FascinatingRhythm

by Lynne Connolly

  “I will be tonight. I flew back to see Sabina before her operation. I’ve just come from the hospital.” He spoke and signed this time.

  Raising her brows, she signed, “How is she?”

  Nice answer. “She’s fine.” Two could play this game. “A surprise when we discovered you canceled the procedure. Why did you do that?”

  Watching him, her blue eyes unreadable, she heaved a sigh. “She did not want the procedure.” She emphasized the “not”, her chin going up and her eyes flashing.

  “How can you tell?”

  “She was doing it for you.”

  Anger rose like lava inside him. “For me? What makes you think that?”

  “She said she wanted to hear you play.”

  Their gazes clashed and held, his furious, hers calm. Hunter counted. He’d always done that since he could remember, to give himself time to think, time to calm down. Because his temper was vicious and sometimes scared him. Playing the drums had helped, but he hardly ever went onstage angry anymore.

  He should remember that. He tried to calm down, then he recognized what she was doing and it was like a bucket of cold water over his head. “You can’t do that, Mother. Not anymore.” She was taking selective points of what someone had said and using it as a basis for a whole new argument that was never meant in the first place.

  She smiled. “Trying to turn your argument on to me?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not interested in arguing. You can’t live people’s lives for them. It’s not up to you.”

  “Sometimes it is. Sometimes they come to me for help. Why do you think Sabina came here before the operation?”

  For once, he knew the answer for sure. Emmelie found doubts in people’s minds and worked on them. She’d always done it, but it had taken him a long time to realize it. That was what made her a great politician.

  Still beautiful in her fifties, with the cool blonde hair and startlingly blue eyes, both of which he’d inherited, she stood slender and tall and defied the world. Good copy for the media. Even better that she was deaf, otherwise they’d consider her invulnerable, and that rarely made for a good story.

  His new understanding of the media, in his own right now instead of as Emmelie Ostrander’s son, gave him a fuller picture. The knowledge gave him a steady beat, something he could use to calm his wayward temper. Only then did he sign and speak once more. “Sabina needed to be close to Uppsala but she didn’t want to be alone. She was scared. Everyone is scared before an operation, everyone in their right mind, anyhow. She wanted familiar people and I couldn’t stay with her.”

  “I know. Isn’t that a signal that she shouldn’t have the procedure? It will make her into a different person, Hunter. She won’t be Sabina anymore.”

  On secure ground now, he could speak with confidence. “You’re wrong. She will always be Sabina. People grow, people change. Everyone does. This is just another development in her character. Or not. Hearing may help.”

  “I gave her work, kept her busy. She may return here if she wishes.” Emmelie’s eyes widened fractionally. “What do you mean, ‘hearing may help’? Are they rescheduling the operation?”

  “No.” He watched his mother, saw how she leaned back into her chair, thinking she’d won. “Sabina is a good interpreter, isn’t she?”

  Her reply was brief. “The best.”

  “If she hears, will that impair her work?”

  Impatient now, Emmelie sat up once more. “Of course. I can’t have a hearing person working for me, and Sabina gained all her clients through me.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know why not. It goes against everything I stand for!” Indignantly, she slapped her hands against each other as she signed. “I represent the deaf community. Nobody else.”

  “What about the people who are partially deaf? The ones who’ve had an operation and can now hear? The ones who are neither one thing nor the other? The ones who their deaf colleagues repudiate, but have difficulty fitting in? Where do they go?”

  She shrugged. “It’s not my concern. They must form their own organization.”

  Fury rose. She cared for nothing and nobody outside her own narrow circle. “Then when Sabina recovers, she will come to me,” he said. “I won’t have you hurting her. She has to stay near the hospital for the first month and have therapy for as long as she needs it.” He’d give everything up for her, no doubt in his mind about that.

  “This won’t happen for some time.” His mother still thought he was signing hypothetically, that Sabina had remained on the waiting list but at the bottom.

  “The next person in the list backed out of the operation. Sabina was there so she had the procedure. She may hear. You can’t always have everything your way. Think gray, as most of the world does, not black and white. If she hears, she won’t automatically fit in to the hearing world. Nor will she belong to the deaf community any longer. She’ll have no one. No one, do you understand? But that’s not true. She’ll have me.”

  Now was his chance, the one time he could tell his mother things he’d never said before. Too eager to keep the peace, not to upset her, he’d abandoned it when he left. Except that he hadn’t. The emotions traveled with him. “When I left home, I was angry and scared. Your friends and employees always pushed me aside. I always felt inferior because I was the only person in this house who could hear. Do you know how weird that felt, especially when you banned talking in favor of signing? I couldn’t speak, even with people who could lip-read.”

  Then he told her what he’d never admitted to anyone. “I learned the drums because of you. Evelyn Glennie has been profoundly deaf from birth, and she’s one of the world’s best percussionists. Plays with the best classical orchestras. She was and is my inspiration. I thought because of her and what she said about drumming in all the interviews I read that it would please you. Instead of learning piano or violin, which you couldn’t hear, I could communicate with you and the rest of the community with my drums. Vibrations and rhythms. That I came to love it for its own sake isn’t something I need to justify. But you took no notice, ever. You never came to the school when they had concerts and you never came to any of my performances, not until Malmö.”

  He shook his head. “But it’s too little, too late. You were close to the stage and you spent most of the evening texting. I saw the light from your phone reflected on your face. That was when I realized that I didn’t care anymore. You don’t care about me. You wanted a deaf child, and when I was born hearing you lost interest.”

  She’d gone white and her hands lay at rest on the desk before her. She was staring at him as if seeing him for the first time. If she protested, he wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  He’d just bared his heart to her, as much as he could, because Hunter found it hard to put his emotions into words. The one and only time he’d ever do it. Because it sounded selfish, uncaring that he wanted her to pay attention to him rather than to all her good causes, and now her burgeoning political career. She’d tried to hijack his press conference instead of attending as a proud mother, she’d texted through his performance, she’d gone to Malmö under duress.

  Hunter turned around and started walking, not stopping until he reached his car, and then only to open the door and climb in. He doubted he’d ever return here and he didn’t feel in the least sorry.

  Until his phone chimed with the text melody. He dragged it out of his pocket and, instead of Sabina or Adela, who he’d made sure had his number before he left Uppsala, it was his mother. He nearly didn’t read it. Three words. “Wait. Come back.”

  That was so atypical he froze, staring at the screen, going over the possibilities in his mind. But that number belonged to his mother alone, her private number. She’d sent it.

  He got out of the car and went back in.

  This time nobody tried to stop him. Word must have gone around or someone had notified the assistant. The two other people now in the outer office, who hadn’t been there before, took
care not to look up as he went in, but he doubted the scanner held that much interest for anyone.

  Sabina’s predicament, the canceled operation and her uncertain future had ratcheted his temper up from its usual controllable level to where he didn’t care anymore. The short walk had given him a chance to calm down, so at least he’d regained control of himself. But he still didn’t feel like apologizing to his mother.

  She was waiting, her laptop closed, a rarity in itself, her hands placed before her. When he closed the door, she motioned to a chair. He sat.

  “Have you ever wondered about your father?” she signed.

  He shrugged. “Sometimes.” His father was a name on his birth certificate. Swedish, and while Hunter had googled him, he’d never found out which of the Christer Sandbergs that came up was his father. The man hadn’t hung around long enough to introduce himself to his son. Truthfully, he didn’t care. “I never knew him. You made it clear he was never going to be part of my life.”

  “It was the shortest marriage outside celebrity stunts you can imagine.” She smiled when Hunter showed his surprise. He hadn’t thought they were married. He’d carried his mother’s name, for good and bad, all his life. Nobody in his home country was small-minded enough to care if he was born out of wedlock or not. The lack of a father had never been an issue for him.

  “He was handsome, the complete alpha,” she signed now. “I fell for him. He knew I was deaf and he found me someone who would give me a cochlear implant. I decided against it. The procedure was still new, but most of all, I was happy as I was. I’ve been deaf from birth—it would have changed me too much. And the operation was still experimental. I didn’t want to take the chance.” He could understand that, in his mother’s case. She didn’t need to hear to be the person she was and the fact that she’d never been hearing made it unlikely she’d develop the right brain functions to effectively hear, even with the implant.

  He lifted his hands to speak, but she began first. “After I said no, he left me. He wanted the publicity it brought him, and not me. I’m still convinced of that. He’s a businessman. I can put you in touch with him if you wish.” The last appeared more stilted than the rest of her speech. She wouldn’t want him to start a relationship with a man who’d hurt her so badly.

  He knew his answer to that. “No. I don’t wish to begin a relationship with him, although I’d like to know his medical history to add to my records.” He hoped his doctor could obtain those, because he really didn’t want to know his father at this stage in his life. “He never made an effort to contact me—did he?” Maybe she’d thought it best to deny her ex-husband contact.

  A thread of hope stirred inside him. Rejection hurt, even years after the event.

  His mother shook her head, but she didn’t look happy. “I swear, he never did,” she signed. “I’m sorry for your sake. I discovered I was pregnant, and that was when he left me. He didn’t want a deaf child, he told me. He saw me as his responsibility until I pointed out to him that I never needed anyone. I sent him word when you were born, and the early milestones in your life. Then I saved myself the grief and didn’t contact him again. He knew how to get in touch with me but he never did. I believe he has another family. You might want to know them.”

  Instantly he signed back, “Relatives in name only. Not interesting to me. You and my grandparents and your brother and sisters are my family.” And Sabina. For sure, they were so close he regarded her as family already, but he was beginning to wonder if he didn’t want more.

  “Besides, I’m newly famous. I’m discovering that not everybody who wants to be my friend is sincere.” That was putting it mildly. He’d stopped using groupies when he’d found that one of them had taken a few of his T-shirts and sold them on an online auction site. Plus the contents of his laundry basket. Someone owned a pair of his used underwear. He repressed his grimace but she must have seen his distaste.

  “I’ve found that too. People want to take my reputation and paste their own onto it. That’s why I keep this house as the center of my operations. I say who comes in and goes out.”

  *

  Hunter left the house with a much better understanding of his mother, even if he did have to break the speed limit getting to the airport and then charm his way onto the plane, as the departure doors were closing when he arrived. But it was worth it. For the first time ever, she’d given him an insight into her inner life, what motivated her deep inside. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to do that, and trust too. He’d walked out saying he didn’t want her and she’d called him back.

  It didn’t mitigate her decision to cancel the operation, though it went some way toward providing understanding. She’d lost someone when she refused an operation that would have been unsuitable for her. That led her to make misguided decisions for the whole of her community.

  Hunter stared moodily out of the plane window. If only life were black and white. It would be so much easier.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The first thing Sabina noticed about Hunter on the TV was that he was wearing ear protectors. The clear wires arched behind his ears, making him look like one of the elves that lived in her country. She’d helped build houses in her garden for them, even built one for herself, but she doubted Hunter would live in the tiny, flower-bedecked bowers they’d created. The thought made her smile.

  True to his promise, he’d had a huge television delivered. It stretched the width of her bed, placed against the base on a stand that brought it above the level of the metal foot.

  She had a pair of ear-defenders with extra-soft covers so they didn’t hurt the small wound sites. This pair blocked all sound, so she couldn’t tell if she was hearing yet or not. Her doctors insisted she wear them to give her implants the best conditions to grow and develop. After the first week, she’d have to wear them in situations of high sound, like airports and yes, rock concerts. She’d also have pairs that let in more sound. In time. If the operation had worked.

  So far, so good, but nobody was promising anything. The sharp anxiety had given way to reason. She would be fine. Better equipped than most people to cope with profound deafness, if that was her fate.

  Now her lover, more than that, her friend, was sitting in front of thousands of people, being viewed by thousands, maybe millions more, albeit on a timed delay, with his closest colleagues. His best friends.

  He looked comfortable, at home. How could she hope to compete with that?

  She’d recovered from the general anesthetic, and today she’d dressed and gotten online for a few hours until she grew dizzy, and then the nurse had insisted that she lie down. Not wanting to miss the concert, she did as they told her. Now her nurse sat on one side and her mother on the other, all three squashed together on the hospital bed, their legs stretched out before them.

  “Why are you smiling?” her personal nurse, Birgit, asked.

  “Because he’s wearing ear protection. He never did before, but I made him.” She signed rather than speaking, still unsure of how she sounded and how she could control the pitch of her voice.

  “Good for you,” Birgit signed in response, her fingers flying. “We have musicians in the hospital sometimes. They lose range rather than all their hearing, but it affects some of them badly.”

  “He was defying fate. His mother is profoundly deaf, and so are other members of his family. Born that way.”

  “He is not deaf. With that family history it sounds unlikely that he’ll be so now.”

  Her mother joined in, her signing not so fluent but just as comprehensible. “Perhaps. Nobody can tell.” Sabina loved them so much for their efforts to help her. “Sabina lost her hearing through illness. A Bactrian infarction.”

  When the nurse went into peals of laughter, Sabina had to explain. “She means bacterial infection.”

  Murder City Ravens wound up for another number. The conversation had taken place in the brief pause between songs, and now they started one with a double beat on the drums
, a beat Sabina found strangely familiar. No, she couldn’t hear it, but she saw it and imagined what it would sound like. Then he laid down a much more complex rhythm, and she couldn’t even see what his feet were doing. He could use his hands and feet independently of each other, a feat that never ceased to amaze her.

  Zazz sang something and the way he crooned into the mic made her long to hear it. But she could read most of the words. Something about—oh, wow, a song about the joys of sex with no metaphors, no waves-on-the-seashore evasiveness. “When you’re lying next to me, breathing, I can feel you. Touch you. Roll my body over yours and love you.”

  That last line seemed to signal an escalation in music. The camera panned back to show Riku, resplendent in animal prints, even down to leopard-print-dyed hair, playing his guitar in violent opposition to the drumbeat. His fingers moved faster and as Hunter’s sticks came down, he attacked them. Like two people in opposition, clashing. She’d forgotten to watch Zazz, the sight enthralled her so much.

  Fascinating to watch the primal appearance of Hunter, his hair sticking to his cheeks and neck, his plain dark-green T-shirt molding to the hard contours of his body and the elaborate, fantastic figure of Riku, just as primal but in a very different way.

  Startling. “I want to hear this,” she gestured abruptly.

  “You can’t,” Birgit signed. “Not now. But they’re recording it. Maybe you can hear it another time.”

  Sabina lowered her hands. Maybe she could. The thought dazzled her, made her want things she’d determinedly put to the back of her mind. But she refused to cheat. They had the volume on the TV, so she was wearing the headphones that blocked all sound. The thought that she could take them off and miraculously hear filled her with delight and anticipatory excitement, although she wouldn’t let her imagination run away with her.

  She couldn’t hear the applause at the end of the piece, but she saw. Hunter laid his sticks across his drums and lifted his hands to sign. Anyone who could read ASL could tell what he was saying. “That was for you, Sabina. I miss you.”