Freak City (19 page)

“Kevin! Stop that right now!” Franzi’s mom looked over at her son, outraged. Apparently, he had showed my little sister a sign that wasn’t exactly appropriate in public. Iris looked at me with a perfectly innocent face and grinned.

“And are you seeing Leah?” Franzi’s mom asked me. I shook my head. “No, we just know each other. Nothing more.”

“She’s a nice girl.” Franzi’s mom was right about that.

I nodded. “Nice, but complicated.”

Franzi got up and sat back down next to me. I couldn’t help myself; I kept staring at that enormous hickey. It was deep red. It looked like Marcel had bitten her.

“Leah misses you,” she signed facing me, so that the others couldn’t read it.

I looked at her in disbelief. “How do you know that?”

“She just sits around in her room all the time and watches her weird movies. And she had been crying when I talked to her this morning.”

“Crying?”

Franzi shrugged her shoulders. “She looked like she had been crying, and I’m sure it has to do with you.”

“Maybe I’m in love with Kevin now,” Iris announced as we put away our bikes in the garage. I helped her lock them up. Our dad’s car was back, so he had come home a little earlier than expected.

“You still have some time to think it over,” I reassured Iris.

“Can I go over to Anna’s?” That was Iris’s best friend. She lived in the building next door, collected those chocolate eggs with a little toy inside, and always ate the chocolate shell right away. That made her look a little like an overfed pug. I was glad Iris hadn’t fallen in love with Anna.

“Sure, but make sure you’re home in time for dinner.” Iris disappeared, and I walked toward the house.

When I unlocked the door, my dad was leaning against the doorframe. He had a bottle of beer in his hand and seemed to be drunk.

“Are you okay, Dad?” I dropped my backpack and went over to him. He had rings under his eyes and looked terrible. The biting smell of alcohol hung in the air. He turned around, stumbled, and almost ran into the corner of the table. Even though we had grown so far apart, suddenly it was there again: the familiarity and closeness we used to have.

“Dad, you’ve had enough!” I took the beer bottle away from him, went into the kitchen, and poured the brown stuff down the sink. An open bottle of whiskey stood on the counter. I put it in the refrigerator. Thank heavens my mom wasn’t home to see Dad in this condition.

He stared at me with red eyes. “Thanks, buddy,” he said sluggishly, like I had just given him a present. “Get a raise in your allowance!”

“Go to bed and sleep it off.” I pointed toward the stairs.

My dad nodded slowly. Then he stared at me again. “You know, Mika. You always think you’re grown up at some point and you’ve got it all figured out. But that’s not how it is. Should I let you in on something?”

I didn’t respond. I was in over my head here. I felt sorry for him, but on the other hand, I was kind of disgusted by him, too. What exactly did he want to tell me?

“One day you wake up and you’re forty. But your feelings . . . it’s just like they used to be when you were fifteen!”

My dad was talking complete nonsense.

“I did something stupid, Mika. Big time.”

An unpleasant twinge made itself felt in the pit of my stomach. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it.

“Sometimes we do stupid things,” I said, trying to comfort him. “That’s normal.”

I thought about Leah. I loved her, but I had still gotten into a fight with her in the car. I loved Sandra, too, in a certain way. But I had still left her sitting half-naked on her sofa, disappointed. We sometimes did terrible things, even though we loved the other person. Or maybe even because we loved them.

I love Leah.
The sentence slowly started to take shape in my mind. I repeated it two or three times in my thoughts, and for a moment, it surprised me.

“And what’s that I hear about the deaf girl?” My father swayed and held on tight to the banister. “Tanya picked up something about it from Sandra. That you’ve fallen for a deaf girl. I didn’t even believe her when she said it.”

“But it’s true.” We stood across from each other like we were rehearsing scenes in a play. A funny scene between a drunk and his son. The text seemed strange to me, actually, not funny at all.

“It’s not cool that you didn’t tell us anything about it. Your mom and me. We don’t want to hear about something like that from a stranger.”

“Tanya isn’t a stranger.” I looked at my dad. He stared past me and turned red. “Tanya . . .” He gasped for air like he was suffocating.

My gaze wandered out the kitchen window. Next door, Iris and her friend ran around in the yard.

“Your reaction at Iris’s birthday party was so weird. Besides, I always had the feeling you were attached to Sandra. Leah is really different from her,” I tried to explain.

“Every person is completely different. That’s the whole point!”

Pudgy Anna had fallen down, and my sister helped her back up to her feet.

“So, will you introduce us to this girl sometime?” My dad seemed to be slowly getting sober again.

I tilted my head to the side. “At the moment, she doesn’t want to see me anymore. If that changes, I’d be happy to.”

“Good. Then I’m going to go upstairs and lie down.”

On the third step, he turned around one more time. He came stumbling back down to me and pulled me close to him. We stood there like that for quite a while, hugging tightly, like in the old days, when my grandpa had died.

“Thanks, Mika.”

“For what?”

“No idea. For nothing. For everything.”

I saw her on the other side of the street. I had already spent the entire morning in her neighborhood, hoping I might bump into her. Then she appeared out of nowhere coming out of the butcher’s shop and disappeared again into the bakery next door. She hadn’t noticed me yet.

It had been a week since Leah had gotten in touch. I had sent her a French movie and a few conciliatory notes that I had written. Franzi had probably been wrong again. Leah hadn’t been crying because of me. If you’re lovesick, you get in touch if one person is giving the other one signs. Leah had ignored my signals and hadn’t even thanked me for the package.
Together You’re Less Alone.
I had hoped she would take the title of the movie as an invitation.

For a moment, I thought about just moving on. Leah wanted nothing to do with me, I had gotten the message. Sandra insisted on an answer, so what was I waiting for?

Nonetheless, I gathered my courage and crossed the street. I shoved open the door, ringing the bell above the entrance.

Everyone, except Leah, turned to look at me.

I smiled tensely. Up ahead, it was Leah’s turn in line. “Rye bread,” she said loudly and pointed with her finger at it. It sounded so garbled, you couldn’t even understand the word “bread.” She pointed right at the loaf she wanted, though, so you could figure out what she meant. A fat woman in front of her turned around like a whip and stared at her with hostility.

“Already drunk and it’s not even noon yet. The nerve.”

“I think she’s mentally retarded,” the man behind Leah muttered soothingly.

“Rye bread,” repeated Leah confidently.

The young girl standing behind the counter looked at her uncomprehendingly. She then yawned, reached up the shelf, and packed up a loaf of sunflower seed bread. Leah paid, turned around, and stood in front of me like she was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t tell if she was happy or angry to see me. She just stood there with a blank face, looking tired.

“Hello,” I said in sign language.

She nodded. “Wonderful. You always find me in the best situations on the planet for deaf people! Come visit me at school next time. Then you’ll have seen all the highlights of my life in no time at all.” She rolled her eyes, and I smiled.

“Don’t laugh. You have no idea what it’s like. Being stared at constantly like a freak. Just once in my life, I want to be able to buy something without everyone staring at me. And I hate sunflower seed bread.”

I looked at Leah sheepishly. “Did you know that goldfish can get seasick?” I had heard that on the radio that morning. Useless knowledge. I had remembered it for Leah.

Leah smiled. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“A little bit, yeah. That must suck, being a seasick goldfish.”

The fat lady at the front of the line headed in our direction. She had bought three bags full of pastries. As soon as she saw me signing with Leah, her hostility turned into fascination.

“Oh, so she’s a deaf-mute,” she said.

“Well, she isn’t exactly mute,” I answered on Leah’s behalf. “You just saw that. She’s just deaf, that’s all.”

The woman looked at her pityingly. “Sorry!” she screamed into Leah’s ear. “I didn’t mean it like that! I have a mother who’s hard of hearing, too!”

Leah nodded. “Fat, stupid cow!” she answered in sign, smiling politely.

The fat woman beamed. “How fascinating sign language is. So poetic!” She squeezed by us on her way out the door.

Leah and I looked at each other and laughed.

“Okay. Are you still claiming that you haven’t fallen for my little sister?” Cindy sat next to me at the kitchen table and played a red UNO card.

Leah had spontaneously taken me home with her for lunch. This time everything had gone smoothly. Leah and I talked with each other at the table, and her mom told a funny story from Leah’s childhood that Leah even understood. I watched her closely. She picked out certain words and phrases that she could understand and used those to piece together the gist of the story.

The point of it was that for a long time, until she was almost seven, Leah had thought that animals could talk. She had come to that conclusion because she had seen the neighbor’s cat open its mouth, and then the neighbor talked to the animal and gave it something to eat. And Leah had read some comic about three little pigs. Because they had a dialogue in the comic, naturally she assumed that animals could talk just like everyone else. The misunderstanding hadn’t been cleared up until she was in second grade.

Now Leah was doing the dishes, her parents had retreated to the patio, and I was doing my best to get on Cindy’s good side. Who knew, maybe she’d be my sister-in-law someday. I was letting her win at UNO on purpose.

“We’re just friends,” I said, shuffling the cards again. “But I admit, I think she’s fantastic.”

“Wait ‘til you see her in action. Leah can be really aggressive, take my word for it.” She played a zero, and we switched hands.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know, when someone talks to her in the streets and then leaves her standing there. If someone asks her for the time, or for directions, and then figures out that she can’t hear anything. Most people just keep walking. She can’t stand that and then she always makes a big scene. Drags them into annoying, deep philosophical discussions. If you happen to be with her when it happens, my god is it embarrassing! Uno!” I played a blue card. “Uno Uno!” Cindy placed her last card on the pile. She had won.

Leah drained the dirty dishwater and let fresh water run into the sink to rinse. Then she turned around and put away the silverware, which was already clean and dry.

“It’s about to happen,” Cindy said. “This is a classic.”

I didn’t understand what she was trying to get at. Cindy pointed toward the sink. The water came pouring out of the faucet and the sink was almost full. But Leah was still calmly putting away silverware. She hadn’t even turned around once to look at the running water.

Cindy put her head in her hands. Then she got up, went over to the sink, and turned off the water.

“Do you know how often Leah has flooded our kitchen already? And the bathroom? She’s not allowed to take a bath anymore; she can only shower. Because she doesn’t hear the water she always forgets to turn off the tap in time.”

Leah was finished putting things away and turned around. When she saw her sister standing next to the almost overflowing sink, she turned red. “Shit,” she muttered in Cindy’s direction. Cindy gave her sister an accusing look and came back to me. “You see what I mean?” she asked. “I told you so.” I didn’t like the way she talked about Leah one bit and right in front of her!