Invincible Summer(44)

Yeaaah, that is the life, Chase. And then at night we could find some cool people and get drunk, or make a bonfire or something, or just cruise around downtown. . . .”

“All right. Next year.”

“Next year.”

Right now next year seems a million miles off. I feel like I finally get what Dad kept saying last summer—anything could happen between now and then. There’s no way to tell where we’ll be this time next year. Instead of making me nervous, the uncertainty is making me numb. How much can I care when I don’t know how much will stay?

Gideon turns and signs to me, and I only get about half of it. Again, I say, squinting through the dark.





Sleep now you read me.


Yes. I take Gideon’s hand and pull him off Shannon’s lap.

“I’m gonna put him to bed,” I say. “I’ll be back out in a second, okay? Don’t let Claudia commit a dramatic suicide.” Inside, Mom and Dad are watching the news, Lucy snug—

gled between them on the couch. Mom starts to stand up when she sees sleepy Gideon, and I say, “No, no, I’ve got him.

You’re good.” I’ll let them stay.

I ask Gideon what he wants to read, and of course he signs C-a-m-u-s, so I run upstairs and get my book. Even though he’s awake—even though he knows I’m awake—I’m terrified he’s going to feel my footsteps and freak out. I keep shaking my head to clear it.

Reading to your deaf brother is weird, but Gideon and I have gotten used to it this summer. We have a routine. Basically, I sit with him squished into one side of me and trace the words with my finger and we read them together, and he puts his fingers over my lips and feels me say the words. It takes me a while with how slow I have to go with him, especially when I’m reading the essays. Not all Camus is as simple as The Stranger.

Gideon’s still eight, though, so sometimes he’ll get bored in the middle of an essay and randomly flip pages and point to a new place, and I’ll just have to start wherever he points. It sort of makes my brain explode. Maybe someday we’ll unlock the mystery of the universe this way. It’s all a code when you read every eleventh word and skip nine pages, or something.

He points to a passage and I read. “‘His scorn of the gods, his hatred of death, and his passion for life won him that unspeakable penalty in which the whole being is exerted towards accomplishing nothing. That is the price that must be paid for the pass—’” I stop and clear my throat. “‘Passions of this earth.’”

With his free hand, Gideon signs pieces of the words that he can translate from English to ASL, skips the ones he can’t.

Sometimes he fingerspells, but his school is training them out of that. Speak ASL he explained to me. English no.

He flips the page and points.

I glance ahead to see what I’m reading and feel my breath catch. I am so glad Gideon can’t hear how shaky and awful my voice is. “‘But being pure is recovering that spiritual home where one can feel the world’s relationship, where one’s pulse-beats coincide with the violent throbbing of the two o’clock sun.

It is well known that one’s native land is always recognized at the moment of losing it.’”

Melinda once read me that one.

I didn’t understand it then. Back when I had a home.

I pretend to be smoothing his sheets so I get a second to collect myself. O.K. I kiss the top of his head. Good sleep.

More?

No. Tomorrow.





I love you.


I love you same. Every time I sign this, I wonder exactly what it is I’m saying. The same as what? The same as he loves me? No, I don’t.

The same as I love everyone else? No. I love him different, and I probably always will.

Even though I’m supposed to go back out to Shannon, I

blow past my parents and Lucy on the couch and go out to the balcony, gulping down the air. Stars are totally pouring all around me, but I don’t feel them. I don’t feel much of anything, except hot.

It’s the same balcony, I’m trying to tell myself. It’s torn up and there’re nails everywhere and I could probably pitch myself off the edge with little or no effort, but it’s the same balcony. And the girl down by the water, holding hands with Shannon? That’s Claudia. The same Claudia.

If everything is the same, why does it feel like everything’s been ruined, and that I was the one who did the ruining?

Next year will be different. Next year has to be different.

I sit down on the balcony. For the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

“Be careful out there,” Dad calls.

I just want to feel like me for the rest of my life. I cover my ears with my hands.

And not like this. *

Claudia makes a funny face when she answers the phone.

“Yeah, sure,” she says. “He’s right here.” I think she was hoping it was Shannon. I’m not sure what’s going on with them. I’m sort of afraid to ask. It looks very delicate.

I’m teaching Gideon a few chords on my guitar. Claudia taps me on the shoulder with the phone. “I’m hearing, you know?” I said. “You don’t have to accost me.”

Gideon holds his cheek against the guitar to feel the vibrations. Someday I’m going to have to tell him that Beethoven story.