4
Leah leaned against the headboard trying to concentrate on the magazine article but failing. After a few minutes, Brooke emerged from their bathroom in a dark blue terrycloth robe. Leah watched as she walked across the room and set the toiletries kit on her side of the dresser.
Brooke turned quickly with an old but familiar look caught between indulgence and annoyance. “Not that much like the old days!”
“What?” Leah asked.
“You following my every move. Defined the first twenty years of my life!”
“Maybe the first eighteen. I couldn’t watch you once you went off to college.”
“First eighteen then. It was a big responsibility.”
“You loved it.”
Brooke sat on her bed on the other side of the room. “At some level I did. It was nice to matter that much. I think that many children feel they don’t matter at all and resent it. That was never a problem for me.”
“I lived much of my childhood through you.”
“So I had to be on all the time. I couldn’t just go somewhere and hide, curl up by myself and be alone.”
“You curled up on your bed and ignored me lots.”
“I pretended to ignore you, but every minute I felt your eyes on me.”
“You’re the least self-conscious person I’ve ever known.”
“Learned then. I had to put aside my worries and just do what I needed to do.”
“Or wanted to do.”
“Least self-conscious and most self-indulgent?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Didn’t have to, but I’m not offended. It’s always been full steam ahead and let the world catch up.”
“Or not sometimes.”
“Jodie?” Brooke said with rare self-doubt.
She’d stopped by the girls’ room after turning out the lights downstairs. Penni had made a point of setting her book aside and getting out of bed to give her a long hug that was by itself worth the price of the rental, this whole crazy plan. Jodie didn’t get out of her bed but had said after Penni had slowly backed away, “Goodnight, Mom. It’s good to be here.” That surprising admission in Jodie’s resigned sullenness had opened the floodgates to her greatest failure in life—figuring out her eldest daughter. She’d wanted to run over to Jodie’s bed and shake her until she woke up from her funk—thirty-five years of resentment and reservation. Well, maybe thirty—her first five years she’d been ebullient and outgoing. But she’d not run across to shake Jodie. She’d just turned to her daughter and said what she felt. “Having all of you here is how it needed to be.” But it didn’t stop her from worrying about Jodie throughout her bedtime preparations.
Leah laughed. “I meant me.”
“What about you?”
“That I couldn’t always keep up with you.”
“You didn’t need to. You found a way to be your own person.”
“Because I realized I couldn’t keep up. It’s all your fault.”
Brooke laughed. “That’s what they all say.” She took off her robe and set it on the chair beside the nightstand then slid between the covers. She switched off the bedside light. “Good night, Leah.”
Leah said, “I still need to take off my processors.”
Brooke laughed. “For the longest time I couldn’t get used to you hearing, now I’m taking it for granted! Go ahead. You won’t bother me.”
“First I’d like to do something I always wanted to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Talk to you in the dark.”
Something suddenly caught in Brooke’s throat and she didn’t dare try to speak for the animal moan that would’ve surely come forth. She swallowed hard—twice, three times.
“Would that be O.K.?” Leah asked. “Just for a few minutes?”
“Yes,” Brooke croaked, barely a whisper.
Leah switched off her light then slid down into the bed till just her face was above the covers, cushioned on the pillows. The room was in total darkness except for the thin silver light of a quarter moon coming and going from behind clouds beyond the unshaded windows facing east, the direction of the blank ocean and the eventual sunrise.
Brooke had regained her voice but was confounded by another tall emotional obstacle—she’d never talked in bed in the dark: not to Leah, obviously, but also not to either of her husbands or her children or the long list of faces she’d shared beds or bedrooms or tents with over the years. She wondered if this too was Leah’s doing, the indirect effect of raising a deaf sister. Or was it just how she was?—if talking needed to be done, turn on the light; otherwise, sleep! And today seemed a fraught moment to initiate this questionable practice. “What do you want to talk about?” she asked of the night.
Leah also saw the mistaken timing of her request. Talk in the dark could be dangerous stuff. But there was no turning back now. Had she somehow donned Brooke’s impetuousness in this new order? “Did I ever tell you about my white world?” She knew she hadn’t—she’d not told anyone about that. She herself hadn’t thought about or visited the place for decades, since well before her hearing, before Jasper and Whitfield. She wondered why she thought about it now then instantly knew—it was Brooke, somehow tied to Brooke.
Brooke said a simple “No” out of the dark.
Leah couldn’t help but wonder what Brooke’s face looked like now. Was she interested or bored, intrigued or confused, grinning or frowning, contented or concerned? Talking in the dark offered some securities but at considerable cost. “When I was a child, there was a place where my mind would go where I could hide from the world.”
“Yes—like, all the time! I was forever having to pull you back into reality—literally: pull you back or pull you along.”
“Well, maybe some of those times I was off in this other world. I called it my ‘White World’ because that’s what it was—all white.”
“Sounds fascinating.”
Leah had little difficulty imagining Brooke’s expression now. “Actually it was fascinating for me. All sorts of creatures emerged from the white background, and they all spoke to me.”
“What sorts of creatures?”
“Horses that could fly. Dolphins that could walk.”
“Were they white?”
“Yes.”
“Then how could you see them?”
“They were like shadows against the brighter background, but I had no trouble seeing them.”
“And they spoke to you? Lip reading? Sign language?”
“No. They spoke to me like people would speak to each other, except I heard them.”
“You couldn’t hear anything then.”
“I heard them but not like sounds when I finally did hear. More like words written out, but heard not seen. It’s kind of difficult to describe. I’ve never tried.”
“Wouldn’t have guessed,” Brooke said with a chuckle. “I’m having a little trouble picturing this, Sis—everything’s white but you can see animals clearly; and the animals speak but not in sounds.”
“Exactly.”
“Glad we got that figured out.”
“Have you ever dreamt of someone and know precisely what they are thinking or feeling even though they don’t speak in words?”
“Sure, but usually there are actions associated with those thoughts. You know what they’re feeling by how they’re acting.”
“Meaning and action are one.”
“Yes, I suppose.”
“That’s how it was in my White World. The horse would think an action that I ‘heard’, and it would happen. Dolphin would make a proposal—feelings or thoughts or words or sounds or a combination of all that—and I would nod and the proposal became a reality. I’d be flying through the sky or swimming beneath the seas.”
“All white?”
“Well, yes, now that you mention it. But it always seemed so rich and vivid, and somehow more beautiful and pure than the real world.”
“Now I know why I had such a time pulling you b
ack to reality.”
“I never chose to go there, at least not consciously. And I was never sad to leave. The visits just came and went. I never thought much about that world when I wasn’t in it. It was just part of who I was—like you and Momma and Father were a part, like the book I’d read the day before or the sun or the flowers along the walk.”
“When did these visions start?”
“Before I can remember. I mean, they were a part of me as far back as I can remember, which is to age three or four.”
“And when did they end?”
Halfway through her revelation, Leah had begun to fear Brooke would ask her this question. While talking into the dark, another part of her consciousness was wrestling with how to respond if Brooke asked. She could lie and say she didn’t remember or the visions had just faded away or they continued still. How would Brooke know? But she would know, and she’d never lied to Brooke in her life. “They ended the day you sent me and Paul to Windsor’s Cove.”
“I didn’t send you anywhere. I suggested it would be a nice outing for two lovebirds about to head off to different colleges.”
“You wanted us out of the way so you could spend the night with Onion.”
“The Slutty Seductress making baby Jodie with a virgin lover.”
Leah really needed to see Brooke’s face now. This talking in the dark was a bad, bad idea. “I didn’t say that.”
Brooke sighed. “No, I did. It’s a fair summary of what happened and why.”
“You told Jodie you didn’t know why.”
“Not the big ‘Why?’ she wanted, no. But it is accurate to the little ‘why?’ explaining my reasons for getting you out of the house. I wanted to sleep with Onion. I wanted to stay with him on Shawnituck. And if we made a baby to cement the deal, then so be it.”
“And pack your deaf sister off with her boyfriend to an overnight on a deserted island.”
“I thought it was what you wanted.”
“No, Brooke, it wasn’t.”
“You could have said no.”
“No, Brooke, I couldn’t have.”
“Why didn’t you just let Onion sleep over while you were at the house? Then you wouldn’t have had to go out there.”
“I wasn’t going to be your pawn in deceiving Aunty Greta and Momma.”
“It happened anyway.”
“Without me in the house.”
“What difference did that make?”
“A lot, for me.”
Brooke fell silent. None of this was news to her, but she’d managed to avoid thinking about it for thirty-five years. “Was it terrible?”
“What?”
“Your night on Windsor’s Cove?”
Leah laughed. “Aside from the thunderstorm and the mosquitoes and the silent treatment from Paul because he didn’t score?”
“Yes.”
“Had a great time.”
“I’m so glad.”
Leah waited a few seconds for the irony to subside then said, “At first I was angry with you. Then when you told me you were pregnant and I did the math, I was angry with myself. I replayed lots of scenarios of how I might have prevented it.”
“What—my life?”
“Your pregnancy.”
“Same thing. I was going to live my life, Leah. You couldn’t stop that.”
“So I eventually realized. Then I stopped being angry.”
“Does it help for me to say ‘Sorry’ now?”
“For what?”
“For involving you in my mess.”
“Your life?”
Brooke laughed. “Yes.”
“I’m grateful. I’m beyond grateful. Being involved in your life made me who I am.”
“We shaped each other.”
“Only each other to blame, then.”
“Like how I destroyed your White World?”
“How so?”
“You said it ended when I sent you to Windsor’s Cove.”
“It did.”
“Then my fault.”
“No, Brooke—life’s. I grew up.”
“And I got a baby.”
“Never thought of it that way.”
“What?”
“The White World exchanged for Jodie.”
“Hardly ‘white’.”
“Still pretty fantastic.”
“Yes,” Brooke said, then added after a pause, “All of it.”
Leah laughed. “Got that right.”
“Thanks, Sis.”
“For what?”
“Talking in the dark.”
“I almost forgot.”
“What?”
“To take off my processors. Can I turn on the light?”
“Sure.”
“It’ll just be a minute.”
“Take your time.”
Down the hall and in similar darkness, Penni asked, “Did you ever want to share a room with me?”
Jodie’s initial reaction was to scoff at the request, mutter some offhand quip to keep her sister slightly off balance. It was a long-held and effective tactic. But not this night in this place on this occasion. “I preferred my own room.”
“I figured. But I always wanted to share a room with you. When you were in high school and I was a kid, I’d sometimes sit on the floor with my ear to your door.”
“And what did you hear?” Jodie wondered mainly in jest but with a tinge of anxiety.
“It’s what I didn’t hear that most fascinated me. Your room was deathly silent—no talking on the phone, no music playing, no exercising or walking back and forth.”
“Teenaged angst.”
“I imagined it as something more, that you had this secret world you would escape to and that it was all in your room but as soon as the door opened it went away.”
“And what was in this world you imagined?”
“That was the problem—I didn’t know. That was what I wanted to discover, to unlock.”
“But you know now there wasn’t anything, no secret fantastic world.”
“Do I?”
Jodie sat up in bed. “Look at me, Penni! My life’s a mess. It’s always been a mess, especially compared with your neat and tidy one. There is no secret order or redemptive mystery in my chaos!”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For making you upset.”
Jodie slumped back under the covers. “I’m not upset with you, Penni. I’m upset with myself. I wished I could have fulfilled more of the fantasies you had for me.”
“You fulfilled them all.”
“How?”
“By living your life according to your own rules.”
“That’s your fantasy?”
“For you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our family always made sense—Mom, Dad, the boys, little sister. We fit every hole the world wanted us to occupy, like some big multi-pronged plug inserted into society’s outlet in the community—a public-policy major’s dream of civic harmony!” She laughed at the idea, not a new one to her but verbalized for the first time. “But you were always the wild card.”
“Maybe a little too wild.”
“Yes, but I was glad for that. I always saw hope in your unconventionality.”
“My screaming matches with Mom?”
Penni chuckled. “You let loose a few times.”
“More than a few. I was an awful teenager.”
“More like an average one, I think. It was the rest of us that set you apart.”
“Sometimes I did feel like I was fighting the whole family.”
“I wished I could have helped more.”
“You were too young.”
“All I could do was watch.”
“That couldn’t have been easy.”
“And wish I could be more like you.”
“Why, Penni? You had to know how hard it was. You saw it every day.”
“What I saw was the wonder of freedom.”
“What you
thought you saw was a falsehood.”
“Was it?”
“Thirty-five years in, I can offer a definitive Yes!”
“Can you?”
“Yes, Penni. Yes! I’m telling you, there’s no secret payoff. My life’s a mess.”
“Now you know why.”
“Why what?”
“Why I wished we could’ve shared a room.”
“To slam our heads together in disagreement?”
“To be sisters.”