13

[A changing scene]

I couldn’t help my short temper with Frank in our next lesson together. You aren’t concentrating, I told him.

I’m trying hard, he replied, puffing out his cheeks as he signed. His mood had lifted from the previous week and his propensity for distraction had returned.

You are wasting my time, I continued. You are wasting your money. You don’t seem to have any interest in speech-reading. I paused then added: You told everyone last week what you really thought of Mr. Bell’s methods.

It was the first time I had mentioned Mr. Bell in our lessons. I spelled out his name and then hesitated. Piano Man. That was what Frank’s friends had called Mr. Bell. I played my hand along invisible keys. I was pleased to see Frank’s nod.

Then he replied, You are annoyed about Mrs. Ellison.

His conclusion was neat and final so I leveled my eyes on him.

Don’t worry about her, he continued. She has her own firm beliefs.

I gazed at Frank in all his openness. His good humor was like a vast and silvery lake and my anger skimmed toward it. Wasn’t this his fault, anyway? He had asked for lessons and caused this confusion within myself, leaving me alone with it when Mrs. Ellison turned on me.

You agree with her, I signed.

He shrugged and bobbed his head from side to side, a neither-here-nor-there gesture. But it was an ambivalence for my benefit: he agreed.

He reached across and shut my book. He signed, I don’t want to learn from Mr. Bell. I want to learn from you. Yes, it’s not possible to speak perfectly without the symbols, but this—he pointed at the symbols—is Mr. Bell’s voice. It’s how he wants your words. They’re his, not yours.

I felt the reflexive slam of my pride. Had he asked for these lessons because he thought I was the one who needed instruction? I wanted to tell him that Mr. Bell did value my words since he had confided in me about the telegraph. But I knew it was no longer true. Frank was right in more senses than he realized. Mr. Bell had always been listening for certain words to come out of my mouth. My praise, approval. I thought I could question him but I was wrong.

I got up and went to the window. The mass of telegraph wires was like a canopy over the street below, a dark protective wing. They were filled at this moment, as with every other, with electric signals racing faster than the tread of human feet below. Hadn’t my longing for connection sped me to places I hadn’t expected? I thought of Mabel standing in the corridor with Mr. Bell, fixed in the mist of his admiration. He was ten years older, her teacher, and not of the same social standing. Was all this eclipsed by what sparked between them? I knew what it was for the space between you and another person to melt into your exchanges so that you became the shared notions that were passing between you. And I knew Frank’s touch, the fiery strokes of his fingertips. They had gone no further than my wrist but caused the rest of me to ache from their absence.

When I turned back to him, his expression had changed. The equanimity was gone, leaving the fuzzed lines of his concern. There was almost a quiver at his eyebrows, his jaw. It knocked any thoughts of Mr. Bell right from my head.

I wagged my hand. Come here. Let’s watch people from the window.

He frowned, newly uncertain.

You’re right, I continued. You cannot learn everything from a book. We will watch and you will tell me what you see. It’s all guesswork, right? Let’s compare our guesses.

He laughed and came to stand beside me. There isn’t anyone, he signed. No one. Look.

We will wait, I replied. He stood with his shoulders less than an inch away, a gap that was easily closed by some small accidental movement. But he was very still as we waited. It started to rain. Frank turned down his smile, matched by a fatalistic shrug, and signed: Let’s go out.

Out? In the rain?

Yes, out. We will find people. Isn’t that what you meant? To speech-read.

---

We took one umbrella, which Frank propped against his shoulder so the canopy covered both of us. My gloves were dark like my coat and what with walking along in that huddled fashion, my signs were camouflaged. I took them off and we walked with our hands bright in the gray day.

As we walked, he told me about the Tanners’ friends who had been at the dinner. Most of them lived throughout New England and regularly went back to Hartford for reunions. Mr. Olive was the only exception having lost his hearing as an adult. Mr. Brooks came from a black deaf family who were established in New Haven, whereas Clara Brooks lost her hearing when she almost drowned as a child. She would rather not live by the sea, Frank signed, but boats are the Brookses’ business. Almena Ellison came from a Southern family and went to Hartford at a time before there were any schools for deaf people in the South. I don’t think her family were pleased, he added, to learn that a few free black pupils were in the student body.

He pointed to a cigar store where two men were deep in conversation. Blue Glass, he declared. They are talking about a lecture on Blue Glass.

I studied the pair and saw what Frank had surely spotted: a pamphlet for Tremont Temple stuffed into the pocket of one of the men.

You’re just guessing that because of what’s in his pocket.

You told me to find the clues.

I laughed. But they aren’t even looking at the pamphlet, I replied. “Blue” is easy to see on the lips, and I can’t see anything about Blue.

Next, we tried taking guesses from two women who were waiting outside a bakehouse, and another woman buying ice from the driver of an ice-cart. She wants to marry him, Frank concluded.

She does not, I answered. She is asking for the largest block of ice and wants it cheap.

We watched them haggling, and Frank signed: He is agreeing. Do you think he is agreeing? What price is he asking? If it’s good I’ll tell my friends. He’ll have a queue of deaf people all the way down the street tomorrow.

His palms drew out the long queue so it went right back to his shoulder. I pointed at the ice-seller again. Look, she needs three blocks. That will be heavy.

Frank narrowed his eyes on the pair. Deliver, he said. She wants him to deliver them.

I watched the ice-seller. He was shaking his head but his lips were clear with a flicking L and biting V.

You’re right, I signed. Deliver. But he won’t do it. Look how pleased you are to be right!

He shrugged. I don’t want you to think you are a bad teacher, he replied, the corners of his smile winking. Then he pushed his arm that was holding the umbrella against mine with a nudge. I felt curved muscle, the point of his elbow, and pushed back against him, bone against bone, fused for the briefest moment.

You’re a terrible student, I reminded him.

The Public Garden was deserted. Some early spring buds were pushing through on the trees, but mostly the branches were bare. Frank suggested we walk down Commonwealth Avenue Mall, but I hesitated. Further into the Back Bay was the Institute. My earlier thoughts of Mr. Bell drifted back to me, although I knew he wasn’t in Boston. Frank glanced at the sky as if to see what the heavens were threatening. Nothing much, it seemed, although the sidewalk puddles continued to flash with rippling circles. He made a question with his eyebrows: Well? he asked. You want to go back?

I didn’t want to go back, but the turning for the Institute—Berkeley Street—seemed to shine out from the rain. But it wouldn’t take long to get past the street, and then I could put it out of my mind.

No, I told him. Let’s go quickly before the rain gets worse. I’ve never been further than Clarendon Street, I added. My fingers were starting to feel stiff from the cold.

C? That’s not far at all. The houses are the grandest in Boston. Shall we have a look?

Frank started walking and I fell in step. Huge houses flanked either side of the Mall, which was thinly planted down the middle with young trees. There was no dust since the rain had turned it into a dirty paste. That one, Frank signed. I’d like to live in that one.

We were passing the turning for the Institute. I waved my finger at the other side of the street. Did he know the streets were named after English Lords? I didn’t know the sign for Lords, if there was one, and could only think of the sign for King, slicing my hand diagonally down my chest.

Kings? Frank asked. He hadn’t heard of any kings called Clarendon.

Lords, I repeated, this time spelling on my fingers.

Lord Clarendon? Frank laughed. Boston people see themselves as royalty. Why not? I fancy being a lord. A deaf lord. You can picture it? How about these hearing lords? This is Lord Berkeley.

He puffed out his cheeks and showed his walking fingers swaggering down the sidewalk, his shoulders matched to their rhythm. Lord Clarendon was thin and spindly, and liked to sip his tea through the corner of his mouth. I did Lord Dartmouth, clawing the sign for sleep down my face, then dropping my head dozily to one side, blowing out my lips as if I was snoring. Frank laughed.

We proceeded down the Mall in the passing company of the Lords Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford. The Institute was behind us now. The spaces grew between the houses, which became walls with no roofs, and then foundations with no walls, and then just empty plots. Soon there would be nothing but gravel pit and swamp.

I stopped but Frank took a step forward, taking the umbrella with him, so I had to shuffle forward. The salt marsh ahead of us stretched on to Gravelly Point, where two dams joined and ran down one side of the marsh, separating it from the river. Mudflats spooled on either side of the dams while wagon traffic plied the tops. Rail trucks brought in the next loads of gravel. I glanced at Frank. We had come as far as we could. Shouldn’t we turn back?

Birds landed on the marsh, and a worker tossed some gravel in their direction, causing them to fly away. We watched them soar against the sky, and when Frank turned to me, I felt his eyes go right into me, a flight path of their own.

Mr. Bell, he began, startling me. He works in the Back Bay. I know there is a scientific building here which he visits. Near Berkeley Street, or Boylston? I saw you glancing. Look, I must give you an explanation, he added quickly, seeing my alarm.

I nodded, unsure with what I was agreeing. Frank continued, Do you remember how we gave him Piano for his sign name at Hartford because he played the piano with his hotel window open? All the hearing teachers said you could hear his music coming into the school. We didn’t know. How could we? But he filled the town with music, same as he tried to fill us with speech. All together in a huge hall, our voices shouted those symbols. If Mr. Bell looked happy, maybe some English had come out of us. How could we know that as well? We stood in the assembly hall shouting out his symbols and he told us we were speaking, and then he went to his hotel, and opened the window and played his piano.

Frank paused to check I was following. I nodded again, but it felt like I was in the flood of his pictures. He showed the hall where the pupils had stood, their voices flowing out of them, the piano flowing into the town, Mr. Bell, exacting and precise, the conjurer of both.

Frank dashed a finger between us. You and I. We are the lucky ones. You learned English as a child. I knew signs from birth. But there are children who have no hearing from birth, so they can’t learn English, and their parents don’t know any sign language. Some of them, they hate the idea of it and won’t let them use it. At Hartford, ten-year-olds would arrive with no words, no signs, no concepts.

I nodded again. No language, I signed and shook out the O shapes of my hands: nothing.

Right, nothing. There was one boy, Frank continued. His name was Roy Stamper. He was like that. I was a senior pupil and was made his college parent. I taught him to sign. He understood nothing at first but he was quick, so quick. Our first day we went into the gardens. It was early summer, all the flowers were out. There was so much color everywhere. I named the colors for him as we walked through the garden. It was the young sunflowers he liked best.

He spelled sunflower then made a sign for the flower, but instead of signing sun and flower, he held up his forearm and with his opening fist showed the flower’s head lifting and rotating toward the sun. It showed the boy, the way he was taking everything in.

That’s why I gave him his sign name, Frank continued, and he twisted the y hand shape—the sign for Yellow—close to his head.

Roy, he signed. Yellow. Roy learned quickly. Soon he was signing the same as the other children. He came to spend summer holidays with my parents. I have three brothers, he was like a fourth. I don’t think his own parents cared about him. Then, in his second year he got dropsy of the lungs. He refused to go home, because no one could talk to him there. His teachers didn’t know what to do. I stayed at his bedside. I promised him he would get better, I wouldn’t leave him, and he wouldn’t have to go home.

One evening, he did seem better. I was telling him stories, making him laugh, but not too much. There was a full moon, so I opened the curtains, to make the room bright. An hour passed, I left him because I was thirsty. I needed some fresh air, he seemed peaceful. Mr. Bell was in the corridor. He stopped me. He told me how it was the saddest thing in the world. A boy who didn’t want to go to his family when he was dying. I told him maybe, but that’s what Roy wanted. We were his family now. But Mr. Bell told me that I must persuade the boy to go home. That’s when I realized he didn’t understand us.

He paused for a moment, and I thought of Reverend Keep, acting as a go-between for Mr. Tanner and his customer. Perhaps the principal didn’t convey your meaning properly, I signed.

Frank was looking hard at me. Mr. Bell knows the sign language, he signed. Didn’t he tell you?

I couldn’t help my disbelief, all my thoughts stalling on this new fact. He didn’t tell me, I managed after a moment.

He’s not very good, Frank continued, but he thinks he knows enough to decide we shouldn’t use it ourselves.

Frank looked across the bay, his gaze sweeping across the flats which were speckled with men and carts. His eyes wavered as if he couldn’t make something out in the distance. When he turned back to me, his signs were slower, carefully made.

We argued in signs, he continued, no third person. Just me and him. I lost my temper. The principal saw us arguing. I was just a pupil, Mr. Bell our guest teacher. I wasn’t allowed back into Roy’s room. I begged but the principal was furious with me. I went into the garden. I thought Roy might go to the window and see me. The moon was bright, he could see me signing in the garden. You know what I saw? Someone had gone into his room and closed the curtains. Left him in the dark to hear nothing, see nothing. I went straight back inside but the principal was coming down the stairs and stopped me. The next day, I learned that Roy had died. Then at lunchtime the hotel window was open. Mr. Bell was filling the town with his music.

Frank’s right hand brushed back and forth above his left palm—music—then he spanned his sign out as if the music was traveling across the air, out into the Bay. He smiled a little and added, Maybe it was a funeral march? Who knows. We couldn’t hear it.

You think Mr. Bell closed the curtains, I signed, and as I drew down my hands, I thought how the sign for curtains closing felt similar to falling darkness. Curtains, Darkness. Once I’d confused the same word with Gardens, and it had led to Mr. Bell asking for the paper he’d never read.

Him or the principal.

Did he stay? I asked.

He went back to Boston to be a professor. You know the rest. He set up his own school but I was expelled from mine. I wanted to stay at Hartford and become a teacher like my older brothers. I had a sweetheart, we were to be married.

His eyes switched to the bay again, leaving me with the hovering pictures of his story. Mr. Bell, his hands at the piano, the music rising from the keys and summoned into the bay, swelling through the air, and Frank’s sign for Sweetheart hung among those planes of music. He’d never mentioned anyone to me. Did she break things off or stand by him? I wanted to ask but I knew it would do nothing but suggest my own feelings at the wrong moment.

Printing is a good profession, I told him, when he turned back.

Lucky my uncle took me on, he agreed, then turned and cast his gaze back down the Mall. What bothers me, he began, is all the scientists listening to him. His ideas, filling up that building, same as his piano in Hartford. If he gets the multiple telegraph, it will be even worse.

Frank’s face looked bare in a way I’d not seen before. It lasted only a second before his expression tightened, pinched by regret. I pictured the boy waiting for Frank, the curtains sealed against any hope of light in the room.

There are lots of men like him, I signed. Women too, I added, thinking of Miss Lance and Miss Roscoe.

He laughed a little. Should that make us feel better? Come on, it is getting late.

As we walked back down the Mall, and the houses began to rise around us, I felt a growing sense of misery. When we reached the turning for the Institute, I didn’t try and breeze past like before. I had been wrong about Mr. Bell, and no longer cared what he did with a telegraph and whether he could make it yield voices or not. At my next lesson at the Oratory School, I would bring the smoked glass with me and return it to him.

I turned to Frank, feeling purposefulness stack up inside me. You don’t need to worry about Mr. Bell, I told him. He can’t persuade anyone to finance what he really wants. Can you guess what it is?

I smiled, readying Frank for the revelation. He wants to put a voice in a wire, I told him. He wants to make the telegraph talk so that two people can hear each other across a distance. But even hearing people can’t see the value, I added. No one is interested!

Frank was watching me closely. There was a sharp light of interest in his eyes. I was taken aback. I’d been expecting his scorn. Had my signs not been clear?

I tried a second time, drawing out the line of the wire and showing how a voice might travel along it, so that it could be heard at the other end, where a listener was located, receiving the sound. Now that I was trying to convey Mr. Bell’s idea in signs, I started to think that perhaps it really was absurd after all.

You see? I told Frank. If he doesn’t make any money from the idea, then he can’t promote Visible Speech.

But Frank was nodding slowly. Tell me that again, he signed. One more time.

I was thrown into confusion. What interest could Frank have with such a device? But I repeated my signs again, more slowly, trying out a different spatial arrangement to see if that helped communicate my meaning.

He told you this? he asked. You?

Yes, I replied, starting to feel my temper rising. He told me all this. He showed me some apparatus in the Institute of Technology. That’s the name of the place where he works.

He showed you a telegraphic device?

No, it was for teaching deaf children, but it gave him inspiration for the human voice telegraph. But as I spelled out Inspiration, not knowing the sign, I felt my shame curling up tight inside me, remembering how pleased I’d been to notice the sensitivity of the tiny bones in the cadaver ear.

Inspiration, right. I see. How would it work? he asked. The talking telegraph, I mean. Did he tell you that?

His face didn’t show any sign of challenge, but he was affecting casualness, trying to soften the edges of his keenness.

I don’t think he fully knows yet, I replied. The idea is that the vibrations of the voice can induce a current. But he has some problems with the voice being strong enough to generate the current. He isn’t an electrician. There is a membrane, I added, trying to remember the Phonoautograph. A stylus rests against it, which can conduct sound through the membrane—

My signing had come apart by this point, and I was relying heavily on finger-spelling. Frank had also started correcting me because he wanted to be clear. A stylus, he spelled. A current? It goes where? Here? The membrane? I don’t understand. Spell it, don’t sign it. I can’t follow your signs.

I threw up my hands. Does it matter anyway? I told him. I thought you were worried about the deaf community, not about membranes, and... But I trailed off, unable to repeat the litany of finger-spelled words a second time.

He drew back, holding up his hands in an overdone concession, as if my accusations had been unreasonable. Then he tried a purposefully neutral expression. So he wants to put voices into the telegraph, he signed. What about the multiple telegraph? Did he tell you about that race?

I looked at Frank. In spite of his efforts to hide it, his questions were queued up in his eyes. The conversation over the dinner table at the Tanners’ came back to me. How did you know that Mr. Bell has rented the attic? I asked.

He stalled. What attic?

The one at the mechanic shop.

That? Well, my uncle sees him there occasionally.

In the attic?

No, no. At the counter downstairs.

He broke eye contact and turned a few paces, twisting footprints in the mud underfoot.

Aren’t you worried he will see you? I asked. You were so worried when we first met. Remember? You asked me not to tell Mr. Bell about you. Well, he might be here now. There, in the Institute. I pointed toward Berkeley Street.

Frank shook his head. He’s not in town, he replied.

My mouth dropped and my hands lifted—how did he know?—but at that moment two men turned out of Berkeley Street and Frank, glancing at them, reached for my elbow. Let’s go, he signed.

When we were at the end of the street, I asked him: Did you know those men?

He frowned. Which men? Those men? No. But his smile lifted his cheeks with an effortful joviality. You have a lot of questions, he signed.

I stopped on the sidewalk. I have a lot of questions? I replied, thumping my chest twice.

His glance was brief, but something quickened in him. He stepped up to me, and his signs came out fast, raised in keeping with his string of Yous, as he pointed his questions at me. You, you, you.

I don’t see how Mr. Bell can have told you all this, he signed. Do you know about electricity? Do you know how sound works? Why would he tell you?

He was looking at me hard, his gaze like a surgeon’s blade, cutting and lifting away something for assessment. He was trying to see my lessons with Mr. Bell. Did he wonder at our closeness? Suddenly I wanted him to see what I knew was no longer there. Myself, Mr. Bell’s star pupil, to whom he confided more than he ought. In any case, the swirl of my anger and pride was making me feel like it might still be true. I held myself straight and open before Frank’s inspection. I meant to show him that I had nothing to hide, and that all his suspicions were entirely reasonable.

But then I signed, Mr. Bell needed someone to believe in his idea.

Believe. It combined two signs, think and marry. I touched my index to my temple then clasped my hands together. But my cupped hands trembled between us, even though my chin was lifted high with resolution. My signs married nothing of my conviction, and he saw it.

So you did! he replied. You told him you believed in all those voices.

He made the voices travel in aimless lines around his head, like irritating flies. His scorn had arrived, only now it was too late.

You should be thankful! I replied. I told you because you were worried about Mr. Bell’s bad idea catching on. I tried to reassure you.

He considered me. It isn’t just one man, he signed. A bad idea? Maybe, who knows. But maybe you don’t know Mr. Bell at all. Maybe you haven’t stood in a room with hundreds of children, all of us following one man’s determination to have us speak the same as him. There’s you and him, sitting together comfortably, chatting about the telegraph, chatting away.

He finished on his picture of two people seated and his flat hand flickering at his mouth, his face straight with boredom and tipped back against this endless repetitious chatter of myself and Mr. Bell. He made us look like hearing people, and our easy talking was a mindless absurdity.

He turned and started walking. I had to follow quickly. He kept his eyes on the sidewalk ahead, his closed umbrella now strutting out our haste even though the rain had stopped, and we might have ambled through more of Boston. Anger made my steps feel light, as if my chest had ballooned with so much heat it was surging me along. A new idea was burning brightly. Frank had lost so much because of Mr. Bell. His future at Hartford, his sweetheart. He’d broken his promise to Roy to stay with him and that was Mr. Bell’s fault as well. Then he met me, and he thought he could win something back. Our lessons were a kind of revenge. He meant to destroy my confidence in Mr. Bell and his methods, and that would be a small victory. How much did he hope to settle a score with his old teacher? And win my affections as well? He had succeeded, so now what? My thoughts carried on swiveling into this darkening hole. Never mind Mr. Bell’s lessons. I was a pawn in Frank’s lessons, serving some purpose that I’d not been able to see.

We stopped at the gates to the Public Gardens. From here our routes home diverged. He turned to me. You are angry, he signed.

His simple statement of the fact only made me angrier. And I wanted to cling on to my anger because it was all I had left. His picture of myself and Mr. Bell nattering away was stuck in my mind. Of course, we hadn’t talked as easily as that! But the truth was worse. I’d labored over understanding Mr. Bell’s words, for months and months, and pretended I hadn’t, and that Mr. Bell spoke to me like he spoke to all people.

Frank’s own anger had dropped away, almost as quickly as it had arisen. I’m sorry, he signed. I shouldn’t have said those things. I’m a terrible liar. Yes, I did know those men. Yes, I have many questions about Mr. Bell’s work.

For a moment he looked so stricken, I thought he wouldn’t continue. Then he drew a deep breath. I’ve been so worried, he signed. I knew I would have to tell you, but my plans went wrong. Next time I will explain. I promise. But not here, like this. Look, see? It’s raining again. Will you come next Tuesday for our lesson? And I will walk you home?

Dimly, I knew that I didn’t want us to part on bad terms, but I shook my head instead. No, I can walk myself back, I told him.

As I turned away, I glimpsed his hand lifting in a T shape, beginning the circle of Tuesday. He still wanted to know if I was coming next week. But my anger had started my steps and I couldn’t seem to stop them. I carried on walking, my pace getting faster as I pushed through the rising wall of my regret. My cheeks started to tingle and dampen with the fresh rain, and I was grateful for its coolness.

It was only when I got back to Little St. Clouds that I realized I hadn’t put my gloves back on in spite of the cold, even after I’d left him.