Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Joscelyn picked her up, cuddling her fiercely, kissing the downy black head. The faucet had been turned off. “You were right,” she shouted in a gratingly angry voice.
“What?” Honora called back.
“She should hear. She doesn’t.”
There was a splashing, and Honora flung open the door, a flash of dripping, dazzling white breast and white buttock before she wrapped a blue striped towel around her torso.
She whistled. A long, shrill note.
“Don’t you believe me?” Joscelyn demanded. “She—does—not—hear.”
“Bring her into the kitchen.”
Yussuf averted his gaze, creeping onto the service porch while the towel-clad Honora stood a few inches behind the baby’s head, clashing two
Revere stainless steel pot covers like cymbals.
Lissie stared straight ahead.
Honora continued her crescendo.
Lissie didn’t turn, but began to wail at the tightness of her mother’s arms.
“Why don’t you stop?” Joscelyn shouted. “She does not hear!”
“We don’t know that yet,” Honora said, taking the crying baby from her sister’s grasp, stroking the child tenderly. “Pretty, pretty. Uncle Curt’ll find the best specialist for you, Lissie darling.”
It took nearly fifteen hours for Honora’s call to Los Angeles to go through: Curt’s response, however, was instantaneous. Within a few hours two first-class bookings to New York were waiting at the cramped window of the hot, dirty Daralam airport, the Ivory apartment in the Waldorf Towers was vacated by a pair of vice presidents, an immediate appointment set up at the Weller Pediatric Hearing Clinic where new patients normally waited eight weeks.
The day after Honora, Joscelyn and Lissie landed in New York, they were seated in Dr. Weller’s spacious, dark-wood paneled corner office: Joscelyn had been a corporation woman long enough to respect a corner office with windows facing in two directions. The walls were lined with books, and in a prominent
space, segregated from the other thick medical tomes by marble bookends, stood five fat volumes imprinted on the spine
Samson J. Weller, MD.
After the initial questions, Dr. Weller snapped down the hanging type of diagram that one sees in classrooms. “Let’s follow the route of sound waves—or, as I like to explain, shook-up air,” he said, raising the index finger of his plump white hand to tap at the grossly enlarged ear. “The waves travel through the outer ear, which though pretty much ornamental, does help direct sound waves to the ear canal, here.” Tap. “Then our waves travel through the inch of the canal, arriving at the tympanic membrane—the eardrum.” He tapped the appropriate area. “The sound waves strike the eardrum with incredibly tiny vibrations, and these infinitesimal sounds reach the middle ear. In the middle ear is a truly remarkable amplification and transmission system called the ossicles. The ossicles are the three smallest bones in the human body . . . .”
Though Dr. Weller was short and outlandishly overweight, he possessed resonant, commandingly rich tonal qualities. Joscelyn let the sonorously spoken words roll over her, pondering whether it was a natural vocal gift or whether he’d taken training to become a radio announcer. She shifted on the rich blue tweed of the couch, rotating her tensed shoulders, careful not to disturb Lissie, who slept in her lap.
Honora touched her arm.
Joscelyn jerked to attention.
“And this is the acoustic nerve,” the doctor was saying. He had reached the far end of his diagram, a broad stalk. “The acoustic nerve is where the mechanical energy is encoded in electrical patterns and transmitted to the brain.”
At the word
brain
, Joscelyn’s eye twitched and her aching shoulders hunched. Was Lissie’s brain damaged? An unbearable thought, unbearable. Then she reminded herself that it was impossible.
Lissie’s a very quick baby, everyone says so.
“I think we have the physiology down pat,” she said. “Now can we get to the point?”
Honora shot her a reproachful glance. But wasn’t it a snap for Honora to remain in control, a perfect lady? Lissie wasn’t
her
child.
“In a general way, Mrs. Peck, there are two types of hearing loss. Conductive deafness. Nerve or perceptive deafness. A hearing impairment may be mixed, involving both conductive and nervous apparatus.”
“Explain conductive deafness,” Joscelyn said, covering her overwhelming fear and the painful twinges of her neck with a Grand Inquisitor act.
“Just what you might guess, Mrs. Peck. The failure of sound waves to be conducted efficiently through the external ear canal, the middle ear or the inner ear.” Glossy cloth rattled as he tapped the appropriate patches. “Adequate messages do not reach the inner ear. Conductive impairment, therefore, simply diminishes the loudness of sound. It never causes
profound deafness. Conductive deafness can be corrected by surgery.”
“Now tell me about perceptive deafness—nerve deafness.”
“Again what it sounds like. The nerves are damaged.”
“What then?”
Ripples moved across the tentlike white Dacron coat as the doctor sighed deeply. “I’m afraid we have no medical procedure to repair nerves. If the damage is extensive enough, that person can never hear as we do.”
Honora’s soft upper lip rose, vulnerably.
“Are you saying that modern medicine can’t do a damn for nerve deafness?” Joscelyn asked.
“I’m sorry, we can’t. But with consistent auditory training and appropriate amplification, that person can learn to develop certain listening skills.”
Lissie had been awake several minutes and was sucking her thumb. “It’s past her feeding time,” Joscelyn said, blinking furiously.
Dr. Weller showed them into a small room.
Lissie was changed and peering alertly at her plush bear when there was a tap on the door and a young woman came in. Thick red curls framed a face too bony and angular for prettiness: it was the intelligent eagerness of her expression that made her attractive. “What a beautiful little girl,” she said, bending her knees to Lissie’s level, smiling. “I’m Carole Donovan, the audiologist. We’re going to see Dr. Weller.”
Joscelyn clasped Lissie to her still oozing
breasts. “Are you taking her away?”
“No, Mrs. Peck,” Carole reassured. “You and Mrs. Ivory’ll be with her in the testing room.”
Testing room?
Joscelyn’s thighs trembled and she held the baby with tight caution as she went down the short corridor. Dr. Weller sat in a booth like that of a recording studio, his plump fingers playing with knobs and dials that bristled from a console. A large glass window in front of him showed a small interior room.
“Here we go,” Carole said, opening the second door.
On this side, the control booth’s window was a mirror.
Large, triangular speakers stood in each corner and an oblong speaker descended from the acoustical board ceiling. Toys spilled from two large bins. Lissie, however, reached toward the table: a mechanical monkey held sticks poised over a drum.
“Not that one, Lissie, honey,” Carole said, again bending to the child’s level. She picked out a yellow rubber whale, squeaking it. “Each of the toys in here makes a different sound.”
The rubber fish squeaked again as Lissie thrust its tail into her mouth.
“What Dr. Weller’s going to do is play sounds on the various speakers. If Lissie reacts, we reward her by letting my monkey beat his drum.”
The speaker behind them gave a high, nearly inaudible whine. Then the rushing roar of surf
was all around them. A horn honked stridently. A trumpet blared. Lissie didn’t react, the toy monkey remained immobile. The muscles of Joscelyn’s shoulders and back were strung so tightly that she worried the baby must sense it. “Here,” she said to Honora. “You hold her for a while.” Trucks passed through the cubicle, then jets, sirens wailed closer and louder, a jackhammer shuddered mightily. Honora’s oval face pulled into a grimacing wince.
Blessed silence.
“As you’ve noticed, we’re at the threshold of pain,” Carole said, pressing plugs into her ears. The bright eagerness was gone from her face. “Now you’ll pass it.”
A cannon blasted, then another. As the cannonade increased unendurably, Joscelyn’s eyes involuntarily squeezed shut. Forcing them open, she saw that Lissie, on Honora’s lap, had tilted her head fractionally as she continued to placidly mouth the whale.
Silence.
Dr. Weller wheezed as he stepped up into the room with them. His round white face was somber.
“Well?” Joscelyn demanded. “What did your stint at the console prove?”
“Mrs. Peck, we’ll talk later. For the next test Lissie must be sedated.”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“Nothing that hurts. For the brain stem we prefer the child still, that’s all.”
“Brain stem?” Joscelyn snatched Lissie from Honora’s arms.
“It’s nothing ominous,” soothed the doctor’s fine voice. “We’ll attach three electrodes to measure the brain stimulation, then use the bone oscillator, here.” He touched behind Lissie’s ear, and she gave her lovely toothless smile. “The brain stem test bypasses the middle ear, which we already know is impaired.”
“So at least you did figure out something?”
“Mrs. Peck, it’s nearly one. Why don’t you and Mrs. Ivory relax, have a bit of lunch? Come back in a couple of hours. Then we’ll talk.”
And Carole said, “There’s a pretty good sandwich counter downstairs in the building.”
They ordered an egg-and-pecan salad on whole wheat to split, but neither bit into her overfilled half. In less than fifteen minutes they were back in the Weller Clinic’s waiting room.
Two older children with hearing aids were reading, and a pretty teenager wrote in her looseleaf notebook. A little boy, maybe three, sat with his mother near the toy bin. Picking out a ball, he made a strange, high-pitched squeak.
The young mother beamed at him. “Yes, Billy, it’s a ball,” she said, enunciating carefully. “A big red ball.”
The child repeated the squeak. “Baa.”
Joscelyn’s bladder sent out an urgent signal, and she requested the key to the ladies’ room: it proved a false alarm. Honora, silent and pale, sat staring out at the opposite building. Joscelyn flipped through back issues of
The New Yorker
, not seeing the pages. By now her shoulders
were so tensed that her neck ached as if from a major whiplash injury.
After an endless two hours the reception nurse told them Dr. Weller was ready.
Next to Dr. Weller’s neat desk stood a Portacrib; Lissie slept on her side, angelic, exquisite.
A tiny, middle-aged Oriental woman in a white coat got to her feet. She was dwarfed by Dr. Weller. “This is my chief associate,” he introduced. “Dr. Bornstein.”
The physician bent her smoothly coiffed, graying head.
“Mrs. Peck.” Dr. Weller was looking at Joscelyn, his big white face expressionless. “Our testing can’t be entirely accurate because Lissie is so young. However, as you doubtless noticed, she paid very little attention to the loudest sounds. In the low frequencies, two-fifty to five hundred hertz, she has a profound hearing impairment—ninety decibels. And in the high frequencies—a thousand to four thousand—she has no measurable hearing.
“Now say it in English.” Joscelyn’s voice shook.
“Dr. Bornstein and I concur that your daughter was born with extensive damage in the eighth cranial nerves—I explained earlier those are the receptor mechanisms of the hearing apparatus.”
“She has nerve deafness, then,” Honora whispered.
“I’m very sorry,” Dr. Weller said.
Suddenly it happened. The dark medical
library, the prestigious windows, the diagrams of grotesquely outsize ears lurched and spun. Suite 2017 was toppling into Fifty-third Street, the blue couch sinking like a fast elevator, her stomach plummeting.
Earthquake! My God, New York’s been hit by a ten on the Richter Scale. Earthquake.
Into her mind swam the precautions every Californian learns: get away from windows, find a doorway with a strong supporting beam. But if the earth was heaving, why were the others calmly watching her as if expecting her to speak?
Honora blew her nose. “What can we do?”
“It’s not too soon to start training,” Dr. Weller said.
“Most major hospitals have a hearing center, with training and rehabilitation,” Dr. Bornstein added. “Mrs. Peck, in Los Angeles you have the John Tracy Clinic. They work with children from infancy to school age, educating the parents and offering them counseling—a hearing-impaired child strains family relationships.”
The room continued falling. Joscelyn could scarcely keep her grasp on the blue tweed pillows.
“Why do you keep acting as if she’s deaf?” inquired someone. The sound waves must not be vibrating properly, for the words were uttered at least a mile from this quaking, shaking office.
“I’m sorry,” Dr. Weller’s rotund form bounced like a huge ball. “News like this is difficult to accept, Mrs. Peck. But your
daughter is a beautiful, intelligent child, and with the right training, patience, devotion and love, she’ll grow into a beautiful, intelligent woman.”
“She is not deaf,” said the voice, yet farther away.
“When parents find out, they’re usually in shock.” Dr. Weller’s wondrous voice was rich with compassion.
“Here, Joss, you better lie down on the couch.”
“She is not . . .”
For the first time in her life, Joscelyn fainted.
* * *
Dr. Weller arranged for other opinions. The otolaryngological departments of Baby’s Hospital and Beth Israel concurred with his prognosis.
When the limousine left Beth Israel it was dark. Neither woman spoke. In the Waldorf Tower suite, Joscelyn bathed Lissie, crooning as she put her down in the hotel crib while Honora ordered from room service.
Joscelyn took her place opposite her sister in the full-sized dining room.
“Joss,” Honora said, “you’re leaving tomorrow morning, so tonight we really better make some plans.”
Joscelyn pushed at the mealy whiteness of her baked potato. “Doctors! They make me sick! At Berkeley the bright guys were never premed, just the grinds.”
“You can’t stay in Lalarhein.”
“One overweight jerk gives a diagnosis and
the others fall in line, backing him up. That’s called professional courtesy.”