Love for a Deaf Rebel - Derrick King (top 100 novels .txt) 📗

came up behind me, and it rocketed past. I wondered where Laurent was going so quickly on a Friday night. I drove slowly, looking for Pearl, on my way home to call the police.

As I crested the driveway, the headlights came down on Laurent’s jeep.

Pearl stood in the kitchen, Laurent at his side. She looked wild and dangerous.

“Laurent, what’s up?” I said without signing.

“Interpret!” demanded Pearl.

“Laurent. What’s happening?” I signed and said.

“Your lips said something different! Interpret exactly!”

“Laurent. What is up?” I signed exactly, pointing up.

“Pearl asked me to arrest you for trying to kill her.”

My head started spinning. “Why?” was all I could say.

“Interpret!” signed Pearl. I was the interpreter at my own inquisition.

“Are you trying to kill Pearl?” said Laurent.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I signed and said.

“She is convinced you are.”

“Arrest him!”

“Pearl, I need reasonable and probable grounds to believe Derrick threatened you. When did he try to kill you?”

“Many times!” she screamed silently through wild signs. “The first time was firewood. He rolled the wood down the hill to the truck. Firewood rolled into me and hurt me and bruised me.”

“I wasn’t aiming at her. It was easier to roll the wood than to carry it.”

“Rolling firewood isn’t going to kill anyone,” said Laurent.

“Derrick made me fall off the roof!”

“Did he push you off the roof?”

“No, he is too clever. Derrick made the ladder break!”

I told the story of the ladder collapse two years ago. “That’s the ladder, over there. Look for yourself. After it buckled, I reinforced it with wood, and we have been using it ever since.”

“Derrick was on the roof when it broke, so it wasn’t deliberate. If he wanted to kill you, he would have shoved you off and climbed down the ladder.”

Pearl shook her head violently. “No! No! No! He tried to kill me with electricity! He told me to hold wires when the power was on!”

“Is that so?”

“Insulated wires. The kitchen lights are on the same circuit, and we were working at night, so I needed to leave that circuit on. Pearl was in the attic on dry wood. She was perfectly safe.”

“And the car? You know about that!” She was hysterical.

“It’s falling apart. Did you tell Derrick about your concerns?”

“No! I didn’t want him to find out that I discovered his plan!”

“Pearl, why do you think Derrick is trying to kill you?”

“I don’t know! Look at these!”

She went to the bookshelf and brought back Get Even, Slash and Thrust, The Blaster’s Handbook, Life After Doomsday, and Home Workshop Silencers.

“What are you going to do with a silencer?”

“Shoot animals.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t for Frank?”

“Get Even was for Frank. Slash and Thrust was supposed to be a Christmas gift, for her self-defense, but she opened my mail.”

“Now I understand why his first wife left him. She was afraid!”

“Afraid of what?”

“You know!”

Laurent rubbed his hands. “You’d better get some firewood burning.”

Laurent and Pearl were scribbling notes when I returned from stoking the stove.

“Pearl says you and Ralph talked about killing.”

“You never talked to Dibs, so you didn’t know he is hard-of-hearing. He listened to you when he was getting beer. Everyone was shocked when he told us about your idea to show death on TV. I was so embarrassed!”

“Ralph wanted to make the world less violent because if people knew about death, they wouldn’t want to kill. Why didn’t you say so when we talked with them the next day?”

“Ralph carries a gun in his jeep! Derrick told me.”

“His gun is legal. I approved his permits.”

Pearl showed Laurent my Pocket Day-Timer. “It’s in code!”

“I abbreviate. Do I need to write everything in full?”

“Hundreds of dollars come into our bank account, but where does the money come from?”

“From my expense claims. You can see the same money going out one month before, in the credit card bill.”

“I caught him listening to messages on the answering machine and then erasing them.”

“Messages like This is a recording.”

“Derrick doesn’t wear a ring. He rides with Leo, and he goes to the YMCA. I think he’s gay. His glasses make him look like a drug dealer. His friends are weird. Ralph, Leo, Virgil, Stanley, Rokus, all weird!”

“All weird, except Pearl.”

“Derrick is a capable man. If he wanted to kill you, you’d be dead by now. I can’t arrest him; all I have from you is innuendo.”

“What is ‘innuendo?’”

I had had enough. “Look it up in the dictionary.” I crossed my arms.

Laurent looked at his watch. “The water taxi leaves in thirty minutes. I’ll drive you to the dock. Can you stay with friends in town?”

Pearl nodded. She ran around the house, tossing items into her backpack.

As she turned to leave with Laurent, I signed and said, “Get help—you need it.”

“Nothing is wrong with me!” Pearl burst into tears.

They drove away, into the night. I stood in shock. Pearl ran away on 4 December 1987, twenty days before our second anniversary.

Where Are the Bullets?

I tried to call Jodi, who lived with Gavin, but his number was unlisted. I called Jeff, told him what had just happened, and asked for Gavin’s number. Jeff refused to release it and seemed to give up on her; his last words to me were, “It’s time for me to hang up my Pearl connection.”

I remembered Fanny, an interpreter friend of Pearl’s whom I had met four years ago but hadn’t seen since. I found her number in the phone book and called her.

“Pearl is paranoid. I am one of the few hearies she sometimes trusts. I hadn’t seen her for a year, but when your new books arrived, she came to show them to me. She was in shock! She thought you planned to kill her, and your books were your research.”

“Slash and Thrust was to be her Christmas gift.”

“If you had told her beforehand, those books might not have been a problem, but in her mind, surprise equals secret equals danger. When she lived here, she accused me of stealing her tax refund. When her check arrived in the mail, she said she trusted me again—but did she? She might have thought I waited to see if she would notice it before I cashed it myself. That’s the way Pearl’s mind works. Earning her trust might take more time than you have left with her.”

“Can you see her? If anyone can help, it’s you.”

“There is nothing I can do until she calls me. If I call her, she’ll know you called me, and that will be the end of her trust.”

I called Eugénie and told her what happened.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Eugénie had a way with words.

“Pearl liked you. Could you have a heart-to-heart talk with her? I think she’ll be at Jodi’s tonight, around the corner from you. You’ll remember her from Wreck Beach.” I gave her the address. “Tell Pearl, or Jodi if she isn’t there, why you left me. Please do it for her.”

“All right, but she might not recognize me in clothes.”

I called Father. “Let us know if there is any way to help. And thank God she isn’t pregnant.”

Eugénie called back. “I saw Pearl at Jodi’s.”

“Thank you! What did she say?”

“She was wound up as tight as a drum. At first, Jodi didn’t want to let me in, but I talked her into it. Pearl wasn’t interested in discussing anything. I think your ability to influence her life even after she walked out, like sending me there, distressed her. I told her that my leaving you had nothing to do with you and everything to do with me. Pearl said only that she doesn’t want to see you again.”

“I see. I’m not going to tell anyone what happened. Otherwise, if she returns, it will make recovery harder.”

“I thanked her for signing for our divorce. Lunch on Monday?”

That weekend, I kept myself busy, with tools in my hands and Whisky at my side. I hoped that Pearl would discuss her feelings with her family. I knew I would be taking a risk if Pearl returned without accepting that she had a problem and agreeing to therapy—it was only a matter of time before she had more delusions and disappeared or became dangerous; she had spoken about revenge as if it were justified whenever hearies wronged deafies. Nevertheless, I resolved to take her back unconditionally.

I was still so stunned by her accusations that I couldn’t feel how much Pearl must have been suffering in order to develop, live with, and act on her bizarre thoughts. Why had Pearl’s friends been neutral? Did they believe her stories? I thought of calling her mother, but I worried that if I did, Pearl would never trust me again.

On Monday, at work, I could hardly function. I called our doctor, who gave me an immediate appointment.

“I think the world of Pearl,” she said. “But this episode doesn’t surprise me, after your fertility test episode. Try calling Dr. Foreman, a signing psychiatrist. If Pearl calls me, I’ll help, but I doubt she will because I’m also your doctor and therefore part of the greater conspiracy.”

I telephoned Dr. Foreman. “I can hear the lump in your throat through the telephone. I am booked for two months, but I will ask my colleague, Dr. Sholokhov, to see you.”

Sholokhov agreed to see me immediately. In his office, I told him what I knew about Pearl.

He said, “I won’t diagnose Pearl without meeting her, but it sounds like she is responding abnormally to normal situations, and so she is struggling with a personality disorder. Dr. Forman’s research for Gallaudet has shown that deaf children are far more likely than others to develop behavioral problems, and one in four has moderate to severe psychiatric issues. If her delusions and volatility are caused by past traumatic experiences, then therapy might help her to reconnect with reality if she is willing to try it. Does she chew her nails?”

“Yes! I have never seen her with full fingernails. We’ve tried Tabasco, garlic, manicures, and gloves. Nothing worked,”

“That’s a sign of anxiety. Most deaf people enjoy their lives as much as anyone, but those who are anxious are more likely to develop paranoia because the communication gap makes it hard for them to trust hearing people. If she is paranoid, she views your love as an attempt to exploit her. New experiences reinforce old beliefs. However, as long as her conscious mind was focused on a powerful goal, such as having a child, Pearl could suppress her subconscious. Perhaps the question is not why Pearl ran away but why she was able to give you three years.”

“She gave her last two partners three years, too.”

“There is another possibility: schizophrenia. I don’t think she has schizophrenia because she is able to work, and she hasn’t been violent. How old was she when her delusions began?”

“In her teens, Pearl starting thinking her mother killed her father. That’s all I know. Her family hasn’t said anything about her history.”

“I’m sorry to say, but family silence is a schizophrenia indicator.”

“What is schizophrenia?”

“It’s a brain disease characterized by a distorted perception of reality that leads to life-disrupting behavioral problems. It is biochemical with an inherited foundation, but it also takes environmental factors to launch it. Sufferers usually develop it in their teens. It changes their personalities, reduces their abilities, and shortens their lifespans. Have any family members ever been diagnosed with a mental illness? Or convicted? Most prisoners have at least one mental illness.”

“Not on her mother’s side, but I know nothing about her father’s side.”

“Congenital rubella—German measles—deafness, discrimination, loss of a parent in childhood, trauma, and family dysfunction are environmental factors.”

“Pearl has most of those. Could you help her if she saw you?”

“Not until she accepts she has a problem that is damaging her life. A good psychiatrist with willing patients can make a significant improvement in a third, make some improvement in a third, and make no improvement in the other third. The patient’s willingness and trust are the keys, but paranoid people are hypersensitive to what they can’t help but think are lies. If she has schizophrenia, we have drugs that should stabilize her thinking, but they have side effects and will have to be taken for the rest of her life. She is unlikely to take them voluntarily. In the meantime, I suggest you take care of yourself.”

Pearl’s behavior made more sense to me now, but I began to feel less hope for Pearl and