past the baggage carousels and the rental car desks with their long lines and rides the escalator up to the departure floor. This time instead of going into the terminal he finds a place to sit.
He sits in a seat across from the Alaska Airlines counters for an hour and then gets thirsty. He walks to an airport shop to buy a Coca-Cola. The girl behind the counter is very nice and doesn’t charge him for the can of soda. She talks to him and he tells her he’s going to apply for a job. She seems very happy to hear that. He feels much better about this visit.
A few minutes after he returns to his seat he sees another girl. He nearly drops his can of Coca-Cola. She’s the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. She has long red hair and a round face and skin that makes him think of the pink roses in the garden at home. She’s wearing a blue sundress with white polka dots. As she passes he sees that her face is freckled and she has bright blue eyes.
Something else strikes him, and it’s the reason he doesn’t talk to her. There’s a look on her face, something at the corners of her lips and in the blue of her eyes. She’s like one of those Seattle days when you can’t tell if the sun is breaking through the clouds or the clouds are racing across the face of the sun. It throws him off, just enough to keep his butt planted in the seat when she walks by less that five feet from him and gets on the escalator to the ground floor. As she passes he smells vanilla, like the smell of the kitchen when his mother makes her famous chocolate chip cookies.
He doesn’t see her again for two weeks. But what a time! He becomes a full-time airport employee. His job is to watch the terminal. He gets lunch each day at the Red Robin and they never charge him because he’s an airport employee. He takes his lunch break when there’s a lull in activity and the wait staff and bar staff and managers talk with him. He never pays for his Coca-Cola breaks at the shop, either. He does the job for the love of the airport and goes home with a few dollars in his pocket every day. He’s very proud but he can’t tell his parents about the money he’s earning because they’d know he’s going back to the airport. He keeps the money in a shoebox under his bed. It feels a little adolescent but it will do for now.
The next time he sees her she’s wearing a pale yellow dress with blue butterflies on it. It’s about the most beautiful dress he’s ever seen. Her hair is tied in a ponytail and she’s carrying a red purse and pulling a black carry-on.
This time he stands up and introduces himself. She looks at him and smiles but doesn’t say anything. He asks if there’s anything he can do for her here at the airport, and she smiles but still doesn’t answer. Finally he goes for the simple approach and asks her how her day is going. This time her smile fades a little bit and she shrugs.
Alfred is confused. He knows enough about girls to know that if she didn’t want to talk to him she wouldn’t have stopped, much less smiled at him.
She puts her hands over her ears and shakes her head, then one hand over her mouth and shakes her head again.
He still doesn’t understand. She takes a small notepad out of her red purse. She writes something then tears off the page and hands it to him. The note says: Hi, my name is Mandy. I’m deaf. It’s nice to meet you. What’s your name?
Alfred is momentarily seized with panic. He can read just fine but writing is one of the things the doctors and specialists and therapists have said may or may not come back after the accident and settlement.
Mandy seems to sense his discomfort and gives him another note: It’s okay, I can read lips.
They talk that way for a few minutes and then Mandy gives Alfred a note that says: It’s been lovely talking with you, Alfred. My sister is waiting at the curb, I should go. She worries too much. She’s drawn a little face with crossed eyes and its tongue sticking out. He still has the note. He still has all of them.
Alfred tells her he hopes he’ll see her again. She smiles more widely than ever and nods her head. Then she is gone.
Alfred realizes now he has a new duty at his job. It’s a promotion, really. His job is to make sure Mandy is all right whenever she comes through the airport. She’s told him she travels twice a month to an ear specialist in Los Angeles, always at the same time and always with Alaska Airlines.
Sure enough, two weeks later he sees her in the terminal. It’s raining and her sister is stuck in traffic so they have more time to talk. They sit in the terminal while people hurry this way and that. She says the doctors in Los Angeles say they’ll be able to restore at least part of her hearing. It’s the first time she’s told him she wasn’t born deaf. It makes him feel closer to her, because he wasn’t born the way he is now either. He doesn’t tell her that, though. She’s so happy about her doctors’ news he mostly listens to her and watches her beautiful smile. Then her phone buzzes and she has to go meet her sister.
The next time they meet they go to lunch at the Red Robin. Mandy has told her sister to pick her up two hours later than usual so they can have a proper, unrushed conversation. The sun is shining and they can see Mt. Rainier out the window. The forest around the airport is so green the trees look like they’re made out of stained glass. The airplanes gleam as they taxi, takeoff, and land. Mandy and Alfred talk and talk and talk. Sometimes Mandy speaks but she’s ashamed of how she knows her voice sounds so mostly she writes even though Alfred tells her she has a beautiful voice, which she does. They discover they have a lot in common. Alfred tells her about the accident and settlement (it’s a short story because the details are so hazy). Mandy tells Alfred she lost her hearing seven years ago because of a rare degenerative condition. She says the doctors are doing amazing things and she knows she’ll get her ears back. She says it that way and Alfred laughs with her. Then the check comes and Mandy goes to meet her sister.
The fourth time they meet Mandy brings Alfred a present. It’s a box of sign language flash cards. At lunch at the Red Robin Alfred told her his parents say he’s always been good with languages (what he doesn’t remember is that before the accident and settlement he not only flew airplanes but he was a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics at the University of Washington and spoke five languages including Latin).
Sure enough, when he takes the cards home he discovers he can memorize them almost immediately. Alfred is ecstatic.
Better still the mental exercise starts to wake up other parts of his brain, and he begins remembering snippets of other languages. One night at dinner, instead of saying Please pass the scalloped potatoes, Mom, he says, Aio, mater, quantitas magna frumentorum est. Which actually means, Why, mother, that is a very large amount of corn. Still, when she hears the words, instead of passing the potatoes his mother leaps up and hugs him.
Two weeks later when Mandy comes through the terminal and they go to lunch he has a surprise for her. He signs out: T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U F-O-R T-H-E C-A-R-D-S. I H-A-V-E B-E-E-N S-T-U-D-Y-I-N-G.
Mandy claps her hands to her chest and then leaps up and hugs Alfred. He never realized speaking other languages was good for so many hugs. He’s going to have to study a lot more. She puts her hands on his shoulders and looks straight at him, still smiling. He doesn’t see clouds in her eyes anymore. He only sees the most beautiful person he’s ever encountered.
Mandy asks Alfred to her house for dinner. She’s been living with her sister for the last year, since living alone finally became too challenging. That Saturday his father gives him a ride all the way up to Ballard, where Mandy’s sister Laura has an apartment.
As Alfred unbuckles his seat belt and opens the car door his dad says, I don’t give a damn what your mother or the doctors say. This kind of thing is good for you, son. You go in there and be a gentleman, and you’ll charm her right out of her knickers, as your grampaw used to say. He says since they’re all
