The Deaf Heart, page 2
“Peeee-ple!” Orendorf knocked on the board again. “Definition, please?”
Flathead hesitantly put his hand up.
“Looks like VD to me,” said Flathead. The class had been studying venereal diseases over the past week, and many of the words accompanied by medical photographs were long and scientific-looking, like the ones now on the board.
“SY-PHI-LIS!” said Orendorf, as if he were selling popcorn. “The poor gentleman whose heart is in that jar keeled over from syphilis. Ve-ne-rrrreal di-seassse!” His lips trembled. “That’s right, ladies and germs … from that dirty, three-letter word …”
He turned his chalk sideways and wrote on the board in fat letters: “S E X.”
“Let that be a lesson to the male of the species in this room who may be thinking about doing some hanky-panky in the woods with a loved one. Your heart might just blow up to twice its size, seize itself, and go blllrrrrtttth,” said Orendorf with a raspberry. To underscore his point, he grabbed a sheet of paper, squeezed it into a ball, and dropped it onto his desk.
Flathead squinted skeptically and glanced over at Max. Max kicked Redhead’s seat. When Redhead turned around, Max gestured with his index finger screwing in and out of his fist, then withdrew his finger and wagged a shaming “no-no.”
“Now, have you lads and lasses formulated in your nimble brains any intelligent questions for me yet?” Orendorf raised his eyebrows repeatedly in an effort to bait his students. What he didn’t realize was that his attempt was negated by his shivery lips.
Max raised his hand and cleared his throat. He swished saliva around in his mouth in preparation for his clearest enunciation, to minimize the sound of his deaf voice.
“If that was a normal heart,” said Max, pointing at the jar, “could you tell the sex of the person it came from?”
A few smirking heads turned his way. Max could tell Mr. Orendorf either didn’t know the answer or couldn’t understand him. Whenever that happened, one of Orendorf’s pockmarked cheeks would flutter a little, and he would rub his fingers over the deep acne scars, scars that made Max wonder just how rough his teacher’s teenage years had been.
June 8, 1981
My room, Photo House, RIT
Hi Guys!
I’M IN!!!!!! Come August, I’m heading for Glavx Galveston. The acceptance letter for the residency program arrived yesterday. Whew! Can you believe it??? Dr. Robb must’ve seen something in me. Went to the Red Creek last night to celebrate with my friend Roger. He couldn’t fully celebrate ’cuz he was bartending, but he was able to quickly quaff a few with me when the boss wasn’t looking. He also slipped me a copy of their secret recipe for making the chicken wing sauce.
The Creek has the best Buffalo chicken wings and artichokes in Rochester. Really crispy and spicy wings offset with a cool bleu cheese dip. But don’t call them Buffalo wings to anyone’s face around here -- they’re Rochester wings. I don’t call them that, though -- too confusing with the Rochester Red Wings, the Oriole’s AAA farm team. Speaking of the Red Wings, I’ve been to a couple of their games already. Cheap entertainment and a great place to take a date. Been keeping my eye out on this one ballplayer -- #5 -- who looks like an up-and-comer; hits a lot of homers and is a great infielder. His name is Calvin Ripken, Jr.
All is going well. The summer resident advisor job has been a piece of cake. It’s really nice not to have to worry about paying room and board for two months. Been doing a lot of swimming, and playing tennis. Trying to do laps to build up stamina. It’s hard and frustrating, but I know it’s good for me.
I met up with Reuben Zagruder, the other biomed photo student who got selected for the residency. I only knew him superficially. We discussed a few things about Galveston, and agreed to share a place down there to save money. We definitely want to live on the beach. He seems like a super nice guy. He plays tennis too! I have a hunch we’ll get along well. He invited me to visit him at his parents’ in NYC later in July. Will join you for Family Week at the beach in Ocean City in mid-August, and then plan to leave for Texas from Baltimore on August 29th. Reuben volunteered to phone Dr. Robb to make arrangements to stay with him till we get on our feet. People who’ve been through the program before have told Reuben that Robb is a very hospitalble person. Guess we’ve got the right man!
It was great having you up here for graduation last month. Thanks for forwarding the graduation cards, gifts, and people’s mailing addresses. I’ve got most of the thank-you cards all written out. Hope to get them out soon before the post office does something ridiculous, like go on strike or something.
Love ya, Mmmmmmax
Every Man Must Fall
The ER When called to the emergency room, you will most likely get one of the following cases to photograph: rape, child abuse, domestic violence, or police brutality. You MUST shoot the injured areas and the face in the same photo. When shooting, vary the flash angle to reveal the bumps, bruises, and cuts. Be sure to shoot lots of pictures—it would be disastrous to under-shoot when it comes to medical-legal situations. Each slide must be hand-labeled with your signature and date on the back in case you get called to court to testify that you were the photographer on the case. Hand-deliver the photos to the requesting physician and have him sign your log to show proof that the images were delivered. NEVER give the photos to a lawyer, a patient, or a police officer; they must ask the physician for copies.
When Max was told what the announcement over Dulaney High’s public address system was all about—that his friend, Billy Hendricks, had drowned in the Loch Raven Reservoir—all he could do was sit there and stare at the wooden speaker above the door. How could such tragic news simply spill invisibly through the speaker’s fabric screen? In Max’s world, all information had to come to him visually. Most of his classmates and teachers had never understood that.
Minutes before Max learned of the tragedy, the sun was shining bright and cheerful rays into the classroom. Morning announcements went on dreadfully long, and to him they sounded like an alley dog barking incessantly. Since he couldn’t lipread dogs and knew dogs couldn’t enunciate anything better than an “arf,” “yap,” or “rowf,” Max ignored the morning cacophony and killed time playing tic-tac-toe tournaments with Flathead.
Flathead used condoms with see-through packages for Os, while Max put down twisted paper clips for Xs. The tourney winner would get a six-pack of beer. Flathead was about to drop an O to win a game when he suddenly stopped midway, pressing the condom between his fingers. He looked up at the doorway. Max could tell he was listening to the speaker by the way he tilted his head. Max imagined that if Flathead turned at the proper angle, a stream of words would enter cleanly into his ear, like water through a funnel. Max envied him for getting information so easily.
Flathead put the condom down and bowed his head. Max saw students behind him talking rapidly to each other. Others sat quietly, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. A few of the girls began to weep. One girl got up and rushed out of the classroom. Max looked over to Mr. Crumwell, his homeroom teacher, for some visual reference. Crumwell looked up toward the speaker, shook his head in disgust, mumbled something that looked like, “He asked for it,” and went back to grading papers. Somebody in the senior class must’ve gotten caught in the lavatory smoking pot and wasn’t going to be able to graduate—probably the star varsity pitcher or quarterback.
Max nudged Flathead’s skinny arm. Flathead looked up at Max, all sad-eyed, running his hand over his crew top, soothing himself. Max gave him a questioning gesture with an upward shake of his head: “What’s up?”
By now, Max knew that something more serious than a pot bust had happened. Flathead didn’t get emotional unless he won at tic-tac-toe or lined up a hot date for a mixer. He flipped the tic-tac-toe sheet over, grabbed the pencil, and wrote, “Billy Hendricks died.”
Max had to read it a few times. Flathead couldn’t spell to save his life, and Max wondered if he’d written an incomplete sentence, like, “Billy Hendricks did …”
To confirm the spelling, Max whispered, “Are you saying Billy Hendricks d-i-e-d?”
Mr. Crumwell and the students in the front of the class suddenly turned their heads to look at Max. He thought he had whispered.
Flathead took a deep breath. He scrawled the words, “drowned, lock ravin.”
It was then that Max took a good hard look at the loudspeaker with the coarse fabric covering, wishing that captions could come out of it during announcements. Perhaps no one else would think this was such a big deal, but Max wanted the right to get the news at the same time as everyone else, especially news concerning someone he cared about.
This was the first time an experience with death had affected Max. When one of the boys in his Cub Scout troop, a kid with asthma, had died, it had not shaken him. The kid was a snob. Only a year ahead of him in elementary school, the boy had always acted like he was more intelligent and talented than Max. Max had felt that the kid had seen him as retarded, and suspected it was because of his deafness. Max didn’t know why the kid thought he was such hot shit, because whenever the troop played baseball, the kid had to take a whiff from his inhaler thing between empty swings at the plate. And here was Max whiffling balls over the stone wall in left field, rounding the bases as easily as breathing in his sleep.
One October evening at home, Max had been helping his mother carve a pumpkin in preparation for a Scout meeting. She was the troop’s den mother. That night, she had received a phone call that brought tears to her eyes. He was told later that the call was about the asthmatic troop member. The kid simply couldn’t get enough oxygen, and had died the previous day. How could anyone not have enough air?, Max had thought at the time. There’s so much of it outside. Max asked his mother about this later, but she shrugged him off and dabbed her eyes again with a Kleenex. Now this one he really couldn’t figure out. The kid wasn’t her son.
Max approached Mr. Crumwell and asked to be excused. He was feeling all knotty inside and needed some air and water. Thankfully, there wasn’t anybody in the lavatory. He didn’t know what he was going to feel, but whatever it was, he wanted to feel it alone, without anyone scrutinizing his facial expressions or listening to sounds he might make. He clogged the drain with some paper towels and turned on the cold water to fill up the sink to the overflow level. He lowered his face into the water until numbness from the cold came over him. He tried to envision what Billy’s face must’ve looked like under water. Bloated? White? Smiling? Yawning, maybe?
Max couldn’t believe his buddy had been killed by a substance as weak and insubstantial as water—the very substance he worked with. Billy and Max worked side by side as dishwashers on Saturdays and Sundays at the White Coffee Pot, a family restaurant nestled between Read’s Drugstore and Hardware Fair in a strip shopping center. Billy was the kind of guy who would probably have grown up to be a Klan member or the president of the local chapter of the NRA. His blazing orange hair matched a hunter’s outdoor shirt, and a badly chipped front tooth gave him a smile that showed you something was missing. Although he was only seventeen years old, he had the belly of a beer drinker.
After six months of working with Max at the White Coffee Pot, Billy’d gotten fired. Max had found out why when Sylvia, the manager, called him out of the kitchen and had him sit across from her in one of the black Naugahyde booths. She stared at him a long time before saying a word. Max’s heart pounded in his throat. He mentally ran through a list of all the things that he shouldn’t have done in the back: dipping his fingers in the cornbread batter, taking home crab cakes, squirting the dishwasher hose at a waitress’s legs, neglecting to mop the floor on the late nights when he was tired and alone.
Over-enunciating a bit for his benefit, Sylvia asked, “Have you ever looked down into the women’s restroom?” When she said “down” her jaw dropped low enough for him to see that she had spent a lot of time in a dental office getting her teeth filled with gold.
“Looked down? I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ve never, ever looked down into the women’s restroom?”
“The only time I even look in there is when I empty the trash can and mop the floor after we close. What happened?”
“You honestly don’t know?” She put her index finger to her head to emphasize the word know in hopes that it might rouse his memory.
“No, ma’am,” he said, using his best speech. “I swear.” During this line of questioning, he leaned forward on the table and stroked his chin. He had read in a book about body language that this posture would show that he was seriously thinking about what the other person was saying. Max hid his other hand under the table, keeping it busy exploring hardened pieces of bubble gum, nuts and bolts, a carved-out hole … Then, finally, he grasped what she was asking.
Once Billy had invited him up into the rafters to take a peek into the ladies’ room. Billy said he’d cut out a small hole in the corner of the ceiling—small enough that no one in the restroom would notice it, but large enough that someone in the rafters could see everything that went on inside. Virtuously, Max had told Billy that he wasn’t interested. He’d tried to sound cool; he wasn’t desperate to see female anatomy. Actually, he’d made a note to himself to check it out one weekend when he was the sole dishwasher. The very next time he worked alone, an opportunity presented itself. The restaurant was closed and it was just him, Esther the cook, and a couple of waitresses cleaning up. Esther was about forty, with a pockmarked face and a body pushing against an extralarge cook’s uniform. She’d put down her grill scrub brush and apron, and headed for the back.
Max had quickly gone over to the walk-in refrigerator, pretending to stock up on “prep” foods for the next day. He’d timed opening the refrigerator to Esther’s opening the door to the ladies’ room. He’d closed the walk-in quietly, without going inside, and climbed up the ladder instead.
There were greasy handprints on the ceiling tiles where Billy had pushed them aside to gain access. Max’s heart beat fast, since he wouldn’t be able to hear it if one of the waitresses came by. He put his hand up to the same corner as Billy’s handprints, noticing that Billy’s hands were smaller than his. Amazing how ego could exaggerate one’s size.
Cartons of lettuce, tomatoes, and potatoes were down below the ladder waiting to be stored in the walk-in. Max looked once more at the ceiling tile, paused, and then came back down the ladder. Being deaf was enough of a stigma. Were he caught, he would never get another job in his entire life. He predicted the rumors that would spread about the incompetencies and sexual vagaries of the deaf.
Across from him in the booth, Sylvia lit up a filterless Pall Mall. She politely bent her head to spit out some loose tobacco strands in the direction of her lap. Each spphht was followed by a puff of smoke.
“Well, I just fired Mr. Hendricks for lewd behavior in the back.” She drew a heavy sigh and exhaled another column of smoke.
“Oh, really?” He stifled the urge to grab a napkin from the dispenser to tear apart and roll up into little balls to calm his nerves.
“I went in the back the other day to check out how many crab cakes we had left in the walk-in.”
“Y-yeah,” he answered, not sure if she was asking him a question.
“Well, I saw where that ladder was when I came out of the walk-in. Mr. Hendricks was standing on it, half up in the ceiling, looking down into the women’s restroom.”
“Oh, my God,” said Max, slapping his forehead to convey disapproval.
Sylvia had ended her interrogation the same way she had opened it, with an eagle-eyed stare. He was innocent, of course, but he was afraid that his knowledge of the hole would trip this human lie detector. Finally, Sylvia put out her cigarette in the white ashtray shaped like a coffee pot and slid out of the booth. Max grabbed a napkin and quickly rolled a couple of little paper balls between his fingertips before going back to the dishes.
At school, Billy and Max happened to be in the same photography class. Billy said he’d taken photography to get out of his art requirement. He couldn’t stand the idea of sitting on a stool for two hours slapping paint onto a canvas; that was for girls, and for boys who wanted to be girls.
Since there weren’t enough darkrooms to go around, they shared one. Billy picked Max for a partner because of Max’s premature baldness. To Billy’s mind, that meant Max was the most mature student around, meaning he wouldn’t give a flick about anything Billy said or did. Besides, Max was deaf and pretty much kept to himself. All Billy wanted to do was read Playboy magazines under the seedy illumination of a safelight.
Max had ended up doing Billy’s black-and-white prints. In exchange, Billy had worked at the restaurant in Max’s place any time he needed a Saturday or Sunday off to spend with his girlfriend, who lived an hour and a half away.
Having Billy fill in for him at the restaurant wasn’t the only reason why Max was willing to develop Billy’s prints. The fat sucker had a damn good eye for composition, and God only knew where he got it. Billy’s mother ran the Laundromat at the end of the shopping center. All she did was open the place, make sure nobody walked out with a washer or dryer, lock up at closing time, and then hurry home to watch Dialing for Dollars by the telephone. His father worked for the highway department filling potholes and striping yellow lines on the streets of Baltimore. He also ran a plow and salt truck during the winter, when it snowed. His parents definitely didn’t seem to carry any genes for a good eye in photographic composition.
In the most ordinary subjects, Billy would find something extraordinary—like, he’d shoot a rusty nail on a barn door. Big funky deal, right? In the developer bath, that 8x10 print came out looking like a Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange masterpiece from the Depression. Max’s pictures always ended up looking like clichés: the proverbial sunset smack-dab in the middle of a print with a seagull silhouetted against the sky.
Billy used his grandfather’s old Leica range finder, the kind where you looked through the viewfinder from the upper left corner of the camera. Max didn’t know how Billy did it, since range finders never recorded exactly what was seen through the glass. Whenever he shot with that kind of camera, Max’s pictures were always off-center.
