Befriend

LaVieEnRose

“I might take an art class,” Evan said, checking the expiration date on a bottle of ketchup.

I threw away two heads of lettuce that were past their prime. Cleaning out the refrigerator: the kind of exciting stuff the two of us get into when Justin's away at his studio all day. Without someone to smother we both resort to coddling the house instead. “Of all the classes you could take. An art class?”

“It seemed relevant to my career. Did you know I work in an art department?”

“Yes, a job you got by being a brilliant artist.”

“I'm no Justin.”

He wasn't, but that's not really a fair place to set the bar for anyone. “You're great.”

“One can always improve.”

We were just talking out loud because my hands were full, but honestly, it's nice to have a break and get to speak English every once in a while. Pretty much my entire social life is Deaf at this point, and I don't mind it, but it is an extra bit of effort, a part of you that never gets to fully relax. And Evan's such a good fucking lipreader and so comfortable speaking that it's honestly all the same to him, so why not take advantage of Justin being out of the house? I obviously adore sign language, but sometimes...God bless Evan's abusive oral upbringing, all hail English.

The differences in Evan and Justin's hearing never fail to fascinate me, I can't help it. I was so used to Justin, who hears absolutely nothing and lipreads like a newborn, that getting adjusted to Evan, who with his aids and his lipreading can catch just about everything you're saying if you're facing him and the room is quiet, was a completely new kettle of fish, or whatever the fuck. Justin gets lost so easily, between the Deafness and the holes in his brain, and it's hard to watch, and it's also easy for people who don't know him well not to see what a fucking genius he is, but God, he has thoughts and ideas and suggestions for fucking everything and I can't remember the last time I didn't run a campaign idea by him or get him to tweak something the art department churns out before it runs. Whereas Evan displays competence so goddamn perfectly that I can be two minutes into a monologue before I remember he doesn't have the language foundation to really grasp stuff like figurative language, metaphor, wordplay, in either ASL or English.

Anyway. It's just different.

So I said, “Take an English class. Work on your writing.” I know the kid like the back of my hand and sometimes I stare at emails from him wondering what in God's name they're supposed to mean.

He shook his head. “I'd be embarrassed.”

“Don't be stupid.”

“See, it's starting already.”

My phone started ringing, and I dug it out of my pocket and checked the screen. An immensely unflattering picture of Justin. I waved my hand at Evan. “Our keeper calls.”

“Our what now?”

Justin.

“Ask him if he wants me to keep this roast beef.”

I hit answer and propped the phone up on the counter. Justin was walking home from the subway, bundled up and breathless. Where’s your fucking coat? I said. All jokes aside, getting Justin and his newborn marsupial immune system to wear enough fucking clothes is a goddamn full-time job.

I gave it to someone.

You gave your coat to someone.

Well, lent it. I have a good reason!

Okay, let's hear a good reason for giving away your coat when it's twenty-five degrees outside.

How about I just saved someone’s life . Hi Evan!

I put down the orange I was holding. You did what the fuck?

Okay, so I’m at Queensboro plaza waiting for the transfer, and there’s this girl next to me, maybe like Evan’s age, pretty, just like messing with her phone or whatever, and the next thing you know...seizure!

You had a seizure? Evan and I said together.

God, no, pay attention. She did. Right there on the subway platform. She could have fallen onto the train tracks if I wasn't there!

Jesus, I said. That's been a shared nightmare of Justin and mine and hell, probably Evan's.

I grabbed her and got her on her side and like...I don't even remember it, it happened so fast. I was like made of adrenaline.

How long did it last? Evan said.

Maybe thirty seconds? It wasn't a super bad one, I don't think. Brian probably wouldn't even have noticed.

I do love ignoring seizures, I said. The other night he had one when I was trying to sleep and I put a pillow over my head, which was nicer than where I wanted to put it.

Justin said, So I stayed with her until the ambulance came, and she was shivering so I gave her my coat. And I put my name and address in her phone so she can send it back, so see? I did not lose my coat.

You're still outside freezing your tits off, I bitched.

I'm fine.

You're going to get sick. Why didn't you fucking call me to pick you up?

Because I'm invincible! Justin says. I save girls from certain death!

I grabbed my keys. Where are you now?

Like two blocks away, he said, and I put the keys down. I'll be there in a second.

It was more than a second, but eventually Justin came through the door in a burst of cold air, blowing into his hands—because of course he didn't have gloves, either. Evan went over and wrapped him up in a hug and a blanket while I glared from the kitchen.

Your powers are useless, old man, Justin said to me.

Don't come crying to me when you're up all night coughing, I said.

He didn't come crying to me, obviously, but of course it kept me awake, which was not as much of a problem as the fact that it kept him awake, so that put me in a bad mood and I was mad at Justin and mad at the cold and mad at his fucking savior complex and mad at his fucking scarred lungs. Sue me, I'm protective over Justin's sleep. He has chronic pain which keeps him up enough and is worse when he isn't rested, and epilepsy itself has a ton to do with sleep. Sometimes he can't be roused for twenty hours, yeah, but other times it's been two days and he's barely closed his eyes to blink. He has seizures when he doesn't get enough sleep. I'm not a fan.

He was hard to rouse in the morning, headachy with his muscles locked up, bitching with his hands and his voice any time I tried to move him. I got him a bottle of water and some oatmeal because he’s deranged and actually likes it better when it’s cold and gluey and left them on the bedside table for him. I’d been stepping back a bit from work lately, because why the fuck not, we’re rich as sin and I have a sick husband I, despite the three hundred-dollar moisturizer, am not getting any younger, but I still needed to go into the office for a few hours. I checked on Evan—fine, sleeping in after he’d spent the night out with some of his hearing friends—and headed out.

The house was pretty quiet when I got back; Justin was sitting at his easel, drafting something out with pencil, and Evan was on the couch, half-watching something muted on the TV while he played with his phone. Silence is hard to come by with these two, so you savor it when you get it, and it was nice.

I was torn between starting something for dinner and yanking Justin away from his painting for a quick fuck in the bedroom when there was a soft knock on the door. Was probably a solicitor, since everyone who knows us knows to ring the bell. I signed door for the Deaf kids and hauled myself out of the arm chair and over to the door.

It was a girl, about Evan's age, tall, hair as blonde as Justin's but probably not natural. She was holding Justin's coat, so it didn't take me very long to put it together.

“I'm looking for Justin?” she said.

“He's here.” I waved for Justin's attention and turned back to the girl. “You're the—”

“The girl who did the impression of a drowning fish on the subway platform, yeah.”

“Can fish drown?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Justin does such impressions regularly, as I'm sure he told you.”

“I don't really remember much,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn't.”

“Everyone at the hospital knew him, though. Somehow word got around that Justin Taylor saved me and all the nurses wanted my autograph.”

“Yeah, they all have a crush on him,” I said, just as Justin finally came to the door. He smiled at her and mouthed, 'thank you,' when she handed him the coat back.

How are you feeling? Justin said, with a glance to me so I'd know to interpret.

The girl looked at me initially but once I nodded her back to Justin, she faced him while she spoke. “Still kind of crappy. They ran all these tests but they still don't know why it happened, or if it's going to happen again.” Shit. I 'd just assumed this girl was an experienced epileptic, for some reason. I hadn't thought that it was her first one. That's got to be so fucking scary.

No wonder you track down the guy who saved you instead of sticking his jacket in the mail.

I could tell Justin was going through the same thought process, and he stepped back from the door to give her room to come in. She stepped inside and slipped out of her boots, and I got Evan's attention and sim-commed, “This is...” before I realized I had no idea what her name was.

“Sorry,” she said. “April.”

April, I fingerspelled to the boys, and I made the rest of the introductions while Justin took her coat. She looked nervous, and I tried to remember the last time we'd had a non-signer in the house. I wasn't sure it had ever happened. “Evan reads lips,” I said to her. “Justin does not.”

“Yeah...I remember that a little. He kind of ignored the paramedics and just talked to me.”

“He'll probably talk in a little while,” I said. “He's shy about his voice.” Justin was watching us, and I signed, Just talking about you, to him, kindly, and he smiled a little.

Drink? he said to April, a pretty intuitive sign.

“Um, water would be...” she said, looking at me, and I showed her the sign. Water. “Thank you?” So I showed her that one too. Justin smiled and went to get it, and April sat down on the couch next to Evan.

Evan said, She's the girl who had the seizure?

Yeah.

“Is that the sign for it?” April said. Another intuitive one, but still, sharp of her to catch an individual sign without context. “Seizure?”

Evan demonstrated it.

Seizure, she said. “I guess I should learn that one.”

Justin came back with glasses of water and Evan made room on the couch between him and April, and when April started to talk to Justin and then stopped herself, looking a little lost in that way hearing people sometimes do, Justin smiled a little and held up a finger and then pulled his phone out of his pocket and presumably opened up his speech to text app he's a big fan of.

April said, “So...this has happened to you too?”

Justin read it off his phone, then nodded and started typing.

I waved to Evan and said, Let's leave them alone for a while.

Justin alone with a hearing person?

He'll let us know if he needs us. Let them talk seizure stuff.

So Evan and I made ourselves busy fixing something for lunch and cleaning up a bit and generally flirting around and pretending not to keep an eye on Justin with a hearing person. It’s not that we were hovering, because Justin can absolutely handle himself with hearing people; he just doesn’t like it, and yeah, I’m a little sensitive about Justin being in situations he doesn’t like when he's home and safe and should be experiencing whatever meager amount of comfort the world offers him.

But Justin was holding his own. He was talking a little, and laughing a lot, and April was a little teary—Justin always is the day after a bad seizure too—but laughing along with him, and typing question after question into his phone. Justin was patient, open, dazzling. I mean, it's Justin. If a stranger didn't fall immediately in love with him I'd worry we'd slipped into an alternate reality. By the time half an hour passed, they'd stopped talking medical stuff and moved straight into a ASL lesson. I dropped by with some snacks and a pill for Justin because I could tell his head was bothering him, and Justin sim-commed, You should have Brian teach you, not me.

You learned at the same time I did, I sim-commed back.

Yeah, but you didn't have Deaf friends back then. You weren't immersed in it. God help me, his Rs.

That's true.

Though, from the looks of things, having a Deaf friend wasn't going to be a problem for April.

**

Sure enough, the next time we all gathered at the bar in Sunnyside, April came. Gwen was home with Jane, but everyone else was there, and Emily was getting riotously drunk to celebrate having the night off from parenting, so that was pretty fun. April gravitated towards Molly and Daphne, who sim-commed for her, and I tried to too but kept forgetting. God, Justin has me well-trained.

Once you get good at signing, you won't want to sim-comm, Daphne told her. Makes getting the grammar right so much harder.

“I don't think I'm ever going to get good,” April said.

It takes time, Daphne said. A lot of time.

April and I had a moment alone at the pool tables, when everyone else was either up at the bar or back at the table. “Do you think I'm being ridiculous?” she said. “Trying to get to know him when I don't even speak his language?”

“I'm a little biased on this one,” I said, with a wave of the ol' wedding ring.

“I guess you did learn a whole new language for him.”

I lined up a shot. “I did indeed.”

“He told me the whole story, how he started losing his hearing and everything. Typed it all out. He was younger than I am now, which like...I don't know how you deal with that.”

“I don't either.”

“I can't even deal with a seizure,” she said, and this shadow passed over her face, and it kind of struck me, I don't know, what a monumental experience this was for her. I didn't know her well, but from what I'd heard it sounded like she'd had a fairly cushy life, and then all of a sudden she has this near death experience and no one can tell her why or if it's going to happen again.

Justin has me used to it, but sometimes I remember that most people don't have to worry about losing control like that. Most people are like me, even if in my little life it sometimes feels like being healthy is the anomaly.

“He hates them too,” I said. “If it's any consolation. He has them all the time and he hates them. I don't think you can get over being overwhelmed by seizures. They're overwhelming by definition.”

She rubbed her forehead. “I'm so freaked out by the complications he's had from the meds.”

“That's not typical. You don't have to worry about that.”

“I know. They don't even have me on anything right now. They said not unless it happens again.” She looked over at the table, where everyone was talking. “God. I am never going to understand that.”

“I can't understand that,” I said. Between the distance and Emily's drunken signing and everyone interrupting each other, I couldn't catch anything.

“I don't know if that's comforting or demoralizing.”

I took a shot and knocked the 9-ball into the corner. “I choose comforting.”

“Does it really just like...click at some point?” she said. “I mean, I know I'm miles away from that, I know like four signs. But it's like...I only know one language. I took Spanish in school but like, I don't speak it.”

“There's not really one time that it clicks,” I said. “It's more like...it clicks and unclicks over and over.” Back when I was learning I'd have these days where I really felt, if you'll excuse the timely metaphor, that I was behind the 8-ball, and I was really making progress, back when Justin and I were figuring out it together and we'd manage a real conversation about what we wanted for dinner or what time we were going out, just basic shit like that, and God, we felt like superheros. I still remember the grin he'd get when he realized we'd understood each other, this slow, incredible thing that I wasn't seeing often enough in that time because he was so fucking scared of what was happening. But there's something magical about being able to communicate. Especially about being able to communicate with Justin.

But there were other times, fuck, there still are, when I see two Deaf people talking to each other or I try to jump in in the middle of a conversation without having context, that I feel like I'm back in ASL I again, learning how to sign my goddamn name. It doesn't bother me as much as it used to, but that's through sheer force of will and sheer force of will alone. It doesn't stop nagging when there's a part of Justin that you can't access. That's that magic again.

“He doesn't usually bother with hearing people,” I said. “He hasn't made a new hearing friend in...I don't think he's ever made a hearing friend.”

She squirmed a little, and I was reminded of how young she was. “So why me?”

I'd thought about it, obviously, why her, and I didn't think it was because she was brave or resilient or clearly tenacious as all hell, though all those things seemed to be true. And I can't say it didn't irritate me a little at first, because...God, I'm always trying to convince Justin to spend half a fucking hour at a party getting to know some clients and it's like pulling teeth, and now here he was willingly going out with someone who couldn't talk to him.

But I knew why. Of course I knew why.

“You're his family,” I said. “You're in the seizure network.”

Justin hates hearing people, but not as much as he loves sick people.

“God, you are driving me crazy with that 8-ball,” she said. “Let me do it.”

“All right.”

**

We headed out not too long after that because I could tell Justin was starting to fade. April signed Good night pretty beautifully which got everyone very excited, and Evan and Justin and I traded embarrassing stories about mistakes we made when we were learning to sign all the way back to the apartment. The fact that Evan taught himself with hardly any exposure still blows my mind. The kid is so fucking smart and he has no idea.

Justin we already knew was brilliant, so no surprises there.

I gave the kids their meds and kissed them goodnight and all my other assorted duties, and then Justin and I retreated to have a shower and sex and lay together in bed making out for a while, so that was pleasant. Justin was really tired and it was making him cuddly and moany and pretty hot. I brushed his hair out of his eyes and kissed his forehead, and he smiled sleepily up at me.

You're such a fucking good person, I said.

He yawned. “It's annoying?”

Incredibly, I said, and he laughed and tucked his head into the crook of my neck.

I wasn't aware of falling asleep, but I definitely know when I woke up: when Justin punched me in the fucking face. Honestly I'm partially to blame. I sleep on his right, and that's the side that seizes.

I sat up a little, rubbing my nose, and turned him onto his side and pulled him carefully into my chest. I just rode his waves for a while, my hand on the back of his head to keep it from slamming against my shoulder. It was just a partial complex seizure, which sometimes I'll just let him have on his own, but it was a violent one, and it went on for a while. He moaned when it was over, and rolled over onto his stomach, not fully awake. I rubbed his back up and down and kissed the nape of his neck. Eventually he turned back over and faced me.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he mouthed back, and I smiled a little and ran a finger down his cheek. “Just trying to sleep,” he said, so fucking sadly.

I know. Any minute now.

He blinked slowly.

Come here. I guided him into me, moving him so fucking carefully because I knew his muscles had to be killing him after that. I watched him for signs of pain as I put my leg onto him, and when he reacted with a nuzzle into my chest I pulled him closer, burying my nose in his hair, smelling his sweat and his shampoo.

“Love you,” he mumbled.

You're okay, I signed on his chest, and we fell asleep like that.

It's just normal for us. That's just something that happens.

**

A couple weeks later, April was over again, watching a movie with Justin and writing notes back and forth, laughing and shoveling down handfuls of popcorn, kid stuff. She showed off her sign language and it was clear she'd been studying, so that was sweet of her, and Justin just beamed. So everything was fine, and then I was up in the office getting some work done while Evan did a grocery store run, and Justin's voice cut through the air like a knife.

“BRIAN!”

So I ran downstairs, obviously, thinking he was hurt or something, but no, he was on his knees next to the couch, and April was on the floor in front of him, seizing badly.

God. She'd so hoped it was just the one.

Okay, I said. Get her on her side...yeah, like that. It was fucking surreal, talking Justin through how to manage a seizure. We'd been through so many of them that it seemed ridiculous that he didn't know exactly what to do. But why would he have ever thought to learn? Start a timer on your phone, okay? I held April in place and unzipped her hoodie so she wouldn't choke herself with it. “You're okay,” I told her. “It's going to be over soon.”

“Brian.” Justin said. “Her lips are turning blue.”

That happens sometimes. It's okay. You have the timer?

He nodded.

We just wait, then. It won't be long.

And it wasn't, though it was a little past when I would have liked, but nothing that meant I needed to call an ambulance for her, which I knew would be a miserable experience for everyone involved.. She could rest for a little while.

Why isn't she waking up? Justin said.

It takes a while after big ones like that. Good to just let her rest. Getting her up onto the couch seemed difficult when she was basically dead weight, so Justin got a pillow and a blanket and we set up a makeshift bed around her on the floor.

Use your inhaler, I told Justin.

I'm okay.

You sound like shit. Sit down.

Justin sat on the couch and pulled his legs up, watching her.

I'm going to get you some water, I said. And I'm going to call your neurologist and see if he can see her this week. I don't want her going to some fucking makeshift doctor she finds on the damn internet.

“Yeah,” Justin said absently.

I went into the kitchen, more to just give him a minute than anything, and dialed the phone and made the call and did all the things and the whole time I was just so fucking mad. I was angry that Justin had to see that. That now he knew what it was like. There are so few goddamn things I've managed to protect him from and my whole goddamn life is watching each remaining one get ripped away. And what the fuck happens at the end of that? What's the goddamn point of me once Justin has been hurt every way he can be, once I didn't stop it?

I'm just saying I have a job, here.

I came out of the kitchen and handed Justin a glass of water. You okay? I said.

I'm so sorry.

I couldn't fucking tolerate that, so I just ran my hand down my face and didn't say anything.

“Is it always that bad?” he said.

No.

“God, I can't believe you have to fucking do that all the time.”

Sunshine, that is not what you should be taking away from seeing that.

He took a shaky breath and looked down on the floor.

It's what I have to take away, he said.

It's so easy to forget how much this all scares him. God, he acts so fucking brave all the time. Every once in a while I'll catch him on his laptop researching complications, death rates, bad outcomes, and he'll have the same look on his face he had now, and I'll remember.

So what the fuck is the point of me, if I can't keep him from being scared.

You saw me handle it, I said. I know what I'm doing.

You shouldn't have to.

I don't mind.

He rubbed his hand over his mouth. Is she in pain? he said, and my heart just goddamn broke.

Yeah, she is.

I don't remember, he said.

I know. Come here.

I pulled him up into my arms and just held him for a little while, and Justin tucked his forehead against my chest and took some deep breaths. I ran my hand up and down his back and listened to him wheeze.

“What if you weren't here?” he said eventually, and I knew what he was really asking.

I tilted his chin up with one finger.

I'll always be here, I said.