Miranda set the box with the sewing goods back on top of the piano and in doing so, she upset another opened box. The contents spilled out onto the floor—more than a dozen bound notebooks.
“Journals?” Miranda hesitated for a few moments, not sure whether she had the right to pry into Virginia’s private thoughts. When a sheet fell out of the book she was holding, she skimmed it and began to laugh. Recipes. Farrah would love this. Miranda opened the notebook at random, hoping to find ingredients and directions for tea cookies and kolaches.
Instead, she discovered a discourse regarding the fun side of politics in the 1990s including Miss Virginia’s opinion that Bill Clinton played one mean saxophone. Miranda grinned, dropped that notebook back into the box and picked up a journal that was obviously far older.
She sank to the floor after reading the first paragraph.
Miss Virginia hadn’t really been a miss. She’d been the missus to a gentleman named Benjamin Auttenberg.
May 15, 1960
I ran into Marta Rosenberg tonight at temple. We cried when we saw one another. I did not know she had moved to Birmingham, too. She said she has been attending the temple in the Mountain Brook area. It was so good yet so painful to see her. We were last together in Terezin on that day the Russian soldiers freed us all in 1945. Marta talked of our husbands’ deaths and we cried again. She wanted to know if I had remarried and I told her that Radinski was my maiden name. I don’t want anyone to know I was Benjamin Auttenberg’s widow because I don’t want to be hounded by art dealers trying to buy his paintings. I had enough of those vultures right after the war. I told Marta I simply want peace.
Miranda heard the sound of the delivery truck pulling up out front. She quickly grabbed a tissue from her purse and dabbed her eyes, then replaced the journal in its box.
“I miss you, Virginia. And I’m so very sorry—for everything.”
MIRANDA PAUSED IN the doorway of what would be her bedroom for the next month. She eyed the deliveryman who was currently kneeling on the floor with his back to her, putting the side slots of the bed frame into the footrest.
“Excuse me? Before you get the frame done and the box springs on, would you mind moving the frame a bit to the right? I need just a little more room to vacuum what passes for a rug on that side.”
Nothing. He ignored her and continued to click the side railing into place.
Miranda waited for a second, unsure if he was being rude or simply didn’t feel like responding. When he moved toward the left side of the footrest without shifting the bed an inch, she coughed, and then repeated her request with a bit more volume.
Nothing. Maybe he was listening to loud music on headphones and simply hadn’t heard her?
She was about to lean down and tap him on the shoulder when Henry—the head deliveryman from Rocky Ridge Furniture—did the same to her. She whirled around.
“He can’t hear you, Ms. Nolan.”
“Music lover with super teeny headphones set on serious blast mode?” she asked.
Henry shook his head. “Yes and no. He actually is a music lover—or I should say ‘was.’ He lost his hearing about two years ago when he was in Afghanistan.”
Miranda was stunned. She tried to imagine what life would be without music and began feeling hemmed in by the room itself. Would complete silence mean a world walled off from the rest of humanity? She shivered. “What happened?”
As if the man knew he was being discussed, he turned and stared—or glared—at Miranda. His shaggy brown hair fell over hazel eyes. His nose appeared to have seen a football, basketball or soccer ball bounce off it at some point in the past. The right side of his face bore numerous small scars, but they didn’t detract from the kind of quiet attractiveness worn so well by some of the movie stars of the forties and fifties—like Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper. Miranda could have sworn she’d seen him before... She was also aware of a tightening in her stomach. The same tension she always got just before going onstage. Excitement and anticipation and a touch of fear of the unknown.
Henry started to answer Miranda’s question but was interrupted by a voice that had a strange mix of richness and a volume that seemed slightly unsure. “Before Henry gets a chance to become melodramatic or bore you with a ten-minute monologue, let me simply state that a bomb went off in Kabul where I was working as an interpreter. I made it out with limbs intact. My eardrums were not so lucky. Nor were the numerous soldiers who never made it out at all. Satisfied?”
Miranda blinked, then calmly and slowly responded, “I suppose you read lips?”
He shook his head. “Not with any great skill. I’m much better with signing. Most deaf folks only read about fifty percent anyway. But your curious ‘what happened’ is easy to understand. It’s an obvious question—and you have fairly decent mouth action.” He paused, then continued with a sarcastic edge to his tone, “Most people slur and mumble, which leaves me without a clue as to what they’re yammering about. In all honesty, I don’t particularly care to know what the majority of the universe has to say. Life is better without the noise of ignorant people.”
Miranda flinched, unsure how to respond. “I’m really sorry.”
Apparently her mouth action was still “active” because he immediately snapped, “For what? You didn’t set the bomb.”
Miranda bit her lower lip then tilted her chin up. “‘I’m sorry’ wasn’t meant as a personal apology. Perhaps I should have said, ‘you have my sympathy for your trouble.’ Would that suit you better?”
He looked at her with some confusion. Apparently his lipreading skills weren’t up for snapping out a speedy response—or perhaps he simply wasn’t able to understand lengthier sentences.
Henry grinned at Miranda. “Get him, girl! He needs someone to stand up to him. Normally, people duck their heads and leave the room when Russ tries to shame them. Of course, it may help that he probably got about four words out of what you said. He’s right. His signing is far better than his lip reading.”
“Russ?” Images flickered through Miranda’s mind. She suddenly remembered seeing this man on a stage sitting at an electric keyboard.
Russ was still staring at her.
“It just hit me. You’re Russ Gerik—right? You were with a really cool band. Very eclectic musically. Columbiana Patchwork. I saw y’all at a festival over in Gadsden about ten years ago. You were on keyboards and vocal backup and you were amazing.” She turned to Henry. “Do you sign?”
“Since the cradle. Both my parents were deaf.” He translated her question and subsequent comments.
Russ’s puzzled stare shifted to a look of anger oddly mixed with apathy. “Yes. Russ Gerik. Columbiana Patchwork. It’s over. So is this—conversation.”
Miranda wanted to ask if his hearing loss was permanent. Did he have partial hearing? Was he getting any kind of medical treatment? For that matter, was he getting counseling for post-traumatic stress? But she wasn’t up for another confrontation, so she turned her back on Russ and addressed Henry. “Before I get told off again would you mind asking him to move the bed a few inches over? I’d prefer being able to vacuum back there before the dust bunnies start going on Easter egg hunts.”
Henry smiled. “No problem.” He immediately began signing Miranda’s request. Russ shifted the