Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 3 (R)

Chapter Three

Stupid jerk.  

Amber dropped down to tug on her canvas shoes and gathered her sunflower seeds before she spilled more.  Stupid, asinine jerk!  She still could not believe that man!  He had grabbed her, and years of self-defense classes took over, reminding herself why she ever signed up for those classes back in high school.  She’d never had to put down a full grown man, aside from her instructors, so when she laid Lincoln Martin flat in the dirt and jabbed his throat with her foot, she’d been just as surprised at he had been.  

Then the jerk did it again!  Either he really was a stupid cowboy or he was drunker than they both imagined.  And it really didn’t matter which was true.  Amber refused to be a helpless victim again.  Just because she’d been deaf since a little girl and guys thought she might be easy pickings, Amber Hayes was no shrinking violet.  This quiet, little hellion fought back, dammit.  Back in high school, the asinine jerks there didn’t realize she could read their lips when they made fun of her and degraded her -- and, oh! since the lips moved symmetrically when a person talked, she could still decipher what the assholes were saying when they stood behind her and she could see their reflection in the gymnasium windows...

Okay...she’d be fair.  Lincoln wasn’t anything like the boys from school.  He actually had the grace to attempt to apologize, and not once did he sneak his hand under her skirt.  He had the opportunity, but he didn’t.  And she won’t give him another chance to, either.  

Amber stopped to breathe calmly and get a hold of herself.  That time in high school had been the only year she attended a public school.  She’d been sixteen and convinced her parents to let her mainstream...a chore that took her nearly two years to accomplish.  It still rankled her that her parents had been right about the experience.  Halfway into the second semester, some guys from the basketball team jumped her while she stayed late after school to finish decorating for the Spring Fling dance.  

Luckily, Chloe and her friends showed up before much more than some indecent groping and jeering could take place.  Amber still couldn’t believe Chloe punched the point guard in the nose, breaking the bulbous sucker.  By the next Monday, both sisters were enrolled in a self-defense class, and the basketball players received a mere slap on the wrist and an extra afternoon of drills.  They were on their way to the State Championship that year, you know.  It would have been foolish to suspend them because the deaf chick said they were harassing her.

She never went back to school after that.  Chloe had been a senior and one of the four Valedictorians, so she stayed to graduate, but she’d been furious with the school from that moment on because of the way it handled the episode...even to the point of giving the athletic department a bitching during her graduation speech in front of two thousand people.  What were they going to do?  Kick her out of school?  Amber had never been more proud to be Chloe’s sister.

She’d been trying to live up to Chloe’s standards ever since.  Of all their family, the two sisters were tighter than a girdle on a minister’s wife.  If her sister knew where she was right now, and who she’d just been with -- the drunken Best Man -- what would she think?  Amber hated disappointing Chloe, but sometimes, she just had to go exploring...you know?

Amber picked up the book that Lincoln threw at her earlier and examined it.  The binding ripped when he snatched out of her hands.  He probably did even realize it.  So damn worried about her reading it.  A stupid, stingy jerk.  Yeah, she’d put it back where she got it from.  His bathroom.  He’d be lucky if she didn’t flush it down the toilet.

Amber sighed.  No, she wouldn’t do that.  She loved books too much to mistreat them.  It was one thing for them to be careworn, but to be damaged...she’d have to repair it before she returned it.  It was only fair.  It had been mostly her fault anyway.  Yes, she should have asked before she borrowed it.  

Tucking it into her bag, she stood up and smoothed the dirt from her skirt.  The horse that had accompanied Lincoln down here waited until she started up the hill, following her...doubtlessly to make sure she actually left.  'Go away,' she signed to it.  It flared its nostrils and stamped a hoof, but didn’t go away.  Instead, it inched forward, prodding her along, and she got a bit irritated at being treated like a wayward steer away from a cattle herd.

Pivoting on her heel, she prissed back to the stable.  Chloe had returned with a still-screaming Nate, and Amber noticed that Daniel was nowhere to be seen.  Poor Chloe.  She looked so tired these days.  That baby was wearing her thin.  Amber saw the dark circles under her sister’s eyes and the frustration on her face as she tried to soothe Nate.  And guilt swamped her.  She should have been helping...since Daniel didn’t seem inclined to.

'He didn’t eat?' she signed to Chloe.  Chloe shook her head, and Amber pursed her lips with shared frustration.  'Where’s Daniel?'

“I don’t know,” Chloe sighed tiredly, not bothering to make the signs.  Nate’s little mouth opened wide as another bellow emitted.  People were beginning to stare at Chloe, and Amber didn’t like the looks on their faces.  They thought Chloe was an awful mother, which was the furthest thing from the truth.  Chloe was the best mother in the world.  She just got unlucky with Nate.  The baby obviously had some issues, but there wasn’t much anyone could do since he was so young.

Amber felt her neck prickle.  She glanced over her shoulder and saw the stupid cowboy staring at her.  And Sally, and Wil...and Eve, Emma, and Sage -- all friends of Chloe’s, but Amber didn’t really know any of them.  However, it was Lincoln Martin’s eyes that held her.  They had been talking about her -- it was that obvious -- but as soon as she turned, they shut up.  Wise of them.

Amber faced her sister again. ' Want me to take him for a while?'

Chloe’s eyes brightened.  “Would you?”

Amber smiled.  'His cries don’t bother me.'

Now Chloe’s eyes darkened with her own brand of guilt.  “Oh, Amber,” she spoke, “I wish they did.”

Amber really didn’t want to have another conversation about the regret her family carried over her deafness.  'But they don’t,' she affirmed, flicking her fingers and thumb out to make the signs.

“Thank you,” Chloe expressed and handed over Nate.  Amber held him close to her chest and hummed, making her body vibrate, a technique she learned weeks ago to soothe the cranky boy.  Nate seemed to calm a little, but Amber wanted an excuse to get away from Lincoln’s eyes on the back of her head, so she walked out into the sunshine with her nephew.  

She circled the stable and house twice, finally spotting Daniel talking to some other men out by the cars and drinking beer.  Amber hoped Chloe was rested enough by the time they left for her to drive back to the hotel.  Amber wanted to march over there and thrust the baby into his father’s arms, and give Daniel a bitching about abandoning his wife and child when they both needed him.  Too bad he never learned much sign language.  What she had to say to him went beyond her speaking abilities right now.

Amber admitted that she had never been fully convinced that Daniel was the right man for her sister.  He was smart and good-looking, but sometimes it seemed he only wanted his family when they were perfect and agreeable.  She stayed with Chloe and Daniel right after Nate had been born to help out, especially since the crying and noise obviously didn’t get to her, but now that she found a job and an apartment up here in Kansas City, Chloe and Daniel would have to deal with the difficulties of a colicky baby on their own.  

Chloe had it in her to meet her son’s needs, but she couldn’t do it alone.  And Daniel spent a lot of time at work lately, coming home late, working weekends.  Some nights, he didn’t get back to his wife and son until they were both sound asleep, exhausted after a long day of diaper changes, fighting the breastfeeding, and crying.

Amber hoped that if she ever had a child one day, she’d never have to deal with a husband like Daniel.  She would have throttled him by now, if he’d been hers.  Then again, if all men were like Daniel and Lincoln Martin, she’d stay single for the rest of her life.

Lincoln Martin.  Amber’s body hummed on its own accord.  Gracious, the man was agreeable to look at, but he made her so...so...mad.  And she really didn’t know him all that well.  It was almost like he was a grown man acting like a spoiled child who’d been grounded for the rest of his life.  Then!...Then, he had the nerve to call her Sugar and say she only had to ask to get him on his back.  Just what kind of girl did he think she was anyway?

The problem really was that even if she did ever get him -- or any man -- on his back, she wouldn’t know what to do with him.  Her sexual experience was pretty much limited to some experimental kissing during junior high, the harassment in high school, and one guy in college who was very nice to her...right up until she refused sleep with him after only knowing her for three weeks.  She learned early on that the majority of the male population didn’t want the be burdened with a deaf girlfriend, much less a wife, and those that had shown interest were so freaking weird that Amber couldn’t make herself agree to a second date.  So at the age of twenty-eight, she was a virgin with only a handful of dates under her belt.  And she could never date one of her own kind.  Though that’s what many from the deaf and blind community did.  Hooked up with someone like themselves.  To Amber, it had been like dating her brothers.  She had too much in common with them.  

She had nothing in common with Lincoln Martin, other than a liking for Gothic literature.  So, why was she so attracted to him?  Then there was the age thing...not that she minded so much about that, but other people -- Chloe in particular -- would find it a bit odd.  And why in the world was she even worried about it?  After today, she’d never see the man again.  If it weren’t for the odd flip of fate that she decided to move up here on the same weekend as the wedding, she wouldn’t know him now either.  Unless, he ever went to the library.

Nah, she thought.  Even if he did read an unusual assortment of writings and literature, he didn’t seem like the type of man who visited a public library on regular occasion.  He was more likely to grab something off the check out stand at the feed store than spend hours browsing old paperbacks on metal shelving in fluorescent lighting.   It still seemed odd to her that he dog-eared “The Intoxicated Ghost” by Arlo Bates.

Oh, wait...maybe not.  Actually, that story seemed quite fitting for Lincoln Martin.  Amber smiled, recalling how much the ghost and Lincoln had in common.  **(see footnote)

She loved all kinds of literature.  She devoured stories and novels like most women devoured cheesecake and hot fudge sundaes.  Which was why she chose degrees in Library Science and Literary Studies.  To be locked down in a basement with dusty tomes and rows and rows of shelves full of literature, inhaling the unique aroma of books piled together and reading until her eyeballs ached...ah, heaven.  She smiled for herself now, picturing her new job already.  Unpacking boxes and crates of the written word, and running her fingers over rare volumes of old classics, and cataloguing all those books and manuscripts and personal diaries...

And the pay wasn’t too shabby either.  For the first time, she’d been able to afford her own place to live and pay her own bills and do her own shopping, maybe even get her own car in a few months.  And yes, the Deaf have the right to drive.  Right now, she’d have to rely on public transportation, but she lived close enough to the library to walk there every day, and she’d already scouted out the closest grocery stores and shopping malls.  She didn’t have any friends or family living nearby to call upon if she needed them, but she had no doubts that this was the right move for her.

Thinking back to the day she told her parents about how she applied for the job and accepted an interview, her smile tipped down into a solemn frown.  Mary and Joshua Hayes had not been eager to let their baby girl go, but...I’m twenty-eight, for cripes sake!  

She’d not graduated high school until nineteen because she started late due to her deafness.  It took her another year to convince her parents to let her go to college -- with the condition that she lived at home -- and then another seven to get her degrees.  All the while, she camped out in her childhood bedroom down the hall from her parents’ bedroom, scheming of the day when she’d eventually be free.  This day.  And of course, on this day, she met a man too old for her who she was oddly attracted to and wanted to strangle at the same time.

Why couldn’t she come across a nice, thirty-ish, normal male who made her smile and laugh instead of laughing at her?

How hard could that be...really?

*****

"The Intoxicated Ghost" by Arlo Bates

http://www.horrormasters.com/Text/a0519.pdf