A MONTH LATER A WOMAN came to visit. Trudy was in the kitchen fixing a late lunch while Gar tended a newly whelped litter in the kennel. When the knock came, Trudy walked to the porch, where a stout woman waited, dressed in a flowered skirt and a white blouse, her steel gray hair done up in a tightly wound permanent. She gripped her handbag and looked over her shoulder at the kennel dogs raising the alarm.
“Hello,” the woman said with an uncertain smile. “I’m afraid you’re going to think this very inappropriate. Your dogs certainly do.” She smoothed down the front of her skirt. “My name is Louisa Wilkes,” she continued, “and I-well, the fact is, I don’t exactly know why I’m here.”
Trudy asked her to come inside, if she didn’t mind Almondine. She didn’t mind dogs at all, Louisa Wilkes said. Not in ones and twos. Mrs. Wilkes settled on the couch and Almondine curled up in front of the bassinet where Edgar slept. Something about the prim way she walked and folded her hands when she sat made Trudy think she was a southerner, though she had no accent Trudy could detect.
“What can I do for you?” Trudy said.
“Well, as I said, I’m not sure. I’m here visiting my nephew and his wife-John and Eleanor Wilkes?”
“Oh yes, of course.” Trudy said. She had thought the name Wilkes sounded familiar, but hadn’t been able to place it. “We see Eleanor in town once in a while. She and John look after one of our dogs.”
“Yes, that was very the first thing I noticed, your dogs. Their Ben is a wonderful animal. Very bright eyes,” she said, looking at Almondine, “like this one. Same way of peering at you, too. In any case, I talked them into lending me their car for the morning so I could see the countryside. I know it’s odd, but I like the quiet of a car when I’m alone in it. A ways back I found myself at a little store, practically in the middle of nowhere. I’d hoped they sold sandwiches, but they didn’t. I bought some crackers instead, and a soda. The store is run by the strangest woman.”
“You must be talking about Popcorn Corners,” Trudy said. “That’s Ida Paine’s store. Ida can be a little spooky.”
“So I discovered. After I paid the woman she told me I wanted to follow the highway a bit farther and take this side road and look for the dogs. It was strange. I hadn’t asked for directions. And that’s the way she put it, too: not that I should, or could, but that I wanted to. She said it through the window screen as I was walking to my car. I asked her what she meant but she just sat there. I intended to turn back the way I came, but then I was curious. I found the road just where she said it would be. When I saw your dogs, I-” She broke off. “Well, that’s all there is to tell. I parked on the road and now here I am, feeling loony for having walked in.”
Louisa Wilkes looked around the living room, fidgeting with her purse. “But I do have the feeling we should talk some more. You’re a new mother,” she said. She walked to the bassinet and Trudy joined her.
“His name is Edgar.”
The baby was wide awake. He scrunched his eyebrows at the unhappy sight of a woman not his mother leaning over him and he stretched his mouth wide, making silence. The woman frowned and looked at Trudy.
“Yes. He doesn’t use his voice-the equipment is all there, but when he cries, there’s no sound. We don’t know why.”
At this, Louisa Wilkes stood up straight. “And how old is he?”
“Just shy of six months.”
“Is there a chance he’s deaf? It’s very simple to test for, even in infants. You just-”
“-clap your hands and see if they flinch. Yes, we’ve known from the start that his hearing is fine. When he’s in his bassinet and I start to talk, he looks around. Why do you ask? Do you know of another case like his?”
“I’m sure I don’t, Mrs. Sawtelle. I’ve never heard of anything like it. What I do know about-well, first of all, I’m not a nurse, much less a doctor.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’m out of patience with doctors. All they’ve told us is what isn’t wrong with Edgar, and that amounts to everything besides his voice. They’ve tested how fast his pupils dilate. They’ve tested his saliva. They’ve drawn blood. They’ve even taken EKGs. It’s amazing what they can rule out on a newborn, but I’ve finally had to draw the line-I won’t have my baby tormented all through his infancy. And all you have to do is spend a few minutes with him to know he’s a perfectly normal baby.”
Almondine was up now, scenting the bassinet and their visitor with equal concern. Mrs. Wilkes looked down at her. “Benny is such an extraordinary animal,” she said. “I’ve never seen a dog quite so aware of conversation. I could swear he turns toward me when he thinks it is my turn to speak.”
“Yes,” Trudy said. “They understand more than we give them credit for.”
“Oh, it’s more than that. I’ve been around plenty of dogs-dogs that lie on your lap and fall asleep, dogs that bark at every stranger who walks past, dogs that crouch on the floor and watch you like a long-lost beau. But I’ve never seen a dog behave that way.”
Louisa Wilkes looked at Edgar in the bassinet. Then she turned and lifted her hands and moved them through the air, looking intently at Trudy. Her motions were fluid and expressive and entirely silent. She paused long enough to be sure that Trudy realized what she had seen, even if she hadn’t understood its meaning.
“What I just said is, ‘I am the child of two profoundly deaf parents.’”
Another swift flight of hands.
“I am not deaf myself, but I teach sign at a school for the deaf. And I’m wondering, Mrs. Sawtelle, what will happen if it turns out that your boy lacks the power of speech but nothing else.”
Trudy noticed how deftly Louisa Wilkes phrased her questions, a steeliness that emerged the moment she signed. Something almost fierce. Trudy liked that-Louisa Wilkes wasn’t beating around the bush. And Trudy could hardly have forgotten Ida Paine’s pronouncement that autumn night: He can use his hands. At the time, Trudy thought Ida Paine had meant that Edgar would only be able to use his hands, that he was destined for menial work, which Trudy knew was wrong. The whole episode had made her angry, and she’d chalked it up to foolishness-her own. She’d never mentioned the incident to Gar. Now Trudy began to suspect she’d misunderstood Ida Paine.
“He’ll make do, Mrs. Wilkes. I think we’ll find out that there’s nothing else different about Edgar. Perhaps, as he grows, his voice will come. Since we don’t know why it’s gone in the first place, there’s no way to tell if this is temporary.”
“He’s never uttered a sound? Not even once?”
“No, never.”
“And the doctors-what did they tell you to do while you’re waiting to find out if your son might or might not find a voice?”
“That’s been so discouraging. They’ve told me only the most obvious things. To talk to him, which I do, so if he has a choice, he’ll imitate his mother.”
“Did they suggest any exercises? Anything you might do with him?”
“None, really. They speculated on what we might do in a few years if nothing changes, but for now, just watch him. If-when something changes, we go from there.”
Hearing this, Mrs. Wilkes’s reserve, rapidly diminishing ever since the topic had turned to deafness, dropped away entirely.
“Mrs. Sawtelle, listen to me now. I don’t mean to presume anything, and for all I know what I’m about to tell you you’ve already read or been told-though from the sound of it, the doctors you’ve seen have been woefully ignorant, which would not surprise me at all. You cannot begin too early to bring the power of language to children whose grasp may be precarious. No one can say for sure when children begin to learn language-that is, we do not know how early in their lives they understand that they can talk and should talk, that through speech they will lead fulfilling lives. There is, on the other hand, evidence that by the age of one year the gift of language begins slipping away unless it is nurtured. This has happened to deaf children throughout history, and it is quite a terrible thing-children considered retarded and left to fend for themselves-I’m talking about perfectly intelligent, capable children abandoned because they did not know that sound existed. How could they! By the time someone recognized that they lacked only hearing, they were handicapped forever.”