What No One Else Can Hear (23 page)

And so the day went. By the time the sun set, most of the neighbors on the block were helping with the cleanup effort.

In the early afternoon the next day, groups of about ten or fifteen at a time started showing up. We found out each of Dottie’s neighbors had mentioned in their respective churches that she could use some help repairing the damage done by the vandals. Each church responded with small groups of helpers. By dusk on Sunday, all of Dottie’s new plants were arranged beautifully, the house was painted, and the door and new windows were installed.

Stevie, Drew, and I went out to eat dinner. We had invited Dottie, but she couldn’t leave her neighbors alone, and she was too nice to turn down their help and say she had other plans. So she told us to go ahead without her this time.

We grabbed a booth at Denny’s, and Stevie proceeded to draw on the back of the place mat with the crayons that were on the table. This was typical for him anytime we went out to eat.

The first couple of times we had gone to a restaurant, Stevie hadn’t known what to make of it. All the people… various emotions. We had worked hard on his walls in the car before ever coming in, and I had explained to him what it would be like. Stevie said he wanted to try. He’d never been to a restaurant, and I figured if he could handle the cafeteria at the center, he could handle a restaurant.

That first time we needed to get a booth as far away from others as possible, not that a little bit of distance really mattered as far as the noises in his head, but at least it seemed to help with the noises outside of it. Stevie took forever figuring out what he wanted to eat and then didn’t really eat much of it. But overall he was doing okay. Then one of the waitresses noticed he didn’t have anything to do and brought him a child’s place mat and some crayons. He immediately turned it over and started to draw. That had become a tradition now. If there happened not to be a place mat or if the waitress didn’t automatically bring one, I asked for one, and Stevie drew until the food arrived.

Drew had eaten with us at Dottie’s before but had never gone out to the restaurant with us. He and I often worked different shifts. It was unheard-of for Drew, Dottie, and me to have the same day off, so we had all planned to take Stevie out tonight. It didn’t work out for Dottie to come this time, but Drew was in for an experience.

Stevie refused to open the menu, as usual. He was too busy drawing by then. After that first time, I typically just ordered for him. I had a pretty good idea of what he liked and what he didn’t, but Drew didn’t know that.

“Hey, Steve,” he asked. “What do you want to eat?”

When I had done that in the past, Stevie just shrugged or said he didn’t care, so I didn’t expect an answer. But Drew did.

“Stevie, can you answer me, buddy?” When it looked like Stevie still wasn’t going to answer, Drew started to repeat the question. “What do you—”

“Sandwich,” Stevie finally said without looking up.

“What kind of—”

“Ham.”

Stevie sounded like a cranky old man, but Drew didn’t seem to mind. He had told me quite often he knew they all let Stevie get away with a borderline rude tone of voice much more than they should, but they were just so glad to hear him say anything in any tone of voice that it was hard to care.

“Stevie.” I stepped in. I had known all along he could talk, and I also knew he had better manners than this. “Look at Drew when he’s speaking to you please. And use a full sentence to answer.”

I never figured out how Stevie could give the impression of rolling his eyes without actually rolling his eyes, but he did. He also complied with my request.

He looked Drew in the eye and answered much more politely. “I would like a ham and cheese sandwich on white bread please. Not toasted.”

“Much better, bud.” I smiled at him.

Stevie gave me that same long-suffering look and went back to work on his picture.

“You know,” Drew began, “even after all this time, I’m still not used to that.”

“What? Him being polite?”

“Him talking in full sentences.”

I just grinned. We’d been over the same ground numerous times. I guessed, from the outside, it did look pretty miraculous.

Oddly enough, Stevie retained quite a few autistic-like traits, even with the mental walls. I often tried to puzzle out whether he really had some level of autism too or if they were learned behaviors. After all, they had protected him at a time when the world around him was pure chaos. Having a schedule, having routines, and even rituals. Not talking much or at all. Not making eye contact. All of that had helped him control his reactions to everyone’s emotions and thoughts that filled his head. I’m not really sure how these behaviors helped, but they had, so I’m sure it was difficult to just give them up, now that he didn’t need them as a crutch as much. To the outside world, Stevie still looked like a child with autism. He seemed okay with that, so it didn’t bother me either.

Our meals came, and Stevie settled into one of his rituals. He took the top piece of bread off both triangles of the sandwich and laid them so they seemed to form a whole piece of bread with the bottom slice. He then took the ham off each slice and laid it on one side of the plate, then pulled off the cheese and put that on the other side. He then put the top slice of bread on the bottom slice and picked up one set of two triangles of totally denuded bread.

“Is he really just going to eat the bread?” Drew was puzzled, having never seen Stevie with a ham and cheese sandwich. Stevie had the cafeteria folk at the center trained to always offer peanut butter sandwiches. He preferred those, but most restaurants didn’t serve them. So ham and cheese was his plan B.

Of course, he had his stylized way of eating it.

“He eats that first,” I clarified. “Then the ham, then the cheese.”

“Kind of like the pizza,” Drew concluded.

“Yeah, pretty much. Only backwards, if you consider the bread is like the crust.”

Stevie didn’t pay any attention to our conversation and just went on with his ritualistic eating of the sandwich.

Our conversation drifted to other things.

“So,” he started, “I noticed we’re both off Friday night….”

“Yeah?” I hadn’t looked at the schedule yet.

“Yeah. So I was wondering….” Drew looked a little sheepish. “If there’s anything playing that we want to see, do you want to go to a movie? Maybe dinner first?”

I grinned. “Like a date?”

He smiled back at me. “Why yes. Exactly like a date.”

“Sounds great.” I smiled and was rewarded when Drew beamed back at me.

We finished our meal and returned Stevie to the center. I got him ready for bed, tucked him in, and waited for him to fall asleep. Then Drew and I went back to Dottie’s house.

Several of her neighbors were still there when we arrive, around 10:00 p.m., and we talked until well into the night. The neighbors seemed to need Dottie’s forgiveness, and she gave it easily. I doubted the real vandals were among the cleanup crew that weekend, but all the neighbors felt they had let Dottie down when she needed them most. That night, just getting a chance to tell Dottie how they felt went a long way toward helping everyone heal from this mess.

It was insanely late by the time everyone left. I had been sitting on Dottie’s sofa the last time I had been aware of anything.

All of a sudden, I heard Drew’s quiet voice. “Wake up, Sleeping Handsome.”

“Hmmm?” I rubbed my eyes and pulled my hair out of my face. “I didn’t even know I’d fallen asleep.”

“Well, it’s been a hard couple of months, and I know you haven’t slept right.” He was pulling me to my feet. “Come on. Let’s get you to bed.”

I was still half-asleep, so I didn’t censor my thoughts. “I thought you’d never ask.”

Drew pulled back just a little to look directly into my eyes. My guess was he was trying to decide if I was kidding. I wasn’t. Now that we’d finally had our first kiss, I was anxious to move on to the next step, but I had been too busy with Stevie, then the trial—not to mention just too chickenshit—to do anything about it. I had tried to take the lead with that one abortive kiss during the whole court mess, and he hadn’t been ready. He didn’t seem shy about kissing me later, so I figured we’d get there eventually. It just hadn’t been the right time yet.

It wasn’t the right time now either. I was exhausted and really needed to crash.

Drew seemed to agree. “Well, maybe not tonight. Say that when you’re not half-asleep.”

I smiled, and Drew helped me get to my bed.

I was asleep again before my head hit the pillow.

D
REW
CLIMBED
in beside me and pushed the covers away. He unbuttoned my shirt and ran his hands through the hair on my chest. I unbuttoned his too, and found that glorious smooth chest I’d gotten glimpses of some mornings when I was having breakfast with Dottie and Drew was running out the door with three or four buttons left to do up.

Drew didn’t stop with my shirt, though. He ran a finger under my waistband and smirked.

“I’ve wanted to do this for so long.” He leered.

“Don’t let me stop you.” I smiled, already blissed-out, just thinking about finally having Drew the way I’d wanted for a while now.

He unbuckled my belt and pulled it through the loops, then tossed it across the room. He unbuttoned my fly and pulled down the zipper carefully. He was nuzzling the hair he found there, licking and nipping my already straining erection, and I knew I wouldn’t last long.

Then he started singing an Adele song. He sounded just like her too, but I had no idea why he would stop to sing right now. It was very frustrating. But he kept singing.

“D
AMN
.” I
hit the radio to shut up the singer I would now forever consider a cockblocker. “You couldn’t have waited for five minutes?”

As hard as I had been in the dream, it wouldn’t have taken much longer than that. I noticed for the first time that certain parts of me had gotten
very
into the dream, so I went to take care of that in my morning shower, mumbling every curse I could think of on the alarm clock, the radio station, and Adele herself.

To make matters worse, this was one of those days that Drew came out of his bedroom without his shirt. My dream hadn’t exaggerated one little bit in that department.

“You okay, Jesse?” He looked over at me with concern in his eyes. It was all I could do to remind myself he didn’t know what “we” had gotten up to the night before. “You look… off.”

Oh no, not off at the time.
It hadn’t lasted long enough for me to get off. I had to take care of it by myself in my tiny little shower.

“No, I’m fine.”

I don’t know if Drew bought it or not, but as he passed by me to get to his place at the table, he dragged his hand across the back of my shoulders and down my arm nearest his seat. He even gripped my fingers a little as he sat down.

Dottie looked up from where she was fixing eggs for all of us… and smirked.

T
HAT
WEEKEND
had been a good start on healing at the center too. Just
having me around the whole time each day helped Stevie a little, but I found he could not let me out of his sight. I had to come up with a pretty persuasive argument just to go to the bathroom by myself. Still Stevie insisted on sitting in the hallway just outside the bathroom. He had refused to sleep either night that weekend until I’d promised to stay until he conked out. Complete healing was going to take a while. Stevie trusted me to never choose to leave him, but he now knew I didn’t always have a
choice.

Ryan seemed to bounce back much more quickly. For a quiet child, he was positively giddy when he realized his friend was back to normal. Now that Stevie didn’t have to fight so hard to control the voices, he was free to play with Ryan again, and the younger boy couldn’t contain his joy.

Healing actually took place in unexpected places as well. Ryan’s parents came to visit him that weekend, and they were overjoyed to see the change in their son. They watched him play with Stevie, in person this time, and just sat and absorbed it. They had never seen Ryan play with another child, except on the tapes the staff had sent to them.

Over the next week, everyone tried hard to get things back to normal. I resumed my usual shifts and had finally talked Stevie into letting me go home at night at a more reasonable hour. I realized that first Monday night I hadn’t been quite specific enough, though. Stevie contacted me in the forest and refused to leave. Finally, by the middle of the week, Stevie was willing to try to actually sleep at night. He started participating in the classroom again and got back to a normal routine. For the last nine weeks, his schedule had been erratic at best due to all the crises and trips to the forest. Maybe at last he’d be able to regain the ground he had lost during that time.

F
RIDAY
CAME
quickly but, even though I was not scheduled to work, I went in to spend most of the afternoon, after classes, with Stevie. By the time I returned to my apartment and started to ready myself for my date with Drew, I heard a knock on the door.

I answered it with no shirt or shoes. Drew stood, on the other side of the doorway, with his jaw hanging open.

“You’ve seen me shirtless before,” I finally chuckled out.

“Not since we….” He didn’t seem to know how to finish that so he just let it hang.

“Come on in. I won’t be long getting ready. I wanted to jump in the shower and change, but then I’m all yours.”

I turned around and had started toward the bathroom when I thought I heard him say, “I hope so. Sooner rather than later.”

D
INNER
WAS
lovely, and the movie was great. But what happened back in my apartment afterward was wonderful.

Drew followed me inside and closed the door. I looked back at him when I heard the
snick
of the door lock.