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

spend a few more minutes together and to see what she took. She rolled back the futon and browsed through the boxes stored under it.

After Pearl packed her articles, including her conch, she took some of my electronic items out of a box and set them aside.

“You bought these during our marriage.”

It was as if she had been briefed on how to divorce.

“I bought all those when I was a student.”

I found a note she had written to me when we first met. As I began to read it, she snatched it away.

“All writing is mine!”

“The notes I wrote to you are yours. The notes you wrote to me are mine.”

I insisted on keeping that treasured souvenir. I grabbed her arm, snatched back the note, and put it in my pocket. Pearl shattered the silence with a scream.

“I’ll call the police!”

“Shall I call for you?”

“I will push the button on the emergency dialer.”

“Then the ambulance and firemen will come, too.”

“I will call Laurent myself.” She sat down at the TTY in the visitors’ room but didn’t bother to close the door. I watched her type:

MESSAGE RELAY CENTRE GA

THIS IS PEARL KING PLEASE CALL 5555212 AND GIVE MY MESSAGE TO RCMP LAURENT GA

WHAT IS YOUR MESSAGE GA

COME NOW DERRICK HURT ME GA

PLEASE WAIT MESSAGE RECEIVED BY PAGER 5555212 GA

THANKS SK

“Laurent gave me his pager number.” With a smirk, Pearl resumed packing, calm again.

I put The Joy of Signing in her box. She handed it back to me. “Maybe you will need it someday.”

“I will never sign again.”

A tear ran down Pearl’s cheek.

She went to the family room and stared at the pictures leaning against the wall. “Some pictures are missing.”

“That’s impossible. You can see three years of dust.”

I lifted a picture, exposing a brown line of plywood surrounded by telltale white.

“Where you took one away, you put new dust to cover the line.”

Pearl browsed through the other rooms and took her fair share. We went downstairs to the workbench. She turned on the fluorescent lamp and shivered. She searched my tools and the rows of jars filled with nails and screws. She packed the antique telephone her grandfather had given us. She inspected the motorcycle, its tires long flat.

“You bought new tires!”

“They’re worn out! I bought those in Tucson. Do you want them?”

“No. Where is Laurent? I called him a long time ago.”

“He knows I won’t hurt you, so he’s giving us time to stop arguing.”

Our last night was like any other. Pearl slept beside me, giving me false hope that, after spending time in her deaf world and thinking things over, she might want to make things work.

How Did You Find Me?

On Sunday, 17 January 1988, Pearl left for good. I woke up at 6:45 and did the chores.

When I returned, she was stacking cartons by the door.

She packed her clock radio and started dividing our pens, paper clips, and erasers. She stared at the little piles.

“Where is my roach clip? I demand to know where you put it!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You never smoked pot here.”

“You lie!” Her hands were shaking with anger, and she started to babble incoherently. “You hid my roach clip … I see … now I understand … your goal … aha! … later, we’ll see.” She sneered and took three computer diskettes from the drawer. “I will take these to be sure you cooperate. I don’t want you to make trouble.”

“Keep them. I have copies. You are blackmailing me. I don’t like it.”

Laurent arrived, in civilian clothes, twelve hours after Pearl paged him.

“Pearl paged me last night.”

“Derrick twisted my arm.”

“It looks fine. I see you’re moving out. Where are you going?”

“To Arlette’s,” she signed. She took some paper and scribbled on it.

Behind her back, I said, “She’s going to Arlette’s, but her stuff is going to Bruce’s. Is he OK? I don’t want her to have trouble.”

Pearl turned around before Laurent could answer and handed her note to him so I couldn’t see it. Laurent read it.

“Derrick already knows. He said Bruce’s name.”

My discovery made Pearl erupt. “Virgil is a cocaine dealer!”

“Derrick, is Virgil a cocaine dealer?”

“He was, but he retired many years ago.”

“Derrick searched his house with a detector! We rode to Mexico to bring cocaine to Virgil. I flew back, but he rode home alone.”

“If he hurts you, call me.” Laurent had had enough. As he walked out, he said over his shoulder, “I don’t respect betrayal!”

Pearl had lost her credibility because of her distorted view of reality, but until now she had kept her integrity and Laurent’s respect. Now she lost both by snitching on my friends—irrespective of whether her statements might be true. Police look down on turncoats even if they find their information useful.

Whisky barked, and Arlette walked in. I put on my coat and sat by the door like a customs inspector while Pearl and Arlette walked back and forth carrying cartons to our Nissan and Arlette’s Toyota. It was just above freezing. I didn’t help—I didn’t want to feel responsible for what might happen next.

“I hope Pearl will thank you for helping her out of her marriage and her future,” I said without signing. “I’ll help if she returns.”

Arlette said nothing. All of us had grim looks on our faces. The women piled the sofa sections on top of the cartons, tied down the loads, and left without a thought for Whisky and me. The way people treat their pets speaks for them; Pearl abandoned Whisky as easily as she abandoned me, as if she had never loved either of us.

The house was silent except for the refrigerator. I put a Bach cassette in the player—now I could enjoy music without guilt.

I telephoned my father.

“Pearl’s gone,” I stammered.

“I can’t tell you how much it hurts to hear those words. Do you want us to spend the night there?”

“That would be wonderful.”

“Is there anything we need to bring? Did she take the TV?”

“Of course, she took the TV, but I don’t want a TV.”

“Don’t do anything. We’ll get the next ferry.”

I had planned to attend a performance of the Purcell String Quartet that evening, but I called Hans, the island’s impresario, to say I couldn’t attend, and I told him why. He suggested I read the Psalms, starting with Number 23, The Lord Is My Shepherd.

My siblings phoned me one by one to offer their support. I reloaded the gun in case a posse of deaf vigilantes like those in Pearl’s stories paid me a visit. A few hours later, my parents arrived with groceries and a portable TV.

Mother hugged me. “It must hurt. Your eyes are red.”

“I can’t believe she’s done it! Pearl’s flushed her future down the toilet!”

“Do you think she was frightened by killing your own meat?”

“No. She’s a country girl.”

“You are better off without her unless she gets treatment,” said Father. “And even if she gets treatment, you are better off without her. Her mother said her first marriage ended the same way, so now we know she’s been seeing things her own special way for a long time. Don’t try to get her back. Don’t give her anything.”

My mother looked out at the moonlit landscape. “It might’ve helped if you’d installed curtains.”

In the morning, I filled the stove and lit the tinder with one flame from the lighter. I looked through the grate at the flicker of light on the corner of a newspaper, gliding across the paper, devouring the kindling, snapping through the sticks, and then roaring over the rounds of hemlock and alder. The flue thermometer rose as the stovepipe moaned. I remembered the first time Pearl and I had built a fire in that stove, assisted by a cup of paint thinner.

I walked through the fresh air to the barn to do the chores and enjoy the friendship of the animals that Pearl would never see again. When I returned, my mother had made breakfast and MJB coffee and was busy organizing the kitchen.

I called my boss to ask for a day off, and he gave me a week. “I thought Pearl might go because, at the Christmas party, she asked if she could visit us alone. I’ll let you know if she ever comes.”

I called Clifford. He advised me to cancel our credit card, take half the money out of our joint account, open a new account in my name, deposit my paychecks to my new account, change my life insurance beneficiary, change the locks, and get receipts for everything I give her.

I canceled the appointments I’d made with Dr. Foreman; we’d missed the first one by two weeks. I redirected my mail. I wrote to Virgil and asked him to call my parents’ telephone on a specified date and time.

I passed my bereavement week cleaning, repairing, taking sympathetic telephone calls, throwing sticks for Whisky, and listening to the Moody Blues. I did the evening chores with a beer; cans stayed cold in the frigid air. I sat with the animals and wondered how much longer I could be with them. I listened to the cat scratching in the loft. A barn is always restless, even at night. I returned to an empty house.

The telephone rang. “Derrick, this is Arlette’s husband. I’m trying to set up Pearl’s caption decoder. Which connector is the input, and which one is the output?”

I told him I couldn’t help without seeing the decoder, which was true, but he told me to stay away.

Sister Nadine visited, and I took her on a scenic gravel roads tour in the jeep. When we stopped at the General Store, Arlette walked out and stared at her as if we were dating. I wondered what she would tell Pearl.

I drove to my parents’ house to take Virgil’s call. I updated Virgil on the recent events.

“Another one bites the dust. You do have trouble with women,” Virgil laughed. His laughter was one of the reasons we had remained friends for half a lifetime, and it drained the strain of the past months from me. My parents stared as I laughed with him.

“Pearl told the RCMP you are a dealer. That’s why I thought you’d better not call me at home. My address book, with your name in it, has disappeared. Pearl must have stolen it.”

“I got nothin’ to hide. When are you coming to Snowslide? We could do some drugs, have a party.” Virgil burst into contagious laughter. “Life’s too short to be paranoid. I used to be paranoid, too, but I got over it when my cocaine was all used up!”

I received a call at work. “This is Sheehan, solicitor for Pearl,” said a raspy voice. “What is the name of your solicitor?”

“I can’t afford a solicitor.” Eugénie and I hadn’t used lawyers when we divorced, and I didn’t see why I needed one now.

“Mr. King, I advise you to retain counsel. It is against professional ethics for me to talk to another lawyer’s client. I need to know his name so that I can set up an exploratory meeting to try to resolve any issues we may face in drawing up a separation agreement. An interpreter will be provided by the Western Institute for the Deaf.”

“Pearl wants this done after just two weeks? I will represent myself.”

“My client wants a separation agreement as soon as possible because there is a … lack of trust.”

“Is that because I’m trying to kill her or because I import drugs?”

“I didn’t hear that! You will hear from my secretary shortly.”

A storm battered the island. Rain machine-gunned the windows and skylights. Wind rubbed the trees together, so they moaned like cellos, pushed the warmth out of the house, and flipped the doghouse on its side. Sleep was impossible. The next morning after chores, I changed into my suit, overcoat, galoshes, and gloves and rattled down the hill in the jeep just before dawn. The steering wheel jerked back and forth as the tires rolled over debris. A fallen tree blocked the driveway. I abandoned the jeep and hitchhiked to the ferry.

That afternoon, sleep-deprived, I walked from work to Sheehan’s. Pearl, Sheehan, and an interpreter were waiting.

“This is the first time I’ve had a certified interpreter to talk to my wife,” I signed and said.

Pearl’s eyes alternated between my hands and the interpreter’s hands. “Only talk! Your signs are confusing me.”

I had to sit on my