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

top of the upper field, I climbed up the chair I had carved into a stump, and smoked the joint the carpet-layer had given me. From there, I saw the grass grew greenest over Mouse’s grave. I turned my collar against the wind and walked to Trout Lake.

In the house, I wandered from room to room, sad that Pearl would never see it completed. It was a wonderful house. The beast that had nearly swallowed us had, at last, been tamed.

My parents drove me to the ferry with my suitcases. The air was salty and crisp. Cormorants walked on the dock. Gulls and grebes floated in the marina. I took the ferry, then a taxi to the airport.

I arrived in Amsterdam like a sailor putting ashore after a storm, disoriented, unable to lose my sea legs. I dreamed of Bowen Island every night; I dreamed of Pearl every night. I had had the time of my life. After reaching the peak, one no longer needs to climb, so I lived to work now, instead of working to live. I lived the serial life Ralph had mocked.

I told no one about Pearl—who would believe our story? Every night, I bolted my apartment door to hide from the world. Dutch conversation excluded me as much as English conversation had excluded Pearl; I realized now how Pearl felt when I’d been too lazy to interpret.

I was miserable, hollow, unable to accept how our lives had blown apart; I was in denial. I wrote the first of three letters to Pearl, the longest and most passionate I had ever written.

I told her I wanted her to be with me, and I would stop the divorce if she wanted. I said I thought of her all the time and couldn’t keep my hands still when I talked to people because the signs still came. I gave her my address and telephone number. I begged her to write or to call me via the MRC. I promised to send her a return ticket as soon as she asked me. I closed my letter with: Write or call me. Do it now. It’s so important. I would marry you all over again because you were so wonderful for so long.

When my goods arrived, I watched my hands lift my former life from cardboard cartons. The first boxes gave up my stereo, music, and tequila. I poured a shot, then more. Memories flooded in as I unpacked. There were our whitewash-splattered overalls with barbed-wire holes. There was our meat grinder. I hung Pearl’s overalls in my cupboard, cried for her, and collapsed.

I wandered the cobblestoned streets and looked for sign language, but the deafies in Holland were invisible. I saw Pearl’s visage in every pretty black-haired woman. I would awaken in the middle of the night, worried I had missed her call. Never did I do the right thing: talk to people. All I could see inside a bar was acrid tobacco smoke and people who might make it necessary to talk about my past or to lie about it.

As Hans had suggested the night Pearl left, I read the Psalms, starting with Number 23, then the New Testament; but I remained a non-believer. I told no one about my past, except that I was divorced. Instead of talking to others about my life with Pearl, I wrote it down. From those notes, this book began.

Exchanging letters with Virgil comforted me. Our friendship had outlasted my marriages.

February 1989

Dear Derrick,

My spirits soared when I got your letter. You’re off and running on a new adventure. Have at it. Don’t go falling in love with anyone that isn’t rich, and for that advice I expect to be supported for the rest of my life when you do marry a rich French woman. No reason for French except I like France and it would be great visiting your France country manor.

Don’t worry about Pearl. Men are supposed to love and lose. Next time rich, nothing else—but if you get good looks with it so much the luckier. I don’t take my own advice but Rhea does own a house of her own so she has someplace to go if it ends.

Winter has had its storms but all and all it’s been fun and full of adjustments on both of us. One must have a city and country manor remember that Derrick.

I’m too stoned to write more. Soon I’ll be down to one syllable words then Xs. Have fun and remember, Rich with a French accent, two homes, and good looks if it happens. Good luck.

Love, Virgil

The telephone rang in the middle of the night. I leaped out of bed and ran to the telephone, my heart pounding. She had read my letter!

“This is the Message Relay Centre with a call for Derrick from Pearl.”

“This is Derrick.”

“Where is the diamond ring appraisal? Go ahead.”

“If I have it, I will send it to you. Go ahead.”

“Someone switched the diamonds in my ring. Go ahead.”

“That’s impossible. Go ahead.”

“Is there any other message?” said the operator, after a pause.

I felt devastated. I took a deep breath. “No.”

In the morning, I found our appraisal, for $9,325, but a pawnshop would offer much less. Her call meant that she tried to pawn her beautiful ring. I mailed the appraisal to Pearl with my second letter.

My second letter was shorter and more cautious. I told her I was waiting faithfully and there had been no woman after her. I urged her to write to me or visit me, and again I offered to send her a ticket. I told her I would always love her.

I didn’t expect a reply. I felt guilty that it had taken me so long to see she was falling apart. Perhaps her Mr. Right had never existed.

Clifford mailed me a copy of our divorce certificate. Eleven days later, I received a letter from a lawyer stating Pearl was filing for divorce. Incredulous, I telephoned Clifford.

“Pearl’s lawyer doesn’t know she’s divorced! Now she’s asking that the separation settlement be amended to give her more furniture in return for the stereo in the truck, which she wants to mail to Amsterdam.”

“I’m not surprised. Your divorce was difficult. You didn’t know where Pearl was living, so serving documents by registered mail was impossible. A Process Server in uniform had to visit her place of employment, the post office, and ask the management to take him to her and to identify her. Then he had to confirm her identity from the photo you gave me. When he tried to serve her the documents, she became hostile, so he had to throw them at her feet. Imagine what her colleagues thought! Then he had to swear an Affidavit of Service. This is Pearl’s third divorce lawyer. I’ll call him now.”

Pearl had paid three divorce lawyers; Eugénie hadn’t paid even for one. Clifford called back to confirm we were divorced.

I wrote Pearl for the third and last time. My last letter was short. I told her we were already divorced, and that I had paid for it. I reminded her that divorce was not what I wanted; it was what she wanted. I told her I still loved her. I told her I wanted to hold her again, see her smile, and hear her laugh. I didn’t offer to send a ticket. I asked her to write.

November 1989

Dear Virgil,

I got a letter from Eugénie who said that Pearl had phoned her! She wanted to get together with Eugénie and discuss “all the awful things” I did to both of them. Eugénie hung up on her.

I went to Spain, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Norway, Sri Lanka, India, Maldives (12 scuba dives!), Nepal, and Pakistan. I wanted to look up my Spanish pen-pal, but her address was in my little black book that Pearl handed to the police, lost forever. In ten days I fly to Egypt and Kenya to spend Christmas alone. I’ll go overland to Tanzania and Uganda. I have a ticket to the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Burma in March.

I like being on the move. I like the sense of disconnection from the present, or maybe of leaving something behind. “He travels fastest who travels alone,” said Kipling.

When not traveling I read, write, ride horseback, sail (a friend has a sailboat) and tinker with toys. I’d rather be cutting firewood or shoveling horseshit on Bowen, but that must wait.

Love, Derrick

My telephone woke me up; it could only be Pearl. The timing was surreal: just two months before her call, while traveling and lonely, I met the woman who would become my third wife. We had become engaged, and our wedding was set for next month.

If Pearl had called me before I had become engaged, I would have listened. If she had been asking for help, I would have given it. If she had been asking to reconcile, I would have sent her a ticket. I had never stopped loving her, but she called after I had given up. I couldn’t talk to her now without being unfaithful to my fiancée. Why had Pearl waited so long to call me?

“Message Relay Centre with a call to Derrick from Pearl.”

“How are you? I’m fine. Go ahead,” said Pearl.

“I’m fine. How are you? Go ahead.”

“I already said I’m fine. Why do you ask me again? Go ahead.”

“Because it is four o’clock in the morning, and I’m sleepy. Go ahead.”

“You did not call me. Go ahead.”

“You never told me your telephone number. I wrote you many times. Why didn’t you write me? Go ahead.”

“You wrote me three letters. Go ahead.”

“You wrote me no letters. I waited two years.” If Pearl had been calling to ask for help or reconciliation, she would not have started the call by bickering. I had to estrange Pearl for my fiancée and our future children. I could never have imagined I would ever tell Pearl not to call me, but I said, “Please don’t call me anymore.” I hung up. I felt defeated by fate.

A few minutes later, the telephone rang again.

“Message Relay Centre with a call to Derrick from Pearl.”

“Why did you hang up? I wasn’t finished yet. Go ahead.”

“Never call me again,” I whispered, and I unplugged the telephone.

Love for a Deaf Rebel

I reconnected with Pearl’s family thirty years later. We shared our knowledge of Pearl’s life and our independent research into her genealogy. Together, we learned the shocking truth.

Pearl had, most likely, inherited the foundation of schizophrenia from her father. There is evidence of dysfunction in almost every paternal family member over generations and similar traits in many of the women they married. Pearl’s bigamist, criminal grandfather, whose older brother died in jail, had at least eleven live births by four wives; one wife, married under an alias, was his half-sister. He had two wives pregnant at the same time. Four children died in infancy, and two drowned with him. Only four children outlived him. He gave up Pearl’s father for adoption and never saw him again. Pearl’s father was adopted by his great-aunt Ida, a blind Seventh-day Adventist.

Pearl’s deafness was, almost certainly, not from random chance but from her parents’ and grandparents’ rush to conceal her illegitimate conception from the Seventh-day Adventist Church, of which her maternal grandfather was an elder.

In March 1953, Pearl’s twenty-year-old father, a salesman, made his nineteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant. Her family decided they must marry before the birth, but an Adventist pastor could not marry a pregnant woman. This prohibition was side-stepped by marrying before her pregnancy was visible.

Their large wedding was held on 29 June in the hamlet of Peoria, her hometown, when Pearl’s mother was three months pregnant—a “shotgun wedding.” That is when Pearl’s mother caught rubella—German measles—probably from one of the dozens of children at her wedding. There was now an eighty percent chance Pearl would be born with birth defects ranging from deafness to fatal heart disease.

After the wedding, Pearl’s parents moved to tiny Bruderheim, 500 km away, for about nine months. Pearl was born there on Christmas Eve, 1953, deaf from congenital rubella syndrome. The family’s hide-the-pregnancy ruse had succeeded, but Pearl’s hearing had been destroyed.

Pearl’s childhood was a happy, loving one, as Pearl and her family all attested, but she was always paranoid, accusing people of speaking or snickering about her behind her back.

As she grew up, she would lash out in brief incidents. Her minor episodes increased in frequency and severity. At about thirteen, she violently attacked her five-year-old brother.

Her father’s death, when she was fourteen, was a terrible blow. Although he was a hard-working family man, he raced stock cars,