Sound Advice (Sensations Collection #1) (20 page)

“Oh, right,” I said. “Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger, not her leg.” I smiled and set the girl down next to Sue.

When I finished putting on an anti-bacterial ointment and a bandage, I asked Katie if she wanted a cookie. I spoke and signed the word,
cookie
.

“It’s a miracle what you’ve done with this child,” Sue said despite Katie’s presence.

“I didn’t do anything anyone else couldn’t have done.” I cupped Katie’s chin in my hand and smiled at her. I was growing bolder about touching her affectionately.

“No one else thought of it but you,” Sue said seriously.

“Someone would have.”

“Well, that someone was you.” Sue pierced me with her wise eyes. There was meaning in that look, but I wasn’t sure what it was.

“You ladies okay over here?” It was Jess. He had walked up behind me as I had my back to the bushes.

I stood up to face him, and Sue looked from me to Jess and back.

“Friends?” She snorted into her lemonade glass. “My arse.”

I laughed.

“What’s going on?” Jess asked as he glanced from Sue to me.

“Nothing,” we said in unison and then both giggled.

“Okaaay. Hey, what happened here?” He noticed Katie’s shorts.

“Sleeping Beauty pricked her leg, but the good fairy bandaged her up.” I beamed a smile at Katie who was smiling back at me as if we shared a secret.

“Thanks. Katie wanted to see you. I’m working at the Mueller’s again, but I wanted to make sure it’s okay with you that she’s here. I know you have…stuff to do.” Jess gazed up at the house.

“We’re done for the day,” Sue chimed in, standing and picking up her glass.

“Oh, I’d love to have her stay. Maybe put her to work again,” I teased pointing to the garden.

“Okay. Be done in a half hour,” Jess said as he walked back through the bushes. It was almost a déjà vu moment of the first time I saw him working on the roof at the Mueller’s.
Had it been almost a month?
Those ugly bushes still pressed into Jess’s t-shirt like they did the first time, pulling and tugging gently at it to make it snug against his body and expose a sliver of abs. I had a sudden urge to pull that shirt myself and rip it from his chest.

“I’ll be going, too,” Sue said, breaking my stare at Jess’ body. “See you tomorrow?”

“Okay,” I choked a little then turned to Katie. “Well, we really know how to clear a room.” Katie didn’t respond. I had an idea for us to do today.

Lately, I had been thinking that I really needed to get to work. It had been intermittent that I actually focused on my current project for the
Chicago Travels
magazine. Magazine publishing was a bit out of sync with the current season – meaning that although it was summer, I was working on fall information for the publication. One of my traits was making the festivals and seasonal events sound exciting, like a traveler would never want to miss this opportunity, but I was having a bit of a writer’s block lately and I was sure it was all the stress of Nana. My editor was more than sympathetic when Nana died, and he actually suggested I file for a leave of absence knowing I was handling everything alone. I wanted to make sure he wasn’t hinting at something else, like firing me or forcing me to quit, but he assured me that he was only giving me an option. I promised I would continue to work via the Internet and email, and if he saw a problem with the work, I would reconsider the leave of absence.

It was after going through Nana’s maple dresser in her room that an idea had begun to ignite slowly. I had that familiar feeling of a story developing in my head, and although I hadn’t written anything creative in over a year, the burning desire was coming back. Another story was building.

In college, one of my writing warm-ups was a word association game and I asked Katie if she wanted to play. I told her to write down any word and under it I would write down the first word I thought of. Katie looked confused at first and I decided it would be better to just start the game.

“Okay, you go first. Write down a word and I will write down an action or meaning to the word.”

Children are funny with games like this I noticed and they always go for a really hard word at first. Katie looked at the garden, the garage, and finally the house before she wrote down
w-n-d-o
. It took me a moment to realize that Katie had phonetically spelled
window
. I smiled at her as I said, “You picked a tough one.”

She smiled in return, proud of herself for making it a challenge.

I looked at the screened windows of the porch behind me and wrote down
l-o-o-k
. I also spelled the word through signing for my own practice.

“My turn.” I kept the pad of paper and wrote down a word.

The word was
house
.

Katie spelled
f-a-i-r-y
.

“Good,” I said. “Your turn again.”

Katie wrote
tree
.

I wrote and signed
g-r-e-e-n
.

I kept the pad of paper and wrote down the word
daddy
.

Katie wrote
beast
.

I looked up at Katie with surprise.

“What?”

Silence. Katie was thinking, tapping the pencil against the paper. She’d written the word
mommy
. I froze as Katie handed the paper back to me. I had to admit my heart broke a little as I thought of this little girl without a mother. It had been so long ago that I lost my own mother under different circumstances, and the loss of Nana was so immediate that it was like losing a mother all over again. But I still did not know what to write down as a good word associated for
mother
that Katie might understand. Finally, I decided to spell
k-i-n-d
and handed the pad of paper back to Katie.

Katie did not seem to like that response. She scratched it out with a hard scribble of the pencil and spelled out
s-h-u-t
underneath the crossed out word. This move was also out of sequence for the game, and I watched Katie as she wrote with a bit of aggression.

“You didn’t like my word?” I puzzled, but she was now staring across the backyard over the bushes. Jess was standing there watching the two of us. It was almost eerie how in tune they were with one another.

“Time to go,” he said to Katie as he squeezed through the bushes. I didn’t respond as Katie ran to her daddy.

“What have you two been doing?” Jess bent to pick her up and bounced her up and down twice.

“We were playing a word game. Want to see?” I handed the paper to Jess. I was hoping he would notice the bottom of the page and see what Katie had done with the word
mommy
, but his response to the paper was “Beast?”

He looked at me. “Did you write that?” He sounded hurt.

“No,” I said with a laugh in my voice.

“Did you write that?” He turned to Katie who was on the ground next to him. He was playful in tone as he said it again. “Did you write that? I’m a beast, huh?” He was now shrinking down into a crouch with his arms in the air and his fingers curled. He made a growling sound and Katie covered her mouth to hide a scream, a sound I had never heard her make. She started to run to the fairy tale playhouse with Jess mock chasing her.

I noticed for the first time that Katie made no sound whatsoever. Other than that time she asked to go to Chicago, Katie was continually silent, and it never occurred to me that she made no other noises. There was no contagious sound of laughter which only children can make. No tears fell from Katie’s eyes to produce the sound of crying. She didn’t scream and I thought of the painting by Picasso,
The Scream
, a face melting down the page in blacks and blues, mouth open and dragging toward the bottom of the canvas in an eternal image of pain.
What had happened to this child that was so damaging to put her in eternal silence?
I was concentrating hard on my question when Jess broke through my thoughts.

“You okay?” He looked concerned.

“Sure.” I nodded my head.

He pulled out his cell phone to check the time. “I got to go,” he said as he replaced the phone in his back pocket

“Katie could stay here, if you would like?” I was hesitant with the request and I hoped I didn’t sound too desperate for Katie to remain.

“Oh thanks, but Katie has a meeting with the teacher. You know the special education teacher from the school? She wants to meet with Katie three times a week to practice signing together and figure out ways to help Katie communicate with the other kids before the new school year starts.”

“Oh, that’s so great, Jess. Really,” but my voice came across disappointed. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Katie to get the help she needed. It wasn’t even the disappointment of not helping Katie myself. It was the disappointment that Jess didn’t need me anymore.

“I know I kind of lost some time with Katie with everything that happened to Nana.”

“Oh, it has nothing to do with that. The teacher requested it and it seemed like a good idea. My sister also encouraged it.”

I remembered his younger sister was a teacher. “Right. It’s a great idea,” I said, but I was still selfishly disappointed.

After they left, I had energy to burn. I knew a walk would not be enough to release this frenzy inside me. I had been in Nana’s house trying to prepare for my meeting with the lawyer the next day, but my eyes kept wandering to the view outside the back window and the dead bushes. They had dark brown bottoms with a thin layer of evergreen on the top. They looked like burned-out broccoli with tan fingers coming out of the ground. I decided my energy would be used best to remove the bushes.

I had found some old gloves in the garage when I went on my cleaning spurt a few weeks prior as well as a spade that was in decent condition. With my iPod loudly blurting some modern music about needing somebody, I let myself be mind-numb. I jabbed the ground several times in a circle, framing the base of the first bush. When I went to tug it lose, though, the bush did not budge. I realized that the roots were intertwined with the other bushes and I could only imagine how old and set these shrubs must be. I jabbed the hard dirt again, moving the shovel backward and forward, trying to pry the roots loose.
Jab. Back and forth. Jab. Back and forth.
Jab. Back and forth.
When I tugged this time, something touched my back, which startled me and I slipped under the pressure of my pulling, landing hard on my butt.

“Can I help you?” muffled with a laugh came from behind me. I shielded my eyes to look up and see Jess. Removing my ear-buds, I could hear him better.

“Can I help you?” he said again, extending his hand to assist me up from the ground.

“Thank you,” I said, accepting the offer.

“You look pretty determined. I don’t want to wrestle with you and get between you and the poor bush.” He hadn’t released my hand from his strong grasp.

I laughed sheepishly. “Yeah, well, I had energy to burn.” Jess rubbed his thumb over the back of my hand in a circular motion. Despite the glove, I felt a zing of desire shoot up my arm and straight to my heart. He held my gaze for a moment, then clenched his jaw, and let go of me.

He grabbed the bush and gave it a hard tug. I could see the muscles strain in his long, lean arms and I followed a bead of sweat that ran down his neck.
Must stop thinking about wanting to lick that neck
, I fought with myself at the jealousy of his perspiration. I returned my gaze to the burnt greenery that was just as determined as I had been and Jess took the shovel while I stood back. He struck the ground in the places I previously attempted, and I could see the flex of his muscles and the set of his jaw as he worked. Sweat beaded up on his tan arms and he seemed to glisten in the sunlight. I had to look away again.

When Jess finally uprooted the bush there was a huge hole in the shrubbery. We stood there for a moment looking at it.

“Well, now it looks worse,” I said with a bit of hysteria in my voice.

Jess stared at me. “Do you want me to put it back?” He laughed nervously.

“No.” I knew I sounded angry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“Never mind.”

“Tell me.”

“No.” That seemed to stop him.

He looked at me for a long moment with his blue-gray eyes. “Why?”

“It’s nothing, really. I was thinking about my meeting with Nana’s lawyers,” I lied.

“Oh.”

I decided to change the subject. “Why are you here? Did you forget something earlier?” Jess seemed to contemplate his answer as he rubbed his hand across the back of his neck and stood still, keeping his hand there.