebook lying separately from the rest of the pile. I remembered Miss Lance telling me she no longer took Miss Hubbard’s lessons in the morning. Had Mr. Bell been teaching her, even when he hadn’t time to teach me? And Mabel’s father was his financial investor so wouldn’t he make sure he took Mabel’s lessons? Did all those trips to Cambridge reveal to him the kind of life he might like to have with Mr. Hubbard’s daughter?

He gave me a sheet of exercises, which I’d copied for him the week before. I tried to study them but my thoughts were full of Mabel and Mr. Bell, and myself and Frank. The clarity I’d felt on seeing the way Mr. Bell had looked at her was gone, and my thoughts bubbled like a film of oil. Mabel had won Mr. Bell’s affections but I didn’t know where I stood with Frank, or any of the Tanners after Frank’s withdrawn mood and Mrs. Ellison’s reservations about me.

My essay, I said to Mr. Bell, looking up from the rows of symbols. Have you read it yet?

He frowned. Had he forgotten what I referred to? I wanted to say for The Pioneer, but right then I didn’t trust my voice.

Your essay, yes, he said. He took out his notebook. This was a matter he wished to be clear about, or else he preferred the distance afforded by a notebook. “I’m afraid I have no time to get the next issue of The Pioneer out and I do not know about the one after that.”

I looked at him, unsure of what to say. I knew I ought to say Oh, never mind! But the words wouldn’t form on my lips.

Mr. Bell looked worried. “I promise,” he wrote, “that when I do publish it, it will be the first paper in the journal.”

I could see him thinking his way toward some kind of conciliatory gesture. I don’t know what I would have done without you, he added.

I felt myself relenting, like a fist was uncurling in my chest, but he continued: The copying has made my workload so much easier. I have been terribly busy.

Copying. My eyes measured the word carefully. There were no homophenes I could think of for copying. I had copied, and with the extra time this had afforded him, he’d been able to teach Mabel.

He leaned toward me and there was that old light in his eyes. He said, That is why I am so pleased that you will be demonstrating at the Institute.

I parted my lips but my words felt like marbles that had been knocked in a hundred directions. I gathered my breath and said, I shall say one word.

His face was dented with surprise. He drew back and said something about Important. When I didn’t understand he took up the pen. “The apparatus is just as important as Visible Speech,” he wrote. “Members of the Institute are very interested in it.”

He tried a smile. Miss Lark, he began, then decided to switch to the pen again. He was using his notebook more than usual.

“I have told you, and scarcely anyone else, what it may lead to. I cannot persuade Mr. Hubbard of it, or even little George Sanders’s mother who has been so good to me! I live too much in an atmosphere of discouragement for scientific pursuits, surrounded by ‘cui bono’ people.”

I skated over his paragraph then let my eyes rest on “cui bono.” I didn’t want to look up. I feared that if I met his gaze, I wouldn’t be able to help myself from falling toward the idea he had always offered: that I could be a person of worth in the hearing world. But I was more “cui bono” than Mr. Bell could ever guess. I knew now there was no utility in Visible Speech, or any apparatus he dreamed up in the Institute, even if esteemed men of science flocked to see it.

I took my own pencil from the desk so I didn’t need to ask him for his pen. “May I ask a question?” I wrote without showing him the sentence, or waiting for an answer. “You said the Phonoautograph would help deaf people by making speech visible, but deaf people won’t be able to use a talking telegraph, so how will it help them?”

I handed Mr. Bell the page. He bent his face down and I was surprised to feel desperation inching through me as I stared at his dark crown. I wanted him to explain that I had simply misunderstood. Of course this was something he had considered.

When he looked up again, I saw that he was the one who didn’t understand. But his confusion only made him look tired. He said, Are you saying I shouldn’t do it?

He waited but weariness was settling into his face, even as he held himself still in anticipation of my answer. My understanding became full and lustrous. I wasn’t supposed to doubt him.

He picked up one of the papers on his desk which I now saw was a letter. This is from my father, he said, then took up the pen. “My father thinks I should publish and sell my plans for the telegraph,” he wrote. “He has advised that I take what I can now. I am overworked. My headaches have returned. But he is also concerned that I am not doing my duty toward Visible Speech. I have promised to do all I can to promote it. I will tell you what I have told him. Should I make money from the Multiple Telegraph, or even a human voice telegraph, we shall have Visible Speech put before the world in a more permanent form than at present. There is so much more I can do for the deaf once I have accomplished my ambitions for the telegraph. I shall campaign for day schools, for one thing, so that deaf children may reside with their families and spend as little time as possible in the company of one another.”

He handed me the page but I could see his disappointment in the flatness of his eyes. I had become one of the “cui bono” people, like Mr. Hubbard and his father, refusing to dream with him. When I finished reading, I looked up, trying to find some foothold in his expression into which I could hook my response. But his thoughts were elsewhere: with his teachings, his letters and the telegraph race. With Mabel Hubbard. I was left alone with the shining burn of his dismissal.

Shall we continue? he said.

Of course, I replied, feeling the upward boil of an anger that was as quick and dangerous as laughter. I picked up the exercises in my lap and focused on the symbols.

Cease, I began. Sea, Safety, Savings. My voice began to fill up my throat and mouth like a river. Youth, I said. Yearn, Yoke, Oyster. Roar, I continued. Fissure, Paper, Matter.

I was a torrent of words, and all of them were perfect.