It Happened at the Fair (13 page)

Finally, they reached the Forestry Building. Tucked in the southernmost corner of the fair, it fronted Lake Michigan and attracted a much thinner crowd.

FORESTRY BUILDING

He took a deep breath, absorbing the sound of tiny waves thrumming the embankment and the slightest scent of fish floating on the breeze.

“The building isn’t covered with the white . . . what do they call it?” she asked.

“Staff. It’s a kind of glorified plaster of paris. And you’re right. There aren’t even any nails or metal in this one. The entire thing is built of wood and held together with wooden pins.”

“It’s a wonderful change,” she said, her smile once more intact.

He assisted her onto a two-story veranda, its giant pillars formed by tree trunks grouped in threes.

“Look, the bark’s still on the trunks.” She pointed to one grouping, then noticed a plaque attached to its centermost trunk. “And they’ve listed each type of tree with the place it came from. These are from Missouri.”

“What are they?” he asked.

White oosh, she mouthed.

“White . . . ash?”

“White oak. A person puckers their lips when they make a long o. Like this.” She made a small round opening with her mouth. “Ooooo. Ooooooak. Now you say it so you can see what it feels like.”

“Oak.”

“Did you feel yourself pucker?”

This was not going to work. “What about u? What shape is it?”

“Same one. See? Union. Cucumber. Universe.”

“And the e?”

“That’s a smiler. Eat. East. Teeth. But I start with the puckers—long o, long u, and double o.”

“What’s wrong with the smilers? Can’t we start with those?”

“No. The puckers are always first because they’re easiest to spot in the middle and at the end of a word.”

“How long before we can move to the smilers?”

“That depends on you. The quicker you learn to pucker, the sooner we can move ahead.”

Suppressing a groan, he led her inside. Numerous states and several countries showed off specimens from their forests. Minnesota displayed a block of cottonwood hewn from the first tree planted in Minneapolis. Washington’s booth held a mammoth disk of cedar that twenty people could stand on at once.

He hesitated a bit before the section reserved for his home state of North Carolina. As a boy he used to roam the countryside and come home with swollen eyes and throat. It had been filled with almost every variety of evergreen and deciduous tree displayed in the booth. Still, he followed her in. A few minutes shouldn’t hurt him any.

“Oh look, Mr. McNamara.” Removing one glove, Miss Wentworth beckoned him, then ran her hand along a settee woven of branches and knots. “It’s been varnished, but is otherwise entirely natural.”

RHODODENDRON SETTEE

“It looks like rhododendron limbs. They bloom just in time to celebrate the Fourth of July and in every color you could imagine.”

She tested the seat with her hand before trying it out. “Do you think it would hold both of us?”

In order to find out, they’d have to sit awfully close. “If it doesn’t, I’d hate to be the one to discover it.” He cast about for something to distract her with. “Look there. I believe that’s a project I read about in the papers.”

Offering her a hand, he assisted her from the settee and forced himself to ignore the smoothness of her skin. Upon reaching a gallery of photographs, she absently pulled her glove back on.

Wanda’s hands were as rough and calloused as his, but they were good hands. Worthy hands. He pulled up a picture of her in his mind. Brown eyes, sweet smile, lots of curves. He clung to those memories, refusing to make a comparison between the two women.

Anyone, man or woman, would notice Miss Wentworth’s blue eyes, her heart-shaped face, and her peach-colored lips. Well, maybe not the lips. He noticed them only because he’d been forced to study them all night.

“What is this?” Miss Wentworth pointed to a picture of a huge building with scaffolding.

“It’s a grand castle called Biltmore. It’s near Asheville. The papers said the youngest Vanderbilt is having it constructed. For the surrounding property, he’s hired the same man who landscaped Central Park and who also turned this park from a swamp into the grounds that we currently stand on.”

She peered more closely at a photograph of barren, overworked terrain. “He’ll have his work cut out for him if he’s to make that look anything like Central Park.”

“It’s to be a planned forestry program. The first in America.”

“Interesting.”

By the time they reached the last booth, hours had passed and they’d yet to do more than practice the long o. They exited Virginia’s section through a hollow segment of a sycamore tree, stopped by the coat check, and stepped out onto the verandah again.

Darkness had set in, leaving only moonlight and street lanterns to guide them to a set of benches facing the water.

He opened her coat, dipping it so her arms slid easily inside the sleeves.

“I’m afraid we’re going to have to be a bit more disciplined with our lessons, Miss Wentworth.”

“I was just thinking the same thing. I became so caught up in all those wonders, I totally forgot our purpose. If it’s not too late for you, we could sit out here for a few minutes and do some work on your vowels.”

“Will there be enough light?”

“If we sit on that bench over there.” She indicated a bench with a splash of lantern light touching its wooden slats.

Settling onto it, they faced each other, her knee brushing his. He sat up straighter, putting another inch between them.

“I’m going to say a list of words with the long o sound.” She cleared her throat. “Watch for the pucker. Sometimes it will come at the beginning, sometimes at the end, and sometimes in the middle. The middle ones are the hardest, so you have to be on your guard.”

He nodded.

“Only.” Her voice was soft, but audible.

“I heard you.”

“Did you? Even over the waves? That’s wonderful. I thought you had difficulty when there’s background noise.”

“I usually do.”

The moon’s reflection cast a burnished ribbon across the lake’s rippling surface. Noise was too harsh a word for the push and pull of its current.

“It’s your voice,” he said. “As a whole, I hear women better than men. But you, I hear very distinctly.”

She nodded. “I’ll mouth them, then.”

For the next ten minutes he watched her lips and tried to read them. He’d never really noticed the nuances of a woman’s lips before. Did they all have such distinct Cupid’s bows?

“What did I say?” she asked.

He scrambled to think of a word with an o sound. “Ogle.”

She shook her head. “Rosy. Watch for the pucker. Every time you see it, insert a long o or u. Like slogan. See how my lips pucker in the middle? Slogan.”

“I see.”

“Good. Now watch for that. Let’s try again.”

For the next several minutes, he forced himself to view her lips as independent objects, as if they weren’t attached to a flesh-and-blood woman. Until she formed a kiss.

He pressed himself against the armrest. “I don’t know that one.”

“Of course you do. Watch.”

Looking him right in the eye, she formed another kiss.

“Say it out loud.” His voice sounded hoarse, even to his own ears.

“But you were doing so well. Let’s try it with a sentence. And watch my entire expression if you can. That sometimes helps.”

Her lips began to move. He knew the minute she used it, but he couldn’t fathom what word in the English language looked like a kiss.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just can’t tell.”

Sighing, she tilted her head, a tendril of hair slipping free and swirling in the lake’s breeze. “Scoop. I was saying scoop.”

“Right.” Jumping to his feet, he pulled out his timepiece. “Look at the time. I had no idea it was so late. I’m afraid we’d best be heading back.”

“Sit down, Mr. McNamara.”

“What?”

She threaded her hands together in her lap. “Sit down. I’m the teacher. I say when we’re through.”

“It’s almost ten o’clock.” He turned the face of his watch toward her.

“Sit. Down.”

After a slight hesitation, he sat on the edge of the bench.

“Thank you.” She reached into a hidden pocket of her skirt and withdrew a folded piece of paper. “I’ve written a list of pucker words. You are to stand at the mirror every morning and night and say each word out loud. Pay particular note to the formation of your lips.”

He shot to his feet again. “I am not going to stand in front of a mirror and practice puckering my lips.”

“Well, of course not. I don’t want you to do anything with your lips. I want you to speak in a normal fashion without elaborately mouthing the words. That’s very important.”

Pulling his gloves on more tightly, he avoided her gaze. “Fine. Is class dismissed?”

She remained silent. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he looked at her.

She indicated the bench with her eyes.

He sat.

“I’m perfectly happy to forgo these lessons.” Her voice was calm, not at all agitated. Simply matter-of-fact. “If you don’t want to do this, I’ll gladly bow out and we’ll both have our evenings free.”

Dragging a hand over his face, he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not a very good student. At least, that’s what my teachers always told me.”

“I’ll not put up with any more outbursts.” She handed him the paper.

He took it, then tucked it into his jacket. “Listen, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About how long it takes for a person to learn to lip-read. And now I can see why. So that makes me wonder if maybe I shouldn’t learn the language of signs as well. Just in case I go totally deaf before I master lip-reading.”

The longer he spoke, the stiffer she became. “You must never, ever use sign language. It would brand you as deaf and different.”

He shook his head. “I’d use it only at home, with my family. They know about my plight and don’t condemn me for it.”

“Even still, it’s too risky. It is critical that you blend in with everyone else.”

He knew she was right. In a society obsessed with United We Stand, Divided We Fall, anything and anyone who was the least bit different was to be avoided at all costs. At best, he’d be labeled an imbecile, at worst, he’d be thrown into an asylum like that poor Ashford girl.

“I would only use it temporarily,” he said. “Until I became proficient at lip-reading.”

“It takes years to become proficient. You cannot use sign language for years without someone finding out.”

“I don’t live in the city the way you do. I’m a farmer, and the only people I see day in and day out are family.”

Frowning, she tilted her head. “I thought you were an inventor. Aren’t you here to sell your fire sprinklers so they can be manufactured for businesses all over the country?”

He let out a soft laugh. “That’s nothing but a father’s dream for his son. I’m here only out of respect for him and because he insisted. As soon as the fair’s over, I’m going back to North Carolina, where I’ll live for the rest of my life on a farm in the middle of nowhere. And I’ll need to know how to sign.”

“What if your fire sprinklers become a success?”

“What if they don’t?”

“I still wouldn’t be able to teach you to sign.”

“Then you are condemning me to a world of silence and isolation. Because I can’t possibly learn what I need to in five short months.”

Her face became stricken. “It goes against everything I’ve been taught,” she whispered, forcing him to strain.

“And what have you been taught?”

“That our aim is to be as natural as we can with the deaf. That we must treat them as if they can hear. That we shouldn’t do anything to single them out. We shouldn’t raise our voices or make exaggerated movements with our lips. And certainly, under no circumstances, should we make hand gestures of any kind.”

He studied her. So passionate. So sure. Yet so wrong. “It’s a shame you feel that way. I’ve always thought the language of signs to be a beautiful thing.”

Her eyes widened. “You’ve seen it used?”

“When I was an adolescent, I worked one winter as a news butch for the Norfolk & Southern Railway, which ran from Charlotte to Norfolk. I sold newspapers, candy, sandwiches, whatever my customers needed.” He smiled, remembering the freedom he’d experienced at earning a wage all on his own. “One of the regulars on my route was a deaf man. He and his wife would sign to each other the whole trip. I was fascinated, so each day, as I waited for the train to return to Charlotte, I walked to the Norfolk library, pulled a book on sign language, and taught myself the alphabet.”