Singing Hands (12 page)

"I—um," I stammered, "I guess I never have. I just read about it."

Mrs. Fernley drew back, blinking, as if I had just slapped her hard across the face. "Goodness, child! You can't make such claims in your sentences without at least hearing some of the works you're referring to." She fluttered over to her phonograph and briskly flipped through the albums lined up on a nearby shelf. Then, holding one of her records between her fingertips like a treasure from a museum, she carefully laid it on the turntable and bent closer to place the needle in a precisely chosen spot.

Her skirt and nylon stockings swished as she swept back to join me on the love seat. "Listen," she whispered breathlessly. "This is it. Canio's aria—
Vesti la giubba.
He's just learned of his wife's betrayal."

"You mean Nedda," I added proudly. "Canio stabs her, right?"

Mrs. Fernley nodded and raised a finger to her lips to shush me. She closed her eyes to listen.

I had to admit—even though I couldn't understand a single word—the music was beautiful ... and sad. Canio's tortured voice poured into the room. First his song drifted off in a sob, and then it began gathering more power, building louder and higher until I found myself digging my fingernails into my palms.

I peeked at Mrs. Fernley. Her eyes were still shut, and she had leaned back in the love seat as if in a swoon. I let out a deep breath, sank against the pink velveteen, and closed my eyes, too, gradually realizing that Mrs. Fernley had the right idea. Listening to opera might be relaxing after all. Compared to the heartache and nastiness those tenors and sopranos sang about, my own troubles seemed downright trifling.

Two weeks later, Nell refused to believe me when I announced that Missy DuPage was coming over to spend the night.

"You're lying, Gussie," she cried as I darted around the parlor plumping pillows.

"I'm
not,
" I said, gritting my teeth. I swiped a layer of dust off the fireplace mantel with the flat of my hand, then stopped and pulled the damp fabric of my blouse away from my sweaty underarms. "She'll be here in two hours. Now, please go upstairs and clean your side of the room. And if you could just hide all those ratty stuffed animals on the dresser, that would really—"

"But you
hate
Missy DuPage!" I blew a clump of hair off my forehead and began again, enunciating slowly and carefully this time. "I—do—not—hate—Missy. I told you before. She's nice. We've gotten to be good friends in Sunday school."

Now I truly was lying. The real fact was that I had barely spoken to Missy until a week ago, when she had followed me out to the church courtyard and informed me she was "on to" my "clever little plan." To my utter amazement, instead of tattling, Missy had asked if she could skip Sunday school
with
me. How could I say no? I had no choice but to lead her directly over to the Tutwiler and use my offering money to treat her to some Nabs.

Nell put her hands on her hips. I could swear she was becoming more like Margaret every day.

"How come you never mentioned this wonderful friendship with Missy before?"

"I don't know. I didn't think too much about it, I guess."

Another lie. I hadn't thought of anything else since last Sunday, when I blurted out my spend-the-night invitation to Missy as we were sneaking back into the Advent.

"Did Mother say it was okay?" Nell persisted. "Daddy's having the church vestry meeting here tonight, you know. And some of the ladies are coming along to visit this time."

"Of course Mother says it's okay. And believe me, Missy and I won't go anywhere near the vestry meeting." I rolled my eyes and then swooped over to snatch the yellowed crocheted doilies off the arms of the settee. Nell watched with her mouth open as I shoved them underneath one of the seat cushions.

"You never used to act this nervous when Barbara Blackwell spent the night," she said.

"Well, that's because this is Missy's first time visiting, and I'm sure she's used to things looking a lot more ... a lot more..." My voice trailed off as I stood surveying the parlor one last time before moving on to the dining room. My gaze lit on a bronze statuette that had been planted in the middle of our coffee table for as long as I could remember. I had never understood the statue or why my parents even owned a figurine of a naked boy riding on the back of a bridled turtle.

"Missy's used to things looking a lot more
what?
" Nell demanded.

I grabbed the naked-boy statue from the table and shook it in Nell's face. "A lot more
civilized,
" I said loudly, and hurried off in search of a place to hide it.

At five o'clock sharp, the doorbell rang, and I breezed down the staircase in a fresh blouse and pair of shorts, pretending that I hadn't been sitting on the landing for the last fifteen minutes, nervously awaiting Missy's arrival. When I opened the door, I found Mrs. DuPage pressed close to her daughter's side. She was peering over her shoulder at the street, as if she was sizing up the other houses in our neighborhood.

"Hello there!" she cried, whipping around and flashing me a smile that could have come right out of a toothpaste ad. "You must be Gussie. Missy has told me so much about you, dear."

Luckily, she didn't seem to recognize me from that awful morning when I'd dropped my pennies at the Advent.

"
Moth-er,
" Missy drawled in disgust, and impatiently shifted her red patent-leather overnight case from one hand to the other.

"I know, Missy, honey. You're just anxious to run off with your new friend. But, Gussie, dear, I would like the chance to say hello to your mother ... since we've never laid eyes on each other before. Missy says she'll just ride to church with you tomorrow morning and meet us at the Advent. It's a wonder I haven't run into your mother yet at Sunday coffee hour."

Missy heaved another sigh. Sitting at the counter in the Tutwiler drugstore last week, Missy had questioned me about the absence of my parents at church as skillfully as any of the inspectors in my
True Detective
magazines. Before I knew it, I had babbled out my confession: my parents were deaf and my father was the minister of a deaf congregation and they had sent me to the Advent to worship with hearing people.

"You're kidding!" Missy had exclaimed, and squeezed one of my hands resting on the counter as if we had been friends for years. "How awful," she said, and dropped her voice low, with her look of horror quickly turning to fascination. "You mean they can't hear anything at all? Not even a freight train or ... one of those ... those noisy old jackhammer things?"

When I shook my head grimly, Missy's eyes had lit up with delight, and she'd launched into another slew of questions about my "poor deaf parents." But obviously she had decided not to share those stories with her mother for some reason.

Now I was stuck. In my rush to make our house more presentable for Missy's arrival, I had forgotten to make sure my mother would be presentable, too. And at that very minute, she was in our steaming kitchen, up to her elbows in flour and sugar, making a cake and two pies for the church vestry meeting, which would be starting at seven. I had forgotten to tell her exactly what time Missy was coming. Mrs. Fernley's word list popped into my head.
Mortification: Mrs. Olivia Davis would surely experience extreme
mortification
if she was forced in her present condition to meet daisy-fresh Mrs. DuPage.

Mrs. DuPage was staring at me warily. "Would it be all right, then, dear? To meet your mother?"

"I'm sorry," I said quickly. "She just stepped out ... to the market. She wanted to make Missy a special dinner."

"Oh, how sweet," Mrs. DuPage crooned. "Well, I could wait a few minutes." She peeked past me into our shadowy foyer. "How long do you think she'll be?"

I hesitated, and we all turned at the sound of a car pulling into our driveway. It was Preston Tucker in a red coupe, bringing Margaret home from an afternoon at the Cahaba River. I had never in all my twelve years been so happy to see my older sister. We watched as Preston hopped out of the car and walked around to open the passenger door for her.

"Isn't that the Tucker boy?" Mrs. DuPage asked, sounding pleasantly surprised and relieved. "The Tuckers live on the next street over from us in Mountain Brook."

"Yes, that's Preston," I said smoothly. "He and my sister Margaret are dating." Of course, "dating" might not have been exactly the right term to describe their relationship. I hadn't seen a trace of Preston since the Birthmark Baines incident back in June. Most likely he was just now recovering from the shock of all the screaming and underwear he had encountered in our upstairs hallway.

Margaret said goodbye to Preston and came swinging up the steps, looking pretty in a flowered sundress over her two-piece. Her cheeks were rosy with sun and the thrill of spending the day with the basketball star of South Glen High.

"Well, hello there," Mrs. DuPage said, reaching out her hand to shake Margaret's. They didn't even need my help with introductions. In no time, they were fawning over each other, gushing about what a fine family the Tuckers were and what a stately colonial they had over in Mountain Brook and what remarkable energy Preston must possess to be able to shoot baskets at the hoop in his driveway until nine o'clock most nights. Mrs. DuPage barely noticed when her daughter kissed her on the cheek and slipped through the front door after me.

Once I had taken Missy to my bedroom to drop off her overnight case, she asked to see the rest of the house. Suddenly, our Oriental rugs looked more threadbare than usual, and I noticed that the rose-patterned wallpaper in the bathroom was peeling away from the corners. When we peeked into Margaret's room, even the flouncy tieback curtains, the same ones I had always coveted, looked dingy and dusty, as if they had never displayed a single shred of flounce.

"You wanna go walk around outside?" I suggested as we stood at the top of the. stairs.

"What about your mother and father's room?" Missy asked.

I shrugged. "It's not much," I said, and led her into their bedroom, directly over to the prettiest spot by the window seat.

Missy pointed to the bare light bulb protruding from the wall over my parents' bed. "What's that?"

"Oh, it's connected to the doorbell. When the bell rings, it blinks on and off so they'll know someone's at the door."

"Ahhhh," Missy breathed raptly. Then I showed her their special alarm clock rigged to wake them every morning with a red flashing light instead of a beeping sound. Then the old cowbell that Daddy kept by his bed because he swore he could hear the faintest trace of its special tone. All the things I had taken for granted my whole life, Missy found absolutely fascinating.

"Just think," she mused. "You and your sisters can scream your heads off at each other, and your parents will never even know it."

"That's right." I nodded proudly.

"What about signs for bad words? Do you know any?"

"Oh, sure," I lied. I jerked and slapped and punched my hands through a long series of rude-looking gestures.

Missy watched me with her eyes growing wide. "What does that mean?" she whispered.

"Oh, it's pretty awful, Missy," I said, wincing. "I'm too embarrassed to say it out loud. We hardly know each other."

"Will you teach me later?" she begged.

"Maybe I could," I told her in a forbidding voice. "But you'd have to swear never to make the signs in public. I could get in huge trouble if anybody found out I taught you."

By the time I led her up to the third floor and told her just a tantalizing bit about Miss Grace, the beautiful deaf war widow, Missy was smitten with our entire household on Myrtle Avenue.

"You're so lucky," she said after I pointed out the room belonging to Mrs. Fernley, the eccentric divorcee. "Your house has so much character."

There was more character for Missy to soak up at dinner. Mother had set the table in the stuffy kitchen, since the vestry would be gathering in the dining room in just a half-hour. On any other night, Daddy would have started right in with teaching Missy the manual alphabet or asking her a long list of questions about school and her family, but the upcoming church meeting must have been distracting him. After saying grace and passing around the pork chops and baked apples, he and Mother lost themselves in a discussion of pressing issues at Saint Jude's, with their hands flying and worry flitting over their faces.

Missy watched their every move, barely chewing her pork chop. I couldn't help showing off. I thumped the floor with my foot and waved my hand to get their attention.

"How many will be coming tonight?" I signed flamboyantly.

I could feel Margaret and Nell sending scornful looks in my direction. At dinner, we usually spoke out loud and relied on Mother and Daddy to read our lips.

"Maybe twelve," Mother signed back, eyeing me as if I had lost my mind.

"What kind of desserts did you make for the meeting tonight, Mother?" I went on, increasing my hand speed a couple of more notches.

Even though they must have been suspicious, Mother and Daddy were patient with my showing off. After a few more minutes of watching our conversation, Missy whispered, "Ask them if they want us to serve the refreshments during the meeting. Tell them I'd be happy to help."

I translated for Missy, trying to ignore Nell's jaw dropping lower.

"Well, I declare," Daddy said out loud, and nodded to my new friend. "That would be wonderful. Thank you, Miss DuPage. Thank you very much."

Mr. Runion shook
Missy's
hand hard enough to make the silver charms on her bracelet clink together. She barely had time to compose herself before Mrs. Thorp, freshly recovered from her bout with kidney stones, hobbled over. Then the Tate sisters crowded around, petting Missy's glossy black hair and making the signs for "pretty girl" over and over again. I had forgotten to warn Missy about how affectionate deaf people could be with youngsters. Most of the ones I knew made it a policy to hug you before they even knew your name for certain.